Cob house update

August 13, 2015

First bottle in the wall

Here’s the good news: the walls to the room we’ve been building now reach almost six feet, with spaces for a door, and two windows for which we have the frames ready to be mounted. The rounded walls remind us of a castle and feel like they’ll last forever. The foundation for the second bedroom and the bathroom await their first layer of cob, and the foundation for the rest of the house, the livingroom/kitchen area, has been built up to six inches or so and we can enjoy its pleasing curves.

Two weeks ago - stripes of foundation stones, dry cob from many weeks ago, current wet cob.  

Guy in doorway of our castle last week.

View from second bedroom.

The bad news laps at the heels of the good: it’s already mid-August and we haven’t completed the walls of the first room. (We’re going to the States for five weeks, as of Aug 31^st) We still hope to have at least one bedroom ready for guests in late October and then for a young friend who plans to live with us for a few months, arriving in December. By then the second bedroom and the bathroom should be well along.

Guy cuts out section of cob for small round window.

Window frames ready to be mounted.

Why, you might ask, and we ask ourselves at times, put so much effort into a cob house, risking disappointment and failure, when construction stores line  the streets in town with mountains of bricks and hills of cement bags?

It’s not just the cool factor though I admit to that motivation among others. Nor is it sheer stubborness in face of the difficulties. So? Permaculture, my friends, and the idealism that holds fast and true since the sixites when The Whole Earth Catalogue showed the way for the back-to-the-earth movement, and feminism painted the picture of women and men working together to create a more people-friendly society, and the doors of perception opened on the grand view of alternatives to a punishing, greedy, individualistic work ethic …  Ooops, am I waxing too grandiose? losing my audience? I’m sure you get the picture.

Recpitulating, for myself as well as my dear reader, we’re here to do our tiny bit in generating a sustainable society where, if human life hasn’t gone extinct, our great-grandchildren around the world will be able to build their own shelters, grow their own food, and live a decent and just life. Cobbing is part of this effort: building with the soil from our own property, avoiding as much as possible the environmental costs of industrial products as well as rediscovering the age-old techniques of building with what’s at hand and fits with the local habitat.

A couple of updates: Sofia, my daughter, has returned to live in the States for the time being.

Sofia, Greta, and Lulu - last day on the farm.

Sofia and Guy - getting ready to go.

She kept us company and worked alongside us for three years, clearing the land for planting and cobbing, making vegetable beds, digging deep holes for saplings, loving our pets (Fofo and Lolita), and generally cheering us on. For the cob house she collected stones with me for the foundation, helped mix the first batch of cob, and brought friends out on several Saturdays to do some building. We already miss her and will always be grateful for her support.

Fresh goat milk - yum.

We’re milking Polly, the mama goat, every morning now. We’re up before 7, in the cold mornings, but we warm up quickly as we put ourselves and Polly through the paces. We’re consistently getting two cups of milk, which we immediately use for our coffee and for granola. Tastes great, just like cow's milk. Perhaps we’ll get up to a quart before we leave for the States. When we get back in October Nina, the pregnant goat, will have birthed her one or two kids and we’ll be back to milking. With experience under our belts we won’t have to start at two tablespoons as we did with Polly.

In the meantime we enjoy the farm views in the daytime and the stars at night.

Bougainvillea (red), mango flowers (pinkish), and quaresma (purple).