dirt and quiet

Daily Life

2006-11-10T16:33:00.000-08:00

From when I got here at the end of April until recently there was pretty much a pattern to life here. Things changed, like who was here, and what we were working on but there was a general similarity week to week.

We had communal lunches and dinners everyday, and mostly made breakfasts for ourselves. People signed up for as many cooking or cleaning shifts as were needed to cover all the slots, normally 2 or 3 per week, until our population diminished. It was great to get 14 wonderfully cooked meals a week and only have to prepare one or two, and/or clean once or twice. When we had lots of people two people cleaned after dinner together to do a thorough job. Mostly cooking was done solo, although certain people liked to team up and help each other out. Lunches were at 12:30 and dinner at 7, although that changed at about fall equinox to 6:30.

Monday was meeting day, we would meet either in the morning or right after lunch (during the middle of the summer it was after lunch since often it was hot enough folks didn't want to work mid day). In the meeting general business was discussed, and the week's work was planned. Sometimes there were small tasks people volunteered to take on sometime during the week, often larger group projects were planned, or someone agreed to make sure something got done. There were also evening sharing meetings on Mondays, half the time they were just for members, the other half everyone around for any length of time attended. They were not business related at all but about updating each other about what was happening in our lives. The format changed sometimes but normally we started with appreciations, people said things they had been appreciating lately, people, chores getting done, sunsets, etc. Then there were pet peeves - small complaints about whatever had been bothering folks recently. After that we took turns telling everyone what was up for as long as it took, often not that long. The meetings only lasted about 2 hours, sometimes less.

For much of the summer work traders worked together with at least one community member, in the gardens Tuesday and Thursday mornings, and building Wednesday and Friday mornings every week. The afternoons were either free or scheduled at the weekly meeting. While the apprenticeship was going on work traders didn't build as much, only working at Strawberry house on Wednesday afternoons while the apprentices were in a lecture. And much of the fall we worked at Strawberry house every Friday afternoon too. We rarely had scheduled work on weekends, except during work parties and workshops. Each work trader had a focus, such as the shady garden, the sunny garden, or Strawberry house, where they worked their extra hours and helped lead other folks during scheduled work times. After the apprenticeship when 3 former apprentices were doing work trade they were more focused on building and didn't spend all the scheduled garden time gardening. Often we started work at 9 am, but when it was hot we started about 7 and ended early. Afternoon work usually started between 2 and 3pm. This all sounds much more strict than it really was.

Most of the members here worked at least some in town each week, and a few work traders also did some paid work off site. On weekends people often left and went to town, or the coast, or somewhere to enjoy themselves. But I almost never left, less than 20 times all summer, and it feels like even less, both to me and the others who have been here all summer.

When worktraders left (there were 11 of us this summer, I think) we usually had an appreciation circle for them. Everyone took turns telling the person leaving things they appreciated about them, work they did well, habits folks liked, things that they did that were inspiring, etc. Appreciation circles are also held on the birthdays of members. They seem nice, although I have not had one yet.

In the last week or two there has been a different pattern, with so many fewer people here, Emerald Earth is in winter mode now. We are only scheduling dinner cooking 5 nights a week and there are no scheduled lunches, but we normally eat around the same time and help each other out, heating up extra food for those who want it. We are now only meeting once every other week. And mostly instead of scheduled work people take on certain tasks and do them when they want. Although in the past week we have had two group clean up days, one of which included moving heavy things under cover, much better done in a group, but they have mostly been more informal and not planned so far in advance. We have also shown up in the garden at the same time on these beautiful sunny days we had earlier in the week. I have been noticing how slow tasks go when I work alone, all those months working in groups spoiled me.

Again I am focusing on work and not play, but there was play too, normally unscheduled, games after dinner, lots and lots of backgammon, Anastasia is a backgammon queen, all terrain bocce ball, occasionally movies, saunas, pizza parties, and tons of interesting conversations, and no doubt there is lots I have forgotten. Lately the winter sport of walnut stacking has been popular. Michael holds the record from last year with 9, this year so far he has only achieved 7, and the rest of us have a hard time going over 5.

Nature's Beauty

2006-11-10T13:37:00.000-08:00

Musings On Roofs

2006-11-09T15:52:00.000-08:00

I spent a lot of time on roofs in the past few months, not so much in the past few weeks though. I like being up on roofs a lot, the height and the view I guess. I helped with 5 roofs 4 of them very different from each other. I helped some with the Madrone house roof, mostly over the second bedroom, last year it had plastic over part of it, this year we finished the walls and then put on the rest of the roof, it has a metal roof attached to perlins, thin pieces of wood running between the rafters to screw the roofing to, no plywood or tar paper or anything.

The pump house roof was fun, I really like working with shakes, although figuring out which one will fit well each time you put one up is slow work, it is fun, like a puzzle, and normally there are a bunch that would work, so it really isn't that hard. The hard part about shake roofs is finding wood that is straight enough grained to make shakes with in the first place, it needs to be old growth. Luckily here there are some stumps from old growth trees cut down a long time ago, before chainsaws when they used huge saws which had one person at either end pulling back and forth, and they wanted to cut up higher where the tree was a bit narrower. The pump house roof is not a traditional shake roof, to shed water shake roofs need to be quite steep, and this one is not, so it has very thin plywood with tar paper and sand impregnated roofing on top of it under the shakes. The shakes make it look nicer and will lengthen the life of the roofing under them.

I also worked on Strawberry house's roof which is the most conventional with plywood, tar paper and metal roofing. I have written a bunch about it already so if you want to know more go back and look at older posts. But as you can see in the picture the roofing is up, including the roof caps, which were not up during the first rain, and there is even a window in.

Then, of course, there is the El Nido roof, with it's pond liner and dirt, and soon to be plants, there are already plants sprouting on it. (See previous post for details.)

The most novel roof I worked on is the roof over the garden wall. It is an experiment and is cob, (clay soil, sand and straw) on and between small redwood branches and looks mushroom like. The cob was plastered and a drip edge was sculpted to make water drip to the ground at the edge of it instead of running around the edge and under the roof, then a final coat of plaster was put on and after that dried 4 coats of linseed oil were applied. It is cool, I hope it works.

All these different types of roofs have their pluses and minuses and which ones to use depend many things: how much embodied energy (energy it took to extract the resources and manufacture the material and deliver them to where they are used) do the materials have; how long will they last without leaking; how easy are they to replace when they do wear out; how available is the material; how steep do you want your roof; is it important how toxic or nontoxic the roof is; what do you think looks the best; what disturbs the house site least; do you care how visible your house is from above; does it matter if it is hard to get lots of insulation into it; does it matter if the roof helps the house stay cool in the summer; do you want to be able to hang out on the roof; are you interested in rain water collection; is being fireproof important; does it matter how heavy the roof is; etc.

I do not have a favorite, it would depend on the circumstances. I like the living roofs, although I didn't like working with the liner very much, and it did smell bad for you, although once it is covered that goes away. I also like how nice it is to be on, being dirt and not very steep it could be a useful area for living. And it is relatively fire proof. I also really liked the shakes, but finding bits of already dead old growth redwood or cedar is getting harder. Also I have heard they are more likely to leak, at least in the first few rains after a dry period since the wood does shrink and swell with moisture. And you can't walk on a shake roof, you can easily break the shakes that way, another drawback is it is not at all firesafe. Metal is easy and relatively long lasting and leak proof but does have a lot of embodied energy. And the experimental cob roof is not likely to be useful for using on whole buildings. I have been thinking about experimenting with an aluminium soda/beer can roof. Cutting the tops and bottoms off cans and a slit though the resulting tube, then crimping them together edge to edge to make a roll, and laying the roll out in stripes overlaping the one below, with the crimps running up and down. Maybe not for a large structure or a house but to cover a small shed, or the roof over a cob oven.

When asked which type of roof they like both Darryl and Michael say they don't like roofs, Darryl likes the way houses look with just rafters, Michael likes the openness and light in roofless houses (at least that is my impression of their reason). I can relate and think I would want some outdoor enclosed space included in/around a house I built, but I would put a roof of some sort over the house part of the house, and they did too.

Fixing the El Nido Roof

2006-11-09T14:16:00.000-08:00

We finished this quite a while ago, before it rained, except for a last bit of dirt to go back on, but I didn't get around to writing about it then.

El Nido was one of the first houses build here and they were used a liner to go under the dirt on the living roof that was not really appropriate for that use. It leaked last winter and they decided to put redo it with a new liner, and take out some of the skylights. Originally the house had 3 skylights, and skylights are notorious for causing roofs to leak. The one in the bedroom which was really needed was replaced, the other two were taking out and replaced with wood, even from inside looking up it is hard to see where they used to be.

First the dirt was taken off and piled up behind the house to be put back after we were done. Then the skylights were taken out. Then, since the old liner was stuck on old used carpets were laid on top of the old liner. The carpets had been stored outside so they were swept off well since any little sharp bits could poke a hole in the new liner and create a leak. After that the new pond liner was put in place. It is really heavy and it took quite a few of us to get it on the roof and unroll it. That roof has thick sheets of insulation on top of it where the house is but not over the eves, so the roof is not smooth, which made it hard to get the liner to fit well. We didn't want to stretch too tight anywhere since that seems more vulnerable to punctures and it is hard to get to stay where you put it. The liner is like a tire inner tube, it reminded me a lot of new bicycle inner tubes in texture and smell. Not a terribly natural material, but not likely to leak. Once people were satisfied with how the liner lay, we attached it by putting flashing around the edges. And the skylight and hole for the stove pipe had to be cut and very carefully sealed. Then we cut the excess liner off the edge of the roof, and put the drains in, the roof drains from the corners but inside the edge of the roof, not in gutters around it.

Once the liner was on we put some rock around the bottom of it to help with drainage. Then it was time to lift all that dirt back onto the roof. Luckily we had a lot of help with this. A few people would work on the ground shoveling dirt into 5 gallon buckets, then someone would lift them up to someone on the roof who would heave them up and take them to where they needed to be dumped. There were usually two people on the roof too so we didn't get behind. I was one of the lifters and dumpers on the roof. Living roofs are normally not very steep since the dirt can roll off if they are so being on it was easy, and this one was pretty low to the ground too so lifting buckets up was not a huge problem.

It was all somewhat more complicated than I make it sound, especially making the skylight and stove pipe not leak, but it seems to be working, no leaks in the last few rains.

Cute Kids

2006-11-09T13:28:00.000-08:00

We have had an number of awfully cute young children visit recently, some of whom I have gotten photos of. Right now at Emerald Earth the only child is Aria, and she is not a little kid any more, but very soon Brent and Liz are going to have a baby (due in a week or so) then there will be a very young child around. And a couple with a one year old child is planning on staying for 8 months or so, starting late winter.

Douglas the Squirrel

2006-11-08T15:00:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned in a previous post, there is this small squirrel who spends lots of time in the pine tree in front of strawberry house. We named him/her (we do refer to Douglas as he so although I do not know his sex I will stick to that from here on out) Douglas since we were told he is a Douglas Squirrel. He has a voratious appetite, or at least is storing up a lot of pinenuts. Douglas chews all the scales off pinecones to get to the pinenuts between them, then drops the cores of the cones. Anastasia got into collecting the pinecone cores and counting them to see how much he had eaten/stored. Before she left last week she had found almost 500! At one point she found a stash of uneaten pinecones, about 50 of them, which he quickly ate through after she found them, presumably afraid she would steal them.

We are quite sure there is just one squirrel, we only every see one and he seems quite tame, willing to be around people, even people with power tools. Although he does like to drop things on people, or try to, or into wheelbarrows people are using. And the week we were cutting metal roofing with a skill saw he was not around much, it made an awful noise, like a metal animal in it's death throws. Normally he is in the pine tree chewing away, but I have seen him in the mudpit drinking, and even in the house climbing on the walls and on a windowsill. He also makes interesting sounds, almost like he is trying to imitate us, or the power tools.

Art Food - Food Art, & Abundance

2006-11-07T18:30:00.000-08:00

Food can be so beautiful. Some fresh veggies have amazing colors shapes, and patterns, and of course food can be assembled into beautiful creations, like that flower covered chocolate birthday cake.

Sometimes just a particular vegetable is extra special, like that cool tomato, and sometimes you just need to look closely, like the zucchini, or chard.

We are still getting quite a bit of food from the garden.

That is only a small portion of the peppers we have right now, we picked them all off the plants so won't get anymore but we have 3 boxes of them, two of spicy peppers which are going to be pickled, and one of peppers for stuffing. We had a very warm and sunny October, which made the peppers, and strawberries, happy.

The bowl of strawberries on the gardenshed table in the picture I picked today, yes we still have lots of strawberries even in November. And last week Sara made a bunch of jars of strawberry jam from the berries we picked then.

A week or two ago after I picked all the basil I took off all the good leaves and had a huge bowl, really a huge bowl (it is sitting on a regular sized wooden picnic bench and is a lot wider) of basil, then made pesto.

An Ode to the Moon

2006-11-07T14:58:00.000-08:00

Sculpture and Artistic Touches

2006-11-07T11:36:00.000-08:00

A lot of natural building materials can be used to make beautiful sculptures as part of buildings. I have taken photos of some of the ones here. Some are done and painted, some just made with rough plaster and will get finished later; some are large, some small; some inside, some outside; some detailed, some simple; some are useful, most purely art, all are beautiful.

I also added a picture of the fresco on the front of fern cottage, frescos are made with lime plaster and lime wash and a lot of burnishing. And a picture of the tile mosaic in the shower.

Fall Birds

2006-11-03T10:30:00.000-08:00

I have been hearing geese overhead flying south. Michael said he saw two large, beautiful V's of them flying over recently, but I have just heard them.

There are lots of little birds eating seeds. I often scare flocks of quail when I walk out my door, and this morning I saw a bunch of little hoppy birds out the window. I counted 34 just out one window, well two windows right next to each other, and there were lots more out there. There was also a gang of blue jays.

The other day in the garden I saw what I think were robins, they were in one of the beds that had had grain growing in it, maybe some had fallen to the ground or maybe they were just eating wild grass seed.

Rain Today

2006-11-02T20:02:00.000-08:00

It rained most of the day. I mainly stayed inside by the fire, drank tea, read, wrote, painted, and talked to my brother who came over for a visit. It was a nice relaxing day. I am fond of rain and we were ready for it so there was no last minute covering of things.

Parts of the madrone house roof still don't have gutters so the rain splashed off the roof on to the ground below, making mud puddles, and nice splashing sounds.

In the afternoon the rain started to lift and before sunset the sun was out, and there were pretty puffy white clouds.

There are so few people around these days we are each making our own lunches, up until now there have been communal lunches and dinners each day with people taking turns cooking and cleaning. I cooked a curried lentil quinoa soup with chard on my rocket stove, the barrel you can cook on doesn't get really hot but since I put in on the stove really early it was cooked in time. The bench that the flew goes through got quite toasty, even a little uncomfortably hot to sit on for long periods.

I realized that in an attempt to not upload too many fall colors pictures for the last post I had missed a lot of the different colors, the red and orange trees in particular, so I am adding one now.

Frosty Nights and Fall Colors

2006-10-26T19:25:00.000-07:00

The night before last was the first real frost, last week there was a bit of frost in places, and last month there was also a bit of frost one night, enough to kill the plants in one of the squash beds. That was an unusually early frost. Emerald Earth is in a frost pocket, at least parts of it are.

Since we thought it might frost we prepared, picked all the winter squash left, and the basil. There were some huge basil plants, the largest one being the one I am holding in the picture, yes that is only one plant. We also harvested all the peppers off some plants and covered the rest and the tomatoes, to keep them a bit warmer. It worked they survived. We finished right before dinner and didn't have time to put the squash away until late so Anastasia and I each pushed a wheel barrow full of squash down and into the house she is staying in, she put a flashlight into the squash at the top of the load to have a headlight so we could see since it was already quite dark. It was all quite funny.

It is hard to get good pictures of frost, to capture the sparkles, but I did my best. It was very beautiful, the picture of the bridge is from last week, the rest from yesterday morning.

As for fall colors, there quite a few wild plants turning colors, oregon ash, poison oak, maple, some oaks, and a variety of fruit trees too, the pears are turning a really nice red, the apples yellow, some of the grapes waiting on pots to be planted into a half finished trellis have bright red leaves. I know Eastcoasters don't think of California as having fall colors, and we don't as much, you need to look and pay attention, you don't get hit in the head with them.

Light Through Colored Bottles

2006-10-14T21:36:00.000-07:00

There are lots of bottles in the walls at madrone house, blue and green in the east and west walls, and red in the south wall and one red vase in the north wall too. The bottom picture is moonlight, the rest sunlight. It is nice both seeing the bottles glow and the colored light shining through them into the house.

Rocket Stove

2006-10-14T20:32:00.000-07:00

Madrone house has a rocket stove, it is a special kind of wood stove, not a regular metal box stove, nor a fire place. It is way more efficient and heats the bench as well as the air in the room so it stays warm longer, plus you can sit on a warm bench.

The way it works is air is drawn in through the top of the barrel used to put the wood in, the fire is in that barrel and in the tunnel between it and the larger barrel, then the heat rises up inside the larger barrel which has two layers with insulation around the middle one to keep the gases very hot which makes the stove draw air in better and makes the burn cleaner, then the hot air goes down between the outside of the inner tube and the barrel then out a pipe running through the bench then up the stove pipe out of the house. We ran it once, it has been pretty warm, Michael who had a stove like this in the past helped me start it, it is quite fussy. When we went out to see what was coming out the stove pipe you couldn't really see anything, no smoke, which means it was burning very well and cleanly. Not only does it burn very efficiently and cleanly it keeps the heat inside the house, most stoves need to let lots of heat out up the chimney to make the stove draw air in and burn well, the rocket stove uses the heat riser inside the large barrel to do that instead. Since it heats the bench which has a high thermal mass so keeps the heat for a while, you can keep a room warm for a lot longer then the stove it running. Also the clay and sand mass around the barrel gets warm and radiates heat into the room, and the barrel gets hot enough to heat water or cook on.

It is really strange, you expect smoke to rise from a fire but although the top of the small barrel surrounding the fire was open no smoke went into the room, and the flames burned sideways, towards the channel going into the other barrel and the heat riser, not up. For more information on Rocket Stoves check out www.rocketstoves.com

October Work Party - Part Two - Building

2006-10-14T19:27:00.000-07:00

We did a lot of building at the work party, worked on 5 projects, I think.

On the pumphouse we worked on the shake roof. To make everything fit together the shakes need to more or less rectangular, not curved, so any curved parts need to be cut off before they are put up. The way a shake roof works is using lots of overlap. The bottom row is shorter than the rest and the second row over laps it completely, with the seams staggered. You nail two nails into each shake at the top so the next row will cover the holes. You need to carefully position the shakes to cover both the nails and the seam between the shakes below. Since we split blocks of wood of different widths the shakes are different widths, the wood we split the shakes from were all the same length though, so the shakes are about the same length, which is nice. You want the tops of each row to be even straight lines, unless you want to make patterns. You need to leave a gap between a shake and the ones to the left and right of it so they will have room to expand when they get wet.

We also did finish plastering on the pumphouse, the wave pattern is tough especially for beginners, much harder than simple straight surfaces, since you want it really smooth and need to worry about all the edges.

Some of the group worked on putting dirt back on the El Nido roof, I will write more about the whole roof fixing project later.

Most of the rest of the building during the work party was plastering, we did a lot of plastering at strawberry house, the east and west walls on the outside, and some of the north wall. After the plain plaster was put up Liz did some sculpture on the west wall.

Monday morning half the group worked on putting finish plaster up on the roof of the garden wall, now it is ready for the linseed oil to protect it from water. It is an experimental roof made of cob with redwood branches put across it then cobbed over to make the overhang. The wall needs a roof to protect it from rain, otherwise it slowly erodes.

On Monday we also plastered the outside of the second bedroom at madrone house, the rest of the house is pretty much done but that room has been sitting unfinished. We wanted to get the first coat of plaster on the outside of the light straw clay and the strawbale walls before it got rainy since it protects the straw from moisture.

Map II

2006-10-14T12:14:00.001-07:00

I made a map that should be easier to read online, if you click on the map to see a larger picture of it you should be able to read the numbers. The pictures of building below are in order based on the numbers on the map. Some I have uploaded lots of pictures of before, some may be new to you.

1)The Common House
2)El Nido
3)Fern Cottage
4)The Greenhouse, Bath house, Sauna, and Sauna Loft (a guest room)
5)Pond House
6)Red Root
7)The Sunny Gardenshed
8)Madrone House
9)Strawberry House
10)Oak House (it was started last year then the folks building it moved)
11)The Pump House

Planting Garlic

2006-10-07T14:30:00.000-07:00

It is the first day of the October work party and this morning we divided into two groups, one working in the garden. We did a few things, weeding, pulling summer crops that were done producing, adding compost and amendments and turning the soil, and planting garlic into that newly turned soil.

We planted one and a half beds, the half with Boonville White, and the one with an unnamed variety, which years ago was given to Emerald Earth by members of another community who grow garlic as a cottage industry. First we separated the heads into cloves, making sure there were not two cloves very close together looking like one, since we don't want two plants together to compete for space. When planting we used a stick with lines drawn on it to help space them evenly, planting one every 8 inches or so. Flat end down, pointy end up since that is where they sprout. They are just pushed into the ground until they are all the way in then the hole is covered.

Boonville White peels really easily, and has big cloves, but not huge heads. It also has a stiff stem so can't be braided and doesn't last as long. The other variety has both mostly large heads and mostly large cloves, can be braided and lasts longer. So both, and other varieties, are planted to take advantage of their good qualities.

Walking Home At Night

2006-10-06T14:46:00.000-07:00

I used to be in a tent right near the common house, but now I am the farthest from it, strawberry house is a bit farther but is not lived in yet. It is still not far but it is a bit of a walk across and up, through one garden and past another, up a hill and under a row of oak trees and up to madrone house. The walks at night have been beautiful. The first night the stars were amazing, last night the almost full moon was shining through mist and clouds, but still quite bright. So far I have not needed the flashlight, it has been light enough with just moon light.

Real Rain

2006-10-06T14:37:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I rained steadily for most of the day, at least all morning and on and off all afternoon. I am guessing we got less than half an inch, or maybe about that much. The moss is really happy, it totally perked up, it had been dry and looking almost dead, now it is lush and green again.

The air this morning was so fresh and clean, not that it is not clean up here all the time, but it seemed extra clean and fresh.

Map

2006-10-05T16:05:00.000-07:00

I drew this map but I am afraid the blog made it too small to read well. Oh, well, if you come visit you can see it in person.

South is at the top, not north.

First Fire

2006-10-04T21:09:00.000-07:00

This evening we had the first fire in the common house. It has been quite cool and did rain a bit while we were eating dinner. It it very toasty in here now.

The final piece of roofing on strawberry house was put up just before dinner, so we were even ready for the rain.

Conto and Tallulah

2006-10-04T14:47:00.000-07:00

Tallulah and Conto are 5 and 4 1/2 year old cousins visiting Emerald Earth for 5 days with Tallulah's mom Karen. She is helping out with work, they are playing, climbing, digging, running, jumping, picking food (lots went right into their mouths, some was brought in and shared), talking, joking, making faces, laughing, asking questions...

It is nice to have such happy energy around, and they keep themselves busy quite well, but it can be a bit much when they are really loud. I spent much of the day keeping an eye on them yesterday.

Strawberry House Gets Metal Roofing

2006-10-04T14:27:00.000-07:00

Metal roofing is going up on strawberry house, about half went up yesterday, hopefully it should be done by the end of today. Cutting it is the tough part, especially the diagonal cuts. They are using a circular saw with an old blade in backwards, and it makes a terrible noise but works.

The timing is good, it rained a little bit last night and has been threatening on and off all day but held off so far, except a few drops once.

Karen, a carpenter and friend of folks here, is here to help out for a week. She helped a lot with the roof and has been doing some framing, may help put in windows and doors later in the week. She is the one on the roof in the red sweatshirt. She brought her cute 5 year old daughter and 4 1/2 year old nephew and they are have a great time, playing and talking and laughing.

I Moved to Madrone House

2006-10-03T16:51:00.000-07:00

A month or so ago Deleh decided that she wanted a break from living up here and moved down to town to see how she liked living on her own again. She is liking it and decided not to move back. It is sad but if she is happier there . . , she always spent a lot of time in town anyway, working and socializing, and didn't seem to be as happy doing things up here as you want to be in your home, although she really likes gardening and farming.

She left just as her house got done, in fact before the floor had all its coats of oil on it. She had been living mostly in the loft of madrone house (her house) for the last couple of years but the downstairs was not finished.

Now I moved in. The threat of rain is here so we decided the tents needed to be taken down, so Anastasia and I moved into houses. Anastasia into pond house and I into madrone house. Pond house was built my Mitch who recently moved to Eureka to live with his sweetie, but he still visits pretty often and stays in touch.

Deleh still has lots to stuff in the loft so I set up my bed on the day bed platform, next to four south facing windows, the two on the ends angle out to make a space and extend the room out a bit. Last night when I woke up in the middle of the night the waxing moon had set and the stars were bright. I was able to star gaze from bed and got up and found my constellation book from one of the boxes and learned. I had been meaning to do that since I got here. Just as I found the name of the constellations I had been looking at the clouds blew over them, leaving me to turn over and try to sleep.

Two women who happened to be in the area and were looking into community heard about Emerald Earth and came up for lunch one day in May, and liked it so much they came back to spend a week and see if they want to move here, and if the members here want to live with them. Lisa and Sue had a good time working, talking, playing and eating with all of us, the folks here liked them, and they are now planning on moving out from the east coast in February. They will probably move to madrone house, so it won't be vacant for long

Composting Toilets

2006-10-03T16:28:00.000-07:00

Perhaps not the most glamorous of subjects, but the composting toilets here are quite beautiful. Three very different buildings, one even has running water and a sink for hand washing.

I feel I have not described the basics enough, mostly I seem to focus on work and changes, but not daily life. So I decided to go very basic.

In top down order: The Honey House is near the common house, Daisy is in the shady garden, and the Sunny Dunny is on the sunny side between the garden and Madrone and Strawberry houses.

The Sunny Dunny was a project of the 2005 apprentices, they decided to do a group project and chose to create a composting toilet on the sunny side, feeling it was much needed, the residents agreed. It is quite beautiful, earth and wood walls, a shake roof, a beautiful view.

Goats Leave :(

2006-10-03T14:59:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday Jim took his goats away :(. Emerald Earth had decided they couldn't keep them over the winter, there was no place for them to live and there are going to be so few people living here. Cathy, who came to the week long workshop a month ago, is taking them, she has land and a barn and had been thinking of getting livestock. Jim is traveling for almost a year and needed someone to keep them while he is away. When he gets back next summer he is going to take two of them back.

Jim had taken the three male kids when he left a few weeks ago, partly because he was going to miss his goats, partly to give the moms a break from having to produce so much milk, and to give Summer (the female of the triplets) a chance to have more milk, she is the one who broke her leg a few months ago. It seemed Summer did miss her brothers though, where as before she had ignored the wild turkeys as they walked through, she started chasing them. Although they seemed happy eating side by side too, they like the same foods it seems.

Cathy is going to take care of the three boys as well as the 5 goats which were still here so they got reunited. I talked to her and she said they were happy to see each other, and that the four adults and one kid in the van riding the few hours to her place were not too unhappy.

We started by putting their food in the back of Jim's van so the goats would not get into it, then we took the fence down and let the goats wander. They did get into trouble. Twice or three times when we left the door open they walked into the common house. Golda seems to like jumping up on tables, both the eating table I got a picture of her on and a metal table we had been using to hold stuff for milking, that one she broke and slide off of. While we had lunch outside Heather sat with a hose by the serving table and warded them off by spraying when they tried to eat our food. Goats do not like getting wet and will run from a spraying hose. I think the goats had fun on their romp. They also walked around and got to eat all sorts of plants.

The van was heavily loaded, lots of goat paraphernalia on top and inside, food, hay, milking stands, a feeder, a cage, the walls of small pen and more, as well as 5 goats and two people.

Pump House September Update

2006-09-29T20:11:00.000-07:00

Anastasia has been spending quite a bit of time working on the pump house, but mainly alone, so it has been slow going. She finished the straw-clay wattle wall and added bottles to it. They are still quite dirty but when they get washed off it should be beautiful and let colored light in. Deleh gave Anastasia some blue and green bottles that she had saved, blue and green being nice watery colors.

In a less visually exciting change she plastered some and put up the rest of the roofing material that goes under the shakes. We are planning on splitting more and putting up shakes during the work party October 7-9.

Strawberry House Roof !!!

2006-09-29T14:35:00.000-07:00

Strawberry house is getting a pretty traditional roof, plywood, tarpaper, metal. We are just done putting up the plywood, 1 1/8 inch thick pieces scavenged from a huge deck. Tarpaper started going up today.

Getting the plywood up on the roof was hard work, the pieces are heavy we had two or more people on the ground lifting and two up top grabbing it and pulling. Just about the time it was out of the hands of the people below the people above had a good enough grip to hold onto it. Thank goodness for friction.

Because it is a hip roof there were lots of triangles of wood to cut, some of them on the ground before and some on the roof after the wood was up there.

Then there was all the nailing, at first the wood was just nailed down enough to keep it from moving then we went back and spent a long time finishing the nailing. It is very tiring working up on roofs. The first day I nailed so much I got a blister.

Liz didn't really spend time on the roof (so if her father sees this, he shouldn't worry), but she did help some with screening vents. And she helped a lot where she could stand on the flat attic floors and work through parts of the roof without wood on them yet. You can't really tell from the photo but she is 7 1/2 months pregnant.

We have also trimmed all the rafter tails, they were cut long so the ends stuck out too much, and some more than others, much better than being too short.

The house is really different now. It seem so dark inside and really feels boxed in, like a house. But is looks kind of like a barn with so many strawbales inside still :)

Painting the Garden Shed Bench

2006-09-26T20:02:00.000-07:00

Today I painted the bench in the sunny garden shed. The bench needs to have lindseed oil applied to it to keep it from getting water damage so I added pigment to the oil to be applied to parts of it. It will need quite a few more coats of oil but they should be able to be plain without pigment from here on out.

For the leaf I used a synthetic green pigment Emerald Earth had been given a large bag of. It was somewhat different to work with, it seemed to stay in solution better and was much brighter. I only really did one coat on the leaf. I did a little touch up work after the first coat had dried though. The vein in the middle of the leaf is a combination of the green and the red from the other side, then some parts of it have more green on top of that. It looks a lot like I just didn't paint it, the color turned out so much the same as the bench.

For the sunflower petals I used yellow ocher, an earth pigment, it was really hard to get it strong enough to overcome the brown plaster. The second coat really helped.

The center of the sunflower was painted with a combination of red iron oxide and a different yellow ocher, and I added small flakes of mica to it so in the sun it should sparkle. By the time I was done the sun was not on that side any more. I will have to check it out some morning.

I tried out putting some of the red on the petals, based on a sunflower I had looked at, but it was mainly just to see how it would look. I did it before I had applied the second coat of yellow. A bit of the red did show through I may try to add a bit more but I don't want very much.

That last picture of the flower the paint is still wet, it won't look like that after it is dried. The second coat dried a lot slower than the first. It never looked wet like that when I painted the first coat.

I also applied the first coat of oil to the whole bench. It was a pain to paint under it and get into the plaster between the rock foundation. The first coat really took a lot of oil. The bench just sucked it in. Following coats should take less oil until it doesn't want any more, then it is done.

Sucker for Flowers

2006-09-26T14:16:00.000-07:00

Maybe I like taking pictures of flowers so much because they are ephemeral and the picture can make them last or maybe just because they are so beautiful.

The marigold is one bred by a friend of Anastasia's which he named after her, so it is an Anastaisa Marigold.

Natural Building Intensive Workshop

2006-09-24T10:55:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago Emerald Earth held a week long natural building workshop. Over a dozen people came to participate and many of the worktrade who were already here also participated. It was taught by members, mainly Darryl, Michael, and Sara, and some of the worktrade who had already been through the apprenticeship. Each day at least one technique or step in building with clay soil, straw and sand was taught then everyone got their hands dirty and built. There was also a couple hour long lecture daily focusing on theory and reasoning behind the techniques and practices. And each evening there was a presentation, except the last evening which was a pizza party, talent show and sauna.

Some of what was covered was cob, strawbale, light straw clay, heavy straw clay, straw clay wattle, rough plaster, finish plaster, poured adobe floors, natural paints. In the lectures we learned about foundations, roofs, passive solar design, as well as what we were working on that day and other versions the techniques we were learning.

At Strawberry house the internal wall was almost completed using straw clay wattle. The bottom part of the wall is cob, behind the stove, and around the stove pipe is also going to be cobbed so we left a gap for that.

The second bedroom at Madrone House (Deleh's) got two walls put up (it had had plastic up on it last winter), one strawbale and one light straw clay. Heavy straw clay was also used to fill in spaces, both between bales and over posts. We also put up some rough plaster on the strawbale wall. Michael showed folks how to do that, but we didn't get to do too much of it before lunch.

I didn't get pictures of either the strawbales going up or the light straw clay, but the bales are put on top of each other with the layers staggered so the space between bales are not over the space between the bales under them. There is not much space the bales are pretty much jammed into place. Since the side of the wall to the north of the door, the part I worked on, was a bit bigger then two bales we mostly used bales we had to make extra long by taking other bales apart into flakes, then tying a few extra flakes onto a full bale. We did both light straw clay and strawbale in one day by dividing up the workshop participants into two groups and having one work on one in the morning and the other in the afternoon and vice versa.

It really was an intense, very learning packed week. I already knew something about a lot of the techniques taught and had done them to some extent helping out, but I learned a lot more. I am sure those who were pretty new to natural building learned a ton and to some extent probably got overwhelmed.

We did the second floor pour at strawberry house. Mixing up clay, water, lava rock, sand, and straw, then putting in on the floor and smoothing it out with a trowel.

The old floor was swept well to get all the dust and straw off it, and right before applying a segment of the mud mixture it was wet down some to help the new layer stick to the old one. When people were done mixing up batches they got put into wheel barrows and brought into the house then dumped on to tarps or onto segments of the floor that were ready.

To apply a segment you put a 1 1/2 inch thick board a couple feet in front of the already done edge (or the wall) then make sure it is level end to end and with the board on the front edge of the segment behind. You then add mixture, push it into the corners with your hands, or feed, making sure not to have air pockets anywhere then screed it with a board pushing it back and forth and moving it forward to make it pretty level and somewhat smooth, then you use a metal trowel.

Darryl was the main teacher for the floor pour segment of the class, first showing how to mix, then apply the mixture. He is pictured showing Jen how to smooth it out.

Most of the class went to the lecture and a few people stayed to finish the floor. We worked through lunch, half of the group going to eat then coming back while the other half worked. If we allowed the edge to dry it would crack where the wet mixture met the older dry mixture, so we had to keep going.

After it was done the floor looked really big, although not as big as it is in the picture.

Parts of two days during the course were spent making and applying cob. That way we could build higher up the wall. Since cob can spluge out (push out) making the wall not plumb and straight if you add too much at a time we let it dry then added more a few days later. We were working on a garden wall between the greenhouse and the greywater pond that had been started a few years ago and sat out since then.

We mixed cob on tarps with our feet, first mixing the clay and sand (putting the bucket of sand down first so the clay doesn't stick to the tarp), then adding any water needed then adding the straw.

We also created this experimental cob roof, it will get lindseed oil on it to make it shed water. To make the roof we put short segments of redwood branches across the wall every few inches then put cob on top and pressed it into the wood and into the cob below the wood to make it stick. We also made sure that it was higher in the middle so water would flow off, both the middle lengthwise and side to side.

I think it looks really cool now, we decided it was mushroom like and talked about interesting sculptural elements we can add later.

Finish plaster was taught by applying it to the inside of the garden shed on the sunny side. Finish plaster had finer material then rough plaster and only a 1/4 inch or so is applied. It is applied with metal trowels and cut plastic lids to smooth it out nicely, where as with rough plaster you use your hands and sometimes a wooden trowel. You can see the difference between the rough plaster and the finish plaster around that nitch. The bottom two photos of the garden shed are after the plaster dried, you can see how nice it looks now.

That bench partly out in the open needs lindseed oil applied to it now so water doesn't eat away at the plaster.

On the last day we go to work with natural paints, both clay based and casein based, and with lime wash, some with clay added to color it and some white. We painted inside the honey house with an alis, a clay based paint, and also Sara added some more blue to the mural on the back wall and that was just a blue pigment (synthetic) and water. (BTW the honey house is the composting toilet nearest the common house.) We used lime wash for the outside of the south end of the east wall of the common house. People wanted to change the color of that wall.

Natural paints can be painted over all sorts of surfaces, such as plywood, sheet rock and most regular paints so they can be used in non-toxic remodeling. In this case the honey house had a clay paint over clay based walls already and the wall of the common house had a lime plaster over a clay wall.

Pictured in the group photo:
(back row) Ian, Creatch (Mike), Christina, Pamela, Ted, Michael, Darryl,
(second row) Ami, Tracy, Alejandro, Sarah Joy, Matthew, Cathy, Heather,
(sitting) Justin, Jade, Amy, Anna, Anastasia, Jen, Mojo, and Jim.
Sara took the photo and Lyn and Brent also participated but are not pictured.

Bounty and Cuteness

2006-09-22T17:33:00.000-07:00

We have been harvesting lots from the garden, tomatoes, cucumbers, melons, some greens, green beans, parsley, tomatillos. On Monday Heather, Michael and I picked pears off the last three pear trees here to be picked, we have also been getting fruit from friends with lots of trees, and picking grapes and apples here. And yesterday we harvested one of the winter squash patches, not the large one, nor the small one, and got a wheel barrow full or so. We harvested it because the bit of frost the other night killed the plants, I am not sure why those ones died and the other patches didn't. It was an early frost and only frosted in a few places.

We are canning and drying some crops, fruit, tomatoes, tomatillos, and making pickles.

The turkeys are devouring lots of the garden, kale, other greens, seeds we tried to plant, baby plants for the fall garden, but there is still food out there. We have been putting bird netting over some plants. We did manage to get a nice bed of beets to come up and as of now they are still not a favorite turkey food. May it stay that way. But there were lots of weeds, we have weeded them twice in the last two weeks.

The goats will be leaving next week but as of now we have tons of goat cheese.

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And now for the cute segment of this post.

There is this one squirrel that lives in the pine tree in front of Strawberry House. It likes to throw things down on us while we work. It just missed Anastasia twice Wednesday, they seem to throw short. It eats really fast and then runs around really fast, maybe to work off all those calories.

We had some visiting little kids who liked the mud pit, they helped us mix it up right after we added more dirt and water.

Autumn

2006-09-14T17:30:00.000-07:00

It is fall, there is a cool wind with clouds blowing by, the days are getting shorter, the redwood needles are falling, and work-traders are leaving. It is sad. I hope we can all stay in touch. Jim left on Sunday, he took some of his goats with him and will be back for the rest soon. Justin and Lyn are leaving tomorrow, and Mojo and Heather are planning on going in a few weeks. It will just be Anastasia and I for a month or so then we leave too.

Pumphouse August Update

2006-09-07T14:55:00.000-07:00

This is for you Steph and Steve

As you can see in the photos the pumphouse is coming along quite nicely. We are almost done filling in the last two wall sections, one using plaster over reed mat, and the other more straw-clay wattle. Straw wattle is where you take a handful of lengths of straw then coat that bunch of straw in clay by rolling it in a clay slip. Then you take that snake and weave it around upright sticks or other pieces of wood which are attached at the bottom and top to cross beams.

Anastasia and Romney, a guest from Oregon, worked out a wave motif to be sculpted around the bottom of the walls, more sculpture is also planned. We are also trying to find some nice blue and green bottles to put in the last bit of wall, like in Madrone house (Deleh's).

The plywood sheeting part of the roof is done. Anna, a visitor from Germany, helped Anastasia get that up, we still need to put the shakes up on that. For shakes to work as a rain proof roofing material the roof needs to be a steeper pitch, so plywood is being used under them with tar paper over that.

August Strawberry House Update

2006-09-05T20:39:00.000-07:00

It has been a long time since I did a post on building, a lot has happened at Strawberry House in the last month or so. The final segment of the beam around the top of the wall was put in place and it was level with the beams on both sides! Some of it has been less visually impressive. Such as covering strapping and posts with burlap soaked in an adhesive coat (made of flour paste and clay slip), adding first a discovery coat (a thin layer of plaster to find holes and soft spots in a strawbale wall), then plaster to both sides of the north wall.

Projects with more of a visible impact were also done, like framing the south wall and finishing the north strawbale wall. A segment in the middle of it had been left undone until the window that was going to go into it was found. Rafters for the ceiling in the bedroom (east end) were put up and joists for a future second floor over the kitchen (west end) were also put in place.

A group of us worked on getting ready for the natural building workshop happening this week by putting up poles to use when weaving straw-clay wattle for the top part of wall between the bedroom and the rest of the house, and added more cob to the bottom of that wall to get it to the height needed.

The hip roof on the east side was framed, and the trusses for the roof over the middle of the house were made and put in place. The east hip still needs to be framed, we had a the-roof-is- most-of-the- way-framed party anyway. It is looking quite house-like and closed in now.

A lot more is happening on Strawberry house this week during the workshop, work is also being done on the second bedroom on Madrone house, and on the sunny garden shed, and a wall in the shady garden.

Beauty

2006-09-04T18:15:00.000-07:00

There is a lot of beauty up here, and quiet and truly fresh air and it is good for the heart and soul.

Food, Lots of Yummy Food

2006-08-03T16:48:00.000-07:00

Another topic I have not talked about much is food, we have lots of wonderful food here. People take turns cooking dinners and lunches (and cleaning up afterwards) and there are a bunch of good cooks, plus the ingredients are high quality, almost all organic, as much as possible local and in season. Sometimes plain meals are made and sometimes leftovers and creative reuses of food, and sometimes amazing beautiful fancy food is created.

I made a special harvest dinner last night of all food grown here, except the salad dressings and tamari and salt but that was collected by folks here at the beach. We had boiled wheat berries (they were really good), beets, carrots, cucumbers, goat cheese with chives, steamed broccoli and dark greens, new potatoes, sauteed zucchini, onions and garlic, and tomatillo, onion, cilantro salsa, and I may be forgetting stuff. I got lots of compliments on how good it was, I think all the really fresh ingredients was the key, most picked that day some the day before, the wheat a month or so ago.

When I first got here most of the vegetables were being bought, the late rains meant the garden had to go in late, and even without that late spring there are not that many things ready to harvest. Now most of the vegetables we eat are from here. We had amazing large delicious heads of broccoli for a while, I only got a picture after the largest ones were picked. Recently the deer broke into the garden and ate a bed of lettuce right before it was big enough to harvest so we have been having to buy lettuce from a farm in town. The deer also ate the strawberry plants in the shady side garden. We are also growing a bunch of food to store for later when the garden is not producing so much.

Jim has been making bread adding whey from goat cheese making, which makes it rise higher. I made vegan bread a few times and cinnamon buns back when it was cool, we had a bread and tea gathering. As for goat cheese we made a very successful batch last week, getting almost a gallon of milk a day it is made quite often, mostly chevre, but some queso fresco, and Jim may make feta soon.

Twice groups of us have driven down to a friend's house to pick black berries, the first time Michael and I made jam with help from Aria and Lyn, we made 21 pints, then last night Sara and Lyn made 32 pints. They also made pickles. Starting soon we will be canning tomatoes, and making apple sauce, as well as continuing to make pickles and other preserves.

The onion harvest has been great, we have only picked one variety so far, and a few red onions when we want to cook with them, but they are all so big and beautiful. They seem to grow really well here, as does garlic, which we finally finished braiding, there is lots of that too.

Tuesday and this morning we harvested potatoes. The yield on the shady side was not so good although the fingerling bed Steph and Jim dug up was quite productive. On the sunny side we harvested four bins of red potatoes out of one long bed.

I have been saving up photos on this topic for quite a while now, so many of them are of food that was not all in season at the same time. When Ron visited the first time he commented on how silly he had been to worry that I might not be getting enough good food. It made me realize I had not talked about food so I started collecting pictures then.

I have to say it is great to only have to cook once or twice a week (except breakfast) and still get great meals.

Entertainment Two

2006-08-03T15:41:00.000-07:00

I totally forgot to include the pictures of the dress up dance party we had about a month ago, it was a going away party for Diana who was a work trade here for two months. I had been saving up some having fun pictures but somehow forgot to put these ones in the right folder. For the party Aria brought down a bunch of dress up cloths from a stash in the kids loft and we all dressed up and a few people took turns playing CDs. It was fun.

I thought I would also add a picture of Diana playing piano.

Entertainment

2006-07-31T12:18:00.000-07:00

I realize that almost everything I have written about has been work, and way more than that happens here. We spend lots of time talking about all sorts of stuff, we eat a lot, swim in the pond, there is music played, although a lot less since Diana left, she played piano at least once a day, there have been readings, animal watching, a few wonderful slide shows, some movie watching, Diana and Steph spun some fire a few times, we play lots of outdoor and indoor games, we had a backgammon tournament last week, it was single elimination starting with 8 people, Darryl won, and there was even some mud wrestling.

Pump House Update

2006-07-30T22:01:00.000-07:00

On the last day of the apprentice they worked on the pump house, which was a project planned and built by three of the apprentices, Anastasia, Steph, and Steve. On Friday Anne and Justin helped out too and Michael and Darryl also helped out.

Most of the wood used was found in the forest, it had to be checked for rot before it was used, Anastasia and Michael were examining a piece she had just brought over.

Steve spent quite a while making a tan oak branch fit just right between two other pieces of wood.

One of the things done on Friday was install the last of the rafters.

Some of the shakes we split are in the foreground on top of the trough that is being used to soak clay.

Flags

2006-07-30T21:54:00.000-07:00

We fixed a part of the fence that was low where we had seen deer leave the garden, which we assumed they were using to get in too. We also noticed that they could jump above the gate so hung some goddess flags.

A Walk Down to Indian Creek

2006-07-30T21:31:00.000-07:00

This afternoon Anastasia and I walked down to Indian Creek and went swimming. It is about an hour down and an hour back.

On the way we were scared by a rattle snake, it started shaking it's rattle at us, but it was on the bank above the road and we went to the other side and far enough away then watched it for a while, after a few minutes it slithered off up the hill.

Near the bottom of the walk there are a few falling down buildings.

At the bottom near the creek there are some beautiful large redwoods.

The water felt wonderful. I swam in a pool that in a few places I couldn't touch the bottom of, and in others there were large rocks I could sit on.

We saw a beautiful dragonfly down there too.

Rough Plaster on Strawberry House North Wall

2006-07-29T19:01:00.000-07:00

Lyn, who is going to work trade here for two months, got here last weekend. She has done natural building before and likes to plaster. On Wednesday we worked on putting a rough plaster over the east end of the north side of the north wall, a strawbale wall, at strawberry house. At this point I like to apply rough plaster more than finish plaster, it dries more slowly so you have more time to smooth it and fix mistakes, and you don't have to worry as much about making it perfect.

We wet the wall where we were going to plaster, it had a thin coat of mud on it already, put a bunch of plaster (wet blended clay soil and chopped straw, about two to one) up on the wall with our hands and smoothed it out somewhat then use a pool float or trowel to smooth it out more. Since we wanted it a certain height we used little pieces of wood of a the correct height on top of the pins holding the strawbales tightly together, and smoothed the plaster to that height using boards and or a trowel. It is important to really make the plaster stick well to the wall under it so it doesn't flake off and stick it to itself so it doesn't crack.

Making Redwood Shakes

2006-07-29T18:12:00.000-07:00

I learned how to make redwood shakes yesterday. It is fun. It only works using straight tight grained old growth wood, so it is mostly a lost artform. Here they harvest off old stumps. The first loggers left tall stumps since it was easier for them to cut trees higher up. Darryl cut up a few sections of a stump to be made into shakes for the pump house roof, then showed us how to make them. Steph and I tried, I took pictures of her so people can see how it is done. You use a froe and a sledge hammer and split across the grain. First you position the froe a shake's distance from the edge of the large piece of wood, then you hammer it down a bit, it is quite easy, then you pull the handle of the froe back towards you, or away, to split it farther and as needed push the froe down more. With really good wood the shake should pop off with little effort. If there are knots or twisted grain, or rotten parts the shakes don't split even and may have holes or break off before they split the length of the piece of wood.

They are easy and fun to make. It feels to me like asking the wood to do something it feels comfortable doing and it agreeing to do it, or not. So it is easy. You are not forcing it to do something, like if you try to cut a piece of wood, where you need do all the work. Shakes are also more rot resistant because the grains of the wood are not broken but brake along natural lines, between fibers so to speak.

(Shingles are used like shakes but are cut from wood instead of split so can be made from less high quality wood.)

Anastasia and the Lizard

2006-07-29T17:49:00.000-07:00

Yesterday while working Anastasia rescued a lizard from pool of water being used to soak mud. It took to her, first staying on her arm then under her hat and in her hair. After quite a while it started nibbling on her ear and she took her hat off. The lizard stayed on her hair for a while then went around to her chest before running off. It even looked up and into the camera when I started taking pictures.

Pizza and Dessert Party

2006-07-29T16:46:00.000-07:00

The last night of the apprenticeship, we had a pizza party. At Emerald Earth pizza parties the cooks light a fire in the cob oven a few hours before hand, get the toppings ready and make the dough, then people make small pizzas and putting whatever combination of toppings strike their fancy. Whoever is the baker at the time bakes them, it only takes about 5 minutes, and a few can fit in the oven at once. This time Darryl, Steph and Anne baked. They get put directly on the oven floor using a paddle, pans are only used to transport them during construction and while they wait to bake. When a pizza is done it gets cut up and eaten, often by a few people, so if you want to eat one you made you keep track.

Aria got into making cool shaped pizzas, she made a heart, pictured here, as well as a star.

The apprentices and Aria also each made a dessert, and a few of us picked berries as dessert toppings. Mojo used the oven after it was done baking pizzas to bake a vegan fruit sweetened carrot cake. Anastasia made banana sorbet, putting frozen bananas through the champion juicer. Aria made an amazing looking chocolate layer cake with berries on top. Anne and Steph each baked a batch of cookies the evening before. Justin and Steve made vanilla ice cream, well they got everything ready, other people helped crank ice cream makers during the party.

Hand Milking Goats

2006-07-29T16:14:00.000-07:00

We have been using a machine to milk the two goats we take milk from, but today Liz and I decided to hand milk instead. (The machine does a gentler job and it is easier to get all the milk with it, but it is less of an experience.) Of the two we milk one is much harder to hand milk than the other. To milk you hold close the top of the teat then you squeeze down on the rest of it to make the milk in it go down and out into the pan. Then you release and allow milk in the udder to refill the teat, and repeat. Golda's teats are short so it is tough to hold high enough that you get much milk in them to be squeezed out each time. You need to hold up into the bottom of her udder which is not normally recommended. I milked her since I have had more recent milking experience.

Plastering at Deleh's

2006-07-21T21:23:00.000-07:00

Deleh's very beautiful house has been being worked in for a few years mostly slowly. She added a lot of beautiful details like putting a lot of bottle into the walls to let light in and look cool. Seeing the colored light through them is pretty, like stained glass. She has been living in it for quite a while but the downstairs is not done, but it will be soon. We, mainly Deleh and work traders, have been working on getting the finish plaster applied. The plastering needs to be done before the final floor pour. The last layer of the poured adobe floor is going to be applied by the apprentices next week.

You can see how much nicer the wall looks after the plaster by comparing the photos of the bas relief dragon over the hearth. Plastering details like that is quite hard and Deleh did them all herself. She was also able to add the teeth and eye to the dragon once the final plaster was applied.

Finish plaster is applied in a thin layer which is often supposed to be very smooth, some people want a certain texture though. It also is not supposed to have cracks or visible lines. After it dries it can get painted with a natural paint. Since finish plaster is supposed to be so smooth the mixture is more finely chopped and sifted. For the mix we used we screened dried horse manure and chopped straw through a 1/8 inch screen, sand and clay through a 1/16 inch screen, the sand is better even finer. We also used paper pulp we made by tearing up used paper given to us by offices then soaked it in water and finally mixing it and shredding it with a paint mixer attachment for a drill, the same one used to make clay slip. It needs to be pretty shredded so there are no large chunks. The other ingredient for this plaster is wheat paste. We make wheat paste here by boiling 4 parts water, mixing 2 parts cold water with 1 part wheat flour, then adding it to the boiling water.
The plaster recipe is:
3 parts clay soil
3 parts sand
2 parts paper pulp
1 part chopped straw
1 part manure
1/2 part wheat paste
a little bit of borax
and some water until the right consistency.

We used 5 gallon buckets as measures, with one 3/4 full as one part.

The straw, manure (which is basically very finely chopped straw), and paper pulp are for fiber to help hold it together, the clay and wheat paste make it sticky and the sand makes it crack less, and the borax acts as a mold repellent, at least that is my understanding. The paper being white also lightens it some, and the manure has some stickiness when it gets wet in the mix.

I started around an oval window, which was a tough place to learn, flat walls are much easier. I also didn't have a lot of time each of the first few times I plastered, the first time we took a while mixing up the plaster. I forget why I had so little time to work during the second plastering session, but that makes it hard since joining edges that have dried without leaving lines is so difficult. The plaster dries lighter, so the darker sections are just finished. (Sorry for the bad quality of the photos of me. I have been told you all want to see pictures of me, not just landscapes and other people. The person in the last photo plastering in Deleh and Greta is screening dried manure which had been put through the chipper/shredder. The photo of someone's hand sifting is me.)

Hot, Hot, Hot

2006-07-21T21:08:00.000-07:00

It was so hot here today. A bunch of people went to the coast to escape the heat, others of us just swam in the pond and lay around in the coolest places we could find. At 6pm I checked the temperature on Sara and Darryl's front, east facing, porch and it was still 93. Normally here it cools down in the evening and the nights are nice and cool. Greta who has been staying here for the last week went to her tent at 3pm which is under a bunch of redwoods, not really old ones but still quite shady and cooler then surrounding areas and it was 96 there. It was much hotter during the day, or on the sunny side, or under less shade, and in the sun was way too much, but I am wimpy when it comes to heat. It felt quite a bit cooler at 6 than it had during the middle of the day, it was I am not sure how many degrees over 100.

The houses here stay pretty cool even when it is hot, lots of thermal mass and insulation. If it cools down at night the thermal mass really works well getting cool during the night then cooling the buildings down during the day. I lay in the sauna, which is insulated and shaded, its door had been left open a bit so it was not as cool as it would have been, but it was 75 or so when I got there at about 3 and 80 when I left, it was a great place to read.

The Apprentices Plastered the Common House's West Wall

2006-07-20T22:09:00.000-07:00

The common house was on the land when Emerald Earth came into being and is an old hunting cabin, mostly made of plywood. It has been improved a number of times, a foundation was put in, it was expended a bit, etc. Continuing in this process on July 4th a group of people put a pretty thin layer of cob (clay, sand, straw and water) on a portion of the wall behind the stove in the common house. People wanted more thermal mass behind the stove to heat up and then slowly let it back into the room, and to protect the plywood wall. We also added 3 shelves at that time with arches over them. To get the cob to stick to the painted wood wall and stay there we put in a lot of nails and left them sticking out for the cob to grip. This dried in the last few weeks and now could be plastered. It was time for the apprentices to learn about finish plasters and this was the wall chosen to be used for that purpose. To get the plaster to stay on the old painted portions of the wall two methods were tried, reed mats were screwed up to cover most of the wall, and for a portion burlap was stuck to the wall using a sticky clay mixture as an adhesion coat which was brushed on. And tape and paper were put on the trim and other walls to protect them from the plaster.

A bunch of plaster samples using different mixtures were made a few days before the plaster was going to be needed to test recipes and see what to use. I think it had been mainly decided but it still needed to be tested, plus lots of other mixes were tried as a teaching tool so people could see what different mixtures would do. They were made on pieces of wood and laid out on the ground to dry.

All the apprentices worked on it as well as a guest instructor and Darryl who were teaching today. The first photo of putting up plaster is the guest instructor demonstrating and talking to the apprentices about applying plaster, she was a guest teacher here this week teaching about plaster. (She showed the community a great slide show last night full of pictures of beautifully plastered buildings.) I took a picture of each apprentices plastering, Steph, Anne, Anastasia, Justin, Steve and Mojo. And Darryl is on the right in the group photo. Everyone took turns mixing plaster outside and plastering, with three or more people working on the wall most of the time. If the edge of where you are working dries it is very hard to continue plastering there and not have a crack or noticeable spot where the two meet, so people plastered through lunch taking turns eating. They started about 11:30 or noon and finished the wall about 5pm, then cleaned up.

The finished wall looks beautiful, the whiter place in one of the nitches in the "were done" photo is dry already, the heat made it dry fast.

Animals Invading

2006-07-20T22:00:00.000-07:00

This morning we chased two bucks out of the garden, they were beautiful and had nice sets of antlers, but we really do not want them in the garden. They ran fast and at one point towards me, and even though I was safe in the shop it was scary. There is a place in the fence which is too low. We also have had flocks of wild turkeys coming into both gardens lately, mostly on the sunny side but now the shady side too. They messed up the drying wheat bundles and ate a bunch, and have been enjoying the strawberries too. :( And ravens here are a problem too, trying to steal eggs from the chicken house and eating fruit off trees.

Starting the Fall Garden

2006-07-20T21:52:00.000-07:00

Today Jim (the only other work trader here right now) and I planted a bunch of seeds into 6 packs to start getting ready for a fall garden. We planted a few different kinds of kale, chard, brussel sprouts, cauliflower, broccoli, and cabbage. They are on a table in the shade and after they germinate they will be moved into a more sunny location. It is way too hot to need the green house right now.

Goat Fence Moved

2006-07-20T21:34:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I helped move the electric fence being used to contain the goats to a new location. We don't want to impact any one place too much and the area they were in for the last few weeks was getting pretty eaten. We moved them to right near the common house between the outside eating area and the pond. First we carried the small metal fence up to the new location and assembled it so we could put the goats in it and take apart the large fence. It was quite a trick getting the triplets to walk up to the new area. They are pretty scared of humans and their favorite place to be in the old fenced area was under a huge poison oak plant.

We then laid out the new fence and mowed under where it was to go and cut a few small trees to make sure nothing touches the fence and discharges it. Then pounded in the posts and poles to hold it up. It takes quite a bit of effort to move it.

They seem to like their new area, lots of stuff to eat and shade to lay in. It has been quite hot these last few days.

Milking is now behind the common house, quite near my tent. Jim, the man who came with the goats, brought an electric milking machine with him and we have been using it. That is him with the goats eating after being milked, part of the milking machine is hanging up above him. The milkers get fed when being milked, and then the mother of the triplets gets fed too because she needs to produce so much milk for them.

Wheat

2006-07-16T22:58:00.000-07:00

Most of the grain that was planted was hard red winter wheat, the kind one uses to make bread. There was a bed and a bit of that. Plus half a bed of three other varieties. Today we threshed and cleaned the wheat that Sara and I had harvested a few weeks ago. We also harvested the three other types of grain.

The wheat we processed today filled two wheelbarrows with its straw when we carried over the bunches from the garden to near the common house where we could work on it in a flat place in the shade, it was hot today. Then it needed to be threshed, the wheat berries knocked out of the chaff, this was something of a hassle. We basically used three methods, walking on it and rolling it under ones feet/shoes, rubbing it in ones hands, and hitting it with a plastic hose or pipe. They all had their pluses and minuses. We had to make sure the grains didn't go flying off the tarp and into the grass, and hitting it tended to make it fly, the rubbing it between ones hands method worked but took a long time, the walking in it method was quite good but the straw which had already been threshed easily got mixed up with the unprocessed wheat stalks.

My father came over with his seed cleaning machine to help separate the wheat from the chaff. You dump the wheat berries and small husks from it into the feeder of the machine, and turn the crank. That causes part of the machine to shake which feeds the mixture through a number of screens, it also makes a fan spin which blows lighter material, chaff, out the side. We mainly had one size of wheat, but there was some smaller wheat coming out a different shoot, which had fallen through another smaller screen. We didn't care about the different size grains but it could be useful, say if we had a lot of weeds which had also gone to seed but had smaller seeds, or if we wanted to plant only the larger wheat berries so wanted them separate.

From all that wheat we only got a bowl full of grain in the end, a large bowl but still not a lot.

Work Party Day Two

2006-07-16T22:30:00.000-07:00

Today I worked with the garden crew, there was also house building but I didn't help or take photos, so an update on that will have to wait. But we did fun gardening, we harvested garlic, fava beans, and the rest of the wheat. A bed and a half of wheat was planted, well modern wheat, oats, triticale, and an ancient variety of wheat. We had harvested the regular wheat a few weeks ago and stacked it in shocks to finish drying and today we harvested the other grains and threshed and cleaned the wheat. We also braided garlic that had been harvested a few weeks ago (the photo of the wagon is that garlic right after I harvested it), and shelled fava beans for seed and to eat as dry beans. Most of the fava beans we ate when they were fresh and green, but dried they are a beautiful dark purple.

Work Party

2006-07-15T21:00:00.000-07:00

This weekend there is a work party here. Twenty some people came up, a lot from the Bay Area, quite a few from other parts of the US, to help out, and camp and have fun. A lot of work was done on Strawberry House, as well as a pumphouse some of the apprentices are building for a special project, there was also gardening and work on a leaking roof on an older house. I took tons of photos of work on Strawberry House and the pumphouse.

I will start with the slip-straw wall photos. The first two things we did was mix up slip straw, this time tossing it with our hands, and put up forms to pack it into. We then put it into the forms, making sure to get it into the corners, and tamped it down, but not too much, nor too little. We worked on it both before and after lunch, and got almost done, we still need to add more above the windows. We packed it below the window then added the window still when we got high enough. Since this side of the house, the west side, is going to be the kitchen we also added pipes through the wall to be used for water.

The pumphouse is a cool small six sided building, of which we worked on three walls today. Steph, Steve, and Anastasia had already done a lot of work digging foundations holes, installing posts and roof beams, and beautiful found pieces of wood to hold the walls between the poles. The wall design does not go to the ground nor the roof, allowing water to flow as needed below and the submersible pump to be pulled through above the walls if need be. So they attached pieces of wood for the bottom and top of where the infill forming the solid walls would stop and start.

We used two different techniques to infill the walls. They are clay wattle and wattle and daub. Both involve weaving in and out between uprights. In the case of wattle and daub willow and other pretty flexible sticks were woven between small uprights, then daub, a clay straw mixture, is applied over that wattle. In this case a truth window, a place where the outer layer is not applied so people can later see what is underneath, is artistically placed in the wall.

Clay wattle is taking a small handful of long straw and rolling it in clay slip to coat it then using that braid (not really a braid but we called them that) to weave in and out between uprights.

Back at Strawberry House, after lunch we added the last bale to the sections of strawbale wall getting done now. It was actually only a partial bale. First the side what was going to get plastered was dipped in a clay slip so the plaster would stick to it better, then it was hoisted into place. (It in fact was a little too long so had to get cut again then put back into place.) After that the pins on the outside of the bales, both front and back, could get tied in using baling twine, which had been layed between the bales when they were put in place, to hold the wall together.

The area behind the highest bales had to get filled in since the boards holding the posts together at the top were blocking the top row of strawbales from being full width. The bales could have been cut in an L shape to fill that space instead of simply being made less wide but it was decided that filling with straw coated in a heavier slip would be easier.

Also in the afternoon people worked on plastering the strawbale wall. First plaster, well mixed clay and chopped straw, is pressed into the wall (but not pounded, which jiggles it and makes it less securely in place), then it is made smooth, in part with a board being pushed back and forth over it. In places not done when we quit for dinner, which will dry before we get back to work on them, holes were poked with fingers to make a rough surface onto which plaster will bind more strongly.

And on the walk back to dinner I couldn't help but take a photo of this beautiful sunflower.

More About Goats

2006-07-14T17:59:00.000-07:00

Last week I helped put up an electric fence, with a solar panel to run it, so the goats can have quite a bit of area to roam and forage. The mainly prefer bushes and trees over grass, and seem to be eating buckbrush, poison oak (yay), low redwood branches, ferns, some bunch grasses, and native blackberry vines, and other stuff no doubt. They like to lay in the dirt because it helps keep bugs and flies away so they dug the grass away and made a bare patch to hang out in.

A few days ago the little baby girl, Summer, broke her leg somehow, we do not know how, but Jim and Deleh took her to the vet and she got a splint on it. When she got home it was quite bright teal, but now it is dusty. She hobbles around ok, but is slower than her brothers, and the rest of the goats.

Two of them have been being milked every morning. There are four adult females here, one adult male, and five kids born this spring/summer, four of whom are males. The mother of the triplets has not been being milked, they need all the milk still, and one of the other females did not get pregnant last year so does not have milk now. The two with older kids get separated at night so their kids don't drink at night and they will have milk in the mornings for us. We are getting between 3 quarts and a gallon of milk a day, and after the older kids are weaned and the triplets are being separated from their mother at night we will be getting quite a bit more. A bunch of people here drink the milk and use in on cereal and the like. And we have been making cheese, a simple cheese, more like goat milk curds once, and twice Chevre, soft cultured goat milk cheese, it takes two gallons of milk to make it and with so much milk consumption it is a while before that much is available.

Strawberry House, Two Walls Up !!!

2006-07-14T12:38:00.000-07:00

First the east wall went up, it is made of slip straw also called light straw clay. It is straw which gets tossed with a clay slip {clay soaked in water then whipped up smooth and quite wet, the consistency of heavy cream}, until it is very lightly covered. Slip is poured onto it then it gets tossed with pitch forks and more slip is added as needed. Then it is packed into forms, but not packed too tightly so the straw all compresses, you want air in the straws for insulation. In the pictures Liz is pouring and Brent is tossing.

The second wall that went up was strawbale. It is the north wall and strawbale is good for that since it is extra insulating the north won't get sun to warm it up. Bales are stacked on each other and tied to thin boards that go up and down to keep them in place, there are also metal strips going at a diagonal for structural support. Then a plaster is put on them to protect them. The first layer if plaster was just started. The gap in the strawbale wall will be filled in later during a workshop, also they need to get the window that will be up in it before it goes up, or at least know how big it will be.

I took photos of the whole house and had the computer stitch them together into one, it makes things looked curved that are not, the house is a rectangle and the boards up are straight, more or less. As you can see the west wall is starting to be framed too, it will be slip straw and should get worked on this weekend during the work party.

Summer Flowers

2006-07-13T15:32:00.000-07:00

There are so many pretty flowers I took some pictures. The bees like them, I saw at least three different kinds of bees on flowers today. Some of them are medicinal, some edible, some just pretty and liked by people and bees.

The Goats Got Here

2006-07-02T18:13:00.000-07:00

A new work trader and his 10 goats just got here. He is going to be here for 2 months or so, then if having the goats here is working out he will leave them here while he travels and when he gets back, if Emerald Earth wants to have goats, he will leave a few here. One of them just had triplets on solstice so they are very young still, those three are called Summer, Soul, and Stacy. They seem quite willing to be held but do like to get down and run around.

While I am talking about newish animals the baby chicks are growing fast. They moved into a large cage from their apple box at night and chicken tractor (small cage) during the day. Soon they can join the big chickens. Aria spent a lot of the day, before the goats got here, in the baby chick cage in a lawn chair playing with the chicks with a bowl of food in her lap, after the baby goats arrived she enjoyed cuddling with the goats.

Strawberry House Floor

2006-07-01T22:40:00.000-07:00

(I am putting * after phrases which are pictured)

We poured an adobe floor last Thursday, it was quite a lot of work but there were a bunch of us helping. Before we got to the stage of pouring all the lava rock which needed to go under it had to be hauled up to the house site and shoveled into place*, it then had to be leveled* and tamped down* so it would not settle much after the floor was in place. The apprentices really worked hard to make all that happen. The crib was also partially filled with lava rock coated in a clay slip* and that had to be tamped as well.

The night before the pour we mixed up a few batches of adobe floor so the next morning some people could start applying it while others mixed up more*. We also whipped up a bunch of buckets of soaked clay soil and water*, which is one part of the recipe, using a paint mixer attachment to an electric drill. The recipe was posted* in case anyone forgot it, we used 3/4 of a bucket as one part, a full bucket is too heavy, except for the straw where we used a full but not compressed bucket, and the water was a little less than 3/4s. We started with the clay and water then added ingredients* in order making sure the last one was mixed in before adding a new one. Once it was mixed up it was put on the floor, either by the wheelbarrow full or using a shovel or hands. It was applied to a wet down section of gravel between two 2 inch boards which were carefully leveled both with the board behind it and with itself so they could be used to measure the height of the floor (we wanted it to be 2 inches high), then the mix was pushed down into the gravel with hands and a board was used with one edge on the board behind and one on the board towards you to even out the mix*, there were normally some holes you had to fill in after that, often caused by the larger lava rocks in the mix, then the floor was smoothed out with a trowel*. Once you had a section between boards filled and smoothed you removed the far board, filled that space in with more mix and troweled it smooth, put the board you had just taken out in front of the previous front board, leveled it and started over again on a new patch of floor. There were usually 4 people working on this part of the job at the same time, we started from both sides and worked toward the middle then forward toward the door when the sections got close. When I left at 5pm to go back and cook dinner it was almost done*. I was told that by 6pm they were done and the site was cleaned up, we started about 9am after a brief lesson on how to apply the mixture, having learned about mixing it the night before, and took an hour and a half lunch break in the middle, so a pretty long day. I think 10 of us worked on it for almost all that time. It now needs to not be walked on for 5 days or so until it dries.

It is only the first layer of floor, two more will be added later, after the walls are done and tools and other stuff are less likely to fall on it and dent it or stick to it. Then a few coats of linseed oil will be applied to make it water resistant.

Strawberry House Partial Cob Wall

2006-07-01T22:12:00.000-07:00

I am a little behind on what is happening with Strawberry House. The week before last part of an interior wall made of cob was put up. It is going to have a wood stove in front of it and the arch is going to be for storing firewood, the stove will go to the left of the arch with a bookcase to its left, and a doorway into the bedroom all the way to the right. The 5 gallon plastic bucket stuck through the cob is creating a space for air circulation around the stove (it will get taken out of course) and the strawbale and rounds of wood formed a form to put the cob on to create the arch.

The bedroom is going to be raised and have a wood floor on the east end of the house, and a subfloor for it was also put up that week.

You can see the bottom part of the back of the cob wall under the bedroom floor with rocks forming part of its foundation, they were put outside the earthbags to protect them. (See last Strawberry house post.)

Rain!?!

2006-06-28T14:17:00.000-07:00

It actually rained today, pretty early in the morning and again late morning, not for long and not hard but it is really late in the season to be raining around here. It has been super hot and yesterday it was a bit cooler, somewhat cloudy and quite humid, also rare in the summer, but it is still quite warm, especially in the sun when it is out. When it rained shortly before noon it was sunny the whole time too.

Garlic Harvest

2006-06-27T17:12:00.000-07:00

We are beginning to harvest garlic this week. A lot is grown here, it is braided and given as gifts as well as cooked with here. (The picture of unharvested garlic was taken on the sunny side last week when it wasn't quite ready to harvest, it gets more brown and fallen over before it is harvested.)

This morning we harvested two half beds of it on the shady side. We will also be harvesting it on the sunny side soon. A couple weeks ago I harvested a Chinese variety which is an early garlic. Today we harvested Siberian and Romanian garlic. We are trying to keep the different varieties separate. We will be drying it in piles in the shade so it doesn't cook while drying then cleaning it and braiding it.

I wonder if the Romanian garlic was specially bred to be better at keeping vampires away.

Visitors and Animals

2006-06-26T22:55:00.000-07:00

I have had a number of friends visit so far (more are welcome) including Ron, who among other things had fun tormenting the community cat, Happy Cat. There are two other cats here, but they are not particularly tame, one doesn't let people touch her at all, the other tends to mostly hang out at Michael's.

As long as I am introducing pets, Deleha's dog, who is kind of a community dog too, is named Big Dog. The story is she was named by a young girl who also had a Small Dog, but Dehela got her after she was named. She is not really very big at all, except her ears.

And here are some wild turkeys I saw below the sunny garden. There were 4 adults and a bunch of chicks. The chicks are faster at getting away so by the time I was taking pictures most of them had run/flown into the bushes and out of camera range. You can see a few of the chicks in the first two photos. We all hope they don't come into the garden and make a mess of it. A few deer did get into the shady garden recently because gates were left open. Big Dog knows how to open all the gates, but not close them.

As for other wild life, saw a large gopher snake a few weeks ago and I have seen quite a few smallish striped snakes in the garden, and two rattle snakes have been seen around.

(You can click on the photos to make them larger.)

Strawberry House Update Mid-June

2006-06-26T21:12:00.000-07:00

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.

The Launch of Pato Palace

2006-06-18T14:27:00.000-07:00

Yesterday after lunch we had a duck house launching party. A procession carried the duck house and tools out to the pond. The flotation system was attached to the bottom of the structure. It was christened Pato Palace, champagne was drunk. The house was set afloat and hauled to a floating bottle (attached by rope to the end of the microhydro system pipe) so it would be in the middle of the pond away from marauding critters. The ducks had watched the whole thing, not only the launch but the construction over at the workshop. They checkout Pato Palace after it was tied in and circled it a few times before entering.

Building The Duck House

2006-06-18T14:04:00.000-07:00

I helped build a cool duck house. There was an old one which had half sunk. Diana and Ben dragged it out of the pond, and took the old walls and roof off the platform. I helped build the new one on that old platform. Ben did most of the design work and spent the most time but I help lay out the shakes and screw them into place. We used unmilled round redwood and madrone branches and split old growth redwood shakes. We made 4 rows of shakes, two of longer pieces for the bottom rows and two of shorter for the top, trying to slant the bottom of the top row artistically. Each row was screwed onto a redwood branch, the bottom rows at the bottom, the top rows at the top. Then the tops were attached to the bottoms and the A-frame was screwed into the deck. (Admittedly the photo of me was taken in the evening after I had finished working, showered and changed, so I posed.)

Bird on Hops

2006-06-09T19:05:00.000-07:00

The image is a little blurry but I thought the bird perched on top of the hops trellis looked cool.

Purple Flowers

2006-06-09T18:59:00.000-07:00

Brent was pointing out to me how many purple wild flowers there are around here now. I took a bunch of photos so everyone can see them, sadly the Wild Iris's are past their prime now. There are more out there too, I didn't get photos of all the varieties.

Garden Buddha and Foxglove

2006-06-07T21:56:00.000-07:00

Strawberry House

2006-06-07T21:14:00.000-07:00

When I got here a little over a month ago the housepad was almost done. It was all hand dug and the dirt was put into wheelbarrows and dumped pretty close, some not so close and down hill a bit. Most of the dirt which was dug out will be used to make the walls, some was hauled over to a near by housesite for use there and some was used to make a level terrace below the house. I helped dig the last bit to make a flat area to build on, then we started digging holes for footings, then mixing concrete to fill them and pouring it, then digging a drainage trench around the outside of the walls but under the eves to catch any ground water, and sloping the ground just inside it toward it and away from the house. (The first photo is from May 24th. The second photo is from today and you can see the first four posts have been put up and the trench is mostly full.)

Filling the trench is what we worked on today, it got filter fabric put in it then a three inch plastic pipe with perforations so water can get into it and flow way, the trench slopes down and drains away from the house, then lava rock was added on top of the pipe to fill the trench with a material water can easily drain through, then the filter fabric was folded over and more lava rock was added on top until it was about level with the dirt. The filter fabric is to keep excess dirt and silt from getting into the lava rock and clogging the air/water ways between the rocks. It was a bit of a workout, most of the lava rock was down the hill and over a bit so we shoveled it into wheelbarrows and pushed it up to the site, luckily it was lava rock so not so heavy but I was still out of breath by the time I finished wheeling it up each trip. We also tamped it into the trench with a heavy metal tamper, a long pole with a round piece of metal on the end which you lift and drop to compact dirt or rock or whatever, it helps move things around to eliminate extra air pockets

The Apprentices

2006-06-07T20:13:00.000-07:00

Emerald Earth has an eight week Natural Building in Community apprentice- ship. It started Monday so there are now five new people living here. There are six apprentices but one of them was here for a few weeks as work trade before the apprenticeship started. They and Darryl and Michael, who are teaching them, have taken over most of the building on Strawberry House, along with Liz and Brent, whose house it is going to be and who have been doing lots of work on it all along. They build/learn five days a week and have one afternoon when they have a sit-down lecture/discussion class, and one evening with slide shows/videos about natural building. Work Traders used to work on Strawberry house two mornings a week, starting this week we are instead working there Wednesday afternoons while the apprentices are in class.

The apprentices all seem like very nice people, although we have mostly been too busy to hang out. This weekend we should have more time. Of the six apprentices Anne is from Canada, Stephanie is from Ireland, and Anastasia, Mojo, Steve, and Justin are from the US, although Anastasia's mother is from Colombia and she has spent a lot of time in Guatemala. This is the third year they have taught a two month long class and in the past it was mostly men so they started a scholarship fund for women, to try to even out the gender balance. It seems like a great program with lots of learning from people who know what they are doing, focusing not only on how and what to do but why so in other circumstances you can know what to change.

"Scrub the Fairy"

2006-05-27T11:01:00.000-07:00

We have been playing games in the evenings quite a bit and a favorite is called Scrub the Fairy. It takes quite a few people and each person starts out with a large blank piece of paper and writes a phrase or sentence across the top of the page. They then hand it to the person to their left who reads the sentence and draws a picture to represent the sentence, not taking up too much room on the page, folds the sentence over so it can't be seen and hand the paper to the person on their left, who looks at the picture and writes a phrase to represent the picture, folds down the picture so only their sentence shows and hands it to the person on their left, etc switching back and forth between a picture and sentence/phrase. When the paper is used to the bottom or in a smaller group the paper gets back to the original person, the game is over and the papers are flattened out and read/looked at and laughter ensues.

It can be quite amazing how transitions get made, we had one where Arnold turned into Elvis, and one where a yoga mat turned into a log, then into sushi but the scorpions also included in that one stayed scorpions throughout although the person pictured changed from one person to someone else then back then into a fairy, then a mosquito queen. It is fun and very funny.

Beautiful, Bright Stars

2006-05-25T22:47:00.000-07:00

Last night was clear and there was no moon and the stars were beautiful and bright, although there was a little moisture in the air. We fired up the sauna and between times sweating sat on the deck outside talking and looking at the stars. I want to learn the constellations, I do have two star ID books, but so far I have just been enjoying them, when it was not overcast and the moon wasn't too full. Tonight is mostly overcast again, so no stars, but I will still get to fall asleep to the sound of the frogs and bullfrogs in the pond. I can even hear the frogs from here, the office loft in the common house.

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Drawing Flowers

2006-05-24T20:54:00.000-07:00

I finally got around to doing some drawing. I have been intending to and brought a number of different types of art supplies up here with me but for one reason or another never got to it until today. Late this afternoon before dinner I managed to draw two pictures of flowers in the garden, well one was a flower planted in front of someone's house, the other was in the garden. I was using new colored pencils and had a hard time with some of the shading. The yellow one is called Jerusalem Sage, of course the purple one is an Iris.

sunflower sculpture

2006-05-24T15:22:00.000-07:00

I took pictures of the sunflower sculpture I made on the back of the smaller bench in the sunny garden shed. I think it looks better in person, it is more distinct, but it has to be low relief since it is the back of the bench.

Anastasia and I went back on Monday afternoon and used up the rest of the earthen plaster we had mixed up on Sunday, and plastered about half the outside back of the shed.

Birds

2006-05-24T14:59:00.000-07:00

Lots of wild birds around, and quite a few domesticated ones too. I have not seen wild turkeys since I got here, but I did see some on the drive in. I have seen lots of ravens, and heard them too, not only vocalizing but there wings overhead when they fly by. The sound of the wind on their feathers is quite loud. They also steal chicken food and eggs from the chicken house :( There are lots of small twittery birds too, I do not know what kinds they are but every morning I wake up to bird songs. Not really intricate songs but the sounds of birds chirping. A few days ago I saw a red headed woodpecker, it didn't seem scared of me at all, it went on pecking, looked up at me for a second, and went back to pecking, looked up at me, etc. Bright red head, pretty large bird. It must have been looking for bugs in the fallen oak it was pecking at.

And today next to the path I saw a smallish blue half an egg shell, I didn't see a nest above it so I am not sure quite how it got there.

And they ordered a bunch of baby chicks. There already are chickens here but only hens and they don't seem to be hens that want to sit on eggs, even when there was a rooster (it got eaten by raccoons a while ago). So they ordered baby chicks through the mail, they get mailed right after they hatch and there are a few days when they don't need to eat so they arrive at the post office alive and thirsty, and hungry. We got quite a few, they are all living in a large wooden box with a light in it for heat, boards on top, and blankets on top of that to keep it warm enough. They are already getting in some of their larger feathers, at first they were just fuzz balls with heads and feet. I think 10 different varieties were ordered, and they do look quite different from each other.

Rough Plaster on the Sunny Garden Shed

2006-05-21T20:18:00.000-07:00

Work party this weekend, not as many people showed up as at the last one. Partly due to the rain threat. It didn't really rain much over the weekend though, it was cloudy and not hot, great working weather. On Saturday I dug at the housesite, both holes for footings and some of the beginning of the drainage trench around the outside of where it will be. Then in the afternoon I worked with two women here for the work party pulling up thistles. But I didn't take photos.

Today I did cob and earth plaster work on the sunny garden shed. And I did take photos for you all. On Saturday a group of people had moved dirt from behind the building to in front to increase the flat space in front and to make more space in back too. This morning I helped mix up a batch of cob, using my feet to mix together the clay, sand, and straw. Two of us smooshed it together on top of a tarp then when it got pushed out flat we picked up a side of the tarp and pulled it up and toward the middle so the mixture at the edge fell onto the part in the middle. (I didn't get pictures of this, sorry.) We mixed and added ingredients until it was the right consistency. Then I took some of the cob and used it to add to a bit under the bench on the outside of the building, I was trying to make a part which wasn't built up as much match the rest of the bench. To get the wet cob to attach to the dry I hammered in old used nails so they stuck out a bit for the cob to cling to, I also wet down the old dry cob. Then I mashed the wet cob into the space and pushed it, both with my fingers pushing it and with the heel of my hand smoothing it to the edges. You should be able to see the place I added to, it is darker since it is wet, and under the middle of the bench, near the bucket (which had the wet cob in it).

In the afternoon I finished working on the bit under the bench then helped with the rough plaster, which is a very similar mix of ingredients but wetter and goes on the outside of the original cob to smooth it out some. There is normally a finish plaster on top of the rough plaster with finely sifted ingredients to get a really smooth wall. I helped with some of the rough plaster on the walls but mostly sculpted a low relief half sunflower on the back of a smaller bench under the window arch inside the building. This is mimicking the half sunflower on the back of the bench I had been working on. In the afternoon I was working mainly with three of the other work traders here. Diana was working on getting the shape of the arch window perfected, Bill and Anastasia were mainly putting the rough plaster on the flatter bits of wall, and mixing the plaster in the wheelbarrow.

I got quite muddy, one my feet, my hands, my cloths, even in my hair when Diana was plastering above me. It reminded me of when I was young and we had a really muddy place in the creek that we called the mucky mud bakery and made mud pies and the like. Then before dinner I took a nice shower and washed it all off.

I will take pictures of the bench back I sculpted soon. By the time we were done, what with the cloudy sky, the inside of the shed didn't have great lighting.

Rain

2006-05-19T14:33:00.000-07:00

It has been hot and sunny since I got here, quite hot lately. We have been starting work at 8 not 9 in the morning so we can stop earlier due to heat. Different mornings of the week we work on different projects but they all seem to be in the sun. But yesterday late afternoon it got cooler and there were a few small high up clouds blowing by and last night more clouds came in and it has been raining some. Right now it is not, but earlier it drizzled. I had to get up pretty early this morning to but the rainfly on my tent. Luckily Diana, another work trader up here, was in the common house and could help, she is quite tall and was able to reach high enough to pull the fly over the peak of the tent. The weather forcasts says it will be like this until Tuesday. It is not great timing since there is a work party here this weekend. But I find the change nice, it was being too hot for me, and all the plants seem to be really liking the damp.

Soon I will take pictures of the house site and get them up here for you all to see. Please feel free to comment and ask questions if you have any.

time

2006-05-15T19:49:00.000-07:00

I have been thinking about time lately.

Yesterday was the one month anniversary of my last day at FSRN, but I find that unbelievable, it feels like so much longer. The two weeks after I was done working went quite fast, between recovering & resting, and cleaning & packing it wasn't enough time to do things as slowly at I would have liked, so time seemed to be fast. The little more than two weeks since I got here on the other hand don't seem to have moved slowly or quickly, they seem somewhat uncalculatable.

My relationship with time is very different here then it was working with a daily deadline. That was one of the reasons I felt a need to do something so different. I wanted to work on projects with a totally different timeline, and so much less time pressure. The large change in how and where I am living is probably a main reason it seems like so much longer. It seems to me people don't measure time very accurately internally, but more measure change, more change seem like more time, less change even over a long period seems like not much time has gone by.

Shortly after I got here, on Monday the 1st I went into Boonville for the Day Without Immigration march. But since then I have not left Emerald Earth, not even walked very far away from the main living areas. There was a documentary film in town last night a bunch of folks from here went down to see but I felt reluctant to leave, and was tired, so stayed here. I don't feel a need to leave right now. So I am staying here where different days are somewhat different, we meet about the week on Mondays, and focus on different projects on different mornings, but really the passage of days is less noticeable. Seasons seem more important, when to plant and when to harvest, when the soil is moist enough digging is easy, when it is sunny and hot and when it is rainy. The difference between say Saturdays and Tuesdays are just human constructions, and I am ignoring them for the most part right now. Other people here do need to pay attention to them and go to work or school on certain days but the impact on me is not so great as to affect my view of time.

One interesting thing though is before we gather for events here, mainly meals, but also meetings or other events, someone rings the big bell outside the common house twice, then at the time the event is to start it is rung three times. So my skills at recognizing how long 15 minutes seems like depending on what I am doing is increasing, of course it also depends on if people really ring the bells at the right times.

Swimming in the pond

2006-05-09T18:25:00.000-07:00

I went swimming in the pond for the first time today. It was cold, but I had been working in the sun and was way too hot so cold was welcome. I didn't stay in very long though. I jumped off the dock then climbed back on it twice then decided to really swim a little bit. At first I tried the slide but it is really meant for children, I am too big :(

You can see the three ducks in the photo of the dock.

I also took some more photos of the common house for you all. One is of the kitchen side, with outside dining and serving, and a cob oven. Another is the bench, oven and serving area. And the third is the "front", the side toward the garden, houses and parking, but the kitchen door seem more like the front to me. This is the house that was on the land when folks moved here, it was a hunting cabin, it has been remodeled some, but they plan on building a better common house on the sunny side in a few years.

2006-05-06T15:07:00.000-07:00

More Photos. Here are some closeups of my huge tent. i am hoping to get some crafts done so set up one side for that, and have a "closet" in the other, with a bed in the back and a yoga mat in the front. I have been doing a bit of yoga each morning.

We have been eating outside a lot, here is a view of the outdoor dining area from the path to my tent.

In a previous post I mentioned dugging up thistles, this is the largest one i pulled up, look at my foot in the bottom of the photo for scale.

This is the bridge connecting the two sides of the land, the part where i am sleeping and the common house is and one of the gardens is is called the shady side, the other side is called the sunny side.

The chicken yard is on the Shadyside near the bridge.

And this is the tool shed in the Sunnyside garden. The wheelbarrow next to it is full of more thistles.

it's been about a week, settling in

2006-05-06T09:44:00.000-07:00

It is peaceful up here at Emerald Earth. Things seem to move slowly around here in a nice way, not much rush at all. Last weekend, right after Sandra and Edrie drove me up was a work party, which was more busy and hectic, but since then things seem quite laid back, but it is easy to keep busy. So different from daily deadlines.

There is lots of land, a common house, houses for the members, mainly built out of straw, sand and clay with some wood, a pond and a creek which dries up in the summer, two gardens, ducks and chickens, a green house with a beautiful mosaic shower inside it, a sauna behind, and guest loft, a few composting toilets, tool sheds, a shop, there are two water systems one from a well and one from a spring, and lots of solar panels and batteries and an inverter to turn the 12 volt DC into 110 AC so devices made to be plugged into the US power grid can be used, and a complicated phone system which works but is expensive to use.

I got my huge tent set up and mostly unpacked and set up everything in it.

I have been helping with getting garden beds ready to plant then planting (mainly potatoes so far), digging into a hillside to make a pad for a new house, pulling out thistles, watering parts of the garden, moving firewood, and cooking and cleaning of course.

I've also been relaxing, sitting by the pond, chatting with people (7 people live here all the time and right now there are 5 people here doing work trade) listening to music (a few of the folks here play), looking at the moon and stars, and there was a sanua one night and have been evening fire circles twice. Aaron and Salam came up to visit on Wednesday, that was nice we spent the afternoon by the pond and Salam fished.