It’s probably a good thing that the weather has delayed us, as I went on a strawbale working bee in Mountain River and came back wanting to make major changes to our plans (not the design, but the way it’s being constructed). When we arrived at the workshop the house frame and roof were already constructed; it was our mission to get the strawbale walls built and apply the first coat of render to protect them from the elements. You can see here that the posts are square, and are positioned right in the middle of where the straw bales need to sit.
So we spent a ridiculous amount of time cutting notches into the bales with a chainsaw so that we could position the bales around all the posts.
Materials for a strawbale building are much cheaper than the average home, however it is very labour intensive, and the labour ends up costing more than the materials. So we’ve been working with the designer and researching around the clock to come up with solutions to make the construction as simple as possible. Instead of square posts that get in the way of bales, we’re using wide posts so bales can simply be laid flat against them.
We also realised that the “Cell Under Tension” method of construction that we were planning to use was very risky, considering it relied on the bales being exactly 900mm long, and we discovered that the bales ranged from 800-1000mm when they came out of the baling machine. We’ve been reviewing our wall and window heights to try and ensure that an even amount of bales will fit, again to avoid spending lots of time making custom bales. We could give many more examples of the changes we’re making to our plans since attending the working bee, but in summary, thank god I went. We’re now hoping to finish the plans in the next few days, get them through the engineer and building surveyor as quickly as possible and into the council by the end of November, which would result in a building permit before Christmas. In the meantime, pray for sunny days so we can do the earthworks!
The property that the working bee was held at was beautiful, on the top of a mountain with 360 degree views of the valley. The house itself was designed to frame the “Sleeping Beauty” (the mountain in the centre which looks like the side profile of a lady’s face).
Eighteen people attended the workshop and by the end of the second day we had the first four courses of bales raised onto the walls, compressed and tensioned with wire.
Once each wall was finished a cob mix was pushed into the gaps.
The weather on day four was dismal, and we found ourselves working on cement mixers in the snow. It was actually quite soothing though, as unfortunately the owner of this house wanted a lime and cement render rather than earth, a concoction that gave us three degree burns on our arms after several hours of mixing. God knows what the powdered lime did to our lungs! Willem is pictured here, who built a large timber mallet for bashing the walls into place, and at the end of the workshop he handed it down to us to build our house with, and we’ll hand it to the next person, which was really special.
By the end of day four all the strawbale walls were constructed and the base coat of render was being applied.
We met a ceramics artist named Nana, who recently moved to Tasmania from Finland (only three days before the workshop in fact). Nana has since visited our property to test the suitability of the earth that we have to use for render, cob and poured earth floors. We couldn’t have asked for better results, we have extremely heavy clay, sandy clay, and sand with a rich colour pigment in it, so we shouldn’t need to bring any materials in at all for those parts of the build. Nana has also trained to do amazing relief work in earthen renders, such as the spectacular corner shown here.
On the garden front… we’re teaching another Introduction to Permaculture Course in November, but have re-designed the weekend’s agenda to spend the entire Sunday on the property doing practical demonstrations. So we’ve been working hard to get the garden in tip top shape, demonstrating as many examples of permaculture principles as we can.
First of all meet the boys; Tumble, Weed, Bumble & Bee. They are quite simple, yet simply adorable, and best of all… they love eating slugs! We dug a swale along either side of their paddling pond (which was a gift from Ben & Anna) to tip the murky water into each time we clean it, and the swales divert the water filled with duck poo to feed the fruit trees and raspberries.
So we don’t need to spend time ushering the boys around the garden when it’s time to go to bed, Karim set up these awesome barricades leading into their house, which makes rounding them up each night a breeze.
The green manures that we planted in the chicken run in September are thriving, and you can see in the background that the girls have nearly finished cultivating the other run. These green manures are not only building soil, fixing nitrogen and feeding the chooks, but they've provided ample mulch for the fruit trees so we don't need to buy straw. They also flowered before anything else, providing bee forage early in the season.
Btw the girls say hi…
The two fruit trees in this bed are surrounded by thyme, sage, coriander, rosemary, chamomile, parsley, beetroot, onion, parsnip, garlic, strawberries and a cabbage. The herbs on the edges have really benefited from the thermal mass created by the rocks, and have done a great job acting as a grass and weed barrier.
We are winning the slug battle and the carrot seedlings have emerged! This will be our third attempt at growing carrots, with the first two missions being unsuccessful, so here’s hoping that previous lessons learnt will result in a good crop this year.
The flowers are blooming, which delights the bees…
The tomatoes, capsicum and eggplant have been transplanted, surrounded by black plastic and rocks in an attempt to increase the soil temperature.
We’re also experimenting with black bin lids from the rubbish tip to increase the temperature around tomatoes and chillies, and as an added bonus they direct all the water to the root zone of the plant.
Evidence that lemon balm loves rhubarb…
Evidence that garlic helps prevent leaf curl on nectarine trees, as the nectarine tree behind the garlic in this photo was riddled with leaf curl last spring and there’s no sign of it now. We can’t wait to start eating that garlic next month. We’ve grown enough this time to eat all year and save enough to sow for next year’s crop (this is only one of the three garlic crops we planted).
These cabbages prove that the Albizia lopantha don’t compete for water and nutrient, they provide shelter and fix nitrogen in the soil, just like various layers in a thriving forest would.
We’ve constructed a trellis ready for cucumber and pumpkin to grow vertically, and have buried fermented Bokashi in the trench so that the earthworms and other soil life can turn it into perfect compost by the time we plant the seedlings.
We also built this container garden with used milk bottles to grow lettuce, coriander and basil without taking up space in the garden bed, and if it works we’ll make some more with the students at the course so the whole fence is lined with lettuce and herbs.
We let a few things go to seed last year, and now have dozens of new seedlings without having to plant a single seed, such as the coriander and radish below.
It’s hard to believe the frog pond was only completed last October...
We’ve been potting up succulents and other native cuttings with the aim of having some established plants ready to landscape around the house when it’s built, rather than live inside a beautiful home that’s inside a construction site for an extra two years. Let’s hope they surprise us next year like the plants around the frog pond have.
And last but not least, we’ve had a couple of naughty possum intrusions in the garden during the past few weeks, which has damaged a few of the fruit trees, so we’ve been altering the floppy fence at what appear to be potential areas of weakness. The last intrusion was about four days ago now, so we are desperately hoping that we have solved the problem.
So that was our October in Tassie Mania… Phew!
