Wild boar!

Jesus H. Christ! Nearly two years since writing?! Where ya been? Watcha been doin’? I guess that enough time has passed now that it's time for an update.

I'll warn you up front…..I've got a two year backlog of pictures and much of this will only be of direct interest to friends and family. Who wants to sit and look at some stranger's baby or vacation pictures?!




OK, where was I? Oh yeah…..the challenges of living with wild pigs.

You see them on occasion, but signs of their passing through are everywhere.

Unfortunately, the evidence that they leave behind is often a completely trashed garden and dying fruit trees that have been stripped of their bark.


Wild pigs in Hawaii.





It has always been our intention to hunt wild pig. I mean, they are so common in this part of the big island that a few more won't be missed and they taste good! They make gardening a challenge, alter the native forest environment in many negative ways and reproduce like mad. Bagging a few for the freezer is a win/win, right?

Well, about this time last year, just before nightfall, my daughter Eliana and I heard a loud ruckus coming from the near edge of the jungle. Dashing off to check things out, after a few minutes Ellie returned.

“Dad! There's a young wild pig here! I'm going to try feeding him! Yes, I'll watch out for the momma pig.”, in that exasperated tone that's so familiar to the pre-teen parent.

“Don't forget to bring a big stick!” I yelled as she was running off, thinking of all those nasty pictures, hunters gored and bleeding from wild boar tusk woundings. Yet another example of good parenting, it's true.

We have an unwritten rule regarding animals that show up around here. Everybody gets fed! As you would imagine, this quickly leads to a overabundance of mouths to feed. More cats than I can remember the names to, chickens trying to take over the storage shed, and now….




I'm sure that you have already guessed where this is going…..

Ellie promptly named him “Nago”, in homage to the wild boar deity from Miyazaki's “Princess Mononoke”.

I had an old bag of dogfood that was getting in the way, might as well put it to good use.

From hunting pig, to feeding one. Rest assured, the irony is not wasted on me.




If you've lived with pigs before (not that I have), you know that they are extremely social creatures. This little guy follows you everywhere, “helping” in the garden, running off with your tools or trying to sneak into the house. Not having an actual door per-se led to a couple of misunderstandings between us, but for the most part, things have gone smoothly. Remarkably well, in fact.


Ellie introduced him to the pleasures of mud…..

...but the tub he figured out on his own.

He likes the cats, something that we were concerned about...

And just as cats do, he prefers to sleep on your lap, or at your feet as a second choice.

We walk through the jungle, trying to find the eggs that the crafty chickens hide from us.

Note to chickens: Bare cinder makes for a lousy nest that is not kind to eggs.

This place is thick with old lava tubes, often just below the surface. In between other projects, Nago has a favorite tube that he is trying to fill with branches and sticks.

I cover the hole with an old piece of roofing, but he pulls it off and gets back to work. We have no idea what he is planning, but it is interesting to see him being so industrious.




It didn't take long for him to outgrow his tub.

Right about that time, teenage boys being remarkable similar regardless of species, it was time for a trip to visit the vet.

He looked a little hungover on the ride home.

The vet didn't even think that we were crazy, not that unusual at all. Kinda makes you wonder about the place where we live, doesn't it?


So, one year in and he's still here, not exactly a pet, but close enough that it makes no difference. We have a few rules established, for him and for us. No pigs in the bed or the house. Ellie is not supposed to ride the pig. Pig is not supposed to run off with my tools or the groceries. We are to feed the pig at daybreak, lest pig wake us all with his impression of a loud and demented kazoo. And so on.


From this….

...to this.

And for those of you who wonder what it is that I do with my day...Too much of this, to be honest.

Sitting around in my pj’s, drinking coffee and providing cats with a warm place to snooze, pig at my side and waiting to do something fun.

It's harder to eat someone who you know. Those other pigs though…..





The last couple of years has just flown by, yet not a single day has passed where I haven't given at least some thought to writing these posts. The idea of putting ones lives and thoughts out there in such a visible way as this can be so daunting at times. What do you focus on? Who reads this stuff? Is this supposed to be a diary? Should you concentrate on simple and close-ended projects that others might  emulate? Long term projects that someone might find inspiring? Are you building a brand and using the blog to promote your own awesomeness?

Maybe it is best to think of this blog as a sort of catch-all bin, lots of random stuff, some of which might come in handy some day. Welcome to the junk drawer of my mind, haha. Strange though it is to say (sad, I'll admit) I occasionally need to refer back to something that I wrote years ago, having entirely forgotten whatever it was in the interim. Documentation definitely has its value. Just because you find something interesting on the internet today, don't assume that it will be there tomorrow. Some of the best and most valuable resources of information that I have found on the net over the years are gone already and more is disappearing daily. Domains expire, picture hosting becomes a financial burden, technology shifts to the flashy new thing, or maybe intellectual property is getting monetized. Whatever. It's gone. Remember that knowledge not shared=knowledge lost. If you care about something, share it as widely as possible.

Of no less benefit is the people whom you meet, in a virtual sense if not in person. Finding someone to talk with and bounce ideas off of is really nice, particularly on subjects of, shall we say, less than universal appeal. I tend to get quite wrapped up and obsessive in my varying interests and it's not often that I find someone that is patient enough to sit through my endless yammering on and on and on. I try to keep that junk under wraps, not wanting to scare the neighbors. When I catch myself running a bit over-long on some obscure topic, I can usually cover up by apologizing for my lack of social skills…..”Yeah, I don't get out much...umm….Sorry”. With a blog, the reader can be passive, active, or just opt out entirely without needing to back out of the room as politely as possible. My wife loves to read the blog because it gives her a glimpse into the reasons why I find certain things interesting, yet doesn't obligate her to sit and listen to me ramble for hours on end. She gets to share in some of my delight, but it doesn't give her a headache, haha.

The act of organizing the content in my mind and arranging it some coherent fashion, choosing photographs to augment the presentation and then writing enough to fill in the blanks, requires me to think about things in a more linear pattern. This forced focus has only improved the outcome of most anything that I've documented. The downside is when I start writing up some new interest or discovery, only to fail so spectacularly halfway in that I gotta drop the line. A series of posts detailing something that only results in a dead end sucks, both for the writer and the reader. I've been guilty of that far to often already and you have my sincerest apologies.

But the best thing of all? In an very literal sense, arranging words and images tells a story. The wonder of telling the story is that it shifts the attention into the abstract. To describe what we are building, be it a box, a travelog, or a philosophy, draws the writer out of their own first-person experience and into the third-person. Paradoxically, it is that distancing of self that can help us to better see the wonder and beauty inherent in each of our lives. The things that I do in my daily life are quickly written over by new experience, then forgotten. In sharing, I see myself differently. Something as mundane as digging yet another hole becomes something…..more. I don't really know how to put any of this into words, but whatever it is, I've missed it greatly.

Watching Miyazaki, and thinking about sticky stuff.

A couple of nights back, needing some visual comfort, I scoured the Internet and found a streaming, Japanese (w/English subtitles ), Miyazaki's "My neighbor Totoro". It's like my absolute favorite movie in the world, ever. Maybe it was our long deprivation, not having watched this movie for nearly a year, but the Japanese version seemed even funnier than the English dubbed version. Or maybe it was the beer, that might have contributed a bit, haha.

 

 

 

I am a slow learner, slow at working, slow at many things it seems. Also slow to take suggestions. Sebastian and I were chatting about usage streams, the cascade of materials use that is the essence of recycling. In conjunction with this concept, my particular interest was on means of food production and use, how leftovers can be stored for later use or used in different ways. I think this was when I was studying rice glue.

 

I love rice glue. Simple to make and it works tolerably well for many different things. Sure, it's not some crazy miracle glue that will fuse two materials "forever" and under all conditions. I mean, it's a starchy sugar that you can eat, for God's sake.

 

It just so happens that rice paste will give two matching surfaces just that little bit extra grip that is so desirable in woodworking. It is wood movement, that wiggling back and forth that causes built objects to fall apart. Think of your favorite chair.....It was fine for years, until that one leg started getting loose. Two years later, the thing feels like a prospect for a mean spirited April fool's gag. Anyways, glue is the material that can delay the early onset of the dread wiggle. The key is that the two surfaces need to be closely fitted.

 

 

 

My relationship with glue has been a long and troublesome one. As a thoroughly middling woodworker, I've had a great need for the stuff, but I can't say that it has been an entirely amicable relationship. Yellow PVA...use too little and the joint is dry and brittle. Use too much and you spend the next week cleaning up after yourself. The magazines (back when I read magazines, haha. Fine Woodworking was like my life preserver.) were ripe with techniques that promised ease of glue cleanup. Bury the wood in tape, then cut the joinery...or, slather everything with paste wax, then glue. Ugh.

 

My glue was everywhere, fouled up my finishes, stuck to my tools and ruined my clothes. It definitely stuck things together. Still though, if I was using solid wood, sooner or later the joints would break free from the inexorable forces of expansion and contraction. Well, I learned how to deal with that. Plywood.

 

 

In small boat building, much of the work that is currently done relies on plywood for structure, then epoxy for adhesion and isolation. This combination of materials allows a new type of design freedom, and lets novice builders create a beautiful little shell that sits lightly on the water and, more importantly, requires very little of the traditional maintenance typically required of boats. These are wooden cored composites, not actually wood boats at all, but rather a boat shaped object that LOOKS like it's made of wood.

 

I know a little about this. For nearly 15 years, I followed the "new" boat builder's evolution of obsession. From cedar wood/canvas canoes, to plywood "stitch and glue"canoes, wood"stripper" canoes and kayaks, I was obsessed with all of these. It was my vocation as well as my avocation. It was a fantastic 15 years, and a very noble way to starve, haha. I had a perpetual waiting list, but my means of production was too slow and my volume too few to be a viable business. I didn't care that my business plan/model didn't work, I just needed to build boats!

 

Day in and day out, lots of machines, lots of dust, lots of glue. This obsession that I now show for sharpening stones and strange Japanese tools? I was the same way with epoxy back then. Reams of paper dealing with relative modulus values of different brands of epoxy, personal shop experiments of temperature/time consideration on adhesion to different species of wood. Studies on how "grippy" different weaves of fabric reinforcement could be, and the relationship to flexoral stiffness.....God, I wish that I could've blogged back then, written some of it down, because I've forgotten SOOO much. A different world then, for me at least.

 

Wood and glue get along OK, but not great. As my depth of study increased (along with concerns over warrantee terms and product liability ), the natural progression was towards greater use of more specific materials and process. Towards the end of things, I was molding carbon composite elements using resin infusion and vacuum bags, Kevlar wear strips and reinforcement, and just tons and tons of stinky sticky crap. Finally I came to my senses and quit, thank god.

 

So yeah, glue. We were friends, but let's be polite and say that we decided to follow different opportunities.

 

Nowadays, I think of glue as not so much a permanent adhesive, but as something more analogous to tape. You use tape to hold things together, sure, but the connection is temporary. In woodworking, all connections are temporary, and once I started to accept that, things started to really change for me. Glue is great for giving your work that extra bit of "stick" that holds stuff together longer.

If you want your work to REALLY last, plan for the future. Plan for repair, because it will break. Don't shoot yourself in the foot by using a glue that doesn't "fix". PVA is a great example of a glue that makes future repair so difficult that most likely anything built using it will end up in the trash. Sad but true. That's a lot of wasted wood out there, furniture that was built using glue that won't handle secondary bonding. Remember that chair with the wiggly leg? Did you try to repair the joint by squirting glue in the separated joint? How long did that repair last?

What the heck was I talking about? Oh yeah, recycling I think.

So, rice glue.....and low energy lifestyles.

Before bed, you soak the rice for the next day in some water. You leave it sitting on the counter and when you get up in the morning it only requires a small energy input to cook that rice, because you were planning ahead. Eat some for lunch,eat some for dinner (still no refrigeration ), then you soak the next days rice. But what about today's rice that you didn't eat? What to do with leftovers, if you don't have refrigeration, that is ?

Rice glue is better if it is made from 2-3 day old rice, because the bacteria and enzymes are working to break down the starches, letting those protein strands really do their thing. At least that's how I understand it, and I do know that 3 day old unrefrigerated rice is insanely sticky. Your kids will never have a lack of paste, just give them a tablespoon of old rice, have them smoosh it up and start sticking stuff together. It's that simple. Rice glue. I love it.

So what I like about the rice glue example, the concept here that I am looking for, is that this is a low energy cascade of use. Start as food, turn it into something else that is also useful, then at the very least point, the remainder gets given to the animals / compost/ etc. All of this requires no refrigeration, and since I am trying to live with as little refrigeration as possible, I was bemoaning to Sebastian the lack of good ideas that I had found on the Web.

Zeer pots don't work well in areas with high humidity, you know? Maybe it would, I haven't actually tried one, but there are few real world examples of it being used in areas like this, only failures. Actually, the only good examples of no-refrigeration lifestyles are in my old sailing/cruising books. It's not refrigeration that I'm thinking of though. Again, I digress.

The idea is making a simple lifestyle change (eat more rice) that will reduce some other energy demand (driving to the store to buy some glue). It's funny, but little things like this are cumulative, have large effects ultimately, but the tricky part is to change our ways of thinking. Expectations of permanence,say, an ostensibly small thing like glue and furniture...forgoing the convenience of making rice that lasts for a week in the fridge but gaining free glue.....what I am looking for are ideas like this.

Working with hand tools exclusively is a little along the same lines. We have no plug in stuff, no expensive tools to wear out, and sure, it's slower. But SOOO much cheaper than buying a generator/gas/power tools, and though it's slower, it's not THAT slow. I don't build much ultimately anyway. Where would I put that furniture? I would need a bigger tool shed/house. I would need book for those shelves.

My friend Brandon sent me a link to a TED-talk, about the relationship between the developing new architectural paradigm and Moore's "law". Moore's law is familiar to us as the reason that our phones now have more computing power than the room full of computers I once saw as a child. Semiconductor technology has allowed the compression of ever smaller bits and bytes, squeezing more into less, so that computing power effectively doubles every two years. I can carry an entire library in a shoebox. Heck, with Internet access.....who needs a shoebox?

Our lifestyle has changed so radically from what I knew 40 years ago. Ironically for me, I am now living the dreams of my childhood, playing in the jungle, building stuff, looking at bugs and talking to animals. My daughter is designing and building a rabbit hutch out of materials scrounge from the dump, while I upload monologues that the entire world can see. I have good friends on the other side of the world who I've never met, but share my interests. Some people say that technology is causing us to become more isolated as individuals, but at least I have friends who I can talk to about this strange stuff. If my wife had to listen to all of this stuff in my head.....well...she has things tough enough as it is. 7 months in, and we are still pooping in buckets for God's sake, haha.

Holy cow! TMI!

So I was telling Sebastian about my rice glue saving the world kind of thoughts and he said, " You should read "Just enough", by Azby Brown."

And last night I found an e-book version at my local library (support your library....Borrow, don't buy!), and 4am started reading. Already, so much that I've read is familiar in a strange way. The key concepts of economy of use, avoid waste, and an appreciation of the finely made object....so familiar.

Though I am notoriously cheap, I will glad give away most anything and would actually be ecstatic if someone else could find a use for something that I would consider waste. This can be a " gift" economy, and it just makes sense for me. This is similar to a barter arrangement. Remember "Bootstrapping" from the 70's? For me, the attraction is a reduction of waste. Now when I watch those YouTube videos of old guys sharpening saws, and you see them collecting all of the steel shaving in a box....I thought that was just a way to keep things tidy, but those shavings would be useful to the neighborhood blacksmith, as one of the ingredients of welding flux. Where do you buy iron filings? You don't....the sharpening guy gives them to you for fixing his hoe/knife/whatever. Cool, but also economical.

As I read more about Azby Brown's thoughts on Edo Japan, I see his examples and what I really am seeing is Hiyao Miyazaki anime cartoons. In each of his movies, there is the appreciation for the country lifestyles and values, although he isn't explicit in any of it. He shows much of what Brown writes of, I just didn't know enough to appreciate what was there. As I read Brown, even more I want to watch my old favorites. Now if only I had a dvd player.....

Our life here is becoming something different. More simple in many ways, but also more complex. Much that I am learning now was common knowledge only a generation or two ago, but now nearly lost. With the help of many friends and their knowledge learned, I can envision an economical life of less money/tv/stuff, but more time for peace and beauty. I don't want a big truck, a big house, none of that junk, and I feel almost a pity for those that do. How insecure they must feel.

Most all of our goals in life are related to security. We need wealth, to be more secure against poverty. A big car is safer than a small one when you get in a wreck. You buy insurance to protect you house/car/health/life.....all of this is fear. I don't know.

I need to cut my Project Mayhem joinery.....part of my doing more, using less, requires me to get better at what I DO.

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Buying and building in Hawaii....I need your help!

 

 

I need your help. My Google-foo is weak in this....I need your thoughts.

For years, seriously...nearly 30 years now, I have been interested in building small living spaces. I love the sense of intimacy that I get from being in a room where I can touch at least two walls from where I sit. A large open room makes me feel exposed and emotionally cold. A small space feels warm, no matter the true temperature. I love boats.... hate stadiums.

Designing for small spaces, is about accommodating the individual. Primary needs are to be met with the greatest efficiency, and resources must be conserved. Everything is intent. It is difficult to be false in small design, flash is wasted. The McMansion aesthetic doesn't work. Small design is challenging because things need to be *right*, you know?

I need ideas for building small structures, homes really, but with some peculiar twists ( of course). What I have been working towards is design ideas that highlight the simple, clean, use of quality materials.....and a structure that is capable of being disassembled somewhere down the road. 1 year....20 years....400 years.....

The attraction that I have had for Japanese joinery is that many of the joints used have allowances made for being disassembled at some time in the future. If you go through the trouble of using a wonderful material, say the perfect piece of wood, you choose this for its qualities of strength and beauty. Along with this comes the acknowledgement that everything has its own life, and at some time that perfect wood will have become old and decayed. It will require replacement.

The study of Japanese joinery has exposed me to an incredible variety of ingenious ideas for attaching one piece of wood to another. In this, I see great potential.

Buying property, land, house, whatever, the situation here in Hawaii is a little bit peculiar. We are in the market for a house, but there are some unique and fundamental difficulties with how things get built on an island. My needs and desires are slightly out of the normal range, so here is what we have.

The situation:

• Property in Hawaii is expensive.
  
• Almost all of the construction is of house "kits". Kit houses use the cheapest, most economical and efficient material possible, but they also meet code requirements.
• Buying an already built, building code approved house, gives assurance to the lending bank. Banks loan money for crappy kit houses= crappy houses become expensive.
• The generic /poorly built/code approved structures are not what I want in my life. And they are expensive.
• Some of the super cool places that I am interested in are VERY well built, but banks are loath to loan on unpermitted structures.

So.

We can buy into what everyone is selling, take out yet another mortgage, and pay WAY too much money...and live in an environment that gives little joy. "We have everything that we want...except money!"

Just down the road from us is a 2 acre parcel with an attractive, contractor built home, for $270,000. The house looks just fine for what it is....just REALLY not what we are looking for.

 

Or...

We can ditch the idea of a re-sale price that just gets higher and higher as time goes. Buy cheap, build cheap, enjoy life. If down the road circumstances change, the house can come with us.

You can buy 3 acres of Hawaii, just down the road from where we are currently living, for $15,000.

Hmmmmm.

Being in debt is like being a slave to your desires, often to fulfill perceived needs that might not truly be important to you. You need to ask yourself these questions, at least I do. What do you want in exchange for your life ?

Me.....I don't want much. What life I have, I want to enjoy, not be forever working to pay for something that I actually couldn't afford. I love our old cars, and we paid cash. Not as nice as what many others might drive, but we have no monthly payments and insurance is cheaper, too. Parking lot dings don't leave me feeling angry, it's a car for God's sake.

Where was I going with this? Oh yeah.....

Living in a debt free home would be one of the greatest freedoms imaginable.

Way back in the day, houses were for family. You were born there, raised there, and probably died there. When the kids grew older, perhaps you added on to the house to make room, but the assumption was that you would always be living with family. Houses and land were passed down, generation after generation. Kids didn't immediately sign themselves into a lifetime of slavery, all so that they could live in their own house.

Obviously times have changed. My "ancestral" home back in Minnesota holds fond memories, but I sure as hell don't want to live there. This is sad, but this is our reality. Our house that we recently left, back on the Oregon coast.... Great house, spent 10 years of my life fixing it.....now occupied by someone else. It's a REALLY cute house! I don't want to live there either.

Where I do want to live.......Ah yes, that's in Hawaii. I want to build a very nice, very small home, but a home that can be moved, relocated. Unfortunate though it seems, many of us have become virtual nomads. We are currently renting, and though our landlords are totally awesome, we need to build for OUR future. I need to begin building our Hawaiian home.

 

Good god! Enough with the preaching!

Help me with some ideas. References, pictures, websites, whatever....help me find some good ideas for building a solid, attractive structure that can be moved at some future time. Please, skip the trendy "Small houses" movement stuff. While cute, I'm not that interested in the "Mini-McMansion" movement.

I am looking more for solid joinery, solid materials, yet used in a simple manner. For the first time in my life, I actually don't need to worry about the potential for freezing to death, come winter. Open-air, year round living is a reality here. What I am envisioning is essentially a platform on short piers, then a minimal post -and -beam structure atop that. Joinery is to be de-mountable. Panel infill would be the finished surface, so natural materials would be desirable and I would like to avoid the use of plywood (though the temptation is great).

I am imagining a minimal structure built with sliding panels, solid panels for winter ( it does get cold here and we will be using a wood stove this year!), screened panels for summer. Sliding panels would be wonderful, because even in winter, as soon as the rain stops and the sun comes out....it gets warm. Each " panel" segment could similar to the sliding door of a cabinet, for instance. The panel could sit in a groove. To remove the panel, just lift, tilt and remove.

Beauty, strength, practical, and cheap.....I want it all. Any ideas?

I've looked, but not found much of interest. I have no doubt that many others share my desires, though our situations would be different. What has been done in the past, I wonder?

 

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Dirty little secret

Brain spinning,

sitting here thinking,

and found myself here this morning.

http://adifferentkindofluxury.blogspot.com/2011/06/what-we-dont-need.html

The hook for me, was that one of the people mentioned doesn't use soap.




I have a secret.......

I don't use soap either.

At least not all of the time. 

One of the things that I have been very slow to learn, is how to live with cast iron cookware. All of those years spent enduring crap skillets, when what I needed was cast iron. I had tried, but something just didn't click, and I don't know what the problem was, but for some reason, they just didn't work for me.

Maybe my expectations were too high? 

Well, what I HAVE decided is that NOTHING works perfectly, in the non-stock realm. Non-stick fails after a while, and sheds little chunks of grit that get in your food. This freaks my wife out. I don't worry about that, but I also don't like crunchy stuff in my food that I didn't put in, either. The shit only works for a little while anyways, and then you need to buy another pot /pan/sheet. I'm sick of buying stuff (says the guy who has 102,000 weird Japanese tools, haha!).

My beautiful, newly sane wife, Renee Bellinger, PhD!!! bought a nice cast iron skillet a few years ago now, and it works ok. Just fine, not perfect, but what does, right? Now I like these things. I seasoned another one, using boiled linseed oil, and that worked great. Our neighbor moved, leaving me with a pile of the darn things, and I don't know what to do with all of that largesse, but anyways.

After I use the cast iron skillet, I rinse it well in the sink...... Warm it on the stove...... Rub it with vegetable oil....

.... Then stick it in the oven. Preferably with a little kanna blade for company.

It turns out that this works great for plain old cookie sheets, too. 

Finally, a non-stick cookie sheet! 

But no soap, usually.

My dirty little secret.