Open Thread - Homesteading in France
Green House and Garden Beds
What started as a solution to a buried drain field, which will be a pond with long rooted plants, ended with first a set of garden beds and an up-cycled double-glazed windows from removed windows and doors.
Here are a large set of photos of our garden site.
The metal garden beds are mail order from Germany and 90 cm high. They need a little more stabilization, but we already have lettuce, greens, Kale, Mesclun in one and some Radishes and Carrots in the second.
Last week the flowers looked splendid:
The large bed is block cemented in with a salvaged bench top of Oak.
The Green house is more of a chapel and maybe a tiny house if we need it. The windows are from PVC doors and windows unframed then positioned above a block and rendered half wall and foundation. It's probably the best built item in the household.
In the Garden
But we've had several freezes, with good ice, and overnight the flowers except Yarrow, have withered. Cold nights and some warm days have given us time to wash more linens and line dry them. Sometimes they take two days to dry, but it works.
The German Garden Beds are already producing nice Fall Greens.
Comments
Looking for some publishing help on the OT
Firstly, how can I edit if I have an additional thought or topic to add, but the scheduler is already set for a specific time. One week I missed my time slot because I wasn't editing far enough before the publish time. So the scheduler kept asking for a new time further out.
Secondly, how can I add a photo or a photo and some text above the line in the thread preview?
News in France
Le Monde Diplomatique
China Invests
Food shortages in France
France 24
Storm last night, just got us a bit.
We had 15 mm of rain.
https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20211021-storm-aurore-leaves-250-000-...
Le Connexion
Saving history
A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.
Consider helping by donating using the button in the upper left hand corner. Thank you.
Our pompe à chaleur (heat pump) has a broken refrigerant
pipe, and we don't have the 17,000 euros to fix it, which means total replacement. After living without heat for many months, we had two friends buy us used stoves, one a house-sized German stove the other a Jøtul we bought in the Jura near Besonçon. We also bought used stove pipes, brackets and other hardware. New anything, is really expensive.
Love the radiant heat of a wood stove. These two are super burners, so the particle escapement is not much.
France has a large impoverished population. The article has it right that it is not visible. Food in markets and outdoor weekly marchés is plentiful and good for anyone. But many cannot afford the cost of good food. We are beginning to see obesity which until a few years ago was just not here. More Coke and Pepsi drinking although Corn Syrup is banned in the EU, they use cane sugar.
There are more storms of strength in the last five years hitting France than the averages before. Last year we had drought; this year we have almost no Summer and lots of rain. Trying to water-proof our yard.
Saving the Patrimoine is a big deal in France. Many of the churches, which are mostly Catholic, are rehabbed, refurbished or rebuilt with commonwealth money. Even though France is a 'secular' state it often employs people with old skills to work on churches and other older buildings. There is no implication of state support of the Catholic Church in these projects. However, as far as we know the state of France owns most of the church buildings in France.
A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.
Consider helping by donating using the button in the upper left hand corner. Thank you.
This is great! Thank you.
If the storm downed that tree, it must have been a fierce storm. Good thing you were inside stone walls instead of a tent while that was happening.
Is it less expensive to get a new heat pump than to fix the broken pipe? Somehow, that does not make sense.
Such a good question. The copper refrigerant pipe is broken
just inside the outside double fan unit. The two inside units (one is for heating the water which goes to under floor heating and the other is a group of piping which sorts the heated water for both the under floor warm water on the ground floor and radiators for the upper floor.) The third unit is the outdoor air to refrigerant heater. They are all from different manufacturers which were eventually bought by Bosch.
But their age and lack of ability to find hardware and software which currently would talk to all three fifteen year old parts is almost nil. We have looked at the circuit boards and they are almost pristine as far as clean, well-soldered, and indicator lights working. But no one wants to fix something this old and put their ten year guarantee (decimel - sp?) on the work.
So we had to get a cost to replace the entire system.
I am concerned that the system has been sitting so long there maybe mud/dirt blockages in the under floor tubing. This is a hazard of not continuously running a fluid tube system under the floor. Tearing up the two layers of tile and cement is beyond my imagination.
Great idea, I wish I had money when it comes to things like this. However, the upside is that for far less we can heat with wood under 1500 euros for the year. And one stove can heat this entire house. We are so glad we opened a mezzanine for the stairway, as the heat floats up the upper floor.
A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.
Consider helping by donating using the button in the upper left hand corner. Thank you.
I put a home made radiant heating system
under the floor of my great room kitchen (20' x 30') Soldered up the manifold and used rubber hose and aluminum sheets for the heat transfer. Works with the old circulator pump on the oil burner (new zone with thermostat). If you can get to the pipes leading into and out of the slab, you should be able to open them up and flush them out with a regular circulator pump. If you can do that, the rest is just to re-pipe into your existing heat source. We also have a Jotul wood stove, and there are heat exchangers available to use that as your heat source for radiant or baseboard applications, which I haven't gotten around to yet. Can also be plumbed with valving to solar thermal panels. PM me sometime for particulars. It is one of my hobbies!
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Great ideas. I would love to see
your information. In the US we had a 3.4kw solar system that gave us two months no bill and in February with low sun great energy. We can do it here but no subsidies so far.
Your ideas of using the stoves for heating the in floor and radiators is good. We need to figure out how much the system uses and how big a reservoir we need.
A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.
Consider helping by donating using the button in the upper left hand corner. Thank you.
This is fun stuff
First off -- there is a difference between solar electric (PV cells) and solar thermal. One uses the radiant energy of the sun to transform the available electrons into electricity. What I was referring to is using the same radiant energy to heat a fluid to either warm your house (using a circulating pump) or pre-heat your well water before going into the hot water heater for domestic use. I have built radiant solar heaters for both air and water. It's a cheap way to reduce your energy usage. The tech is not complicated, using PV to circulate the air or water with DC pumps or fans makes it a constant source for heating.
Perhaps I should dedicate a thread to the things learned in this process.
Thanks again for persevering with your OT on the French adaptation of your life skills.
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Yes, it might benefit more people that way.
It would be interesting to see how an existing sub floor tube system could be converted. We do have access to outbound and returning tubes/hoses.
A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.
Consider helping by donating using the button in the upper left hand corner. Thank you.
Your green house looks grand!
You will be able to grow lots of goodies in that structure.
Veggies and herbs, or flowers and fronds?
Good luck with that phase of your development.
Cheers and thanks for the French la propriété !
question everything
Good afternoon DM. Sorry about the storm damage and other
problems. The German raised beds look reminiscent of watering troughs for cattle and horses, some of which are also used for that purpose here and there.
Editing: Often if you try to Edit from "My Account -- Scheduled" it won't let you, but you can open it with double click or click and choose open, make your edits and then save without changing any of the scheduling date and it will work.
Not sure what you mean above the line - if you mean above the bottom of the preview AND that is not one you set your self, go down to the draft and enter LessThanSymbol!--break--Greater Than Symbol (or use control+T) to put the break where you want it. I'm sure that there is a length that it will override, but I have no idea what it is.
HINT: Years ago I created and saved a draft named "Sandbox" with a tag "Sandbox" which has the header info but no "publish on" info and which I nevere publish. When I need to test stuff or play around or think "on paper", I open it, do my thing and preview it, rinse and repeat until I'm happy or give up, then delete all the new content and save as draft again.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Raised beds for flowers and vegetables - I use these
@Dawn's Meta
- cheap - stackable - and durable:
wooden, stackable flower beds enclosures
I admire your skills building your garden and ameliorate your old stone house, Dawn's Meta.
Kudos.
I regret to not have taken pictures of my little piece of a garden to show off with a 'before' and 'after comparison.
Good luck and all the best with your work.
https://www.euronews.com/live
Mimi, vielen dank. Take pictures
now. There's always something to find.
We have worked harder than we should have, but it's getting better.
Finding a way to keep septic gas out of the house and having wonderful heat makes a huge difference in our comfort.
Habst du ein gutes tag.
A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.
Consider helping by donating using the button in the upper left hand corner. Thank you.
El, thanks so much for the
helpful hints. I could swear I was able to edit in the first few OTs,but got tangled up in the scheduler.
Maybe I'll try with this thread now there's no pressure.
Have a good one yourself.
A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.
Consider helping by donating using the button in the upper left hand corner. Thank you.
You mean like this one? We shipped it over...
A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.
Consider helping by donating using the button in the upper left hand corner. Thank you.
Thanks for the interesting OT.
I plan to stop by later this evening and read more carefully.
We have had to build raised beds for part of our garden since most of our ground is limestone with a thin layer of soil on top. We did a modified 'hugelkultur' type of layering in the beds to help promote soil health and to decrease the amount of soil we had to buy. We also bought a half-dozen troughs similar to the one in your picture several years ago before we started building our own raised beds. The ones we built are less expensive and bigger than those we bought.
I love your green house. Hopefully that is a project for us soon.
Hi there. First of all, the tree down is in N. France.
It is from the news on Connexion. We are all ok. One of the earlier storms got our area pretty badly: a friend lost ten or eleven Oak. The Oaks are taking a beating in this part of France, and I don't see young ones coming up.
If you look at the link, the photos of the big block bed shows how we built up the under soil:
grillage/small fencing to keep out rodents, then a big layer of rotted wood from our adjoining wood lot; followed by our granite soil; then we'll add rich horse manure/soil mix and finally put the bed quiet for Winter with a deep layer of wheat stems.
The two metal beds are growing greens and root veggies until they don't. We cover them with corrugated plastic for warmth and sun.
Looking for a simple design so we can cover the German beds. We need something higher for the Kale and Broccoli that are topping the sides. But it needs to be warm for cold nights.
We have wheat straw bits around the lettuces, greens and such. It is working well for moisture and warmth.
Anybody growing Papayrus? We have a small runoff channel from our well, so we have an almost year round tiny stream and small delta for planting water and moisture plants. Nettle is trying to take over so I'm trying to plant things I like better, that can compete.
Good to see you.
A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.
Consider helping by donating using the button in the upper left hand corner. Thank you.
A day late and dollar short...
Tied up yesterday and didn't even get online. Garden beds look great! And it looks like you got an unexpected firewood delivery.
We've yet to have a frost nor freeze. Still have two beds of sweet potatoes to dig and okra and peppers will keep producing till we get one. Cabbage, greens, broccoli, lettuce and so on are all doing well as fall colors grow and temps cool.
Wishing you and yours the best. We love our radiant floor heat supplemented with thermal solar.
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
Oops, see my response to rand about the down tree.
Never too late. Threads seem to be active longer these days.
We are working to get ready for some really cold nights coming right up. Snow in the Morvan last night.
Love the solar thermal to supplement the underfloor heat. Do you have a tank or some reservoir to store/carry overflow or extra fluid for the underfloor tubing? We have an electric mixer part of the defunct heat pump but most of the volume is in the outbound and inbound tubing.
A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.
Consider helping by donating using the button in the upper left hand corner. Thank you.
consider using an old hot water heater
as your storage tank / heat exchanger. They have coils inside that will act as a transfer to the domestic water from the solar / thermal panel or wood stove based heat source.
I get them at the transfer station in town, normally electric, but it is the guts of the tank that is important. If you are doing the heat transfer thru a roof mounted solar thermal panel and live in freezing temperatures, you would need anti-freeze as the heat exchange fluid.
Getting ready for the fall split and cut chord of wood stacked on the covered deck. Bingle wood stove heat exchanger to see what's out there. I'm kinda the DIY sort and make my own with recycled parts.
question everything
Cool beans!
ETA: our wood is measured in cubic meters.
A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.
Consider helping by donating using the button in the upper left hand corner. Thank you.
the important aspect for us is the length
since our jotul only takes 16" logs, it is a bit of an issue when we get a load of 18"
and end up having to end cut them to length. The wood is good .. split and seasoned oak and
maple -- burns good. Normally we go thru about a cord and a half over the winter.
Here there are two interpretation of a cord. One is a "face cord" which is anybodies guess, but our wood chuck guy gives us a truckload which is somewhat more than a cord. The rest we cut up from fallen branches and trees in our woods.
Burn baby burn
heat me up
question everything