Want to Spend the Night?

Our Earthship B&B is back up and running with select dates February-June and any date July-August!  This includes a full tour and our time to answer any questions you may have, and a home-cooked breakfast for you the following morning:
https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/1249134

Autumn Update

As we creep into winter, I am reminded how awesome the thermal properties of an Earthship are.  The low sun quickly heats the place right up.  On overcast days, we start a fire in the wood-fired oven.  We cook in it a lot though so its pretty much on every day.  The oven-powered radiant-heat floor in the back hallway keeps the granite slabs in the floor hovering around 80 degrees - warming the rest of the 'Ship.  This saves us around $3000 a winter on heating costs.

In the greenhouse, we're raising this year's batch of egg-layers.  They'll be laying in March.

The exterior greenhouse is pretty much done (done enough for the winter anyway). I need to thank Courtney DeVoe for putting in overtime taking care of Solara while I finished it up. Early data suggests roughly an 8 degree difference in nighttime temperature between the South-end entryway and the earth-bermed tirewall North end. I'm looking forward to seeing how it performs in sub-zero temps. My cold-hardiest citrus (navel orange and mandarin) are already planted at the south end. They can handle down to mid-upper 20s. At the North end will be the more sensitive citrus (Limes and Grapefruit) to take advantage of the passive geothermal heat.

 In the end we used 150 tires, about 2000 cans, and about 2000 glass bottles. Thanks to everyone that saved us bottles. This is also the beginning of a multi-phase farming experiment that will hopefully help establish a college fund for Solara.

The chicks have been moved into the exterior greenhouse until they are big enough to ride out the rest of the winter in the coop.

 

Summer Update

Solara loves to bounce now - 4 months old!

The indoor garden is much more lucrative than the outdoor.

The lemons are just starting to turn!  (Pretty stoked about this.)

The greenhouse has turned into a huge project.  I am scrambling to get the thing enclosed by sub-freezing temps.

The main holdup is acquiring bottles.  I'll go through close to 3,000 by the end.

This year, I will only be overwintering a navel orange and a mandarin - my 2 cold-hardiest.  If they survive I'll plant lemon and lime cultivars as well.  Since there will be no additional heat source, I have no idea how this will work.

My favorite flower so far.

Around the 'Ship

Our baby girl, Solara, is loving life in an earthship.  She loves the natural light and colorful bottle walls.  We can't wait to see what each new day brings with her and someday soon she'll be running down the greenhouse hallway.

Also, here are a couple more photos of the wind turbine Chad put up!  It looks pretty cool!

Spring Update

Here is a quick update of some of the things happening around the Freeville Earthship.

Solara is adjusting to her first month of life!

The Greenhouse is alive with Peppers, Broccoli, Tomatoes, Greens, Strawberries, Artichokes, and we have baby Meyer Lemons.  The Avocado tree has put on lots of new growth as well and should start producing next year.  Water flow in the house is so efficient that we find ourselves running faucets to fill the greywater planter this time of year.

Outside we're currently establishing a "food forest" for humans, birds, and pollinators.  Pictured is yellow sweet clover, elderberry, and currants

To supplement our winter energy needs, we're putting up a small wind turbine that should deliver about 30-40 KWH per month

With any free time I'm currently building a 12'x 50' underground greenhouse.  Not knowing how it'll actually turn out, I'm hoping that it stays above freezing all winter long.  More progress pics on this in the future.

Newest addition to the Freeville Earthship

 Introducing Solara Jade - Born 25 May 2014 at 8:16am. 7 lbs 15oz

Winter Update

 Things are going well in the Freeville Earthship.  We've taken some measures to eliminate the mid-summer humidity issues, including polyurethaning the pantry shelves and ceiling, and redesigning our walk-through closet, so clothes are no longer against the back wall.  We've found that the one or two times in the summer where it nears 90F with over 90% humidity, we get some "sweating" on the back 1' of floor and bottom 1' of tire wall.  However, most people in our region have similar issues and we can't attribute that to the fact that we're in an Earthship.

If we had sun every day in the winter we could probably get away without any heat source whatsoever.  I don't think its possible for the main living area to get below 55F...unless a door were left open of course.  We easily keep the main room in the mid-upper 60s with the wood-fired oven.  We just got done with -25F wind chills and the greenhouse stayed in the 40s at night.  The radiant floor heat setup coming off of the oven works well too.  After a few hours, the back hallway floor heats up to the mid 70s and sometimes into the low 80s - warming the East end of the Ship.

Our tomato plant is about 2 months away from becoming a "perennial tomato plant."

Our banana tree finally flowered and began growing bananas!

Cooking local.

Southern Tier Chili

We use the oven as much as possible....toasting, boiling, baking, frying, dehydrating, etc.  We had a $200 propane bill our first year and this should help lower that.

Looking forward to lots of canning next year.  I put my Fedco seed order in and we should start seeing the beginning of production from the orchard this year.

In other related news, Courtney is pregnant!  This is how we finished our last bedroom for a future nursery, with a raised-plaster sun, pallet-wood wall, and yellow, orange, and red bottles on the hallway wall:

And the Starry Night room, plastered and painted