Guide to retreat on our land

The only dangerous wild life on the land are snakes, scorpians and some types of spiders, and of these, only snakes are of real concern. All the animals on our land are our friends and as such you must take care not to upset or harm them. There are many different types of snakes (we’ve seen seven different species so far) and of these a few kinds are very poisonous, but they have a very reclusive and tranquil attitude, so as long as you remain aware not to step in places where you can’t see the ground, or to step carefully where you have to be in long grass or foliage, your encounters will be peaceful ones.

Hopefully by the time the first person comes here for retreat (when we go to New Zealand in February 2016) the vegetable garden will be able to provide a good portion of the food. But even then a trip to Canela will be required every month or two to purchase out-of-season vegetables, dry goods like rice and pasta, granola, gas, coal and various other things that the land doesn’t provide.

The best way to get to Canela is to walk the path to the bus stop at Vaca Velha in the morning and return by the same route in the afternoon.

• we use river or rain water for washing (fill the 5L bottles from tank or river to keep an in-house supply each day), well or spring for drinking
• using the well
• Maneco’s spring
• the rain water not ok to drink as half the roof is asbestos and is also not clean, it’s just for washing and watering the plants
• in absolute emergency (e.g. the well is dry and Maneco’s spring isn’t working) you can use the river water, but you should boil it first
• o boil water, use the fire not gas as you should do a whole 20L bottle. Best to use one that’s already got at least a couple of litres in it so that the newly added boiling water mixes with cold water to avoid boiling water affecting the plastic. Use the cast iron kettle for boiling water on the fire, the blue kettle is for gas. The cast iron kettle should be washed first as rust builds up inside it.
• collecting rain water for the plants in dry season

Dishes: We have no running water, so washing dishes is similar to how it’s usually done when camping. You have two bowls, one for washing, one for rinsing. When the washing water is too dirty, pour into the compost bucket and switch the bowl positions so the rinsing one is the new washing one, then clean the empty bowl and fill it with fresh water for rinsing. I usually have the washing bowl at the front of the bench and rinsing behind it. The dirty water is poured into a bucket below the bench which has a mesh over the top to catch the pieces of food waste. The dirty water is emptied onto the garden beds and the contents of the mesh emptied into the main compost barrel in the garden along with the small purple compost bin under the bench. The mesh and dirty water bucket should be cleaned every week or so as it can start to smell. Be sure to replace the cover of the compost barrel after emptying the food waste into it so that mice can’t enter it.

We use a dry toilet which means dry material is added after use, our first version was just a bucket with a toilet seat on top of it, and we used saw dust as the material to add. The dry material absorbs all the odour and helps the composting process occur much more efficiently. Our latest version is in a small room made behind the house, we were actually quite content with version one in the forest, but Beth’s parents weren’t too happy so I built the small cubicle room we have now before they came to visit. Also we now use dry grass clippings instead of saw dust which we needed to source from elsewhere. The best grass is short grass that comes from trimming the lawn around the house, raking it into wide shallow piles and leaving them to dry for a couple of hot days before storing in sacks behind the house. Ensure the sacks have wood on top so that mice don’t make nests in them.

• you need to be sensible with power usage, about 200 watt-hours per day is average. In summer you can use twice this, but sometimes in winter you have weeks where all days are quite dark and you will likely have to ration power sometimes. In emergencies there is the petrol generator. You can also charge computer and phone in Maneco’s barn if you need to.
• there are two connection schemes for the panels one for dark days and one for light days. On dark days it’s better that the panels are arranged to give 30v output instead of 20v because when it’s a dark day they’ll drop to about 60% voltage which is too low for a PWM type controller to be able to charge a 12v battery. See our power project for more detail about the components involved.
• the inverter can handle the blender, but not any power tools and certainly not the spinner-dryer, they all need to be used with the generator
• we like to turn the inverter off at night because we don’t use it’s stand-by feature (it has a feature allowing it to go to sleep when no power is being used, but unfortunately it considers less than 8 watts to be “no power usage”, but we’re often only using a single 4 watt LED light bulb). We have two switches on the wall to turn the inverter on or off, one up in the loft and one above the clothes cupboards, this makes it easy to turn the lights on at night if you need to without having to go down out of the loft.

• the generator takes pure petrol, the oil won’t need changing before we’re back. The chainsaw and weed-eater both take 2-stroke mixed with petrol in 1:25 ratio, e.g. 10ml 2T with 250ml petrol, or 15ml with 375ml, use the blue mixing bottle that has total volume indicator up the side and a cap for measuring exact amounts of 2T.
• turn the metal on/off valve to off if the generator will be sitting idle for more than a day or two otherwise petrol can leak over time due to temperature changes etc
• try not to leave the chainsaw or weed-eater with petrol in them if they’ll be idle for more than a week or two (i.e. use them until they run out, don’t just empty them) otherwise the carb will get dirty and they will be very difficult to start.
• in the case of difficulty starting (dirty carb/petrol or very cold) holding the accelerator in when starting can help. Also if you’ve tried to start it for a long time, try both with and without the choke because it can get flooded if trying to start many times with the choke in. If still no luck, leave it for half an hour and try again as it could be too flooded to start and need time for petrol to settle out of the system.
• if using the blade with the weed-eater, it needs sharpening quite often, use the green-handled metal file, no need for sharpening stone. Be sure to sharpen the correct side of the blade and install it the correct way (there’s an arrow on the plastic guard indicating which way the blade spins)
• use the blade for cutting/maintaining paths that have anything at least as strong as ferns, the nylon for keeping the grass around the house short

The only company accessible from our location is Vivo, and usually you need to go up the hill to the northern fence to make phone calls. Internet access is achieved via an antenna on the top of the hill above the northern fence. A cable runs through a PVC pipe from the house up to the top of the hill which contains a power cable and a LAN cable. At the top of the hill is a box containing a Vivo router connected to the antenna. Halfway along between the hill and the house is another box which contains a hub since LAN segments must be shorter than 100 metres (see our rural net connection for details about all this). To use the net turn the power to the router on with the switch to the left of the door. This switch has a red light below it to remind you to turn it off after using the net. The net uses about 10 watts.

• minimise gas usage as you can only bring 5L gas bottles yourself
• the fire needs to be going for a good hour to be really ready for cooking
• try and brings some newspaper rubbish back with you whenever you visit canela as this will make fire starting a lot easier
• keep some wood piled up on the back of the fire to dry for the following day – keep an eye on it to make sure its not burning, turn it over when it gets to hot. Don’t go to sleep with the wood drying on the stove top if the fire is going, put the wood on the floor under the stove.
• empty the ash into the metal bucket, and when full pour onto the vege patch, or into the dry toilet if any odour is noticed (only happens when no short dry grass is available)
• the oven is not very efficient, so for things like bread we make flat bread in the big frying pan

Many people in Brazil are from the north and don’t really understand what cold is, in winter you will need to be prepared for sub-zero temperatures in the mornings with thick frost and sometimes snow. This is usually starts in May and can last a couple of months or more.

• the veges need to be covered in the evening with the clear plastic tarps over the hoops that are on all the garden beds to be protected from morning frost
• thermal top and pants will make it a lot easier to dress warmly, especially at night, wool gloves and scarf, long thick woolen socks and a tight woolen hat which covers the ears is very good for nights and mornings – all these are readily available in canela
• put a pile of coal on top of the embers of the fire before you go to bed, this will burn slowly throughout most of the night and also keep the fire warm enough to start easily in the morning
• wash the dishes the night before when it’s warm as the water will be painfully cold in the morning, sometimes iced over if the fire didn’t last long enough
• the mornings are the hardest time to warm up, if you’re shivering too much go for a walk to the top of the big hill or chop some wood for half an hour

In very rainy times such as November the river can rise up very fast – sometimes more than two metres in less than an hour. When this happens the water from the river comes very close to the house and sometimes even goes over some of the vegetable garden. It can be quite scary, but bare in mind that if it were to get as far as the house the current at that point would be weak and the house would be ok. Also although you get the sense of being trapped, the path through the forest into the field where you can get to the road can get up to about a metre of water but has no areas of strong current so you can actually get out ok. Avoid going near the main area where the river usually flows though in these times as the current is very strong there. To the right is a picture of Beth walking along the road through the forest from the field to the house with the water quite high.