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.

Ribbit

Lately, I've noticed TONS of tiny, baby frogs hopping all around the property.  Every now and then you'd find one in the garden, careful not to step on it ... but now, in the evenings, no matter where I am, I find numerous little frogs hopping around. Some have been as small as 1/2" long!  It's pretty cute.

 

I saved one from the shower the other day.  I'm pretty sure he could have found his way out, I mean, he found his way in.  But I decided to corner him and set him free onto the grass.  I think it was just an excuse to pick another one up.


One thing I haven't seen yet is the bull frog ... but I've definitely heard them.  You can hear their deep, loud sounds coming from the pond in the evening.  I have a feeling I wouldn't be able to corner one of them.

Barrrrtender

Look out Hopland.  There's a new bartender in town. 

The Hopland Inn

About 6 weeks ago, the Hopland Inn reopened their bar.  It's a quaint little spot, and really, the only "hotspot" in Hopland.  Think 1800's style building, all wood bar complete with wooden ladder (you know, to reach the Hpnotiq) and an adjacent library that is reminiscent of Nancy Drew and the classic board game, Clue.  ("It was the Professor, in the Library, with the candlestick!")  Needless to say, we were all pretty stoked when Brandon got a job there.

Blackberry Mojito

He met the new manager, Amy a few weeks ago by the river.  A few of the inters were hanging out on a typical scalding summer day, and Amy was there with her golden retriever, Igmor.  Igmor kept grabbing our shoes and hat, running around with them inciting us to play with him.  It was pretty adorable.  Turns out, she needed some help at the bar and next thing you know, he's mixing margaritas like whoa.  Last night, on his 4th day of work, we all decided to stop by and challenge his novice 'tending skills.  Cassie and I arrived first, with fresh spearmint and blackberries.  We had an agenda: Blackberry Mojitos.  What could be better than a mojito on a hot, 100 degree day?  Two of them.

After downing those, we let him make us one of his staples: a dirty martini.  It was the single dirtiest martini I've ever had.  You couldn't even taste the alcohol - yes, I know that's what they all say - but it was true.  It was also Cassie's first martini, making it a great introduction to the heavy hitter.  The olive juice also had pepperccinis in it at one point, so there was a hint of pepper in there - excellent.

Not too long after that, the rest of the crew arrived.  Brittany had returned from biking to and from Ukiah, so she just popped in to say hi.  Next, Rhonda, the Manager of the Real Goods store ponied up to the bar, followed soon after by Vaughn and then David.  We pretty much owned the place (no hard to do). 

"I see you Cassie ...!"

One last drink ... a margarita.  Now, Cassie works at a margarita bar/mexican restaurant in Santa Rosa and is a trained bartender - so she knows her 'ritas.  I snuck this pick while B was grabbing something behind the bar - Cassie swoops in and makes a few adjustments.  Hey, if you want something done right .... !?  ;) 

All in all, it was great time, and will definitely be back again soon. 

Making Goat Soap, Cheese, Yogurt & Kefir

One of the most recent sustainable living workshop we had was on how to make kefir, yogurt, soap and cheese using raw goats milk.  I was pretty excited about this class.

We spent the day with Jini Reynolds, expert on just about anything from herbal medicine to helicopter flying. Really.  She's got a lovely little homestead nestled in the hills of Redwood Valley overlooking Mendocino Lake.  

The first part of the day, we prepared the ingredients for making soap - you have to use lye, a chemical that essentially emulsifies the fats you add to produce glycerin, which is what suds up and is actually soap.  So, we added water to the lye and had to wait for it to cool down (adding water = chemical reaction = gets really hot) before we got started.  In the interim, we learned about cheese, yogurt and kefir.

Cheese, I discovered, is quite simple to make.  If you're using raw milk, you basically heat it up (just a bit), add some white vinegar, and let it sit over night.  The vinegar forces the curds to separate from the whey, (then along came a spider and sat down beside her...no wait, wrong post.) After letting this mixture sit overnight, you pour off the whey (liquid) and maintain the curds (cheese).  Put the curds in cheese cloth, squeeze out excess whey, and hang for a day or so.  I present to you ... cheese!  Easy, huh?

Yogurt is even easier if you can believe it. All you do is add a little bit of existing yogurt to a raw milk.  Let it sit out and it turns into yogurt!  I need to get me some raw milk to start experimenting ... Making kefir is much the same way.  You can either use the cultured kefir pearls from kefir that has sat out for a few weeks (too old to eat, but it produces some great starts), or use kefir pearls you purchased at the store.  Again, so simple.  The hardest thing is waiting for it to be ready.

After the morning session, we had a lovely lunch in her backyard, which included, of course, goat cheese!  We chopped up some garlic, chives and basil and added it to some freshly made cheese.  It was yum.  Jini also broke out a bottle of red and a bottle of white wine - quite a treat for our afternoon lunch.

Back to soap ... now that the lye/water mixture had cooled, we mixed up a few different kinds of oils - coconut, olive, palm - as well as some raw goat milk.  We then added the lye and took turns stirring - we ended up stirring for something like 45 minutes!  It was a huge batch, enough for like, 40-50 bars of soap.  But you had to keep stirring to force the emulsification else the ingredients would separate.

This is about 5 min into the mixing

We poured our mixture into soap molds and added some fresh lavender to a few of them for texture.  Because it takes a while for it to settle and harden, Jini said she'd mail our finished soaps to us.  Again, waiting is the hardest part!  I'll be sure to post a photo of once we receive them.

If We Don't Start Acting Now ....

I thought this was a pretty poignant advertisement I stumbled upon while in SF for the conference.

As such, I think it deserves it's own post.  (Apologies for the glare)

on a bus stop on California Street

Intersolar Conference

Not too long ago (ok maybe 2 weeks ... I'm a bit behind on my blogging) ... Brandon and I went down to the city by the bay to attend the Intersolar Conference.  It was a massive event filled with everything you can imagine solar-related.

Kathryn, schwag in hand

We rolled in wearing jeans ... soon to discoverer we were probably the most casually dressed folk there.  Lots of slacks, dress shirts and skirts.  But not to worry ... I did see a few other scrappers walking around.  

I wish I had more to comment on about the conference, but there wasn't a whole lot for the SLI Interns.  It was interesting to see all the different gadgets and new do-dads they're coming out with (many of which, may not be all that necessary according to my PV 200 instructor).  But, it was a great opportunity to nab some sweet schwag. That's always my highlight of conferences.

View as we escalated down

What we walked away with, in order of increasing cool-ness:

resuable tote / grocery bags

set of blank cd's for burning

key chain w bottle openers

memory stick

2  (bad a**) camouflage trucker hats 

Needless to say, it was a good conference. 

And check out the weather we had:  

Hi, Pretty

Spiral Garden 1.0

I'm going to title this "Spiral Garden 1.0" because I anticiapte a few iterations / updates of this project.

David & Solar Bob laying down seaweed

The spiral garden is the brainchild of Cassie.  In the intern village area, there's a lot of unused land with exceptionally poor soil in the middle behind the teepee in front of our kitchen yurt. Cassie wanted to convert the soil in to rich, nutritious soil that could be used to grow crops.  David had been reading up on Lasagna Gardening, so they decided to use this method to treat and repair the damaged, sun-leached soil.

Cassie sectioned off a circle ~36 feet in diameter and fenced it in.  Next, Brittany began transporting muck (aka freshwater seaweed) from our pond as the first layer of the lasagna.  She laid the seaweed out in a spiral pattern and soon after the rest of the crew began adding layer upon layer of various organic materials that would decompose and 'cook' down, creating a stew of nutrient-dense soil ready to be planted.

Brandon busted out the weed chopper to cut the weeds (mostly grass and plantain, which is actually not a weed in my book) so that it was flat and clean between the raised beds they were building.

The various layers they used, in order:

freshwater seaweed
grass clippings / weeds
fresh goat manure
cardboard
dried leaves
partially decomposed straw
fresh straw
biochar
seabird guano (aka bird droppings)
stable bedding

The raised beds should be about 14" tall by the time all of those layers have been added.

Holy S*hit!

I can't tell you how long this all took, but it was much longer than anyone anticipated.  It wasn't uncommon to see an intern or volunteer working well into dinner still wheeling goat manure and shovelling it into the bed.

They aren't done quite yet.  They're in the process of layering on the dirt.  After that comes compost then mulch and then they are done.  Well, then they'll have to plant, but that's the fun part right?  But that comes after they allow their compost cocktail to marinate for just the right amount of time.

I'll keep you posted.