Buckajo Bothy

When most people see our house (or pictures of our house) they comment on its diminutive size - "are you 4 really going to fit in there?" - or its "fairytale proportions" - I reckon you should render it in lollies and call it a gingerbread house". So I was pretty refreshed when a work colleague of mine saw a picture of our little strawbs and said "Hey! That looks just like a Scottish Bothy!". "A Scottish Bothy??" I exclaimed, and so ensued a whole lot of oohing and ahhing as we perused lots of online photos of these outrageously cute little houses.

It was one of those funny things: The day before the revelation of the bothies, Pearl's dad and I had been commenting on how our place kind of feels like you're in the mountains somewhere, especially when there's heaps of fog and/or rain rolling around obscuring the actually-quite-close-ness of Bega town. We talked a bit about Alpine chalets, but that wasn't quite right. Bothies, on the other hand - perfect! Especially when I learned they are also drinking houses!!

I love that a strawbale building can satisfy so many tastes, and be built in an almost infinite number of styles. If you read The Straw Bale House you'll get the Mexican vibe that people are fully into in the south west of the United States. If you look at some of the fancy-pants places Frank has built you'll get the "I have heaps of money and really like straight lines but still dig strawbale" vibe. Look on the internet and you'll see everything from wonky little hippie houses like this

to McMansion-esque contemporary numbers like this.

And if you look at our place... well... you'll get the DIY slightly wonky hippie Bothie cross. LOVE it.

 While all this diversity in the strawbale building world is cool, it's also kind of frustrating. So many crappily made, badly insulated, highly toxic UGLY houses are being built that are just going to perform terribly over the course of their life, sucking energy as their inhabitants try desperately to keep cool/warm through the seasons. People could still be building the same shape and style of ugly houses (I dunno - people seem to like them...) but out of strawbale, and they'd probably cost the same, be better for the earth, healthier and much more comfortable to live in. Makes sense to me, but apparently not to too many other people. Humans man. What is up with their nonsensical ways???

First coat of render finished - happy permaculture day!

First thing this morning I headed up to the land, determined to finish the first coat of render. It's been pretty slow going these last couple of weeks (since our divine working party dispersed). While it's been fun, the 4 of us on weekends, me late at night by myself, and me and Olive on a Friday night working by moon- and lantern-light, I was feeling a bit "is this ever going to be over?". But over it is - I feel confident that layers 2 and 3 will be quicker and easier, though I'm not sure what this is based on...

Of course, I'd left the tricky bits til last. Frank, in his haste to get away, didn't give us any very clear instructions on how to get the render to stick to the underside of the window and door frames. You know those beautiful curved frames you see in strawbale books? Not so easy to come by. Luckily, we only had 4 windows and a door to do, and by the time I'd gotten to the final window, I was pretty good at it, developing my own loose-straw with clay-slip-suspended-in-a-mesh-hammock-attached-with-foil-clips method. 

mesh hammock attached, awaiting render

Render seemed reasonably obliging and stuck to this contraption with only a small amount falling off.

render almost done

As always, I enjoyed every minute in our little house, and was especially excited to observe the passage of the sun over the morning hours, watching closely to see just how much solar gain we'd be getting this winter. I was pretty happy, as it crawled across the walls and floor for the whole time I was there. 

We're counting on this sun to heat up the walls and floor (our thermal mass) so that as the temperature drops in the afternoon, the heat is released into the house, keeping us warm in the night time. I was slightly apprehensive about how the house would perform in this respect, since the orientation was forced from solar north to more of a north-north-east aspect thanks to our friend the massive submerged boulder. But it seems like it's going to be OK. Yay!

As if finishing the first coat and watching the sun crawl around our little house wasn't enough to make today awesome, it's also National Permaculture Day, and we were very lucky to be able to tour a few totally inspiring houses in our area. 

I felt invigorated and excited as I looked through these properties, picking and choosing the bits that could be applied to our place, learning about ducks and sheep, and  feeling liberated by our friend Cam's approach to weeds in his food forest. Interestingly, I was actually calmed by seeing the 'big picture' that we're working towards, rather than just the 'to do' list that I've been struggling with since we started this crazy project. 

view from the top of John Champagne's

It was awesome to take a step back and visit people who, like us, started with just a couple of paddocks of weeds and grass, and built for themselves a home and a garden that are sustaining and fulfilling and brimming with joy and beauty.

.

Olive, Pearl and Oscar taking in the goodness (and the diversion drain!) at John Champagne's place

Exciting thoughts and plans resulting from today:

1. sheep are probably better than goats - rams are not nearly as offensive as man-goats, so we can have plenty of ewes getting knocked up without having to send them on sex-holidays or worrying about insemination

2. we need to harvest more water off the road! this means planning a drain across the driveway to get that road-water into our diversion drain, which leads straight into the soon-to-be-built top dam.

3. cool-cupboards are cool! On the south side of the house, make a cool, shaded fernery-type garden. Then, make a big underground pipe that carries the cool fernery air into the bottom of a well-insulated cupboard (I'm thinking a dead fridge). At the top of the cupboard, have another pipe outletting the warm air. Convection currents will keep the air circulating and cool.

4. make the duck house in the middle of the dam, island-style, to keep them safe from foxes.

5. kikuyu doesn't actually need to be eradicated at all costs. 

Sara and Cam's swale-y food forest

I'd been expending quite a bit of energy stressing about all the weeds on our place, so was absolutely and joyfully liberated by Cam's approach, which he adapted from Jackie French - spend your time and energy planting, rather than pulling stuff out. If you focus on growing the plants you want, keeping them happy and healthy with things like mulch, worm juice, friends (as in a biodiverse food forest) and compost, they'll thrive, and eventually the weeds won't matter, and/or they'll be shaded out.

And here's what I learnt yesterday: borage flowers look beautiful on an orange cake.

Tige's borage and orange birthday cake

Credits

You know how great you feel when you get a really awesome, handmade present? Well, multiply that by about a gazillion and you'll have some idea of how we're feeling every time we look at/think about our little house (which is pretty much all the time because we LOVE it). Yes, that's right, about a week ago, we got the best handmade present of all time when a bunch of our buddies got together to help build us a house. I know… AMAZING. To the people who shared with us in one of the biggest weeks of our life, THANK YOU for the generosity, compassion, support, cooking, skills, hugs, advice, fun times, tears, power tools, tarps, words of wisdom, endless iphone weather reports and most of all the LOVE you all brought to our new home. It may be a funny little gingerbread house, but guess what? We all made it! Together! With our own hands! How wonderful is that?

Recently-arrived-bales action shot L-R: Little Steve, Nassim, Huon, Louisa, Cam, Tige, Sara, Alf, Deb, Big Steve, Peps, and the indefatigable Morag.

Little Strawbs (the gingerbread house) - an independent production

Directed by Frank Thomas

Written by Tracy Graham

With (in order of appearance)

Awesome and fearless building-lady - Morag

Mistress of wood-carving and kid-wrangling - Louisa

Supplier of tools, composting toilets and camper trailer and generally very tanned dude in a fedora - Alf

New friend and super-bale-stitcher - Bec

Mer and Bec

Master of bale-compression and beautiful hugs and bum-squeezes - Nassim

Beautiful Nassim, smile-making even in the rain

Incredibly talented eyeballing of bale-sizing and master bale-re-tyer - 'Little' Steve

Little Steve and Nassim, bale-trimming like pros

Generally super-enthusiastic and energetic all-round-nice guy - 'Big' Steve

Supplier of many random items that actually came in quite handy and super-gripple-man - Matt

Helpful and lovely lady extraordinaire (and owner of the one-in-a-million Womble Dog) - Deb

Sara, Tige and Deb re-tying custo-size bales

New friends and neighbours, dinner companions and extreme-helpful and lovely types - Mer and Myoung

Tiny but mighty dynamo with a wheelbarrow full of render - Sara

Tige and Sara and a well-earned rest

Master-channel-cutter and general strong and funny guy - Cam

Handsome bearded man in the red socks - Peps

Super-kid-wranglers, food-suppliers, hardware-purchasers, bale-stitchers, truss-attachers and awesome moral-supporters - Nanny and Jaije.

Superb window-sill renderer - Bukhari

With a special thanks to our littlest friends and helpers Luca, Anise, Nelleke, Tige, Olive, Oscar,  and Huon

Jaije, Oscar, Anise, Nelleke, Luca (behind Olive's hat), Olive, Tige and Cam enjoying a little story time on day 1 (when it was sunny)

Catering by Nannies, Nana and Parps, Chani, Pearl, Peps, Linda, Rebecca, Cath, Deb and Meg

Financing by Alfie, Oma and Opa and Gerlinde and Steve.

Special thanks also for the many many words of love and support and encouragement, the good vibes and the site-visits.

Actual cost of all this help and love and support? Absolutely priceless.

Ruminations

Today, after a breakfast of raisin toast and Earl Grey tea, the kids and I headed off to Candelo for a day of learning. One of the many great things about living in an at-least-partially-forward-thinking rural area is that there are heaps of opportunities for learning about innovative ways to manage your land. We've only been here 6 months, but I already feel like I've been exposed to so many great ideas, and have met so many really inspiring people who are all working towards making their properties more than just 'sustainable' or 'organic' - they're actually working towards making them regenerative. Today's field day, 'Grasses and Grazing - Managing Pastures for Better Outcomes' was held at a farm out at Candelo, which is fighting the good fight against one of our resident noxious weeds - African Love Grass.

Farming-types. Love grass to the left
(No, I did not photo-shop that fluffy white cloud)

Luckily, we don't have any of this at our place, but it was awesome to hear about the ways people are utilising native grasses and combinations of slashing and animal-management to eradicate and control the weeds they have on their properties.

I was particularly interested in anything to do with managing native pastures and weeds through the use of animals such as goats and sheep, since this is something we're looking to get going at our place, both to service our own lamb-y meat needs, and also the demands of the local Muslim population, who are keen on something like a pick-your-own berry farm, but of the halal goat-meat variety. Pearly's already devising outrageous lamb dishes, like last night's hum-dinger, Pearl's SCPA Lamb Stew (recipe coming soon!!!).

Some goats hard at work in the love grass

But of course it's not just about having a bunch of ruminants roaming the acres eating whatever they feel like. We have some awesome regeneration happening in the form of self-sown acacias and eucalypts and angophoras: these will all need to be fenced. And then there are the native grasses. Microlaena stipioides (weeping meadow grass),  Bothriochloa macra (Red grass) and Themeda australis (Kangaroo grass) are the main ones at our place, interspersed with a fair bit of kikuyu (boo! hiss!). This is the bit where it gets tricky, because you need to manage your animals so that they only eat when the weedy species are setting seed, and the good stuff is strong enough to withstand extensive chowing. Even more complicated, this changes throughout the seasons, so you have to be pretty much on top of your game, if you want to achieve your desired outcomes. After seeing the results at the farm today, though, I'm feeling up for the challenge.
Our main weed issue is fleabane, a dreadful, hideously ugly plant with (alas) wind-borne seeds. When they're big (think about 2 metres high) nothing eats them, but there's a possibility that goats and sheep might eat them when they're little. I reckon it's worth a go.
I grew up with goats, so was always pretty keen on getting some to be our lawn-mowers, but now I know even more about them, I'm even more convinced that they are the way to go. For example: Did you know that the goat's rumen (first stomach) operates at a higher temperature than other animals', so weed seeds are sterilised and don't sprout from the goat poo???? I thought this was an excellent piece of information... And I also learned that, even though GOAT stands for Got Out Again Today, a solar-electric moveable mesh fence will keep them contained. This is what's used by the dudes who run Rent-a-Ruminant. I figure they'd know, but I'm also open to tethering ours, depending on the number of goats and the area that needs work. I'll tell you one thing though - our goats are probably not going to have flash houses like this little cutie, though I reckon I could get into sewing goat-coats.

But of course this is all a ways down the track, and at this point we're pretty much focused on getting our little house to lock-up and moving out of our (enormous) rental place.

The issue of getting our Little Strawbale finished was hammered home to me this afternoon when I noticed quite a lot of smoke coming from the western hills, right in the vicinity of our place. I do have a dreadful sense of direction though, so wasn't super-concerned at first. But as we drove closer, I realised "Hey - that really is near our place". We have been regaled quite a few times with the delightful story of a strawbale house at Cobargo that was burned down by arsonists. Strawbale houses, when rendered, are pretty much more fire-proof than any other building material. But when they contain exposed straw (like ours) they're pretty vulnerable. By the time we turned into Peak Hill Road I was absolutely convinced it was our place on fire, and broke into horrible sobs, imagining having to walk into the cafe and tell Pearl that our dream was over. But then we crested the hill and I realised, with immense relief, that the smoke was actually coming from our neighbour's burn-pile, not 200 metres from our little house. Obviously, those moments were horrendous, and really hammered home for me the fact that we need to get the joint rendered. NOW. I slapped on 2 barrow-fulls then and there, while Olive stripped naked, paraded in the sun and caked herself in clay and Oscar slept in the car, clutching a sausage he'd picked up at the field day. Tomorrow, more of the same. I don't want to rest til all our bales are safe!
On the pre-bed reading list tonight? Managing Native Pastures for Agriculture and Conservation. Oooohhhh....

Clay fun on a cold and windy day

This morning we ventured to our land, and our little unfinished straw bale, as a family. For the first time in two weeks, it was just us. 

It was a freakishly cold and windy day and I guess we wondered, is this a portent of winter to come? Yes it was windy on that hill but inside our little strawbs we felt pretty secure, snug and warm. We started the day with the modest aim of finishing the first layer of clay render on the back interior wall. We almost made it until Oscar, in a fit of enthusiasm, tipped the water out and we had no more water to make more render. By that time, the sun was getting low on the far hill, our arms were aching and we decided to call it a day with a necessary detour home via Coles for  ice cream and red wine. 

With a healthy clay render, everyone can be involved.

It felt odd working on our home, just the four of us. Odd and good at the same time. Oscar noticed the absence of a collective with his plaintive cry, "All the people, gone... all the people, gone.."Annie and I wondered how we'd go working on the house, just us with our little kids. People warned us it would be hell. But actually, it was fun. Productivity was low to medium but still, we felt like we'd all contributed and clay rendering is just so damn satisfying! I'm sure there's a beautiful analogy somewhere there about the joy derived from building a handmade house from the earth. Also you can't really get much more kid friendly than clay rendering, so kids are all hands on for the inside, though the outside render involves lime and a bit of cement (to make it weather proof) so is less for the kiddies' involvement. We're on the first layer, with two more layers to go, so rough and cracked is a-ok. Some little kiddy inscription just adds character and will actually help with the application of the subsequent layers by providing a 'key' for the 2nd and 3rd layers to attach to.

Annie working hard on the tricky window areas

Always time for snotty kisses

The noticeable absence of a collective today provided us with a moment to pause and reflect on the awesome and mammoth effort that got us to where we were today. Really, it's overwhelming to think about the love and generosity and fine assistance we have been showered with these past weeks. So next up must be a roll call of thanks. But for now, it's ice cream and wine and fruit stewing on the stove with vanilla bean... and maybe, hopefully, completing the paint removal from the old windows and french doors we are using in this little straw bale... Golly gosh they are beautiful! Don't fret, windows and doors to feature in a future post.

Annie, a little bit Deadwood today

Cost of clay, lime and cement for internal and external render was $2700. Most of that was the clay, which is annoying, given the amount we found on site when we excavated. At least we'll know for next time!

Nesting neighbours

And here's a post, with some lovely lovely photos of yesterday's rainbow, from our soon-to-be neighbours down the road, who will also soon be living the dream in their own tiny little house. Yay for tiny home-made houses!

The little strawbale house at the end of the rainbow

This evening Frank left our building site for the last time. As we loaded his truck and pushed the cement mixer up the hill, an amazing double rainbow appeared in the sky, perfectly framing our little house and boggy building site. Even though I was exhausted (it was my turn to render today) I felt happy. Frank was pleased with our progress and I was too... though I have to admit I will be happier when the first layer of render is completed.

We had a small cohort of workers today, as most of our team returned to Sydney town, but we did what we could, making a start on our internal rendering which is being done using clay and sand. The lack of lime and cement was a joy to behold - that stuff is hard on the hands, and quite a few of us a nursing lime burns. Bukhari, in particular, excelled with his rendering skills, even impressing Frank!

My rendering, on the other hand left quite a lot to be desired.

The curvy, irregular edges of the window opening proved very difficult to attach the fibreglass mesh to in the straight way it was 'supposed' to be done.

So I did what any good seamstress would do - I made some darts! This helped, but not quite enough. I figure it wasn't a total disaster though, as the only comment I got from Frank was "that's not really how we want it to be", sans any request to re-do it. Good enough for me! I figure I can fill it in later...

Frank was busy building the frames for our gable ends.

In my dreams, these had been made with strawbales: My vision for our little sleeping loft included nice, deep rendered window sills and little niches around the place. In reality though, our decision once again came down to a combination of exhaustion and the daunting prospect of all the tasks we now face in order to complete our little house. But that decision wasn't made until after Frank and I climbed up into the roof space and he started running through all the thing we needed to do in order to infill the gable ends with strawbales. I very quickly, and very easily made the decision to say goodbye to strawbale gable ends when Frank explained that, if we framed and clad them, we could have them framed and ready to go by the end of the day. Yes please!

One end (the western, most exposed end) is now 'clad' in leftover resiwrap, awaiting the application of whatever we decide. At this very point in time I'm leaning towards reclaimed corrugated iron or fence palings. We will definitely be having fence palings inside - I have collected a ton from the tip and from freecycle, and am very keen to use them for some cladding action because I think they're beautiful!

But now, some beer, a little read of my pasture cropping book, and some sleep. Ahhhh....