Moving in…sort of
Christmas drew near, and our goal of being in the home before Christmas, make that last Christmas, is almost realized.  Unfortunately, we didn’t have Ann’s Mom in before Christmas… as nature played the Harper card and prorogued completion, as well as froze 18 buckets of floor mix together, under a blanket of 26 inches of snow.

Imagine what 18 buckets of useless frozen horse manure plaster look like at this time of year in Ottawa?  Probably a topic we should all elect to stay clear of.   Truth be told - we realized in this cold snap it was best to have someone looking after the trailer to ensure the pipes froze and the outside composting toilet seat stayed dangerously chilly exactly like they had in the prior two winters.

How does cob do in -15 C weather you may wonder?  Cob is not ideal for a sub zero climate, but this said it performed amazingly well.  When the sun is out, for the five useful hours on a winter day, the solar thermal collectors provide the entire top up heat needed, with input off the roof at 120-140 degrees F.  With 70 km/h winds and a temperature of -15 BEFORE WINDCHILL, we needed to use the wood boiler once a day. 

We used up more wood than we expected; and like every other month for the past year, the windows are cracked open to allow the wet floors, plasters, and paints to dry.  We will probably eat through 4 cords of wood this year… ouch.  But apparently this is better than most homes our size.  Also as expected, our truth window shows the walls still retaining moisture and have not yet fully dried.  All along we have said we won’t really know how the building is performing until next winter when the walls are fully dry.  All in all, our cob home is quiet, warm, and draft free.

What would you do Differently?
We love questions, but there is one that is really hard to answer.  “What would you do differently?”   So here it is… we would…
-         Double the insulation under the earthen floor to gain an R 25 value.
-         Add one additional layer of cushion under the roof membrane to provide peace of mind.
-         Not build concrete pads at the three doors
-         Not agree with Ann’s request to make homemade door latches.
-         Put a larger mechanical room in the center of the house to decrease plumbing and electrical runs, and contain the wood boiler within this room.
-         Build the mud room door 2 inches wider
-         Add anchors to our wooden sun rays in our earthen floor… what were we thinking?
-         Not glue down wood flooring to the earthen sub-floor in the upstairs den.
-         Build second story load bearing as first floor or use light clay infill
-         Create more earthen counter tops.
-         Stored more firewood
-         Tracked Ann down and married her sooner
-         Located the sun tube directly above the stairs
-         Put bathroom switch inside the door
-         Be more specific with all family members (ourselves included) about the energy conservation and efficiency required to be Net Zero Energy on a 2 kW solar array.
-         Be more realistic with our estimates for how long it takes to build and finish a home…optimism won out here over practical common sense

To balance the “would have should have” of above we have added the next question.  What do we love about the home?  We love:
-         The warmth from the floors
-         The wonderful acoustics
-         The small but numerous windows providing lots of natural light
-         The creative earth and wood forms
-         The LED lighting
-         The awesome kitchen
-         Fresh bread most mornings
-         The beautiful shower
-         The completely odourless bathroom
-         Being able to share a queen bed with Ann… in our bed… finally after three years… and we have been married for four! (Ann hated the trailer and slept first in the loft of the den, and then in the unfinished house)
-         Meeting numerous wonderful people and sharing what we know
-         Watching the kids the first night they spent in their beds in the house
-         Having a warm toilet seat to sit on
-         Good Scotch (as we write this update…thanks Ben)
-         Being reunited with such simple pleasures as Ann’s much missed soup ladle…there was no room in the trailer for such luxuries.
-         The amazing feeling of living in a home that is a creative expression of ourselves.

2009
As we rewrite this update deleting all the pre-Christmas day scrutiny (because we were late in finishing it), we find our minds saturated with the reviews of 2008 and predictions of 2009.  It strikes us that 2008 was the year when capitalism and environmentalism collided to send debris flying with cascading effects just beginning to be realized.  It’s sadly interesting how the environmental issues have taken a back seat to the economic woes of the masses.

Those who take a moment to ponder the crises know that the two cannot be separated as they are actually the same.  The good news is that “fixing”, or recreating a sustainable economy will also heal our environment.  2009 looks to be a very pivotal year in our opinion, as this is the year when to put it bluntly, the S#!T hits the fan and humanity makes major choices for the survival of our species.  We can choose to cling to our disintegrating capitalist self indulgent lifestyle living beyond our global means OR we can choose the path of simplicity, beauty, community, and family celebrating the richness of all life.

We see the first quarter of 2009 start to look good due to the Obama effect then another crash; see some dinosaur companies going under, observe the forced change (or perhaps collapse) of civilizations, celebrate new opportunities for political reform with increased citizen engagement, and witness the peoples struggle with increased poverty both globally and locally.   We can change by force, which will be painful and not so pretty, or we can change by choice with empowerment and joy.  We choose the later.

Santa Baby
Hey “Santa Baby”… as we listened to Maude Barlow asking for…  well… everything… I wonder what Santa’s carbon footprint is.  We have a friend with numerous health issues and a son with asthma.  Will they make the connection this year that less crap may mean better health.  What better gift could you offer other than good health?  Maybe it is really health and happiness that the Grinch has stolen from Christmas.

The Grinch of the Christmas season is really the corporate greed machine, where people’s sense of gratefulness for friends and health is stolen by the mentality of consumption and selfish gratification.  The Grinch is the marketing machine telling us what we deserve, like more polyphenol-A in our plastics, and tarsand contaminants in the Athabascan river.  Isn’t it odd that people feel guilt and shame if they can’t participate in mindless consumption, if they can’t live up to the status quo?

Not us.  For Gord this is the first time in five years of trying to get to that “place” of freedom of shame where a season of expectations has been replaced with a relaxed calmness; a calmness where the kids don’t expect anything; a calmness where the best presents were warm gingerbread cookies and cold milk after playing in the snow, Ann’s sushi on Christmas eve and fresh cinnamon buns Christmas morning.  This was our first Christmas where the kids said thanks for spoiling them, in the face of getting two books each and a clothes drying rack for their room.

I am glad our family has reached this place of simplicity, as our prediction for the next few years is rather horrid with food and fuel shortages, rising inflation, rising unemployment, increased homelessness and huge social unrest coupled with drastically reduced social programs to help (we haven’t even put in climate change). Unfortunately it will be the majority of the innocent humans throughout the planet that will suffer the most, and they don’t deserve the fate we have handed them from our greed and our unscrupulous GROWTH economy.

As morbid as the big picture is, we see opportunity in people being forced to change.  It has taken five years to become comfortable in not buying xmas gifts, not going on planes for holidays, giving up skiing, not signing the kids up for every activity… it has taken this time for Gord to quit caring what the other parents and neighbors may say because we don’t enroll the kids in lots of activities.  We can’t afford these and we choose to educate our kids outside of the box.

We expect over the next five years that most of the people in Canada will spend sleepless nights fighting their internal turmoil as they struggle with less…less of all the material things.  When you get to this place of voluntary simplicity and stop fighting it we know you’ll be feeling more complete, require less counseling, less Prozac, have healthier fitter bodies, stronger resilient communities, loving families, better self esteem, better lovemaking, more tolerance, and an enriched creativity and appreciation of beauty… remember less life stuff… more lifestyle.

Cabbage, Potatoes, and Carrots
Or is it carrots, cabbage and potatoes… or potatoes, carrots, cabbage?  We have spent the past couple months eating what we have, or more importantly what we have grown (while we were building.)  Amazingly we have cut our food budget down from $700 to $300 a month for four people… and this includes our fresh milk which is $100 of that.

Ann has made so many wonderful variations that Gord has given up his desire to even try to cook with these three ingredients.  The whey from the cheese Ann has been making is used in soups, stews and more.  Our evening tea consists of wild mint we found on a hike last spring, our Yerba beuna from the land, local Highlands honey, and a spot of lemon juice.

Now open for business
Ironically in this era of the onset of a depression, as we finish off our first small project (the house), we are eager to start the next.  We are open for business. Open to a wide array of sustainable education projects, from books, to tours, to presentations, to house calls, and even toying with a documentary on building a carbon neutral home.  (Kind of like the Garbage Warrior…which we have not yet seen).

School Tours
$600 in carbon tax dividends has been donated from generous people, which will be subsidizing six school tours in the coming year.  We hope these tours will spawn more school tours or class presentations.  Grade sixes seem like a good age.

In Home Sustainability Consulting
We are seeing an interest in people wanting to become more sustainable in their own homes and lives, but not sure quite where to begin.  So why not have two rational crazy people in for a session and consult on how to live more affordably and sustainably within your own lifestyle.  From learning to cook with basic ingredients, conserving on energy and water, learn if grey water re-use will work in your home, setting up your own composting toilet, rainwater harvesting, to making casein paints, plasters, and learning basic self sufficiency skills, we can help out.  Almost sounds like a TV program… “SUSTAINABLE MAKEOVER”.  Yikes!  Maybe even you are thinking about putting in a suite?  We can help you learn what is practical and possible for you.

Specialized One Day Courses
The wonderful alternative energy suppliers are inundated with a lot of questions about the basics… questions and time they rarely can afford to offer unless the customer is really serious.  That’s where we come in.  We will also be offering one day (4-6 hour) classes covering specific topics on solar photovoltaic energy (from site selection, conservation, efficiency, and the understanding behind volts, amps, watts, line loss, phantom loads, inverters and more).  Is PV right for you?    We offer a rare opportunity for people to learn about a topic and see how the triple bottom line is applied for REAL!

In the same manner as above we will also teach about greywater, rainwater, solar thermal, composting toilets and more.  If you have a group interested in any of these topics and wants to learn about them, in a cozy cob home, just contact us.

Sustainable  Building
Onsite teaching of natural building skills, for use in home renos or new construction.  We are willing to come and spend a day or more to help people learn about and incorporate sustainable natural methods in their homes.  Natural plasters, natural paints, earthen floors, earthen counters, making composting toilets… teaching skills you can use, with materials that are beautiful, natural and inexpensive.

Public Tours
General public tours will continue on the first Sunday of every month…please contact us for reservations.   Two and a half hours of applied sustainability, interspersed with laughs and information.  It amazes us how many repeat visitors come to see the progress.  Maybe they just want a glimpse of Ann in her gumboots.  Hmmm… Ann of Green Gumboots?  Has a certain familiarity.  We put a great deal of time and energy into the info packed tours and will be raising our rates to $20 per person.  The contents of our tip jar will apply to some subsidized tours so please contact us to see if we can offer reduced rates.

Cabinetry
Gord is also craving more custom cabinetry work.  This month more cabinets have been made, cabinets with expanding radius curves, incorporating willow (recently brought down from December’s snow), spalded maple for the top, the last scraps of our doug fir for the sides and some juniper scraps from Wise island (the very same juniper our wedding rings are made from).  The spalded maple, sanded with 600 grit, is sealed in tung oil and a coat of bees wax from our friend Pattie’s bees.  You can’t walk by it without stopping to touch it.    This newest cabinet snuggles in to the curved cedar driftwood log that arches up to the ceiling in the kitchen.  Pictures will be posted soon.   If you have some special wood with history, recycled or milled and want it made into a functional piece of art to enjoy every day just make an appointment to look at our resume of cabinetry in our home, and see what we can create for you.

We also do earthen counters from cob to lime, for kitchens, bathrooms or even desks.  And if that doesn’t floor you than we can also do clay floors.  And then continue up the walls with plasters and more… OH NO another TV program “This Local Earthen House”

Media update
In the new year Chek TV will be here filming, the Harrowsmith article will be out, and we will receive all the props back from the Royal BC museum.  If you know anyone that wants a larger than life picture of Ann and Gord, let us know otherwise we’ll be giving it as a gift to Gord’s oldest brother, Dave, for Christmas next year.  (Dave has always been kinda keen to have some of Gord’s artwork on his walls…just kidding).

The last day of 2008 saw Ann lay her last earthen floor in the house.  With this project coming to an end, Gord starts the new year scared that with all her free time she’ll catch on that he’s not doing anything and put him to work…

Happy New Year!!!  Enjoy the basic things like friends and family and support your community by buying local.

(cross-posted at www.eco-sense.ca)

Simply Happy,

Gord and Ann