Come take a tour of the inside of my Garden house. If you haven’t visited part 1 already it includes photos from breaking ground, stages of building and blue prints.
A tour of inside of my Garden House
When you enter the Garden house from the 2nd floor you are in the screen room and bar area. I use the room for drying my herbs for teas. From the screen room there is a small deck overlooking the valley. It is way to hot to sit at in the summer without an umbrella. But great in spring, winter and fall.
Upstairs what was originally suppose to be the workshop area. It has now been converted to our party room or guest area. Complete with full kitchen. 70% of all our building material is recycled, used or produced from something off the property. All the kitchen fixtures and parts of cupboards are from an old motor home we retired and stripped down to the van part with deck and sold that. We still only have plywood floors in this room. My husband wants to finish them but then trying to keep the clean will be a chore. Plus its a place no one has to take there shoes off in winter or summer, making it great for parties when people are running in and out. A big problem also was where the stove pipe from below came up in the middle of the floor.
So we just curved with brick to go around the pipe protecting it and created a bigger kitchen counter work area. My husband made all the bar counter tops from birch from our proper and most of the cabinets were made from the beetle kill pine off our property which they call denim pine because it has a blue hue of colour in it.
The dining and living area. Our TV is kept down here in the Garden house. We have no TV in our main house. Makes watching TV a more planned event instead of just watching it all the time.
Down stairs. This room was originally to be the chicken coop. That never happened. It was built out for a guest bedroom which has the full length windows with a view of the valley and stars at night. The head board is a fireplace mantel from the same house the bricks all came from.
Here is where our only heat supply comes from and is our Sauna all in one. The wood stove has a 24 hour burn that we bought 2nd hand. This room is completely surrounded with concrete block or brick. In the sauna sitting area cedar tongue and grove is over the concrete blocks. From the sitting area in the sauna during the day there is a window that looks out past the growing area windows giving a view of the valley.
The bathroom area is just outside the door of the sauna. It also is completely inside the brick and block area.
Greenhouse Growing update
Back in December when the temps plummeted on what was weeks of cloudy days we did not light the stove for a few days in a row and I lost most the tomatoes plants and damaged the peppers way to much. But I left all the fruit on and it is now January 23rd and I am still harvesting tomatoes and peppers. We are having cold temps again but with sunny days which warm the greenhouse back up to about 60F or 15C. Daytime outside temps are about 23F or -5C, while night time temps have been about 5F or -15C. We never have to start the fire under these circumstances. We do start it a couple times a week for watching TV or taking a sauna.
Recent Harvests
This set of photos were taken end of October before I lost my plants to a freeze in December.
These below were taken about 2 weeks after they got to much cold. I had cleaned off all the dead leaves, leaving mostly just the fruit that seemed unharmed. I also moved the plants away from the windows and up against the brick wall. Something that I should have done earlier, the plants might have survive.
The photo below is turnips greens I dug up from the garden. As you can see the cold didn't effect it at all. I also have some Swiss chard that is thriving that I also dug from the garden in the fall. So even in January I am harvesting fresh greens. I just cut them with scissors and it grows back. The bowl of vegetables are what I harvested right after the plants got to much cold. As I said earlier I am still harvesting although the vegetables are now much smaller in size.
So ends my tour of one of my dreams come true. I have always felt it is very important for people to find some way to supply their own food. In today's world you can never count on or trust the food supplies that are out there. They are either contaminated or suddenly your supply is cut off due to economics or nature. I have always aimed for self-sufficiency in my way of life.
Hope you enjoyed my tour of a dream come true......
Wishing everyone a
Good Morning....Good Afternoon....Good Night....
What ever it is to you....
Story and Photos
by
Here I Am/Carrie
