Life off the grid in the SW Texas desert. An experiment in sustainable living. NUMBERS AT THE END OF EACH BLOG POST: temp at 8PM,high temp,low temp,rainfall,wind conditions(CalmBreezyWindyGusty). YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/c/TheFieldLab Daily live streams at https://www.youtube.com/thefieldlab/live
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
a day in alpine
Stocked up once again....made a run to Johnson Feed for some huge feed tubs they sell for 6 bucks - got 10 this trip to be recycled into planters for the greenhouse. Grabbed some potting mix at Alco on sale to use in various blends with my own soil and compost mixes to get some plants started soon. Hoping to ween myself from the grocery store at some point this year. There are two food stores in Alpine...both called Porters Thriftway. The one I shop at used to be called the Food Basket - some locals called it the Food Casket. Gassed up at Stripes then hit Subway - a half step up the food chain from MacDonald's.
My buddy Greg Hillje sent me these images he did of the greenhouse, experimenting with Google Sketchup for the first time. Nice job - something about a computer rendering makes this look "official".
58,76,31,0,C
interesting....there's "self sufficient" and there's "ingrained"....even in Alpine there's a choice....not a lot mind you, but a choice.
ReplyDeletelooks like it was a productive excursion - guessing that wasn't Jared at the sandwich shop...
ReplyDeletesubway
hope the green thumbs kick in - supposedly Gilberto Luna had success with beans & melons
Your vision, your dream.
ReplyDeleteYou have so much to be proud of.
After starting at the beginning, I'm half-way through 2009 of your blog archive--your experiences and the reader comments have been so interesting, I have learned a lot so far and it's been very entertaining.
Gas prices? I feel your pain.
Seems like there should be a car stuck in the road a couple miles away in the background somewhere of the google sketchup. ;)
ReplyDeleteOtherwise, very cool.
You're hard work has been a huge motive for me to get more done. Thanks so much for doing this blog.
In the sketchup, where is benita and the junk? It looks like a sterile museum rendering, not Terlingua enuf, you know what I mean.
ReplyDeleteYou know you're in Texas when there's stacks of cases of Big Red.
ReplyDeleteTest your commercial compost before planting in it. Plant some bean or pea seeds in small pots of pure compost & see if they germinate. Many commercial composts are contaminateed.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteGreat SketchUp stuff John. How would someone get in touch with Greg Hillje to do a SketchUp model of a small house?
ReplyDeleteGlad you liked it, Paisano. Shoot me an email at delgrego@yahoo.com and I'll see if I can help you out.
ReplyDelete-G
To soften your fuel price pain: Dutch petrol price topped at 1.80 euros/liter today, or about 9.07 $/gallon. And there are still daily traffic jams in most of my country...
ReplyDeletedelgrego, outstanding sketchup! It really is an elegant structure - about the best exemplar of 'cargotecture' I've seen, and that includes a lot of container bldgs. done by licensed pros.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of which, it's too bad they don't have an architecture program at Sul Ross (closest one to TFL is probably UT San Antonio?) because John Wells clearly missed his calling. Well, come to think of it, all he really missed is the diploma on the wall & having to pay AIA dues every year, because he seems to be doing just fine without it.
unknown: YIKES! But that's why they have so many bicycles in the Netherlands. That's where I learned to ride one as a kid, in fact, while living in Scheveningen. <---Oops, I think I just broke blogger's spellcheck with that one. ;-)
Nice stuff, John. The Google Sketchup rendering of the greenhouse does, indeed, look official. Maybe it was a similar image, in your head, which guided you these past few years.
ReplyDeleteremmij, not many would know the reference to Gilberto Luna. For those who have never visited Big Bend National Park, Gilberto Luna was a Mexican farmer who lived in what later became Big Bend National Park. The area is near Terlingua Abaja, or Lower Terlingua, a former agricultural area near where Terlingua Creek joins the Rio Grande. His little mud and wattle 'jacal' (house) is still standing by the side of Old Maverick Road in the Park. We usually visit it every year, and take yet another picture of it.