The big cob-house update

The last time we showed you our cob house the roof frame was beginning to go up, back in October. I'm taking a step back to show the whole process of getting the roof up. By the end of this post the house will have developed dramatically. I hope you enjoy these photos.

October 17, 2016 - The house unprotected. For a year we had a tarp over the house to protect it from the rain. Guests slept in the rustic rooms with good windows and doors but only a large blue tarp to cover it.

Oct. 19 - The roof structure goes up.

The recycled tiles are made from used milk boxes - heating and molding the aluminum and plastic remains
into strong but  lightweight and pliable tiles.

We hired a local builder and his brother to put up the roof.

The weather cooperated, cloudy but without rain.

Nov 10 - The finished roof, nicely rounded with a small circular saw.

Another view of the completed roof.

The space between the wall and roof must now be filled in. Eventually the roof
will be supported by the wall and some of the posts will be removed.

Handing up the cobs to be added to the top of the wall.

Cob meets roof.

We created vent holes with screening. 

Dec 28 -The walls of the two bedrooms and the bathroom are almost completed.

Jan 17, 2017 - Now it's time to work on the two level floor:
living room above, entry-level kitchenette below.

Guy empties one of the unending wheelbarrows of gravel. At the back sits a
handmade water level. 

Lolita and Cindy inspect the premises while Guy starts filling the lower level.
The tamper is used to make the floor as solid as possible.

Stones, gravel and sand are delivered just outside our property since the
bridge isn't strong enough for heavy trucks.

It's a pretty stretch but long after about twenty cartfuls. 

Especially since its' uphill.

Feb 1 - The next floor layer is made of earth, sand, gravel and straw.
It's pocked so that the next layer will adhere. 

We decided to make a ramp between levels since we have a wheelchair-bound
friend. And, who knows, we might need it ourselves in the future.

Feb 7 - Now we're placing the used windows we bought back in October. 

The three large windows have to be propped and tied in place until
the walls go up around them.

We get an idea of what the windows will look like from the outside. The space looks smaller from this perspective.

Today, a week later (February 22) I took the final photos for this update. 

The cob has gone up almost two feet, holding the windows firmly in place. 

Since we've decided to wait a few weeks before building the front wall with its doorways and window, the cob wall has been tapered so that the next piece of wall supporting the main doorway will join more securely.

                     The space looks inviting in the morning sun. The tall window at right will open into an alcove.

(I just realized I should have a photo taken from the same angle as the first photo in this post. I'll take that picture and get it posted as soon as I can.) Feb 23: Here it is:

The cob house as of February 23, 2017

Once again we want to put out an appeal to anyone who is ready for a Brazilian  adventure and eager to learn about cob or to participate in a permaculture project – come join us for a week or two. To come from the US you will need a minimum of around $2000  for airfare and incidentals. We will pick you up at the airport in Brasilia and host you (good food and wonderful sleeping in a quiet dark space where the stream gurgles by and the stars jump out at you at night) in exchange for four or five hours of work a day, very flexible. Of course, there is a whole lot more to see and explore in Brazil and Latin America. Contact us through the Comment section below, or by email or Facebook.

Mangoes and guavas on window sill.

January             2017

In these times of political unrest, both in Brazil and the United States, I sometimes wonder if we’re in the right place, doing the right things. Guy often wishes he were in the US in order to participate in marches and other actions to protest the direction this new president is taking the country, and to hold our elected officials accountable for preserving the rights of every American as well as safeguarding the rights of those world citizens, including countless children, who have been displaced as a result of the war-making in which the US is complicit.

On the other hand, our work here compels us to continue with ongoing projects. The cob house is more than halfway done, goats and chickens need daily attention, fruit trees require care. We’ve also taken our commitment to ‘living into our place’ to another level as we help found and build a non-profit organization which will dedicate itself to the preservation and recovery of springs and creek beds in this high plateau where many rivers have their source.

Looking North toward the crest of the Continental Divide of Central Brasil and to the beginning of the Amazon Basin beyond. We live just South of the divide at the beginning of the La Plata Basin. 

Just two miles north of us runs one of the ridges of the continental divide - between the Amazon River Basin to the north and the Plata Basin to the south. Rainfall here has decreased steadily over the past few years (climate change?) while farmers, large and small scale, continue to clear land with reckless disregard for ecological balance. People in this area of abundant water are for the first time in memory worrying about the  water running out. In Brasilia, only 60 miles away, water rationing  has become necessary. If it doesn’t rain enough between now and May, when the dry season starts, the situation could be drastic, even deadly. So it makes sense for us to stay here and do our bit for sustainability.

The site of a spring that has been totally cleared of trees to make a watering hole for cattle. 

Our permaculture project began its sixth year in August and we moved into the first house we built a full four years ago. Trees that we planted back then have begun to bear fruit: pomegranate, pitanga, coffee and orange. Guy has produced two years of fully-cured humanure that we use in our vegetable garden and on our fruit trees. I’ve developed a flock of chickens with Rhode Island Red hens that are just beginning to lay, and we collect four eggs a day already. Our goats provide enough milk for our daily needs and we’re learning to make cheese.

Among other things, I would like to plant ginger and turmeric – both grow well around here -  to use with goat milk to make turmeric tea, supposedly a powerful anti-inflammatory.

Very soon I plan to post a complete update on the cob house so I won’t go into any details in this entry. Please stay tuned.

A peek at the cob house with its new roof.

Almost there!

I wrote this post in late October however earlier attempts to publish it failed - and it sat languishing for three months. Much has happened since then and very soon I'll publish two entries in order to catch up.

Almost there!

Our neighbor, Marli, has been building the walls of our cob house since I had to stop, and now two of her brothers have worked since Monday this week to put the roof over the whole house. The two bedrooms are finished, except for the final foor layers and wall plaster and Marli just completed the foundation for the living/dining area, but we’re taking a break from the cob building until we get the doors, windows and other parts together. (With the two bedrooms we got the walls most of the way up and then had to partially cut out holes for the doors and windows – a waste of energy and time.) It will be great to have the whole space covered and protected from the rain. 

Cob house with blue tarp that was up for over a year.

Cob house without any cover.

Current work on the cob house - wood structure for the tile roof.

Animal management takes a lot of our time. We get up early to feed the goats and milk Polly whose two kids spend the night enclosed in a pen away from their mother. We’re getting three cups of milk every day now. We made a difficult decision: we got rid of Nina and Daisy, and are keeping the two Nubians, Polly and Nellie. “Developed in England, the Nubian is popular among makers of cheese and ice cream because its milk is so rich. This goat comes in many colors, most typically bay or black, and is the most energetic, active, and talkative of the dairy breeds.” (Damerow, Gail, The Backyard Homestead Guide to Raising Farm Animals.) Nellie has returned from the farm where the went last month to hang out with the billy goats, and hopefully the fullness in her body means she's pregnant, expecting in February. 

The chickens require little care other than feeding them in the morning, making sure they have plenty of fresh water, releasing them late morning, gathering eggs, and enclosing them at dusk. As I described in the last post, from time to time we have to deal with a broody hen - right now we have one isolated in the cooling down pen and are only collecting two eggs a day. 

Lolita in the pit.

Then we have our pets, Lolita and the cats. Lolita tore her leg on a piece of wire and the sore was invaded by flies that lay their eggs inside. It was taking forever to heal so I took her to vet. Now she has a collar to keep her from licking her wound, and she reminds me of the RCA dog. 

Our little orphan kittens seem to be doing fine. When they're not sleeping they're all over the place, very cute.

The cats usually require almost no care but suddenly Fofa, who birthed kittens in the beginning of September, has gone missing and we have two of the cutest little devils to take care of. They’re drinking goat milk out of a bowl and eating both cat food and dog food. I miss Fofa. The other adult cat is Cindy, a pretty Calico, and she’s no trouble at all. I assume that she catches any mice who make the mistake of coming around for corn and other foodstuff. Lolita also has a job and that’s to bark when any stranger, including the monkeys, comes onto the property. She’s good at her chore, sometimes she overdoes it, but fortunately she doesn’t bite.

Lolita and Cindy.

When we moved onto this piece of land several fruit trees remained from the prior dwellers who’d lived here about fifteen years before. There were five mango trees, two China limes, a dying orange, several guavas, and five jabuticaba trees, the latter being a superb fruit endemic to Brazil that is now cultivated in many places including Florida. We’ve pruned the old trees and all of them, including the orange, are doing well. 

More limes than we can use - lemonade, salad dressing, caipirinhas, lemon bars - yumm.

Jaboticabas- a few green fruits growing on the trunk while a new set of blossoms are beginning to flower.

We’ve also planted numerous fruit trees, coffee, and a small banana grove. We picked our first coffee beans last season, and pitangas (a delicious cherry-like fruit) this year. One of the new orange trees is flowering right now as well as a pomegranate. The passion fruit vine is flowering profusely but no sign of fruit.  

Eggs and milk

October 7 , 2016

It’s 11 am and I just collected three eggs from the chicken pen as I let out the flock (three hens, one rooster, and seven 3-month-old cockerels and pullets) for free-range pasturing the rest of the day. At sunset they will go voluntarily back into the 8 x 12 ft pen to roost safely for the night. In the morning I feed them corn and keep them enclosed so that they’ll lay their eggs where we can find them.

Our chicken pen: the roosting area is protected from the rain, and there are two nests in boxes in the covered area. A passion fruit vine covers the rest of the pen, including the extension.

Last month two of the three layers went broody, meaning that their hormones changed, they stopped laying and started sitting on the nest day and night, even though we’d removed the eggs. For those who aren’t familiar with chickens, brooded eggs hatch after 21 days and the hens spend another six weeks or so protecting their chicks and keeping them warm at night, before starting another period of producing eggs. To bypass the 9-10 week brooding and little chick phase it’s necessary to break the hormonal cycle by cooling down the hen’s body which has heated up to hatch the eggs. Some say to dunk the hen in ice water, which I’ve tried several times without success. Instead we put our two hens in little elevated cages with wire bottoms and left them there for four days with only a bit of water and corn. It worked but still took another week and a half for them to start laying again – about three weeks without eggs. Any day now the third hen will probably go broody.

The separate extension provides an area for little chicks. Right now it houses six Rhode Island Red pullets.

To the left of the main chicken pen is a smaller extension (4 x 8 ft) where my six Rhode Island Red pullets live. I got them by special order in Anapolis, five day old chicks that I raised in a cage in our pantry until they were old enough to be outside. Now they’re about nine weeks old and have joined the older fowl for the run of the property where they gobble up insects, worms and bits of choice vegetation. Thanks to Grace’s work in January and February we have two enclosed garden areas for our vegetables, protected from the chickens.  Two or three months from now nine pullets will begin laying eggs, and we’ll finally attain our goal of all the eggs we can eat plus plenty to share.

The Rhode Island Reds grazing in the open range - enclosed veggie garden (fallow now at the end of the dry season)
and the goat pen in the background.

Our newborns, doeling at left and buckling at right. (Guy's photo)

Polly, one of our original goats, nursing her newborns (Sept.20th) Guy's photo

This morning we started milking Polly, the mama goat. Eighteen days ago she delivered two kids, a buckling and a doeling. This is her second birthing and we hope to get more milk, three or four cups a day, which is enough for our needs when it’s just the two of us here. Guy and I have learned to house and feed and to milk the goats in the past year, since June 2015 when we got our first two pregnant does. Our little herd is up to six and one of the does that was born here is off at a neighbor’s to get pregnant from one of his billy goats. We don’t have enough space to keep a buck.

2011: Clearing the old foundation - a jabuticaba and a mango tree.

2012: another angle, a second jabuticaba tree; babassu palms in the background.

We’re entering our sixth year on the farm. The photos above show our land before we started building anything. Now our brick and mortar house sits on the old foundation we cleared, and just beyond the little jaboticaba tree on the other side of the foundation we’re building our cob house. I plan to write an update on the cob house very soon – hopefully by the end of the month we’ll have a roof!

Guy sitting in our future sitting room. The foundation was completed last week. 

The first house, brick and mortar, completed in November 2012. The two houses face each other.