During my internship I'll be working on two different projects. Ma'ikwe Ludwig will be building a 2 bedroom post and beam straw bale house. Dan Durica will be building a straw bale house and I'll also be helping him with gardening work. Dan had the foundation poured for his house last year, so the first task on his project will be framing the structure. On Ma'ikwe's project we'll be starting by taking the bark off of the logs that will be used for structural supports and assembling Insulated Concrete Forms (ICFs) for the foundation.



Dan's foundation is ready for framing to begin. The lumber for this project was salvaged from a local farm building that was torn down. Although the lumber is free, it will take a considerable amount of time to remove the nails from the lumber. Another consideration is that salvaged lumber will be irregular in length and will take more time to cut pieces to the same lengths. At Dancing Rabbit the lumber for structures is either locally harvested or reclaimed from demolition projects. Using lumber in this was dramatically decreases the environmental impact of construction. Most lumber sources are located in distant parts of the US and large amounts of fossil fuels are used to transport it. (Large lumber suppliers usually are mostly located in the pacific northwest.) Old growth forest is becoming increasingly precious as more of it is clear cut by loggers.



Ma'ikwe has set up a large army tent as a home base for her project and lounge space for workers. The center supports for her house will be 17 foot log posts and 8 foot log posts will be used to form a "shed" style roof.




Ma'ikwe and I have been working in Google Sketchup to convert her building sketches to a digitized format that is easier to change as issues arise in the building design.


Monday

Today I assembled round cages to protect the grape vines in the vinyard. These round cages are made from chicken wire and will be attached to stakes near the vines with pieces of wire. Deer and rabbits have been a nuisance in gardens and the cages are intended to protect the vine cuttings until they are well established. We'll be assembling a total of 250 cages for the vinyard. After assembling around 30 cages in the morning, Dan and I attached them to stakes at the vinyard during the afternoon.





Tuesday

We started off tuesday morning with a meeting to conceptually layout some of the construction details of our project. Tamar will be lending her expertise to our construction efforts; during the meeting she talked about our strategies for the 'post and beam' frame of the house. On the outer corners of the framing we'll be notching the upright logs so that they are cross braced with 2x12 lumber. The corner joints of the framing will be the most important to structural stability, so they will also be held together with large bolts. Tamar also discussed some strategies for assembling our rafters above the framing. I spent the rest of the morning stripping bark from logs for the framing. Tuesday afternoon was my cooking shift for the food coop. Ma'ikwe and I stopped work early to prepare a feast of chili, cinnamon rolls, and acorn squash. (All vegan friendly recipes.)




Wednesday

Today I spent the whole day gardening with Dan. He had scheduled to pick up a truck load of compost during the afternoon, so our morning was spent mounding up top soil for the raised beds in the garden. A mound of excavated soil from the foundation for Dan's house was our source of top soil for the garden. The work today involved a lot of heavy physical labor, most of the day was spend shoveling and dumping full wheelbarrows of either soil or compost on the garden. The compost was of low quality; it was a manure compost that contained large amounts of straw that had not been broken down. We spent a significant amount of time separating the straw chunks from the usable compost. We covered the raised garden beds with around 2 or 3 inches of compost. We also spread compost around the vines in the vinyard.




Thursday

Today I continued to strip the bark from logs on Ma'ikwe's site. We spent part of the day constructing a box to hold the batteries that will be connected to her solar panels. The box is constructed from 2x4's and wheat sheet and doubles as a bench above the batteries. After the box was finished, we arranged the army tent to be a more comfortable hang out spot and staging area for our crew. I spent some of the afternoon de-nailing salvaged lumber and stacking it neatly into a pile with metal sheeting on top of it. The days here have been sunny lately and temps have been in the mid 70's. The average workday results in at least one jump in the pond to cool off. This morning a large group went to the courthouse in Memphis to voice their opposition to CAFO's being allowed in the area. (Confined Animal Feeding Operation)



The battery box that doubles as a bench and denailing salvaged lumber

Friday

We had thunderstorms Thursday evening the continued to pass through on Friday morning. Most of the outdoor work is put on hold at the ecovillage during a rain day. This morning I spent some time re-potting some of the seedlings that Dan had planted for the garden. When the rain cleared up around noon time, we started planting onion seedlings in the garden. I also spent part of the day laying down a layer of newspaper with straw for mulching over a bed of garlic planted in the garden. I used the same technique of newspaper and straw mulcing for some of the fruit trees and grape vines planted near the foundation for Dan's house.



Repotting seedlings and layering newspaper and straw for mulch over garlic


Saturday

Today was the yearly May Day celebration at Sandhill Farm, an income sharing intentional community close to Dancing Rabbit. I showed up in the morning to work on rebuilding the sweat lodge that was to be used in the afternoon festivities. We started by tearing off rotting boards from the outside of the walls. The structural support of the walls is provided by posts of black locust connected by 2x4's. Many of the 2x4's were replaced because they had rotted out. After the outer boards had been taken off, we stapled a layer of plastic to the inner wall to act as a vapor barrier. Since much of the heat in the sweat lodge is distributed via steam, the air barrier is intended to trap more steam in the lodge. We insulated the plastic layer by stuffing sorghum stalks in the cavity created by the 2x4 cross pieces. As a finishing touch I raked our debris from the sand inside the lodge and added a layer of fresh sand. I'll be coming back to Sandhill to work on reconstrucing the roof; we also discussed applying a clay plaster to some of the air leaks between the roof and the plastic layer on the walls.



Outside view of sweat lodge framing and stapling sheet plastic to the frame



Sorghum stalks stuffed into the cavity space and an inside view of the lodge after the addition of fresh sand