News from our farmstead #6
News from our farmstead #6
How to build a house
👋 Hello, Mauro here. Interrupting the usual finca updates to tell you all about my holidays. Like Harriet said in the last issue, I’ve been away doing a natural building workshop run by the fine folks at Freedom Farm.
We met Nic and Max from Freedom Farm earlier this year when we stayed in their yurt for a couple of days and learned about their project. They have a few hectares of land in the province of Aragón and live there completely off-grid with solar power and rain water. They have goats, chickens, 6 lovely dogs, loads of olive and almond trees and even some guinea pigs (which they use for their poo!). We really liked Nic and Max, not only because they were lovely hosts, but also because of the way they build a community in their area, their values of equality and respect for the environment and their laid back personality and sense of fun. We look up to them and when we saw that they were running a natural building workshop, I didn’t hesitate to book all my remaining holidays at work to go help them.
So what is natural building? The way I understand it, it’s the construction of houses and other structures using mostly locally sourced and natural materials (such as wood, clay, stone, straw, etc.) with the aim to reduce the environmental impact of buildings. It’s a topic I’ve been interested in for a while and this workshop was the perfect opportunity to get my hands dirty and start learning. This project in particular was an earth bag house. Aptly named, earth bag houses are built out of a mix of different kinds of soil (mainly clay and sand) held inside bags and compacted. Nick and Max wanted to build a 5 meter in diameter and 5m tall dome with a mezzanine level. They want to use it as communal area and housing for their volunteers.
To build an earth bag house you need:
A lot of clay and sand. The clay we dug from a terrace (to also make space for the house), the sand they bought from the local construction materials shop.
A roll of plastic mesh bag to hold the soil in
Barbed wire to go in between bags to stop them from sliding
Tampers to compact the soil after laying each bag
Wood for the mezzanine level beams, door and window frames
A bunch of willing volunteers
We started by digging a 6 meter semi-circle out of a 1.6 meter high terrace. I don’t know if you can picture that to scale, but let me tell you, that’s a lot of digging. It took 8 people armed with shovels, hoes and pick-axes almost 4 days to dig the hole, an outside trench for drainage and to get the surface level. The first day was fine because we were full of enthusiasm and because the top layer of soil was soft like cake. The second day was the complete opposite, we were all very sore from the previous day and we reached the dryer part of the soil, which was hard as rock. On the 3rd day we were lucky because it rained the previous night so it softened the soil for us. Gotta love nature! On the last day of digging, two more volunteers joined us and we went to swim at the river for lunch, which really helped to keep morale up. Digging was quite hard, we were all sore and tired at the end of each day, but I think that shared pain made us bond as a team.
On the fifth day, after shovelling a layer of gravel as foundations, we started laying the first earth bag. We filled the first bag also with gravel to make it stronger as a foundation. The process was fairly straightforward because we had a mountain of gravel very accessible and because the bag was at a comfortable height (on the ground). We would quickly discover what happens when these conditions aren’t met. For the second layer of earth bag we changed to a mix of 70% clay and 30% sand. As soon as we started mixing the soil we realised that it’s a really heavy task and a lot slower than the filling of the bag, so we couldn’t keep up. Luckily for us, one of the neighbours let us borrow his cement mixer which made our lives so much easier. If you ever want to build an earth bag house, definitely get one of these!
As the layers of bags went up, we got more and more efficient in all the different processes needed to lay them. At some points we would get so focused and into it that it was like a choreographed dance routine. I found it really interesting to experience how good our brains are at learning and adapting after a few days of practice and repetition. One thing that increasingly slowed us down was the height of the structure once we reached the 2.5 to 3 meters. You’d have to be a lot more careful while up there filling the bag and getting the buckets full of soil to the person filling the bag became harder and harder thanks to good ol’ gravity. The beams for the mezzanine level helped, but to finish the structure you would probably need scaffolding.
And that’s how much we were able to build in 12 days of work. It was slightly disappointing not being able to see it finished, but we all felt extremely proud of what we accomplished. We built 3/4 of a house by hand in two weeks! That’s amazing! On the last day of building we had a lovely end of workshop feast, we made t-shirts and took a group picture in front of the dome:
This was an incredible experience that I will remember for the rest of my life. Even though I signed up to learn construction skills (which I definitely did) I came out having enjoyed the human aspect of the workshop so much more. Sharing the amazing meals that Max cooked us every day, coming up with digging puns and song lyrics, watching the stars hunting for satellites and generally getting to know everyone’s life story. That together with sleeping in a tent and the lack of modern comforts all added up to an incredibly relaxing and fulfilling holiday. I still find it crazy that I came back home relaxed after 2 weeks of hard physical labour.
After a couple of weeks, having processed this experience, I think I will probably build an earth bag structure in our finca at some point (I would probably start smaller than five meter dome, though). But what I’m sure I’ll do is strive to create and nurture a local community of nice people like Nic and Max do.
I’d like to thank Nic and Max for organising the workshop and for being so inspiring and lovely. To my fellow volunteers Marta, Jess, Olga, Klara, Eddi, Heidi, Liz, Hottar, Louisa and Martin for creating such a fun environment to work at. To the lovely doggies Rusty, Dusty, Babs, Reggie, Molly, Skip and Ganesha for keeping the morale up. And last but not least, to Harriet for driving me all the way to Aragón and for encouraging me to do this.
Thank you for reading this clumsily written account. We’ll be back soon with more finca updates.— Mauro
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