Mainly this has been organizing time and getting the girls places on schedule.  Doing all the gap filling, with Debbie doing some, too.  Teacher meetings and various obligations.  Mobile broadband and a flexible schedule are my savior here.  Even then, I ended up taking about 25% of my time over three weeks as PTO (paid time off), which is the abbreviation for “vacation”.  Things are finally humming a bit more, weathering the shifts around us, and I am able to put my nose to other grindstones.

As we move in to the fall at the urban farm, we’re finding ourselves taking the hard 2-year look at what we’ve done, what we planned to do, and where we think we can do.  It’s pretty clear that farming 50′x50′ (15mx15m) can only make a handful of cash, perhaps 20% of the mortgage if we really work the angles.  Downtown restaurants, even in times of flush cash and customers, can’t support a micro-intensive urban farm that charges 4x what other local organic providers do.  It comes down to the amount earnable per square foot, and how much that square foot costs us.

So we’re looking for other ideas and trying to turn our bruised-apple experience in to some applesauce.  The value of house sales dropping like a rock around here hasn’t helped; even traditionally expensive Santa Cruz is down in the market.  It makes the whole business-side of the equation hard to evaluate.

In the end, whatever we can do to foster community and create sustainability in our lives here is a good thing.  Lessons learned along the way are digested, composted, and turned in to something new.

For those who’ve never heard of building automation systems (BAS) and the smart grid, you have my pardon to take a few minutes to go read up.  In essence, BAS controls lighting, heating/cooling, and power.  In some buildings, especially modern (last decade+) construction or recent reconstruction, there are smart(er) devices right down to individual fans or perhaps lights.  In some cases these end-devices have various embedded sensors that report data or have localized smartness.  For example, the heater, the boiler, and all the thermometers share data.  From a building management standpoint, there is a measurable savings.

Where these end-point systems are generally interoperable (they use the term Open Systems), the software that interacts with the devices, providing information and control to humans, is closed and proprietary.  There are also many end-point devices that only interact with a proprietary interface.

The problem of the controlling software is a chance for open source to significantly change the game.  Money and energy savings, just to start.  A way to improve the quality of life for people around the world.  It is even more interesting because of how potentially useful the existing on-site hardware is.  There are many end-point installations that can be controlled with open source-based BAS software.

The power grid is, in essence, a massive network already connecting houses and commercial buildings.  It is also fairly ubiquitous:  “You have an existing network in your house,” someone said to me, “It’s the bus bar in your electric box!”

Kent Hoskin, from Robinson Solutions, told me, “If there is one thing you take away to share, it is this – there is a new computer to program.”  This includes the 4 million+ commercial buildings in the US alone.

One project is Open Lynx, which a lead developer demonstrated before I spoke on the open source round table.  In the demo, we looked at monitoring from an installation in Washington, DC.  In a larger demo on the expo show floor the day after I was there, they were going to show control beyond monitoring.

The round table was enlightening for all of us.  Many people were engaged when I spoke, taking notes, nodding their heads, and asking questions afterward.  It was great to be able to bring a bit of “been there, done that” experience and mentoring.  At the same time, I learned a lot about the history and potential future of BAS, and the 1.5 hour conversation I had afterward with some attendees was one of the best I’ve had in a while.  I’ve made some good contacts and am looking at ways that I can help get together other like minded people, which is one reason for this article.

A smarter local grid gives an owner a way to smooth out some of the costs.  For example, a company might have three buildings at a large site, each on a separate connection to the power utility.  One of the buildings might have an unusual spike of power draw on Sunday mornings that sets the rate for the week, while another building has an unusually low power draw at the same time.  A smart system could smooth out, drawing power from one building to the other to compensate, and keep the rate set lower to a level closer to the actual power used throughout the week.  For various reasons, the disconnected systems situation is more common than not.

In further research during my travels home, I learned a bit more about where the mentality of this industry is.  For example, they have ISO standard networking protocols (BACnet) and there some a rejection, scoffing, or eschewing of IP as a protocol.  In one article, Sustainable Design of Building Automation Systems, the author makes a classic case where the best answer is “open source and open standards”, yet doesn’t actually draw that conclusion:

In conclusion, a sustainable BAS is achievable with proper initial design considerations that include the use of open protocols, standardized network management tools and open access to product and training.

It reminded me of the way IT uses TCO as a way to calculate costs and savings when considering open source and open standards, but stops short of adopting the full open source methodology.  “Oh, let me take these open standards as given to me and swallow them without ever thinking I can affect the future here.”  I was happy that at least the people who attended the round table got a dose of how and why participation in open source is key to getting maximum potential and exponential value.

(Post updated to fix name and URL of Robinson Solutions.)

So far, it is the Aruacanas who are laying the most, with multiple large, green shelled eggs. When everyone slows down from feasting on first eggs, we get some pictures to post.

Under the neighbor’s apricot and nectarine trees is a cool, shady spot.  The chicks daytime box was there for a few days.  This is a refrigerator box recut and folded to create an open topped box 24 in./71 cm tall, with chicken wire stretched over the top and two boards providing shade.  The chicks used this outside, with an open water and feed, for about the first week.  This is where the girl crew found the chicks, and it became a sweet spot to just hang out with the chicks.  They crawled on heads, stood in pairs on shoulders, rode around on fingers, and even sat on a few branches.

At that point, we’d had the chicks for two weeks and two days, so they are around five weeks old.  Their size is a good handful, and in fact is about the same area as my elongated fist.  When we get the farm pictures gallery up later, I’ll post some of the pictures from this party.

We found the last place w baby chicks of and 4 girls are on the go. Mo Blog Later.

… which was written on the go, while I was on a last house errand after we strapped my two-year-old neighbor in the back with my six-year-old and her eight-year-old friend.  In the way back of the Volvo wagon was my ten-year-old, in the backward facing jump seat.  Four girls and me in search of the last feed and seed store with baby chicks.

Apparently a subtly growing trend of city folk getting a few egg layers for the backyard has turned into a “chick rush” this year.  We were all set to go at the beginning of April, in fact, we were gearing up for a bike ride to the feed store to choose our chicks, when my wise wife thought to call the store to assure the chicks had indeed arrived.

“They’ve sold out?” she said.  “In two hours?!?”

We called a few near-by feed stores, and the story was the same.  There had been a run on the chicks, with everyone selling out in record time, except for one store that was far away (car trip required).  We confirmed that a near-by store would have twenty varieties of baby chicks on Thursday of this week, 17 April.  We planned to head up there about 9 to 9:30 in the morning.  When we couldn’t make that time window, we decided to skip that morning and check the next morning to see what was left.  We called Friday morning and they had sold out in the first hour of Thursday, with a line of people outside of the store since 7:30, half an hour before the feed store opened. *smacks head*

Determined to not let this stop us, and also to keep our neighbor from rightly telling us we should have gone with the boring old layers from the few weeks before, my wife diligently called all the feed stores, chatting with a few proprietors.  Store after store had the same story as the first one.  A big, county-wide run on baby chicks.  Everyone had at least a two week wait until they thought they could get more, and even some of them had heard from hatcheries that they were out and back-ordered.  (This urban poultry thing is beginning to feel like a zeitgeist.)

Finally, one feed store, literally at the furthest end of the county, had three varieties left and enough to satisfy us.  Myself and the four-girl team began pulling ourselves together for the journey.

The first challenge came when we realized we would need to put one of the girls in the jump seat in the back, and everyone wanted a turn.  That’s fine, but we had three girls wanting and only two legs to the trip.  The girls kept coming at the problem by trying to negotiate who should give-up a ride in favor of the other two girls.  Well, to be fair, this was my two daughters, the sisters, doing that negotiation.  Their friend, it turns out, wasn’t really happy with the options; she wanted to keep things fair and equal.  I helped them see how.  We figured that we had a sixty mile round trip, so I set the trip meter and at the 20 mile mark (or thereabouts) we stopped so two girls could switch.  The one who was in the back at that point also climbed in the back for the return trip.  At the 10 mile mark back from the feed store, we swapped the third girl in to the rear for the last 20 miles.  Sadly, this was my seven-next-Saturday daughter who got lonely in the way back and wished she were in the middle with the bigger girls.  Tamara-who-is-two was blissful about the whole thing, happy to be along on a big girl adventure.

At the feed store, “Aromas Feed & Ranch Supply”, we discovered that in the intervening hours, one entire variety had been purchased.  We ran into a woman we know from here in Santa Cruz, she was picking up three of that variety.  I promptly forgot that variety’s name, since I wasn’t getting any.  We then got to choose out our mini-flock, picking thirteen total from amongst the buff Orpingtons and Araucanas.  Ironically, this one feed store, which happens to be a hundred meters over the line in to Monterey County, had these chicks for the last couple of weeks.  At two weeks old already, they are double the size of newly hatched chicks, and flapping and flying around.  The girls don’t realized they missed the super-fuzzy, super-small stage.  We’ll likely have to get more in a few years, so they’ll enjoy that stage then.

Last night we hooked up the heat lamp over the box, loaded in food and water, and set all this up in our neighbor’s house.  Both families are sharing the flock across the two properties, and they don’t have a live-in cat the way we do.

The whole adventure illustrates one of the small parts of homeschooling that I love.  We were able to pick up and go in the middle of the week for this adventure.  In the process, I could squeeze in a math puzzle (how to split the jump seat ride amongst three), geology (always lots of that to observe around here), and sociology and science (farm management, livestock, chicken lifecycle.)  The friend, Isabel, who came along was unexpected, but present for the same reason.  Her Moms had an NVC event at Cabrillo College, and rather than be bored, Isabel wanted to play with someone.  They called us to see if we were available, and an hour+ later Isabel was joining us on the chick adventure.  Later in the afternoon, we dropped the chicks back at home, and I took all three of the big girls up to the campus where they all attend a City Schools homeschool program (AFE) for rehearsals of their California history play.

Last September we closed a deal to be tenants-in-common on the property next door, with the part under our control approximately 2350 square feet/218 square meters of raw backyard to garden. Since then, it has been work preparing the land, planting, weeding, controlling pests, and making sure we can pay the additional mortgage. In other words, the same plight of all farmers, large or small, for millennia.

This is all part of a multi-year effort toward self-sufficiency. Is that a strange thing to be doing from the middle of an urban center? Typically one thinks of self-sufficiency as something you save for living remotely from people, where it is you, the steel, and the land. Here we have solar, but it is tied to the grid — when there is a power outage, we lose power, too. Our water and sewer are hooked into city services, we pay the taxes and bills to prove it.

On the other hand, the city can bring me fresh water and remove my black water more efficiently here with all these other people to share the costs and benefits, as we all gain from living close to other people. We walk downtown all the time, bicycle around everywhere, and fill our gas-guzzling Volvo station wagon once a month or less. Our power doesn’t go out here nearly as much as it would in the country, and we enjoy the opportunity to light a candle and be in the quiet.

Self-sufficiency is more than a way to save money. It is recognizing that we cannot live apart from our essential humanity, which is very agrarian. There is a natural inclination to be a steward of the land, rewarded in the literal fruits and vegetables of our labor.

At the same time as increasing our own self-sufficiency, we are experiencing a monumental increase in community around here. First is being such close neighbors with a family where we are all new to each other. Still learning our way around our relationship, it is forming as we work through the interesting, challenging, PITA issues of owning land together. Maybe it’s to our advantage that we weren’t friends first, instead we’ll be friends despite the challenges.

Along with Micah, Akiko, and Tamara (“I’m two ana haf”) come their myriad friends and their housemate and her friends. Micah and Akiko are well-connected activists, and we increasingly know disparate people in common. Then we added Melinda living in our studio apartment, who is a great addition to the family and thankfully offsets more of that new-land mortgage. Soon we’ll add a shared flock of hens. Much more musical around here.

This image shows where the new gardening space is. Our house with garden is in the green box, and the new land is in the blue box. Our neighbors/partners are in the red box.

Finally, some garbage at the end for the permanent record …

To get this nonsense off my chest, there are two reasons I’ve been resisting writing about micro-farm life. One is because I don’t have an audience. The parts of this blog that have to do with open source are hooked in to a well-watched feed, the Fedora planet. But that is just a part of this blog; I don’t send all my work there, and that is by design. If I want to write about homeschooling or farming, I’ll do it here and not make all the rest of the open source software world read it without wanting to. If they want to, they can come read more here; otherwise, why increase the noise and make people want to read me less?

The other reason is I want my wife, Debora, to start writing on her urban farm experience, and I guess I was saving the fire for her. Obvious nonsense, not like we can’t both write about the same things, same events. Anyway, them were continued excuses as to why I don’t get out farther on the writer’s tightrope. Meanwhile, she is going to start writing from her domain, and we’ll see if she does write about urban farming.