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!
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.
Other than the massive amounts of cobbing lately, there has been some excitement on the food front, too. On July 31 (my birthday), Jeff noticed the first truly ripe apple on my apple tree, and we picked it and ate it. What a treat. Delicious. I have been fortunate enough to inherit a mature apple tree on my warren (that’s DR speak for ‘plot of land’), and this was the first year it decided to put out fruit. (It may have done so last year, but the late frost killed any potential.)
Over the next week, most of the apples ripened, and last week, I harvested a giant pot’s worth and turned it into applesauce. The final color was a beautiful light pink. I decided to leave the skins in the sauce, just to keep things simple… it was less work, and just seemed right, too. I got about seven quarts worth from the haul - not bad!
I would have never called my life “dynamic” two or three years ago. Life then seemed pretty slow, predictable, and dare I say, a little bit dull. One of the things I have come to appreciate and anticipate is the dynamism of living in an intentional community. This can be a very positive experience, but in some respects, it can be equally disorienting.
Things are constantly changing. Not only the obvious things like the surroundings, including wildlife and even buildings and homes (new ones seem to be going up monthly these days), but social life, too. People come and go constantly, which can be exciting, but it’s also a little dizzying, and sometimes dispiriting.
Occasionally, the folks that come through fit in like they’ve never lived anywhere else, and it’s easy to get used to their company. Oftentimes, these short term visitors are gone within a month or even a couple weeks. Faces come and go. Of course, there is always the same core membership group (well, until someone moves away, of course), but visitors and short term guests can have a significant impact on the social scene. New faces bring new energy to the group.
I suppose that’s just something to get used to when you’re living in community. It’s no wonder then that some “veteran” communitarians are cautious about getting too invested in the new crowd. Perhaps it is a matter of necessity to be wary of forming solid but temporary bonds.
Me? I like change. I like the dynamic landscape and the modes of life that shift and morph over the seasons. And I like to meet new people, too. I usually have a least a basic interest in where people come from and what brought them here. Once in a while, it’s hard to say farewell when you get to know someone, though.
Rainiest year. Ever.
When I left DR three weeks ago, I figured all that rain we’ve been experiencing had left us, too, but boy was I wrong. Yesterday, we experienced yet another incredible flash floor, dumping a good 2″ or so of rain on us in less than half an hour. We just can’t seem to get a few dry days.
The day was gorgeous until a mere hour before this storm rolled in. We went to a party at Sandhill Farm, and before we left I decided against covering my house, noting the clear skies, but I should have known… never take a chance… (Covering the walls is really annoying at this point because it takes a good half hour to do it right, hence my reluctance.)
Needless to say, my house was left exposed (although it was quickly covered pre-storm with the help of some folks who were staying back at DR, the wind [60 MPH+!] whipped any and all tarps off the walls).
The north wall took a bit of a beating, washing away a decent amount of cob surface material, exposing a lot of straw. But really, it’s only just surface damage (although it still really sucks to see), and the integrity of the walls has not been lessened.
Let’s just say: lesson learned. I don’t want to see that happen again. (But I wonder if it really would have even mattered had I myself tarped the walls before we left… oh well…)
Tomorrow I return to Dancing Rabbit via the train. Well, lemme correct that: tomorrow I leave for Dancing Rabbit, but I won’t get back until later the next day. It’s a day and a half trip by train. It’s pretty grueling, but I prefer it to flying, mostly for environmental purposes.
It feels strange to be away for so long in the middle of summer, when most of the action is happening. I haven’t seen my house in weeks, and I can’t wait to get back to work, although I know the heat is pretty intense by now. I anxiously await finishing the cob walls and getting that roof up. I feel like once the roof is up, it will be pretty smooth sailing. (Not that the work will be so quick after that, but at least more familiar to me: plastering, making a cob bed, the earthen floor, etc.)
Here we go!
If there’s one thing you’ve probably heard/read about cob many times before, it’s probably the fact that cob is immensely sculptural.
Lately, I have been working at a much slower pace since I have been working on sculpting various cob book shelves and other little storage nooks into the walls of my house. The photo above is a small shelf immediately next to the entrance. When I look at it now, I think of the mouth of a snake or the jaw of some other creature.
This wide bookshelf extends almost a foot from the wall, and is nearly 18″ at its peak height in the center. The shape is pretty strange and not exactly what I intended to sculpt, but I kinda like it now that it is done. (I can always do a little bit of carving with a machete if I decide to alter the appearance.) I will build a similarly-sized shelf right above this one.
This mushroom-shaped window came to me in a something like a vision the morning before I started to work. I acted upon the impulse and stuck a piece of sheet glass in the wall and began to sculpt around the glass to make something roughly mushroom-like. I’m pretty satisfied with the end result. It will look much cleaner once the walls are plastered, I think.
I carved these coat hooks from some mulberry wood and planted them in some fresh cob this afternoon. I mostly just cut the wood to size, whittled it down a bit, and smoothed it out. These are located right near the entrance for jackets and other things for hanging. I hope these hooks give the effect that they growing out of the wall once it’s all said and done.
Ok, so my original estimate of 100 total batches of cob to complete the walls may have been off.
Eighty plus batches later, the walls stand at an average height of 3.5′ (not including the foundation), which is probably half the total amount of cob necessary. Some taller spots are now no longer workable without standing on a bench (as seen in the areas next to the south window in the photo above.)
Now begins the time when the actual cob application slows down, due to the extra step of having to stand on and move a bench or scaffolding (which I might just need to make soon…) to work the walls.
We didn’t get nearly the same amount of work done this week thanks the absurd amount of rain, but I guess a little break is an okay thing, too…
I thought I might touch upon the actual cobbing process, since I haven’t really talked about that specific element of building very much. Over the past few weeks, we have developed a very efficient working system, allowing us to quickly stomp, loaf, and apply the cob to the walls.
It begins with a “burrito”, the final cob mix of sand, clay, and straw. (Once cob has reached its ideal mixed state, you can roll it and it keeps its shape, which is something like the shape of a burrito).
Once we are satisfied with the mix, we begin to make “cobs”, or little loafs of the material. It’s almost like kneading dough: grab a bunch of cob, and make a loaf that can easily be picked up without breaking. (Making each loaf should take no more than a few seconds.) We call the really big ones “wonderbreads”.
We then carry these loaves to the wall (which is typically no more than a few feet from where we are mixing), and line them all up. (First we soak down the walls with some water so this newest layer gets worked in to the existing cob more easily.)
Next we take cobbers thumbs and “stitch” the cobs together, making sure the straw gets worked well, and the individual cobs can no longer be distinguished. This newest layer should also get worked into the layer underneath. This is a quick and rough job that goes quickly. The main key is create a cohesive, monolithic wall.
Next, we work the wall with our hands, creating a clean, plumb edge. Viola!
Here are some different angles of the cob house in progress:
The Year of Mud: Building a cob house Green Options: Posts by Brian Liloia