Timber Framing Fun

We finished standing up the timbr frame for the "green" house that we're building in Muncie, Indiana.  We still have a long way to go before we can move in, but this is a big milestone that encourages me to keep going strong.

After we finish the roof and framing out the windows and doors, we'll stack straw bales (not hay!) for the exterior walls and plaster them with a natural clay/sand/straw plaster.  The slab will be heated with hot water and is colored dark red to be the finished floor.  The house sits on 4.3 acres, and is surrounded by a large organic garden, small deciduous and coniferous woods, and a mixed orchard.  We're building without a mortgage (by choice), so it will take another year or two before we finish, but in the end it should be very sustainable.

Communal Living

Communal living has some interesting advantages. Housing , energy and transportation costs are reduced, and it is often easier to live materially simple lives.  People living communally seek this simplicity for several reasons: the spiritual freedom from having fewer things to be attached to, more time for prayer and meditation, sharing of chores, intentional manual labor, financial freedom, and the ability to live in solidarity with the poor.  Let's not forget the most obvious reasons people live communally: for a deeper and more intentional community with other people, encouraging each other, learning from each other, and focusing more time and effort on relationships than on possessions.  There are also challenges that come with living communally, but most people who voluntarily live communally will tell you that the challenges are minor compared with the advantages.

Creative Manual Labor

I recently re-discovered the joy of creative manual labor while building my house, and was reminded of a Saturday back in my college days spent with a friend, in the woods of Colorado cutting up trees that had fallen in a recent snow storm. We were utterly exhausted by the end of the day, but filled with an intense joy, soaking in the sounds of the brook and the birds while we stood, sweating and aching. Some of the side effects of creative manual labor are that it’s great exercise, your whole being is engaged in the work, and it's often better for the environment.  I find myself having more inclination for poetry and writing after a day of creative manual labor, and I'm more hopeful.

A few quotes from E.F. Schumacher, whose essay Buddhist Economics is one of the best analyses on manual labor out there. Here are a few quotes from Small Is Beautiful which includes Buddhist Economics as one of its chapters:

...methods and equipment should be such as to leave ample room for human creativity.  Over the last hundred years no one has spoken more insistently and warningly on the subject than have the Roman pontiffs. What becomes of man if the process of production "takes away from work any hint of humanity, making of it a merely mechanical activity"? The worker himself is turned into a perversion of a free being.  "And so bodily labour [said Pius XI] which even after original sin was decreed by Providence for the good of man’s body and soul, is in many instances changed into an instrument of perversion; for from the factory dead matter goes out improved, whereas men there are corrupted and degraded"

There is universal agreement that a fundamental source of wealth is human labour. Now, the modern economist has been brought up to consider "labour" or work as little more than a necessary evil. From the point of view of the employer, it is in any case simply an item of cost, to be reduced to a minimum if it can not be eliminated altogether, say, by automation. From the point of view of the workman, it is a "disutility"; to work is to make a sacrifice of one’s leisure and comfort, and wages are a kind of compensation for the sacrifice. Hence the ideal from the point of view of the employer is to have output without employees, and the ideal from the point of view of the employee is to have income without employment.

The Buddhist point of view takes the function of work to be at least threefold: to give man a chance to utilise and develop his faculties; to enable him to overcome his ego-centredness by joining with other people in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming existence. Again, the consequences that flow from this view are endless. To organise work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless, boring, stultifying, or nerve-racking for the worker would be little short of criminal; it would indicate a greater concern with goods than with people, an evil lack of compassion and a soul-destroying degree of attachment to the most primitive side of this worldly existence. Equally, to strive for leisure as an alternative to work would be considered a complete misunderstanding of one of the basic truths of human existence, namely that work and leisure are complementary parts of the same living process and cannot be separated without destroying the joy of work and the bliss of leisure.

Character, at the same time, is formed primarily by a man’s work. And work, properly conducted in conditions of human dignity and freedom, blesses those who do it and equally their products.

And finally, a quote that helps me understand the depression that attacks the unemployed:

If a man has no chance of obtaining work he is in a desperate position, not simply because he lacks an income but because he lacks this nourishing and enlivening factor of disciplined work which nothing can replace

Is Heating With Wood a Bad Idea?

Heating with wood can create a lot of pollution and waste natural resources if it isn't done well, but here are two options that are very efficient and low on pollution.

Rocket Stoves are fairly easy to build yourself, and provide a way to burn small pieces of wood really hot, which is required for reduction of creosote and pollution. The Aprovecho Research Center has done significant research on rocket stoves and are now producing inexpensive rocket stoves for third world countries. Ianto Evans, from the Cob Cottage Company, is building heated couches with rocket stoves and has a book out about them.

Masonry Heaters are the big brother to rocket stoves. They work under the same principles as rocket stoves: small pieces of wood that burn very quickly (usually 30 minutes or less) and get very hot.  The addition of large amounts of thermal mass in the surrounding masonry and maze-like chimney capture this heat and radiate it out slowly over many hours, heating your house all day. There are many different designs for masonry heaters, and they are also known as Russian, Finnish, or Scandinavian fireplaces.

Give a Poop, Don't Pollute

I am very intrigued by the idea of composting human excrement.  Joseph Jenkins has been evangelizing this method of recycling for many years now, with his book The Humanure Handbook. In it, Jenkins describes a simple system for safely composting poop using thermophilic methods, which basically means that the compost needs to reach a certain temperature in order to properly kill the pathogens.  The resulting compost, when properly processed, is safe to use even on vegetable gardens (Jenkins has been doing it for over 20 years).  Not only does this increase the fertility of our soils, it also significantly decreases pollution.  When combined with the composting of other organic matter, the impact could be tremendous.  Poop could save the world!

For a crash course in humanure composting, including a documentary about bringing this concept to Haiti, check out Jenkins' videos at http://humanurehandbook.com/videos.html.

Here's the challenge or the catch, depending on how you look at it.  "Above-ground sewage treatment" is illegal in many parts of the United States because of the health hazard to the community if it is not done properly.  Mustering up the courage to help guide and educate the Board of Health in your county, city, or state and lead the legislative reform is not something to be taken lightly, yet it is a leadership opportunity that matters. This is one of the next steps for me, in my long "to-do" list of things that will make a difference.  I'm not especially looking forward to it, but I'm sure I will be stretched and learn a lot in the process.

Have you noticed any trends with these simple yet effective methods of environmental stewardship? Joel Salatin hit the nail on the head with his book, Everything I Want to do is Illegal.  More thoughts on this to come...

Beautiful Hand-Sculpted Homes of Cob

One of the least expensive methods for building a house is to use a mixture of clay, sand, and straw to make little loaves, called “cobs”, and form them into the wall while they are still moist.  This method of building is labor intensive, but the labor often is satisfying and has the potential to foster teamwork and a sense of community among the crew working on the project.  The end result is a beautifully sculpted house, with curving walls that seem you hug the occupants and provide a strong sense of security.  The walls are typically 12-18 inches in depth, and act as a heat capacitor to store solar heat during winter days, and release that same heat at night. Nooks, niches, bookshelves, and benches can be formed right into the wall system.  People building with cob often build smaller houses because of the labor involved, which can lead to a stronger family life and lower utility bills. The walls are non-toxic, and cost little if anything.

The downside?  In the United States, it is difficult to get a building permit for cob structures.  Most of the owner-builders actually build illegally, without a permit or inspections, and therefore also avoid the property taxes that would come as a result of a certificate of occupancy.  This is enough reason for me to avoid building my own house with cob.  I would, however, like to try to get a building permit to build a cob shed or barn.  When I finish my own house (timber frame + straw-bale), I will probably try it out.

For more information about cob, visit the Cob Cottage Company online (its worth checking out just for the photos!), or read The Hand-Sculpted House by Ianto Evans, Michael G. Smith, and Linda Smiley. These guys are really living lives of voluntary simplicity and practicing what they preach.  I called them several years ago to apply for a position in their company, and they explained their health care benefits: "you get to eat from an organic garden, drink pure water, and breath clean air". 

There are several great videos about cob houses online.  Here is a quick one that gives a good intro to cob building:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Frkps9jmCVM

The Automatic Saint

The Automatic Millionaire by David Bach talks about how easy it is to become a millionaire using a variety of automatic methods such as setting up direct deposits into retirement accounts and making extra mortgage payments. For example, starting at age 22, if you direct deposit $300 from every paycheck into a mutual fund that returns 8%, then by the age of 62, you have $1M.

A similar approach can be applied towards personal growth, but the automatic methods are a little bit harder to setup.  The automatic methods that I'm talking about are daily habits.  Most of us live our lives through an intricate framework of daily habits, from what we do when we wake up to the inner dialogue going on when stressful situations arise.  We aren't even aware of many of our habits, and a lot of them are detrimental to personal growth. In Linchpin, Seth Godin writes about what he calls the "lizard brain" that thinks about survival, and how the lizard brain, when left unguarded an undisciplined, leads us to lust, gluttony and paralyzing anxiety. The lizard brain can be much stronger than our higher level brains, so we have to be purposeful in tricking it to not want to take over and sabotage our lives.

To take this a step further and apply similar concepts to spiritual growth, we should carefully consider the words of Mother Theresa, "God doesn’t ask that we succeed in everything, but that we are faithful." St. Francis of Assisi also had something to say about spiritual growth and daily habits, and he articulated it in the rule for the orders that he founded. His solution was daily conversion, a purposeful act of going from gospel to life, and life to gospel.  There are many methods of doing this, but they all hinge on our ability to put into practice one or more spiritual disciplines on a daily basis.  Dallas Willard gives us a wonderful explanation of the rationale behind many of the spiritual disciplines in his book, The Spirit of the Disciplines. 

The automatic part of daily spiritual disciplines is that once they are formed, it takes relatively little to maintain them, and you don't have to muster a bunch of will-power in order to carry them out every day. The difficult part is establishing these disciplines, and getting into the habit of continually increasing or improving on those disciplines.  This is a big part of the imperative to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. It may take a couple of months of fighting a daily battle with an existing bad habit in order to establish each new spiritual discipline in your life. This is sort of like setting up a permaculture garden in our hearts (see Hosea 10:12); it takes a lot of up-front design and labor, but then it is fairly self-sustaining and yields good fruit in season.  This is, in my experience, the light yoke.

Rusty Water Heater

I was first "turned on" to the world of environmental stewardship when my water heater rusted out 11 years ago.  I was new to home ownership, and wanted to do my due diligence in selecting a new water heater. I was looking for quality, low maintenance, and high efficiency, so I started researching online.  I had traveled internationally before and had used "on-demand" water heaters in Egypt, and was very dissatisfied, but I came across some information about new larger models and how they outperformed the models used commonly in other parts of the world.  Of course I was intrigued, so I kept researching. 

It turns out that tank-style water heaters are common only in the US; the rest of the world prefers the tankless approach.  Not only does the tankless water heater save money by turning off when not needed, but it also provides an endless supply of hot water, so you never run out.  The only trick for me was going to be finding the right sized model so two or three end points (showers, washing machine, dishwasher, etc) could all get hot water at the same time.  I settled on a Takagi TK-2 since we had natural gas already available, but on my next house that was all electric, I had to try different models.  I found out that some of the electric models had really nice controllers, like the Stiebel Eltron, and others had "opportunities for improvement" (names withheld) .  I settled on the Steibel Eltron, and was very satisfied. 

So, after all this research and installing the tankless water heater in my own house, I kept coming back to the bigger issue of why I had only heard about tankless water heaters when I travelled out of the country.  There seemed to be a big marketing giant among the tank-style water heater manufacturers that had spent lots of money to convince the American public that there were no other options.  I later learned that nearly all tank-style water heaters are built in one town in Tennessee, in one of three plants.  All of the different labels and features were just there to give the public a false sense of "choices".  Amazing.  I was convinced that this had to be happening in other industries and other products, as well, and I was on my way to an amazing world of discovery about the environment and the world of big business.

The Virtue of Poverty

No, I'm not talking about entitlement or the "cycle of poverty" that reinforces it. I'm not talking about starvation, malnutrition, or the lack of basic medical attention.  I'm talking about simple living and the freedom that comes from the lack of material possessions. For some people who have abundant income this is called Voluntary Simplicity.  I spent a summer in Quito, Ecuador for a summer, living out of a suitcase, and it was wonderful! When we store up material treasures, a lot of time (and money) is spent maintaining, cleaning and repairing those material possessions.  For most of us, we don't even realize how much time and money we spend fixin' stuff.  Some of the side benefits of simplicity: mobility to pursue the journey towards our vocation /calling, more time to spend on the important stuff like prayer and relationships, and less dependence on our factory job.  But the principal benefit and reason to move towards simplicity, at least for our family, is obedience. 

No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.

- Matthew 6:24 (NIV)

Of course, for those of us currently living a wealthy lifestyle, the journey towards poverty usually doesn't take place overnight, and there isn't any black and white rule for what level of simplicity is "good" and what level of wealth is "bad".  The important part seems to be the journey.  Even Saint Francis recognized the need for caution when embracing poverty, especially for families. When he established his Third Order (now called the Secular Franciscan Order), he understood and expressed the importance of taking care of our families, and intentionally left out the vow of strict poverty that were present in the first and second orders. 

In my own family, we have put several things in place to move us along the road to poverty, but we also recognize the need for further changes, and we're glad to be making progress.  We often dry our clothes on a line instead of using an electric drier.  We're starting our third year of gardening.  When we need new clothes, we usually check thrift stores before buying new.  We rarely buy convenience foods.  We're building our own house without a mortgage, using a timber frame structure and straw bales for in-fill.  We just started making our own soap this year. We bake our own bread, with whole wheat that we grind. We still feel the need to sell one of our 2 vehicles so that we only have one. We still feel like we have too many toys around the house, too many books on the shelves, and too many clothes in the closet.  So, we still have work to do, but we're on the journey, and we continually appreciate the benefits

Food Purity and Religion

In Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Barbara Kingsolver laments the lack of emphasis on food purity in Christianity. Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and many other religions address food purity to some extent, so why not Christianity? Not surprisingly, it is from so-called Christian countries like the United States that chemical farming and concetrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) have emerged and quickly become the predominant method of food production.  This bothers me. I wonder if the lack of emphasis on food purity started with (or was reinforced by) a misunderstanding of Peter's vision on the roof of Simon the Tanner in Acts 10:9-16? If you have any theories on this, let me know!

Grow Your Own Health Care

I picked up a bumper sticker at the Acres USA conference recently that said “Grow Your Own Health Care”, and it made me smile.  High quality food, grown with simple means and minimal processing turns out to be the best health care around.  Many of the inflammatory diseases of our age such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes are actually caused by mal-nutrition, and can often be treated successfully with certain high quality raw organic foods.  Jerry Brunetti has put together a video about his recovery from terminal lymphoma using natural cures that consist primarily of raw organic food, and another video about food as medicine.  Consider, too, that much of the third world eats healthier foods than we do in the United States and they don’t have (or need) healthcare insurance. In deed, the healthcare insurance crisis in the United States is, at its roots, a health crisis that has been building for the last 70 years, starting with the introduction of chemical based farming and the so-called Green Revolution.

Simpler Food Production

Permaculture also deserves our attention and careful evaluation. Permaculture is a term coined by Bill Mollison, an Australian who noticed how rainforests continually produce an abundance of food without human chores of tilling, planting, and weeding. Masinoba Fukuoka had similar ideas much earlier, documented in the One Straw Revolution. Both men advocate an initial investment of labor, tilling, and planting, but they do so in ways that model nature and seek to eliminate as much ongoing labor as possible. After setting up a permaculture garden, no mechanization should be needed, and no checmical inputs should ever be needed. Companion plants, landscaping, and the acceptance of critters and weeds are all part of permaculture. Heirloom varieties are important so the plants can reseed themselves. Animals are encouraged in the mix because of their ability to turn pests into manure and provide some surface tilling, such as chickens eating Japanese beetles, cattle working their own manure into the ground in when rotated in small paddocks, and moles aerating the soil for the next succession of crops.  Farmers of Forty Centuries is also an interesting read to see how the Chinese have accomplished sustainable agriculture with soil that is still extremely fertile to this day.

Is Being Certified Organic Enough?

There is still plenty of room to grow low quality (low nutrition) food and still be certified organic. Our family tries to avoid the retail prices of certified organic food; instead we get to know local farmers who care more about the quality of their food than they care about a certification.  They are first and foremost soil farmers, going out of their way to balance minerals in their soil and feed the microorganisms. They understand the the soil is the basis for the quality of the food they are producing.  We buy grass-fed non-certified organic beef and lamb, and cage free pastured chicken. We buy eggs produced by cage free pastured hens and we own a cow-share in order to get raw milk (non-pasteurized, non-homogenized).  We buy vegetables and some fruit in season at our farmers market, and grow some ourselves. There are still quite a few foods that are not grown locally, such as coconut oil, olive oil, wheat berries, spices, tea and coffee. For these, we don’t feel bad purchasing from the store or through our co-op, and preferring the certified organic label as much as possible.

Large Agri-business and Economies of Scale

High quality food is packed with nutrients and is the primary factor in our physical health, and raw (unprocessed) food keeps the nutrients intact.  Large agri-business, consisting of farms that are 1000 acres or more, generally wants to increase profits and they have found methods to do this that end up causing less nutrient density in the food. What they produce still looks like food and sometimes even tastes like food, but is not good for nutrition. They operate with the following principles in mind: economy of scale, long shelf life, and the ability to transport their products long distances. They are not interested in sustainability because in their business model, sustainability is less profitable.  The focus on economies of scale in agriculture has introduced two products to the farm: the tractor and chemical additives in the form of fertilizers, fungicides, pesticides, herbicides and pharmaceuticals. 

The antithesis to this is organic food that is grown for nutrient density and flavor, left in it's raw state and sold locally directly from the farmer to the consumer, usually through a farmer's market or CSA. This approach leaves out the big business costs of the chemical inputs, expensive machinery, distributors, marketers, packers, transportation, extended periods of refrigeration, load rejection from USDA inspections, retail shrink and retail markup.  It leaves in all the nutrients and flavor, and often for the same or lower cost.  The farmer tends to do more manual labor in this scenario, but can make a living on 5-20 acres without any loans to own the minimal equipment needed.  The soil, air and consumers are healthier, and the system is sustainable.

Woe To You Who Are Rich

Sally and Joe went to a Dave Ramsey conference in the first year of their marriage and learned how important it was to save money every month so they could retire. Joe had steady work, getting raises every 6-12 months and the occasional promotion. Sally got a job to increase the income and secretly because she knew she would be appreciated more at a company than she was at home. She had to pay for the childcare for the summer and for the 3 hours after school before she got home. She was so tired and stressed out by the end of the day that she didn’t want to do the housecleaning or laundry, so she hired a housekeeper to handle these chores. She bought convenience foods more and more so that cooking would take less time (though they are organic convenience foods since this is one way the advertisements told her that she can take care of her family), and the family ate at restaurants twice a week on average. The family was busy with extra curricular activities, so they usually had a meal together once a week. Because of their new income level, they moved to a nicer neighborhood with better schools. By the time they turned 60 and are thinking about retirement, Sally and Joe have moved five times, each time just barely able to put 20% down on their new house, so the house they own at retirement still had a mortgage balance of $200,000, and a monthly payment of $1,800. Joe has heart disease and the Sally has type-2 diabetes. By saving 10% of their income and finding a stable mutual fund that always returned 6% APR (how did they do that?!), their retirement savings has increased to $850,000 by age 60, which will last them 10 years on their current cost of living. Of course, their medical bills will be increasing over those 10 years, so it probably won’t last quite that long. During their lives so far they have added thousands of pounds of waste to landfills, burned tens of thousands of gallons of gasoline, and added thousands of pounds of carbon monoxide to the atmosphere. They are not wealthy, happy, or healthy, and by their consumption have caused several families to live in subhuman conditions.

Wealth, and especially the love of wealth, has an incredible ability to distract us from God. In fact, Jesus is adamant that wealth is incompatible with a love of God. In addition to distracting us from our focus on God and our reliance on God, there are some things about wealth in this present world that cause compounding problems for the believer. Wealth that is concentrated in one family causes a lack of necessities for another family; global economics appears to actually be a zero-sum game. Unlimited growth and unlimited profit are not achievable. Wealth also lures us to conveniences that are often not healthy for the environment, and that cause other people, perhaps on the other side of the planet, to live in oppressive conditions.

Some scripture for reference:

• Luke 6:24
• Matthew 19:16-30
• Luke 14:33
• Luke 16:19-31
•  Matthew 6:24-34
• 1 Timothy 6:10

 

Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit

As a child, teenager, and young adult, I never understood this beatitude "Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit" from Matthew’s gospel, which is not the same as "Blessed are the Poor" from Luke's gospel. In my typical judgmental way, I thought the poor in spirit were miserably pathetic people who were lacking in spiritual maturity. And I couldn’t figure out what part of that could be called blessed.  Just recently, I started to read some of the early writings of Gustavo Gutierrez, and I realized that the poor in spirit might be understood better in contrast to the rich or wealthy in spirit; namely that they might actually be the people who refuse to use other people’s talents and labor for their own gain, who are not oppressive to the poor, who live materially simple lives, and who work for the liberation of those who are oppressed, mistreated and stuck in the cycle of poverty. Images came to mind from Les Miserables and Schindler's List. This was a real eye opener for me, and I immediately understood how blessed these people were.  I wanted to be one of them! This realization also brought to my mind some very interesting assertions made by Paulo Freire in Pedagogy of the Oppressed that entitlement programs for the poor can actually be a subtle form of oppression because they build a dependency rather than liberation.

How does this make a difference in how I live my life? If I am in a management position at my place of employment, this affects the way that I treat and think about my direct reports.  If I am an individual contributor, this affects how I treat and think about my peers, particularly from other departments in my company. If I am a homemaker, this affects how I treat and think about grocery clerks, postal workers, and contractors that I hire to help with skills that I don’t yet possess.

How does being poor in spirit synergize with the other virtues mentioned in this essay? If I don’t think a task to be below my status or station in life, then I am more likely to do it myself.  If I clean the toilet instead of hiring a housekeeper, then I have less need for a high income, the housekeeper won’t burn any fuel driving to my home, less polution will be generated by the lack of driving, etc. This housekeeper, if not able to find enough work doing housekeeping, might consider homemaking themselves, would not feel oppressed by doing a job that others consider beneath them, etc. I myself, in doing the manual labor to clean the toilet, have time while cleaning to think and pray, have done a small amount of excersize without having to own a treadmill, and I can focus on a small task and do it well.

Overview of Synergies for Wise Living

There is a lot of recent interest in environmental stewardship, alternative energy, and organic food. Mostly this interest is relegated to the middle class and upper class because the products being sold to solve the problems are generally more expensive. For example, hybrid electric cars cost around $30,000, photovoltaic panels for an average home can cost over $40,000, and organic food is often twice the price of its conventional counterpart at the supermarket. Of course, in order actually make a significant difference in the world, there must be desire from and availability to lower income brackets, as well. What seem to be overlooked are the remarkable synergies between biblical living and these latest interests in environmental stewardship.  Many people may think that voluntary simplicity is a concept born in the 1970’s, but this is actually a biblical concept that predates Christ.

I’m interested in exploring specific synergies between poverty, local economies, organic food, small scale agriculture, simple hygiene, nutrition, smart housing, appropriate technology, homeschooling, environmental stewardship, homemaking, debt-free living, theology, deeper spirituality, and manual labor.