Okay, but what are you going to do with it?

Sooo. In my initial plan for the studio we are building, I had planned to use a small wood-burning stove that I picked up on Craigslist about two years ago for a hundred bucks. The title of this post is the question Greg asked me when I arrived home with it in the back of the truck.

Unfortunately, once I had laid everything out on paper when we were contemplating the studio, and I took into consideration the very large clearance from combustible materials that is required for a cast iron wood stove, I realized it was going to eat up a whole lot more floor space than I thought. I haven't solved this dilemma completely, but I'm looking at a few options, including a direct-vent gas (propane in my case) fireplace that recesses into the wall and has a low profile on the inside (most of the stove bumps out of the wall to the outside), and does not require a chimney. I also found a very small Vermont Castings cast iron gas stove that is only 13 inches deep and can sit as close as three inches from the wall since the combustion chamber is insulated. This would eat up very little floor space.

Anyway, I'm still working on this issue and cost is a factor. We'll probably wait until next fall to deal with the heat issue because we can limp along with a small electric heater for the time being, except when the temps drop into the single digits. I just can't store anything out there that will freeze until we solve this issue.

Anyway, I have this old second-hand, wood-burning stove that looks exactly like this... It's a Vogelzang Deluxe Boxwood Stove and that's the image from their website. Mine is buried under a bunch of stuff in the barn at the moment. I figured I'd hang onto it and eventually use it to heat a greenhouse since it turned out not to be ideal for my studio. It's a nice little utilitarian stove, no window, just a cast iron box with a flue. It's pretty cute and you can even cook on it in a pinch. It's perfect to heat a greenhouse if you have a way to move the air around the space. There's even a little gadget that you can add between sections of the stove pipe that will capture much of the heat going up the stove pipe and send it out into the room rather than having it escape to the outside. It makes the stove much more efficient. Anyway, the problem with cast iron stoves is that they get super hot, and once the fire goes out they lose heat pretty quickly. There's just not enough thermal mass to really retain a lot of heat for very long.

Or so I thought... check this out!


http://www.handprintpress.com/ovens/bring-in-the-mud/

This is from Kiko Denzer's webpage. He's the guy I got the original idea from, for Sunny the clay oven. Look at that thing! He's basically created a "clay hat" for his stove and inside this hat is a serpentine tunnel that winds around and around inside that thing. The clay heats up and becomes basically a radiator and the winding design inside there is basically a big heat exchanger, with lots of surface area to soak up the heat. After the clay absorbs the heat traveling through the tunnel, the stove pipe exits "the hat" and the smoke and some of the hot air goes on up out of the roof, leaving most of the heat behind in the Hat. The hat slowly radiates the heat into the room, just like my clay oven radiates heat back into the baking chamber. Genius! (although I do have some concerns about the ability of those spindly legs to support what has to be several hundred pounds of clay. Looks a tiny bit precarious.

Anyway, it sparked an idea about how to heat a future greenhouse, using a stove I already have, and the abundant supply of oak firewood we have accumulated over time.

I could really extend my growing season if I could put a little bit of supplemental heat into a tunnel or lean-to greenhouse, particularly if I use twin-wall polycarbonate or a double layer of poly film. I'd start by taking the legs off the little Vogelzang stove (they're bolted on), and right smack in the middle of the greenhouse, I'd dig down several inches and put a scrap of foam insulation in the hole about 4 x 4 feet square. Then, I'd pour gravel on top of the foam insulation until it was level with the ground. Then, I'd basically build something similar to Sunny, but embed this stove inside the mud dome, leaving the front of the stove exposed, for access to load the wood, build the fire, and clean out ashes. Access to the damper is also in the front part of the stove. You could make a hearth out of the clay too so you could sit by it and warm up when working in the greenhouse in the winter, and even build out to the side, a chamber that could hold your firewood. The heat from the clay would probably get warm enough to help dry the firewood so it burns better, with less smoke, and it would also give you a place to store several days' worth of wood without having it piled up all over the place. I'd cover the stove pipe with a thick tube of clay up to about six feet or so, then stick another damper in the stove pipe at that height, to help draw the air upward, then add that little gadget to capture residual heat that is still in the stove pipe, and then vent it out through the roof. Basically, the stove becomes the firebox for a big masonry heater, and all that clay (probably 12 or more inches thick) would absorb the heat through the walls of the stove, and slowly release it into the greenhouse. You could really make this a massive thermal storage device and really get a lot of bang for your buck with each fire.

I think you could still do what Kiko did and form a small chamber above the firebox that you could use as an oven, and get double duty from this contraption. Not sure what you would want to cook in a greenhouse but, whatever... Although, you certainly could bake bread in there when it is too cold outside to use Sunny.

It would look like a big adobe fireplace in a pueblo except for the cast iron door. By enclosing the stove inside a big envelope of clay/mud, I think you would eliminate any issues of minimum clearance to the wall, and with the exception of the door, none of the surface should get hot enough to actually burn you. The thermal mass of the clay structure should help avoid the extreme temperature swings that you get with a typical wood stove.

One thing you'd need to keep track of is the humidity level in the greenhouse. As a rule, you want a lot of humidity in a greenhouse, and the hotter the air temperature, the more water it holds. This is a good thing when trying to raise plants. However, raising the air temp in the greenhouse way above the outside temperature is going to cause a lot of condensation on the walls/ceiling of the house. This water is going to come from somewhere so you would need to make sure your planting beds are not drying out too much, or figure out a way to recapture the condensation as it runs down the walls of the greenhouse. Hmmm, surely there's a solution for this. People grow food in heated greenhouses at latitudes above 50 degrees so this is not a unique problem. It might be something as simple as having an open tank of water as your humidity source, which slowly evaporates, providing the necessary water for the surrounding air, and then capturing the condensation along the bottom of the greenhouse walls and feeding it back to the drip irrigation system. This could help prevent the soil from drying out. Sounds complicated but I'll research this issue and figure out what other people have done.

This might be a fun project to do when my folks come up sometime. It would be much more challenging than building Sunny, which took the better part of a weekend. My dad would have a blast doing this with us. Based on the amount of clay, sand and straw I used when I built Sunny, a clay heater of this size would probably require at least a full pickup bed each of sand and clay, and probably not as many bales of straw. The straw strengthens the mix but too much straw creates an insulating effect, trapping the heat inside the stove, which was perfect for the clay oven but not what I would want for this heater. I would want the heat moving through the clay walls and out into the room. I'd have to mess around a bit and figure out how little straw I can get away with and still have a strong structure, particularly the chimney part.

Best part about this project is the cost. I already have the hundred-dollar stove. Local clay is free or almost free (I probably can use the tractor to dig some really decent clay out of my pond that will be easy to work with) and coarse sand is a few bucks a ton. Literally. I just need to go to the sand pit and get it. The rest is just manual labor. As for fuel, we have numerous dead trees on our property that need to be dealt with anyway. Much of the wood is useable lumber but the limbs and so forth are perfect for firing this little stove, and we have an almost unlimited supply of them.

If I eventually do this, the greenhouse should be stay comfortable in all but the worst part of winter, and I ought to be able to grow all kinds of cool season veggies well into December or perhaps... even... dare I say it? January????? Eliot Coleman would be proud!

"Chewbarka"

"So... I guess that's your accomplice there in the wood chipper?"

Oh how I love this thing... We've started on the dead tree "carcasses" and so far, the bed of the truck is about two-thirds full of wood chips. I have no shortage of places that need mulch, starting with my newly pruned fruit trees, and around my clay oven, Sunny, so it definitely won't go to waste. We have massive piles of tree branches to chip, and lots of stuff too big for the chipper but not big enough to mill into dimensional lumber. It will need to be cut up with the chainsaw and used for firewood. This afternoon, I used the tow strap and hooked one of the biggest logs to the truck and dragged it down the driveway and parked it out of the way. I think I came within an inch of backing the truck into it the other day. Not something I wanted to have to 'splain to Greg...

What's up in the vineyard?

I've been terribly negligent on keeping this blog up to date, so it's time for an update. So, uhhh, what's happening out there? Well, most of the vineyard chores at this point involve controlling grass and weeds, tying/training the vines to the trellis, and making sure things stay wet enough. There are no grapes to harvest this year because the vines are still too young. We will probably let the two-year-old vines produce a half crop next year assuming they come out of dormancy in better shape than they did this year. We will be taking off the grow tubes in the next several days so the vines can start hardening off for winter. These are plastic tubes that are about 30" tall, and surround the newly planted vines. They create a protective greenhouse for the vine while it begins to grow. They also help direct it up the bamboo stake toward the wire, and protect the base of the vine from rabbits and so forth. They go on right after planting, and come off in mid August. As we take them off, they get nested into bundles of 20 and stored until next year when we plant the next batch of vines.

Since early July, we have gone through several weeks with minimal rain. We've gotten some but not enough. Watering is a hassle but with new vines, one thing you can't do is let the roots dry out. Older vines, with much deeper roots handle heat and drought stress better than new vines. We have pretty heavy soil here, clay loam, which holds water well so what percolates down tends to stick around.

Anyway, we hand water when necessary and this entails putting a big polyethylene tank in the back of the truck, and driving up and down each row, putting a couple of gallons on each vine. We have a small pond right next to the vineyard and when we get decent snow in the winter and normal rain in the spring, the pond is full to the brim through late June. This year was no exception. We had a pretty wet spring and were able to store plenty of water in the pond. We have a trash pump that we keep by the pond and it sucks water up through a hose and into the tank. The tank holds about 125 gallons of water and we have 12 rows of new vines so it takes several trips back and forth. We put about 1500 gallons of water on the vines each week that we don't get at least an inch of rain. Very time consuming. Also, it takes two people, one driving, one holding the hose. Last week I rigged up a little dealie with a piece of metal pipe that extends out almost over the vine, and a couple of clamps attached to the tailgate so I could just open the valve and then run and jump in the front seat, and drive along the vine row, and water by myself. Before I had a chance to try it out though, we started getting rain every couple of days again so I haven't tested it out yet. Anyway, that will free up one person to do something else.

The long term solution, however, is to run drip irrigation. It's expensive but the value of time saved (and gas driving up and down the the vineyard rows with a half ton of water in the back) is worth something so we are probably going to do it either this fall, or next spring before planting gets underway.

I'm totally intrigued by the idea of putting some alternative energy to use in the vineyard. I'm already doing this a little bit with the "mutton mowers" as an alternative to mowing and weeding. Anyway, moving water from place to place is an ideal task for a solar or wind project. I subscribe to Home Power magazine which is a really good source for ideas and products geared toward do-it-yourself alternative energy projects. The drip irrigation will require a huge poly tank of at least a thousand gallons, which we will put at the highest point of the property (which happens to be just north of the vineyard). My idea is to use either a small wind turbine or solar panels to a battery bank (or possibly a hybrid of the two) to pump water from the pond to the poly tank, where it will be filtered and stored. The vineyard will then be divided into zones and the flow controlled by a manifold that allows only a few rows at a time to be watered on any given day. That way I can really deeply water 3 or 4 rows at a time on a given day, and then move on to the next batch the next day. Hopefully there will be enough elevation of the tank that gravity can handle most of the pressure needed to push all of that water out to the emitters, but if I need an electric pump to boost the pressure, I'll break down and buy one and run it off a battery bank charged by the panels too. Hopefully it won't be needed. I can drip irrigate overnight and refill the tank during the day when the wind blows and the sun shines. I figure if there's no sun, it's probably raining and I won't need to fill the tank anyway. There's no electricity running out to the vineyard and this seems like an ideal application for solar/wind/hydro. I've even considered buying a big thousand gallon tank that I can put on a trailer, and attach the turbine and solar panels to one side of the trailer. It would look like the Beverly Hillbillies meets Mad Max and would be a self-contained little electricity generator of a sorts, and I can move it to various vineyard blocks, which by the time we finish planting will be spread out on the 40 acres in various locations, park it with the panels facing the sun, and hook up to the manifold for each vineyard block, and let er rip...

As a bonus, that thing could be parked next to a future hoop house/greenhouse and used to provide lighting and irrigation to a winter vegetable garden when not needed in the vineyard. I've been looking at hoop houses online and have the perfect place for one just to the south of the house. I can't grow tomatoes and peppers year round here, but I could probably keep some lettuces, kale/collard/mustard greens, spinach, and cold weather veggies like broccoli and squash going well into December, and then get started in early March with lots of early spring veggies. It will also give me a lot of space to root cuttings of grape vines to either replenish dead ones or expand the vineyard to more of the acreage., and play around a little bit with crossing grapes and developing new cultivars. The possibilities are endless...

Now that I have these sheep, I have an unlimited supply of "fertilizer" in handy "pelletized" form. I've even seen people use horse manure composted in a trench inside a hoop house to raise the temperature several degrees as it breaks down. We're surrounded by people with horses, and plenty of poop to spare.

The thing about a hoop house is it's cheap, movable and when it gets hot you just roll up the sides to the open air. Once it's cold, if you garden in raised beds, and insulate the sides with rigid foam, you can even run PEX tubing under the growing beds and circulate it through a big holding tank attached to a solar collector on the outside of the greenhouse, and provide toasty warm growing beds. With a big enough tank inside the greenhouse, you can probably store enough heat to moderate the temperature of the greenhouse overnight as long as you have good sunny days during the day to heat the water up. You definitely could if you paint the tank black and put it where it can absorb heat from the greenhouse during the day.

So many ideas, so little time.

I warned you...

I might go off on a tangent now and then. Trust me, if this blog was all grapes all the time, you'd soon be telling me this is one very boring blog. Therefore, I feel I must throw you a curve now and then, so today I present to you...

The Silkie Chicken. I.am.not.kidding! Those are chickens. And yes, they certainly do look silkie! Okay, here's the deal. Ya know how you have those special places on the web you like to check in with, on a pretty regular basis? Well, one of mine happens to be Craigslist. Yeah, yeah, I know all about the sociopaths lurking around on Craigslist, but I'm not too worried because my particular category of interest is the Farm and Garden section. I don't think Hannibal Lecter is hanging out there. I have a little list of items I'm always on the lookout for, and I go looking for them a couple of times a day. You might even say Craigslist Farm and Garden is my "happy place" on the World Wide Web. One time I found a dirt cheap Spring Rake for the back of my tractor the day after pricing a new one at Tractor Supply... I had to drive two hours round trip to get it but what a deal!

Anyway, I usually end up scrolling quickly through the day's postings in case there's a deal on one of the things on my list; as I tell Greg... "There are things I might need!" (for instance, I'm on the lookout for a large polyethylene tank, at least 1000 gallons, no leaking, and I don't want to pay too much, and bonus if it already has a valve fitting for a hose to attach). When I finish my first run through the list to see if anything I'm looking for has been posted for sale while I slept, I go back through again, more slowly, and check out all the weird stuff people have for sale. That is how I found the Silkie Chickens. The baby chicks are $2.50 a piece and if I knew what the heck to do with a dozen silkie chickens, I'd have already called that lady to make arrangements to pick them up.

Hmmm, I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that free-range chickens can be put to work eating insects in your garden. I wonder how they'd get along with my sheep?