loving things

Whereas it seems very foolish to fall in love with things rather than people, places, ideas, and adventures, it seems equally foolish to have things that you're not in love with.


My most recent material love is my new pickup truck, even though I have only driven it once due to the current non-existence of auto insurance and license plates. I fell head-over-heels for my leather boots one fortnight ago, after I was attacked with the realization that they've given me three honorable years of reliable service, and I had not even once taken the time to wash or oil them (which I have since done, and enjoyed very much). I already knew that I was in love with my cordless screw gun, but when I thought it broke the other day the depth of that love was really brought to my attention. My trusty laptop failed last week, and it tore at my heartstrings. I fail to see any shame in loving inanimate objects.

Countless other objects would make the list, such as my bicycle, my little brown backpack, my jack-o-lantern shirt, and my rope. There are things that I own which I do not love (I don't think), and I'm wondering whether it would be best to let them go. In summary, love could be a good filter for purging one's life of excess goods.

Site at Eno Commons

In anticipation of "Before and After" photos in June, here are some quick shots I snapped of the intended cottage site while visiting the co-housing community that I will be building at this spring.

(from the NW - the stakes roughly represent the footprint that the building will have)

(from the NE - you can see that rubble and 5-gallon buckets are already being collected!)

Noncrete

Should cob be branded under another name? Would the building community take the material more seriously if I built houses out of 182-grade Noncrete? (the grade being designated by the weight, in pounds, of the cobber who stomped together the mix). With the conception of the brand, it now seems appropriate to consider ways in which mud houses can be built more expediently, and with less work. Instead of dancing on mud with our shoes off, why not just call up the Noncrete Delivery Company, and order a truck to come and dump a load of the stuff? And perhaps there should be fleets of robots for rent that will come apply the cob at a perfect speed, creating perfectly plumb and even walls (without a level!), and with the ability to program the design into their computer brains, so that you can just sit back and sip juice on a stool. The robots can be called Noncretins, or something of the sort. Then everyone could live in cob houses, and the world would be sustainable just like mother nature intended (forget about all the sand that would be removed from our rivers, and the clay that would be mined from our lands, and the nasty chemicals that would go into making the robots' eyes). THIS IS THE FUTURE.

But for now, we're still cobbing the old-fashioned way. Natural builders are a backwards folk, who seem to care about neither efficiency, nor progress. All they care about is having a good, healthy time, which sounds to me like the desire of a selfish, lazy person. Enjoy the photos below, as they might represent the last recorded mud building project before the imminent industrialization/robotification of natural building.


Sheila the dog, Margaret's co-inhabitant



Look at those shelves all filled up!


(notice the cracked plaster hanging on for dear life on the underside of the shelf)






Margaret knitting a hat for me in "Margaret's nook" (nook design courtesy of Mike McDonough)




This is the one succulent from the green roofing workshop that held its ground and its life through the hot summer of '08 and is ready to thrive this spring, and bear bananas maybe.


Margaret points to the arugula in the garden that she lords over.


East side in the morning.



After this photo set, you might be thinking: SOMEONE GET THIS KID A NEW PROJECT! He keeps posting photos of the same cottage over, and over, and over! For all who share this sentiment, I'm happy to announce that I'll be starting a new cottage in March, at a co-housing community in Durham, NC.

Garden Wall Update

Writing is a lost art, and why shouldn't it be? Enjoy some film shorts.








Since the video was captured, I have removed all of the cob from the wall, and piled it upon tarps to use later. It's still good stuff. During the deconstruction process, I uncovered numerous chunks of material that had remained dry inside the wall, and they were hard as rock.

Today, I built up certain sections of the foundation with more block. This is not because my cob ambition has been shattered and replaced with a love of conventional masonry, but instead because the ground levels have shifted since I was last here (Doug and Elaine have been doing a lot of earth-moving and fence-building lately). I want to ensure that the cob will be high enough off of the ground to avoid getting hit by splash back from rain.

The current plan is to next build a wooden support system for the roof that is connected securely into the block foundation. After this roof is built, I will get back to cobbing. The cob will fill in the entire void between the foundation and roof, burying the wooden support structure for the roof deep within its core. The reason for building the roof before the wall is twofold: 1. it will protect the cob from any rain as it is being built, and 2. it will result in a very secure connection between the wall and its roof.

Photos to come.

Stony Creek Farm

There were a number of sunny days in a row at the farm, so I took the camera out for a stroll. By no means did I do the vistas justice, but here's a sample of what I see and do.


Endless piles of snowflakes.


Go, go garlic! I admire the courage.


I used scraps of foam insulation to thermally close in the mudroom. Clearly, these industrial materials are much less pleasant to work with than natural materials, but I justify using them here for two reasons: 1. they are not useful for other projects, and so would be thrown away otherwise and 2. this insulation is very efficient, and is waterproof (whereas slip-straw, for example, would be less insulative, and could get damaged by moisture).

There is often a great deal of waste in conventional construction. When I see this waste, I think: "Should I avoid using these salvaged materials because they are not enjoyable to work with, and are unhealthy? Or should I use them to save valuable resources from going to the landfill, and save money?" There's no good answer, and so it must just be decided on a case-by-case basis. In any case, the mudroom will be fully insulated when it's done, making it a very functional winter space.

To ensure that the interior of the Pod doesn't end up too "woody," I decided to use a wall system/material other than pine boards for the rest of the interior walls (mudroom and sleeping loft). There's room for mud in every good building project, so I decided that an earthen plaster would be a good choice. With cob building, it's very intuitive and simple to apply plaster over the earthen wall; it's just the bonding of two like things. Plastering a wood-framed structure is different. The plaster will stick neither to foam insulation, nor empty space. A time-tested solution is a lath-and-plaster system (lath being a grid of stiff, structural members with open spaces in between - it can be wood, metal, or plastic).

Here's the wood lath, over and between which the plaster will go. The idea is that the plaster can squish between the strips of wood when it is being applied wet, and will be locked in as it dries. I additionally installed lathe on the walls of the lofted sleeping area of the pod. It will create a nice separation between life on the main floor, and life "upstairs." My thought is that the plaster will make the loft feel cave-like and cozy.


Here's a sheep. Alas, I cannot call myself a shepherd. But I am the guy who takes care of Stony Creek Farm's flock of sheep, supplying hay and water on a daily basis.

the savory snacks

A part of my blogger identity feels a tad guilty about doing a "food post." After all, this blog is supposed to be documenting a journey in building. But in the spirit of sharing my doings with people whom I care about, here is a series of photos from a pretzel experiment.









The recipe can be found here.

The results were delicious! Complaints do exist, however, and they were as follows: 1. too much salt (an easy fix), and 2. a bit too damp, which is a strange - but accurate - way to describe a pretzel. I did not let them drip sufficiently after they emerged from the boiling water, and so they were too wet when they began baking. Consequently, I had to let them bake for longer than recommended, and they were still a bit wet in places (but would have gotten too dark/burnt if I had left them in any longer). Next I would like to try making English muffins.

Cozy Cottage

Here are some photos of the cottage in North Carolina, braving the winter, sent to me by Megan:


Cob and a sunset, together.


It's good to see that Margaret is storing firewood here. This is the section of roof overhang that we extended to 2 1/2 feet, as a semi-protected area.


curtains!