Enough for Today!!

Uncle! I'm tired; bushed; had enough. We've made good progress this last week. A new kitchen floor and straw bale walls being built. There is a bit more to building a straw bale wall than just stacking some bales. You have to cut and re-tie the bales. You have to heft the thing into place. You have to get everything level and straight. You have to attach the bales to the posts:

Inside the house. Joni will finish up the corners...

The walls are straight!

Work will resume next Wednesday...

Applying Linseed Oil to a Post...

R. O. shows his ballet type skills while painting a post with Linseed Oil...

Building Walls...

My friend, R.O. came up to help me build walls today. I spent the morning sanding and applying linseed oil to posts. We did manage to get a good start on walls though. This is the South wall of our bedroom:

And our bedroom:

The view from outside the house..

My friend will continue to help me tomorrow. We will take a crack at getting more walls completed. Then it is off to the Napa Valley for five days of paid labor...

The Kitchen Put Back Together (sort of)...

We put the kitchen back together. We also added a tall cabinet.

Now I get to wait another year before putting the doors together for the cabinets! That's how long it took us to get the floor in. One must be patient while remodeling.

By the way, thanks to BC who built the counter tops while he was visiting here. That guy sure can cut one...

Our Solar Hot Water System...

We tripled our shower system to fifteen gallons this year. Three hours in the sun, and you have a comfortable shower. Five hours in the sun and it is hotter than what probably comes out of your sink. One of our neighbors leaves a black hose in the sun. He can make coffee out of his hot water.

When the bag is hot, you can either take the container into the inside-the-cabin shower. Or you can have a glorious outside shower!

Which would you opt for?

Another question: Why do we use fossil fuel in the summer time, just to heat water?

Finishing the Bamboo Kitchen Floor...

Last July we started this project: to put a new Bamboo floor in the already existing cabin. For some reason, that for the life of us, we cannot remember--we didn't finish putting the floor into the kitchen.

Today, we decided to finish the job:

Joni preps the floor:

Putting the Bamboo floor down:

The finished product:

And another view:

I wish we hadn't purchased this floor. We thought we were being Green. But this is just another example of Green Industrialism. Yes, the Bamboo does grow fast. And it makes a nice floor. The wood is coated with petroleum products. And it is made in China.

If I were to do it over, I'd just have some of our downed trees milled into planks and use them. I'd coat it with a bees wax sealant, or something similar.

This is not a Green floor. Live and learn.

Rooms Start To Take Shape...

Now that we have started to put up some walls, we can create more livable space. The view below is (currently) what it looks like from our bedroom, into what will be the living room:

And the view (currently) from the living room, into our bedroom. On the left, where the strawbales are (which I moved and piled again--for the 16th gazillioneth time!) will be the girl's bedroom:

I'm off to Napa yet again tomorrow. Gonna work a couple of extra shifts. But when I return on Saturday, we hope to make quite a bit of progress. More work in the kitchen. Finish putting up the strawbale walls (along with the windows). Plus more cob work--and another picture window installed. Stay tuned...

Or as Bobby Dylan sang: "The times they are a changing"...

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Thus far our garden is doing quite well. The critters are leaving it alone (knock on wood).

Yukon Gold potatoes!:

No fence protects our garden beds. We have asked the deer to leave it alone--giving them full permission to gobble down anything else they find. Will this work? Will we be able to harvest what we have sown?

Or perhaps the mountain lion that was spotted yesterday morning a hundred yards from here is protecting our garden?

T. Boone Pickens...

Peak Oil folks love this guy: T. Boone Pickens. Perhaps you've seen his commercials on TV for the "Pickens Plan"? Since I'm at work, which means I stay at the hospital in the old Nurses Dorm, I have time to read. I picked up this tome, part autobiography, part energy tract, at the library to peruse in my free time.

First the good parts of the book: I like the style of the writing. It is quite populist. Country Oklahoman in style. I also liked it when he admitted that he got depressed during his divorce in the later 90's. He fully admits that anti-depressant medications helped him. Even billionaires get the blues.

Unfortunately, that is about all I have to say that I liked about the book.

Reading this book was way outside my normal reading material. I have never, ever read a book written by a billionaire. I have never, ever read a book by a man who calls Ronald Reagan our "greatest President". Reading this book made me feel like I was wearing a Parka to a sun drenched, Beach Volleyball game. Out of place.

And repugnant. In the biography section, it is quite apparent that for oil executives, morality and environmentalism just isn't a part of their experience. Not on their radar. It is a good ole boy network. He calls this frat friend and that golf buddy to gather his capital. The only morality he embraces is dedicated to investors. He saw that stockholders were being ripped off by executives who kept their stocks valued too low. For Pickens, his best moral behavior was to lift corporate stock prices.

As for his energy plan for America? Here you can see how the populist, American, entrepreneurial, corporate class (as opposed to the multi-national corporate class) wants to deal with Peak Oil. Change transportation to natural gas (an industry that Pickens has huge investments in). Embrace wind energy (as long as they are on huge, ugly, wind farms). Keep everything centralized and Mega in scale. Develop clean coal. Go Nuclear!

He writes nothing of conservation; very little about solar. He writes nothing about redesigning cities, nor mass public transit. He writes nothing about greening agriculture. He ignores geothermal and tidal power. He ignores small scale community local investments in clean energy.

Just because he thinks that Oil has Peaked in production, doesn't mean that he should be a hero to the Lefty Peak Oil crowd. In fact, I think he has done us a favor by revealing which way the corporatists want to go. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Guest Accommodations

My friend, Scot, made a comment in the last post about making a visit from Iowa ("Is this heaven? No, it's Iowa") to give a hand with the strawbale building. He also personally attests to my lack of talent, reason, ambition and agility. True.

This is our guest facility for the summer, Scot! Drop me an e-mail and this splendorous, four person, Coleman Tent awaits. Hopefully this year we won't have to evacuate because of a wildfire! Don't worry, we haven't seen one bear this summer. BC said that when he stayed in our guest tent last week, he was only awakened once by a furry creature screeching from meeting some sort of terrifying, red tooth and claw, death. The deer have been bedding down next to it. No mountain lions have been spotted around here for months. You'll be safe (maybe?)!

Or if anyone else would like to take a stab at cobbing or strawbaling...drop me a line. Nothing like sharing a bit of honest sweat--followed by a bit of dinner (fresh and homemade!), a bottle of wine (the very best five dollars can buy!) and some stargazing.

Now I'm off to the wine-marinated Napa Valley for five days. Further progress on the Addition will have to wait until next week.

Cheers!

Finally! We Start Building Strawbale Walls!!

A friend of mine from Minnesota is spending a few days with us--helping us build the house. We took one whole day and built "window bucks" for the Strawbale walls:

And yesterday, we started building the Strawbale walls. Here I am laying the ceremonial "first" Bale on the new wall:

We did that as part of a demonstration to a few curious folks who are interested in building like this:

The first tier of Bales.

Attaching the Bales to a window:

My friend makes sure the wall is level:

Putting in a Window Buck into the wall:

That's as far as we got yesterday...

Joni Teaches Others How To Make Cob...

A few folks came up to the Solar Compound yesterday to learn how to make Cob. Here Joni shows them how it we do it:
And then the group got to build some of our wall:

A good time was had by all. Some of the folks come from a religious intentional community who are interested in making small "Cob" huts as sleeping rooms for people who are homeless...

House Finches Share Our House...

While Joni was busy making some Cob, she noticed a nest of House Finches. There are youngin's in the nest (and boy do they chirp when fed). Can you find the nest?

See it yet?

Not a great photo. The House Finches are welcome. I'm amazed they were able to build their little nest right under our noses...