At it’s deepest, the winter has given us the experience of twenty five degrees below zero.   I have fond memories of the days when I thought ten degrees c was cold… I noticed myself thinking when I saw this temperature on the thermometer on my bedroom wall -  “oh good, it’s not too cold then.”  Luckily, manual labour is very warming.

The week in which we experienced minus twenty five was rather catastrophic. Over the weekend we lost drainage, and then a chimney fire on Monday night meant that we had no heating at the house until we had a certificate to say that the chimneys had been swept.  A couple of weeks before the chimney fire we had texted a chimney sweep, but had not chased it up when there was no immediate reply. Next time we will know that when the fires start to burn less strongly, it’s time to get the sweep to visit.  I’d thought it was just because of damp wood. Anyway, the net result is that the core temperature of the house has fallen dramatically. We are down to zero.

We have made some stupid decisions. For example, insulation was removed from the temporary drainage pipe at the back of the house - this has now frozen solid - so no use of the washing machine or shower for the time being. We had planned to put in the new (accessible) bathroom and link this to the old underground sewage system to give us drainage during the hard winter months, however the project did not advance that far in time.

We also did not get out onto the roof and clear the snow away early enough. When it was decided that the snow looked serious enough that we should clear it off, it was impossible to open the roof hatch to get onto the roof - possibly because of the weight of the snow, and possibly because it was frozen shut. Now we have mounting snow and no way of getting up onto the roof to clear it. If only we’d gone up there every day to check, and figured out how to clear the snow before it was too late. The roof is newly repaired, so it should be okay, but I’m worried.

A wood pile left uncovered was buried deep in snow - creating hours of digging and damp wood which is difficult to burn. The chain saw failed on Sunday - meaning that we have enough wood cut only for a two or three days… we will be lucky if it lasts till Thursday morning - even when we’re heating the house only in the evening.  Also, the fridge freezer is working intermittently because the room we use as a kitchen is too cold for the mechanism to work. About the only place in the house where food could possibly spoil is our fridge.

I wish I’d had a secondary set of doors installed in the hallway, and there are still some rooms with only single glazing.

We cannot now retreat from the house because of the animal entourage.  To have the three cats and a puppy in the one room we can use in Tábor is just not feasible.  Taking on a puppy in the winter has not been a good decision - there has been snow on the ground every day (apart from Christmas Day) since she arrived on the 18th December.  We cannot leave her in the garden as it is too cold. She is spending all her time in human company and this is not good for her.

This winter has been way harder than I thought it could be. The positives I can take from the experience… lessons learned about clearing snow and insulation… we’ve realised that a central heating system is essential - yes, local heating and insulation is also important - but something to protect the core temperature of the house is necessary in order to have some degree of freedom over the winter. You can heat a room to a nice twenty degrees with a roaring fire, but if the next room is at zero, that heat doesn’t stay there till the next day.  I was looking forward to winter sports, for which we have had no time since Christmas. Right now, I’m emotionally exhausted, and tired of this fxxxxxx snow.

So, the issue of micro generation has been at the back of my mind for some time. The standard arguments about it are that if you are going to have a home generator of some description -  solar cells (ridiculously expensive at present), wind turbine or water turbine, you end up with a lot of maintenance and a payback time which is uneconomic (ie the amount of embedded energy needed to create the system will take too long to be made up by the equipment during it’s lifetime).  Dedicated enthusiasts and those who have serious amounts of money to invest can create their own personal electricity supply.

The big advantage of micro generation is that electricity loses power over distance because of resistance, so creating the electricity close to where it is to  be used is important. Also - it grants a measure of independence from centralised systems. With this in mind I’ve been thinking about building a mill wheel utilising the water which should be coming down the stream into the pond. This is going to be a big undertaking and quite frankly, beyond my own capability so I’ll need help. There is embeded energy in anything moving downwards because of gravity, if we could capture the energy of falling rain, for example.

To this end I had researched dynamo generators to be placed within rain water down pipes in domestic homes. The amount of power generated can be calculated using available data on average rainfall. There is nothing on the market at the moment - with electric generators being too expensive. There would be a natural coupling between times when we experience rain the need for heat and light (in all situations where the temperature is above freezing!) - if only it was possible to take the wasted energy of gravity on rainwater and convert it into something useful…

This year I put up Christmas lights with more though than previous years. There are people who decorate their houses so extremely that they end up with a massive electricity bill. This is clearly a waste, but to say so too loudly would be rather Bah Humbug about Christmas. Wouldn’t it be nice to have decorative lights which didn’t waste energy, and provided cheer on dark winter evenings? LED fairy lights don’t need much energy - which is why there’s that big black box with the plug - to convert the high currents of your household electricity down low enough for these bulbs. I had been thinking of hooking up lights like these to my bike to create something truly spectacular (alongside my Pedalite flashing pedals & magnet powered front and rear lights) but wasn’t sure how safe this would make me in the eyes of startled motorists.

Today, I was thinking about the mill wheel, and drawing designs for a wheel to go on the north wall of the house, simply capturing water from the roof guttering and carrying it towards to ground. I would love to create something beautiful and useful for the back wall as there is a large space with no windows which is permanently in the shade. It would need to be aesthetic as well as functional, and built of something light and durable, with as many reused/recycled components as possible. Of course - as the scale increases, so does the energy capture capability as well as the complexity… but how nice it would be to convert that freely available energy into useful heat or light on a gloomy day. Would it need to be one large wheel? Or would several small wheels be a more efficient way of capturing energy? What do we have available in the way of light, strong wheels? Old broken bicycles. Of which we have, by a fluke, more than one (I cannot throw things away), some even with dynamos. As I’ve though so many times before… I wish I’d studied engineering.

What I have learned from previous projects is that it’s important that I can take the first steps using only my own ability, so my first experiment will be with an old bicycle wheel, some guttering and my non-friction bycicle dynamo generator (from http://www.freelights.co.uk ).  Wish me luck!

Read the rest of this entry »

I should tell you what I know about gardening… but I’m don’t know how much of it is true…
In organic growing you’re depending on earthworms to do a lot of the work for you, if you ever lift up a piece of cowshit in a field you see under, worms having dinner. Worms dig the soil for you. They bring organic matter down under and aerate the soil. So a school of ‘no-dig’ gardeners has come about, because digging is bad for the soil and hard work and it kills everything. But to have this work you need to mulch to keep the weeds down and give the worms something to eat. I get cow dung off my neighbour, lots of it.
So I experiment with this type of no-dig gardening. Last year I mad a bed about 4ft wide and 10 ft long. I made a few, put down newspaper (about 20 sheets thick) then put about 1/2 foot of dung on top. Then using triangles planted potatoes in a bit of compost (triangles make more space than rows).
Of course everybody complained about the smell of cowshit, but not about the spuds in the summer. Read the rest of this entry »

This is our first winter at Nový Mlýn. We now have a water supply, and wood burning stoves in place to heat the property… and nowhere else to run to. My greatest personal fear (after global warming above 2 degrees!) is the cold. I recently bought a set of 10 thermometers from a seller on Ebay. The purpose – to give us an accurate idea of the temperature in various parts of the house. Sent from China, nine out of ten of them functioned – though the (included) hydrometers clearly don’t work as some are taking measurements of more than 100%. On Saturday I put these up around the house and the results have been… well… no surprise really. Rooms that we heat are warm… the north side of the property is colder than the south, the upstairs hallway warmer than the downstairs. What is more surprising is that comfortable temperatures can vary so much.

The weather turned cold early this year … with a good half foot of snow falling on the 13th October. We were lucky because by chance we’d bought two extra wood burning stoves two days before the snow, one for the bathroom and one for our bedroom. With the old range in the kitchen and barrel stove heating the guest bedrooms, this means that the rooms which needed to be warm have been so. The hallway is many cubic metres of air space, so I’m not yet entirely sure how much heat we’ll put into a place which is used only to walk through – it would seem a waste. We put a large curtain (well, bedspread) across the hall by the front door to prevent heat escaping until we manage to get the secondary door in there. The hallway stands at about 10 degrees – the same temperature as you’d find constantly under the ground. I wonder if this is a coincidence. If we can manage bedroom, kitchen & bathroom temperatures between 17-20 degrees c and other spaces within the house at about 10 degrees, the winter will not be unpleasant.

Apples! The amazing discovery by Nic and Katie of how amazing thinly sliced apples soaked in honey is on porridge ..and how un-amazing it is if you soak cubes of apple and pear in honey…
Baking, Beans, Bike Rides, Burrrito eating contests and…..BUNBURY (Nic and Mikes‘s new little puppy named after our lovely, sophisticated and exciting home town)!
Chopping wood. Excellent form of anger release. Composting toilet. Poo with a view. Satisfying. Constipation. Cheese Cheese Cheese Cheese Cheese
Digging holes. Composting toilet holes. Who would have knew this was rich’s dream job? professional poo digger.
Eating amazing foods. Curries, Roast dinners, Vegetarian delights and excellent beer and mulled wine. going to be hard to go back to a backpackers diet of crackers and tuna..
Forrest. Some of the most stunning scenic walks we have been on. Nic and Mike are one lucky couple.
Gigantic knitting needles. The talented knitter Nic and her epic needles that knitted the first ever once you start you can’t stop jumper.
Haircuts. Richard received a beautifully crafted Mohawk..with mike’s very short clippers. Henrik’s bullet wound! Shot by a rock in a poo hole!
Indoor soccer matches. Gave an insight into how unfit a few workaways were. Irish Football game - tragedy!
Jams. Henrik on lead guitar, Noel on the ear piercing tin whistle, Richard on deep smooth vocals and Katie with earplugs. Special note to Henrik for his talented guitar playing.
Kitty cats. With both of us not having the strongest of love towards cats we have made a complete turn around. Pavaoc, George and little Zizka made us fall in kitty love. Going to miss the morning cuddles from Zizka and the face plants from George.(don’t worry George..things will be ok without your balls)
Lifting bucket after bucket of rubble from the dining room. Tyre flooring experiment is now near completion. just waiting on that wood! Hopefully it will be a huge success!
Mushrooms. Eating mushrooms, picking mushrooms, cooking mushrooms and Noel drinking mushrooms. think we may have become part mushroom? Middlesborough = SHITE! HAHA
Nights out in Tabor. Epic. How could we not forget the Hoegarden beer, great feed at two cats and foosball tournaments and 12 hour sessions…
Oooooooooooooooo!! The discovery of a real breakfast in Tabor!! This had to be the happiest day of Mike and Nic’s life (ok maybe a slight exaggeration but still, you can’t go past a great cooked breakfast after a few too many beers at the Lev)
Porridge. sweet beautiful amazing porridge. thinking of marrying it rather than marrying Richard. And can’t forget Ping pong. Had our first ever game of epic ping pong. with everyone in the pub…going to bring this game to the Olympics. Pumpkin Pie! James thanksgiving treat. Poker - thanks again James….for your money!
Questionable motives behind Richard’s online dating service for Noel.
Restoration. The marathon restoration of the bookshelf. so satisfying to see it blissfully clean and varnished. Raw meat should also be mentioned here….Rich = thumbs up, Katie = undecided.
Sawing through massive logs gave us both massive guns and a massive need for tea breaks. Stalkers…Clay ones.
Tea glorious tea. Maybe the result of late night toilet runs but tea is VERY important in a days work needed at regular 2 hour intervals (or half hour ones).
Undulating hills on cute little bikes make the bikes seem less cute and more demon like…but so rewarding when reaching the destinations of Cernovice and Czech Castles.
Violent - Noels chopping technique! Actually just Noel in general.
Workawayers..Claire, Henrik, Noel and James. Our stay would not of been the same without the American arsonist, Smooth Swede, Impotent Irishman and the anti-dish American. Wedding of the century - Henrik and Lenke (BFG!).
Xrated on-line dating profiles of Henrik and Noel.
YES!Yes yes yes…the discovery of a hangover cure drink in Tabor. still yet to decide if it actually works or not..
Zizka adorable. We will very much miss Nic and Mike who made our stay so pleasant and rewarding. Thanks so much guys, we will send you a bucket load of cheese from England or maybe we will start a good cheese factory in Tabor.. Summer will most certainly bring upon a return visit to the beautiful Novy Mlyn as I don‘t think we can stay away for too long!

By the beginning of October it was not possible to dry apples in the sun any longer and I didn’t want to buy a small and power-hungry fruit drying machine. We have made cherry compote, but I’m keen to avoid using sugar as the main preservative here because it has to travel so far (food miles) and is not good for our teeth or waistlines. Therefore, the majority of the cherry compote is, rather tellingly, still in the cupboard.
I’ve been doing some research about alternatives and have come across some great information about honey. My interest was sparked by a radio article about honey from the Pyramids still being edible after thousands of years in storage. Eating locally produced honey is said to help build up a resistance to hay fever, and it was used as a preservative since Roman times, long before sugar was available so far from the equator. I tend to use honey to sweeten my current favourite Dilmah Green Tea with Moroccan Mint, as well as breakfast porridge, therefore it made sense to also use it to store apples that could not be dried.
Apples sliced with the kitchen mandolin and layered into the honey worked very well - they have kept their colour (unlike the vodka apples from 2007 which went brown very quickly). The only problem is that we keep eating them… meaning that I can’t judge how long they will keep. They are delicious on porridge (made with water) with a dash of cream - a good, hearty winter breakfast.
The apples and pears that we cut into cubes behaved rather differently - they started to ferment in a very short time, and the liquid bubbled out of the storage jars, slowly spreading a sticky goo around the kitchen. I eventually gave up on these, instead I drained the fruit and put it in with a batch of mulled wine - the result - apple or pear poached in mulled wine has made a very tasty desert to share with guests. The liquid continues to ferment - I’m adding it to tea, but it is beginning to loose it’s sweetness so I’m curious to see how this incidental mead will turn out.
I look forward to experimenting with cherries in honey in 2010.

Coming from the bustling streets of Prague, I was ready for the lull and undiscovered woods of the countryside. I had pieced together my idea of Novy Mlyn from images on a computer screen: sweetly colored pears basking outside, an endearing huddle of mushrooms in the bottom of a basket, a row of trees bending together in the mist of a field, instructions on how to fix a butterfly wing: A conglomeration of whimsy and authenticity. When Mike picked me up from the bus station (after nearly getting killed by an ornate bus) I was already enamored with the Czech countryside and it’s bassooning hills. Novy Mlyn unfolded into all of those images I had first imagined and then multiplied on itself in depth and form and sense. There were eons of wealth in this piece of land, the four floors of space and earthy smells, the heaving barns and scrawling lush trees. I became convinced that magic burgeoned from the soil: the wild hedgehogs cultivated it, the pennybuns discussed the intricacies of the land’s fantasy. Off in the middle of the night there were exhilarated creatures that met with joyfully patterned scarves; they waved them around in ancient dances and ceremonies to preserve the spirit of this place. Yes, the land seemed enchanted and would enchant anyone who listened to it. Mike and Nic had listened carefully and they had found themselves intimately connected and tending to an accordion of history, intoxicating corridors and blossoming spaces.

It was solacing to run your palm along the cool walls of the house, see the winter light through the warm kitchen windows, smell the footprints and creaks in the encompassing attic. The house is an organism, alive in its transformation. The wood stoves its sultry respiratory system, its peeling walls its constantly renewing skin. Nic and Mike revitalized its heart and all the workawayers are guided around the house’s circulatory and nervous system, like artistic plasma.

There was not one project I did not enjoy working on. I started refinishing a window, its layers of sea green paint telling me about the turn of the century. We unsheathed the attic from a cloak of dust and bat leftovers, the air crisp and the atmosphere nostalgic. We fondled presents from the ocean and destroyed yet delicate china until the tesserae were laid out on the window sill in a mosaic. I helped button up the corners of the house and prepare it for winter (that came overnight). We all cooked and laughed and slept in warm beds. There is a constant air of movement and progress at Novy Mlyn: Refigure. Build up. Tear down. Smooth away. Research about. Wire together. Clear. Stitch. Make. Continue.

Amidst the work we wandered through the woods. When the snow fell the whole valley became even more sacred. We found a herd of horses careening through the wet ground and nuzzling in the cold. We came across an architect’s grave; an oval portrait with muted color in his cheeks by the patient lake. Novy Mlyn took its blanket of snow gracefully and shined in its white coat.

It was so hard to leave such a wonderful place with lovely people that we decided to stay longer. When the time finally came for our departure, we wrapped all the interesting projects and ideas, shared dinners and marvelous cats into a resonating memory. Novy Mlyn will be vivid to me in its pocket of enchantment nestled by the edge of the world. I think Nic and Mike and Novy Mlyn have found the perfect match in each other and I wish them all the best. I hope I can come back someday, maybe to live in the attic!

At the conclusion of my first week at Nový Mlýn, I’ve developed what you might call a frienemy. How is this possible, you ask, when only the nicest hosts, the coolest workers, and three adorable cats inhabit Nový Mlýn? Two words: wood stoves. When my toes are numb or when I’m snuggling into my bed for the night, they’re the best friends a girl could ever ask for. Or when I shower and there’s one right there, just waiting for me to finish so that it can continue to keep me warm through the drying-off process, I love them. But it was also in the bathroom last night that one of the stoves turned on me, rightly earning the enemy half of their title. As I took a quick shower, my beloved sweatpants, Vassar sweatshirt, and incredibly warm socks were nestled in a basket next to the stove. When I went to put them all on again after the shower, they were, gasp, MELTED! Who knew that cotton could melt? Not I. True, I must’ve knocked them closer to the heat while reaching for a bar of soap in the basket, but still I was heartbroken to know that the stove was capable of such destruction. And as I gaped at it in horror, it just stood there steadfastly as if to say, “Who me? No, of course not!” Not unlike George, the cat here who favors jumping on the counters to steal cheese, and then stares at you innocently when you scold him and then boot him out of the kitchen.

Alas, I should’ve known the treachery of the wood stoves, as just the night before I essentially fried two of my fingers after grabbing a hot pot off the top of one. And again, here, I should mention the human element of negligence involved, but still! I mean, I had to sleep with my fingers in a glass of ice water! We’re talking blisters and all. FYI: honey compresses, vinegar soaks, and lavender oil are all excellent home remedies for painful burns.

Luckily, no other object at Nový Mlýn has declared war on me. Last week Emily and I worked on drilling holes into the walls that surround the windows, and then we sawed IKEA curtain rods down to size in an effort to eventually cover each window with an insulating duvet. Even though it was my first time using both a handsaw and a drill, each provided nothing short of a stellar performance. We finished the job covered in red dust from the drilled brick walls and that, combined with my new tool usage, made me feel pretty badass and awesome.

I also had the pleasure of helping Emily finish a gorgeous mosaic on one of the front windowsills. She had already plastered down most of a very cool swirling star design and I simply helped her fill in the last spaces with some sea glass. It was a lot of fun picking out the most interesting pieces of broken porcelain and glass, and I’m glad that I had the opportunity to learn a little bit about doing a mosaic. The only downfall was the weather; three days of constant snow doesn’t exactly nurture the best environment for being outside working with bare fingers. Therefore we took frequent tea breaks while we defrosted our numb hands next to a wood stove (oh, wood stoves…). The mosaic still needs to be grouted since Emily and Grier have just left Nový Mlýn to continue their travels. Luckily, one of the new Australian workers, Katie, has experience with grouting and has volunteered to take on the final step of the mosaic.

The past couple of days have been pretty mellow and actually quite domestic. Henrik from Sweden and Richard from Australia have undertaken the everlasting task of chopping wood while Katie and I have been doing a few little sewing jobs. Aside from pricking myself about 100 times and cursing at the thread, which liked to slip out of the needle at only the most inconvenient moments, it was nice sitting by the fire and being domestic. Today, Henrik braved the melting snow by himself to tend to the wood, while Katie and Richard worked on a draft of the Nový Mlýn property. In the meantime, I’ve been taking pictures of everyone else working and then writing about it, calling that my own form of work for the day…

A fantastic Saturday night dinner:

Béchamel Sauce:

6 tablespoons butter

6 tablespoons flour

4 cups milk

salt and pepper

2-3 cups cheese, diced: a mix of Gouda and Edam (and cheddar if you’re lucky)

2 cloves garlic, minced

Pasta/Topping:

1.5 pounds elbow macaroni

1 cup breadcrumbs mixed with a few tablespoons melted butter

To make the béchamel, melt the butter and then add the flour. Mix well, then add the garlic and cook for 5 minutes on low. Warm the milk in a separate pot and then add it to the butter/flour/garlic mixture, along with the salt and pepper. Bring it to a boil and then add the cheese. Cook on medium-low heat until it melts. Cook pasta until it’s a little underdone, drain, and mix with sauce. Place in a greased casserole dish. Sprinkle bread crumb mixture on top and bake in the oven at 375 degrees F. for like 15-20 minutes, depending on how brown you want it. Remove, let it cool for about 5 minutes, and then enjoy!