the bliss house

[ljgeoff]

So, I've been imagining this idea for the property. I've been thinking about growing both Theobroma Cacao and Coffea Arabica in a green house. Both plants can be kept pruned below three meters, and they have similar growing requirements: no freezing, plenty of water with good draniage, dappled sun, and high humidity.

So I'm visualizing a large hothouse, big enough for twelve trees -- each tree would require nine square meters when grown, so we're looking at a foot print of about 1080 sq meters, or about 30'X40' -- about the same size as the house.

We can try growing all kinds of tropical understory flowers under the trees.

In winter, it would be heated by hot water solar, and in the middle of all of this would sit a solar powered hot tub. I'd plant sugar maples to provide dappled shade, as well as syrup and beauty.

The house would be stackwood from the base up to 1.5 meters, and 8mm clear twinwall polycarbonate panels up the rest of the way -- I figure I'm going to need about 2400 sq feet of panels (includes the roof), at maybe $2/sq ft by the time I'm gonna be in a position to buy it. All together, not counting the cost of the plants, I'm thinking 10K-15K.

As an aside, I'm looking toward a small low-tech wood-fired steam powered generating plant, if we get to a place where we can't replace a worn out solar system. I'm hoping that we'll have at least 30 years on solar, maybe fifty if we can store extra equipment against failure. Timeclock starts in 2025 or so.

making chocolate from cacao beans

coffee: 10 Steps from Seed to Cup

Comments

[amaebi]

Wow.

You are Thorough.

[tylik]

Have you looked at the book "Growing Tasty Tropical Plants"? They cover both cacao and coffee - their processing is a little bush league, but it was a fun book, and got me started. (They either don't cover tea, or give bad advice, I don't recall - until a few years ago, most english language sources gave horrible advice when it came to processing tea, and I had to go to Chinese sources to figure it out. (And now, of course, there are english sources available - not as good, but considering how much work it took me to get through the Chinese...)

BTW, I don't know if you're a tea person, but tea isn't that hard - heck, you can grow it outdoors year 'round near Seattle, and in other parts of the country. And it's *tea*. It might be worth it for the trade value if nothing else.

[johnpalmer]

I have to say, I hope you're wrong about the needs in the immediate future. But if you're right, you've got some wonderful ideas for how to transplant much of the important things.