Welcome Parducci!

It's official.  Parducci winery has opened up a tasting room right in middle of the Solar Living Center - inside the Real Goods store to be exact.  How perfect is that!?  The first carbon neutral winery in the US pouring in the greenest store on earth?  That's a match made in heaven.

Wine tasting is that-a-way --->

The tasting room officially opened this past Saturday.  The cost is $5 for a flight of 4 wines. You choose the wines you'd like to try from their tasting menu, which includes a nice mix of various reds and whites.  The tasting fee is waived if you purchase 2 bottles or if you're a club member. Cool beans.

Ross, our Executive Director getting his taste on

Stop by for a taste!  They open with The Real Goods Store at 10am ... but if that's too early for you to start imbibing (hey, that's 5pm in the Azores), they pour all day until 5pm - our time.

Mr. Tough Guy

A number of weeks ago we received 3 new chickens and a rooster.  Our chicken population had been dwindling - many of our birds caught some sort of  terminal respiratory virus, and we were down to only one. Luckily someone answered our Facebook post and we're back to a solid brood.  The chickens are finally laying now too which is great - we went through a dry egg spell for quite a while.  It's no fun buying eggs when you keep your own chickens.  But this post isn't about chickens, or their eggs.  It's about the rooster.  And he is definitely a cock.

Step off.

Now, this may be typical, and I'm told that it is ... but our rooster is kind of a punk.  When you walk by him and his harem, the lady birds will move out of your way, but he just flaps his wings, even takes a step forward  as if to say "get off my path!"  If you walk towards him directly, he'll flap his wings, make some throaty rooster sounds, and wait till the very last minute before he steps away from you (only because now you really are too close to him - and let's face it, you're much bigger).  But as soon as you move back and give him space, he steps towards you as if to say "yeah that's right ... keep moving."  He likes to get the last "step" if you will. 

You can find many an intern messing with him, as a result.  All very playful of course ... we'll walk behind him with increasing speed and intensity and see how long it takes before he actually runs away.  Though, I've tried  this - and he turned and lunged at me!  He's lunged at others too - clearly, he's on to our games.  Last week, as I was walking behind him a bit too close for a bit to long, he quickly turned around, flapped his wings, few up into the air waist-high, froze Matrix style, did a 360 and scratched my legs on his way back down.  I kid you not.  I chased him down the path after pulling a stunt like that.  It's the Intern Village, not Rooster Row.

For being so sassy he's actually quite handsome.  Cassie and I have been eying the teal feathers in his tail - they'd make lovely earnings.  Just sayin. ;)

Natural Building Intensive: Final Days of Dirt

It's getting down to the wire. 2 days to go and on our to-do list:

- design and build the stained glass wall
- fill in sides of front wall
- plaster
- take a shower


Before we could plaster up the front, we had to fill it with earth, but more importantly, we used a natural building technique that incorporated glass bottles to give the effect of stained glass. You can use any bottles - we used old wine and spirit bottles (patron tequila bottles are the best, ps). Brittany and Eric designed a spiral pattern. They outlined their design on a piece of plywood that was temporarily fixed to the exterior of the wall. On the interior, they fastened a wire mesh wall, into which the bottles would be attached with pieces of wire.

Britt adding the bottles to mesh wire

Final design, ready for clay

Once the bottles were snugly wired in, we filled in the area surrounding the bottles with straw clay. Next, we cut out the wire in front of each bottle and removed it (after taking down the plywood). Now, the bottles were fully exposed in the spiral pattern, magically suspended between the clay mix! Make a few adjustments here and there to refine the shaping around the bottles, and you have a gorgeous handmade glass design within your wall. I love this feature of natural building; It ads such a personalized, unique artsy touch.

Moving right along ... to the left and right of the bottle design, we built 2 "quick and dirty" walls. On the outsides of the frames we stapled a reed mat, leaving an opening at the top. Into that opening, we poured wood shavings (the owner of the property mills his own wood, so these were the byproduct of his effort) tossed with clay silt. This filling was somewhat fluffy; it kinda reminded me of popcorn slathered in butter. We poured that mixture into the wall, nailed it shut and it was the ready to be plastered.

Last but not least: Plaster. This is the layer you put on the outside of the walls you just filled, in order to make it look really nice (and insulate, protect it, etc). We used a mix of, you guessed it, straw, clay dirt, straw and sand. It had a more goopy texture so you could just palm it onto the back of the wall, let it stick, then smoothe in the edges so it blended altogether. Once there was enough on to cover it uniformly, we used a trowel to smoothe the surface. We did this to the back wall, inside and out of the clay waddle wall, as well as on the outside of the front wall (the last wall & roof will be completed at a later date.)

The back side fully plastered. (Brandon contemplates.)

 This is as far as we got building the composting toilet structure over our 5 day course. Not too shabby for beginners! That afternoon, we opted to visit Massey's place. She and her 3 roommates (all natural builders) share a piece of property. Initially, it consisted of a main house and a large garden out back; however, they're in the process of building their own individual "pods" along side the garden. These pods are naturally built, personally designed bedrooms. It was pretty amazing to see their works in progress, some of which were already completed and lived in. We spent the afternoon here, helping out where we could and working on the floor of Massey's pod. We chose to do this over working more on the toilet. Can you blame us?

One of the pods on Massey's property

Inside - check out the inset shelving & bamboo ceiling detail

Massey's brain child

The last pod in the row

Inside the last one - large bamboo exposed in the ceiling

And now, for the final to-do:  SHOWER! ;)

Natural Building Intensive: Days 2-3 of Dirt

On the second day, we learned two natural building techniques: wattle and daub & clay wattle.  Wattle is basically weaving thin branches horizontally around larger vertical pieces.  In our case, the thin branches we used were pieces of split bamboo, and the vertical piece was a whole bamboo reed.  There was a bunch of it growing on the property, and much of it had already been cut and dried, so it worked out perfectly. 

Bamboo wattle

Before we could start any form of wattle, we had to finish building the timber frames.  The frames were built using 2 by 4's, into which we put 3 vertical bamboo rods. For the side wall, instead of weaving small pieces of bamboo through vertical bamboo (wattle & daub), we wove a mixture of clay and straw (clay wattle).  To do so, we rolled the thick mixture into ~12 inch long "snakes", and wrapped it around the bamboo pole, blending it back into the clay below and beside it.  Rinse and repeat.  In no time you'll have a new wall. 

Brittany & Brandon getting their wattle on

Wrapping the clay straw around the bamboo

Here's the back wall frame we built.  The split bamboo will be woven around the 3 vertical bamboo rods on each side.

Working hard on the frame

The middle section (where Brandon is standing) will be filled with the adobe bricks we made the day before - but not before they fully dried.  To ensure fast and proper trying, one of the first things we did on day 2 was flip and trim the bricks.  We turned them on their side to help them dry faster and trimmed their edges so they were more fully rectangular.

our 100 or so adobe bricks drying in the sun

 

The bamboo used for the wattle was split into 4's using a pretty handy tool: Bamboo Splitter. I don't know the official name - but it's Japanese and it splits bamboo. If you're interested in a live demo, check out Eric on YouTube.

bamboo splitter

Once split into 4's, the bamboo pieces were cleaned with a knife (to smoothe the rough edges) and cut into smaller pieces with a saw to fit horizontally around the full, vertical bamboo pieces. 

Cassie weaving wattle in the back wall.  Looking good huh!?

Once we put the back wall up, wove all the wattle, it was time for the daub.  We used a mixture of cut straw, clay, sand and water to make the daub; it was essentially a type of plaster.  To apply, simply slather it on from the outside and push it through the cracks of the bamboo so it sticks, creating a more sturdy wall. 

Because the bamboo was so pretty, we opted not to put daub on the inside walls, but rather to leave the bamboo exposed.  But we did clean it up before it dried so that it wasn't "goopy" looking.

Next, we laid adobe bricks.  Between each brick we put a layer of mortar (sand, clay, water) making sure it was level.  For mis-sized bricks, we'd chisel it back into form.

Brick wall close up

We've also got some video footage of the brick laying:



Up next ... the final touches: spiral bottle design, "quick and dirty" front walls and plastering the whole thing.  Watch it all come together ....

Natural Building Intensive: 5 Days of Dirt

Last week, we participated in a 5 day intensive workshop on Natural Building.  The course was held in the East Bay, so it was a bit of a trek - half of us camped on site (no water or electricity) and the rest stayed with family in the area (no brainier).

The course was taught by Massey Burke, Natural Builder Extraordinaire.  She has been building for 8 years, co-founded her own company Vertical Clay, and also interned at SLI.  She is the brain and the brawn behind the mosaic cob showers in the intern village, as well as the Pach.  An incredibly talented and creative woman, it was a week long workshop that felt anything but "intensive".  It may actually have been my favorite SLI course thus far. And it has nothing to do with getting to play with mud all day.

Before diving into the nitty gritty and bombarding you with photos (I have loads), I should start by explaining what natural building is.  I certainly didn't know when I first arrived at SLI.

Natural building, as defined by Massey, is the art of building using local and unrefined materials.  Think: from your backyard, and you do all the prep work.  But in a very good way.  It's incredibly energy efficient - from how you source and create the building materials, but also in the end result.  Natural building utilizes design practices such as passive solar, where you orient your home according to the sun's path maximizing sun/heat in the winter and minimizing it in the summer.  Plus, earthen materials also naturally moderate building temperature - so, depending on what materials you use, you can effectively keep your home cool in 100 degree heat without AC, and keep it warm when it's cold out.  Brilliant, eh?

Our project for the week was to build a composting toilet on a large piece of property, a short distance from the main house.  When we arrived, the foundation had already been laid, so our job was to do the rest. Build up 4 walls, leaving room for a window.  

Day 1
After introductions, we jumped right in making adobe bricks.  Adobe is a mixture of clay soil, sand and straw.  If you're familiar with cob, it's essentially the same 'recipe' of earth, just used in brick form. (Cob is typically molded - throwing gobs of the mixture right onto the foundation building a structure in curvature).  Massey walked us down to the bottom of the property and showed us the soil we would be using.  I would have never known by just looking at it that it had so much clay in it. 

First, we poured the clay soil into the water (not the other way around) until it turned into a consistency best described as 'pudding.'

Next, we mush this all around, breaking up any solid clay bits and watch and wait as the mixture thickens.  Different clays take different amounts of time to absorb water.  Next, we added in some sand as well as straw.  Traditionally, this mixture is mixed using bare feet, but we opted for just hands.  (Don't want to step on a hidden piece of glass.)  That said, we did some mixing with shoes and a tarp:

David adds straw

More mixing. Manually.

Once combined, we put the mixture into adobe brick molds (built right then with scrap wood), packed them in, then gently shook them out.  Viola!  Insta-bricks.  We did this quite a bit, making close to 100 bricks.  We also created a mixture without sand (just straw and clay) which were much lighter.

Brandon, Cassie & David giving it a go

Here are Brandon, Cassie and David making bricks live:



That's pretty much how we spent the first day.  Brick making + a lecture after lunch in the organic garden.

Days 2-5 up next.