Return from Canelo

…return to reality (kicking and screaming all the way). What a great week I had at the Artistry in Clay workshop at The Canelo Project. At an elevation of approximately 5000 ft (Tucson is 2400) the temperatures were near perfect, making for beautiful autumn camping despite an unexpected late season shower. Canelo is a green oasis with a running creek, the sound of which lulled me to sleep every night.

The other workshop attendees were fun and interesting, people from all over the US,all ages, all walks of life. We enjoyed eating our delicious meals together, sharing bits and pieces of our lives and discussing our projects and plans. I hope to meet up with some of them again in the future.

This workshop spans a week, Saturday to Saturday with lots of physical labor-I don’t know how Bill and Athena do it. To have a group of strangers (16) take over your house and property for a week and keep smiling (most of the time) is a feat, but they do it and do it well. I learned so much, if only I had more walls!

Some samples of my work in clay and lime. Look at the sheen on that first one! My greatest accomplishment-successfully using a hawk and trowel!

And just to add to the mix, Athena’s aunt, the artist Nora Naranjo-Morse visited to work on a prototype for her sculpture
to be installed on the mall at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington. We all got to have a “hand” in that and it was quite an honor to be involved and to hear her speak with such passion about her work and about life. The creation of the process was being filmed and there were visitors from the Smithsonian. Life is interesting even in little known corners of Southern Arizona.

This is a picture of the outdoor shower, my favorite place! Taking a shower at dusk, looking at a beautiful sunset, priceless!

StrawbaleRedux

We're still around, just haven't done much work due to the trip to Ohio and Rick's fractured kneecap. Things are looking up though. We got the LAST window in and I will have more pictures by the end of the week. Thanks for checking in!

Chicken Wire, Stucco Wire-
What's the Diff?

It's been a very busy week getting the walls ready to plaster. Like most jobs, it always turns out to be more than you thought. But with every little bit we do it only looks better and better. We have a bit more lath to do (and then I will find more I want to do to tweak it). When we have all the wire up it's time for another inspection and then we can get the plaster on. I found a website called Bad Stucco (Iwas looking for information on diamond lath and ways to apply it). Wow, what a scary site that is! It's a wonder any cement stucco houses last. But, it also brings to light that there's a lot of art and science to building and that to get quality, you have to search out people who do quality work and know what they're doing. Anybody can slap stucco on but not all of them know how to keep the water from getting behind that stucco and ruining your house. You have to look at a house as a system and all the systems have to work together.

The doves hatched and this is the only one left in the nest.

And the boys and I are flying the coop for about a week, back to Ohio to visit family. Rick will be holding down the ...nest.

Construction Halts for Birth

We've been busily filling in the bales with cob and light-clay but had to take a break for the dove who has nested at the top of the wall.

As you can see by the photo, there is quite a bit of room between the top of the bales and the roof plate on this end (west). This is all to be filled with light-clay.

The rest of the pictures show the filling we've done. I probably didn't need to do that much in some places but I get carried away and it will just make it easier to plaster.

Same corner after light clay.............................................and before light clay.

The dove nest is to the left of the small window on top of the bales.

It's Winter in Australia

Here's another site I've been following for awhile: an adventure in sustainable building. The Cockburn/Wittmer family will be building in Tasmania. (How many of you flash on that whirling Looney Tunes character whenever you hear that word?) In the July post there is a graphic of their house plan.

LindaCockburn has written a book Living the Good Life, detailing the her family's experiences with suburban sustainability. Many people think you have to have 40 acres to live sustainably-not true. We can all do things to decrease our ecological footprint, it just takes a little planning. One family has practised this on a city lot in, of all places, Pasadena, California (flash on Rose Bowl parade-I am a visual person) since the mid-80s. Check out The Path to Freedom, but take your time, there is a lot to learn in those pages.

A Reading

Last night we attended Borderlands: A Reading of Prose and Poetry at our local coffee house, Javalinas. The authors who read both live in Civano. Simmons Buntin, is the author of Riverfall a book of poetry and Scott Calhoun wrote A Yard Full of Sun which details his family's experiences building and gardening in the desert Southwest. (check the Riverfall link to the left). It made for an enjoyable evening-what was truly great was seeing the wide range of ages who came out to enjoy the reading.

You can now receive an RSS feed of this blog. I know I was spending a fair amount of time checking for updates on blogs I like to follow. So, just click the orange icon and you can subscribe!

I've also added a link to another Strawbale Owner Builder, this one in Canada, Stonehouse Straw House. This will allow you to see a project in 2 very different climes. The Stonehouses are having a wall-raising soon, so if you are in that area you might want to check it out. The site pictures are beautiful!

Mud, Mud, Glorious Mud

Mud! Mud! Glorious mud!
Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood.
So, follow me, follow, down to the hollow,
And there let us wallow in glorious mud.
~Swann & Flanders

The clay arrived! Now I can get to some serious work. The walls need to have some holes filled and be evened a bit and for this I will use cob. The recipe for cob is simple and very flexible. Sort of like making bread, a lot of it is done by "feel". I will lay a tarp (like the blue one in the picture) over 4 bales arranged in a square to make a well in the center. This will be the "mixing bowl"; to that I will add clay, sand and some chopped straw sifted through a screen. This will then be mixed to incorporate the ingredients throughout. Then add water, take off my shoes and "dance like no one is watching"!
Cob has been used to create shelter for centuries in many cultures. Two great books: Built by Hand and Home Work, have beautiful examples of people creating their own shelter from what they find around them. These range from the simplest mud hut to intricately embellished castles.

Speaking of embellishment-I'm going to the Artistry in Clay and Lime workshop at Canelo the first week in October. Canelo is SE of Tucson in the hills. It's a bit cooler there and October will be beautiful. I'm so excited-I've wanted to do this for a couple of years and it's finally going to work out! The plaster work at Canelo is beautiful beyond description. I will come home chock full of ideas-but we only have a few walls, hmmmm maybe we could build...


These are 2 shots of the doors in place. These were taken on August 6 at approximately 10am and as you can see, the sun falls about 3 feet up on the south wall. Inside, the sun only hits about 6 inches inside the wall. Even with all the openings (front door not in, utility closet not closed in, the inside temperature is very comfortable.






This is the walkway going north, showing all the green after our summer rains.

Ventanas, ventanas, ventanas!

We have windows!

I'm very happy with our choice of windows. This is one area we decided to spend more money on this time around because we know what a difference quality windows can make in the long-term comfort and efficiency of a home. The last time we got medium grade windows from a salvage yard. Returns from building projects around Tucson-they were all new windows but somewhat mismatched though I doubt many people ever knew. Our current residence has a south facing patio window and in the summer if you get within 8 ft of that window, you can feel the heat. These are Jeld-Wen windows (the front door is Pella) in a Prairie style and I think they add more character to the house.

This is a light fixture I picked up at the HabiStore because it goes so well with the windows! Yes, that's the price tag-$25!

Those are storm clouds you see in the house photos. The monsoon has arrived in full force and are we ever glad the roof is finished. It has rained for about 16 of the last 24 hours here, which is a bit unusual, even during this time of year. We're not complaining because all of the West needs the rain. When we were harvesting water, the rain was always exciting because I knew the culverts were filling. I hope the rain is helping with the fires and potential for fire that is so great in the summer. Rick used to fight forest fires in Ohio and during fire season, I never knew when he would be home (this was pre-cell phone). I can't imagine fighting a fire for hours on end in 100+ degree heat.

I've included a picture of our sodden backyard with overflowing bird bath and the wash behind our house running bank-to-bank! Our backyard was xeriscaped to keep much of the rainwater on the property for the plants. It is quite lush right now, even though we cut all the shrubs back completely in late winter. We have lantana, verbena, Mexican Bird of Paradise, 2 types of mesquite, sweet acacia, rabbitbrush, Texas Ranger, Texas sage, Mexican honeysuckle and cat claw vine. This backyard is probably the #1 reason we bought this house.

Rain is the main topic of conversation at this time of year. "Did you get any last night?" means RAIN! "What time did it start at your housee?" "Did you hear that thunder?" "Yeah, lightening woke me up about 2am!" "It was dry as a bone at my house." The discussion of the amount of rain, the force of the wind, the loudness of the thunder goes on and on until the end of August. I guess we get so little "Weather" we have to make the most of it because it's "Forecast: Sunny and Dry" the rest of the year.

This was supposed to be with the following post.

More roof pictures.
I know you probably think I've gone dotty over this roof-and I have. I think it's just beautiful. And I've wanted this roof for a long time. Hmmmm a diamond would have been cheaper but would have given me no more pleasure that looking at this roof.

And here's another with Monkey Boy climbing on the gable end doing all the meticulous finish work. He's so good at those detail things; comes from years of intense LEGO interaction, I'm sure. He's always been able to take a pile of LEGOs and turn them into something fantastic or just to bring order to any chaos. We were camping in Colorado 5-6 years ago just outside Pagosa at a little campground that had a laundry room and lounge with a TV. We were in the 2nd week of a 3 week all camping trip and the TV was very popular with the boys. The lounge also had a big magazine rack similar to what you see in stores. People would bring in magazines and leave them for others to read. Well, that rack was a mess-so Sam, then 11, organized it for them. All the National Geographics together chronologically, all the Time, all the Trailer Life, etc. He had such a great time doing that. And to think when we decided to homeschool people were worried about the boys learning their ABCs.

And how often do you need to recite the ABCs as an adult? It wasn't on any college entrance exam and it has never been on a job application nor have I been requested to recite them in a job interview. I've never understood "learning the ABCs" as an important gateway to future learning. Aren't the things we are expected to learn in the artificial world of "school" derived from the real world? And wouldn't it follow that those things could be learned from the real world when it becomes important to advance to the next stage of our development. And by being forced to learn prescribed things that may or may not have relevance to us at that point in time what things are we not learning that would be much more beneficial? Simply put, I believe we learn what we need to learn when we need to learn it. The most important concept is to be active and interested in many things. Learning never happens without the spark of interest.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a wonderful book and in it there is a passage in which Miss Brodie, a teacher at an all-girls school in Scotland in the 1930s, compares her view of education with that of another teacher at the school:

"To me education is a leading out of what is already there
in the pupil's soul. To Miss Mackay it is a putting in of something that is not
there, and that is not what I call education. I call it intrusion. "

I have no bumper stickers on my car and think it interesting that people seemingly sum up their whole philosophy of life, political ideology, sexual habits and/or religious dogma in a 9" x 3" space on the back of their car. That being said, I do love to collect quotes, so here is one from Thoreau who seemingly has a quote for everything:

"What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch
of a free, meandering brook."

Henry would have been the Bumper Sticker King of his time.
And one last quote, then it's back to building:

"What makes people smart, curious, alert, observant,
competent, confident, resourceful, persistent - in the broadest and best sense,
intelligent- is not having access to more and more learning places, resources,
and specialists, but being able in their lives to do a wide variety of
interesting things that matter, things that challenge their ingenuity, skill,
and judgment, and that make an obvious difference in their lives and the lives
of people around them."
~John Holt~ Teach Your Own

It's a Roof! And a beautiful one, it is.

Let the rains come-however, now that the roof is on, we will probably get no rain. We have had a couple of good gully washers, but nothing the past few days. Some people asked if the rain was a problem for the bales-the short answer, Can Be. Rain that lasts for hours for several days in high humidity areas would be very damaging. The water then has time to penetrate deep into the bales and does not have a chance to evaporate. Here in southern AZ where the summer high temperatures are consistently in the 100s and the humidity low, bales will dry out quickly. One (of many) reason we've chosen earthen plasters is to allow the bales to "breathe". Many old adobe buildings (unstabilized) have failed after having portland cement stucco and elastomeric paints applied. The Mission San Xavier del Bac has undergone extensive restoration, part of which included removing cement stucco and reapplying the traditional earthen plaster.

Those of you familiar with building know that no matter the wall material, housebuilding is pretty much... housebuilding. It follows a sequence, site work, foundation, walls, roof, windows doors, then we move inside. The doors and windows have arrived so we can get that started. Things are going well, we're pleased. It will be nice for the guys to get out of the sun and work inside. We are still trying to find a source of clay but have a few leads. We'll find the right people.

One cool thing I found-Tucson now has a HabiStore where they sell construction leftovers and salvage! It's a wonderland of possibilities. We used to have a ReStore in town but not quite sure what happened to that. We bought several things for the previous house there.

I'll leave you with more pictures.

Here's the roof with the paper on and some of the metal on the fascia. A few of the panels are up on the north side. Progress! Cutting those triangular pieces for the corners is proving to be a pain-as we knew it would and that's one of the reasons Rick didn't want to do this type of roof. But, when it's finished it will be worth it. 

It's getting closer to the roof!

Starting Monday it should be ON the roof. Then we can breathe a sigh of relief. The next "drying in" step will be getting the plaster on the outside.
















This is the view from the kitchen window.
Haven't used this company before. Will let you know.








View fron the dining room window. 

Dia de San Juan is coming-get the roof on.

It rained last evening. Not just a sprinkle but a pretty significant downpour. Enough to have the wash run for a couple of hours. And it cooled everything down. That's one of the reasons we so enjoy the coming of the rain. Just when youthink youcan't stand another degree of heat, the clouds roll in, the heavens open up and it drops 20 degrees in a matter of minutes. Then the whole cycle repeats the next day. The boys and I took Gen for a walk along the wash. He loves running through the water. We enjoy the rain but it does signal the beginning of the monsoon. Luckily the roof material was delivered on Monday evening so that will be the next big project. Hopefully the arrival of the doors and windows will be next.

Happy Father's Day 2006!

Don't let the salmon burn!


Studying the pizza situation.










He builds houses, cooks and is a great dad to his sons!

All we need are some rocking chairs...

This is the porch on the north side. Eventually it will have a flagstone floor. This opens on to the pedestrian walkway and will have a bit of a view of the Catalina Mtns. This will be a great place to be on hot summer evenings.


Same subject taken from the walkway.











 

Guess they did publish, finally!

I thought the blogger issues were resolved but I guess not-created a post with several pictures which would not publish nor save so is lost. Will try again later.

Finally, more pictures....

Apparently Blogger was having serious issues.

Right-that's the shower between the 2 "throne" rooms! The whole room will be "wet". I plan to use a product called Milestone and create some mosaics on the walls. Part of the floor will be a pebble mosaic.

Below-The hallway. At the end will be a small "office" with a window to provide cross ventilation.

Center-the lav will go in the alcove under the window and we will suspend a mirror in front of the window.

Bottom Right-The Master BR. All windows are operable, again for cross ventilation. The space under the large window (which is North) will have a window seat with built in storage under.

Today the front porch is being built-that should change the look of the north side and provide a space for a favorite Tucson summer activity-thunderstorm watching.

Still awaiting clay, windows and doors...

Barn's burnt down
Now I can see the moon~Masahide

Update

Wow, it's been awhile since I last posted. Lots going on but much of it behind the scenes work. Finding a source for clay in Tucson has proven more difficult than we thought. Previously, we obtained our clay from the Pascua Yaqui Adobe Company which has since gone out of business. That's too bad because we found the company to be great to deal with. We have another adobe company that we are waiting for a delivery from but that seems to be a problem for them at the moment. We know we only need what is a relatively small amount but an order is an order and a customer is a customer. I suggested we could go to the wash and dig our own but Rick didn't think that was such a good idea. Stick in the Clay!!

The metal roofing is still to be delivered-that'll be a hot job as the temps are now reaching 100 degrees daily. We need to have the roof on by beginning to mid July, as that is when the monsoon should start. But now that we seem to be creating our own climate in southern Arizona, who knows.

And we are still awaiting delivery of windows and doors. All thing in their own time.

Here are some pictures:



South Elevation












Interior looking south,
this is the living room.













Kitchen window and front door.

The Most Beautiful Roof in the Entire World Passed Inspection!

Even the inspector thought it was beautiful. Now on to paper and metal. We ordered windows and the front door this week. CHA-ching! I need to start cobbing the voids in the walls. Straw bales, being imperfect, when brought together need some "make-up" to fill in the imperfections. It's messy (like mudpies) and somewhat tedious but one can get a lot of thinking done.

I'm a Registered Nurse and like many RNs have a love-hate relationship with the profession (don't worry, the source of the negative feelings is usually NOT the patient). However, last week was Nurse's Week (another Hallmark moment) and Friday was Florence Nightingale's birthday. Instead of taking part in the "festivities" that were sponsored by the powers that be in nursing, a few of us had our own celebration. We went to Javalina's for coffee, conversation and great music. Amber Norgaard was the musician, and she is great. If you get a chance to see her, do. The coincidental thing is that Amber used to make her living as an RN and we could tell that as she was belting out a tune she was longing for the good old nursing days. NOT! We got into an interesting discussion about what it takes to leave something "safe" and strike out on your own. How many of us beat back our passions and are pulled along by the siren song of safety? It was a great Tucson evening.

I've been led to another gifted artist, Amy Steinberg by an unschooling family blog. (If you've read the Intro to this blog, you know we are an unschooling family and I'll probably write more about that at some point.) The song Exactly is amazing. Really listen to it.

And on to the next project.