The Tilapia Project

It's on the to-do list too!

“So, how about those tilapia?” my mother asks and giggles as we catch up on our weekly Zoom call.

“Did you say something?” I respond.

The tilapia and steelhead have become a bit of a running joke in our conversations. Erik’s and my ultimate vision for our solar greenhouse includes a hydroponic garden integrated with an aquaculture system, where we can raise dinner – both protein and veg – with the equally efficient, mutually beneficial use of water and byproducts. We announced our plans a bit prematurely (in hindsight) more than a few years ago. Unfortunately, but to everyone’s credit, no one has forgotten and they still enquire regularly. 

“Steelhead on the menu yet?” my dad asks when we next talk. 

“Not quite yet,” I answer. “Still a bit more work to do.”

“Soon, though, right?”

But that’s the thing of it. Moving through matter takes time. Weeks, months, seasons; sometimes years. But I am happy to report unequivocally that this summer, finally – finally! – we seem to be almost at the point where we can begin preparing to start building the integrated hydroponic-aquaculture system. 

Maybe.

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This summer we are making the big push, trying to finish off – for good, for real – as many of our multi-year projects as possible. As Erik says, we are tired of construction and ready to focus on other pursuits.

We’re getting there. Erik and Rocky are wrapping up our massive irrigation project, digging the last few trenches for the water lines, chem-welding the last hundreds of yards of pipe, attaching the last of the heavy-duty impact sprinklers to help protect the house from wildfires should they come. Victorio, our landscaper, after spending years taming our forest, is now completing stonework around the main house, including rebuilding a retaining wall to stop the hill from creeping closer to our structure, and putting in my much-desired, long-awaited front porch.

And me: I’ve begun construction cleanup, believing that if I act as if it’s time to put everything away, somehow the projects will all miraculously get done before the work season ends. 

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Winter is coming, and today I saw the first sign of it – a neighbor driving up the road with a truckload of split firewood. We probably have another six weeks of good working weather – eight if we’re lucky. What about that garage we’re putting in, you ask? Worker resignations, engineering backlogs and supply chain issues mean we’ll be lucky to complete the foundation, which we’ll have to build in three stages once we have the final approved plans in hand. At this point, I don’t expect the garage will be done until next spring.

Here are some things we’ve learned living up here in the rural Cascades when it comes to such projects:

1. Book workers for your project a year in advance.

2. Plan on everything taking at least one year longer than you expect to complete.

3. If you can’t complete an outdoor project before winter and if any incomplete parts aren’t impervious to weather, expect to redo whatever work you’ve done in the spring after the snow has melted.

4. Master contingency planning.

My contingency plan for our garage project takes a two-pronged approach: First, I will organize everything –  and I mean, literally, everything – into watertight storage containers that I will label, top and sides, so we can find what we need easily – which might also help speed the work. Second, I’ve decided that we’ll rent a shipping container in which to store everything over winter. Of course, this is no easy fix; it turns out we’ll have to prep a level graveled site for the storage unit – in and of itself another project we’ll have to add to the to-do list for this summer if the garage isn’t finished in time.

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At this point, I’ve spent three weeks and counting working on the construction cleanup and organization. And that’s not counting the substantial construction cleanups that Erik, Rocky, Sam, Victorio and I have done in years past. I have the time to tackle this now because I’m taking time off work to heal a medical condition, one that seems to be improving with medicine, exercise, good nutrition, and the stress-relieving physical labor of making order out of chaos. 

I started with the studio workshop and grounds, moved to the winter workshop, then to the construction materials storage site, then to the greenhouse – both indoors and out/around. I find organizing to be a little like an archeological dig. In jumbled boxes of goods, I can see patterns of behaviors, rituals, lifestyles:

Field notes, 8/1: Today, in one box, I unearthed a drill, holiday ornaments, a 90-degree bracket with a hook hanger, photographs from 2015, a sewing kit, and blank cards and envelopes. I suspect the inhabitants were preparing for the holiday season, perhaps planning on installing a bracket from which to hang and display holiday ornaments while also creating custom greeting cards using photos from that year. So much unrealized ambition in this one box! And so many questions: Why was this all packed away in such a haphazard, jumbled way? And did anyone ever wonder where the drill went? 

In fact, the drill was sorely missed – as were other tools found in these boxes of things collected and “put away” before visitors arrived for the winter holidays each year. With little storage space in our home and access to the workshop severely curtailed once the snows set in, we would often gather up things and bring them down to the workshop – forgetting over winter what we had stashed and where. In my cleanup process, I discovered we own at least two or three drills.

As I sort and organize, now rediscovering missing tools and materials, I recall Erik’s ongoing frustration with time spent on the hunt for such things — hours that equal months by his count — and his remarkable patience in the face of it, nonetheless. I redouble my efforts to properly sort and label everything with the intention that he’ll lose no more precious time. I clear seven years’ worth of boxes of miscellaneous mishmosh, and then turn to the organization of tools and materials – for plumbing, electrical, painting, gardening, snow management, car maintenance and tractor maintenance.

This phase of the work is not so bad. Sam — a good friend of Rocky’s and now one of ours after working up here with us several summers — made a great start of organizing for Erik several years ago. Erik still speaks in glowing terms of Sam’s work every time he goes in search of and finds PEX or PVC or electrical components, sorted by type and size. I’m reminded that the expression “clarity is kindness” applies in the physical world too, and I take a note from Sam’s thoughtful, skilled approach, labeling sorted boxes with as much detail as possible so we can find needed things with some sense of ease and peace.

As I do so, I can see how much I’ve learned over the years. Where once I threw all piping into a single box, now I know to sort PVC, PEX and electrical conduit each into their own. I can tell the difference between schedule 40 and schedule 80 PVC, and without squinting to read the tiny embossed print on the parts, I can tell by feel ¾, 1, 1 ¼, 2 and 3 inch fittings. To me these days, stainless steel fasteners are easily identifiable — even without a magnet, which (trick answer!) I know won’t attract that metal — as is the super high-grade steel of unistrut fasteners. And washers — rubber, metal, locking: I realize the value of putting each in their own specific place when one needs one urgently. 

It’s all hard-won knowledge, but what I feel as I sort and organize surprises me, and that’s my sense of amazement at and appreciation for the breadth and range of parts — from the hundreds of types of fasteners to the dozens of types of fittings — along with all the specific tools people have designed and machined to enable other people, like us, to create any conceivable project. There is a tool for every job — perhaps multiple tools — and I have to admit that after a decade of remodeling, we seem to own many of them. 

Except for TIG and arc welders (top of my list) and, top of Erik’s, a waterjet CNC (computer numerical control) cutting machine and a metal 3D printer.

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Around 6 every evening, Erik comes and finds me on the property. 

“Ready for porch-thirty?” he asks.

I am, and at that point, I’m usually hot, sweaty, aching and tired — but in all the good ways a hard day’s physical labor yields. Back at the house, Erik pulls an iced tumbler out of the freezer and a cold beer from the fridge and we trek down to the lower patio at the edge of the upper meadow, where we sit in our lawn chairs and watch as the deer and turkey come out to feed and drink from the water trough we maintain. We run over the day’s progress and our plans for the rest of the week, adjusting our sights depending on what we’ve accomplished in the last 24 hours. 

Almost every evening it seems we say some version of “we’re getting there” or “it’s almost done.” This evening is no different.

“And then we’re on to the next thing,” says Erik.

“The tilapia,” I say, just for fun.