Forks of Ivy

Fini

2010-11-18T14:01:00.000-08:00

The beautiful fruits of Jackie's labor this year. We just posted this apartment on a site for seasonal rentals a month ago, and already had 4 renters and many inquiries!

Spring Things

2010-05-24T14:14:00.000-07:00

Spring sprang after a challenging winter here.
We had visitors (two and four-legged) from Florida, New York and Boston. We enjoyed the flowers at Biltmore, the drum circle in downtown Asheville, walks in the woods, and just hanging around the house...

Our garden's expanded and improved over last year's - the garlic is flourishing (I think Jackie must be secretly speaking Italian to it), and we've been feasting on our sugar snap peas and lettuce. I discovered a great recipe for pesto from garlic scapes. Buy them at the farmers market! My nemesis the flea beetle returned. I've sacrificed the arugula as a "trap crop". I'm doing incantations to prevent tomato blight...

We've also got culture - vermiculture! Looking forward to next year's worm castings for our garden...

Next door, Kevin and Laurel have added bees to the farm.

We had a wonderful visit to MA to see family and friends. We commandeered one of our favorite old haunts, JP Licks!

Here a Year!

2010-01-30T13:54:00.000-08:00

We are grateful for our wonderful home, our excellent wood stove, and fabulous friends and family! We survived some record snowfall (for here, a foot), Jackie's hard at work finishing the basement to make a rental, and we're looking forward to planting soon.
Kevin and Laurel's chickens started laying eggs. We heard crowing one morning, and it turns out that "Belle" is actually "Bill"!

Happy Solstice!

2009-12-15T15:50:00.000-08:00

We cut down our own tree on our land this year. It was a 60 degree day, so it didn't feel very christmas-y. Jackie fixed that!

Robots, Lasagna Gardens and Works in Progress

2009-11-12T11:56:00.000-08:00

View from the kitchen window. Makes washing pots and pans pleasant.

We've enjoyed some fall veggies from the garden - kale, lettuce, still lots of beets and carrots - and are creating a couple of new beds for next season using the "no-dig" or "lasagna-layering" method. It has nothing to do with yummy Italian food (except maybe the dishes with good vegetables). It's basically making a compost bed - layers of green (like hay, grass clippings) alternated with layers of brown (leaves, compost, manure). We were motivated by Kevin and Laurel's gorgeous gardens next door, and the pain of roto-tilling this soil which is so dense and full of clay. We thought we'd give their technique a try!

First trip to the Feed and Seed Store.
Shoveling a truckload of goat----

Jackie and Caroline have been working on a deck for the entry to the basement (future apartment, we hope). And the woodshed's almost finished...

We had a robot visitor for Halloween. ("I come in peace!")

Jackie made a beautiful box for the kindling.

Hard to believe we've been here almost a year!

Getting Ready for the Hunkering Down...

2009-09-10T08:57:00.000-07:00

We've canned peaches (from Caroline's trees next door), made apple butter, frozen yummy greens, and stacked firewood.

The siding on the house is finally finished, ready for winter winds.

We've had more great visits from people we love and miss.

Kevin and Laurel got chicks, so we're looking forward to really fresh eggs.

We had mixed results as novice gardeners - the carrots and beets are outstanding, but we don't talk about the onions or broccoli - and we're already fantasizing about a greenhouse. Fresh lettuce in the winter, mmm...

(Photo credits to Dana, who can make even our humble veggies look stunning! And some photos by Elizabeth and Jackie.)

We mourn the loss of Jackie's beloved mom, Josephine - a wonderful, warm woman. She passed away peacefully on August 19, surrounded by people who loved her. We will miss her very much.

2009-07-22T08:29:00.000-07:00

Yankees and Others...

We've had some wonderful visitors from FL, MA and NC! It's been a beautiful summer (here's a first - Jackie had to come in from the deck the other night because it was "chilly"!), and the siding is slowly getting done. We decided to put some cedar shakes on the east side, facing the road. We've been working with Kevin, who is doing a great job.
Jackie jokes that we have a "bonzai" vegetable garden. The onions failed (maybe too much rain), and so far things have been tiny, except for my first 'taters - they are healthy!
p.s. I may have "misrepresented" the goats - they belong to our neighbors Kevin and Laurel, but we did learn to milk Juliet, and I've got a regular shift now! Still experimenting with making goat cheese...

Welcome Fiona and Norman!

2009-05-31T15:57:00.000-07:00

We've done a little more work on the house - our bathroom is painted and the sink is installed, and Jackie did some more great tiling. We did a bit more of the siding, but we're going to work with someone who's willing to get up on scaffolding (not me anymore!). The garden's more fun than real work. I'm chicken about thinning, obviously, so that's why the beds look so crowded. The potatoes seem happiest - must be because I'm Irish! We're plagued by flea beetles, which munch green leaves so that it looks like they've had buckshot go through them. Lots of rain has given everything a healthy start.
The exciting development this month was the arrival of Fiona and Norman, beautiful Nubian goats. Our neighbors Kevin and Laurel built them a great barn. These goats are very affectionate and chatty! We're looking forward to goat cheese - yum!
Jackie's gone to visit her mom in Arizona for a few days. Deco and I are missing her!

Dog Days of Spring

2009-05-01T11:06:00.001-07:00

No, we didn't get puppies (Deco would never stand for that!) - our neighbor Caroline rescued these Louisiana Catahoula dogs. Maybelle and Roux are overwhelmingly cute and distracted us from getting much work done on the house. But we got our garden beds planted, and Jackie made this simply beautiful gate (to keep out troublemaking puppies and rabbits, we hope). We had a few days close to 90 degrees, but our house stayed comfortable (thanks to the cool concrete floors). I'm campaigning to keep air conditioning out of the house, but it is only May...

We are new to gardening, so we are listening to all the advice there is, which gets confusing. It seems to range from scientific ("when the third set of of true leaves appears, lower the night temperature to 55 degrees for four weeks ") to casual ("just plant the seeds and they'll grow") to superstitious ("plants like the attention when you mess with them"). Anyway, there are some seedlings coming up, so we're happy. We'll see if we eat this year... I sometimes think of the Transcendalists - big on ideas, short on farming skills. It'll be an interesting experiment!

We're heading to Florida this week to celebrate Luca's birthday and see some dear friends we miss!

La Casa de Tyvek

2009-03-31T19:26:00.000-07:00

Finally started getting the siding up! Board and batten is right for this house...

Equinox/Spring is Springing

2009-03-18T10:39:00.000-07:00

It's easy to fall in love with the mountains when there's forsythia, apple and cherry blossoms, dogwood, and all kinds of beauty blooming. We finally finished the shower (the tub was fine, but I need a shower to really wake up) - Jackie's the queen of tiling - and now we are focusing on the outside work, like the siding (hemlock boards stacked in photo), and making our plant beds. We are excited about our neighbors getting ready for their goats, and we are going in together on a chicken coop. Lots of planning!
I had to take a day off when it was in the 70's to hike - the closest Blue Ridge Parkway area is Craggy Gardens. I thought I saw a shortcut on the map, but DeLorme lied. I just parked and walked from where the road was closed. It was a gorgeous trail, although I never made it all the way to the top. I had to include my hat in one of the photos to show I was really there. All these rhododendrons will be blossoming in the next couple of months.
We had a nice surprise when we saw crocuses (croci?) in front of the house, left from someone who lived in a trailer on this land years ago.

Jackie and I think we have crossed a line - we are thrilled to drive home with huge, stinky bags of compost (aka garbage) from the juice bar at our favorite local natural food store, and from a local vegetarian caterer. Already looking forward to next year's compost.

Mucho Mulch

2009-02-24T17:51:00.000-08:00

We got a beautiful pile of mulch (we've got a lot of mud to cover!) from the C & M Sawmill, where we ordered hemlock to do our siding. We're going to do board and batten siding - vertical boards, also called barn siding. Fortunately, or unfortunately, there's a lot of hemlock that's been cut down because of the pest the woolly adelgid. It turned out to be the most economical option for us, and we think we'll like it better than the other choices we had considered, stucco or hardiplank.

We've been working on the office and Jackie's studio - we had a ladder/stairway built to get up to the loft.

And Deco supervises from her doggie bed!

Happy Chaos

2009-02-05T20:37:00.000-08:00

We are slowly and gratefully making our way through boxes and bags (why can we find all kinds of useless chachkes but not the important paperwork we need), and settling into our new home. Can't remember what day it is, but it's starting to feel like we were always here. We spend time talking with neighbors about compost and squash bores (take a guess), and are loving our comfortably warm radiant floor heat on the colder days. This weekend, temps go back up into the 60's. We think it's hilarious that 2 inches of snow brings everything to a halt, but altitude does matter - we are at the cutoff, it seems, so we don't get the big snow and ice. Lotsa mud, though!

We painted with Sherwin Williams low voc brands - Harmony and Duration. Definitely less fume-y, but there are types with no voc's - harder to clean, we hear, and more expensive.

We've got a nice pile of firewood, some seasoned and the rest getting there. Getting ready to make some raised beds and start some seeds inside.

We couldn't have gotten here without the fabulous support of friends and family! Thank you all a million times - we really do wish you were here, and hope you will be eventually!

No place like om...

2009-01-08T16:46:00.000-08:00

So we didn't pass our house inspection ("missed it by that much"), but the problems are easily fixable, and we are hoping to get it Monday! We are still being tested, apparently, so we continue to roll that primer on the walls, clean the floors yet again, and exercise our zen muscles. The good stuff - we have a boiler (Monitor, on demand hot water for both domestic and radiant floor heat - Jackie complains that the stuff that's hidden in the basement costs the most, but no one sees it), and check out this genuine plastic rock covering our well (everyone has them here for insulation) that costs only $87. Really.

As I use my nifty sixteen foot extension pole, here's the song looping in my head:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68KLZCVFDQI

Home/is where I want to be/but I guess I'm already there!

Happy Boxing Day

2008-12-26T19:30:00.001-08:00

On solstice, I was walking in the woods close to our house listening to the hoot owls, and in the middle of nowhere, lying in the leaves was this angel. I felt sorry for her, with her bad Farrah Fawcett 70’s hairdo, so I had to pick her up and bring her home. The dove in her hands came off on the way, which I hope isn’t a bad omen. I was going to give her away, but Jackie thinks we are supposed to keep her.

We are enjoying St. Augustine for a few days. Deirdre's enjoying the 80 degree weather, and Jackie can't believe she's turning on air conditioning the day after Christmas.

Here's how we left the house. Hope it's different when we get back.

(Not Quite) Home for the Holidays

2008-12-24T08:15:00.000-08:00

People try to warn you about things, but who really listens. For example, building a house will cost more and take longer than you think. A lot. Here’s the formula: imagine more money than you would ever want to be in debt for, add about 1/3 of what would give you a major anxiety attack in the middle of the night, and figure in a major recession/global financial catastrophe. That’s what it costs. And to figure out how long it will take: multiply by two the number of months that you think you could live out of a suitcase without tearing your hair out, and it will be longer than that by several weeks.
So we carry on, putting together our little Ikea projects and observing the amazing (not in a good way) mud that the grader tells us is only in our area of the county, and he knows mud. On the positive side, the electrical is in, the plumbing’s almost done, the basement ceiling was insulated, and the boiler could possibly, maybe, if there is a Christmas miracle, be installed early next week. We don’t hold our breath anymore.What’s great is the wood stove, which we have seasoned over the past few days (the temperatures have gone from 60’s to 30’s, so just in time). We sat in front of it Sunday and dreamed of living here and having our wonderful friends come visit us!

Ikea - nobody gets hurt

2008-12-07T16:08:00.000-08:00

Jackie and I spent yesterday afternoon putting together these dandy dining room chairs. We're getting good at Ikea furniture - and we have plenty more to do to get our kitchen stuff together. Once you get the hang of it, it goes fast and easy, and is relatively painless...unlike some of our other projects!

Drywall

2008-12-03T20:14:00.000-08:00

...or gypsum or wallboard, but not Sheetrock (a trademark name), as I was reminded by my friend Debbie who works for Lafarge and has been trying to train us for years, but I slipped. Anyway, the walls are covered and Jackie likes this design the joint compound makes. We may be looking at it for a while. Really. No money for paint... And appliances from Sears arrived. Very exciting day.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving on the other side of the Mason Dixon line. Live and virtual family present (I'm happy with slightly pixelated versions of people I love if they can't be there - thank you Skype), lots of gratitude despite some hardships.

On long road trips, I like to collect odd place names. When we lived in St. Augustine, I wondered how it was for people who had to give their address as "Glimpse of Glory Rd." or "Mosquito Control Rd." Last week we discovered Pigs Ear Rd., Cheater Lake, and Upper and Lower Shut-In Rd. Many years ago we loved Powhite Highway, but we don't drive that way anymore.

Snow Day

2008-11-21T15:38:00.001-08:00

There was a dusting of snow today - and school was cancelled here. It's all relative. (Higher elevations do get big amounts, and it's not safe for the school buses.) And no sheetrock today, since workers got snowed in.

We're very happy with the stained glass windows we put beside the front door. They travelled from St. Augustine to Boston, back to FL and now here...

When we get back from our Thanksgiving travels, we should be almost ready for final inspections. Crawling to the finish line!

Seems like a good sign...

2008-11-15T14:29:00.000-08:00

...but forget about the pot of gold - it's spent!

Concrete Karma

2008-11-14T15:14:00.000-08:00

Seems like fate, after working on the Big Dig (3.8 million cubic yards of concrete), that we'll be living on this slab. It's good to use with radiant floor heat and works well as thermal mass for the passive solar heat. The floor will be sealed next week. Stay tuned for stucco and sheet rock...

A series of tubes...

2008-11-12T12:26:00.000-08:00

...not to be confused with the Ted Stevens series of tubes. Radiant floor heat has been around for centuries in different forms. It's very comfortable, efficient and clean. Concrete will be poured on this pex tubing. Our hot water boiler will heat water that will go through these tubes and warm the slab. Deco will be ecstatic, but we're really not doing this just for her!

It was a busy and productive week. The crew installed all the windows, and Jackie and I unloaded the Pod over the weekend. We ask the perennial questions, why so much stuff and why do we keep lugging it around with us?

We really love these Avonni windows - they are aluminum clad outside and wood on the inside. They are manufactured locally and go really well with our metal roof. Glazing is one of the key elements of passive solar heating.

Not sure we mentioned one of the best sources of information about this type of construction - The Passive Solar House by Dan Chiras.

One of these photos shows the glass block that will be over the countertops in the kitchen (reduces the need for daytime lighting - Jackie's good idea!). Chris the Plumber and Jeramy, our project manager, are in this picture.

Halfbacks

2008-11-02T09:13:00.000-08:00

People who move from the north to Florida (which they discover is as hot as hell, surprise!), and then halfway back to North Carolina are halfbacks. It's not technically halfway, but there's foliage and snow, so it's very un-Florida like.

We are officially here, but can't move in to our house until the last few details are finished - windows, doors, floors, sheetrock, boiler... Many updates to follow this week!

A little spooky...

2008-09-30T10:24:00.000-07:00

...but there's some progress. We were thinking of going up next week, but we're waiting to hear about the gas shortages in Georgia and the Carolinas.

From the holler...

2008-09-11T13:56:00.000-07:00

Our clever and talented neighbor, Caroline, combined two local cabins she salvaged - one from 1850, the other 1815 - and built this one which we see from our back deck.
This is what our house looked like when we left Monday. You can see the cut outs for the gable roof for the deck. The small critter in the bedroom is Deco!
Estimated moving date: October 31st.

There's an inside now...

2008-09-05T10:53:00.001-07:00

And a beautiful deck! It's been fun to see all the work that's getting done day to day. Wish we could stay longer...

Raising the Roof

2008-09-03T07:25:00.000-07:00

It's been exciting to see this part of the project! We're in the process of deciding details now - where to put all the switches, what faucets to use, where will the hammock go (some details less important, obviously) - so it feels like we're really getting closer to maybe trick or treating here. Or at least having Thanksgiving dinner with Jackie's mom.

Intermission/Fay

2008-08-29T05:46:00.000-07:00

We know it's been a month, but there were some delays (nothing bad)! We're on our way to visit next week, so we'll see the crane install the roof panels.

We survived Fay intact and dry, and our new door and windows didn't leak, so we were patting ourselves on the back until we got into the car and discovered a large swamp on the floor in the back seat. Oops!

One of the photos is from the kitchen of our friend and soon to be neighbor Beatriz.

Meanwhile, Back at the Beach

2008-07-15T14:02:00.000-07:00

While Jackie and I have been waiting for our house in North Carolina to be built, we've been busy with improvements on our cottage in Saint Augustine, Florida. It's a charming little rental by the beach.

We rebuilt decks, installed new windows, put up new fences, and generally tore stuff up and put it back together - better! Quotes from our working together - Jackie: It'll be easy. I saw it on This Old House. Deirdre: #!@& I'm never doing this again!!

Seems like projects never end, but the results are great.

Deco Digs the Decks/Cutest Baby Ever

2008-07-05T09:44:00.000-07:00

We stopped back in Weaverville after our visit up north. It was great to see everyone, especially new family member Ted, also known as Cutest Baby Ever. He's only a few months old, but he's promised to come and spend time with us in North Carolina, helping us with the gardens when we're too old and creaky to weed (maybe next year!).

In the photo above where Deco is inspecting her future home the house in the background belongs to our friend and neighbor Beatriz. She and her sister are fantastic glass artists. Check out their work!

p.s. If anyone can help me place the photos on the page where I want them, I'd be grateful!

Also, I forgot to give photo credits - Jackie, of course (except for the one of Ted)!

Sneak Preview/We Love SEED

2008-06-22T10:52:00.000-07:00

When we began our search for architects and builders in the Asheville area, we interviewed a lot of professionals who had some "green" expertise. The most knowledgeable and experienced person we found was Kevin Ward from Southeast Ecological Design. (Be careful if you go to this site - you will probably end up needing to move here and have him build your house!) He is very familiar with green building materials and methods, and he is a designer whose aesthetic sense is close to ours (or to Jackie's, more importantly!). He is also a skilled landscape architect and stone mason. He has been very patient with us during this process, (we ask a lot of questions!) and we feel fortunate to have his company building our home.

The pictures above are renderings of the house from the north and the west sides.

SIPs - A Good Thing

2008-06-19T15:40:00.000-07:00

Structural Insulated Panels - SIPs - are foam sandwiches, basically. Not as cool as straw bale or other more "natural" building materials, but they are the most energy efficient, use very little wood and are the fastest to put up (which means lower cost). Window and door openings can be pre-cut, but ours were delivered like this so the cuts can be made on-site. (You may have thought, weird house without windows!). These panels contain all the insulation and structural strength of traditional stick-frame houses. They create such an air-tight house, good ventilation is the biggest concern.

The picture with the generator shows the beginning of construction of the deck on the west side of the house.

Fahma's Mahket on Mahs Hill

2008-06-08T04:52:00.000-07:00

At the end of our road, we avoided hitting this turtle that we then helped cross to the river (we hope that's where s/he was headed). We were going to the farmer's tailgate market at Mars Hill College, the closest to us of the dozens of markets in this area. Mars Hill is just a few minutes away. Lots of great local produce, baked goods, and crafts. We got rosemary fig goat cheese and organic broccoli.

We learned this week that LVL (laminated veneer lumber) beams are stronger, straighter and better for longer spans than conventional materials. And these floor trusses are also a good design because of the web form inside of them.

Trusses and Cicadas

2008-06-06T13:56:00.000-07:00

It's hard to believe that it's been hotter here than in St. Augustine, and this has not made Jackie happy at all. We were treated this week to the serenade of the seventeen-year cicadas who have emerged from the soil to sing their mating song. The sound is a bit eerie in a Twilight Zone-ray gun kind of way. If we were still in the city, we might think it was someone's house alarm going off all day. These periodic cicadas are interesting, and some say, delicious!

The floor trusses are all in, and the SIPs (more on those later) are due early next week. We won't be able to stay for their installation, but it's okay. We had a good bonding experience with our future home. We got to meet the crew and they are all great people.

Lesson One: Patience

2008-06-05T11:47:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Forks of Ivy! It's the name of the exit you will take when you come to visit us in our new home. Our property is in the Ivy River watershed. It's been 2 years since we found the perfect location for our passive solar house, and now we have a foundation!