The Southern Wall....

We had plans to build a large window across this wall. We changed our minds; decided that it would be cooler in the summer to just finish it off with bales. Here Joni persuades a bale to go in:


This is the gap before we finished it off with bales...

Another view...

We are attempting to get all the bale work done, as we are having a few friends over on Saturday, September 12, 2009 to do some mud work. On that day, we hope to get the first layer of mud on three of the four walls.

If you would like to participate...feel free to drop me a line. Hopefully, we will have a barbecue. A few brave souls might want to camp out and howl at the moon. We would love to have you here...

Manzanita Leaves and Chicks!!

Kylie managed to get into some poison oak. A Native American woman told me that "if you make a tea out of the manzanita leaf---and then wash the outbreak: it will help". So here, Kylie harvests some manzanita leaves:

We shall see if it works:

And we got a couple of chicks today. Chickens. They will go back to our neighbor's if they are Roosters. Here Jazmine shows off her chick, whose name is "Rivermoss". (!?)

And Kylie with her more conventionally named chick: "pepe' "

We've never had chickens before...so this should be interesting. We do have a book on keeping chickens. Getting chicks was on our "to do" list. I just didn't think that we would get them today.

I hope the chicks turn out better than our Lilliputian corn...

Mud and More...

Joni making Cob... And building another layer of mud...

Despite the heat, we managed to get some work done today...

Yipi-Ai-Oh Mini Tiny Corn Cobs...

I promised, when I started this blog, that I would show everything, warts and all. Our failures and mistakes. This has got to be one of our more embarrassing moments. The corn harvest!

Two foot tall stalks.

Joni approaches the corn cautiously.

Yes, there are ears in there...

Kylie harvests an ear...

Yes, we shall have some of the corn for dinner tonight. The rest Joni plans to make into some creamed corn. We are on a mission to prove eco-poet Gary Snyder wrong...but not this year.

Tomorrow we shall start some real work on the house.

Built by Hobbits on Mushrooms?

We have done almost no work on this house for six weeks. Yes, we were a bit preoccupied with other matters. We also spent every last dime on this court case ($25,000). That leads to having to work for pay more, which leads to exhaustion, which leads to no work being done on the house. A downward spiral.

We are stymied.

We haven't figured out a way to frame out one of the sixteen foot walls. We have to figure out how to put in two doors (and frame them). We need to put in a wood stove, or a Cob stove (Joni wants to build one, but we have so much cobbing to do that I think this is nearly an impossibility). How do I put that thing in without burning down the house or fumigating us with carbon monoxide? Now is the time for "Norm" the master carpenter to appear on the scene. We also could use "Oak" the electrician and "Smokey" the wood burner expert.

How does one finish a project with no money? How does one finish a project with no expertise? How does one finish a job without a twenty foot extension ladder? How does one finish a project with a fear of heights?

Then there is all the mud work left to do. Cob walls to finish. Mud for the entire exterior walls. Mud for the interior walls. The half million kids at Woodstock didn't make as much mud as we have left to make.

And did I mention the wiring we need to do? And about 1,000 watts of solar panels to add (which we cannot afford right now). And what about the hot water tower I want to build?

Then there is the problem of the Adobe floor. Mixing that by the wheelbarrow full. Hundreds and hundreds of them. With a month to dry. When is that gonna happen?

We are two to three months away from the rainy season. Will we have more livable space available to us before we are marooned by four to five months of torrential rains? Will we have the walls done and plastered so that the bales don't get wet?

And when we are done, will it look like a bunch of Hobbits on Mushrooms built this place? (Most assuredly the answer is "yes".)

Stay tuned. We have lots of problems to solve. Right now, it looks like we will be roughing it for a bit longer. Maybe another season. Or year. Or decade.

As the AA folks say: "One day at a time"... Time for a beer.

Raising the Next Generation of Monkey Wrenchers!

When I was in Moab, Utah last week, I picked up some "monkey wrenching" t-shirts for the girls. I bought them at the best bookstore in Moab, Utah: "Back of Beyond Bookstore". Here I hob nobbed with the owner. Saw a first edition Jonathon Troy. Saw multiple signed copies of other Ed Abbey first editions. I was in heaven.

I am pleased to announce that Jazmine and Kylie will continue their political/enviro indoctrination with us for many years to come!

Maybe Gary Snyder Was Right?

I got the idea to live this life from the great Enviro Poet: Gary Snyder. Gary (whose property he shared with Allen Ginsburg is some forty miles south of here) said that no one can garden in the Foothills. Undaunted, we set out to prove him wrong.

Our first garden has been mostly a failure. We didn't fence it much to our neighbor's dismay. They said the deer would eat the garden. In standard New Age Yuppie "WE LOVE THE WORLD" fashion, we Shamanistically held hands and asked the deer not to eat the garden. I reminded the deer not to eat the garden by peeing around the perimeter. Thus far the deer have left it alone.

But the garden didn't really grow. We got a few zucchinis and some tomatoes. We also got some Yukon Gold potatoes. The lettuce didn't ever grow. The carrots grew to be about an inch long. Bizarre!

Jazmine standing in front of our Lilliputian Sweet Corn.

And the weirdest thing is our sweet corn. These plants should be seven feet tall. Instead, they are two feet tall. And they have tasseled! Yes, ears are developing.

The ears will probably be like those ears of corn you see in Chinese cuisine.

We have been adding Alpaca poop to the garden (courtesy of some neighbors). We also will order better compost (besides making our own), worm tailings, chicken poop, Alpaca poop and topsoil for next year's garden.

Hopefully over the next few years we shall solve this problem. Add more beds. And be able to eat more out of our garden. For now, we just laugh at our efforts!!

It can be done, as our neighbors (an RN couple) have a beautiful garden. They said it took years to figure out how to do it.