It was a 5.5 hour drive up, and I was pretty sick the whole time (still am) but definately worth it. Ive taken other courses with Laura and other people which we talked about strawbale and played with it a little bit, but this was my first in depth course. All the other students seemed particularly impressed by us (my brother Eric and I), as we came in with a solid design we have been modifying for a year or so now.
Very boring, basic, rectangle. Which means, easy and cheap to build. We can add creativity and beauty in the details, sculpting into the walls with cob and painting murals with natural pigments, etc.
The design is somewhat of a duplex idea. Since im sharing this house with my brother, we want plenty of our own space and space for our own families. So we each have a large apartment-like wing, but share a living room and kitchen.
Well, everyone in the course seemed psyched for us, and wants to come down and help us. I hope that sticks until next year when we actually really need their help!
Our friend Steve also came out for the week from CT. I was pretty sick the whole time unfortunately, and then we drove up to Boulder and he stayed with some other friends while we were in the course. But while he was here, he helped Eric bust out the greenhouse beds. The wood we got from All-Pine in La Jara, I learned of them actually when looking for rough cut wood to build bat houses with a few months ago. Great resource, very friendly and cheap. We spent about $100 on wood.. If we went for some nicer stuff from the La Jara Trading post, it would have easily cost $3-400.
We still need to buy soil for the beds. That is going to be reallly expensive. About a grand.
Once we get that goin, then we will make some large coldframes using strawbales and old windows. And then in the next month, start growin some veggies!
Also very soon we will start building our wellhouse. The main purpose of the wellhouse is for us to get more experience building with strawbales, and complete a project start to finish that will give us essential practice for when we build the house next spring.
We are looking at a rubble trench foundation, topped with a course of earthbags, then strawbale on up. It will be really small, about 6x6 feet.
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