Daily Life

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

Musings On Roofs

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.