Things We Love About Winter

We often try to come up with things that we love about winter, if for no other reason but to ease the pain of frozen fingers and toes. But in all honestly, there is a lot to love about it. The garden has provided the foods that our bodies crave during the cold season; roasted root vegetables, pumpkin and silver beet frittata, potato and leek soup etc. The wood stove is on, which means scrumptious wood fired meals without trekking up the hill to use the oven in the caravan. We don’t need to irrigate the garden, and there’s minimal weeding to do. Snow on the distant mountain tops is beautiful. The wildlife hangs around later than usual in the mornings, and comes out earlier in the evenings, so we get to see more of them. The cats are cuddlier.

One of our favourite things about winter is the sun’s rays filtering through the trees on a foggy morning. What we didn’t expect is how magnificent these rays would be filtering through the clerestory windows in the house, and can only imagine how amazing they will look when hitting the stone wall.

A seven day strawbale working bee has been booked for 29 November to 5 December, so we now have a clear timeline and deadlines for things that need to be completed before then. Whilst we’d confirmed that our bales were safe and sound, booking in the workshop prompted us to visit the farmer, Kevin, and see the bales that will soon become our walls. We were shocked to find that Kevin has never been inside a straw bale house, as he usually only sees the timber frame when he delivers the bales, so we must rectify that when the house is finished. He threatened to keep me locked in the shed to work on the farm, then deliver me back to Karim along with the bales in November, but I managed to escape.

We’re hoping to install the first layer of earthen floors in the dining and lounge rooms soon, so that it hardens enough for us work on when we raise the walls. We were going to use the dining room as the “trial”, but succumbed to our friend’s recommendation to do one square metre trials to get the correct proportion of clay to sand; because too much clay can cause cracking. This is the process that we followed:

Step 1: Remove any rocks and organic matter from the massive pile of clay that was stockpiled during the earthworks, and soak it in a pool made from hay bales and tarps for at least one week prior to using it.

Step 2: Build some formwork to do the trials in, with fibro as a base, 100mm deep timber edges (the total depth of the three layers of earthen floor), with 50mm deep removable strips of timber around the perimeter to screed the first layer.

Step 3: Remove the 10mm layer of ice that formed on top of the clay pool!

Step 4: Shred some straw (not hay) with the whipper snipper.

Step 5: Gather the ingredients. Our first trial is 2 buckets of sand, 1 bucket of clay, ½ bucket of straw, ½ bucket of cow poo as a binder and to add strength, ½ litre of wheat paste and 1 glass of powdered milk (the proteins provide cohesive bond and flexibility). Our second trial will be 3 buckets of sand and 1 bucket of clay, plus all the other ingredients.

Step 5: Mix the sand and clay on a tarp.

Step 6: Mix in the poo, straw, wheat paste and milk, which looks like, well let’s just say “very unpleasant”.

Step 7: Roll the mix into balls and slap it onto the floor.

Step 8: Knead the mix in with your knuckles.

Step 9: Use a trowel and some muscle to compact the mix, then smooth down the surface.

Step 10: Admire the finished product.

Step 10: Use your fingers to poke holes in it, which will help bind the second layer.

The third (final) layer will receive seven coats of burned linseed oil, and then be polished with bees wax. If we don’t like the colour of the floor once it dries properly, we can also add a natural pigment to the final layer. Doing the trial has been exciting, having an earthen floor just “feels right”, and makes us look forward to living in a home surrounded by natural materials inside, while we admire nature outside.

It's Getting Arty

Frank Thomas from Strawtec, who ran the strawbale workshop in Mountain River last October and the one in Canberra that Karim attended in 2008, held another workshop in Dungog a few weeks ago. When I realised this was only 60km from where Mum lives, and knowing that I had a LOT to learn before building our own strawbale walls, I jumped at the opportunity to attend. So off I went courtesy of Betty Boop…

We were only in the design stage last October, so I didn’t really know what details to look at during the Mountain River workshop, but now that our frame has been constructed and I know all the ins and outs of our home, the workshop was incredibly educational. We got hands on experience with a huge variety of tasks, one of which I particularly enjoyed was trimming the fluffy edges off the bales so they sit flush against each other in the wall. I learned a great deal, but in the end came to the conclusion that attending two workshops does not give me the skills and experience I need to build strawbale walls that will remain intact for hundreds of years. So we’ve decided to get Frank down to Tassie Mania to hold a Strawtec workshop to raise our strawbale walls, which will probably be at the end of November.

The wiring was installed this month and our planning efforts appear to have paid off, as the lights and switches do seem to be in the right place when you walk through the home. The main posts being recessed 15mm in from the straw bale line allows the electrical conduit to run straight down the posts, and we’re installing power points in the skirting boards, so most of the electrics won’t interfere with our bales or render at all.

The plan has always been to build a strawbale window seat in front of the round window, and we’ve been considering its design so we can construct an adequate footing for it to be constructed on. We thought it would be beautiful to carve a back rest out of an old tree stump, the roots of which blend into the earthen floor, with the base blending into the strawbale bench seat. I know, I know… what were we thinking (again)! As with many other things about this home, we weren’t sure if that was achievable, but I’ve since tracked down an artist who makes sculptures from tree trunks that are saved from clear fell areas, Eddie Freeman, and we might be able to do it. Jack has installed a piece of ply in one quarter of the frame to show Eddie where the round window will be positioned, so he can carve a back rest in the stump that’s in sympathy to the window. This has also really highlighted just how spectacular the view is going to be, and seen as it’s to the east, I think this will be where I undertake my morning coffee during the sunrise ritual.

Another artistic dream that has now become a reality is some feature lights in the dining, kitchen and lounge, made from scrap metal by James Simpson, who is Jolly’s brother-in-law. All of the lights will feature scrap plumbers coil, which is used for un-blocking sewage pipes. We think that's quite fitting considering there will be poo in our floors and walls. These old leaf springs from a car will be the main component of the dining room pendant light.

All the roof sheets have been installed now, the roofers just need to come back and do some trimming then install the gutters and fascia. This means we are completely under-cover and can continue with the build rain, hail or shine over winter. The next major project is the stone wall, which we’ll be able to see from both the lounge and bedroom. Yep, this means we have to lay a double-faced stone wall, but you know by now how we like to make things as hard as we possibly can. Take a good look at this gap and picture a beautiful stone wall being there by the next blog update (highly unlikely, but worth visualising anyway).

We met a builder that has recently finished his own two storey stone house only 2km away, and he’s been kind enough to give us all the training we need, from stone selection through to working the stones and building the wall. It would make sense for Ben to be in charge of working the stones, because him with a diamond disc blade on the angle grinder and large steel chisels just fit like a glove. Ben and I spent a day choosing our first 1.8 tonne of rocks and delivered them to site, which involved handling about 30 tonne of stone in total that day. They now cover the lounge room floor, but this is probably only one fifth of the amount of stones we’ll need.

Tim, Bree and I have been scrubbing them for the past couple of days to get all the mud off them so the mortar will stick properly. Our arms are aching, and we haven’t even started building the wall yet. No doubt our biceps will be as monolithic as the stone wall is by the time we’re finished!

To get an idea of what the wall will look like, and to experiment with different mortar colours, we continue to follow Bree’s advice and have done a display board.

Last but definitely not least, during my walk through the garden this morning I realised you haven’t met a new addition to our family. This is Freddy, yes he has boobs and an extreme case of varicose veins, but he does a great job of keeping the hawks away from the chooks and brings a smile to our faces.