Simple Project: Waterproofing Canvas Shoes

Waterproof? Well, maybe more like water-resistant...but still.

When you are vegan, you don't buy leather. One major downside to this is that most canvas shoes are not coated, which means that you have to shop carefully to find the shoes with a rubber covered toe or, at the very least, something with some substance to it.

We recently upped our hipster cred by getting some Toms brand shoes. The vegan version is essentially a piece of canvas attached to a recycled rubber sole. When it is wet outside, they absorb water almost instantly. Thanks to the wonder of the internet, however, we have discovered a method for keeping our feet dry. Since I did this myself and took these pictures during my own process, I will not be crediting another site or blog for this.

Check it out:

Step 1 - get a small chunk of beeswax. Most natural food stores carry this in little bars. Take the wax and rub it against the canvas HARD. You need to deposit a lot of wax on the canvas for this step.

From Simple Projects

Step 2 - Cover the whole shoe well. Make sure you get in all the little cracks and crags. The place to overdo it is along the seam between the sole and the body of the shoe.

From Simple Projects

Step 3 - Now take the shoe and run your hairdryer on high and hot all over the shoe. Move slowly over each part and make sure the wax melts and absorbs completely into the canvas.

From Simple Projects

Step 4 - Test out the final product. Run the tap over the toe. Does the water soak in or does it roll off? Hopefully it just rolls off.

From Simple Projects

It's a beautiful thing! Try it for yourself. Now, these are Toms and I haven't tried this method on other brands of canvas shoes, but the premise is solid and should apply to pretty much any canvas shoe. I will try it on some of my other shoes soon and report back on my findings. In the meantime, if you have Toms, this works!

The window situation

I may have mentioned before that I am building a chicken coop with an adjacent greenhouse space to serve multiple purposes. The greenhouse will be a geothermal heating room for the coop, a place to propagate my seedlings in the spring and a storage area for garden tools and supplies. I'm going to build the window wall from old windows.

This morning I met with a lady I met at the Eastern Market Antique store who told me she had a "warehouse full of windows". Little did I know what she meant was that she had a warehouse with windows that I had to cut out of the walls... either way, I am getting enough old warehouse windows to do my whole greenhouse.

I also had purchased a few windows from random places, and I had one or two in my basement. So I guess I'm building several cold frames now as well, which is good because I know people who can use them.

I go to pick up the warehouse windows Tuesday. Hopefully the guy who is taking them out can get them without breaking them. We shall see. I'll post some pictures when all is said and done.

Let's Talk Dirty...as in Compost

I just finished my first class in my Master Composter program and let me tell you, it was amazing!! The material we are covering and the possibilities for community outreach and education are very promising.

I also attended my first co-op garden meeting this week and I already see that I'm going to fit in nicely there. I like a lot of what they are doing already and I see plenty of opportunities to add my input.

In the coming months I have several more composting classes to finish the program. Part of the requirements include building a composter and getting a heap started as well as 12 hours of volunteer work in multiple different settings. I'm scheduled to help run a demonstration table at both the Greenfest at the zoo and Vegfest, which is being held in Novi this year. I contacted my guy through the Ferndale Environmental Sustainability Commission to potentially get myself on the roster to head up a composting workshop in Ferndale this summer.

Part of my volunteering can come from simply working in the community garden, which is awesome since I sporadically volunteered to lead a Wednesday evening work night at the garden. Hopefully, after I've taken a few more classes, I'll be versed enough to hold a workshop for members of the garden on starting and maintaining a compost system.

As I mentioned previously, there are multiple methods to composting. The method that SOCWA, the organization hosting the master class, uses is primarily cold composting. I have already noticed variations in the way they teach how cold composting works, however. This is of great interest to me, since I plan on studying different methods this summer. My plan is to build several enclosures and test different methods to find out if they work the way they should. Provided I have the time, I will be building 3 new composters in my backyard. One will be a double unit, near the house for kitchen scraps and yard waste. One side will be a hot system, the other side will be cold. I hope to get one going near the chicken coop as well and one on the opposite side of the yard.

I will sketch a site map this week and post it so that what I am talking about will be easier to envision.

Permaculture 101

I've been schooling myself in permaculture all winter. I've been waiting for a class to present itself in the Detroit area for 2013 and so far it seems like I'm out of luck. Instead of relying on someone else to offer me a program, I've pieced one together myself. Basically it consists of purchasing way too many books and ignoring everyone around me for large chunks of time while I read about swales and edge and diversity of species...etc.

In addition to all of this reading, I've been proactive about learning through experience. I joined a co-op garden on the edge of Ferndale and I also enrolled in a composting class which runs twice a month in March, April and May. I plan on volunteering a few hours a week down at the CSA we joined last summer. I wanted to work with people who have already established a system and these folks offer a "work share" to make the program more affordable. So I guess I'm not technically "volunteering" but I'm really only taking what I grow and I'm not getting money for helping...so yeah.

This summer looks to be quite busy for us. I addition to the 10 x 10 plot I'm getting from the co-op, I'm also planning an expansion on my backyard garden space. I'll be essentially doubling my growing area. I'm using John Jeavons' GROW BIOINTENSIVE method to garden this year, which adds a bit more prep work, but should decrease the amount of labor time I spend in the beds. I'm definitely building my chicken coop this spring and we hope to have chickens in it by May or June at the latest. Our front porch needs to be demolished and rebuilt and then for the few days that I'm not doing all of this, we want to remodel our bathroom. Overwhelmed yet? Me too!

Here are a couple new pictures. My ever expanding library (I think I have at least 3 or 4 more books since this was taken.) and the preliminary images of the coop plans. I will post a high res image as part of the series I'll be doing during construction.