(Hunter)

We have decided to try traveling south next summer to visit friends and relatives, so we're starting right now to find someone to "homestead sit." This means placing our lives in someone else's hands: They will tend the garden that provides so much of our food, care for our two cats, who are cherished members of our family, and use the various systems on which we depend for survival and quality of life: water catchment, wind generators, solar panels, the wood pile. I'm not at all comfortable with this! As a result, I've been thinking a lot about "The Rules" for living here. Whoever we find to live in and care for our cabin and property will have plenty of written instructions for doing so!

Since many people express curiosity about our life here, as we accumulate these sets of rules, we'll post some of them here as examples of how our lifestyle operates.

We've already written a few sets of rules. One of our first efforts merely transcribed the step-by-step process for turning the water systems on and off. When we bought the place, these hand-written rules were decoupaged to a piece of plywood. We copied them, edited a bit to update and reassign some names and terms, laminated the result, and stuck it under the sink. Since we moved here shortly after that, we stopped turning the water system off except on rare occasions, so it hasn't been needed much since. But, when and if we do, it will be there.

Last summer we had several family visits, so we wrote instruction sheets for the guest house wood stove and our two "little houses," the outhouses near each of the cabins. The main cabin's little house uses a composting system, which requires a little bit of guidance for use.

Both outhouses were pit-style when we moved here. The main house's hole was nearly filled, so we began laying contingency plans immediately. We brought a composting toilet with us. We purchased it several years ago, back when we planned to build a 40-foot live aboard sailboat. This will be an excellent toilet for our homestead . . . someday.

Briefly, a composting toilet collects waste in a container full of fine organic material such as peat moss, where it is dried and mixed until it becomes odorless compost. This is not garden-variety compost, as it contains human pathogens that are dangerous, but it's fine for non-edible flowers, ornamental trees, and other plants that don't produce food. We also understand that if it can sit for a specified period of several years it will, eventually, become safe for garden compost.

For optimum operation (and, it's a toilet! Optimum operation is essential!) this composter requires a warm room, and the toilet must be vented out the roof. If you've seen our outhouses, you know they're pretty much out of the running as candidates to house this machine. The boathouse outhouse's walls are only about three feet high, after which it becomes an open booth (which allows for great views, by the way—of the mountains, not the occupant!). The main outhouse is enclosed, but there are gaps between the planks, and the door is half-Dutch, meaning the bottom half opens . . . but there's no top half. The door, I must point out, is a large, metal reflective sign that reads: "Danger: Explosives!" The people who built the homestead have a delightful sense of humor. This building will need to be insulated considerably before it can effectively house the composting toilet.

In the meantime, we've adopted an ingenious plumbing-free toilet system that we learned about on the Duckworks Magazine Website. Rob Rohde-Szudy's excellent article describes an inexpensive bucket-based composting toilet method that works extremely well. We built a box seat in our little house with an appropriately-sized hole covered by a regular toilet seat. The box lid lifts away so that buckets can be inserted or removed. We gather forest duff in 5-gallon buckets, primarily from the middens the local squirrels create from shucked spruce cones, and stack them under the eaves behind the little house. We bring them inside one at a time, and use the contents by the metal scoopful as needed. When a bucket is full, it's emptied at a secret, secure location where it continues to compost until it will, eventually, become soil for flowers or the forest floor. Occasionally, to move things along, we'll stir in a couple of buckets of spent mash from the local brewery, a composting catalyst that works faster and better than anything we've seen.

The result is a largely odor-free outhouse. Inevitably, there's some odor right after use, but it dissipates far faster than a "regular" bathroom.

We find the little house a place of refuge and quiet contemplation no matter what the weather. In fact, we often set up a bucket inside the cabin when the weather turns extremely cold (yes, the compost system allows that level of closeness!) yet we still find ourselves using the little house when temperatures fall to around zero, just for the time to sit quietly by one's self!

Here then, are the rules we wrote and posted in our little house as a guide to visitors:

Little House Instructions

This is a composting toilet system. Deposits are made into a bucket beneath the toilet seat, and are covered with forest duff to create compost that will eventually break wastes down into forest soil. For proper composting, it is important to follow the instructions below:

1. This toilet is primarily for solids. Please try to keep liquid deposits to a minimum.

2. Please do not put toilet paper in the bucket. Used toilet paper goes in the trash basket under the window. If you drop it business-side down, it will greatly enhance the aesthetics of the little house for everyone.

3. The wastebasket will be burned, so please use it only for paper and other burnable items, not plastics. Used sanitary products and plastics go in the covered container next to the toilet seat.

4. Please close the wastebasket lid when paperwork is complete.

5. When finished, please add a scoop of duff from the bucket under the window to the toilet bucket. Be sure to lift the seat to apply duff to the bucket! One scoop sprinkled over the contents of the bucket should be sufficient. You only need to cover deposits—you don’t need to bury them.

6. If you spill duff, please use brush hanging under window to sweep spillage into bucket.

7. After you have scooped the duff, please consider the level of the bucket. If you would not be comfortable using the bucket again at that level, please change out the bucket with a new one (ask for help if needed).

8. When finished, please close toilet seat lid.

9. If you have turned on any lights, or listened to the radio, please make sure they are all turned off before leaving.

There is a pump bottle of waterless hand sanitizer on the shelf near the door.

I know what you're thinking: "lights? Radio?" We're not barbarians here! We do love our comforts. We rely heavily on our little wind-up, solar radio for company in the little house, and good lighting (from a battery-operated, LED puck light, a wind-up flashlight and wind-up lantern) is essential to successful operation of the system.

How about that carefully-crafted prose? It took some careful editing to make the concepts clear while maintaining a proper level of decorum, believe me!