Attitudinal Principles

The Attitudinal Principles of Permaculture are people-oriented rather than environmental principles, and we can apply them in so many ways when we deal with our attitude. These principles have definitely helped us to find some positives out of recent “negative” events.

 A big shock recently was Karim losing his job after more than a decade of service, especially in the middle of a house build. However this has allowed Karim the opportunity to work on the house and feel more connected to it than he previously has been able to. And he might now have the opportunity to work for someone that he’s known for many years and has the upmost respect for. Some of you might remember him from sailing down the Pittwater in his boat… Cheesy I’m pretty sure you were with us during the “near miss”! They say that a change is as good as a holiday, and there is no doubt in our minds that this is true, though his “IT hands” are suffering somewhat.

 Another shock was having our water tanks tested to find that they contained extremely high levels of lead, which was followed by blood tests that confirmed I have lead poisoning. Karim’s levels were much lower because he’s been away 90% of the time since we moved here. Luckily I’ve mostly used a Britta Water filter, as the level of exposure would have been much higher otherwise. I contacted the Department of Health and there is now a state-wide product recall in action, and this story appeared in today’s newspaper:

http://www.themercury.com.au/article/2013/03/02/373585_tasmania-news.html

You might be wondering what the “positive” could possibly be in this! Well at least we found out and can hopefully prevent other people from becoming sick. Also, since experiencing a few years of great rainfall and catchment here, this gives us the opportunity to increase our water storage capacity for household, irrigation and fire fighting. Oh, and I get to blame any personal failures on having lead poisoning!

We also had a bushfire that started about 100m off our boundary. Luckily for us the wind blew the fire in the opposite direction, but unfortunately some friends did incur property damage. Ironically, this was our first night alone on the property this year, and we spent it sleeping in the back of the car (with the cats) down near the river. On the “positive”, this has provided an opportunity for us to learn and implement better bushfire planning and strategies, it was extremely reassuring to see how quickly and skilfully the fire service acted, and these fires have brought communities closer together.

 

 Amongst all of this, the past two months has brought some wonderful people into our lives who have offered friendship, support, and so much help it is somewhat flabbergasting. At one point we had six Wwofers staying with us, from Italy, Australia and Germany, and we made quite the happy family. Some helped render the house, some managed the garden, some eradicated weeds from the forest, some built a beautiful little wood shed to store our kindling over winter, and Leeny became our camp mother. She did the food shopping, made our meals, relishes, jams, washed our clothes and dishes, and cleaned our living quarters… which isn’t easy when eight people are sharing such a small space. I think we would have been lost without her. She took Wwoofer duties to a whole new level, by even running the bar at our local tavern one night!

A few weeks ago we had a magical visit from my step-mum Jenny, who lives in Busselton. She’s been a full-time artist for years now, but was an interior designer before that. We basically achieved three months’ work of interior design decisions in six days, kitchen layout and materials, floor coverings, trims, the colour of every wall and ceiling, lighting, furniture layouts and textiles. It was truly amazing to have Jenny’s input in the house, and to spend some time together after having not seen each other for a few years.

A lot of work has happened on the house in the past eight weeks, and it is becoming increasingly stunning. We realised that installing architraves on a row of straight windows that are embedded in a curved wall would be quite tricky, but could also detract from the curve, so Jack hand crafted the most beautiful curved window sill.

 

He also installed the celery top cladding on the lounge room ceiling, and the clerestory wall is now plastered and primed.

Jenny stayed in the shed during her visit, and Karim and I slept in the new house. It was absolutely beautiful, though after having bats visit us in the night, and birds during the day, we thought it might be time to strive for “lock up” stage and get some doors on to protect all the work that we’ve done internally. So Jack installed all the external door jambs, and Grant made three beautiful doors. We haven’t installed them yet because we were lime rendering last week and wanted to keep them safe, but they’ll be in by the end of this week.

 We haven’t just done one more coat of render since Christmas, we did the second coat of lime render outside in mid-January, the second coat of clay render inside in late January, and the FINAL COAT of lime render outside last week – wwooooo hooooooo! It looks absolutely incredible, thanks to Kate, lots of other friends and this incredible team who helped us finish last week, Helen, Chloe, Grant and Drew.

 

In March last year we were excited to post the news that we had a front door…

But what the front door looks like now, plus what we can inside the house, is incredibly exciting as well as a reminder of just how far we’ve come on this journey.

The whole outside of the house looks simply fabulous, all it requires now is a final protective coating with a a splash of colour, which we think we’ll use mineral silicate paint for.

 

 

 

Believe it or not we’ve also had a couple of social outings. A local pool competition on Tuesday nights has helped maintain our sanity, we attended a bushfire appeal concert that featured a Mongolian throat singer who was out of this world, and we visited the rainforests with some of the Wwoofers… this is Irena from Italy.

We also did a beautiful five hour return walk through this magical piece of forest.

 Once we exited the shady and wet forest we walked for about forty five minutes across a very exposed hillside in the scorching heat, and were getting a bit delirious, when we finally made it to Lake Skinner – the most magnificent spring fed lake.

 We have an exciting month ahead in March, my sister Mandy is visiting us, I’m off to WA for a shindig, we are attending some great permaculture workshops and are teaching another weekend course on the property. We hope to have all the internal walls installed this month, plus any other preparations required before we can embark on the final coat of clay render inside. Exciting times!

Another Brick in the Wall

 You may be wondering what we’ve been up to, since the end of November was the first month that we haven’t updated the blog since 2009! Well… we’ve been visiting remote islands

Driving 900 horsepower jet boats

Going on journeys with Max the German Journeyman

Doing yoga on the most magnificent, yet deserted, white sandy beaches

Talking bollox on the beach

Walking through ancient rainforests

Breaking the rules

Witnessing the 2012 family of swallow chicks take their first flight

Having close encounters with the local mammals and their young

Climbing summits with awesome friends to experience places that feel like the top of the world

Lighting lots of campfires

Reminiscing with beautiful friends

Singing

Dancing around the campfire

Dancing on the deck of the new house

Dancing on the beach

Kissing and cuddling

 

Considering forming a band

Having afternoon nanna naps

Looking at friends through, and in the lens of, what seem like rose coloured glasses

We can almost hear your shock… yes we’ve had some time off! And there is absolutely no doubt that we deserved it. It’s been a huge year and an enormous effort over the past few months to get the house ready for the strawbale workshop that started on 29 November. This earth building adventure has continued to become more about the people than the structure itself, and those people will always be a big part of the home long after we have finished enjoying our time in it. Words can’t possibly describe what the strawbale workshop was like. They say a picture speaks a thousand words, so hopefully this series that we’ve put together for you will speak volumes.

Franklin Strawbale Workshop 

We Have Windows!

Choosing the windows was quite a lengthy process that took several months, because they are such an important feature and there are so many options to choose from. We had to consider thermal efficiency, maintenance, cost, how the windows would sit in the frame and how we would render into them. We chose a thermally broken composite product, which is maintenance-free aluminium on the outside and aesthetically pleasing timber on the inside, all double glazed with a 14mm argon filled air gap. The windows look absolutely stunning so we are very happy with the final choice. The sliding door from our bedroom to the deck was ridiculously heavy, but the guys somehow managed to lift and fit it.

Building a round timber frame was a bit beyond the window supplier’s comfort zone, so Jack did a brilliant job of this. Once the glazing was installed we noticed a bit of fluff, and unfortunately it was inside the two pieces of glass, so the whole round double glazed unit is being remade. Someone who isn’t too fussed about looking at a piece of fluff inside the glass will get a large round window for very cheap!

From some angles outside it looks like a sphere, but this is just an optical illusion.

The largest window, facing directly north, is absolutely stunning with the rock wall as a backdrop and allows a beautiful amount of sun to enter the living rooms.

Beautiful shadows will be cast through the windows at different times of the day, including the round window creating a circle on the lounge room floor. We think the river views will be even more spectacular once the walls are in and the view is framed through the windows. Take note of how cracked the earthen floor is in this photo.

Here’s how the home looks from the outside now with the windows installed.

We tend to focus more on the curved sections of the house, so you may not have seen what it looks like from the garden, which is quite a different look to the front of the home. Here it is under a rainbow at dusk.

Now to the earthen floors! The first layer shrunk away from the perimeter of the rooms so much, and formed an incredible amount of cracks, some up to 30mm wide, that we felt the need to do an improved second layer before the strawbale workshop so that we didn’t risk damaging the floor too much. This time we called in an expert from Victoria to teach us all a completely different method, which was “don’t be pedantic by laying small sections with screeding boards – shovel the mud on, broom it into the cracks and trowel it”!

Many of the volunteers that came for the first layer came back for more, as well as some extra hands, including our designer Graham (pictured on the left). We were shocked when both earthen floors were done and all tools clean in 1.5 days. Some of the major causes of the initial cracking were the underlying foam insulation, too much clay in the mix, and the mix being too wet.

This is how the floor is looking now, two weeks after the workshop, solid as a rock with nothing more than a few normal hairline cracks and absolutely no sign of shrinkage.

We were lucky enough to engage the services of a boat builder friend before he left for Darwin, Grant, who has installed the deck and our bedroom ceiling (as well as constructed a trellis for our kiwi vine and many other things). The view from our bed through the glass sliding doors really is beautiful, and will be particularly stunning in the mornings since the sun rises behind the mountains and river.

We wanted a large deck because we’ve found that we spend more time outdoors than indoors, and are thrilled with the size of it. All the eaves and internal ceilings are also installed now, as they will act as our render stops. Above the deck here we plan to install timber battens at equal distance apart, which should break up the solid white ceiling.

Being a boat builder, Grant also installed an awesome secret hatch, as there’s a great amount of under-deck storage for preserves. This might also be useful for somewhere to banish Karim when he’s naughty!

We chose to line our bedroom ceiling with ply rather than plasterboard, and seeing this at Tash’s confirmed that we liked it. It contrasts the stone wall perfectly, and adds a touch of warmth to the room.

So now our biggest task is to try not to panic, as the straw bales have started arriving and the workshop is only three weeks away – yikes! We will be ready, we will be ready, we will be ready… and next blog update, you should be looking at a strawbale house!

WARNING! Way too cute photos coming up…

To sign off on a high, we’ve met some wonderful new people, our first wwoofers with baby, Paul, Titia & Miles from the Netherlands. Paul is helping us transform the garden from a jungle back to a productive food forest, Titia is cooking us beautiful meals, and Miles is just being way too cute!