Machetes and Excavations

It has been several days since my last update.

A guy named Jeff had e-mailed Jessa volunteering to come help at the workshops. From what I understand, he has studied at Cal-Earth and just finished the bagwork on a double eco-dome somewhere. We needed to decide if we wanted to let him come on board for free or allow him to do some kind of work exchange. E-mails circulated and a meeting was held with John. Jeff is going to come up, I believe, although nobody really has a place for him to stay... (I honestly don't know too much about this situation...)

Phil and I returned to the bamboo site that I mentioned in my last post. We want to use bamboo as a thatched ceiling in John's house, so we needed a lot. I used a reciprocating saw to cut down the stalks and Phil used a machete to clear the extra limbs and leafs off them. The patch was huge, so after a couple hours of cutting, we had hardly made a dent in the supply.

Adam and I returned the next day. (Have I mentioned that Adam is back up here?) Jessa and Phil had alternative things to do- this was the first time we've ever been split up doing non-computer work. We cut bamboo for a few more hours.

Me, trimming with pruning shears.

Adam, trimming with a machete.

I learned that trimming with a machete is far easier than trimming with pruning shears, but trimming with pruning shears is infinitely easier than trimming with my utility knife thingy-ma-bob.

Jessa met up with Adam and I in the afternoon to move all the cut bamboo. She had brought the trailer to the truck because she knew the pieces wouldn't all fit in the truck. I think we underestimated the bamboo.

The truck, full of bamboo.

We took the bamboo up to John's house. The ride there was not an issue at all. We had wrapped bungee cords around the bamboo to keep it together and attached the bundled bamboo to the truck and trailer with a few more cords. The trouble came once we got to John's. The road from the entrance to Egret's cove and to John's plot of land is steep(ish) and rocky, with little room to turn around at the top. Since Jessa isn't entirely comfortable backing the trailer up, we decided to detach the trailer and let the bamboo drag on the way up. It worked until we were about 20 feet away from the site- the hill got too steep and the bamboo decided it didn't want to be bundled anymore. It came out of the truck and scattered across the road. (Across, not down. We didn't have to go chasing it down the hill.) We decided we were close enough and, since Egret's Cove is an intentional community, we left the bamboo there, scootching it off the road. Good enough. ^_^

The next day, we all woke up early to go help with the excavation at Michelle's house. We had marked out the foundation last time we were there. From our soil testing, we thought that there was only 6 inches or so of soil before hitting bedrock. One we got the excavator (Michelle's neighbor) in there, we found out that it was very much not true. There was just a lot of flat rock near the top...

A lot of dirt.

There wasn't much to do during the excavation (since only the man on the Bobcat could actually do anything.) We ended up sitting under a tree on some blankets for a few hours, discussing foundations and other details of the house. I figured out how much clay was needed for the site. Hooray math! I met Rob for the first time, cooed over the adorable baby, moved Michelle's windows into the barn and ate a granola bar. Nothing too strenuous.

After a few hours, the perimeter was dug.

Phil and Jessa, making sure the trench for the foundation was satisfactory.

The excavator moved the dirt into the lawn and flattened it; it will probably be used for raised bed gardens later. He also went ahead and dug the draining trenches.

After visiting Michelle's, we met up with Howard Carlberg at his home in Berea. He cooked us lunch (which was fabulous because we were very hungry.) He had an idea to build a cob oven somewhere in Berea, but wanted to make sure that it was used for something (as opposed to just being a structure to point at and say "we have that.") Howard is very involved with the folk dancing that happens in Berea, so one thought that he mentioned was firing up the oven when there were festivals. While no decisions or agreements were made between Howard and HomeGrown HideAways, I think Howard got ideas about how to make his cob oven something for the community to enjoy.