Kazagashira Niwa

Here the latest pictures. Almost ready, still a bit plastering to do. It is functioning sweetly. Good draft. No smoke coming back whatsoever, also not in the beginning. It doesn't burn super super clean though. I think because of the smaller system size, it doesn't reach high enough temperatures for a total burn. Every time I add some wood it produces a bit of smoke until it is properly on fire. Smoke is barely visible outside.  The total mass became about 7000 kg. And it does keep warm for a couple of days, after a 4 hour burn. Still I need to see the performance when the winter kicks in completely.

Update on the stove: Design has been made simpler, and came back into the mainframe of the house. Since there are so many burnable elements in close proximity of the planned stove, I had to make some compromises. Taking as much wood away as possible. Rebuilding three walls with cob. making a shield to protect the paper doors that are next to the stove. Adding air ducts to take away potential heat from the support beams. And in the end I could only fit in a system 15 cm in diameter instead of the 20 cm that would be stronger.

An exciting new project! We are going to build a rocket mass heater:  But it is super hard to make the right design since our house is made all of paper and straw and is designed in such a way that there is actually no place for it. After 2 years of thinking about it, I am now exploring the possibilities to build the stove actually outside the mainframe of the house in a cob-build extension, away from anything combustible, and then try to bring some heat back into the house through a small heated platform. Not ideal, but last winter had been the coldest in my life, so the motivation to do something is great.    First: breaking down a rotten shed in the back. Then preparing a concrete base for a storage container. Next deconstruct and reconstruct the storage container on the place of the shed.    Now I have a location for a clay pit    And rubble for the base and old but dry wood for the future stove.

Last year I brought water kefir grains from Belgium. However I failed to make them work properly here in Japan. They became vinegar somehow. Buying new ones didn't work out either. They were sent through mail, but were too bad to use. Still looking for something to give me a source of healthy gut organisms, I am trying Kombucha now. They proof to be a lot more resilient than the water kefir. And also less demanding. Down part are that they are slower  to produce and that they taste (supposed to be) like vinegar. And they look like jellyfish or aliens in a jar with tea. Still I can appreciate them. Then I found milk kefir powder to make yoghurt at home. Since I don't take milk very well, I am trying with soymilk now. It seems to work... but I would really like to find a more tastier kind of milk to make kefir with.

It is not so much yet, and most of the times the vegetables don't look perfect, but at least something edible is coming from our garden every day. And tasty also. These pictures show some of the successful ones. Aubergines are doing great! We eat them almost every day. Okra's every other day. They grow twice the size in half the time, and look a lot healthier where I placed them over the dug in bokashi / EM (effective micro organisms that ferment your kitchen scraps) The carrots didn't do so well. Tomato's still keep coming, not enough though to take the effort to dry them.

Many tomato plants. Because the first batch failed to sprout I mixed the earth with the seeds with the soil for the cucumbers while also seeding another batch. (mistake?) Then they started to sprout suddenly from the soil everywhere. So I potted them and tried to find a good place for each of them. I think sun dried tomatoes might be a possibility later on this Summer.