life’s everyday adventures in an ecovillage, plus other intentional community, filmmaking, and random musings
ecosalon just posted an interview with Dancing Rabbit member Alline, who co-founded the soon-coming Milkweed Mercantile, a bed and breakfast slated to open at Dancing Rabbit sometime this winter. Check it out!
Note: Please find all of my cob building related content at my new blog, The Year of Mud: Building a cob house. Thanks! See you there!
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Tony Sirna here at Dancing Rabbit was recently interviewed for Ecovillage Radio. Check out the podcast here to learn all about life and goings-on here at DR: Dancing Rabbit on Ecovillage Radio.
Here’s a short little video I made at Alline’s request about the Milkweed Mercantile, a bed and breakfast currently under construction here at Dancing Rabbit. The Mercantile will also feature an organic cafe, and an eco general store. Check it out in the above video!
This weekend, I met some Superheroes. These were bike-riding Superheroes who take a month to do public service without any plans or agenda. This year’s location is Missouri, and they started off their ride by visiting Dancing Rabbit, Sandhill Farm, and Red Earth Farms, doing a day of service for each community.
The Superheroes headquarters is the Possibility Alliance community in La Plata, Missouri, which I visited a few times last year. I’m a big fan of what is going on down there: the community is completely petroleum-free, car-free, and electricity-free. I’m very inspired by this living model and the folks who live there, Ethan, Sara, and others.
Anyway, the Superheroes are super inspiring folks - the rides occur once or twice a year and they are totally unplanned - once they hit the road, they decide where to stop day by day. They help folks in exchange for nothing. This is activism at its finest. I could wax poetic about the whole concept, but it feels more genuine being able to actually talk about it. Maybe later.
Although, I had the chance to sit down with Ethan, who lives at the Possibility Alliance and co-founded the Superheroes movement. We had a great talk - about sustainability, radical simplicity, the balancing act of trying to live simply, and trying to bridge the gap between different alternative groups and communities - and it resulted in this article that I wrote for Planetsave.com: Superheroes Bike Across Missouri and Provide Public Service. I’ll write a second article about the Possibility Alliance itself.
Hopefully I’ll be able to go on next year’s ride. I really wanted to make this one ever since I heard about it last year, but the cob house has been taking all of my time, ya know. Next year, for sure!
The other day, I mentioned that the Milkweed Mercantile, the soon-to-be bed and breakfast/cafe at Dancing Rabbit, is hoping to win $10K to put towards the purchase of a wind turbine.
Well, the Mercantile is now a finalist, meaning that they are that much closer to the prize! Please consider voting. It’s for a good cause. Seriously. Who ever heard of an off-the-grid bed and breakfast based in an ecovillage? Well, now you have. It’s real. It’s happening.
The Milkweed Mercantile, the first official business at Dancing Rabbit, is hoping to win $10K to put towards the purchase of a big ol’ wind turbine. The Mercantile is a bed and breakfast / cafe and shop, a beautiful straw bale building that is currently under construction and planned to open this winter, if all goes according to schedule.
It’s been the wettest spring, wettest summer, and perhaps it will even be the wettest fall on record here in Missouri.
Last week we got a whopping nine inches of rainfall, totally separate from anything Hurrican Ike delivered elsewhere. (Thankfully, Ike merely skimmed this part of northeastern Missouri, so we were spared any extra rain.)
It’s really been messing up my building schedule, as I’ve had to delay re-building my reciprocal roof frame. There’s just not much one can do when it’s raining all day and night, and the ground is completely saturated. Thankfully, this week’s forecast is looking solidly sunny thus far…
(Climate change = changing weather patterns? Huh? Who said that?)
Recently, I got a new blogging job. I have been doing freelance blogging for over two years now. Previously, I’ve been writing for various video production blogs, but now I’m doing something a little more personally rewarding and more relevant to my everyday interests.
My new position is at Green Options for their blog Planetsave, which claims to bring you “green news, commentary, and services”. (Services? Eh? That part of the tagline kinda throws me off…)
Anyway, my first post was just published. It’s a kind of introductory post about living off-the-grid at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage. Expect to see more writing about life off-the-grid and living sustainably. Hopefully I’ll now have the opportunity to share my interests in natural building, permaculture, local foods, and all of that good stuff with a wider audience.
You can view my Green Options author profile here, and keep up with everything I’ll be writing.
If you are a StumbleUpon or del.icio.us or Digg or other social bookmarking user, I would love it if you shared my posts using these websites.
Thanks.
This was a tough week.
Bad weather, a tired body, stress, and some other bad spells and downers spilled over me in one week’s time. I had a bad case of fatigue that lasted a few days. At some point I slept nearly 36 hours in two days. I was essentially bed-ridden.
Significant rain delayed the raising of my reciprocal roof (which probably wouldn’t have happened anyway, because I was so fatigued), and put me in a generally sour mood. Then, a bad case of indigestion and a lack of appetite continued beyond my spell of fatigue. But during that, the reciprocal roof went up anyway. Which was a positive thing! But. Now I am planning to redo it, since it’s a bit short of perfect. (But I’m not too sore about that one.) Afterward, more rain came through, harsher indigestion, some bad luck, and other personal things took any kind of potential zap outta me over the rest of the weekend.
This is a new week, however. I’m focusing now on cutting trees for my roof. I can’t worry about the weather, and I can’t try to stick to a non-existent construction schedule. The roof will get re-done in due time.
But damn if it doesn’t feel like the whole world’s pissing on you at times. I rarely get so bleak and bummed out, but last week was my definitely my time to do so.
Time to move on, though.
Yea!
I’ve been toying away the past few days on getting this website a bit more organized, and I’m happy to say that I have finished making a new cob building-specific blog: The Year of Mud.
From this point on, I will only post my cob house updates, progress, and photos on The Year of Mud. Please consider subscribing to The Year of Mud RSS feed to keep updated!
This address will go back to serving as my all-purpose ‘life in an ecovillage’ blog.
Thanks!
194.5 batches of cob stomped by foot and you get:
Yesterday afternoon and this morning, I put some final touches on the cob walls, leveling them in preparation for the soon-coming reciprocal roof. After I smoothed out some of the last cobs, I took a minute as I stood on the lean-to trestle, just staring down at the walls which now easily tower over my head, and I wondered in amazement.
It has been quite a journey to this point, moving over 40 tons of material. That’s a lot of earth. More specifically, it’s been 194.5 batches of cob so far. All this over 57 days (which were not all full work days, mind you.)
And it’s not over yet, but this massive portion of the process is, at least. Here are some photos of the structure.
Interior, looking southwest.The bed will be positioned along the far wall, under the window. The joists will support a 7.5′ wide, 22″ deep storage shelf.
The north wall interior, with nooks and a shelf at the foot of the (future) bed. The rocket stove will be to the left of the window. Exterior backside, looking southwest.
Entryway with storage nooks. A gigantic corner bookshelf.
Happy.
Here’s a couple of photos of the 99% complete cob walls. I figure I’ll be able to finish them off tomorrow, perhaps Sunday if it takes a couple more batches than I expect. Reciprocal roof: here we come!
Also, in the top photo you might notice a post near the entryway. This black locust post will bear one of the reciprocal roof rafters, making for a nice little overhang near the entryway. Call it a really small porch, maybe, but this should provide some decent extra coverage from the elements.
The Year of Mud: Building a cob house Green Options: Posts by Brian Liloia