The Dacha Project

Our Blog Has Moved!

Danila — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 13:43:10 +0000

Update your RSS feeders and links! The Dacha Project blog has moved!

From now on, we will be posting on our own domain, at http://www.dachaproject.com/blog.

We’re super excited about the move, because it gives us more flexibility and control of the site. And we’re starting to need it as our traffic starts to increase. As of June 23rd, 2010, we have had almost 9,000 unique visits, and the monthly numbers are only growing.

So update your links and tell your friends, the Dacha blog has a new home!

A Rustic Barn Board Ceiling for the Cottage

Danila — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 14:59:08 +0000

After mulling for weeks about how to finish the ceiling on our straw bale cottage , we still couldn’t decide what to do. Should we go with drywall, the (cheap) material of choice for nearly everything built these days? Or tongue and groove wood, which would definitely look amazing, but would cost at least 4-5 times more.

As we wrestled back and forth, an opportunity fell into our lap. While hunting for a bathroom vanity at the Finger Lakes Reuse Center, we noticed that they had reclaimed barn boards for sale at a very reasonable price. Before long, we were driving back to the Dacha with a truckload of miscellaneous planks, most of them oak from 60-80 years ago. The boards were a dull gray on the outside, with a thick layer of dust and the occasional worm hole. They looked dingy, about what you’d expect for a plank that’s been in use inside a barn for the larger part of a century. You could still see deep saw marks from now-antiquated milling equipment.

These planks were rough-cut at a time before standardized lumber, and this presented a challenge not unlike a complicated math problem: How do you arrange 70 boards, with widths ranging from 4 to 12 inches, to fit an area that isn’t perfectly square? We ended up grouping the boards by width, then cutting them into stretches of 9 feet. This way, we could have spans of equal length and variable width, and could put skinny boards next to wide boards with minimal gaps.

Next came the longest part of the project: the refinishing. Using only a belt sander and a little muscle, we spent several full days of work sanding down the equivalent of 144 square feet of wood. As we dug deeper into the reclaimed barn boards, we started to see their true and beautiful character. The tightly knit and warbled grain began to emerge from the depths, like a hidden jewel under a thin layer of rubbish. Once the boards were sanded, we covered them with three thin coats of polyurethane, and got ready to throw them up on the ceiling.

To give our boards something to grip to, we added thin purlins on the underside of our trusses. And finally, after a couple weeks of preparation, we began the final step of settling our reclaimed boards into their new home. Using a pneumatic brad nailer and a little bit of patience, we arranged the boards and tacked them onto our purlins.

As you can see, the result is a warm, glowing ceiling. The rustic stylings of the rough cut boards meld into the smoothed, uneven edges of the plastered walls. The dark ridges of the saw-blade kerfs serve as a reminder that we’re looking at an object with a history. And best of all, we saved a couple trees in the process!

-Danila

From Straw Cottage to Straw Hat

russiandollfigure — Tue, 04 May 2010 17:55:53 +0000

So here we are again. The summer is giving in to the spring and we are finding ourselves with some sunshine on our backs and tools in our belts. We can shed the insulated jumpers and slip into something a little bit more comfortable like a straw hat.

On the sill

We can take breaks outside.

Tori sitting amongst the infused mushroom logs

On one of these sunny days, our glass wine bottles cast a decorative light around the “sunflower window.”

Sunflower Window

Sometimes we get down to business and play wack-a-mole.

Wack-a-mole

But seriously, the dacha crew whistles while it works and is taking advantage of this weather to prepare for another productive season.

~Russiandollfigure

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

torikins — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 13:43:48 +0000

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.

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

LeaLSF — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 17:38:05 +0000

The Dacha Project is in Checkhov’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!

Photo of Week: West Side

LeaLSF — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 02:05:10 +0000

West side of house, notice the retaining wall and the berm coming up to it.

Recycled Wine Bottles Add Good Churchy Feeling

LeaLSF — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 22:59:51 +0000

Visitors beware when you step inside the Dacha Haus you’ll see colors and glowing orbs. While not quite the illumination of the divine, all hail the awesome sun as it catches the diffused color of all-dry-now wine bottles.

Yes, after seeing many pictures on homestead blogs and in straw bale building books, we have joined a movement of people using recycled wine bottle as passive energy light fixtures.

We’re just at the beginning stages of this, but these photos are cool! For more visit my flickr Dacha Project set.

-LSF

Marina plugs up wine bottle-sized holes in the oh-no-zone layer (our insulation) with wine bottles.

Wine bottles! Cut in half, with the bottoms of each bottle tuct taped together and fitted into a wall.

Earth-bermed, passive solar Common House .vs. Snowmaggedon 2010

LeaLSF — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 19:18:28 +0000

Before we forget how awesome the Dacha Haus Part One preformed in Winter ’10 here are a couple of photos of February. They are also to remind this summer’s building crew that as we build Dacha Haus Part Deux a winter in the Southern Tier is no joke, but that we got it on lock down!

-LSF

All photos by Joe Fisher.

The key to solar passive is full frontage windows facing the south. They are placed at such a height that the house gets direct sunlight in the winter and indirect sunlight in the summer. This technique works around the sun's busy but well-established and much preferred primordial travel schedule- that is low in the sky during winter and high as a pie in the summer. The placement and size of the windows optimizes for maximum comfort, while minimizing energy use.

Danila and I are in shock that the Common House is so warm (see below) when outside it is like 18 degrees F! The snowbank behind us is caused by snowmagedden falling off the hell roof and onto the front field. I'm just back from Mexico, and feeling like this is warm enuf but where's the coconut tree?

The thermostat is reading in the mid-sixties F. The wood stove has not been fired up at all this day and the Common House is not even fully insulated. Way to go passive solar design, bermed in the back! Fuzzy in the background are Lily and I. She is drinking snow she's so warm, and I am pointing to a mythical land-bird beast that everyone thought was extinct, but that in fact only live on the Dacha Project. Sike?

Mushroom Log Workshop at the Dacha!

Danila — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 17:13:02 +0000

Join us for a hands-on workshop this Saturday, April 10th, as we learn about mushroom cultivation on logs. We will be inoculating poplar logs with oyster mushroom spawn, using a method that is sort of like a game of Whack-a-mole.

We’re certainly not experts (yet), but we’ve been wanting to try this for a while, and it should be a fun learning experience. All the necessary tools and materials will be provided.

This workshop is free! If you want to take an inoculated log home with you, there’s a suggested donation of $5-10 to cover material costs.

The event is expected to run from 1-4pm on Saturday, April 10th, 2010. To RSVP or get directions, email Danila – dapasov (at) gmail (dot) com.

Old Barn Boards Meet Restoration

LeaLSF — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 19:49:17 +0000

We purchased some old for-cheap barn boards from the Fingerlakes Reuse Center to throw up as the ceiling of the straw bale cottage we built. Check out what some sanding and polyurethane and/or linseed oiling can do to a board. Will post photos of completed ceiling when that happens.

-LSF