The Big Crisis

There is such an author Koshasty, he described his vision of the future in sufficient detail, most likely this future is too dark, but anything can happen, but his reasoning seems very useful to me, so I will keep it just in case. Here can be read in the original.

1. Introduction
My name is Viktor Sergienko, now (2011) I am 35 years old.

My contacts: email: [email protected]

So, first a brief chronological sequence. I was born in 1975 in Kyiv. In 1997, I graduated from the Kiev Polytechnic Institute, Faculty of Chemical Technology, majoring in biotechnology. The result was a rather rare education – technical, and at the same time biological.
Since 1995, I started working in the field of information technology, as a programmer, system administrator, and also gained experience as a teacher (3 years), at the peak of my career I worked as the head of the IT department in a rather large company.
At the end of 2002, I thought about the need to change my lifestyle, since for a number of reasons my previous lifestyle no longer suited me (the reasons are discussed in detail in a separate section). The period lasted for approximately six months when I was actively searching for and processing information and developing a solution. In March 2003, the decision to move was finalized and made.
At the same moment, I began to actively prepare for the move. In May 2003 (2-4th) I went to the area to find a home. The search was crowned with success in the village of Kovalin, Pereyaslav-Khmelnitsky district. I found an empty house, found the owners, negotiated the purchase, gave a deposit; and in the summer of 2003 bought a house for $500.
From that moment on, I spent all weekends there, in my future home, and continued to work in Kyiv on weekdays. In order to bring the house into a habitable condition, a lot of work was needed, one of the main things was to change the roof (the old one was thatched) with a new slate one, and later – to install metal-plastic windows (the old ones were completely dilapidated).
In the summer of 2003, I changed my job to a calmer one – as a simple programmer. During the winter of 2003/2004, I continued to prepare for the move, which I planned for March, and to build up supplies. In March 2004, I quit my job and moved to live in my own house in the village. Now my lifestyle has turned upside down – I spent 6 days a week in the village, and 1 day a week I went to Kyiv to work.
That spring I was already planting my own garden, and in general was completely engaged in organizing the farm. In the summer of the same year, my wife quit her job and moved in with me, and from that moment on there was always someone at home – we got dogs, cats, and bought a goat. In the fall, in November 2004, we bought horses – two rural horses with a cart cost us $1,500 (shared with my sister).
At the same time, in the fall of 2004, my sister and her family moved to the village (she bought two houses not far from me even earlier). Since the winter of 2004/2005, our livelihoods have become completely independent from external supplies. In the winter of 2005/2006, I worked in Kyiv for 3 months, 4 days a week – at the same job, as a programmer.
After that, I completely left this job, and instead of this, I got a part-time job in Kyiv, where I could come on a more flexible schedule – once every 2-3 weeks, for half a day. Since the beginning of 2007, I almost never go there anymore, I come to Kyiv quite rarely, we can say that I’m completely finished with making money on IT.
In October 2006, I bought another horse – a thoroughbred, Oryol trotter. In December 2006, I bought a six-month-old foal – also an Oryol trotter; raised and rode her. In 2008, he made major interior renovations to the house and laid a foundation under the walls. In March 2009 our daughter was born. In 2010, he began a large construction project, which included almost doubling the expansion of the house.
In October 2011 our second daughter was born. Here, in brief, are the main events up to today (November 2011).

The main goals that I tried to achieve by changing my lifestyle. The main and primary goal is to achieve maximum autonomy in the main aspects of life support, which primarily include food and housing. The second goal is to achieve maximum autonomy in all other aspects of life support, which include the reproduction of elements of material culture.
The third goal is to achieve the maximum quality of life, the aspects of which include physical and psychological health, nutritious nutrition, a healthy environment, sufficient free time for recreation, creative self-realization, etc.

Explanation. Autonomy here means independence from the positive factors of the surrounding society that provide these aspects of life support. This refers to the conditions that society provides for us in order for us to have something we want.
For example, delivering groceries to stores, water in our water supply, electricity in our wires, heat in our batteries, gasoline at gas stations for our cars, removal of our garbage from our yards, etc. I specifically point out that these positive factors should be distinguished from negative ones – those that MUST NOT exist in order for everything to be good.
For example, the military registration and enlistment office, taking children into the army, drug addicts in the entrances, hitting us on the head with a pipe to take away our wallet, surplus appropriation units, etc. This explanation is made specifically for those dreamers who do not distinguish positive factors from negative ones. In the concept of autonomy, I mean independence only from positive factors;
achieving independence from all conceivable negative factors is impossible for anyone, and I do not set such a goal. No single person can do anything reasonable against a platoon of machine gunners on armored personnel carriers, including me.

Assumptions based on which the above goals were set. It is expected that a large-scale resource and economic crisis will occur soon (in the coming years), indefinitely, turning into a civilizational one.
Its difference from the immediate economic and resource crises (the Great Depression in the 30s, the Second World War in the 40s, the collapse of the Union in the 90s) is precisely in its perpetuity, associated with a civilizational turning point, caused by the beginning of the depletion of the most important natural resources for civilization.
This means that, unlike all previous situations, the strategy of “survive, wait, wait until better times” will be wrong; if it gets bad, it will get even worse. The justification for the inevitability of such a development of events is beyond the scope of this material; I’ve touched on this issue in my other materials, and there are plenty of other people’s materials out there.
Those interested can look at the overview of the links here – http://vicsrg.ho.ua/stat/doctrina.htm. The development of possible consequences is also a very complex issue that requires separate research. I will only give a conclusion that is important for this work. At the beginning of the acute phase of the crisis, the global financial system and international trade will be almost completely destroyed.
The supply of many goods across borders will stop, including energy resources: oil and gas. In a very short time after the start of the acute phase of the crisis (from several months to a year), the most important infrastructure complexes that ensure the livelihoods of the majority of the population will be completely and irreversibly destroyed.
This is an agro-industrial complex that cannot fulfill its tasks without an uninterrupted supply of petroleum products; transport infrastructure, for the same reasons; housing, communal and industrial infrastructure (electricity generation and transportation, water supply, sewerage, heat supply).
Irreversibility will be caused by the inevitable chaotic and vandal actions of people (for example, in moments of irregular switching on of electricity in the absence of heat supply, the local wiring will be burned by massive switching on of heaters – experience has already been gained from similar incidents at accident sites), and the lack of repairs and spare parts (a number of equipment must be regularly maintained and repaired, and continued attempts to use without this threaten complete destruction).
As for electrical networks, irreversibility will be achieved when, after several months of no electricity, people begin to remove the wires from the poles. Thus, we must count on the fact that the above infrastructure will be destroyed once and for all.
Consequently, those whose livelihoods are based on the existence of this infrastructure will find their physical survival at risk. To get out from under this threat, it is necessary to achieve autonomy, which was stated in the goals.

Basic principles for achieving the above goals. In order to understand these principles, one must more or less clearly imagine the existing state of affairs and the structure of modern urban civilization. We will try not to go too deep into these issues, but to reveal them in their main features.

Let’s start with nutrition. Each person consumes their 1.5 – 2 kg of food per day, and treats it as calmly as if these products appear right in the back rooms of stores (c). If you figure out where they come from, it will become clear how many factors influence the possibility of having them.
Starting from the availability of money in your pocket, ending with the global state of affairs in the country and in the world – with finance, energy, agriculture, etc.
Moreover, references to the fact that hunger and food rationing remained somewhere in the past are invalid, since the world is not only approaching a difficult period of its existence for the first time since the Second World War, but also since then the situation with dependence has greatly worsened – which can be seen at least from the ratio of the rural to urban population.
So, to achieve autonomy in the supply of products, the clear choice is independent manual labor on the land. Why independent – so that there is no dependence on other people (suddenly some year they for some reason want to do something other than growing food for me;
one must understand that in any serious crisis the degree of division of labor in society drops significantly, and many professions that provided “sure income” before the crisis find themselves out of business). Why manual – so that there is no dependence on petroleum products and other energy sources. This note is for those who with a pure heart advise “everyone to do what he knows best” (i.e.
for me – programming), or “why bother when there are cars” (i.e., buy a walk-behind tractor or a walk-behind tractor). No, neither one nor the other is suitable – only independent and only manual.

Now about housing. Housing performs an extremely important function in human life; a person cannot exist without housing (at least some kind) in our climate. Its most important function is to provide protection from adverse climatic conditions – precipitation, wind, and cold. The secondary function is to provide a person with conditions for life.
Every person needs not only to have food, but also to cook it – which means there should be such an opportunity in the house – an oven or stove. Every person needs to bathe and wash things, which means it must be possible to get water somewhere, heat it, and then put it somewhere. And so on. All human needs satisfied by housing must be divided into three parts.
The first is absolutely necessary, without which a person experiences physical discomfort and danger to life. The second is what is not directly necessary for life, but is still very useful and necessary. And the third is something that gives pleasure and comfort, but does not bring much real benefit.

To the first part we will include:

1) a closed space (walls, floor, ceiling, roof) – something that protects us from wind and precipitation;
2) a source of heating heat in the house and sufficient thermal insulation of the walls – something that will provide us with an acceptable temperature in the winter;
3) the presence of windows that provide enough light (we will not be able to do anything in the dark);
4) a source of strong heat suitable for cooking (raw potatoes or cereals don’t really fill you up);
5) the presence of a source of water in the house or near the house (in an amount sufficient for drinking, cooking, washing and laundry);
6) the presence of a place in the house or near the house where waste water can be poured;
7) the presence in the house or near the house of a place where you can go to the toilet in compliance with sanitary and hygienic standards (so that there is no danger of the spread of diseases).

Since the above functions are absolutely necessary, housing that does not provide them is not housing by definition.

The second part would include the presence of electricity in the house. It does not provide anything truly vital, but one thing – lighting at night – is extremely valuable, allowing you to extend the daylight hours and do much more things (this applies to winter time, when it gets dark already at 4 o’clock in the afternoon).
This also includes the presence of normal furnishings in the house – furniture, all sorts of things, a carpet on the floor, curtains on the windows, household utensils, etc.

And only to the third part I would include the presence in the house of a chandelier, suspended ceilings, heated floors, a jacuzzi, Italian tiles in the toilet, and the very presence of a toilet in the house.
This issue is a sore point for many people, so I’ll emphasize once again – in my opinion, having a warm toilet in the house is pleasant, comfortable, desirable, but in no way is it absolutely necessary or even brings any significant benefit. You don’t have to live in the toilet or read books, you have to come there, do a moment’s work and leave.
In my experience, even 30-degree frost is not an obstacle to this. This does not pose a health hazard, no matter what anyone says.

So, when making a fundamental decision on the issue of housing, I took into account that housing must necessarily provide the first part of the requirements; if possible – the second; and the third – how it turns out. At the same time, of course, everyone should not forget that the main condition is autonomy. Having considered the options, we can come to the conclusion that a city apartment is not housing at all.
In the absence of a working infrastructure, they provide almost nothing from the first part (namely points 2,4,5,6,7). In the absence of running water, there will be nowhere to go to the toilet (and after a couple of weeks of pouring buckets under the bushes in the courtyards of apartment buildings, especially in the summer, epidemics will begin); it will not be possible to cook food in it (even if there is food);
there will be nothing to drink and nothing to wash with (and there are few reservoirs in a big city and they are far away, and there is no drinking water in any of them; it is difficult to imagine how you can water a large city of several million from a couple of small dirty rivers; perhaps the lack of drinking water will become the very first serious problem when the water supply is turned off);
in winter the temperature inside will be almost the same as outside.
Some idea of ​​what city apartments cost in winter without a working infrastructure (let’s list – electricity, water supply, heating, gas) is given by descriptions of besieged Leningrad (taking into account the fact that in those years half of Leningrad was heated with wood, and accordingly, many houses had stoves and some kind of reserves of firewood, and taking into account the fact that the population of the city then was not at all the same as now).
Some descriptions can be found in the works of the Strugatskys.

I formulated the solution this way: the dwelling should be a private house, located on a site with an autonomous water supply, with stove heating, in an area where there are few people, not far from as extensive a forest as possible. This is what guided me when choosing a place and a house.

Combining decisions regarding food supply and housing, we get a solution for the overall lifestyle:

You need to live in a private house, on a plot of land as large as possible, organizing the household in such a way that autonomy in food and housing is as complete as possible.

This is the basis, and then various clarifications related to the elaboration of individual issues are attached to it.

Here it would also be appropriate to formulate what the Koshasty Method is (this name was born against my will, and everyone uses it in whatever way they want, so in order to avoid disagreements, I give my own formulation).

The Koshasty method is: (follow the key words) – methodological recommendations based on personal experience on changing the way of life of an individual family, (WHEN) on the eve and at the very beginning of a crisis, (WHY) designed to REDUCE THE PROBABILITY of death and disasters in the midst of a crisis, and INCREASE THE PROBABILITY of survival following its results, with a planning horizon of about 50 years, that is, until the end of your life and before the independent life of your grandchildren, (WHAT WAY) by moving to the countryside, away from big cities, and establishing the most autonomous management possible.

Like this. No less, but no more.

Selecting the location and distance from the city. The fact that the place should be chosen is not in the city or near the city is clear from the very beginning. During a crisis period, large and medium-sized cities will become zones of severe disaster, and it will be necessary to stay as far away from them as possible. On the other hand, moving somewhere very far away is difficult for technical reasons. A distance of 60-80 km from Kyiv was chosen as reasonable.
As a second measure of passive protection, choose a village not on the highway (which would be very convenient from a transport point of view), but away from the highway, at least 10 kilometers away. I will explain these measures. In my opinion, during a crisis period there will be two types of movement of people from the big city.
The first is raids, when a person goes somewhere with the goal of getting food there and returning back to the city, where a hungry family is waiting. Most of this will be on foot, some on bicycles; mostly alone or in small groups (2-3 people), some – in medium-sized armed gangs.
The main feature is that the raid involves a round trip over a short period – a day or two. A long trip for food is not advisable because during the journey you will eat more than you can bring. Based on the possibilities of travel on foot, the “hottest” zone will be 20-30 km from the city borders.
A circumference of 50 km will be the practical limit for “several-day” hikes and for cycling trips. Further, you will have to deal with raids quite rarely. (I remind you that these are my personal calculations, someone may think differently, but that’s what I thought). The second type of movement of people is migration. When people move with their family and belongings.
These people can go anywhere, but their behavior will be completely different from the first ones – being vulnerable themselves, they will be much less prone to violence and aggression than the “reavers”. The main flow of people will move along the highway, so villages along the highway will be much more susceptible to contact with migrants than those located further from the highway.
Thus, choosing a location 70 km from Kyiv and 10 km from the highway is an effective and cheap way of passive protection in crisis conditions. Which, of course, does not negate the danger and other means of protecting against it.

The area was chosen Pereyaslav-Khmelnitsky because it is not densely populated, it has considerable forests, it is ecologically clean, and, according to the radiation map, it is the only clean area in the Kyiv region. Among several villages that met the conditions, the village of Kovalin was selected. An empty house was found on the edge of the village, with a plot of 75 acres, and bought for ridiculous money – 500 dollars.

Principles of economic organization. To understand these principles, we must take into account that I assume in the near future the beginning of the collapse of technological civilization associated with a resource crisis. This means that many things that are now available and inexpensive will in the future turn out to be inaccessible or very expensive, at least for the majority of the population.
This refers to those things that cannot be done in artisanal conditions, which require large high-tech production facilities, inaccessible raw materials, etc. The list of such things is huge, even if you exclude from it what you can easily do without.
What’s doubly bad is that many things that people used to be able to do in makeshift conditions, no one can do now – the knowledge is lost, and you can’t even find it in books.
For example, clothing – back in the early 20th century in villages, purchased clothing was a luxury that was not accessible to everyone, and most people wore everyday clothes made from homespun canvas, which the owners made themselves from flax and hemp fibers. Almost every house had its own loom; parts from it are still lying around in many huts, including mine and my sister’s.
Unfortunately, it is impossible to assemble a complete working machine, and there is no ability to operate it; and most importantly, to operate the machine, you must first prepare threads, and this is a separate industry – the production and spinning of plant or wool fiber. And the same with many other things – wooden dishes, barrels, tubs, baskets, etc.
– in the economy of a century ago, in fact, only iron tools and salt were purchased. Now this feat is almost impossible to repeat.

Running a household requires many different things. These are a variety of tools – for processing soil, wood, metal; These are a variety of household utensils; and these are consumables necessary for construction and a number of other matters.

Some of these things are strictly necessary (try, for example, digging a hole without a shovel or cooking borscht without a pan), others – which you can do without or replace with others (for example, a milking machine for milking cows or a food processor);
some are inexpensive (the same shovel, pitchfork, ax, pan), others are much more expensive (motoblock, chainsaw, tractor);
some can serve for a long time, many decades (the same shovel), others fail after a certain period of normal use (for example, a hacksaw), or are simply short-lived in their properties; and finally,
some are able to work without attracting external resources (the same shovel), others need constant access to resources that cannot be reproduced on the farm (for example, a tractor does not work without fuel; less obvious, but it does not work without access to spare parts – one small part flies, a belt, a hose, a gear – and that’s it, the tractor stands).
If we want to use things to run our household in the future, after the crisis, we need to decide now, before the crisis, what things we will buy in what quantities. If you have unlimited financial resources, then you can, of course, buy a lot of everything. But not everyone has such happiness.
Therefore, the usual task is to make the most rational purchases of various things in conditions of limited financial resources. When solving this problem, it is very important to correctly determine the criteria of rationality. I defined them this way.

Priority is given to things of strict necessity over things that can be done without (that is, there is no point in thinking about a food processor (no matter how much the wife would like it) until there are a sufficient number of shovels, scythes and axes in the household);
Priority is given to inexpensive things over expensive ones (if the same problem can be solved with a cheap thing and an expensive one, it’s better to choose a cheap one; here the caveat about quality and the side characteristics of the thing is really important. For example, I bought some tools only from Stanley, although they are very expensive; but it’s definitely worth it;
if you compare a Stanley hacksaw and some Topex – they are identical in appearance, sawing one board – there is also no difference; but to use it for a long time and actively – Topex has long been thrown away and cursed, and Stanley has not yet become dull, she cuts and cuts like she sings a song);
Priority is given to long-lasting things over short-lived ones (this is one of the most important points. The planning horizon is important here – many people don’t look further than a couple of years ahead, but I found it necessary to set the horizon at 50 years.
Accordingly, those things that are purchased in one or a few copies should be able to survive this period, even if they cost significantly more than their analogues. For example, I purchased kitchenware – pots – from massive stainless steel, Berghoff, although it would have been much cheaper to buy enamel pots.
But enameled ones have one drawback – sooner or later you hit them on something, and a small flaw will appear on the enamel, a spot with cracks through which water will get onto the iron, it will begin to rust – in a year or two, and a hole is ready, and the pan can be written off. It can last 5 years or 10, but it won’t last 30-50, you can guarantee it.
A thick stainless steel will last 50 years, and in principle nothing prevents it from serving 100 or 200 years. It can only be ruined with a sledgehammer. Not to mention that such pots and pans are very convenient to use); and finally,
Absolute priority is given to things that operate autonomously, over things that need external resources (pumping water with an electric pump is much more convenient and pleasant than using a bucket with a chain, but in the absence of electricity, the pump becomes a useless pile of metal, and it’s difficult to disable a bucket with a chain. There is a very fine line here;
for example, is a hand pump an autonomous thing or a non-autonomous one? At first glance, it seems to be autonomous, but at second glance, it sometimes needs repairs and replacement of rubber gaskets; the filter in the well tends to clog over time. In this regard, a well and a pump are much less reliable and durable than a well and a bucket with a chain; Moreover, it is a more expensive solution;
therefore, priority is given to the well, and a well can only be started after the well, if finances allow.
Let us formulate the principles by which it is desirable to organize the economy. The household should be organized in such a way that, if possible (ideally, at all) not use consumable, non-reproducible materials, but use only non-consumable, durable items. This ideal is 100% unattainable – for example, salt is a non-reproducible material, and there is no way to avoid using it.
This can be solved by reducing the number of such points to a minimum, and providing those that exist with reserves for the entire period of the planning horizon. For example, the issue with salt is solved like this: one person consumes 2-3 kg of salt per year (this is with some reserve). A family of four will consume 600 kg of salt in 50 years. This is the amount you should stock up on (I stock approximately this much).
Another inevitably consumable material is nails. It’s good if they are spent on buildings that will last for many decades – for example, a new roof on a barn. What’s worse is that they have to be used where their service life is much shorter – for example, a fence or fence.
There are two options here – stock up on a fair amount of nails (I now have about 100 kg of different ones, but this is still not enough), and reuse the nails (pull them out, level them, and use them in inappropriate places). And so on.

This principle has a number of subtle points that cannot be fully observed. For example, I didn’t stock up on canning lids for 50 years, but only for 5 years. But we can do without canning, especially since we have already mastered alternative methods for pickling cucumbers and cabbage and making Korean carrots. Well, while there are lids, we will enjoy the canned cucumbers.
And in other matters it’s the same – the less vitally necessary a thing is, the more deviation from the principle is allowed. Naturally, at the same time, everyone should not forget about the cost factor – all these games are acceptable only with cheap things.

Up

2. Home
In my very first material, I described in detail the project of a foam concrete house that I was going to build. As I wrote later, for financial reasons I was unable to build this house. However, my project was not in vain – after me, my sister moved next door to me, and she built herself exactly the same house, practically without changes, that I designed.
Therefore, I have the opportunity to describe two houses at once – the one in which I actually live, and the one that my sister built. So to speak, first reality, then ideal.

My house was built in 1948. According to the structure, it is a log house. The lower crowns are made of oak, the upper ones are made of alder, pine, I don’t remember exactly, but I was told that the wood species were selected using the “correct” technology. The oak crowns lie directly on the ground; there is no foundation. At the corners are the cornerstones (their role is played by tank rollers (!), which, given the year of construction, is not surprising). The soil is sand.
On one side, the floor is level with the ground, on the other, a bedding has been made under the house; it stands, as it were, on an elevation 30-50 cm high, which recedes a meter and a half from the walls. The location relative to the surrounding landscape is such that the house is not at risk of flooding in any case – it stands on a local hill.

The walls, both inside and out, are coated with a thick layer (7-10 cm) of clay and straw. This is a purely Ukrainian tradition, which, as I was told, is not widespread in Russia – there is a much more common picture when the log house is bare and not coated with anything. Why this is so is unclear to me.
This coating is an ingenious means for thermal insulation (the wall is at least twice as warm) and for preserving wood (I read that in a thick layer of clay there are unique conditions that preserve wood in maximum dryness, plus protection from bugs). Plus, there is a complete lack of blowing – and no worries with caulking the seams (which must always be taken care of in a bare log house).
Well, the material is free – clay and straw are usually available everywhere. The process, however, is labor-intensive – knead clay in small volumes, mix straw – your hands will fall off, I tried it. In large quantities, this is done in a hole with the help of a horse.

In the seventies, the outside of the house was sheathed on top of clay with fiberboard sheets painted on top with white paint, and the corners were covered with painted boards. Surprisingly, this fibreboard, a seemingly short-lived material, now looks quite decent.
If the walls are not covered with anything, then the clay must be greased every year (in the open air, clay, which is not perfectly protected from moisture, can swell and peel in places), and whitewashed. Usually this is done for Easter, “smearing” the hut both inside and outside.

House at the time of purchase, 2003. The roof of the house at the time I bought it was covered with thatch (one of the last houses in the village that was under thatch). This thatched roof had lived for almost 50 years and was no longer suitable. Thatched roofs are actually very durable, but they do require annual inspections and minor repairs.
If somewhere it starts to rot and become numb, the place needs to be found, cleared, the straw moved, and perhaps the sheaf changed. No one has done this for at least the last 20 years. A piece of roofing felt was placed on the leaking area and pressed with a stick. What happened as a result is scary to look at (see photo, my house at the time of purchase, 2003). I’m still slowly burning this roofing material in the stove.
And the straw from this roof, after dismantling, almost all of it was fresh, golden, strong, a lot of it in undisintegrated sheaves (I later repaired the roof of the shed with them). A properly maintained thatched roof can last 100 years.
Now, by the way, it would be very difficult to restore this technology – if only because the straw sheaves for the roof are made only from rye, hand-compressed with sickles, tied with overhangs into sheaves right in the field, and then threshed in the same sheaves. No combine harvester can do this, but you have to know how to do it with your hands. Previously, everyone could…

The result of the damaged roof was streaks on the ceiling – where water was leaking. One of them was already quite significant – another year, and the wall would have begun to rot. Therefore, immediately after I chose the house, in the summer of 2003, I replaced the roof on it (taking a slight risk – the purchase had not even been finalized at that time). A team of Westerners made a new roof in 4 days – a gable slate roof.
The workmanship was disgusting, but overall the roof turned out to be quite suitable and fulfilled its functions. Looking at their work, I remember the immortal words of Sorg – “If you want something done well, do it yourself.”

House with new windows and roof, 2004 Later, in the spring of 2004, at the time of moving, I installed new windows – metal-plastic. The old wooden windows were in very poor condition, and a lot of heat would have been lost through them. Therefore, I chose a profile (Austrian, 72 mm wide, five-chamber), a double-glazed window (two-chamber, 36 mm wide: 4-12-4-12-4), and inserted new windows into the opening, removing the old ones.
(see photo, my house with new windows and roof, 2004)

The house cost me 500 dollars (and another 120 for decoration). The roof cost me $750 – somewhere in equal shares, 250 each – for the timber (beams, boards), for the slate, and for the work of the crew. The windows cost me 500 and a penny of dollars. Thus, my capital costs for purchasing housing amounted to 500+120+750+500 = $1870. Let’s add small expenses with rounding and get 2000.
I think the price for a full-fledged home with a large plot of land is simply meager. I didn’t need any capital, this money was simply taken out of my salaries (I left my job in March 2004). I told this especially for those who, crying, proclaim that it is impossible for a young man to acquire his own home; therefore, you need to shell out money for rented housing;
or get into credit bondage for 30 years. No, everything is quite possible and real if you go a little beyond the imposed stereotypes.

The house has one living room, a kitchen, a corridor and a storage room. The total area of ​​the house is 49 sq. m. The area of ​​the living room is 32 square meters, excluding the stove – 27 square meters. The area of ​​the kitchen is 8 square meters, the corridor and storage room are 4.5 square meters each. There are 4 windows in the room, 2 windows in the kitchen.

There is a Russian stove in the room. It is used for heating and cooking. The rest of the room is functionally divided into zones: at the entrance there is a hallway (hanger, on the floor there is a rug on which you can walk with shoes, a place for shoes); opposite the door is a living room (sofa, dining table, piano, in the corner is my workplace: table with a computer, shelves, bedside tables), to the right is a study (wardrobe, desk;
fenced off from the living room by the back of the sofa), in the corner there is a stove on which there is a bedroom. I must say that such a functional division is quite convenient, and I more or less began to understand the essence of houses in which the kitchen smoothly turns into a dining room, smoothly turning into a living room with a fireplace, at the end of which there is a hallway and an entrance. Fine.

The kitchen is separated from the room by a door. There was a second furnace, which was practically unsuitable for further use – a serious crack ran through the entire body. I took it apart and made a new one instead, which is what we mostly use now.
The stove (here this type of stove is more often called “rough”) is multifunctional – it alone heats the entire house, food is also cooked on it, and a tank for heating water is built into it.

Sister’s house About my sister’s new house. In fact, this is not one house, but two. My sister has an adult daughter, so she couldn’t build a house just for herself. She bought 2 huts next door to me, and built 2 new houses on these two plots. They are almost identical, one is full-size (2 floors), the other is slightly smaller (1.5 floors – the top floor is semi-attic).
I will describe a two-story one (see photo, the south side of the house has large windows; the entrance and veranda are on the opposite, north side). The size of the house (external) is 8×9 meters, the foundation is strip, the doorway is half a meter wide, the depth is 1.2 m, the height of the base above the ground is 60 cm, reinforced with 16 mm reinforcement.
The walls are made of foam concrete blocks (density 800), 300 mm thick, reinforced through two rows with a mesh of 4 mm wire. The outside walls are lined with half-brick white sand-lime brick, with a 3-5 cm air gap between the foam concrete and the brick (see photo, doorway, the inner door has already been installed, the outer one has not yet been installed), the cladding is connected to the foam blocks with a reinforcing mesh released every two rows.
Between the first and second floors, and above the second floor, on foam blocks there is a 15 cm reinforced concrete belt, wooden floor beams, 25×25 cm, are placed on it. The ceiling is 40 mm boards laid on the beams.
The ceiling of the 2nd floor is also beams, 30 mm boards, on them – clay-sawdust-concrete (sawdust, clay and the eastern side of the house are mixed with cement, laid in a wet form, hardens, a fairly strong light heat-insulating mass is obtained. On the northern side of the house there is an entrance through the attached veranda (the entire length of the house, 4 m wide). On the southern side of the house – 2 large windows per floor;
on the east and west sides there is 1 small window, on the north side there are no windows (see photo, east side of the house). The windows are wooden (made by a local craftsman, quite high quality), but not with glass, but with double-glazed windows (double-chamber, 32 mm) (see.
photo) The heating is stove, the stove will be located in the center of the house on a separate foundation, designed in such a way as to heat all rooms of the house, serve for cooking and heating water. The stove has a two-bell design, I developed it. The roof of the house is simple gable, the attic is cold, the gables are laid out as a continuation of the wall, made of sand-lime brick, with one window on each side (east and west).
The house still has unfinished interior decoration; my sister has already been living in it since 2007 (before that she lived in the old hut on this site). The second house is not really needed yet, and is still in the form of a box.

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3. Life
Heating with woodAbout heating. I only have wood heating (see photo). I will write separately about the preparation of firewood; Now – about what’s inside the house. I start heating in September and finish in May; in fact, for most of the year, except for the summer months itself, the stove is lit. September-October and April-May are the time for “frivolous” fires – a small amount of firewood once a day or even two days;
from November to March, the stove is heated seriously – with a significant amount of firewood, once a day (if the temperature is about 0 or a little minus), twice a day (if the frost is not lower than -20), or even three times a day (in extreme cases of frost below -20, below -30, in our places this happens no more than a few days during the winter, and even then not every year). The combustion process takes about 2 hours, and the coals burn out for about another hour;
then you need to close the valve so that the heat does not escape from the house. Close later and heat will be lost; It is impossible to close it earlier under any circumstances, as you can get carbon monoxide poisoning. So you have to watch. This is a Russian stove; in the rough (where wood burns on grates with an ashtray), the wood burns faster and the coals burn out completely and quickly, so it’s easier to monitor there.
The grub uses the heat from burning wood more efficiently than the Russian stove, so now we use it almost exclusively for heating. This heating allows me to maintain the temperature in the house in winter at least 18-20 degrees, and usually 22-23 degrees. I scoop out the ash that accumulates in the oven, sift it through a mesh, and use it mixed with manure to fertilize the garden.

About ventilation and air conditioning. My windows are metal-plastic; only one of them opens in the room and one in the kitchen, the rest are blind. So no air flows through them. But there are many leaks in the house through which air can be sucked in, for example at the front door.
The main ventilation of the house occurs when the stove is fired – the stove takes air from the room for combustion, instead of it, outside air flows through the leaks, and the house is completely ventilated. Thus, during the heating season, ventilation is carried out automatically, and there are no problems with either fresh air or humidity.
In the warm season, when there are no mosquitoes, both the window and the door are open during the day; when there are mosquitoes, only the window is open (it is covered with mesh). So in the summer there are no problems either, and there is no need to do anything special for ventilation. In the summer, by the way, the window also serves as an air conditioner – when the average daily temperature is below comfortable – then during the day (when it is warm) the window is open and closed at night;
when the average daily temperature is higher than comfortable, then during the day (when it’s hot) the window is closed and opened at night to cool the house. The interior of the house has a large heat capacity (2-3 tons of stove, plus clay coating of the walls), so the temperature is averaged, daily differences are small (1-2 degrees).

WellAbout water supply and sewerage. I am supplied with water from a well located 10 meters from the house (see photo). It was made in 1956, from homemade concrete circles. Depth – about 3-4 meters. It contains high water, soft, barely noticeable yellowish tint, tasty. A neighbor did an analysis in Kyiv, on several dozen parameters – everything was normal, only the organic content was slightly increased.
This (and the yellowish color) is because the water passes next to peat deposits. These are tannins, tannins – the same ones that give tea color, and are completely harmless. The well’s output is about 1 ton of water per day. The water is pulled out using a bucket on a chain and a gate. The gate was old, somehow broke, I learned to pull it out by hand, and I liked it even more than turning the gate.
The gate was later repaired. The speed of pulling out one bucket is about 10-15 seconds, comparable to filling it from a tap with good pressure. Two buckets are brought into the house manually, there is a water container in the house (a 40-liter stainless steel pan), the stove tank for heating water, and the washbasin tank are also filled. Here’s a simple diagram.
Water consumption for domestic needs is a bucket and a half per person per day, so you usually have to bring water into the house twice, no more. Livestock farming takes much more – to water horses and goats, it takes 60-100 liters a day, but this water does not need to be carried anywhere – horses drink right next to the well from a large saucepan (50 liters made of stainless steel).

As I said, the kitchen will have a sink and a bathtub. I will make a drain under them, which will be taken out of the house under the wall and 10 m away from the house with a plastic pipe at a depth of about 70 cm, and then into a shallow hole. The soil is sandy, pour even 10 buckets into it, even 20 at a time – everything will go away, so there is no need for a complex system. Only gray waste will be poured into it – water from washing, washing.
Plastic pipes, tee, siphon – everything is already stocked, just waiting for me to make it. Now, while this has not yet been done, the waste water in the garbage can is taken to the garden and poured onto the compost heap, or under the trees in the garden.

ToiletAbout the toilet. The toilet is a standard rural one – a pit, with a booth above it (see photo). Located 20 m from the house. I made it completely myself, new. The hole is about a meter deep, with an area of ​​about a square meter. The booth is wooden, the roof is one sheet of slate. It just stands on four bricks.
When the hole is filled (estimated in three to five years), a new hole will be dug and the toilet will simply be moved to a new location. The old hole will be filled in, and in another year a tree will be planted in this place. The place for the pit should be unflooded, a couple of tens of meters away from the house and well.

For those who consider a toilet on the street to be a terrible savagery. Of course, a toilet with a flush in a warm house is comfortable; and I also like it better than the street toilet. But you have to pay for everything – a warm toilet poses a problem in terms of autonomy and labor intensity.
It requires a supply of water – about 100 liters per day, which must be hauled by hand – and a sewerage system for treating black waste. This gray waste can be drained under the bush. But human feces are not allowed, due to sanitary and hygienic requirements. Cleaning them according to all the rules is quite difficult; you need a two-chamber septic tank, plus a drainage system if the soil is clayey;
It needs to be pumped out by machine (or raked out by hand) every couple of years. Therefore, you need to understand that everything has its price. Well, a toilet on the street seems like something unimaginable only before you start using it. On the third day you forget about it – you went, did the job and moved on. And (for fans) – it’s better to sit and read a book on the sofa, and not in the toilet.
There is, however, the possibility of some deviations – in some cases (winter, night) you can pee in a garbage can and then take it out. For emergencies, there is a bucket with a lid – you can use it if you really need it. In short: in all the years of living in the village, neither my wife nor I felt any particular problem with having a toilet on the street.
Therefore, to any opponents (for some reason there are quite a lot of people fixated on this topic, as if there is nothing more important than a toilet in life) – I can say with confidence that their opinion is groundless. For those who really need an indoor toilet for health reasons, there is a completely normal solution – the so-called. powder-closet.
This is the same plastic bucket with a tight-fitting lid (removed before use), which stands under a stationary seat, located in a separate (but warm) room. Nearby there is a container with filler – sawdust, ash, pine needles, peat, or at worst just dry earth or sand – the main thing is that it is dry and free-flowing.
The filler is poured into the bottom of the bucket, and then poured on top after each use; In combination with the lid, this helps prevent odors. The bucket is taken out once a day and poured into a hole in the street toilet. That’s all there is to it, and there’s no need for drains, black drains, or treatment facilities.
The effort and money that must be spent on installing a warm toilet are not endless, and it is rational to spend them in other, more important areas.

I stocked up on toilet paper for several decades.

Cooking on the hearthAbout cooking. In earlier materials I wrote that it is advisable to have a gas stove at the initial stage. Now I think there’s nothing like that, it’s all pampering. And it’s very different from the principles of management (cylinders are used up very quickly, but they cost quite a lot of money), and they take up space and pose a fire hazard. And most importantly, they are not at all necessary.
In winter, the stove is lit at least once a day, and more often twice a day – this is usually enough to cook food. Other times, in between fires, to warm up food, it is enough to put it in a heated oven and close the damper – or on a heated stove – it remains hot enough to heat the food to a pleasant temperature in 10 minutes.
It is even more convenient when the stove is fired twice a day. Well, in the summer we cook outside, on the fire (see photo). I built a primitive hearth three bricks high, put a grate welded from reinforcement on top, build a fire in the hearth using small sticks in 2 minutes, place pots on the grate (up to 3-4 can fit at a time).
Brushwood is used as fuel; a lot of it accumulates over the winter from the goats (I feed them with various branches, tree tops, in general there is enough). The branches are chopped into small pieces with a hatchet. There is a table and benches next to the fireplace; if the weather is good, it is nice to have lunch there.
Over all this, in 2010, I made a large canopy so that the rain would not be a hindrance, and also remodeled the hearth more thoroughly, making a smokehouse out of it as well.

Special utensils are required for cooking in a Russian oven. In the Russian stove, cauldrons are used (cast iron pots, or banyaki, in Ukrainian), and they are placed in the stove with a grip (stag). Cauldrons are available for sale, albeit in very specific stores (I found them in Kyiv in the Gospodarka store on the Yunost market). Stags are not sold anywhere – they simply don’t exist now. Previously, they were made by village blacksmiths.
The good thing is that they are very durable. I grabbed four of them. For cooking on the hearth and on the stove, they are rough – you need ordinary pans. The only requirement is that they do not have plastic parts, any handles, etc. Everything is metal. As I already said, I don’t respect enamel cookware; I prefer to use stainless steel pans, and I cook food for dogs in enamel ones.

Now we also have an additional tabletop induction cooker (Meridian, Kyiv). Relatives gave it as a gift. A very convenient and quite economical thing; It’s especially good when you need to heat up something small or boil half a cup of water for tea, during the time between firing the stove. It doesn’t fit into the concept, and we’re not preparing anything big with it.

About other kitchen and household utensils and utensils. I have a number of ordinary earthenware plates. But, of course, I don’t rely on their durability. So I bought a fair supply of metal plates, made of my favorite stainless steel (I generally have a weakness for it).
Most of them have a very unassuming appearance (they were bought at a flea market for pennies) (such plates are used in the army, orphanages, boarding schools and other similar institutions). For beauty, back in 2004 I bought a set of stainless steel Bergoff plates, very beautiful and not particularly expensive.
(Not long ago I tried to buy more – and was surprised to discover that such plates had been discontinued; for some reason they were no longer made!) I stocked up on several dozen spoons, forks, and teaspoons (most of them were from a flea market, each in one hryvnia). There are two meat grinders. Several graters (stainless steel, also Bergoff), and other small things. A very important part of the utensils is bowls. They have many uses.
Naturally, they are also made of stainless steel 😉 Most are cheap, made of thin metal (555 company, it seems), they are not particularly durable – they are prone to dents, and some are already damaged. Some are of better quality. One very successfully purchased at a flea market large brass bowl. Two large saucepans (boils) made of thick stainless steel – 50 and 40 liters.
Of the first, I now water horses, the second – at home for water. Another large saucepan of 36 liters is used in the summer to heat water on the fireplace and for washing. It is also important to have a sufficient number of buckets. Regular galvanized iron buckets of 10, 12 and 15 liters. They’re not cheap. A little cheaper – plastic buckets (not just any are suitable;
I liked the simplest and cheapest “construction” buckets the most – they are made of viscous plastic that is not subject to cracking and breaking, unlike many more expensive and beautiful buckets). To increase the durability of plastic buckets, it is advisable to use them at home, protecting them from freezing water and direct sunlight.
To my great regret, I never found any stainless steel buckets 😉 (late addition. I just found them! gorgeous looking buckets, but I won’t buy them for two reasons – firstly, the price of one stainless steel bucket is the same as 20 regular ones; secondly, in a vulnerable place where buckets usually break (the ears to which the handle is attached) – it’s made obscenely, from thin steel, and with poor welding.
The whole point of buying an “eternal” bucket is lost. Damn, that’s a shame!)

Hot water tank for hot water supply. Now I have a special outdoor pot for hot water, 8 liters. In the summer, when we cook on the fireplace, at the end of cooking we put a pan of water and heat it on the remains of the fire and on the coals – sometimes it comes to a boil, sometimes it’s just hot. It is enough to make one and a half to two buckets of hot water, suitable for washing dishes, laundry or washing.
If more water is needed – for example, for a large wash – the water is specially heated (this was written before the 36-liter water pan was introduced into use; it is even more convenient).
In winter it’s the same thing – before a new fire was made, a large cauldron with water was placed in the Russian stove, and as the fire went on we got 10 liters of boiling water – that’s 2 buckets of hot water, enough for everything (usually one cauldron, but if necessary, then within an hour and a half of the firebox you can boil about 5 of these cauldrons).
In the intervals between fireboxes, you can put a cauldron of water in the stove and it will heat up, although not to a boil, but it will be quite hot. In short, there are never any problems with hot water – as much water as you need, there will be as much. Well, now, as I already wrote about the new stove in the kitchen, it has a water heating tank (see the photo for the internal structure; more details in the section on stoves).
Its capacity is about 50 liters, and the water is heated automatically when the stove is fired, using the “free” heat of the exhaust flue gases. It takes quite a long time for the water to cool down – in half a day, say, it still remains quite hot, in 24 hours it remains warm.

Quite unexpectedly, it turned out to be an excellent solution in the kitchen for washing hands and dishes with warm water. I ordered a large stainless steel washbasin, and while wondering where to hang it, I suddenly thought, why not hang it directly on the surface? It turned out that this tank’s back was leaning against a very hot brick surface;
and after heating the coarse water, the water in it heats up by itself, albeit not as hot as in a water heating tank, but just to the warmth at which washing hands or dishes is just right.

About washing. For washing, use laundry soap (white, Gala) or cheap washing powder. Let me note right away that if the supply of powder is exhausted, the washing will not stop – you can use an extract from ash (the ash is mixed with water, settled, the solution is used for washing; our ancestors washed in “lye”, and quite successfully. If there is fat, you can get confused and make soap).
Small items are washed by hand, and large items are washed by foot. The foot washing method is very effective and convenient, despite its low popularity among the general public (I recently watched one of the Japanese cartoons, where household details are carefully worked out. I discovered that in Japan, foot washing is a common folk method).
I once read about it and tried it when I lived in Kyiv (I never had a washing machine). The essence of the method is this. Large items are soaked as usual, and then prepared for washing as usual, in a large bowl or in a bathtub, that is, filled with hot water and washing powder.
After that, you climb into the bowl with your feet (clean, of course), and begin to step rhythmically (you can listen to music) and trample things all over the area. Washing is carried out due to the fact that when it comes, water is forcefully pressed through the fabric, taking dirt with it. You need to wash for 5-10 minutes, during this time you need to take out the clothes 2-3 times and turn them over to the other side so that everything stretches evenly.
Then the items are rinsed as usual, 2-3 times in cool water. All things are washed perfectly, the bed turns out pure white. The advantage of this method over hand washing is that: 1) the fabric wears out less – there is no friction of fabric on fabric, there is only squeezing; 2) the arms and back are not strained – the method is not labor-intensive at all, unlike the traditional one. And it only benefits your legs;
then I rinsed off the powder in clean water, and that’s it. Therefore, I recommend – in the absence of a washing machine – the best method.

About washing. In the future, as I wrote, we will wash in the kitchen, under running hot water, in a bathtub that functions as a shower stall. Now we wash ourselves in a large bowl, pouring hot water over ourselves from a mug. Quite inconvenient, but you can wash yourself quite normally. A bucket of water goes somewhere; if you wash your hair – one and a half buckets. In the summer, we wash outside, in the evening, when it gets dark.
I was going to do a summer shower, but haven’t gotten around to it yet (there’s no particular need, and it’s convenient); so we use a bucket and water heated on the fireplace during evening cooking. We use regular inexpensive toilet soap. Including for washing your hair – I don’t know what supporters of shampoos will tell me, but both my wife and I have improved the appearance of our hair after switching from shampoos to soap.
Not the slightest dandruff, and a clean look for at least 5-7 days; But with shampoos, I remember that if you don’t wash it on the second day, then on the third day your head already looks bad. It seems to me that shampoo manufacturers are fooling us.

About lighting. The house uses electric lighting. We use energy-saving light bulbs, 20 W (analogous to 100 W incandescent) in the room, the same in the kitchen, and the same in the hallway. There is also a small light bulb above the stove. Now only the light bulb in the room is lit for a long time, the rest are turned on for a short time as needed.
The lighting is on for half an hour to an hour in the summer, and 4-8 hours in the winter. I’ll say right away that of the other consumers of electricity, I only have a computer, which works from an hour to half a day, and nothing else. Current lighting is practically the only part of everyday life that will be seriously damaged by the destruction of infrastructure – I will not have an equivalent replacement.
There is a certain supply of candles, but even with the most careful use they will not last more than a year; During this time you will have to master lighting with a torch, or oil, or something similar. It will be difficult to live without lighting at all: in the summer, nothing, just shift sleep and awakening by an hour;
but in winter, when it gets dark at 16 and gets light at 8, there will inevitably be 4-6 hours that you don’t want to sleep, and it’s sad to sit in the dark. However, with the stove burning it’s still okay, there’s enough light from the mouth of the stove to walk around the house without stumbling, and you can even read right in front of the stove.
I have experience of living without electricity – over the past time there have been several times for 2-3 days when there was no electricity due to accidents. (Note from 2011. Now the situation with lighting has changed, thanks to the development of autonomous energy supply, described in more detail in a separate section, based on a small solar panel, battery, and LED lighting devices.
Now, in the absence of electricity, my house will not be dark).

About garbage. Garbage collection is an essential part of city infrastructure. In the village, no one takes out garbage, and most villagers solve this issue very simply – they arrange a landfill somewhere near the site or on the site itself. Many are more radical – they load garbage onto a car and take it to the nearest forest. I still dream of catching one of those who do this.
I solve this issue in a fundamentally different way. So, my main principle is not to create garbage. Therefore, in principle, I don’t have anything like a trash can where everything falls in a row. If I need to get rid of something, the thing is sent to the appropriate place. If it is something organic that can rot – cooking waste – then put it in a garbage can, which is then poured onto the compost heap.
If it is something that can burn, then put it in a box standing near the stove, the contents of which are burned. These two categories almost completely cover the garbage that arises for me. Less often, but still, garbage appears, such as unnecessary rusty pieces of iron and broken glass. This garbage accumulates in a special place, and then, when I concrete something, it goes into the concrete, where it remains forever.
I’ve already poured a considerable amount of foundations, and it’s scary to say how much broken glass I buried there (there were probably five hundred bottles left under the barn from the previous owners, and last year I took out three cartloads of bottles from a neighbor).
If I don’t concrete anything, this garbage should be buried to a depth of at least a meter, where it also remains forever, without negatively affecting the environment. And finally, extremely rarely, but still, garbage arises that cannot be burned or buried. Some suspicious vials with chemicals, etc.
I pack such things in a little bag, and when I go to Kyiv, I take them with me and throw them into the nearest container.

This method of sorting and recycling waste became natural and the only possible for me; when I see (sometimes when I’m visiting) city residents who put metal caps and glass bottles, paper and plastic packaging, and banana peels with cores into the same bag – I start to twitch.

About the financial situation. In all the years since moving, I have had some kind of income almost all the time. It, of course, could not be compared with the salary that was in Kyiv, but by rural standards it was more than noticeable (on average, 1/5 of my programmer’s salary). However, from the very beginning I organized my life in such a way that no money was needed at all.
Of course, it couldn’t work out “totally” down to the penny; but the degree of approximation is very large. Currently, we spend about 20-30 hryvnia per month on electricity (for those who do not know what a hryvnia is: 1 dollar = 5 hryvnia before 2009, and 8 hryvnia now, in 2011). And about 30-50 hryvnia for bread. I have no other mandatory monthly living expenses.
Of the optional ones, 80-100 hryvnia is spent on mobile communications for two. There are also taxes: land tax, which ranges from 15 to 20 hryvnia per year, and the so-called “yard” tax, 20 hryvnia per year (but for some reason it is not taken every year). There are no other taxes.

Minus these very small expenses, all the other money that I have is NOT spent “on life”. Directions of spending – capital expenditures for construction, increasing reserves, expanding the economy. Currently, I no longer work as a programmer (only occasionally I can come to work in one other place one evening when I am in Kyiv). I now get my income from horse rentals.
It’s more convenient than going to Kyiv, and the income is higher. People come from Kyiv, ride through the forest, are happy, and I get money without leaving home. Thanks to this, I successfully promote projects that require spending money.

An important feature of my current financial model is complete independence from the receipt of money. Let’s say, if for six months there was not a penny of income (as sometimes happens in winter), then this is not only not a disaster for me (compare with city life – the lack of money even for a month or two can already be comparable to a disaster), but not even some kind of inconvenience.
Even construction will not stop – since I usually have tools and materials prepared in advance, and there is always a wide range of things that need to be done.

About TV and entertainment. I don’t have a TV at all. Moreover, I got rid of it a relatively long time ago – 5 years before the move. The reason is simple – I currently consider television to be a natural enemy agent aimed at destructive functions and brainwashing. Therefore, I removed him from the house completely and irrevocably. However, the resulting vacuum must be filled with something.
This is not difficult at all, considering that I have a computer. On it I have a collection of selected films, a large collection of selected music. Even more films are on disc; They have accumulated over the years mainly through exchange with people. Therefore, on long winter evenings, watching a film or two is a nice thing, even if it’s old and worn out.
Moreover, these are not shitty series, but selected films of the highest class. When there are many hundreds of them, they don’t get boring.

About the Internet. Internet of urban quality in the village, unfortunately, is not available. Of the available options, there are quite acceptable ones – CDMA with an external antenna, for example, works well. However, I chose the cheapest option, although it is of very low quality, but I am quite happy with it. This is GPRS, with a mobile phone (an old Motorola C350) as an external modem.
It costs now, it’s funny to even say, 8 UAH for 80 days, and every day there is 20 MB of traffic, which is completely enough for me. Who remembers working with a 14400 modem on a bad line with frequent connection interruptions – this is something similar. I have disabled loading of images and flash, and the pages load quite quickly.

About culture. Sometimes they ask me: “how can you do without theatre, opera, and other cultural events? You voluntarily bury yourself..”, etc. My answer to such culture traders is simple and truthful. I didn’t go to theaters when I lived in Kyiv – well, theaters don’t keep me away – I don’t go now, and I don’t feel any loss.
Moreover, I have a simple and somewhat rude answer to those characters who, in all seriousness, ask the question of how I can manage without regular visits to nightclubs and other similar establishments. In any case, the question is far-fetched. If I find the opportunity to visit Kyiv once a week or two, then I would like to sometimes go to the theater – what problems would there be?

About books. Unlike theaters, I consider regular good reading much more important for the cultural level of an individual. I love to read and read a lot. I moved my books, and over the years I bought many new books, essentially forming a library. In total, I now have about 1000 volumes of books; of which there are about 500-600 volumes of fiction. Half of them are my favorite science fiction.
The rest are different prose, classical and modern. The main source of books is the flea market and used bookstores on Petrovka. On any day you can choose excellent books there for two, three, five or ten hryvnia apiece.

Also part of the library are natural science books. There are about 400 volumes, ranging from school textbooks to specialized literature, with an emphasis on textbooks and reference books at the technical university level. Sciences – mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology. There are also quite a few books of a humanitarian nature – history, philosophy.
There are also a fair number of applied books – construction, home economics, agriculture, medicine. I downloaded and printed quite a few books that were not available in print form in 2003 (what else was there to do at night at work). The pearl of my collection is a two-volume ed. Devrien “Handbook for Russian rural owners” ed. 1875

I also store many tens of thousands of book titles in electronic form, on a small netbook. As long as my autonomous power supply system is working, they will also be available. But I still focus on paper books.

About education. The question often arises: “how will you teach children, because there is no normal school in the village.” I consider this question to be very important, much more important than any of my opponents think. Because I believe that there is no normal school in the city either. According to my feelings, normal schools finally ended 5-10 years ago.
However, even when I was studying, the school could hardly be considered half normal. There are a lot of things that don’t suit me about educational technology – both then and even more so now. I will not discuss this topic in detail – it is worthy of a separate large article. But my conclusion is clear: school discourages children from learning and comprehending something much more than it gives them something useful.
Therefore, I will teach the children myself. I have teaching experience, and quite a lot. This experience, my level, and the available literature allow me to confidently count on the opportunity to provide children with an education at the level of a normal technical university.

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4. Medicine
In the pre-crisis period, medicine was available to me at the regional hospital in Pereyaslav. The drive there is 20 km, if that’s 15-30 minutes. I was there, the hospital is quite decent, a clinic, a 24-hour emergency room, an ambulance, etc.
During the crisis and after, I predict that qualified medicine will be inaccessible to anyone, due to total chaos, so other places will not have advantages over mine.

My main focus is on not getting sick and having good health. Now I am more than able to do this – I am in excellent physical shape (the workload is quite large, but reasonable), the nutrition is excellent, the air and water are clean. In principle, I did not complain about my health in the city, but there were some problems (my stomach was spoiled due to nervous work); here it passed without a trace.
Poor vision (I wear glasses) cannot be easily corrected; I stocked up on 4 pairs of new glasses (I know about Zhdanov’s method and others, but there are a lot of negative reviews about them). I predict the biggest problems in connection with teeth. Over the past years, there has not been a single hole (which I attribute to the refusal to consume sugar, and a full supply of vitamins and calcium).
What happened before – I cured everything that was possible, but the fillings do not last forever, and someday they will begin to fall out. After a dozen or two or three years, this may lead to the fact that you will have to turn to the services of craftsmen who pull teeth with pliers. Naturally, everyone will be in exactly the same position. Who has healthy teeth now?

However, I found it necessary to create certain stocks of medicines and medical equipment that are stored for a long time, and may be useful in times of crisis and lack of medicine. Of course, it is impossible to solve all problems with medicine in this way, but 90% of simple problems can be solved completely. A typical example is minor injuries.
Their treatment requires very simple medications and basic skills; but if they are not treated, this is fraught with serious problems.

Here is an almost complete list of my supplies. I did not indicate the quantity so as not to overload the text; since almost all of these medications (except antibiotics) are very, very cheap, their quantities are considerable everywhere; typically about 5-10 plates (for tablets).

Equipment. Scalpel: holder + 20 interchangeable blades. Surgical scissors. Semicircular suture needles of different sizes. Surgical tweezers. (Most of these instruments were purchased for veterinary purposes, but are also great for humans). Clamps. Suture material. (in addition to special silk threads, ordinary nylon threads sterilized with alcohol are also excellent). Mercury thermometers.

Dental equipment. Straight tongs, curved tongs of different shapes. Elevators. Probes, spatulas.

Consumables. Non-sterile medical cotton wool, different packaging. The bandages are non-sterile, different packaging. Disposable syringes 2, 5, 10, 20 ml.

Medicines: traumatology. Hydrogen peroxide (washing fresh wounds). Iodine, brilliant green, fucorcin (treatment of minor injuries, wound edges). Potassium permanganate (disinfecting solutions). Alcohol 82% (sterilization of surfaces and instruments. Even 50% is suitable). Furacilin (tablets for preparing a solution for washing infected wounds).
Iodosept wound powder (drying and disinfection of fresh and infected wounds). Streptocide (treatment of wounds with powder). Novocaine 0.5% (local anesthesia before surgery).

Medicines: therapy. Analgin, ketanov (pain relief). Paracetamol (antipyretic). Activated carbon (stomach disorders). Phthalazole (an effective remedy for intestinal infections, including dysentery). Furazolidone (intestinal infections, typhoid fever, dysentery, urethritis, etc.). Dioxidin (for treating ulcer cavities, purulent wounds). Nitrofungin (broad-spectrum antifungal agent).
Amoxicillin, Tsifran (broad-spectrum antibiotics. A whole bunch of different diseases – from cholera to gonorrhea, including pneumonia).

Medicines: other. Wormil (albendazole) (broad-spectrum anthelmintic). Benzyl benzoate (anti-parasitic – lice, scabies).

Quote about methodology.

We are choosing a kit for autonomous survival, so you will have to make a diagnosis and choose a medicine yourself, you won’t be able to do a bacterial culture to determine the pathogenic microflora, and you won’t be able to distinguish dysentery from salmonellosis or typhoid fever. Therefore, drugs with the widest possible spectrum of action are selected.
According to the list – for a mild stomach upset, activated charcoal and diet are sufficient; for a serious gastrointestinal infection – furazolidone, phthalazole and, of course, replenishing fluid loss.
For other infectious diseases (bronchitis, pneumonia, tonsillitis, pyelonephritis, urethritis, wound infection, etc.) – a broad-spectrum antibiotic amoxicillin (or the Tsifran mentioned here) and sulfamidesine.
For the treatment of infected wounds – streptocide and furatsilin solution (prepared from tablets before use). For minor wounds and ulcers, iodine, brilliant green.

I will add from myself. Wounds that are more than “minor” should not be left without surgical treatment. Rinse, remove foreign bodies and dirt, remove torn and crushed tissue – of course. And in most cases, such wounds need to be sutured. Especially if the wound is cut, fresh and clean – God himself ordered it. Therefore, the ability to surgically treat and stitch up a wound should be a must.
To do this, you just need to have a little equipment that costs a penny, but lasts a long time – scissors, a scalpel, needles, tweezers, threads, from medications – novocaine (inject for pain relief), furatsilin (make a solution for rinsing and disinfection).

I was able to purchase dental instruments from a specialized store. They may be the most valuable part of medical supplies – they have an indefinite lifespan, and pulling teeth will be a very popular activity throughout post-crisis life. Next to them I placed a printout of the chapter “Tooth Extraction” from the book “Maxillofacial Surgery”;
With theory, everything is clear, but practice is mastered according to the principle “the eyes are afraid, but the hands do the work.” Speaking of practice, I managed to acquire a small surgical practice; both times not for a person, but for a horse, but it’s not even more difficult (and he doesn’t want to stand still, and most importantly, the skin is thick). Once I had to stitch up a very large wound in a difficult place;
another time – to amputate the injured tip of the tail. I did everything as it should – with novocaine anesthesia, with antiseptics, everything healed well. Now I could sew up a large cut wound on a person, or perform, say, amputation of a finger, I could quite confidently and successfully.

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5. Site
OakAbout the site. The area of ​​my plot, according to my measurements, is 75 acres; the land service workers who measured it for privatization measured 70 acres. It is irregular in shape, very far from a rectangle. The main facade of the site is along the road (a dirt road leading from the asphalt road into the forest, 300 meters to the asphalt, 100 meters to the forest), the facade runs in a small semicircle, its length is about 120 meters.
The site is functionally divided into zones – in the center there is a house (about 15 m from the road), three barns, a cellar; to the left of the house is a garden; behind the house there is a vegetable garden; to the right of the house there is a utility yard and a pasture, behind it there is a strip 100 meters long and 25 meters wide, bordering on two neighbors and running into the forest, this is also a pasture.
Under the garden the land is normal (6-10 acres), under the garden it is also quite good (10-15 acres), under the first pasture it is moderately lousy (almost unsuitable for haymaking), under the second there is absolutely sand (even for pasture it is not so great). In general, the site is not a fountain at all. For comparison, my sister has one of the plots – 80 acres, almost all of the land is of excellent quality;
rectangular in shape, the facade borders the road only 40 meters away, one and a half sides face the forest, the house is located in the depths. My site, however, has a unique advantage. There is an oak tree right in front of the house, which was planted simultaneously with the construction of the house, and over 50 years it has grown very, very large (it takes one and a half people to grasp it) (see photo). It shades the facade of the house and half of the yard.
The second half of the yard is shaded by pine trees growing in a group opposite the oak tree – 5 pieces. As a result, in the summer, when it’s hot, my entire yard is shaded, it’s cool and comfortable (on one of my sister’s plots, where there are almost no trees near the house – in the summer there are periods when you can shoot yourself – there’s a bathhouse in the yard, and a bathhouse in the house, and it’s not clear where to go; but in my yard and in the house it’s good).
In winter, when the sun is low, it shines through the yard from under the pines, and it is quite light in the yard, and light enters the windows. So these trees – oak and pine – can be attributed to the undoubted advantages of the site, and those that cannot be bought with money or made with hands – it takes 60 years for them to grow.

About other buildings on the site. As I wrote in the very first materials, things were very bad with my sheds. There were three of them, but they were all in extremely poor condition. I have now corrected the situation and continue to improve it. In turn:

The first barn (utility barn) is small in size, with an old slate roof. He is in more or less normal condition. It has two compartments – larger and smaller. The larger one is used as a warehouse for various things: agricultural tools, a wheelbarrow, a bicycle, all sorts of nonsense, in the fall for temporary storage of the potato harvest. The smaller one was previously used as a firewood stove;
Now I have made a small chicken coop in it.
The second barn (now called the stable) is large, 6.5 m by 4 m, consisting of two almost identical compartments. Its walls are made of logs, and are still in pretty good condition. The roof was thatched, in a completely destroyed state, unsuitable for restoration, the compartments were filled with all sorts of rubbish. I cleared out the trash, demolished the old roof, and made a new, slate gable roof of my own design.
More details about it can be found in the construction section. So now this barn, I think, still has 30 years of life ahead of it, maybe more… I keep horses and goats in it.
The third barn (goat shed) was very small and housed goats. He was still under the thatched roof, also very bad. I didn’t bother to repair it – the walls were completely rotten. In 2008, I demolished it, and in its place I built a new building, consisting of two sections. Above it is a large gable canopy (8 x 5 m).
In one section, in 2010, I built a small barn made of shell rock as an additional stable and housing for the goats. There is nothing in the second section now; I plan to make plank walls and a workshop.
The canopy (summer kitchen) was made in 2010, 5×7 m. It was made over a place for summer spending time – where there is a fireplace, a table with benches, a well. It is very convenient when the weather can no longer prevent you from cooking and eating outside, especially when you can accommodate a large group of people under it.
The canopy (hay barn) was started in 2010. It is planned in four sections, with a total size of 8x16m. Now only one section has been made, 8x4m. Height is about 4.5 m. Hay is conveniently stored under it. When the remaining sections are completed, many other uses will be invented for them.
I also made other canopies free-standing. There are two of them – 3×7 m, and 4×5 m. Under them there are boards and a lot of different things that need to be hidden from precipitation.
The cellar is located opposite the entrance to the house. Old, but in very good condition. Last year I replaced the internal door there and repaired the external one. Vegetables are stored there perfectly, potatoes do not freeze in winter and do not sprout in summer.
My bathhouse started in 2009, but has been put on hold for now due to other projects; I’ll probably continue in 2011. So far only the foundation has been made, 4×5 m. It will be a two-story building made of foam blocks. On the ground floor there is the bathhouse/sauna itself (steam room, shower room, dressing room), on the second floor there is a heated living room.

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6. Inventories
About stocks. I still believe that now it is necessary to transfer all available funds into material assets, from necessary and irreproducible ones, which are cheap now, but in the future will be inaccessible and very necessary. One example is salt and matches. The other is good quality second-hand clothing. The third is tools. Well, and much more.

Here I will give a rough list of the supplies I made, with some comments. Making a detailed and complete list is an unrealistic task, so I will only go through the most basic, large, and important inventory items, grouping them into categories. I do not indicate the quantity so as not to overload the text;
on all counts, the amount can be considered “significant, at least for several decades of use per family.”

Hand tools. Axes of different sizes. Stanley bow saw blades. Hacksaws. Two-handed saws. Planers. Chisels. Files. Pliers. Hammers. Knives.

Agricultural tools. Shovels (bayonet, shovel, snow, sapper). Pitchfork. Rake. Braids. Cultivators. Boots.

Consumables. Nails, different sizes. Self-tapping screws, different sizes. Bolts and nuts of different sizes. Fire-resistant bricks, red bricks, stove appliances – stoves, doors, grates, dampers. Ropes (polypropylene of different diameters). Chain (4 mm technical galvanized, for a harness), carabiners, swivels. Braid (belts) of different widths and quality.

Utensils and household supplies. Galvanized buckets 7, 10, 12, 15 l. Plastic buckets 10, 15, 20 l. Stainless steel troughs, plastic basins. Second-hand clothes and shoes for different sizes and ages.

Consumable household supplies. Toilet soap, laundry soap. Washing powder. Toilet paper. Matches. Salt.

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7. Electric and gas powered tools.
Initially, this category of instruments was absent. I only had a drill, bought long before the move. After 2006-2007, when the main supplies of hand tools were made, and the financial situation, on the contrary, began to improve, and construction projects began to unfold, some non-autonomous tools began to be purchased.
They do not fit into the concept, being positioned rather as investments in construction.

Drill, wood drills, metal drills. For various jobs, it is necessary to drill holes in both wood and metal. It is also convenient to use a drill to stir clay solutions (with a stirrer) during furnace work.

Grinder, metal circles, stone circles. When reinforcing the foundation, it is necessary to cut the reinforcement; and in many other cases it may be necessary to cut off a piece of metal. When building with foam blocks and bricks, it may be necessary to cut foam blocks and bricks around the stone; Also, cutting bricks greatly speeds up the process during kiln work.

An electric planer is a small and useful tool for carpentry work when you need to sand the surface of small wooden parts. The same thing, however, can be done with a simple plane, only much longer.

The welding machine (inverter) was purchased before two projects that required a fair amount of welding – finishing a house, and a new cart. The thing is not cheap, but it is very convenient to have your own welding; in combination with a grinder, it allows you to do almost any operation with metal. Cooking with an inverter turned out to be quite easy.

The concrete mixer, small (120 l) but convenient, allows you to pour large volumes of concrete and concrete solutions (sawdust concrete, in particular), without a lot of manual labor. On a large construction site you can’t do without it.

A chainsaw, and a supply of consumables (chains, tools for sharpening chains, some spare parts, fuel oil, lubricating oil, a supply of fuel – A95 gasoline). This tool is mainly not for construction, but “for life”. The main purpose is to free up significant time spent on sawing firewood, as well as felling wood.
To extend the life of the instrument for some “post-crisis” time, a supply of consumables was taken with it, which, with luck, will provide another 5-10 years of autonomous use. In order to cut a year’s supply of firewood, only about 3-5 liters of gasoline are required.

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8. Food
About nutrition. Since nutritional autonomy was stated as the main goal, nutrition needs to be discussed in detail. During the first year, this goal was fully achieved, with certain reservations. Basic principles of nutrition: mainly plant foods; minimal fat intake; minimal use of fried foods.
This fits well with both the principles of healthy eating and my principles of housekeeping. So, our diet mainly consists of vegetables – those described in the Vegetable Garden section. Naturally, all these vegetables are grown by us ourselves. The most important high-calorie food is, of course, potatoes.
We consume it almost every day, mainly in boiled form – in pieces, in the form of puree, and as part of soup or borscht. The remaining vegetables are included in borscht or other dishes. In the summer, when the vegetables are fresh, salads are made every day. Fresh vitamins appear from mid-April – when the chives come out. It is finely chopped and added, for example, to boiled potatoes.
The most expanse is from mid-summer, when fresh cucumbers and tomatoes are in abundance; then chop a large bowl of salad 1-2 times a day. It doesn’t need anything other than vegetables and salt. Also a good dish in summer is vegetable stew; It contains the main components – zucchini, potatoes, tomatoes. All winter we also eat large white beans, which are exceptionally tasty.
Throughout the winter, pumpkin is consumed as part of pumpkin porridge. An essential component of winter dishes is garlic. Also in winter we eat pickles and preserves – sauerkraut, canned cucumbers and tomatoes. As an addition to regular boiled potatoes, it’s just right.

In addition to vegetables, animal products are constantly present on the menu. These are meat, milk and eggs. Meat – goat; I wrote more about goats separately. We consume very little meat (5-10 times less than is generally accepted in the city), but quite regularly. Most often, borscht is cooked with a piece of goat meat, or it is stewed with potatoes and vegetables.
We consume goat milk almost all the time, except for January and February, when it is not available. It is very tasty and healthy. When there is a lot of it (in season, in summer), you can make cottage cheese and sour cream from it; when there is not much of it, it is simply drunk. During the day, one person can easily drink a liter of milk, or even two. When you have milk, you don’t really need meat; milk contains enough animal protein.
And finally, when chickens lay eggs, we regularly eat eggs. Sometimes there are no chickens (if the year is bad in terms of chickens being eaten by rogues or foxes), or they do not lay eggs in the winter; but the rest of the time there are usually eggs. Further, mushrooms were an essential part of our diet. In season, of course, they are fresh; the rest of the year – dried. Collecting them in season is a pleasure;
300-500 meters from the house in the forest there are places where you don’t have to look for mushrooms, but just mow them with a scythe. There are mainly two types of mushrooms collected – latrine mushrooms and hedgehog mushrooms. There are others too, including white ones, but you have to look for them, but these grow in large clearings.
They are sorted (if collected cleanly, then this is quick), cut as necessary, and dried over the stove on a mesh specially purchased for this purpose, quickly and well. After this, at any time of the year, dried mushrooms are boiled in boiling water for about 20 minutes, after which they are no different from fresh ones, cooked in the same way. You can cook many delicious dishes with mushrooms.
(Everything that was written about mushrooms concerned 2006 and previous years; unfortunately, from 2007 to 2010 ALL years were very dry, and in our dry pine forest with sandy soil we practically did not see mushrooms. And we are too lazy to go far for mushrooms). From all of the above, we have already formed a menu of a dozen or two dishes, which alternate so that nothing gets boring.
All of these are products of our own production; in addition to them, we also use some purchased ones, namely bread. This is a deviation from the principle of self-sufficiency, but we have decided to afford it now – it is unprincipled. For the sake of the experiment, we went without bread at all for two months, and did not experience any particular difficulties.
But while it is in the store and cheap – once every couple of days we buy one loaf or loaf – the same borscht is usually eaten with bread. Every day we drink tea. The tea there, however, has only one name – it’s herbal. Base – raspberry and currant leaves; a choice of mint, lemon balm, oregano, St. John’s wort, chamomile, and thyme is added to them for taste and smell.
Melissa grows in the garden, everything else is collected from the environment. We also love real tea, black or green, and sometimes buy it.

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9. Ovens
I had to study furnace business for a number of reasons. A stove is the most important part of the life support of a rural house, and it is extremely advisable to understand stoves yourself, be able to repair them, maintain them, and build them yourself.

Russian stoveThe first stove that I came across was our Russian stove, located in the room with which we heated and in which we cooked most of the time we lived in the village. Her age was over 50 years old, and in some places she had aged a lot.
Nevertheless, there was no question of disassembling it in any way – at its core everything is still in order, the vault is intact, only a little chipped on top (taking into account the fact that it is also made of adobe – this is just an excellent result. (I remind you who does not know that adobe is just ordinary clay, molded into a brick and dried.
Placed in water, a raw brick will get wet after 5 minutes and become a pile of dirt). However, I was unhappy with how it warmed up the room. In the fall of 2005, I started doing cosmetic repairs to it – it was pretty peeling and, moreover, its top was sagging at the edges. I started raking out the crumbled and sagging top, taking out and taking out the crumbs, but it still didn’t end.
It ended with me taking out and carrying out the entire body of the stove, right down to the vault, that is, from the body of the stove, only one vault remained. The reason why it did not heat well was revealed. Those who made it simply poured clay chips on top of the vault! loose granular mass, light and airy. Naturally, it did not warm up well.
For thermal technical reasons, it is required that the furnace body be as massive as possible and have maximum heat capacity and thermal conductivity. In this case, the stove will be able to accumulate more heat during combustion and release it more evenly to the room. And clay chips have a low heat capacity and lousy thermal conductivity;
as a result, the vault itself became very hot, but no heat went up – only a strip along the very top of the vault warmed up, where the clay layer was the thinnest. As I understand it, in 1948 everything was done in a great hurry, and the stove maker, having laid out the roof, simply swept up the clay debris from the floor (this backfill contained chips and fragments of raw brick), filled the top of the stove, and poured a 3-4 cm layer of clay on top.
And for the next 50 years after that, a lot of wood was burned in vain. (Addition – I recently took part in dismantling a neighbor’s Russian stove that had fallen into disrepair – and found exactly the same picture there. Apparently, this was a common tradition. This is terrible. I also observed the work of modern stove makers several times.
Unfortunately, we have to come to the conclusion that most often they work without understanding most of the simplest physical principles of the furnace).

I reconstructed the furnace as follows. On the exposed vault, I laid a layer of red brick halves flat on the clay mortar – this is an additional strengthening of the vault in case it continues to chip away – with this, I think, I extended the life of the stove for another few decades. Clay mortar was poured on top, and fragments of brick and rubble stone (granite) were additionally sunk into it.
And so on until the upper plane. All the clay that was taken out went there, several dozen buckets of sand (clay mortar is prepared as a 1:1 mixture of clay and sand), fifty red bricks (in halves and fragments), five buckets of granite stones. I just finished the main work by the beginning of the 2005 heating season. The whole thing dried out (about a dozen buckets of water went into it) already during the heating process.
After complete drying, a huge difference was immediately revealed compared to what it was. With the same amount of firewood, the temperature in the house rose 5 degrees higher than in previous years.

Russian stove A little later, we made cosmetic improvements to the stove – we lined the façade with sandstone, and a girl artist we knew painted a “fantasy flower” on the stove (see photo). Also in the photo you can see a wooden shield, made of boards, on which the sleeping place is located, raised above the surface. I came up with this device so that I don’t get fried in the back when the stove is well heated.
It’s comfortable to sleep on – warm, but not hot.

After that, until 2009, we lived with only one Russian stove. Although it does not have a number of advantages that a good rough stove has, it must nevertheless be stated that you can live perfectly and quite comfortably with a Russian stove. Its most important global advantage is that it can be made without having any oven equipment at all, but with only clay, sand, and hands.
For peasants right up to Stalin’s times – in conditions when any piece of hardware had to be bought, and it was extremely difficult to earn any penny – this was of decisive importance. Its other advantages are its large mass, which makes the temperature in the house uniform, even if the stove is heated once every two days;
and the fact that the stove creates a sleeping place (for 2 or even 3 people), which is the warmest place in the house, and will allow you to sleep comfortably even with a severe lack of firewood. In general, in terms of survival, a Russian stove is very valuable. She also has disadvantages. It uses firewood less economically than rough wood – by estimates, about a third. The coals burn out more slowly (since there is no grate).
Ordinary pans are not suitable for cooking with it, but you need cauldrons and a grip.

Next, the question arose about a new rug in the kitchen – the old one hardly served for the first year, but it was in very bad condition – it was cracked from top to bottom, the crack was wide and old – they had obviously tried to repair it more than once, but to no avail. So I took it apart and took it out. The grubka was made of raw brick and served for more than 50 years, so we must give it its due.
When I began to plan what the new stove would be like, I began to search and study literature on stoves. As a result, a stove design was developed that was significantly different from the traditional one.

GrubkaI will describe it in a nutshell. The new roughener has a bell-shaped design. It is based on a traditional type firebox, with a grate, and two doors – fuel and ash. The body of the firebox is made of red brick (half a brick), the inside of the firebox is lined with refractory brick (quarter brick). A cooking stove with two mugs is installed above the firebox.
The upper part of the New Grub furnace is a large bell (for detailed explanations of terms, see the relevant literature, search for “Kuznetsov bell furnaces”). In this hood, in the center, there is a built-in oven. The outlet from the hood coincides with the inlet to the water heating tank. I designed, ordered and delivered this tank at the very beginning.
I wrote about it when I talked about the supply of warm water (in the photo it looks out on the right; on the left there is a washstand, which was also mentioned there). The exit from the tank is into the chimney.

I started building this stove back in 2006, but the process was very long – I wasn’t in a particular hurry, and there was nothing to customize, and there were a lot of other more pressing things to do. I only finished it in December 2009, so this (2010/2011) is the second winter we’ve used it. Overall the design was a complete success.
Now we use this rough one for heating (it’s -10-20 outside), we cook on it, and we heat the water on it. And the wood used is less than it used to be before.

And finally, I have another stove project on my conscience, which has not yet been implemented anywhere, although it is very promising. This is a stove designed for my sister’s new homes. This is a two-bell stove (the second cap faces the second floor with its top), located in the center of the house, so that each room on each floor has its own part. It will have a stove, a hot water tank, and an oven.
This is a complex stove, I have worked on it for a long time, and if everything turns out as planned (which I firmly hope for), it will be a real achievement. It is unknown, unfortunately, when this will be done, since it does not depend on me.

I have at least two more stoves looming for the future – in the bathhouse, when I build it (a sauna stove, also known as a heating stove); and a fireplace stove in the new part of my house (a brazen idea to come up with and build a stove that would combine the advantages of a fireplace, a Russian stove, and a grubka).

About the solar collector. Even before moving, I designed, ordered and made the base for the solar collector. Its purpose is to heat the water in the tank on sunny days of non-frosting periods due to the heat of the sun’s rays. Due to lack of time, and, as it turned out, not a particularly great need, it has still not been installed. However, he is waiting in the wings, and will definitely wait someday.
The base of the collector is a closed tank made of millimeter stainless steel, rectangular in shape, 100 x 70 cm, 5 cm thick. At the top and bottom of the tank there are pipes for water inlet and outlet. On the sides – bolts are welded for attaching the body – 10 cm boards; glass is attached to their upper edge (at a distance of 5 cm from the tank). The surface of the tank under the glass becomes blackened with soot;
the entire structure is installed in a sunny place. The tank for heated water is suspended above the collector; pipes lead into it and are connected to the collector pipes. In the sun, this system will heat the water in the upper tank by gravity to very high temperatures.

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10. Vegetable garden
The area of ​​the garden is about 6 acres. The soil in the garden, like everywhere else here, is sandy. The surface is slightly sloping, one corner – the lowest – with the best soil, moister and black; the opposite is dry and infertile sand. Accordingly, the other two angles are transitional. The area of ​​the garden is distributed as follows: about 4 acres for potatoes, 2 acres for everything else.

Before talking about my agricultural technology, I will briefly describe the traditional agricultural technology that everyone in the village uses. The garden is cleaned in the spring (last year’s dry weeds are raked and burned – people don’t know any compost heaps, even corn stalks are burned, or even dumber – taken to a landfill), and closer to May (potato planting) it is plowed with a tractor, deep plowing.
Some people plow in the fall – which is more correct – but there are not many of them. If there is manure, then before plowing it is scattered on the ground in large pieces, fresh, as a result of which it ends up deep and rots slowly. Potatoes are planted according to the plow, and so is everything else (the rest is usually not enough, there are a lot of potatoes). During the summer, the garden is “harvested” several times, i.e. treated with a hoe to remove weeds.
The boots are not razors, but the kind that Kurdyumov calls “an ax on a handle.” Potatoes hill up high, for which soil is selected from row spacing 10 centimeters deep. People’s gardens on sandy soil often suffer from drought; those who have the opportunity water them with hoses, but this helps little.
Potatoes are planted small (about the size of a chicken egg or even smaller), and harvested exactly the same, with CAM 3-5 maximum (the CAM number is how many times the harvest exceeds what was planted). A sufficient amount of potatoes is harvested only due to the huge areas of vegetable gardens – 20, 30 acres per norm, and even 40 acres are not uncommon. Accordingly, such a garden requires work – you can kill yourself to “waste everything.”
The Colorado potato beetle is treated with poisons several times during the summer, despite this the beetle severely damages the plants – it succeeds in the intervals between treatments. People don’t even think about collecting beetles by hand in such areas.

My agricultural technology is completely different. The main ideas are taken from Kurdyumov’s books, and much is also taken from Zhirmunskaya’s book “Vegetable Garden Without Chemicals.” First of all, in the first year I did a lot of work to clear the soil of perennial weeds. The most important of them is wheatgrass. Kurdyumov doesn’t really write anything about this; the issue of wheatgrass is cleverly ignored.
But I must warn everyone – Kurdyumov’s ideas work great, but only if the land is completely free of perennial rhizomatous weeds, primarily wheatgrass. If this work is neglected, or done carelessly, and then not completed, everything will go down the drain, the wheatgrass will quickly recover, and make the method completely unsuitable.
However, in a small area, such as 6 acres, getting rid of wheatgrass is not particularly difficult. This is done using a digging fork (a shovel is not suitable as it leaves behind rhizome cuttings). The main work was done in the first year, in the second spring it was only necessary to clean up the remains.
Along the perimeter of the garden, offensive actions continue to this day – every year I slightly expand the garden to the sides at the expense of virgin soil. Where the border is established, a mulch bank is suitable to contain wheatgrass; I used coniferous forest flooring – a meter wide and half a meter thick (thinner – wheatgrass will sprout).
This is very labor-intensive, so now I use another method, no worse – along the perimeter of the garden I plant a strip of Jerusalem artichoke about a meter wide. It holds back wheatgrass – no weeds really develop under it. It is only necessary in the spring, when digging and planting Jerusalem artichoke, to select wheatgrass at the edge of the strip.

With the selected wheatgrass, the need for annual plowing is completely eliminated. Kurdyumov in his books is perplexed (I think, rather for show) why it is necessary to plow the land at all. I can easily answer this question for him – deep plowing is needed in order to suppress perennial weeds. Without this plowing, wheatgrass will completely clog the soil in one or two years and turn it into virgin soil.
Surface flat-cut treatment is like a dead poultice – where annual weeds need to re-develop from seeds, which takes weeks, wheatgrass grows back in a matter of days.

About green manure. In the fall, after harvesting, I sow winter rye over almost the entire area of ​​the garden, it germinates, and in the spring I don’t touch it until planting; by the beginning of May it grows thickly and is almost knee-high. Therefore, where my neighbors have freshly plowed land, I have a thick green carpet. Rye perfectly performs the function of green manure.
I also tried mustard and other cruciferous vegetables as green manure, but I didn’t like them – you can’t sow them in the fall, they don’t survive the winter; and those sown in the spring take a long time to germinate, and by the time of planting the potatoes are still very small (optimally they should grow before flowering begins). They write that rye dries out the soil, but in the spring, I think this is unimportant – there is enough moisture;
and for its dense root system that structures the soil, rye has no equal.

Jerusalem artichoke In the spring, I do nothing in the main area of ​​the garden until the potatoes are planted. Until this moment, all operations on the perimeter of the garden must be completed. These include digging and planting Jerusalem artichoke, and selecting wheatgrass where it has grown into the garden.
There is a lot to be said about Jerusalem artichoke, it is a very important crop – since I wrote a separate article about it (I wrote it for “Rural Life”), I will not write about it here – I recommend reading the article at the link http://vicsrg.ho.ua/stat/topinambur.htm

About fertilizer. In the spring, all work related to fertilization is carried out. The main source is horse and goat manure. It is collected all winter, and in early spring (mid-to-late March, when everything thaws) it is taken out from the stable to the garden. Quantity – about 50-80 horse wheelbarrows and 10-20 goat wheelbarrows. Each wheelbarrow fits about 80-100 kg. The transport is not far – from the barns to the garden it is about 20-30 meters.
All this is folded into a pile 1 meter high, 2 – 2.5 meters wide, and as long as possible, at the edge of the garden. This heap instantly heats up, and the process of hot composting takes place in it (in the morning steam comes out of it, it’s impossible to stick your finger inside the heap – it’s hot).
Within a month to a month and a half, before planting the potatoes, the process basically ends – the heap decreases in volume by one and a half times, the contents become dark. Yes, I forgot to add – in the process of folding the pile, ash is mixed into it – all that has collected over the past year (in winter – from the stove, in summer – from the hearth, and sifted through a mesh).
Applying ash directly to the soil is not very beneficial for the soil, but this is just right, at the same time it reduces the acidity of the manure. The volume of ash is about one and a half to two boxes from a 17” Samsung monitor (by 2010, I discovered that times have changed, and many people do not know what these boxes are; to clarify, we are talking about CRT monitors, large ones.
The joke is right here that a generation of cats has already grown up who don’t know what it’s like to bask on the warm back of a monitor…). So, I have 40-50 wheelbarrows of humus ready for planting.

About the tools. Immediately before planting potatoes, the land is cultivated with a cultivator. Here I probably need to say a few words about my instruments. The main two tools are cultivators, both work on the flat-cutting principle. One is produced by the Mariupol company ROSTA. The working body is replaceable, either a triangular bracket, or a flat blade; the base is two long handles and a wheel in front.
The cultivator is extremely convenient and productive if the work is done on free ground before planting. It’s not clear where to buy it in Kyiv, I bought it at the exhibition, right from them. (Later addition – I saw them on sale in the Gardening store near the Lesnoy metro station).
Another cultivator is a rectangular bracket, directly in front of it there are mounted aluminum gears that engage with each other, loosening the soil. It is quite common, available at any hardware market, in many stores. I think it’s just a godsend. Kurdyumov scolded him, saying that earth was getting into him and weeds were getting tangled.
I can say that if the ground is sandy and the weeds are small, then nothing gets clogged and doesn’t get tangled. It should be used not against weeds (when they have already grown), but to prevent weeds from appearing (when they are still small) (c).
This cultivator is not as productive as the first one (but 5-10 times more productive than a hoe), but it is much more maneuverable and works great where something is already planted and growing – in the inter-row spaces. So I use the first cultivator before planting, and the second one the rest of the time.

About planting potatoes. So, with a “big” cultivator, I cultivate the entire soil to get rid of the rye. This is quite difficult if the rye is knee-deep, but if you sharpen the cultivator blade well, the work is done quickly and efficiently. It is necessary to cut just below the surface of the earth – 0.5 – 1 cm. Potatoes are planted on the treated soil. Rows are marked, a rope is pulled where the row will be.
The cut rye is raked with a rake to the space between the rows, where it remains as mulch, rotting quite quickly – in a few weeks. Potatoes are planted with a gap of 50 cm between bushes, 60 cm between rows. In recent years, I began to plant more densely in rows, 35-40 cm between bushes, quite satisfactory. Using a shovel, you dig a hole quite deep and wide, more than the bayonet of a shovel.
Humus is brought into the hole – half a bucket, this is a full shovel (a row of potatoes 20 meters long takes about a wheelbarrow of humus), if there is no good humus, I used clean, loose peat soil brought from the field, where it is easy to collect from molehills. Let me remind you that I have very poor and dry sandy soil in my garden, I try to improve it as intensively as possible.
Then planting potatoes are placed in the hole and sprinkled with soil (shallow – 5-7 cm maximum). After planting, the entire area of ​​the planted potatoes is covered with a thick layer of mulch.

About mulch. Kurdyumov recommends using it everywhere, and spreading it in a layer of 8-10 cm. I confirm that this technique works great. Weeds do not grow through such a layer (except for wheatgrass; annuals do not germinate from seeds, but wheatgrass germinates easily – once again, there should be no wheatgrass), and moisture is perfectly retained. But there are two negative points.
Firstly, for real garden areas (and not for a toy garden bed) a simply monstrous amount of mulch is needed. At first I used pine needles. You bring a whole cart with a mountain of coniferous litter from the forest (and you still need to rake it, throw it on the cart, this is a decent job), scatter it over two rows of potatoes – and that’s it, the mulch has run out. It is very difficult to prepare it in the required quantity.
Then, coniferous litter is not very suitable, it acidifies the soil, there are cones and twigs in it… And most importantly, it does not rot within a year, in general it rots quite slowly in the soil in my dry conditions.
A more suitable mulch is straw, it can be prepared, but it is even more difficult – you have to travel much further to get it, and not at any time, but only one week a year – after harvesting the fields, then it is burned. And straw is a very valuable material for bedding for horses and goats; horses also eat it safely.
Then, where there was such a layer of mulch, and if it does not rot within a year, it must be removed at the end of the season, otherwise it will be inconvenient to plant in the spring, and you cannot sow green manure. This is a huge amount of work – spreading this mulch, then demolishing it. Therefore, for some time I used mulch not “according to Kurdyumov”, but limitedly, in a thin layer – about 1 cm.
In my experience, such a layer does a good job of retaining moisture in the soil and feeding the worms; however, it almost does not prevent the germination of weeds. However, it does not prevent the destruction of weeds using a cultivator. There is no need to rake it later – it eventually mixes with the soil and rots, which greatly reduces the amount of work. I consider this option optimal for almost any conditions.

In recent years, having a large farm, I have had the opportunity to use manure as mulch, of which about 100 wheelbarrows are produced every year. And this turned out to be the best option. This mulch can be used “according to Kurdyumov”, in a thick layer of 10 centimeters. And it rots quickly enough so that it does not need to be raked anywhere in the fall.
I now mulch most of my potatoes with manure immediately after planting; Potatoes easily grow through a thick layer of manure, but weeds do not grow at all. Thus, there is no work with weeds on the potatoes at all – I planted them, spread manure over the area – and until the fall there is no work with the soil. Another big plus is that thick mulch greatly saves soil moisture and saves potatoes from drought.
In dry years, when other people’s gardens dried up, we got a normal harvest. When harvesting potatoes, manure is partially mixed with the soil, but by next spring there is little left of it. An important detail: in order for potatoes to grow through a thick layer of manure, it must be crushed to pieces no larger than a matchbox. I do this with a pitchfork, quite productively.
The trampled manure from the barn is taken out in large pieces, and if it is not crushed, the potatoes will not grow through it.

About potato planting material. Traditionally, smaller-than-average potatoes are used for planting. I consider this practice vicious and wrong. I select the largest healthy tubers of the correct shape for planting, and I try to select them not from any bushes, but from the most productive ones. This is done for simple selection reasons.
Although potatoes reproduce vegetatively, they also have a certain variability due to somatic mutations, therefore, although much slower than with sexual reproduction, selection still occurs. And if year after year you select small potatoes for planting, then in the end they will all be small, which is what the villagers observe. Planting large tubers whole is too wasteful;
so I cut them into 2 or 3 parts, so that each part is still larger than regular “planting” potatoes. This pays off with a large, strong bush. Before this, the potatoes are germinated for several weeks in warmth and light so that centimeter thick seedlings emerge. Potatoes are cut immediately before planting, and the sections are dipped in ash for disinfection.
The germination rate is 100%, nothing rots. The pieces are not thrown into the holes at random, but are carefully stuck in with the shoots up. The planting date is somewhere in early May or the last days of April. Even if at the end of May the seedlings are exposed to frost, they then quickly grow back.

Colorado potato beetleAbout Colorado potato beetles. There is no escape from this scourge, but I don’t want to use chemistry for reasons of principle. Fortunately, when there are not 20 acres of potatoes or 40, but only 4, it is absolutely possible to deal with the beetles manually. In the very first days after the shoots appear, I go around all the rows every day and collect adult beetles that have crawled out of the ground and are preparing to lay eggs.
This takes 5-10 minutes daily, and greatly reduces the number of clutches, although they cannot be completely avoided – the beetles actively fly from garden to garden. A little later, when the potatoes grow just below the knee, you need to walk carefully once or twice, examining each bush from below (tilting it in one direction or the other), and destroy the found clutches. It will take quite a bit of time, but it’s worth it.
Even later, when the larvae hatch, you no longer need to walk with a jar, but with a bucket, and shake the larvae into the bucket. This is quite fast – you don’t have to strive for 100% collection – 90% is enough – if you do this every day, then the destruction of the larvae will be quite effective, and they will not cause any noticeable harm to the bushes, and this is the main thing.
At the hottest time – during flowering – this takes up to half an hour a day, then the number of larvae decreases, and the time required for collection again decreases to 15 minutes, closer to August, every other day. I think this is not such a big price to pay for the absence of poisons in the garden, even the most progressive ones.
In addition to manual collection, its natural enemies make a significant contribution to the destruction of the beetle – contrary to the popular belief, the Colorado potato beetle still has them. These are the most common ladybugs (mainly their larvae), and predatory bugs. Both of them destroy only eggs and the smallest larvae, without touching the grown ones, but this is already a big plus.
When there are a lot of ladybugs in the garden, it will be much easier to collect beetles. So you have to love ladybugs. I also unexpectedly saw several times how large Colorado potato larvae were attacked by wasps (once I was able to document it – see photo). Now, if wasps learned to fully feed on colorados, it would be just a fairy tale.

About hilling. Absolutely everyone knows that potatoes need to be hilled. And absolutely everyone does it. This is a very labor-intensive operation, but it is still done with ant persistence, citing the fact that potatoes set and grow only in a heap, and only in loose soil, and they will not set normally in flat, dense soil.
From the very beginning I had great doubts about this, and after in the first year I collected exactly 33 potatoes from the most successful, “record” bush, which grew absolutely without the slightest hilling – counting only large and medium ones – I finally realized that something was wrong with the official legend of this ritual.
Much later, in two materials about growing potatoes, I read in Russian in white that on sandy soils, hilling potatoes does not bring any effect and can even be harmful – due to drying out the soil. So I didn’t come up with anything new, everything was written before us.
But people don’t read smart books… Thus, I can say with complete confidence and officially that no hilling is definitely necessary on light sandy soils. Regardless of mulching, by the way. Simply keeping weeds at bay is enough. On heavy clayey, waterlogged soils – I can’t say anything, the question requires experimentation.

About weeds. They need to be destroyed, and it is best to do this without waiting for them to grow seriously. The general rule is not to allow weeds to be higher than a third to the middle of the cultivated plants. On average, once every 3-4 weeks it is necessary to cultivate the soil with a cultivator, or a razor hoe, or a flat cutter.
In all cases, the soil is cut at a depth of 1-2 cm, the top layer is loosened, the cut weeds remain right there and are not removed anywhere. They are quite tender, and by the next treatment they have time to completely rot. It is very good to time the treatment on the first or second fine day after the rains – this will seal off the moisture and destroy the first seedlings.

About shared culture. I planted beans with potatoes for two seasons, but in the end I didn’t like the result. Beans do not coincide in time with potatoes – they must be planted in early April – planted later, they give a poor harvest. I tried planting regular bush beans and pumpkin along with potatoes. Both succeeded.
The pumpkin turned out so well that the harvest from the plot was as if only pumpkin had grown there; At the same time, no serious damage was caused to the potato crop. Beans also produced a noticeable harvest, but where there were fewer pumpkins. Now I continue to look for the most effective combination and variety.

For the sake of the harvest, I plant the beans separately. In this case, they need to be sown much earlier, in early April; they are not afraid of frost, and the extra month of growing season is very important. 25-30 cm between rows, 15 cm between bushes in a row. The bushes grow tall, over a meter, branched, grow quickly, bloom actively, suppress the weeds underneath them well, and produce an excellent harvest.
Unfortunately, the beans are not very tasty; they have a tough skin. Last year I collected half a bag of them, from an area of ​​barely a dozen square meters; but we haven’t started them yet – there are much tastier white beans, which are discussed below.

About varieties and yields. Let’s return to potatoes. In 2006, I planted three varieties – a certain “yellow” (taken from neighbors) – it has a good taste and average yield; some “red” – it gives a tolerable harvest on completely lousy sandy soil, where the other doesn’t really produce anything; and Slavyanka – it has average taste (although not bad at all) and excellent yield.
In total, from an area of ​​4 acres, I collected a total of 80 buckets of potatoes, despite the fact that I planted 5-6 buckets, do the math yourself 😉

In subsequent years, it was no longer possible to boast of such productivity. It turned out 50-60 buckets. The main reason is unprecedented droughts in summer; Judging by the fact that they have been repeated for 4 years in a row, it can be stated that, apparently, this is already a stable climate change.

In 2011, we again had an excellent harvest, 80 buckets. Although the year as a whole was again dry, there were very heavy rains in the middle of summer, perhaps thanks to them there was such a harvest. Many people’s gardens were flooded, some of them were in low-lying areas, and the harvest was lost. It was like manna from heaven for my dry sandy garden.

potatoesAbout cleaning and storage. Potatoes are harvested after the tops have completely died; for some reason this does not lead to any diseases for me. This is somewhere early to mid-September. The dug up potatoes are brought into the barn and placed on a sandy floor, each variety separately. There it lies for a month, until mid-October (but it is important not to reach frost).
During this time, it hardens and its damage heals (see photo). After this, the potatoes are sorted and brought into the cellar for storage. During sorting, potatoes that were cut during harvesting or otherwise damaged/gnawed are carefully separated. This type is collected somewhere up to a fifth. It is stored in a separate compartment in the cellar and consumed first, usually before the new year.
As a result, it does not have time to rot. The rest of the potatoes, whole, are put into compartments according to variety and consumed as needed. Then, during sorting, seed potatoes are selected, put into separate boxes and lie in them until spring.
As for the cellar, it is of the usual rural type, buried one and a half meters into the ground, with a mound of earth poured on top, with ventilation (plus, for ventilation, when there is no severe frost, I leave the inner door slightly open.
Potatoes are stored in the cellar for a whole year – until the new harvest – with virtually no loss of quality, almost no sprouting (by the end of the year the sprouts are up to a centimeter), without the slightest rot (rotten potatoes – only a few for the entire quantity for the entire time).

About other cultures. In addition to potatoes, of course, I grow a lot of other things in the garden. These are cabbage, carrots, beets, cucumbers, tomatoes, beans, beans, green beans (cowpeas), onions, garlic, corn, pumpkins and zucchini, Jerusalem artichoke. Perennials include strawberries and chives. Now, in order.

CabbageCabbageI plant mostly white cabbage, a little red cabbage, a little cauliflower, a little Brussels sprouts. All this is consumed during the summer and autumn, a certain amount of white cabbage is used for harvesting, making sauerkraut. We found a good recipe – you don’t need anything other than salt, and it turns out very tasty. An excellent product, it goes great with boiled potatoes.

We sow carrots at one time, in early spring. We decided on the variety – Queen of Autumn. Excellent yield, keeping quality, good taste. In 2007, the garden bed was very small, but they collected more than 10 buckets.

It’s the same with beets. But here it turned out less fortunately – for two years in a row the same horse got loose at night, came to the garden and ate almost the entire bed of beets. Moreover, the infection follows the principle “if I don’t pick it up, I’ll bite it.” So when there was a potentially large harvest, we collected the leftovers. However, there was enough for borscht. In recent years, due to drought, the beet harvest was so-so.

More cucumbersCucumbersI grow cucumbers on stationary trellises. Acacia posts, aluminum wire. In the spring I make a trench and add a large amount of humus; in fact, I grow cucumbers using humus. Naturally, in the wettest place in the garden. I tried different varieties. The result is an excellent harvest, long fruiting, no diseases. We eat cucumber salads all summer;
At maximum harvest, every two days we remove all the cucumbers and preserve them in jars. We close about 30 three-liter jars of cucumbers for the winter.

I sow tomatoes in a nursery – a meter by meter box of boards in the ground, covered with a raincoat at night, until it’s frosty. At the end of May, the seedlings are transplanted into place. For support – acacia pegs. I tried different varieties. The harvest is not particularly impressive, but it is enough for constant consumption in salads throughout the summer, and for a dozen three-liter jars of preserved food.

Beans produce a solid harvest only in a separate bed. They are planted early, in April, and are not afraid of frost. They grow like a wall taller than a meter. I mainly plant them to increase soil fertility (a very powerful root system that enriches the soil with nitrogen), because their taste is so-so. But for a reserve – in case the beans don’t work out – they are quite appropriate.

Climbing beans I grow climbing beans, they are much more productive. Varieties Spanish white (I saw what it was called at the exhibition, before that I just planted the seeds they gave me, they were very successful). Large white beans, 3-6 beans per pod, exceptionally good taste, thin skin. There is no price for it in borscht; all sorts of dishes like lobio also turn out great. Productivity is excellent.
It requires tall acacia pokes (3-4 m high). She sits nearby on the northern edge of the garden, so she casts a 2-3-meter shadow outside the garden, thus expanding its usable area. But this crop is afraid of frosts, and in some year, when they are late in the spring and early in the fall, it may not ripen and not produce a large harvest.

Bush cowpea (an asparagus crop similar to beans). The plant is very similar to bush beans. It produces a variety of thin green pods up to half a meter long, which can be removed every two days and cooked like green beans. An exceptionally tasty and healthy thing.
This year I had a very small garden bed, next year I’ll make it three times larger, it’s not a sin to eat such a delicacy in the summer 😉 I’ll also plant climbing beans as a test.

Cowpea (added 2010) I don’t grow cowpea anymore. Instead – climbing beans, both on individual butts and on the wings along with cucumbers (only two bushes for each wing, they grow strongly, but do not interfere with the cucumbers – the cucumbers have time to grow earlier). It turned out to be much more productive and tastier than cowpea.
For the last 3 years, we have had it in unlimited quantities almost all summer (from July to September).

We consume little onions and accordingly plant a little. In the first year we tried to grow both from seeds and from bulbs – from seeds it is very tedious, and the bulbs must first be grown from seeds 😉 In the following years, we plant bulbs in the spring, which we exchange for various small services from the neighboring grandmothers. We plant a liter jar of onions, get a bucket and a half harvest, and we have enough until spring.

Garlic is a very important crop. It goes into many dishes, it is extremely healthy, and protects against diseases, increasing immunity. Therefore, we actively consume it and grow it carefully. We plant it in the fall, in October; cover with leaves for the winter; It hatches in early spring and grows until mid-summer; we harvest in August.
If you plant in the spring, you won’t get a good harvest, at least with the varieties we have. About the varieties. At first we used local varieties, and in the fall of 2005 I was inspired to try Chinese garlic, which is sold in our stores. Large white heads, good taste.
Everyone Garlic assured me that this garlic does not grow here, but I decided to try anyway – I don’t like to take all such statements on faith. I bought five heads and planted two rows. An excellent harvest has grown, the heads are no smaller than the original ones. After the first winter, it became possible to add the last thing – it also stores well. In all subsequent years, we have also been successfully growing it.
So this variety is a definite success. There is only one thing that surprises me – how did all those people who assured me that it does not grow here (and there were about half a dozen of them) came to such a conclusion?

I planted some corn. But in general this culture is very promising. She is the only one that produces grain products from the garden. It grows well and produces excellent harvests (I mean fodder corn).
But its use is limited – either for animal feed (which I don’t need in accordance with the principles of animal husbandry), or in the stage of waxy ripeness, boiled and eaten in the summer (a good thing, but you don’t need a lot of it for this). I found another application – if corn grains are boiled in an oven in salted water in winter (for a long time, 3-4 hours), they boil well, becoming edible, although somewhat hard.
After that, you can eat them out of nothing to do, like nuts or seeds. But you don’t need large quantities of it for this either. I also tried growing sweet corn, but it didn’t inspire me. Corn has the disadvantage that it is afraid of frost, and sowing it early in the spring is dangerous; and too late, you won’t get a harvest. And in the fall it will strike early again – when the heads of cabbage have not yet ripened – and that’s it, there is no harvest.
Beans, for example, also Pumpkins under the stove, having such a disadvantage, nevertheless compensate for it by the fact that after the first September frosts, those pods that hang on it, at the very least, will ripen in a couple of weeks, even with leaves beaten by frost, and they can be collected.

MelonsPumpkins and zucchini. They can be planted in the worst place in the garden, and near the compost heap. A hole is dug half a meter deep, filled with manure, several seeds are planted in it, and sprinkled with mulch. It grows well, even when there is almost bare sand all around. We even managed to grow melons.
In recent years, I have been sowing pumpkins directly over the potatoes (two or three seeds per row, right along with the potatoes in the holes), and the pumpkin gives a full harvest in this area, making good use of the time when the potatoes are already starting to dry out (August), and the pumpkin is just growing, covering the entire area with its leaves.

Jerusalem artichoke I already wrote about Jerusalem artichoke – see separate article (http://vicsrg.ho.ua/stat/topinambur.htm). At first I planted it in a strip along the garden, about a meter wide, in three rows. It perfectly protects the garden from the wind, which is very important for maintaining moisture. Now I plant it much more, along the entire perimeter of my garden and on the border with the neighbor’s garden.
It has shown itself to be excellent as a fodder crop for any animals. Its other most important role is as a reserve food product in case of famine. Although it is not a fountain of taste, it is completely edible for humans (which is important, in its raw form), it has the same calorie content as potatoes (20% carbohydrates in raw weight), even more protein (3% instead of 2), and is more complete in vitamins and fiber than potatoes.
Therefore, I consider having a significant bed of Jerusalem artichoke to be one of the important measures to prepare for the crisis.

In 2010, we tried a new crop – sweet potato. It has landed too little so far to draw definitive conclusions, but it showed very interesting capabilities. It has excellent yields (better than potatoes), it obviously tolerates drought better, and makes better use of the growing season (it grows right up to frost). In 2011 I will plant it in large quantities.
There is an idea to use it in joint planting with rye (it grows widely by August – when the rye is already ripe and will be harvested).

There are also some perennials. We planted a bed of asparagus, but we didn’t like it. We planted a plot of remontant strawberries. A couple of lemon balm bushes. From the first year, a bed of chives grows; This is an exceptionally useful thing; The first vitamin-rich greens come out very early – at the end of March, and this bed is enough to start making salads every day and adding to potatoes and other dishes.
It tastes like regular green onions, but thinner and more delicate.

About pests and diseases. Quite often, gardeners have this question in the foreground. There are countless different pests in the garden, and each has its own control measures. Not even talking about pesticides – even with folk methods you can get confused so that the light of God will not be visible. My only real pest is the Colorado potato beetle; I have already written above how I deal with it.
I simply don’t notice all other pests, and I don’t take any measures to combat them. However, they do not cause noticeable damage to plants. How does this happen? The main principle is biosecurity. This is written in detail and very well in Zhirmunskaya’s book “Vegetable Garden Without Chemicals.” I will try to outline the essence of the method in a nutshell.
To prevent the pest from multiplying, you must always have a sufficient number of its native predator at the ready. To do this, you need to 1) not destroy predators – i.e. no pesticides; 2) have a natural reservoir of predators around the garden. The first one is clear;
for the second, the garden must be surrounded by a natural, undisturbed natural environment, in which predators are always found in some quantity. I have a meadow and a garden around my garden; nearby there is a hedge (shrub thickets), and also nearby there is an overgrown grove that provides shelter for birds.
All this leads to the fact that when aphids appear on beans, for example, there are a sufficient number of ladybugs that fly in to eat them and breed their larvae. And the aphids never reach levels that can actually harm the beans.
The important point is that nothing should be removed from these bushes and groves – the ground should be littered with branches, leaves, whatever – this provides insects with suitable conditions for wintering, and also creates a shelter for hedgehogs – very important predators. For the hedgehog, it is advisable to pile up a special pile of brushwood.
Another important point is that the soil is not plowed, creating good conditions for underground predators, which include moles and shrews. For some reason, rural residents hate moles and abuse them in every possible way – this is stupidity, a mole does not damage plants, it is a predator; the piles he dug just need to be leveled; But the presence of a mole in the garden practically guarantees that there will be no mole cricket there.
Toads also thrive in unplowed soil, which ensures that there are no slugs in the garden. In general, this question can be developed for a long time; I once again recommend Zhirmunskaya’s book to those interested. As for diseases, it’s amazing that healthy plants in healthy conditions actually don’t get sick. No rot in potatoes, powdery mildew in cucumbers, etc.
– even late blight, the eternal scourge of tomatoes, barely touches the lower leaves, so it’s not even clear whether it’s late blight, or whether they just dried out on their own.

Well, that’s all about the garden in a nutshell. As you can see, it provides us with complete vegetable nutrition – both fresh in the summer and prepared in the winter. I will continue to develop it and try new crops, but I don’t see any serious gaps now. It remains to repeat that all this is grown on an area of ​​6 acres, and takes very little work, and pleasant and unburdensome labor.

About the garden.

Another question: A vegetable garden is great, but what about a garden? Large apples and pears
They don’t require any care, but they provide vitamins and a delicious dessert. For
The harvest of five trees is not enough for any cellar.

My mistake, I didn’t finish it. A garden is a must. I have now planted 12 seedlings. Apple trees, pears, apricots, cherries, cherries, hazelnuts. And berry bushes – currants, joshta, gooseberries. The difficulty with planting is that the soil is sandy and poor.
To plant a seedling, I dig a hole one meter by one meter and one meter deep, trample 10 cm of clay into the bottom (to retain water), and fill the hole with fertile soil. And then I just plant the seedling. All this work takes at least a day. But I don’t regret the time – the tree will pay for it. There is an opinion among the locals that “trees don’t grow here.”
Of course, they make a hole and stick a seedling in, but it doesn’t grow well in the poor sand. And if you plant it properly, everything will grow.

2010 addition. During dry years, several seedlings disappeared. Apricots turned out to be resistant to drought; cherries, apple trees and pears dried out. I also got annoyed with apricots and gave up cherries completely. One apricot tree was already producing a harvest.

About the hands, backs and joints of old people.

You never saw what kind of hands they had
those old people who started working in the countryside “before mechanization”?
Haven’t you heard them complain about their backs and joints?

I’ve seen enough of these arms and backs. I’m terrified myself, believe me. And one of the important issues that I decided at the very beginning was how to make sure that all the necessary work was done, and that physical health did not suffer damage, but, on the contrary, was strengthened. This issue is resolved quite simply.

Anyone who is familiar with sports knows that one of the most important issues is the intensity of training. If the intensity is zero (you sit on the couch, chewing chips), there will be zero effectiveness and degradation of health.
If the intensity is within “reasonable limits” – from light jogging in the morning to 3-4 hours of training a day “without fanaticism” (I’m speaking relatively speaking, everything is different in different sports) – then the result is directly dependent on the intensity, and the beneficial effect on health.
If you increase the intensity even more (prepare for the Olympic Games), performance will further increase, but it will begin to cause harm to your health, especially in the long term (retired professional athletes usually have serious health problems).
And finally, if the loads are made prohibitive, then the harm to health will be immediate and significant, and productivity will drop.

So, my physical activity remains in the second range – “within reasonable limits.” At the same time, for city dwellers they are in the first range (close to zero), and for villagers most often they are in the third or fourth range (exorbitant) (this is why among city dwellers there is an opinion that “the village is hard labor, you have to plow there, you will kill yourself there.”
This opinion has a basis – those villagers they saw plowed exactly like that. Which does not mean that this is the only option.

The question may arise: “Aren’t you cheating, Koshasty? Is it possible, with physical exercise “within reasonable limits,” to provide yourself with everything you need in agriculture?” The answer to this question is no, I’m not lying. Since 2004, I have completely provided myself with food and fuel, I have kept a farm – 10 goats and 3 horses – and all this myself, without the help of tractors.
At the same time, my health is excellent, many city ailments have gone away (I had gastritis), nothing new has come, my physical fitness has improved greatly. In general, no bent back or curled fingers. I type on the keyboard with my fingers and play the piano no worse than before.

The question may arise: “how can this be?” The question is complex, but there is a short answer to it. Here, as in the city, you don’t have to strive for the maximum. You need to limit your needs and live within your means. And also use your head (which is very important) so as not to do unnecessary and bad work. But the villagers don’t do this.
They work ineffectively, stupidly, do a lot of unnecessary things, don’t do what is necessary, most often their technology has degenerated to the point of ritual (i.e., actions are performed without realizing the meaning of these actions, but “because it is necessary”). And they do MANY TIMES more work than THEY NEED. I have 4 acres of potatoes, more than enough for the two of us (with the 50 buckets we needed, 80 buckets grew in 2006).
They plant 20, 30, and 40 acres of potatoes in order to feed the pigs and sell them, and with the proceeds they buy a TV (this is not a fictitious example, but a case known to me personally; in another case, a man worked like hell for years to save up for a used Lada.
In third cases, alcoholic men are ready to work hard all day for someone else for the sake of “mogorych” (a bottle of vodka or moonshine) at the end of the day.). Naturally, they are killed to death on their 30 acres, and I process my 4 acres effortlessly and with better quality. They work with a hoe with a short handle, bent in half; I work as a cultivator with a straight back.
Are you saying they don’t have a cultivator? When I didn’t have one, I had a hoe with a long handle, and I also worked with a straight back. And who is stopping them from buying a cultivator? it’s inexpensive. They don’t know? Maybe. I did an experiment – I showed about five old women I knew my cultivator and praised how convenient it was for them to work. They shook their heads skeptically and returned to their boots.
I tried to give them a try – not one even wanted to pick it up. “Screw him” – and the whole conversation. And with hoes they work like machines, like some kind of moles – I can’t do that, my productivity is not the same. The only woman who was impressed with the cultivator, bought it for herself and now praises it, is a former Kiev resident.

What about “crooked fingers” and “wear-and-tear muscle strength” did I answer? The real resource that is lost irrevocably is time. But even here I don’t want to chase maximum use – life is going on right now, and I want to live pleasantly, and not exhausted. And I already have the required level of farming.
There is always room for improvement, but now I have already achieved a balance – I can improve little by little, but I no longer need to work my ass off to improve.

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11. Animal husbandry.
You can often hear about animal husbandry that it is not necessary at all. We regularly hear this from vegetarians (however, I have not yet seen living vegetarians who do not eat fish; why is ordinary meat worse than fish?), it is quite understandable. You can often hear this from Anastasians, but this is even stranger.
If we discard vegetarian motives, then the ideological justification looks like this: to get a kilogram of animal food, you need to spend 10 kg of plant food; This means it’s more rational to eat plant foods and not keep animals at all.

This reasoning is not devoid of logic and common sense. But, as in many other cases, everything very much depends on the nuances. For example, such a nuance: when they talk about plant food, is it assumed that it can be consumed by both animals and humans? Obviously yes, otherwise what’s the point. For example, wheat or potatoes. What about plant foods that humans cannot consume?
Like grass? Obviously, this reasoning does not apply to such a case. Another nuance: plant food must be grown, and some labor must be spent on it. What about plant foods that grow naturally? The first nuance is relevant where there is little land suitable for growing plants for human food. Most places are like this.
The second nuance is relevant for those who do not want extra work, but want to work less and get more results. Such people are absolutely everything. Therefore, let’s take these two nuances as a basis. So, animal husbandry will be most rational if 1) feed the animals what the person himself does not eat; and 2) if this food grows independently, without labor costs.

It logically follows from this that animal feed cannot be either grain or garden produce. Because both can be eaten by humans, and require a fair amount of labor to grow. Thus, pigs disappear immediately: in order to feed a pig, you need to feed it a ton of grain, and countless potatoes and beets, and much more.
In general, pigs are one of the reasons why people think that living in the countryside is so unpleasant and difficult. Indeed, it is so: to feed a pig, you need to plant 20-30 acres of potatoes, kill yourself on them in the summer; you need to buy grain, which will cost most of the money received for the meat of last year’s pig;
feed it 2-3 times a day, crush grain, cook porridge, potatoes, cut beets, in the summer – cut and scald nettles, etc. – you just run around this pig. She shits thinly on herself, in the pigsty – … the pigsty is there, you need to arrange a drain for the slurry, and it will be either a stinking puddle near the barn, or a concrete hole, from where you scoop it out with a bucket every day and take it out… and so on.
And all this – in order to have a mountain of delicious meat once a year; the dubious delicacy of sausage, and the dubious usefulness of lard. You still can’t eat all the meat at once; Usually people eat to their fill, part of the meat is stuffed into jars, the rest is distributed among relatives and friends. Another option is to simply sell this pig for meat, and get several thousand hryvnia.
They buy a new pig, grain for it, and the remainder is just enough to buy a new TV (or some other similar thing somewhere of the same degree of need). And everything starts all over again. Of course, this is not life, but idiotic hard labor. Once again, summary – no pigs!

Plant food that does not need to be grown in the garden – of course, exists. It is grass and its winter version is hay. Grass grows everywhere, on its own, and the labor intensity of making hay is tens of times less than growing the same nutritional value of food from the garden. And in the summer there is no need to harvest it – you can eat the grass right where it grows.

Of course, animals that eat grass exist. These are cows, goats, and horses. But we will consider horses separately – they do not belong to animal husbandry, in the sense that people do not use them in the food cycle, but keep them for other purposes.

The traditional farm animal is the cow. Many people keep cows. In fact, in rural areas it is an attribute of a full-fledged economy. Cows are kept for milk. They don’t get meat from cows – no one in the village slaughters cows themselves, or even small bulls – they just hand it over to a meat processing plant. As for milk, a normal cow produces 10-15-20 liters of milk per day.
For one family, even a large one, this is too much. Where does the excess milk go? It is handed over to a collection point – a milk truck from the Pereyaslavl dairy factory arrives in the morning and accepts milk from the villagers. At a ridiculous price – less than hryvnia per liter. Thus, villagers earn about 10-15 hryvnia per cow per day for 9-10 months a year, and once a year or two – a decent amount for the meat of a bull or an old cow.
A cow gives birth to one calf once a year. Those were the pros, and now the cons. A cow is a very difficult animal to handle (in my opinion, a horse is much easier). A dumb and aggressive cow (there are such things) can be dangerous. The cow eats a lot of hay, and good hay at that. A cow cannot be milked well on hay alone; she must be fed grain products, beets, and pumpkins.
(Of course, you can not feed it, but keep it on the same hay, but then who needs a cow that gives 3-5 liters of milk?).. The cow often gets sick, and is no longer able to exist without a veterinarian (almost like a person: one thing will happen, then another, and childbirth is a whole problem). But you can’t ignore the veterinarian – she’ll just die, and she’s expensive.
Calculating a cow costs a lot of money, the veterinarian comes with a big contraption, and he succeeds the third or fifth time (each visit costs new money). And there is one bull in several neighboring villages, and naturally, bringing a cow to him is also not very free.
And finally, the cow is certainly not a pig, but her manure is also semi-liquid, and either crazy amounts of bedding are needed, or it will champ underfoot in the barn, and the cow itself will be constantly covered with a semi-dried crust from lying in the manure, despite daily cleaning. And so on. (All of the above about the cow is the result of direct observations, mainly from how my neighbor held the cow).

From all of the above, it is clear that a cow does not suit me at all. They keep her not for themselves, but for the money. And I, as already mentioned, am engaged in agriculture with very little redundancy, that is, mainly only for myself.

goat A completely different animal is the goat. It is almost ideal for my purposes. She is completely unpretentious and requires much less care than a cow. It is much smaller in size, and even a child can handle it. She does not need any veterinarian under any circumstances. If suddenly something happens that she dies, she costs much less than a cow.
It is rational to keep not one goat, but a small herd – about a dozen of them – so the retirement of one does not change anything. A dozen goats equals ten to one and a half kids a year. Half of them are goats that are used for meat. They need to be raised from six months to a year (later is not possible – an adult goat, from 1.5 years old, Kashtanka Goat with kids starts to stink).
Thus, every month or two the goats can be slaughtered for meat. Goat meat is quite tasty and completely lean. But this is only for young kids, up to a year old; Old goats have tough meat. Adult goats give milk, a good goat about a liter a day or more, a bad goat less. (All this is when feeding only grass and hay, no feeding with concentrates.
A goat that is well fed with grain and other feed produces up to 3-5 liters per day, but in my opinion, less tasty milk). Goat’s milk is much better than cow’s milk – it is slightly fattier, never causes problems even for people who cannot tolerate cow’s milk (it is similar in structure to human milk), and has healing properties.
I’ll specifically address the statement “goat’s milk stinks,” which you often hear from people (usually, those who have never tried it). This kid myth is very persistent, like all negative information. Indeed, goat milk DOES have a smell; This happens when unscrupulous or stupid owners keep an adult goat with their goats.
The goats become saturated with the smell, which transfers to the milk. Any book says that this cannot be done; but there are owners who neglect this rule and put the goat in the same barn. Well, you should drink your own milk yourself; no, they give people enough to support the myth (bad things are remembered and conveyed very well).
If the goat is kept strictly separate from the goats, then the milk does not have any bad odor; it has a pleasant smell and taste. To my taste, it’s much tastier than cow’s. Another option when milk may have an unpleasant odor is when the goat is kept “knee-deep” in semi-liquid manure, and the udder is constantly smeared with it. Minimal care and bedding is enough to prevent this from happening.

During the season when there is a lot of milk (summer-autumn), it is one of the main foodstuffs. Drinking a liter or two of cool milk on a hot day is for your dear soul. I currently keep about a dozen adult goats. Of these, two are goats, and about eight are milking goats. The rest – usually about 5 of them – are goats for fattening and slaughter for meat, their number decreases to zero by mid-winter.

I feed my goats only what grows on its own. In the summer they are tied to pegs in the pasture, and they only need to be moved to a new place every few days. In winter I feed them hay. They consume the best hay (horses are willing to accept worse hay, the good stuff goes to the goats). This is enough for them to grow normally, feel good, and give milk (in quantities sufficient for me).
An important nuance of feeding goats is that, unlike most other animals, goats are able to eat food such as branches and bark of trees and shrubs. Moreover, they eat it with pleasure, in large quantities, and can live on it.
This gives you confidence in safety – if suddenly for some reason you are left without hay, and the grass is still far away, the cow will simply die, and the goats can be fed with branches that can easily be chopped in the nearest forest or wasteland. It is especially pleasant that goats actively gnaw the bark and eat needles and even small twigs from pine branches. This is a complete meal for them, and it also contains vitamins.
When I go to the forest to get material, I always take with me the top of a fallen pine tree to give to the goats. I also give the goats Jerusalem artichoke – greens in the fall, and tubers in the fall, winter and spring. Not all the time, but depending on my mood.

Chickens About chickens. In my conditions, chickens are uniquely convenient and useful animals. To keep them, practically nothing is required – just some kind of shelter for the night (in case of severe frosts – up to -30 – this chicken coop should be well protected from the winds; in normal climates it can be anything). In the morning the chickens come out on their own, walk around the area all day to graze, and come in on their own in the evening.
(In an area where there are foxes or stray dogs, the chicken coop still needs to be closed at night. In the winter of 2009, a flock of foxes came to me at night and carried away 5 chickens in a second – it was a great pity. The fact that the chickens were sitting at a height of 2 meters did not stop the foxes – having jumped out of the house to the barking of dogs in 2 minutes – I only found tracks and feathers.
In areas where martens live, everything is even worse – the chicken coop must be impenetrable, without the slightest cracks, and made of reliable material so that they cannot get through). Human participation consists only of coming once a day and picking up eggs (for laying, you need to prepare a “nest” for them – a box with hay). It is better to keep several hens with one rooster; You can do it without a rooster.
In my conditions, I have to feed them only in winter, with Jerusalem artichoke, or some kind of grain, and only if the snow is thick and dense. During the entire snow-free period, they feed on their own – if only there was enough territory. In the garden, they do not cause any damage – they do not touch almost any of the cultivated plants, but just eat the weeds. They can only ruin the cabbage.
Their main food is insects and earthworms, in search of which they scoop eggs into the ground. In the spring they can gorge themselves on May beetles. They are capable of hatching and raising chickens with virtually no human intervention and no waste of young animals. In general, he is an ideal, not an animal. We had two egg-laying hens of some breed, they each laid an egg a day, large and beautiful.
One of them hatched 4 chickens in 2006 and raised them almost to adulthood.

Unfortunately, the idyll was interrupted three times by an unfavorable factor when my chickens were eaten down to zero. In the forest there are such cute birds, popularly called shulyaks (judging by the book, according to science they are called black kites), a sort of handsome eagle with a wingspan of up to a meter (although there are smaller varieties).
Usually they don’t go to the village very much to hunt hens, but at the end of summer they have a period when the chicks grow up and they need a lot of food. They lose their fear and fly into the village (the outskirts are especially vulnerable, and I am right next to the forest), watch for the chickens, and successfully kill and eat them. Shulyaks are very careful, it’s not easy to see them, and it’s simply impossible to protect the chickens except by grazing them all day.
Unfortunately, with the hen and chicks being kept freely like this, they are vulnerable. The villagers get out of the situation by keeping chickens in a fence (the area is fenced with a net, and many even hang a camouflage net on top). However, this method of maintenance is fundamentally different from free. In a small area, chickens quickly gnaw the grass down to bare ground. They need to be fed grain all year round.
In addition to grain, they need to constantly add greens (crumb knotweed, beet tops, scald nettles), buy feed with vitamin supplements – otherwise they will not live, they will get sick and die. They lay much fewer eggs. The chickens are not hatched normally – half of them die (or all of them). Etc. In general, for me, the event completely loses its meaning; with this kind of maintenance, I don’t need chickens.
And when it was free, the rogues ate all my chickens twice. However, I kept chickens again and again (it’s not difficult – every spring chickens sold very cheaply are decommissioned from a poultry farm – scary, tattered – they peck at each other in cages – but in freedom they return to normal in a couple of weeks, and begin to lay eggs well, and subsequently grow feathers normally.
In addition to the pranksters, in 2009, for the first time ever, foxes came to me, and due to my oversight – I left the chicken coop open, hoping that the chickens were sitting at a height (more than 2 m), and who would do what to them – the foxes managed to drag away all the chickens, and at the same time, at a time, that is, they came in a flock.
In 2010, in broad daylight, a fox with a ragged tail appeared right in the yard (the locals know it, have seen it more than once, and call it the Chupacabra). She crushed the chicken, but didn’t have time to drag it away, she scared it away. In general, there are plenty of people willing to profit from chickens.

About geese. In 2008, I first tried to have geese. Geese are promising in two ways – firstly, they eat almost nothing but grass, which is abundant around them; secondly, they are large enough so that pranksters don’t try to touch them. They lay few eggs; it makes sense to keep them for meat.
Goose meat is very tasty, and a good goose can produce up to a kilogram of goose fat, which is tasty and convenient for cooking. They also have disadvantages – geese (mainly ganders) are prone to aggression and acts of senseless destruction (for some reason they killed several seedlings for me).
It gets ridiculous, sometimes you can’t calmly walk through your yard with geese and ducks, so as not to fight with the goose, explaining to him who is the boss here 🙂 My geese have fattened up, a couple of geese have overwintered, in the spring they laid eggs and hatched goslings. Then a fatal failure occurred – the geese, leading the goslings behind them, crushed them all under their feet within a few days. They don’t look where they are going, but they weigh 6-7 kilograms!

In 2010, I got geese again, and now I have a gander and two geese over the winter. I’ll try to breed them again in the spring. (along with geese, there are now ducks; I got them by accident and didn’t like them).

With both geese and chickens, the important thing is that in the winter season, when the natural food is under the snow, they can easily be fed with Jerusalem artichoke alone. Which must be dug up in advance, before the soil freezes. So there is no dependence on purchased grain and feed.

Note 2011. I’m completely tired of geese and ducks, we ate them and aren’t getting any new ones. Okay, I’m fine, but they didn’t allow the child to enter the yard.

About rabbits.

– But I looked and looked for rabbits (rapidly self-reproducing meat), but couldn’t find them. What is the reason? 😉

I was also attracted to rabbits. The first year I got two pairs of rabbits. I bought one pair of young animals at an exhibition, a hybrid of a chinchilla and a gray giant breed. I bought another pair in Pereyaslav at the market of the “local mongrel” breed (they said it was a chinchilla) 😉 The overall result is unsatisfactory.
From the moment of purchase there were already suspicions – since the sellers spent a long time telling me what vaccinations they had received, which ones would need to be done, in what time frame, and when they should be given water with a diluted antibiotic, etc. In general, solid medicine. Naturally, this did not suit me – I need animals that live independently of veterinary medicine. I honestly tried.
I kept them in a normal cage, fed them well, in general, I created all the conditions I could; however, after a couple of months, one couple contracted coccidiosis and died; the other couple fell ill with some other crap a little later, struggled with it for a long time, then one rabbit finally gave up his soul to God, and the second one died. Then he lived all winter, but in the spring we ate it safely.
At that time, I had already heard enough stories from the villagers about how they kept rabbits, and then at one moment – overnight the entire livestock died from unknown reason. Therefore, it was decided to recognize the experiment with rabbits as unsuccessful and not to resume it in the future. At that time, a replacement for rabbits was found – goats.
They do not reproduce as quickly, but are more convenient to keep (in the summer they do not need to be fed, only tied; while rabbits need to be fed all year round), and they do not get sick.

Vietnamese pig Pig About Vietnamese pigs. In 2010, I had the opportunity to try holding new animals – Vietnamese pigs. Despite the name, they have many important differences from ordinary pigs. Firstly, the size – they are small, growing to a maximum of 50-80 kg, usually smaller.
Secondly, they eat grass, which immediately makes them interesting from the point of view of animal husbandry according to my principles. I took two piglets for testing in the summer – a pig and a wild boar. Now they are already six months old, they have grown a lot. In the summer, they ate well on the grass that I mowed for them (I don’t have a suitable fenced pasture, otherwise they could just graze). They eat especially well fresh alfalfa.
In winter, as it turned out, you cannot feed them hay (although I was told that it is possible). They eat Jerusalem artichokes in winter. So far they have tolerated frosts well (I don’t spare them bedding – pine needles). The outcome of the experiment – whether it is worth keeping them – is still unclear; it will probably be clearer only in a year, when they bear offspring and they have time to grow up.

Note 2011. Experience in the summer of 2011 showed that Vietnamese pigs do not live well on grass alone. For normal growth and weight gain, they need to be fed something other than grass; and on grass alone, adult pigs lose weight, but the piglets (the pig brought 8 pieces) do not grow.
This is despite the fact that the grass was not just any hard grass, but alfalfa, nettle, and other juicy and high-calorie herbs, which I specially mowed and brought. As a result of the experiment, in the fall of 2011 I slaughtered the pigs and we ate them (the meat is tasty, and even a poorly fattened pig has lard); and we will not resume their content.

About sheep. In 2010, I had the opportunity to adopt another new animal – sheep. Like Vietnamese pigs, sheep are an interesting source of meat. However, they also have another important advantage – they produce wool during their life, and at the end – skin (sheepskin). At the moment this is not particularly relevant;
however, in post-crisis times, this is the most important raw material from which warm clothes can be made. Therefore, raising sheep would be a very promising business. Now I have a ram, two sheep, and a lamb from one of them. In terms of content, they are not particularly different from goats. They are also capable of producing very tasty milk (tastier than goat milk), but it is not enough, and milking it is very inconvenient.

A general note on livestock farming, as it relates to meat production. My personal experience has shown that keeping animals solely for meat (rabbits, pigs, geese) is a much less rational activity in terms of labor costs than keeping animals with a complex result (goats, chickens).
Therefore, my current choice and my recommendation is not to pursue “meat” animals, but to be satisfied with a small amount of meat obtained from animals with another target product (milk, eggs). This turns out to be the most balanced in terms of labor costs and results.

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12. Horses
I bought two horses – Kvita and Mukha – in November 2004. My sister and I bought them together, so I personally only owned one of them (but for two years they were both completely in my care and use, so I got used to saying and thinking that I had two horses.
Then we “divided the property”, and one horse went completely to her, so of those two I only had one left – a bay, Kvita, 10 years old. However, in October 2006 I compensated for this by purchasing a new horse, a thoroughbred Oryol trotter – Dina, 10 years old, bay. And finally, in January 2007, I bought a third horse – a foal, 5 months old, Groza, also a black trotter. Now she is already an adult.
In March 2009, Kvita gave birth to a foal, now it is with the neighbors, an almost adult filly Maruska.

Kvita

Kvita
Dina
Dina
Storm
little thunderstorm
Storm
adult thunderstorm
CartThe main purpose of horses in the village is to provide freight transport. For this you need a cart (see photo). I bought a cart along with horses, it worked for a year and a half without repair, in 2006 I rebuilt the wooden part and changed the bearings in the wheels. In general, the design is reliable and will still serve a long time (although it is already about 30 years old at least). The cart is steam-windowed, i.e.
it is harnessed by a couple of horses, but most of the time it works with one horse – this is quite possible. A cart can be loaded with up to 2 tons of cargo, but in reality it can be loaded with less (to transport 2 tons, you need a perfect flat road), up to a ton – a couple of horses will trample on bad asphalt or a good dirt road, and one horse can easily carry up to 700-800 kg on a regular road.
On bad dirt roads (which we have) – I usually load no more than 500-600 kg, and Kvita carries them perfectly. This weight is more than enough for most needs. This is a fully loaded cart of firewood, for example.

Horses are also used in agriculture to cultivate the land. I have a horse plow, I tried to master it, and I didn’t like it. This plow is heavy, and apparently, it is intended not for a horse, but for a pair of oxen, since it is almost impossible for them to plow virgin soil with one horse – it is too heavy for a horse;
it might have worked out with a pair of horses, but this requires a very great coordination of the horses’ actions, which I was not able to achieve. The loose soil could perhaps be plowed with one horse, but I did not have such a case. On my farm, I don’t use thunderstorm plowing. Another operation is harrowing the land; here they also say “to harrow.” Tractor harrows are very large and heavy;
but I have a pair of horse-drawn harrows, smaller and lighter, which can be pulled perfectly well by one horse across plowed ground. I had to use them in practice – for example, when sowing alfalfa; on large areas it would clearly be useful for sowing grain.

DinaThe second use in horses is riding. In 2005 I bought two “Cossack” saddles (Kharkov company “Sedlo”), and later bought a third; learned to ride (even if not according to all the rules of riding schools, but quite effectively and safely). For a year I enjoyed riding ordinary horses, but when I bought a thoroughbred (Dina), that’s when I was struck by what real riding on a real horse is like.
It’s difficult to describe it in words, you have to feel it.

Currently, horse riding brings me a certain income, which allowed me not to think about making money in Kyiv. Kievans come to ride, most often beginners, but there are also many regular customers – for a small amount (quite sufficient for me, but many times lower compared to prices in Kyiv).

About caring for horses. Caring for horses in my conditions is not at all difficult. All summer they stand outside on a leash around the clock, grazing. They do not need to be brought in at night or fed anything. You just need to give it something to drink once a day (2-3 buckets), for this you need to go get the horse, take it to the well, where there is a 50-liter pot of water, then take it back. Leash about 20 meters long;
when the horse eats up the grass in this radius, it must be rearranged (on average once every 5 days). A grazing stake is driven into the ground, and a leash loop is placed over it. In the fall, horses are brought in at night and, in case of bad weather, they are fed hay in the stable and as grazing deteriorates; in winter, they are switched to a full diet of hay.
But in good (no wind or snow) weather, even in winter, during the day the horses are taken outside and tethered. Fresh air and the opportunity to move and stretch are very valuable for health. (In 2010, I made a fenced paddock with an area of ​​8 acres in the corner of the plot, and in the winter I take horses there for the day. It’s even more convenient than tethering).
In general, it turns out that caring for horses takes me 15-30 minutes a day in the summer (water everyone and move them if necessary), in the winter – 30-45 minutes in the morning and the same amount in the evening (take them out for water, throw some hay, put them on a leash; in the evening, pick them up from the leash, give them a drink, throw some hay in). The sennik is located not far from the stables, wear it close.

About horse feed. The basis of feed (meaning winter feed, not summer grazing) is hay. Hay is roughage, low-calorie, and therefore you need a lot of it. But in sufficient quantities, good hay is a complete feed, and most importantly, it contains all the necessary vitamins and microelements. Hay is easy to prepare in any required quantities.
In autumn (October), an essential part of the horses’ diet is Jerusalem artichoke greens. They eat not only leaves, but also tough stems – entirely. In winter and spring, from time to time I feed my horses with Jerusalem artichoke tubers. This is an effective and uncomplicated way of high-calorie feeding; I have planted a lot of Jerusalem artichoke. And finally, you can buy horse feed – oats, barley, bran.
In 2007, I had to buy a certain amount of grain feed, since the harvested hay was not enough – I prepared it for two horses, but had to feed three or even three and a half (Dina was added in the fall, Groza was added in January, my sister took her horse only in February). The horses have lost a lot of weight.
Hence the moral – feed must be prepared in excess, and not by 10-20 percent, but better by one and a half times. You never know what happens.

About the leash. In the first years, I used a polypropylene rope with a diameter of 10-12 mm as a tether. However, these ropes have shown their fragility – serving no more than 2-3 seasons. They fray and lose strength in the sun, like any plastic; The advantage is that they are not afraid of moisture. Natural hemp ropes are not suitable at all – they rot in the rain within one season.
Thick nylon ropes last longer, but are correspondingly much more expensive. Currently, I have found an extremely successful solution for tethering all animals – a short-link technical galvanized chain of 4 mm. It is very expensive (currently – 18 hryvnia per meter), but this is fully compensated by its almost unlimited service life.
Over the past 4 years since the start of operation of the first chain, it has not shown the slightest serious signs of wear. The shortness of the links prevents it from getting tangled, and the fact that it is technical gives it much greater tensile strength compared to ordinary household ones. I bought this chain in whole coils, 56 meters each, receiving a discount on this occasion.
You can’t just buy it on the market; I found it at a company specialized in hardware. There I also bought the metal parts necessary for the harness – swivels and carabiners. The swivel is an extremely important part of any harness to prevent the animal from twisting the chain. Those sold in markets are only suitable for goats and small dogs; Large animals can tear them apart.
An excellent “eternal” solution was found in the same company, large, strong stainless steel swivels, regular or with fastening on one side. All animals need carabiners with a twist – they sometimes manage to unfasten regular carabiners. For horses you need carbines of at least 10-11 mm, for goats – 7-8 mm.

In the photo: 1) Swivels: regular galvanized, suitable for goats; and powerful stainless steel, for horses; 2) Carabiners: galvanized 10 mm for horses, 8 mm for goats, and 6 mm stainless steel without twist – for harness and harness; 3) Stainless steel bits, very successful; 4) A small stainless steel ring for the submandibular frenulum strap; large stainless steel ring for halter;
technical chain 4 mm (pay attention to the processing of the joint – a distinctive feature of a technical chain from an economic one), made in Poland.

bridleAbout harness and harness. To exploit a horse, a horse alone is not enough. You also need to have the necessary harness and equipment. Its most necessary part is the bridle. I sewed my own bridles (based on a sample, with sizes individually for each horse). To do this, you need a certain amount of dense cotton or synthetic braid, thicker for the base, and thinner for the straps.
Leather is considered the best material, but I strongly disagree with this; leather seems to me to be a much more capricious material to use and less durable, and ultimately less durable. It has the property, when saturated with sweat, to become hard and rub the horse’s face, which does not happen with braid.
Also, in any case, you need a metal part of the bridle – the bit (what is threaded into the horse’s mouth). It’s very difficult to make bits yourself or replace them with something (blacksmith work), so I stocked up on them wherever possible, I have about 5 in stock. The bridle is sewn to the size of a specific horse. The submandibular strap is fastened (pictured) using a small stainless steel snap hook;
They also fasten the reins or reins.

In order to harness a horse to a cart, a harness is required. It comes in two types – clamp and harness. The clamp is considered the most effective, especially in heavy work, but it is difficult to manufacture, heavy, and I don’t like it. Historically (at the time of purchase) I was dealing with a harness. It’s simpler and more convenient.
It consists of a harness into which the horse’s neck is threaded, so that the harness clasps the horse’s chest and withers; Narytnik (a belt with supporting straps that wraps around the horse from behind); outsider (they are also traces – two thick traction ropes running from the harness to the orchik);
and orchika (a 60-70 cm wooden stick, to the ends of which outside parts are attached, and in the middle through an iron ring it is attached to the traction hook on the cart). All this can be done with your own hands, having a supply of different calibers of braid and ropes.
The metal parts that you need to have are two large iron rings, which are the fastening basis of the harness and other parts of the harness (they are difficult to get, but possible), and the middle fastening of the orchik (it is impossible to get it – this is a blacksmith’s work, and blacksmiths died out a long time ago. I got hold of several pieces here in the village. Later I ordered several ponchos made of stainless steel).
I bought harnesses for my horses (you can make them by hand, but it’s very labor-intensive, but I found a master in Kyiv who makes them well and cheaply). For making helmets, ordinary braid is not suitable – you need a very strong and wide (10 cm) synthetic braid. Fire hoses, by the way, are surprisingly good for this purpose. They are just durable, synthetic and flat.
I managed to stock up, so in the future I can make harnesses myself. The harness also needs reins – it’s just a braid of the required length. The reins are attached to the bridles using small carabiners – this is very important from the point of view of convenience. Fastened and unfastened.

In order to ride a horse, in addition to a bridle, you need a saddle. Making one yourself is extremely difficult (here and everywhere I am talking about a combat-type saddle, not a sports one). I bought my saddles in Kharkov, the Sedlo company, for $200 each (more expensive now). This is the lower price level and quite decent quality. Well, cool saddles can cost many thousands.
Price, however, is not an indicator of quality – I had to communicate with people who bought an expensive saddle that fell apart very quickly. So you need to look carefully when purchasing. If you do without purchased saddles, then, in principle, you can make something that will allow you to sit on a horse and move around on it, including galloping.
Before buying saddles, for a fair amount of time I made do with just an old padded jacket folded in half, placed on the back of a horse, with homemade stirrups (a rope threaded through the sleeves with wooden sticks attached. If you add girths to this design, you get a simple saddle. You can’t go very far on it, but within the village and surrounding area, you can easily ride.
If the horse is well-fed, and its back is smooth, without a protruding ridge, then it is quite possible to ride it without a saddle at all (I didn’t believe that this was possible before, but now I’ve learned – I can gallop freely on Kvita without a saddle. But Dina is too thoroughbred for riding without a saddle – she has a large stride, throws a lot, it’s difficult to sit).

About the cart. The most important addition to horses is the cart, or cart, as they say in Ukraine. Without it, of course, you can’t carry loads. I got my cart along with the horses. She is already 30 years old, no less. It consists of a metal frame and a wooden part (bottom and sides). The frame is welded, made of different pieces, pipes, corners, metal profiles.
In general, the welder made it from all sorts of waste. I changed the wooden part – the old one was worn out. Made it longer, the sides higher. There is a 40 mm board on the bottom and 30 mm on the sides. Axles are welded to the frame, on which wheel hubs are placed through bearings. The wheels are of the agricultural type, either front tractor ones, or from some kind of seeders (opinions differ). The length of the cart trough is 3.5 m.
Type of harness – double-horse (harnessed by a pair of horses); this means – in the middle there is a drawbar, on both sides there are hooks for harnessing two horses. If there was a one-horse harness, there would be two shafts on the sides and one hook in the center. I personally prefer the double-horse type of harness – it’s simpler.
My cart can be loaded with up to two tons of cargo (however, a horse can only move such a load on a flat asphalt road. Almost the maximum load is 800-1000 kg; at the very least, they can carry it along any road and take it home. But everyday cargo is 300-600 kg. The cart itself weighs about 150-200 kg. Overall, I am completely satisfied with it.
In terms of convenience, it is significantly superior to the usual carts that people use here. For some reason, local carts are very small in size, they have very low and sloping sides. As a result, it’s impossible to sit properly in such a cart or really load anything.

Although my cart is still quite working, and I have acquired spare wheels, the question of a new cart is quite urgent. In 2010, I started making a new cart (in general it’s not that much work, but due to the construction workload the cart is moving slowly; I plan to put it into operation by the spring of 2011).
The new cart will be on wheels from Moskvich, welded construction, with a wooden bottom and sides, large in size (4 x 1.5 m), single-horse (experience has shown that I almost never harness more than one horse to a two-horse cart – there is no need). The large size of the cart is needed to make it more convenient to transport hay.
Hay is a very light load, and the main task when transporting it is to load more. In general, if you load skillfully and then tie it with a rope, you can load a monstrous amount; but for this you need two people (one at the top lays out and tramples, the second at the bottom serves); But it’s important to me that I can comfortably load it myself, and that the horse can carry it calmly.
What I call a “load of hay” costs no more than half a load of hay from the locals.

There are also plans to make a lightweight single-axle passenger vehicle, which we among ourselves call a britzka, based on wheels from Zaporozhets. A neighbor had experience in operating a similar carriage, made on the basis of the rear part of a Muscovite.
It is much more comfortable for a person (due to the springs), and lighter for a horse (due to its low weight), when all that needs to be moved is one, two or three people.

Up

13. Blanks
A special category of activities during life on earth consists of preparations. Annual harvesting activities include haymaking and firewood collection. Harvesting as needed includes harvesting wood for construction.

About haymaking. First of all – where to mow? There is no normal haymaking on my site. He would be where the vegetable garden and garden are; but then there would be no room for a vegetable garden. Whenever possible, I use the plot for goat grazing, and I make hay on someone else’s property. The areas available for haymaking are practically unlimited.
Over the past years, I cut hay on the plots of people I knew (villagers and summer residents) who did not need the hay. I have up to ten such people (this is more than I needed).
Then, if you wish, you can contact the village council, and for a rather symbolic sum they will allocate a haymaking plot outside the village, where all the other people who have cows mow (this order has been preserved since collective farm times, now (2011) it has practically degenerated, since there are much more haymakers than people willing to mow).
Then, if you want, behind the village a little on the other side there are squares where no one mows and no one claims – you can generally mow there. In general, there is somewhere to mow. The main haymaking begins in mid-June and lasts until mid-August. You need to mow the grass when it begins to stretch upward and prepare to bloom.
In different areas, the grass reaches this stage at different times, so this allows you to work over a long period of time. After the main haymaking, which ends somewhere in mid-to-late July, the mowing of the aftercut begins – the second mowing of the grass that has grown back after the early first mowing. In addition to “wild” grass, there are cultivated areas where alfalfa is sown.
Alfalfa generally produces three full mowings per summer. Alfalfa hay is much more valuable than regular grass hay – it has more protein and calories. At the same time, the area on which alfalfa grows increases fertility, despite the constant removal of nutrients. It fixes nitrogen itself (this is a leguminous plant), and extracts potassium and phosphorus with its roots at great depths.

Mowing by hand, with a scythe, is quite hard physical work (perhaps the hardest of rural work), but in half a day (before lunch) it allows me to cut an amount of hay that can hardly be loaded onto my (rather wide and long) cart. I find it difficult to name the total volume of hay harvested. In pounds, centners and tons – God knows how much hay, I didn’t weigh it. In hundreds and hectares of mowing?
Different places have different mowing conditions, and the grass yield can vary significantly. I roughly measure the hay in the carts, and one cart is simultaneously one fully loaded cart, and one day of mowing, during which just this much can be mowed (I mow one day for 3-4 hours, then fatigue reduces the mowing productivity, and it’s better to do something else).
Roughly, my cart is 300-400 kg of hay. One horse needs about 10-15 such carts for the winter. For goats you need about half a load or load of hay per goat.

It is extremely important that the hay is of good quality. It is better to have one cartload of excellent hay than two cartloads of lousy hay. I have developed (I read the basic idea somewhere) my own method of mowing and drying hay, which provides excellent quality with minimal labor costs. The hay is cut in a windrow (in two passes – forward and backward), and not scattered.
It dries in a windrow, it would seem, a little longer than scattered, but this is compensated by the fact that inside the windrow the hay is not exposed to direct sunlight and dew (the main factors for the loss of quality of hay during drying). This time. Two – the windrow should be turned from side to side twice during drying (this is done by passing with a fork very quickly and easily). The first time was in the evening of the day when it was mowing;
the second – in the afternoon of the second day; and if all is well, then in the evening of the second day the hay is ready to be picked up. In the worst case (not so hot weather, very thick hay windrows) it will take three days to dry; then it must be turned over on the second and third days. Dry hay is collected with pitchforks into small piles, to which a cart is already approaching for loading.

Villagers usually mow hay with a tractor mower. It costs money and the results are much worse. Behind the tractor, the mown grass lies as it was, i.e. randomly Even if they mow with a scythe, they still leave it scattered. So the hay lies for 3 days until it dries, all these days it is irradiated by the sun and wet by dew.
Hay lying on the ground does not blow well from the wind (and when I turn it over, I deliberately try to leave it high so that it can be blown through). Then it is collected with a rake (which is quite labor-intensive, but I am free from this stage, since the hay is immediately collected into a windrow). The hay they produce is of average quality at best.

It’s bad if it rains during the drying process and wets the hay. You have to wait until the rain stops (maybe a couple of days) and until the hay dries again (a couple of days and a couple of turnings). After this, the hay, of course, will no longer be good, but will be mediocre at best, and worthless at worst.
Good hay is clearly green in color, which indicates that the grass has dried without loss of nutrients, and by eating it, the animal receives everything that it would have eaten with fresh grass. If the hay is slightly brownish in color, this is worse, but if the hay is brownish-brown, or yellow, or whitish in color, then it has very little nutritional value.
The goat will not want to eat such hay, unless it is very hungry. The horse, of course, will eat it (the horse will eat the straw too), but it will not be full of such hay. And finally, if the hay has black shades and other obvious signs of fungal infection, then this hay cannot even be brought into the stable, this is fraught with colic and death for the animals. Straight to the compost heap.
Such accidents sometimes happen when you cut hay and it rains for a week or more – everything you cut is lost. So when making hay, the correct weather forecast is vitally important, but alas, it lies phenomenally.

The brought hay must be stored under the roof. The best place is an enclosed space, a hay barn, or the attic of a house. A simple canopy is also suitable – a roof without walls. If there is neither one nor the other, the hay can be stacked in the open air, making a stack of the correct shape from it so that water rolls off it, wetting only the top layer.
You need to fold it so that it is as high as possible, with the top as pointed as possible, and the sides “combed” so that all the blades of grass are directed downward. In this case, the outermost layer of 5-10 cm deteriorates, but the rest of the hay remains intact. It is better to stack the hay on a platform made of poles and boards – so that the hay does not come into contact with the ground, otherwise a layer of 20-30 cm from dampness from the ground will also deteriorate.
The worst thing is if there is a horizontal platform under the slate in the stack, and water will flow on it deep into the stack. A trickle of water can ruin a haystack right through. Everything would be fine with the haystack, except that a large haystack cannot be mowed down in one day;
it accumulates for two or three weeks, and if it rains, it will ruin the unfinished haystack, and you urgently need to run to cover it with something, or after the rain, throw off the top wet layer and dry it. So, in any case, having a regular hay barn with a roof is a great benefit. Before building the hay barn, I stacked two large haystacks, covering them with slate (ten and a half sheets for each).
In general, everything is fine, but difficult and inconvenient (see photo). In 2010, the first section of a large stationary shed (hay barn) was built, and now the hay is stored immediately under the roof.

About firewood. About the procurement process – see a fragment from the forum.

The question of whether heating with wood is possible for the entire population:

“Now you’re chopping wood while the whole of Ukraine is running on gas
sits, and if they go to cut down all the trees, then there will be only stumps
will remain. Natural forest growth per capita
Which? That’s it”

I already wrote about the essence of the question, but I won’t be too lazy to write again.

A bundle of firewood to heat the stove once weighs 8-10 kg. She can be tied up and carried on her back. In winter, if it is warmer than -2-5, you can heat it once a day, if it is colder, you need to heat it twice, and if it is colder -20-25, you need to heat it three times. This is my information – I have a small house, a good stove. For some it may take more.

How far will an ordinary person agree to walk with this load on his back, which is not very convenient to carry? A kilometer is quite enough, two or three is already with great difficulty. Five kilometers is the practical limit; no one will walk further. It would be better to sit in a cold house, wrapped in a fur coat.
Five kilometers is an hour there, an hour and a half back, and you also need to prepare this firewood there, it’s not ready, which means you still have a saw and an ax in your belt. You’re not there. Be it summer or winter.

If you have a wheelbarrow, you can transport 40-60 kg of firewood at a time. That’s already something. But the practical limit of distance is the same. Walking with a loaded wheelbarrow on a dirt road (or no road at all) is very tiring, and even slower than walking with a load on your back. You can carry firewood with a wheelbarrow only in the summer, when there is no snow and dirt.
This is exactly how I prepared firewood for the first winter, when there were no horses yet – I carried it in a wheelbarrow from a nearby clearing. It was only 400-500 meters from my house. And believe me, I had a lot of fun with this car while I was preparing it.
When the snow is stable, you can make a sled, but with a sled the load will be a little less. Today (I just walked with my wife in the forest) – it’s not snow, it’s a mess, you can’t go through it with a sled at all, it’s difficult on foot (it was the beginning of February).

So, when there is no horse transport, the practical limit for transporting firewood is 2-5 km.

If there is horse transport, then the distance increases significantly. However – not at all to infinity. All subsequent years I carried firewood with horses, and I can perfectly imagine where else I would go for firewood and where not. In reality, I traveled distances of about 2-3 km, I could easily travel 5 km, or even 7. But 7-10 km is already a distance that you cannot travel more than once a day.
If the road is good, then at a trot – it’s an hour’s drive empty, one and a half to two hours loaded. And after this the horses will be tired (it’s for me to sit, but for them to run). If the road is bad, then walk – it’s two hours there, two and a half – three hours back. Of course, a cart can carry up to half a ton of firewood at a time, so the number of trips will not be very large. About a dozen to one and a half.
What distance will be the limit? I think it’s something that can be completed in 1 day. Do you think it’s more than 20 km? but no, fig. 15-20 km – maximum. A horse can trot 10 km, but cannot trot 20 km or more without rest (I’m talking about rural horses with a loaded cart on their back, and not about Arabian horses).
So 20 km, with all the rest, means leaving in the morning and arriving in the evening. This is if the asphalt road is good. If it’s a dirt road, then 15 km is a lot.

Probably, someone is already thinking – “why is he talking nonsense here about walking, on horseback… Yes, go with a Kamaz, and a couple of men with chainsaws, two trips and firewood for the winter. And if the whole of Ukraine does this – there are a lot of Kamazs, there will be enough chainsaws too – then the forests will quickly disappear, which is what was said.” So my answer to this is that as long as there is diesel fuel for Kamaz trucks and gasoline for chainsaws, there will be gas.
And no one will do this (you’re not doing it now, are you?). And when you are tempted to go for firewood, because there is no gas in the pipes and is not expected, you will suddenly discover that there is no fuel at gas stations either, and Kamaz trucks (tractors, etc.) are useless piles of iron. Or does anyone have thoughts that there will be no wages, gas and electricity, but with fuel there will be complete prosperity?

And what I described above will remain – on foot or on horseback. Taking into account the number of horses in the villages, they will physically be able to provide fuel only for their owners, and a maximum of 3-5 families of their closest neighbors and friends. This is a very small percentage even of the rural population, especially of the general population. So all that really remains is “on foot”, which is 2-5 km.

Now look at the map and estimate forest areas, at a distance of 5 km from which there are only rural settlements. These forests will survive. These are the most significant forests of Ukraine.

Now look at the map and estimate the populated areas (including large cities) where there are no forests at a distance of 5 km. The population of these areas will be forced to live without fuel. This is almost the entire urban population of Ukraine and a fair part (more than half) of the rural population. But HOW it will manage without fuel is the second big question, which is beyond the scope of this material.
Those interested can be directed to descriptions of life in besieged Leningrad, for example.

With the difference that in Leningrad, old houses almost everywhere had stoves; and in modern cities there are basically no houses left with stove heating, and even if you have firewood, there is generally nothing to heat. By the way (for chest-beating enthusiasts), a potbelly stove is not a stove at all. And the semblance of a potbelly stove, smeared on a tin knee, is not even a potbelly stove.
To heat yourself, in addition to firewood, you also need to have a real stove, and the room must be equipped with a chimney. So it won’t be warm in city apartments anyway.
In this regard, even a significant part of the rural population will have serious problems – where new houses have been built with gas boilers, but without stoves – or in old houses, out of a great mind, the stove has been thrown away, because “there is gas, why is it needed, it’s just expensive, it just takes up space” (this is a typical saying about the Russian stove.
Almost 100% of Kiev residents who bought an old house in the village as a dacha, the first thing they do is remove the Russian stove from it).

To this I will add that to bring firewood I now make about 10-15 cart trips over a distance of 1-3 km. The firewood is about half pine and deciduous (acacia, alder, oak, elm). For three seasons (before the advent of the chainsaw), I sawed it by hand, using a bow saw on raw Stanley wood. I then split thick logs with a cleaver.
Harvesting time is no later than June, so that the firewood has time to dry over the rest of the summer (except for dead pine trees – they are already dry, they can be harvested at any time of the year). Typically, heavy work on firewood occurs in March-April – when the snow has melted and the roads have dried out, but it is still too early to start gardening. It is more correct to harvest firewood (and forests in general) with at least two people, using a two-handed saw.
A hand-held bow saw, in principle, is not intended for sawing thick logs, but a two-handled bow saw can cut anything, and with good performance.

FirewoodIn 2008, having enough finances, I purchased a chainsaw. Having a chainsaw, preparing firewood generally turns into a completely easy and quick task. It has become very convenient to harvest dead wood (dried pine trees) – there is a lot of them in the forest, and although the firewood is mediocre, it is immediately dry, and cutting a whole cart takes barely 15 minutes.
Unfortunately, even a good chainsaw tends to break over time. Mine broke down twice in 3 years; both times the repair was simple and inexpensive – but it required a trip to the service center and the purchase of a simple part. Without which, alas, this miracle of technology does not work. In addition, chains become dull and wear out, and they are expensive; you can’t make a large supply.
Therefore, even if you have a chainsaw, you should absolutely not forget about hand tools; In times of crisis, a chainsaw will work for a long time only with exceptional luck.

About sources of firewood. See another fragment from the forum.

– What about restoring forests cut down for firewood?

By the way, about the restoration and rational use of forests, I’ll add a few words.

0) Firstly, no one cuts forests for firewood. Unless it’s a birch forest; and usually any forest is cut down for commercial timber. Firewood is obtained in some quantity as a by-product;

1) when a forest grows for commercial timber, usually pine – during its growth it is necessary to do the so-called twice or thrice. sanitary felling – thin it out so that it is not too thick. Naturally, weaker and crooked trees are cut out (commercial wood should be smooth). These sanitary fellings are an excellent source of firewood.
Of course, this firewood belongs to the foresters, since only foresters can do sanitary cuttings, but it is sold very inexpensively, and the majority of the people in the village stock up on firewood from this source. Also, during ordinary, commercial felling, there is always some part of the forest (about a quarter to a third, by eye) that is not suitable for commercial timber, but goes into firewood.
By the way, if sanitary felling is not done, then the thickened areas will be full of windfall – the pines that are lagging behind in development dry out, rot at the base, and the wind knocks them down. In the first year, they are still of interest as firewood (but not as a material! A dead tree quickly becomes infected with a beetle. A felled tree can lie in the bark for no longer than a week – it must either be sawed or barked) (see.
in the photo – the worst enemy of commercial wood, the wood-boring beetle), in the second year and beyond it already becomes too rotten for it to make sense to tinker with it (if there is no urgent need and competition for firewood, and if there is, then an old windbreak is good for firewood, you just need more of it). In my forest there are many areas where the windfall is a rampart and simply impassable.

2) in deciduous forests it is very common to have undergrowth such as hazel (in aspen forest) or elm (in oak and alder forest). This nasty thing grows on its own, has no value in terms of commercial wood, but is good firewood, especially elm. All this can be sawed when it reaches the thickness of your hand (just convenient for firewood, and no need to chop).
It then grows back from the stumps by itself, and very quickly.

3) alder and acacia forests are good because they do not need to be replanted after felling – they grow back with root and stump shoots. In the first years after cutting down an alder forest, a whole bush stretches upward from each stump. After 5-8 years, about 5 distinct leaders form in this bush, the rest die off.
And over the next couple of decades, shoots from this “bush” of leaders can be cut off one by one (already quite thick), which will obviously also remain in growth, so that in the end there will be one main leader left, which will give rise to a new tree. This turns out to be a replacement for sanitary fellings. Even better with acacia.
It usually does not form a continuous forest, but vacant lots, areas along roads, near clearings, etc. are very vigorously overgrown with it. If you cut a large single acacia, then from the roots young shoots will immediately shoot out of the ground within a radius of ten meters.

Firewood I’ll add this to this fragment. Despite the above points, in the first years my main source of firewood was picking up garbage after felling. Every year one or two or three plots of half a hectare are developed in the forest, where everything is cut down to zero, and young forest is planted. Immediately after felling, a huge amount of thick branches, scraps of logs, etc. are lying there.
– everything that is not formatted firewood (straight pieces of 2 m each), the foresters do not need it, they leave it, and it is then stupidly burned when clearing the area before planting. All I have to do is come on horseback and collect this ready-made firewood for the cart. The labor intensity of the workpiece is close to zero.

Windfall I also took a certain amount of firewood from a windfall – harvesting fresh windfall (pine of different thicknesses) is easy and pleasant – drive up, saw it and pick it up. Both living and dry pines fall; the living one, if it is good, can be taken for material. Well, with a chainsaw, as I already wrote, it became convenient to harvest large dried out pine trees.
They are often found in the forest, and for the first two or three years after drying they practically do not deteriorate (after 3 years they usually rot from below and fall off) (see photo). In their minds, foresters should have harvested them, but they ignore them, and the trees simply rot.

About the procurement of material. Over the years I have built quite a few buildings, mainly sheds (roofs only, no walls). To do this I need a quantity of pine logs, acacia posts, boards, nails and slate. More details about construction are in another section, and here – about where I get the wooden material from. In principle, you can buy it from foresters…
but the tree needs to be non-format, pine – 12-18 cm thick, and in the areas that foresters are developing – pine trees are much thicker. So if you order a tree from foresters, they will simply steal it (oh, sorry, they will cut it down without permission) and sell it to me. So “why pay more”? I can turn it off without permission myself.
I love the forest and have no intention of spoiling it, so I choose places where sanitary felling has not been done for a long time, and there are many pine trees doomed to die in the coming years. The pine is cut down close to the ground, the stump is covered with pine needles, the tree is cut into the required pieces (usually one or two pieces of the required length are obtained – 4.5 meters each, another thinner irregular piece, and the top with green pine needles.
I usually take everything; Sometimes I leave the top. In one ride, horses can carry 2-3 pine trees, which is 3-5 logs.

It is more difficult with acacias – it is not easy to find a fairly straight tree of the required length and diameter. However, the forest is large, and you can find everything you need. Acacia is very useful because poles made from it rot very slowly, even slower than oak ones. And all other branches are excellent firewood. It is very heavy, and it can be difficult to load the log into the cart yourself. But in general there are no problems either.

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14. Construction
I will briefly tell you about the construction that I have already completed, and about the one that is still being planned.

veranda foundation In 2006, I made the foundation for a new veranda. The old veranda is small and requires repair (the boards are already decades old), but rather than repairing it, it’s better to make a new one. The new one was planned significantly more, with the capture of one window of the room. The veranda is a very useful part of the house, so it’s not a pity. This foundation stood as a monument to itself for 5 years;
I will finally build the veranda this year (2011), along with other construction.

As it turns out, doing concrete work by hand is not that difficult. The most labor-intensive thing is to mix the solution with a shovel in a trough (if you don’t have a concrete mixer). The foundation was made shallow (40 cm), because sandy soil; height above the ground (basement) – about 10 cm, reinforced with one reinforcement and metal strips from packs of bricks (waste from the construction of my sister’s house).
During the pouring process, I mixed a lot of bottles and various iron and glass nonsense into the concrete. I made the rest of the foundations using a concrete mixer.

old thatched roof on the stables Also in 2006, I made a new roof on the stables. An old barn is used as a stable. The roof on it was completely unusable – thatched, half full of holes, the rafters were rotten (see photo). Therefore, I completely demolished the old roof, leaving bare walls. I covered them with a roof, an original design, as I believe.
The fact is that the traditional gable roof of the New stable roof implies either tightening at the ceiling level, or the roof spreading out from the walls. I didn’t want either one, since the walls are quite low (horses will hit their heads against these puffs), and old (no pushing load can be placed on them). I solved the problem simply – with the help of a ridge log.
Under this log I dug three acacia pillars running along the axis of the building (two outside the walls, one in the center), and on these pillars I placed a 7-meter pine log, at a height of 1 m above the walls. Well, then he began to lay the rafters with one end on the wall, the other on the log (in both directions). The design is simple and solves all problems. But for some reason they don’t build things like that here.
During the work I encountered a lot, learned a lot, but in the end everything turned out quite well (see second photo). On one side of the barn I also built a fairly large canopy. Learned how to work with slate roofs of various configurations.

For such large-scale construction – roofs, awnings – nails of 150 and 200 mm are very important, and not just any nails, but thick ones – 6 mm (thinner ones, 5.5 mm, are sold, they are no good – they bend; this must be taken into account when purchasing). It is also highly desirable to have staples for fastening the logs together in critical places.
It is very important that the staples are made correctly – in particular, that the folds on them are slightly flattened. If this is not the case, the brace will not hold the extension load reliably enough.

In 2007, I began work on laying the foundation for the house, which was completed in 2008. This foundation served two purposes. The first is to place the existing walls of the house not on the ground on which they previously stood; and on a reliable concrete base, and at the same time isolate them from moisture.
The second is to prepare the foundation for the construction of new walls around the old ones (initially this was formulated as “a foundation for lining a house,” but I decided not to limit myself to lining, but to make a lining around the old walls in the form of new, solid walls that could stand on their own, without the old ones. Therefore, the foundation is made in this way.
A trench was dug around the old walls, 50 cm wide and 50-60 cm deep. On the inside, the trench was dug under the house by 20-30 cm, i.e. for the thickness of the walls. From the outside, formwork is installed in the trench; from the inside – nothing, concrete was poured directly to the wall of the trench and to the old wall. The foundation was reinforced with four 16 mm reinforcement bars connected to each other.
From above, the foundation base is raised 20-30 centimeters above the ground. The width of the upper part of the foundation surrounding the old walls was about 45 cm; the internal, underground thickness turned out to be about 70 cm, so its strength is more than enough. Now under the old walls of the house there is a reliable concrete foundation that insulates them from moisture, so they are not in danger of any further destruction or subsidence.

A few words about what happened there. As I wrote, the lower crown of the house is made of thick oak ridges (30-35 cm in diameter). When I dug under the wall, I saw that the bottom of these oak logs was completely eaten away by dust. However, when I took a shovel and began to cut away the dust from the bottom of the logs, about 5 cm of dust was cut off, and then the shovel stuck into the dry, strong oak.
So, even if I didn’t build a foundation, the house still had a very solid margin of safety for the future. Further, the logs did not just lie on the ground, but in the corners they rested on cornerstones dug into the ground. As these stones, huge metal tank rollers were used – in two corners, and in the other two – halves of a tank engine.
Or rather, I certainly don’t have proof that they are tanks; however, their size is simply enormous, more than 2 times larger than that of conventional tracked tractors, and what else of this size could have been available to villagers in 1948, when there was a forest nearby where the fighting was taking place? I tied these metal things together with the reinforcement of the new foundation, and poured concrete into a single monolith.

Foundation for a bathhouseIn 2009, I decided to build a bathhouse. This should be a two-story building 4×5 m. On the ground floor there is a bathhouse itself, consisting of three rooms – a dressing room (with a staircase to the second floor), a steam room, and a shower room. On the second floor there is a living room. The bathhouse will be built from foam blocks, walls 30 cm thick, with a pitched insulated roof.
The steam room will have a stove-stove, which will be heated from the dressing room and will go out to the second floor into the heating panel. Thus, the bathhouse can serve as a guest house at any time of the year. In November 2009, I made a foundation for it; but then construction was frozen, since in 2010 there were many more pressing matters. I expect to continue its construction in 2011.

Also in 2009, together with a friend, I built a gable shed over the place where there used to be an old goat shed. The overall size is 5 x 8 m. The size of each section of the canopy is 5 x 4 m (in support pillars, and the slate roof itself is 5 x 3 sheets of slate, i.e. 5.50 x 5.40 m. The construction scheme is simple and reliable, somewhat reminiscent of a roof on a stable, only larger in size.
6 pillars (thick acacia) are placed, 4 pillars at the edges a little lower (about 3 m), and 2 pillars in the center – a little higher (4 m), so that there is a height difference of about a meter in each section. A horizontal beam is installed on each pair of pillars; after that, between the central beam and each of the outer beams, inclined rafter logs 4.5 m long are installed, with a pitch of about 70-80 cm.
(It is this length – 4.5 m – that is ideal for the roof size “3 sheets of slate”). The rafters are thin pine logs (11-14 cm at the thin end), with a slab cut off on one side at the sawmill. With this plane they are installed upward; the most important thing in this is that all these planes of all rafters form one common plane.
Then the sheathing is nailed on top of it (an unedged board of 25 mm, which is called “shalyovka”), and the slate itself is placed on top of the sheathing. All this is done quite simply, reliably, and with two people – also quickly. My friend and I did this construction, and I gave him the foal for his help.

A barn made of shell rock. In one of the sections of this shed, a foundation, 4 x 5 m, was immediately poured, and in 2010, on this foundation made of shell rock, I built a new shed – as a goat barn and a spare stable. It is not yet completed (see photo, in progress). I made a big mistake with the shell rock – I bought a truckload of it cheaply, but did not pay attention to its monstrously poor quality.
Shell rock – Very uneven, irregular in shape, unequal in size. It was very difficult to build a more or less even wall out of it, but somehow it worked out. In the second section of the shed, I plan to make a workshop in 2011 – a room with simple plank walls.

Sennik Using the same scheme, in 2010 I began to build a new large sennik. In essence, this is the same gable canopy, only consisting of four such gable sections, as described above. Its size is 16 x 8 m, the size of each of the 4 sections is 4 x 8 m. The support pillars – 15 pieces (5 by 3) – are installed in the form of a rectangle 16 x 8 m, in the corners of squares 4 x 4 meters.
The height of the two extreme lines is 3.80 m, the central line is 4.30 m. One of the four sections was made, and hay was already stacked under it in 2010. The three remaining sections are waiting their turn – I expect to finish them in 2011. This roof will be the basis for many new premises – it is, of course, much more than what is required for a hay barn.
One of the sections will be a passageway – I will leave carts in it so that they do not stand in the open air. In another one, perhaps, I will make a sheep pen. We also need a covered place for firewood (they are still stacked anywhere) and for bedding (pine needles from the forest). In general, there are many useful applications.

In 2008, in the summer, we started doing major renovations inside the house. The main thing for which repairs were needed was the floor in the house. The floor was adobe (5-7 cm of clay mixed with chopped straw). It served valiantly for 60 years, about 20-30 years ago linoleum was laid on top of it, which also served its term valiantly; but now it was no longer cool to walk on it;
there were uneven spots on the floor along which the linoleum had cracked; In some places there was an air gap between the linoleum and the floor, on which when you step, a stream of dusty air flies out of the crack about a meter from your foot. In general, we moved out of the house for the whole summer, took our things under the shed and into the stable, and used the neighbor’s house ourselves with the kind permission of our Kiev neighbors; and everything inside the house was gouged out.
Most of the repair work was done by hired workers – there would not have been enough time to do it yourself, but finances did not allow it. The clay floor was broken (with a crowbar) and taken out; the clay on the walls of 50% of the area was beaten off and taken away (on the remaining 50% it held up well, and we left it). Next we made the floor as follows. The soil (sand) was slightly removed to a depth of 10 cm. A thin layer of crushed stone was poured and compacted.
After that, they poured the base – a thin layer of concrete, 3-4 cm. They let it harden for a week, and laid the main heat-insulating layer – sawdust concrete. This material was new to the builders, and they did not want to deal with it in any way, I had to insist. They definitely wanted to use only expanded clay.

A few words about sawdust concrete. This material has long been known, described in many books, both new and old, including Shepelev’s famous book “How to Build a Rural House,” from which I took a lot of valuable information. However, it is practically unknown among builders. The conservatism of builders is very great; plus there is a great reluctance to try and experiment with something;
plus, of course, in commercial construction, builders are completely uninterested in making things cheaper, saving on materials, etc. Meanwhile, sawdust concrete is simply a brilliant option for those who want to build well, and at the same time, as inexpensively as possible. The condition for its use is the presence of a sawmill nearby, where sawdust is simply waste that is thrown away.
Usually there is a landfill behind the sawmill, where this sawdust is simply poured out in a heap – come and take it, whoever you want. Villagers sometimes rake up sawdust to use as bedding for pigs (although it is far from the best bedding). Having a cart and a horse, it’s easy for me to bring an unlimited amount of sawdust.
The sawdust should be sifted through a mesh with a mesh size of about 1 cm (to remove large pieces of bark and other debris), and they are ready. The solution can be mixed in different ways; I chose a composition such that both the strength was high and the heat-insulating properties were no worse than those of foam concrete. To do this, the volume of sawdust should be about half the volume of the final solution.
For me, with my concrete mixer, this worked out with the following volumetric composition: (I measured with a 7-liter bucket) cement – 7 liters (1 bucket), sand – 14-20 liters (2 – 2.5 buckets), water – 12-15 liters, sawdust – 20-25 liters (I used a plastic construction bucket of 20 liters, with a mountain). A concrete mixer mixes such a solution quite easily;
As with any mixing of the solution, you should carefully add water at the end so that the solution is mixed and there is no excess water. The finished solution of sawdust concrete is not liquid, but rather falls out of the mixer in pieces. It is not poured, but laid with light tamping (patting with a board or trowel) so that it spreads without voids; and after that do not touch until completely hardened.
After a week it is already quite strong, after 2-3 it is not much different from a completely finished one. But it dries for a very long time (which, however, is even good for gaining strength).

So, the second layer of the floor is filled with sawdust concrete, 10-12 cm thick. Such a layer is quite sufficient for thermal insulation; If desired, you can make it even thicker. After a couple of weeks, when it had hardened, the topmost, finishing layer of the floor was poured with a clean concrete solution of 1:4, evenly, along the beacons, forming an ideal finishing surface.
It hardened quickly, after a week it was already possible to walk, but it took a very long time to dry, more than two months – right up to the end of September, before which we could not move back into the house. So if anyone follows the same path, start it all early in the summer. A simple thin linoleum was laid on top of the finished, dried floor. We are currently extremely pleased with this floor.
Despite the fact that it is “concrete” – in the minds of most people, this means that it should be cold – we calmly walk on it barefoot in winter, without feeling any discomfort at all. I think this floor design is much better than any other solutions, incl. wooden.
The floor is practically eternal (what will happen to it?), excellent in operation, warm, and very cheap – the only cost is cement. (I didn’t say anything about waterproofing, since my soil is sandy and waterproofing is not needed.
I would like to draw your attention to those who have clay – it will be a little more difficult – you need to waterproof the floor from the ground (a plastic film over the first layer of concrete will do just fine), and insulate the foundation so that the ground under the floor does not freeze. Another option is to choose deeper soil and add sand)

We also made the walls in the house using an original technology (we didn’t come up with it ourselves, we looked at it from our neighbors), which fits well with the concept. As they were, they remained clay. In those places where the old clay did not hold well, it was beaten off right down to the tree. In some places, the tree was covered with new shingles – slats packed at an angle.
Then a clay solution was mixed – clay, sand, and instead of chopped straw – the same sawdust, approximately 1:1:1. And a thick layer, 7-10 cm, was spread on the wall, previously moistened. Such a solution, when dried, has a fairly high strength. Then, immediately, without allowing it to dry, a finishing solution was prepared – the same clay with sand, only without sawdust;
a little cement (no more than 1/10 of the clay) and a little PVA glue were added to it for strength; and it was applied in a thin layer (about 5 mm) to the rough surface and smoothed with a spatula so that it was even and smooth. After this, the wall was allowed to dry (the clay dried much faster, in a couple of weeks), and painted with water-based paint – white. In two layers.
The result is a neat white surface that is quite durable (unlike traditional whitewashing, without the need to whitewash every year). And practically free in terms of money, only the paint cost something. We did not level the wall according to the beacons – we did everything by eye, as in traditional construction, so the wall has small natural smooth irregularities. It looks quite normal.
This method, I believe, can also be recommended as quite successful for those who want to tidy up the interior appearance of a wooden house without spending an extra penny.

Putting the ceiling in order in the house was postponed due to non-urgency. So he is still waiting for his turn. Now it looks the way it was made when the house was built – there are two beams across the house, and on top of them thick boards are laid at intervals; a layer of reed (5-10 cm) filled with clay was laid on top of the boards, and in the attic above all this, again, an adobe floor was installed;
and from the inside it is all covered with clay and whitewashed. It looks very nice, but it’s all very peeling, and it’s difficult to put it in order, and there’s no desire. I plan to put planed wooden slats on top; and we have already put the beams in order – washed, covered with stain and varnish. The end result should be beautiful.

General summary of construction. As experience has shown, ANY person without any construction experience, but with a normal head and hands that are not out of their ass, CAN build almost anything, and on their own; help is needed rarely and in small quantities, for example, with roofs I needed it literally several times for half an hour (lifting a log to a height, installing poles, etc.).
Of course, this does not mean that building together is not better. Better, and more fun. But you can do it yourself.

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15. Construction of a new house
Finally, I will include in a separate section a description of a large construction project that began in 2010.

After analyzing the situation and your capabilities. We came to the decision to begin a large-scale construction project, the result of which will be to double the area of ​​the existing house. However, according to a number of signs, this construction is something more than “expansion of the house”, and is quite close to “construction of a new house”. Why will be clear from the description.

So, it is planned to build an extension next to the old house with an area of ​​about 45 sq.m., which will almost double the area of ​​the house (47 sq.m.). Construction began in July 2010; Before winter, approximately 50-60% of the work was done. So there’s still a lot of work to do for 2011.

Why did I call the project “construction of a new house” and not “construction of an extension”? Because at the same time as building the extension, I was building new walls around the old house on a new foundation (done in 2008, described above). Since this is not “lining the house”, and it is new, solid walls on a new foundation, then in fact I was building a new house with an area of ​​100 square meters. m.

The first step was to pour the foundation around the perimeter of the future extension. As in other cases, I made a shallow reinforced strip foundation, with a depth of about 50-60 cm, a width of 45 cm, and a base height of 10-40 cm (the relief is not entirely even). The reinforcement is made with four 10 mm reinforcement bars, two in the lower part, two in the upper; They are connected to each other by jumpers every meter, by welding.
It was poured in two stages: the lower part – directly into the trench, without formwork; then movable plank formwork, insulated with polyethylene film, was installed and the upper part was poured.

New house After giving the foundation a couple of weeks to harden, I started on the walls. I chose the following wall design: flat foam blocks, that is, 30 cm thick; and the outside is faced with sand-lime brick, half a brick. The wall thickness turned out to be about 45 cm, i.e. along the width of the foundation.
Every two rows of foam blocks, a 50x50x3 mm mesh was laid into the masonry for tensile strength and to connect the foam blocks and bricks. I did not leave an air gap between the foam block and the brick – I filled it with solid mortar. In general, so far this all sounds quite normal;
What’s unusual here is that as a masonry mortar on the foam blocks I used not pure cement mortar, but sawdust concrete, with a slightly reduced sawdust content (versus that described above). Having carefully studied the requirements for masonry, I came to the conclusion that this is quite acceptable;
and the benefit here is that cold bridges are eliminated, the total area of ​​which is very noticeable (the seams on the foam block are quite large, 1-3 cm). The brick was laid on ordinary cement mortar 1:4, and detergent was used as a plasticizer. The height of the walls (from the foundation) is chosen to be 2.40 m. An armored belt is made along the top of the entire wall, approximately 20×20 cm, reinforced with two 10 mm reinforcement bars.
It is poured into permanent formwork – brick on the outside, foam block halves on the inside.

New houseThe brick cladding transfers from the extension to the old house without breaking. The walls of the old house are quite uneven, the gap between the cladding and the wall ranges from 30 to 40 cm. For these reasons, and to save foam blocks, I decided to make the new walls around the old house from sawdust concrete. Having already had experience using this material, I came to the conclusion that it is just in place here.
Its properties (both strength and thermal conductivity) are not very different from foam concrete. First, 3-6 rows of facing bricks were laid out; it formed a formwork with the wall of the old house into which sawdust concrete was poured; then the next rows were laid out, etc.; every 6 rows, again, a grid was laid.

The main walls around the old house were made in such a way that if someday, many years later, the walls of the old house would have to be completely dismantled, so that the new walls would be completely independent main walls of the building.

Until the fall of 2010, the walls of both the “old” and “new” parts were built; Then, oddly enough, winter came, and further work was postponed until 2011, during which I plan to finish the main work. Of these, the largest are floor pouring; flooring device (I plan to insulate it again with sawdust concrete); installation of the roof and coupling of the roof of the new part with the roof of the old part;
construction of internal partitions (I will make them light, right on the floor, so as not to make a separate foundation for them); interior wall decoration (I plan to use sawdust concrete or sawdust clay plaster); construction of a stove (I plan to make a separate stove in the extension; I would like to test a new design that would combine the advantages of a heating stove and a fireplace;
it will be some kind of Russian stove, standing lower than a regular one (right on the floor), and with a much wider mouth).

The laying of sand-lime brick was carried out by a hired worker, and this was one of the most expensive parts of the project. Alas, although I myself have mastered masonry more or less, I certainly would not have been able to lay such quantities, at such a pace, and with such quality (about 5,500 bricks were laid). I did the auxiliary work for the masonry worker (mixing mortar);
I also did all the other work, including laying the foam block wall myself. Another part of the work, during the pouring of the foundation, was helped by a local helper – bringing in sand and water. It would have been slower than I would have liked. However, in general, all this work is quite accessible to one person, if time were not so limited.

The result that will be achieved upon completion of construction is a new house with an area of ​​about 100 square meters. m., with three living rooms, two utility rooms, plus a corridor and a storage room, and a large veranda. I don’t think I will definitely need more during my lifetime.

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16. Children in the village
ZhenyaMy daughter, born in March 2009, (now November 2011) is two and a half years old, she has already passed the stage of infancy. And I have been watching my niece for the last 6 years, from the age of five to 11 years. So I already have an almost complete idea of ​​what features the life of children in the village has.

It must be said that for some reason many problems are associated with children in people’s minds. To the point that when life in the village is discussed, after revealing a number of questions, something like “But when will there be children?
what then?” – as if a child in itself is a huge problem, and when he is combined with life in the village, which is also God knows what a problem – that’s when things really go wrong.

Zhenya and I wrote a separate detailed material about children – http://vicsrg.ho.ua/stat/child/child.htm – so I won’t write too much here. I’m only stating the main thing: raising children in the village is not only possible, but also in many ways easier and better than in the city, and in no way worse. Let me list the main facts:

0) Our child is growing up (for two and a half years now), without ever getting sick in his life. We simply don’t know what childhood sores are (of which most of our urban acquaintances usually have plenty);

1) The appearance of a newborn child did not radically change anything in our life; except that in the first year I had to take on a little more work than usual – say, in the garden – so that my wife could not be distracted from the child (the addition of November 2011 – the birth of a second newborn child – too);

2) The birth of a child did not change anything in the financial situation; you can raise a child in the village quite calmly, without spending a penny of money on it;

3) Based on observations of my own child, my older niece, and my neighbor’s children, the village is definitely better as an environment for the life and development of a child than the city.

Of course, we are not going to stop at just one child. In a village, the more children, the better. (addition November 2011 – a month ago our second child was born, also a girl).

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17. Autonomous electricity
For a long time I did not have an adequate solution for autonomous electricity supply. It does not exist in full now and will never exist; However, since the summer of 2011, thanks to the invaluable help of my friend Volodya from Rostov, I have a solution that covers the most important needs, and is quite satisfactory for technical and economic reasons.

This solution consists of several key components. This:

solar battery (see photo);
Phocos battery charge-discharge controller (see photo);
regular acid battery (see photo);
12-volt consumers (see photo).
Solar battery Controller and measuring instruments Battery LED strip
Solar battery Controller and measuring instruments Battery LED strip
Battery of semi-handicraft production. Its rated power is 30 W, but the real power, measured in summer in direct sun, is about 20 W; in cloudy weather it produces no more than 1 – 1.5 W. It is mounted on a pole in a sunny position, exposed to the south, at an angle of approximately 50-55 degrees. Other equipment was installed in mock-up mode under a canopy (by winter, all this was moved inside the house).
The photo shows the connection diagram: a wire from the solar battery is connected to the controller (1), from the controller there is a wire to the battery (3), passing through instruments – a voltmeter and an ammeter, which allow you to manually control what is happening on the battery; and from the controller there is a wire (2) to the load. An LED strip was connected as a load (see.
photo), glued to the rafters of a summer canopy, with a power of 4 W, which was completely enough for evening and night lighting under the summer canopy, quite complete lighting, suitable even for reading (another example of an LED assembly is visible in the photo, number 4, it is not connected according to the rules – directly to the battery). A DC/DC converter was also used to charge mobile phones and laptops.
An interesting experiment was also carried out – a netbook (consuming about 20 W in active mode) with the battery removed was powered from a solar battery through a controller and converter. This means that it can be turned on even after the batteries die – if the battery and controller are intact.

The fundamental drawback of this solution, like any other solution for autonomous power supply, is the short life of the batteries, which will not last for decades. To partially solve this problem, “dry” batteries were also stocked – with electrolyte in a separate container, filled in just before use.
This gives a considerable shelf life before use, but unfortunately not forever – and for such batteries it is limited.

Thus, now the issue of home lighting in the absence of electricity has been resolved more or less efficiently. To complete the solution, I also plan to purchase a small inverter that would produce 220 volts and allow us to power “traditional” consumers.
Alas, no powerful consumers, such as tools, can be powered from this equipment (theoretically it is possible, take capacious batteries and a powerful inverter, but in practice it will not make sense, since capacious batteries will take too long to charge with a low-power solar battery).