My little Stella grew so fast! Since Mrs. Wolf, the master teacher in the classroom where I student taught, was uncomfortable with me bringing the bird to school, John volunteered to take over Stella’s care for a few days. Here are another couple of weeks’ worth of e-mail exchanges between me and John (the illustrator of Stella…
I’m so excited that my children’s book, Stella the Starling, based on a real-life wild European Starling that I hand-raised, is finally out! Writing that story brought back many memories. I went hunting through my computer e-mail archives and found quite a few detailed messages that I had sent to my friend and fellow bird enthusiast,…
In this post I would like to share a list of the resources we have used for building the earthbag house. I’ll update this page as we continue the project, so check back later or sign up for my newsletter at the end of the post to be notified when I add something new!
Papercrete? What’s that? Papercrete is a mixture of paper and Portland cement. It has a light, spongy, airy feel and it’s a great insulating material!
Greetings from Fort Collins, Colorado! I started this 2014 “holiday letter” about a month and a half ago and things have been a real whirlwind since then! Let’s see…where was I? After many months of working on an earthbag house in Kansas, Keith is back to work in on an official, paying job. He worked…
We install doors and windows a bit differently in an earthbag home than in a normal house. Watch the video below where Lee explains how it works, and enjoy the slideshow afterward which shows the doors and window frames in the earthbag house we are building:
A few weeks back I wrote a post about the rainwater cistern we’re building. We’ve made a lot of progress since then! My newest video shows the cistern from dream to (almost) done! This cistern, made of earthbags like the rest of the house, will be the primary source of water for the house. We’ll…
Protecting the House from Cold and Moisture One of the major things to consider when building a house is how to protect it from moisture and temperature extremes. Here’s a video I filmed (a couple of months back now) on how Keith protected the foundation of the earthbag house from the elements using natural and reused building…
Cistern and Utility Room The most unusual and complex part of the earthbag house is the utility room, containing a 3,000 gallon rainwater cistern. This room is the center of operations from which the electricity, sewer and water supply will be controlled. It is also recessed into the ground with double-thick walls below ground level,…
Earthbag Mixture This being an earthbag house, one of the primary tasks involved in building it is making the mixture to put into the earthbags. We start out with the piles of clay that have been dug up around the building site. My father-in-law, Lee, made mud pits–like kiddie pools–with boards and plywood and tarps, and…
Four different people have sent me the same link to a news story that broke this week about a girl who was kidnapped by her mother and found hiding in Mexico. It’s not uncommon for friends to let me know when a story like this comes up because it always reminds them of my own childhood…
The Walls are Coming! I’m so excited to be past the trenching and foundation stage and working on the actual walls! We’ve hired some helpers to come out during the week, and on the weekends sometimes Denise and Jeff come out and may bring friends to help as well. Thanks to the additional hands, things are moving…