Frog Pond pics

A few pics of the frog pond. We have at least 1/2 a dozen frogs living in this thing now. They're getting big too. First lily pad bloom just opened. 2nd pic is when I found it Wednesday a.m.

 

Insect Hotel

Hopefully this will help draw some natural pest control. We'll see...

Blackberry Trellis

Made from cedar branches and anchored to leftover treated posts. We transplanted some blackberries my dad gave us a couple years ago. This is a mound from where one of the persimmon tress went down in the hurricane. A lot of work but probably still easier than pulling that stump.

 

Greenhouse progress

Here's what it looks like so far...

Pergola Bench

I added a bench to the Pergola. I split a couple of logs and made 1" planks. Tough with wet wood and an axe and sledgehammer. The first two small ones I ran on the belt sander after I got them split. The large ones I ran through the planer.

 

Unfortunately, before I could finish the bench, I had to cut down our last cedar tree. I spent half a day trying to get the tree to fall the right way. I had a rope tied around it, angled around a tree and then tied to my car. The unfortunate part is that it didn't work...

 

It fell right on top of the goat shelter, of course! Fortunately, the roof on the goat shelter is fine. Not having a smashed roof to fix eased the pain of the screw up. And the goats love the cedar bark!

New Pergola

I spent the weekend cutting down cedar trees and building a new pergola or arbor or whatever you want to call it. All of our cedar trees were infected with cedar apple rust and we haven't seen an apple since we moved in because of it. Saturday I cut up the trees and Sunday I built the pergola. It was good to take a break from the greenhouse and tackle something I could see finished. I'm happy with the way it turned out, now all it needs is some vines growing on it.

Spring work

Since we've had such ridiculously warm weather this month I figured it was time to turn my attention back to the greenhouse. I got the door frame up plus a couple of windows. Slow and steady...

I'm also adding a frog pond next to a new garden so we can grow squash... hopefully the frogs will take care of the squash bugs for us. I dug the hole for this last year when I needed the clay. Now it has a liner and I'm still working on the border.

Julien and Hank are very curious to know what's going on in their yard!

Greenhouse Entrance and The Shaggs

Finished the step to the greenhouse entrance today. I dug a shallow foundation and lined it with landscaping fabric. Then it's basically a border of slate built up in rows, filled in with gravel and sand and then capped with the surface you see in the picture. I just finished reading The Art & Craft of Stonework by David Reed and wanted to try something. Plus I wanted to get this done so I could see how much slate I have leftover. It's a little off-center with the entrance, which is annoying  because I actually measured when I laid it out. I think it has to do w/ how I stacked it, plus the top stone on the right juts out where the one on the left is missing that corner. Like the guy with the portable mill said when he saw how I was building the greenhouse - doesn't look too scientific.

 I think I'm going to pack it in for the winter on the greenhouse. I'm out of sand and will probably save my money (or spend it on heating the house) and get a truckload delivered in the spring.

This is a picture of the Shaggs. We got them back in August from the Amish farm but I think someone else rescued them and gave them to him. They had their beaks clipped and all the guy would tell me is that he didn't know how old they were or what kind of birds they were. They have to be Rhode Island Reds, and I'm guessing they must be somewhere between 16 - 20 weeks old but they haven't started laying eggs yet. Their pal's name is foot-foot.

Patrick Dougherty

This dude is the bomb - http://www.stickwork.net/installations.php

Books and New Pictures

I started using this blog b/c when I began planning the cob wall and the greenhouse I was reading a lot of other blogs to try and learn how to use specific techniques, solve problems, etc. I thought if I ended up doing anything interesting, it would only be fair to return the favor and share my methods. However, as I started building, I ended up relying more on books and now only really look at blogs to see cool pictures of other people's work. So, here's a list of books I haven't mentioned yet but have read and learned from:

Michael Reynolds:  Earthship, How to Build Your Own
Ianto Evans:  The Hand Sculpted House
Becky Bee:  The Cob Builder's Handbook
Joseph F. Kennedy, Michael Smith, and Catherine Wanek:  The Art of Natural Building
Mike Oehler:  Earth-Sheltered Greenhouse
Rob Roy:  Cordwood Building

And here are some pictures of the Greenhouse. Slab was layed in 8' sections with a sand&gravel/clay/cement mix. I mixed a wheelbarrow at a time and shoveled it into a form made from 2x4's. Each slab section has a sheet of chickenwire in the center. Slab is just sitting on top of the tire foundation. North wall is 18", east and west are 12". South wall is 18" but most of that will serve as an interior shelf; I'll set the windows on the outside edge of the slab. There are three rows of slate mortared together on top of the slab at the north, east, and west. Mortar is also sand/clay/cement (mix is roughly 3-1-1) with the gravel screened out and spread on the floor. The floor has 2 layers of landscaping fabric between the ground and the gravel. I built the first window frame for the east wall and started the first (northeast) stackwall corner. That's it so far!

View from west (with bottom of doorway frame)

View from South

The Good House Book - Clarke Snell

http://books.google.com/books?id=xwLKa8-FRVoC&dq=Marc%2BAnd&ie=ISO-8859-1&source=gbs_gdata

This is an excellent book that addresses the concerns of natural building and alternative building without being crippled by fanatic idealism, or carried away by unrealistic whimsy. This could be a 101 course textbook for these fields.

The whole natural building, eco-community phenomenon, for all the attributes and good intentions, still leans toward escapism. I'm convinced, and even more so after reading this book, that the best approach is to leave any remaining untouched land untouched and instead focus on a remodeling/rebuilding project. Read the book yourself and see what you think.

Incredible Houses

Just found these examples of Indonesian traditional architecture -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5FCgfmDaMs

Irene

Well, the greenhouse roof is now "in a heap on the ground over collapsed posts" (as I feared in the earthquake). The hurricane took down the 3 largest persimmon trees in our backyard, two of them fell onto the greenhouse and took it down. 1 step forward, 2 steps back. However, the ranch-like arch that I put over the entrance to the goat pen caught one of the trees and kept it from smashing the fence and probably the chicken coop run. So... that was good.

Some photos Crystal took of our yard after the storm...

 

All Shook Up

Progress on the greenhouse so far:

Over the past few weeks, I finished the last row of tires, set piers, and put up posts. The posts are a collection of what we had down on our property - 2 cedar, 2 oak, and 2 maple. Cutting and peeling posts is hard but I enjoy it. Almost wish I needed more. After setting the posts on the piers, I got 2 oak beams and 2 cedar beams w/ the help of Jon Sola. I peeled all 4 of those and then decided the cedar were too narrow. So I set double 2x6 beams at the South that I also got from Jon leftover from a barn we took down on his parent's property. Next, I took a trip to the Amish lumber mill to order rafters and ceiling boards, all poplar. The order process consisted of me writing down what I wanted on a sheet of paper and putting my initials on it. I was there on a Saturday and they told me to come back Thursday. I talked to a friend who asked for some wood and was told to come back but when he showed up again they didn't have it. I didn't get my hopes up to high b/c of his story but when I showed up looking for my order on Thursday, it was there all bundled and ready to go. I think my friend forgot to write down what he wanted and initial it. I set the rafters on Friday and had Jon's help again putting up ceiling boards Saturday.

Northwest corner: Posts, oak beams, and rafters

View from the Southeast

Today the earthquake hit Virginia and it was pretty strong here. I was in the middle of a meeting at work, in a corner office on the second floor, and the whole building shook and swayed. I've never felt an earthquake before and it was definitely unnerving. As soon as we all got out of the building and I realized everyone was ok, I started to worry about the greenhouse. I began to picture the roof down on the ground in a heap over collapsed posts. But when I got home....

It survived!!

Antidote to Capitalism Gone Wild

http://www.lewishyde.com/publications/the-gift

This is the best half of a book I've read. In the first half, Hyde examines the role of the gift in various traditional cultures and contrasts that with it's commodification in ours. Second half was less interesting to me - two separate essays, one on Walt Whitman, the other Ezra Pound. In fact, I think I tapped out about three quarters of the way through Walt Whitman, skipped the piece on Pound, and re-read the first half. How's that for a book review?

R.I.P. Sophia

Sadly, we lost our beloved Sophia last night. I found her in our backyard this morning. One of our own dogs may have been the culprit but we can't be sure.

One thing we do know is that she was the most curious and adventurous of all the GGs. Each day when I got home she would have escaped and come running to the back gate to meet me. She would often fly out while I was working in the backyard and follow me around, leaving the other 2 GGs to pace back and forth, cooing along the fence line. When I was working on the roof over their run, she found a way to fly through a two foot opening that I hadn't finished yet, walk over the roof of the coop (about 12 feet high or so), along the cob wall and down into the hay I was using to mix cob. I never worried much about her wandering because it didn't seem like she wanted to escape, it just seemed like she wanted to be where I was. Quite flattering actually. I don't want to say I picked favorites or anything...

I don't know when she got into our backyard or how she died but I'm not surprised that her wandering got the best of her. Poor girl. We will miss her something terrible. We love you Sopia!

Greenhouse Foundation

I finally made some progress on the greenhouse. The first two rows of tires are finished and so is the drain. The drain is set on the inside perimeter, just below the level of the first row of tires, and runs out the south end (to the right in the 2nd photo). Pounding tires is slow work, and fatigue is definitely a factor in how much I can finish in a day. Especially this weekend with 100+ degree heat to contend with.

Footings with first row of tires

Greenhouse Foundation

Leonard Knight

I first learned of Leonard Knight through the film God's Architects (http://www.godsarchitects.com/)

Here's a virtual tour of his Salavation Mountain:
http://www.snubble.com/niland/

Jim Bishop

Here's a good video introducing Mr. Bishop and his work:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDQsy7aiVD0&feature=related

This is a link to a feature-length documentary, "Scrap", that splits time between Jim and a Wisconsin sculptor:
http://www.snagfilms.com/films/title/scrap/

Official Web Site:
http://www.bishopcastle.org/#

Ferdinand Facteur Cheval

C'est Incroyable - http://www.facteurcheval.com/video.html