Sunflowers around Cottage
Our planters around the cottage have produced a bounty of sunflowers, peas, radishes and even some pumpkin plants in bloom. Usually I plant many colors of sunflowers but this year went with just yellow. The planters seem to have done better than our gardens in this rainy summer. Perhaps they were able to better warm up during the first part of this cool summer. Of note, the sunflowers on the south side of the cottage, which gets more hours of sun, are fairing much better than those on the east side.
Outdoors: 70째F/48째F Sunny
Tiny Cottage: 71째F/69째F
Walter Jeffries Tinker, Tailor… A bit eclectic & a tad eccentric, polymath, quantum mechanic & Farmer. Also lucky at cards.
Love and envy your tiny cottage butoff special note is the large towel hanging above the front door. Makes me happy to think my farmer husband is not the only one who thinks once the towel is slung somewhere it is put away :)
Actually, that's where we often hang things to dry in the sun. I had hung it there after my shower.
On the wall are also some work coats. During the warmer nine months of the year we hang outdoor work cloths there rather than bringing them, and their dirt, into the cottage. It helps keep our living space clean.
Just inside the door is a boot grate that catches sand, again one of those little things that help keep the dirt out and reduce the cleaning load.
The cottage is looking better all the time. I want to live in a space that small or smaller in a few years. Sick of trying to heat a too big house.
Sheila,
We get a lot of solar gain in the winter which the thermal mass of the cottage passively soaks up. We haven't insulated the roof yet but it only takes about 3/4 of a cord of wood to very comfortably heat the cottage per year in our northern vermont climate. One factor is we built the cottage so that it is out of the winter wind, sheltered by the ridge, trees and in the winter the snow. Eventually we'll earth berm the north west side to further improve that.
Other improvements are better windows, we have only double pane but I intend to make them into quadruple pane like I did with some other windows. Also curtains for the night and shutters for the very worst of the cold.
I suspect that one could get a small house like this down to zero auxiliary heat, e.g., only burning wood for enjoyment and cooking if that. We'll see how far it goes as we continue to improve the cottage.
Cheers,
-Walter
Walter. I will keep "tuning in" while you "fine tune" the cottage.
I am so interested in hearing about zero waste — such as burning a fire in the winter in your climate just to have a fire — or for cooking. That would be so rewarding.