Money not spent is money not taxed. That's why saving money is better than earning it. No one can take away the money you saved. Many things you take for granted and/or consider trash can be used for things they were never intended for, and do a better job than what you would pay stupid prices for to get new.
Designing a permaculture homestead that needs the least amount of energy and work to maintain requires a lot of planning and design. If you don't use your head, you'll use your feet, and the idea behind this homestead is to create an environment where all our needs are met with little or no work involved with the least amount of money spent as possible.
For example, building a rocket mass heater may require you to gather wood to burn, but you don't have to split it and you don't have to pay money to have someone bring you cords of split hardwoods. You simply gather fallen sticks and branches and stack a few at a time vertically into the burn box and they'll feed themselves into the fire and break themselves up into hot coals as the fire burns. No splitting, no stirring, no adjusting logs. You don't even have to buy the heater. You build it out of
cob and (hopefully) found scrap materials. We mentioned to everyone how much we love cast iron cookware, and lo and behold a wonderful person bought us a cast iron griddle that will work perfectly for the stovetop of out rocket mass heater. We've found bricks on craigslist for free, and now we're looking for firebrick.
Another example? Instead of building fences around each garden area to keep the deer and rabbits out, you build a double fence around the entire perimeter of the land and let your dog run along it and chase away the deer and rabbits before they get in, and pee along it so the smell also helps deter would-be veggie thieves. Dog gets exercise and you keep more of your food.
Design can work in every aspect of your life on the homestead. But before you design, you'll need to know not only what materials you have to work with, but what properties those materials possess and how they can be used to save you work. If you are smart, you can use free materials for everything. The more free stuff you use, the less work you have to do to make the money to spend on the not-free stuff. After all, that's what this whole blog is about.
I'm compiling a list here for my own reference (most of this blog is actually our recordkeeping, which we hope helps others in their process too)
Insulation:
Heat
- sun - especially on a dark surface
- thermal mass like dirt, stone, brick or cob and/or dark color materials absorb heat
- metal and air transfers heat
- exhaust from rocket mass heater
- compost bins put out over 100ยบ or more in their decomposition process.
Cooling
- underground
- thick thermal mass structures
- evaporation and flowing air
- spring fed streams
Building
- earth-rammed tires
- cans and/or bottles in cob
- cob (straw and mud)
- branches
- watch craigslist for give-aways, shelves, barrels, tools, old hot tubs, bathtubs etc
- windows - watch craigslist and the curb
- pallets - watch craigslist
Gardening
- any containers you can get your hands on
- washing machine drums - great planters
- bath tubs
- hot tubs (people are always trying to get rid of those)
- Learn to root cuttings and get cuttings from trees from your friends and neighbors
- cardboard and newspaper (best weedkiller around)
Here are some ideas how to put things together.
Hot tubs and bathtubs can be used to store water both above ground and below grade. They can be linked together and filled from various rainwater catchment systems. You can fill them with gravel and grow water loving plants in them. You can filter grey water (especially if you're vegan like us and have no grease in your sink water) by running it through one planted tub, then another, and another, some with fish, some swampy.
You can use old box springs or chain link fencing for trellises and arbors.
Rammed earth tires (at 300lbs each) can be used to level off driveways and patios, build walls, shore up creek banks to support bridges, build dams and hold ponds.
Cans and bottles can be laid in a cob mortar like bricks then plastered over to form thinner walls and interior walls. Bottles (especially colorful ones) can be used on the south, east and west walls to allow in light to showers, breakfast nooks, kitchens and bedrooms.
Shelves: You can never have enough shelves. Homesteaders need them to store canned stuff, dried stuff, seed starters, fresh food, supplies, create storage walls separate rooms for bedrooms. Watch craigslist and curbside for these and snatch them up whenever you see them.
Windows - ALWAYS grab windows if you see them on the curbs on trash day or on Craigslist. You can always find a use for them. Cold frames, small greenhouses, solar gain for animal houses (and people houses), solar ovens, poop cookers to kill bacteria before composting poop, solar hot water heaters, solar dehydrators. Windows are some of the biggest expenses in building your home. If you have the windows on hand, you can custom build your walls to support any size windows you happen to have found.
Branches: You can save a lot of money building things out of branches. Using baling twine, you can create wattle and daub fences and pet shelters. I use them in place of tomato stakes because they branch out like the tomato plants do and give you plenty to hold your veggies up with - for beans, toms, any climbing viney plants. Tie and weave them together low to the ground and you can support your squash and melons and other ground-crawlers up off the ground so they don't rot.
Andrea found a washing machine drum, stuck a pole in it and a bicycle wheel on top of that, ran string off it and made a great planter out of it. The holes in the sides help the soil drain and running strings off the bicycle wheel gives the plants something to climb.
