Strawberry House Update Mid-June

I took a bunch of photos of the housesite June 13th (the first 4) and 20th and thought I would finally get them up to show all you. First the posts had notches carved out of them since they are round, unmilled tree trunks which need to fit into square brackets, they also had notches cut out of them for the crib, then they were put up in place, you can see one being put up in one of the photos. The crib is the bottom portion of the exterior walls to keep the earthen parts off the ground and away from moisture and is made of milled redwood boards. It will have two 2" by 8"s on the inside of the posts and two on the outside one on top of each other and lava rock in between them. Most of the notches were cut before the poles were put into place but a few were cut afterwards. In the third photo Brent is marking on a pole where to cut a notch.
In the second group of photos used feedsacks had been filled with gravel and laid out to make a foundation for a semi-interior cob wall. The sacks were stacked on top of each other with barbed wire tied around the posts and run between the rows to hold the bags together. Cob needs a foundation to take it off the ground so it doesn't get wet and suck water up into the wall. The bags are to do that, the cob will cover them in the front which is inside so can go down to the floor, and in the back, which will be under a raised bedroom floor and so outside, rocks are covering them. You can see a portion of the crib boards up at each end of the earthbags.
The bottom picture is of a clay pit made of strawbales laid out in a square with a tarp laid on top of them and filling the hole between them with clay rich soil being soaked to make the clay wet all the way through so it can be mixed up into cob. The wall of soil behind it is sub-soil which was dug out to make the housepad and is going to be used to make the walls. The stack of 5 gallon buckets in front are to be used to measure proportions of sand and clay, which get mixed together with some water, then straw gets added and mixed in.