dacha project

March 18, 2011

Spring 2011 Planting Calendar

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Cabbages in the Dacha garden - 2010

note- this calendar is mostly thanks to Skippy’s Garden Calendar (customizable), with a number of rarer additions, such as orach and butterfly weed (thanks Sean Dembrosky!). The customizable calendar will ask you for your last frost date, which might vary from ours here in zone 5b. You won’t need to know your zone, but will have to give your last frost date. So get some seeds and get to planting! Suggestions for when to grow and how/when to grow it are encouraged to be posted in the comment section of this blog or on our Facebook page!!

Vegetable Garden (based on a last frost date 6/1/2011)

3/16 – Sow onion, celery and celeriac seeds indoors. Also- lavender & butterfly weed (indoors)

3/30- Sow broccoli, kale, cool weather lettuce, escarole, eggplant and thyme seeds indoors. Also- orach and spinach (indoors)

4/6- Sow pepper seeds indoors (keep temp above 78*F for germination). Also sow indoors marigold, parsley, basil and beet seeds. Also- kholrabi

4/18- Start watching the soil for the first direct planting! As soon as the soil can be worked its time to sow peas, fava beans, arugula and radish directly in the garden. (Note: In warmer climates, where the soil doesn’t freeze, this tool may not give an appropriate pea planting date.

February 4, 2011

Sustainable Tompkins Neighborhood Mini-Grant Award 2011

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Lister Engine

Many thanks to Sustainable Tompkins for awarding us a Neighborhood Mini-Grant for the second year in a row! This year the $750 award will fund the conversion of our Lister generator from running on diesel to running on waste cooking oil and bio-diesel. Currently, the Lister provides us with electricity and hot water. It also provides the air pressure to pump water from the well into our cold water storage. In the the near future… More

November 16, 2010

Friendlies Visit Dacha Project, take Photo + Blog Us.

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Last month our friends Adaobi and Lucy visited the dacha and took this lovely photo. Adaobi also blogged about her experience on her sustainable urban design blog Apt86.

Thanks A + L for stopping by and sharing with the world,

-LSF

November 12, 2010

Years Ago (a new segment): The First Video of the Dacha Project!!

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Hey Kids, as I prepare something called a portfolio for art shul, I keep coming across old treasures (completely unfit for art shul portfolio of course), and here is one I’d like to share with all y’all dedicated to reading our blog (we love you a lot btw).

Watch this video of heartfelt laughter + spring green innocence showing our first time on our land.

After if you have any suggestions for a Years Ago segment, or even want to write a quick Years Ago entry for our blog let us know. I’m thinking anything from Years Ago We Heated Food on the Dashboards of Cars to Years Ago We Got Lost in Your Woods and Ended Up Miles Away and were Scared.

So, if you’ve visited and/or kept up with us over the years you too can submit an idea and/or blog entry. It’d make us happy hippies (well I’m not exactly hippy, but that’s another story).

peacers,
LSF

October 22, 2010

Slideshow: This Fall- It Was So Glorious I Couldn’t See

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Here’s a slideshow of The Dacha Project this fall. Enjoy! Note- Play with music for increased joy.

July 26, 2010

Contemporary Prairie Schooner aka Gypsy Wagon Visits Dacha + Makes Us Happy

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Friends Libby & Tristan built a gypsy wagon, or as they’re calling it a Contemporary Prairie Schooner, on a trailer bed and towed it from New Mexico- The Land of Enchantment– to the Northeast- The Land of Abstraction behind their Hyundai. It’s now their very own little house!

July 22, 2010

Art Installation of the Month: The Gates at Dacha Project

LeaLSF buildings, Cultura: art, film, writing, multi-media, DIY, multimedia, Uncategorized alternative building, building, community, construction, dacha project, DIY, footers, foundation, green nettle dacha, homestead, intentional community, photos, sustainability, the Gates at Central Park, tompkins county, upstate ny 1 Comment

The copycat art installation of the Gates serves two purposes.

The Dacha Project recreates The Gates at Central Park in an attempt to bring big city culture to the stix. You can see a visitor, Joe, enjoying the site and the magnificence.

Also we discovered that The Gates- luckily- serve a further function of marking where our footers will be dug. Thx Gates.

Also enjoy this photo of Gals Digging Footers, to prove that we don’t just make art installations but also dig footers. Thx Gals.

Gals digging footers for the addition.

-Lea LSF

July 22, 2010

Progress Report: West Side with Footers for the Addition

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North side of the main house with footers and the start of foam for the addition.

If you check for the previous photo of the week you will see almost the same view, but some things have changed. For one the wing wall has been knocked out to make room for the addition. The berm, which is the earth piled up behind the wing wall, has been removed. The area next o the house has been leveled, and graveled. The back and side footers have been poured, and what we see Danila and Joe doing in the corner is stacking block. The pipes you see by Danila and Joe are for septic. They are currently working right by the bathroom. I will try to remember that one day when I’m brushing my teeth in that bathroom with some herby toothpaste or something else that makes brushing teeth more fun. Yey.

The foam on the ground is for insulation, and eventually the entire area will be covered with it.

The front footer has not been poured with the rest, b/c it will be poured with the slab (floor) itself to ensure extra strength. The foam on the side of the building is to insulate the wall where bermed earth used to fulfill that function.

More updates soon!

-Lea LSF

April 23, 2010

It’s Alive!!!! (Well… it should be in 6-9 months anyway)

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On April 10th the Dacha hosted it’s very first workshop led by Danila on inoculating logs with oyster mushrooms! The event proved what a group of 15-20 novice naturalists can accomplish with a little knowledge, 750 spore infested dowels, and several drill guns. Although many of the attendees were new to mushroom growing, almost thirty logs were successfully inoculated.

To maximize efficiency (and to let everyone try their hand at each aspect of the process) the students formed a loose assembly line: drilling holes on all sides of each log (the hardcore part), whack-a-moling the dowels into the holes (the fun, anger management, part), and painting the holes with wax to keep them moist (the messy part).

To witness this feet of fungal mastery, check out the little wooded patch at the dacha, where the logs are casually leaning in a patch of dappled sunlight preparing to pop little white oyster heads.

-Torikins

Striking a pose with your inoculated mushroom log is said to encourage mycelium growth.

April 20, 2010

Checkhov’s Dogs: A Documentary about Russians, Mushrooms and the Diaspora

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The Dacha Project is in Chekhov’s Dogs, a very special documentary (in progress) about Russians, Mushrooms and the Diaspora!

Katya Gorker, a Russian-American filmmaker from Philadelphia is “tracing the cultural tradition of Mushroom foraging in Russia and the diaspora.” (all music by Animal Hospital).

While far from completion, with a trip to Russia still on the horizon, Katyachka has put together a short excerpt from the footage shot at the Dacha Project and somewhere else in NY (a place clearly special as far as the footage tells us).

Check it out, and let us know what you think!