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.

Exciting things are taking place!

I've had a couple of meeting since my last post. Yesterday, Phil, Jessa and I had an impromptu meeting to hammer out some details with the workshops and specific things that need to be completed before starting the workshops. I don't feel like I contributed too much, but I listened attentively.

Today, I woke up early, (said goodbye to Adam, who left today) and went with Phil and Jessa to meet Michelle at the codes office. Michelle had her two kids with her- a baby strapped to her chest and a hyper boy who really wanted some attention- cute as anything. She got her building permit (from the same guy who approved John's- he seemed friendly and fairly excited about the buildings. It was nice to see who the others had been working with for so long.) Her permit was not near as hard to get as John's, since she will have a timber-frame to support her structure. I got to look at the official floorplan for the studio and I think it's going to be beautiful. (For a reminder, Michelle has the strawbale and cob studio. John had the earthbag dome house.) Jessa took a picture of Michelle with her permit, so maybe I can get my hands on that and post it as well.

After going to the codes office, Phil and I met up with John to discuss his house some more. Phil had plans drawn out on his computer, which I think helped me to understand and visualize the house much better. I felt like this was a very good meeting- I understood and felt up to speed with the others. I might owe my cup of Mocha Jo a thanks. I think John's house is going to be wonderful and unique to look at and I really hope that he opts to put bottle in his wall somewhere. I want to put bottles in a wall.

I just typed up a list of things that need to be done before our first workshop at John's on the 16th. I now need to type up short descriptions of each of the workshops so that Jessa can start advertising. I'm not entirely sure how well I will do on this, but I'm going to go give it a shot. Once Jessa posts the schedule and descriptions somewhere, I will post it on here. I don't want to falsely advertise.

I'm feeling good about this. I'm looking stuff up in books and becoming familiar with the terminology and processes. Phil let me look through his tools that he ordered for the summer, so I now know what I need to buy. I'm looking forward to this.

First Day

Hi folks. I haven't been around my computer lately and I haven't wanted to post without being on my own computer.

I had a meeting with Jessa, Phil and John (owner of the earthbag project) on Friday (I think.) A lot was said to finalize plans on John's house. A lot of what is said was technical, design stuff and I didn't feel like I could contribute so much to that part of the conversation; I think I will be far more helpful when we actually start building.

John got a building permit.
This is an amazingly good thing. The entire time I have been involved with this internship, the others have been pushing for the codes office to give John a building permit. There are no earthbag residencies in this region, so codes officials were extremely hesitant about giving the permit. Now, as long as everything goes well in the building process, people who want to build with earthbag should have a much easier time getting their permits. Groundbreaking stuff, kids.

Carol's cob house has been moved outside my internship. She doesn't feel that she will be ready to build until late August/early September, which is past the internship end. I was looking forward to the round cob house, but I will have an opportunity to build with cob when I work on Michelle and Rob's studio.

My internship officially starts today, although I don't think that there's anything for me to be doing today. I'm a little in the dark right now about what I'm supposed to be doing- I'm just waiting for Phil or Jessa to tell me to do something.

In other news, Adam (boyfriend) is visiting for a few days, so I've been playing with him lately. He likes the SENS house and, hopefully, will help me get a bed into the room I'm wanting to move into. Then I can unload boxes.

I have a giant fear that I'm going to kill all my friends' plants that they left with me for the summer.

Planning the Summer

I had a meeting with Phil and Jessa yesterday. I was waking up from a nap that I took to get rid of a headache, so I was fairly low energy. The meeting went well though and I now feel more comfortable with what I'm going to be doing this summer.

There are three buildings that I am going to be working on.

1. John's earthbag dome. This is the structure that I'm most familiar with- I've been following the progress as John, Phil and Jessa have been designing and dealing with codes people. This structure is unique because it's actually a house. From what it sounded like, nobody has lived full-time in any of the structures that Phil or Jessa have made.
2. Carol's cob pottery studio. This will be a round structure with a shed roof.
3. Michelle and Rob's strawbale and cob art studio. Three walls will be strawbale and the fourth will be cob. Cob needs to be round, so the fourth wall, the southfacing wall, will be rounded, allowing for more thermal mass.

We set up a schedule for workshops for the summer. Jessa wanted to check with the project owners to make sure that the weeks we designated to work on their buildings was alright with them, so I'm going to wait until I hear confirmation from that before posting the complete schedule, but I will say (that this sentence is getting very long and) that there are nine straight weeks of workshops that I will be helping out with. The plan is to hold workshops Monday through Friday, 9 to 5 with long lunch breaks. We're hoping that each workshop has 5 to 15 people. The workshops will start June 16th, two weeks after my internship officially starts. Phil and I will be doing prep-work in those two weeks. I'm waiting to hear more about that.

June 10th I have a doctor's appointment. July 30th I go to the Warped Tour for free tabling for the Rainforest Action Network. I honestly know nothing about this- a friend of mine (Lilly) asked me if I wanted to join her. I will be recieving information in the mail to pass out, etc. I just found out that it was July, not June, so I will have to tell Jessa next time I see her.

I'm taking care of the animals now. They are sweet and wonderful. Even the shy cat (Sara) let me pet on her for a while. Good stuff.