By Virtue of Working Through the Holiday

All along, our goal was to have finished the greenhouse by Christmas. This particular holiday doesn't mean a whole lot to me these days, though I do take the time to think of the people I love right around the turning of the year. For Anna, the big event is Boxing Day (December 26). There was to be a big party for which she was determined to have the whole room enclosed, even if it meant she was up on the roof alone on Christmas Day. David and Dianne, wwoofers from southern England, weren't particularly keen on having the day off, not when they could be doing something productive. I have to say I agreed in this instance. It really felt so close to completion, and with the threat of rain some days later I thought it made more sense to keep at it.

Christmas Eve morning:
So close to our goal, and yet so far. The roof is more than halfway covered, but it has taken several days to get this far.

At least it doesn't look like this anymore!

Two of the three outside walls are totally done, but the west wall is only hip height. Dianne is zooming along with it, but despite her remarkable progress we doubt it'll be complete before the party.

view from up top

Luck is on our side. The weather is beautiful, warming enough for t-shirts for a couple hours. Richard from Quebec has arrived, and his presence spotting Anna on the ladder and handing up tools speeds up the process considerably. And of course, work is more productive now that we aren't all entertaining the 8- and 3-year-old grandsons like we've been doing for a week. (They've gone on to stay with their 'normal granny' now.)

A few hours later: the design in Dianne's wall is really starting to show up, the roof is only lacking a few more panels and I have managed to patch most of the holes left in the metal from previous usage. (A side effect of this: I am covered in black tar.)

With so little left, Anna insists she'll be up on the roof bright and early to finish the next morning. I figure that as long as there's more panels going up I might as well patch them then and there, so I commit to the roof as well. Dianne says she might as well continue building up the wall, and David will make more cob than she can use. Richard will continue with ladder support.

Christmas Day:
Our early morning plans meet some obstacles. We've had a few visits from a skunk these last days, and Anna has an allergy attack and goes to the hospital for a breathing treatment before the crack of dawn. Half the day passes before they release her and she arrives back on the ranch, raring to go. This time, the weather is less pleasant, cold wind blowing and the sun vanishing behind an ever-growing haze of clouds. Finally, running out of screws as we fumble our way through attaching the very last panel, Anna informs me that I am climbing down from the roof the moment she is done. Patching the remaining holes is finish work; save it for another day. We pop the bottle of champagne to celebrate--the roof is up!

Zero and Lily keeping themselves warm and entertained.

Almost there!

All tidied up and ready for the party.

Lessons From Building A Bottle House

In the very first email exchange between me and Anna, she mentioned that the immediate big project was the greenhouse because it was "getting cold and the iguana needs a new home." (Since then, the intrepid iguana has managed to wander off into the desert [more than once], so the question of iguana furniture has been shelved until either she returns or a new iguana is acquired.) When I first arrived at the homestead I initially did lots of random tasks: yard and garden work, organization and so on. The past several weeks though, I've been focused on greenhouse work: washing bottles, mixing cob and laying bottles, and most recently hanging rafters and going on a tin-collecting mission for roof material.

If you would like to have your very own wall, room or house that lets in beautiful, colored light whenever the sun shines through, you can build one in just a few, easy, time consuming steps! (The sight of a finished wall is absolutely worth the effort.)

Collect bottles - Depending on how large the space you hope to fill, this may take some time. Start saving. Consider making friends with a nearby restaurant or recycling facility. Ask your drinkin' friends to save glass bottles for you. Keep an eye out for interesting colors and shapes.

Green (and clear and brown) bottles are fairly easy to come by.

Blue makes a striking and unusual addition to any bottle wall.

Pick a location - Here at the Lonesome Coconut Ranch, what we've been calling a "greenhouse" is in actuality a conservatory of sorts, 15'x30' attached to the south side of the house. When the winter sun is low enough in the sky, the room will collect heat from the sun and with help from a rocket stove (a small, clean-burning stove that stores heat in a large cob biomass). In the spring, the heat collected and radiated out by the cob biomass of the wall will prevent grapevines from freezing during cold desert nights. In the summer, the now-leafy vines will help shade and cool the room. The two separate doors into the house proper mean that both hot and cold air can be recirculated from house to conservatory and vice versa, as needed.

That's a big space.

Mix cob - First, you'll need materials. Dirt can come from anywhere (say, the excavated floor space) as long as it has a high clay content. Sand can also come from anywhere and prevents drying mud from shrinking too much. Got a dry riverbed or beach nearby? Add straw for structure and a water supply to your list and you're pretty much good to go. Your ratio of dirt to sand is 2:1. Add water and straw, the process is much like making dough--keep playing with it until it feels right. It should be damp and sticky, but not too soft.

Traditionally, cob is mixed by foot. Stomping and squishing mud between your toes is a pretty good way of familiarizing yourself with the consistency you are trying to attain. We happen to have a small cement mixer here. We've experienced a few technical difficulties, it doesn't handle large batches well, and some workers prefer not to use it. But boy is it nice to be able to mix cob in the colder months without freezing your toes off!

Billy and Justin contemplate the mixer: to stomp or not to stomp?

Build - Building is fairly straightforward. If your foundations are in place, simply lay a layer of cob, place the bottles where you like and surround them with more cob, smoothing new layers and old as you go. It's just that easy!

cobbing in progress

final result

Prepare to have mud under your nails, in your hair, on your face, ground into all of your clothes and smeared on every surface you touch. Learn to live with the grit; you won't be rid of it at any time during this process and it is better to simply revel in it! (Also invest in some good lotion. It will prevent your hands from feeling like the skin is too tight once you've washed the mud away.) Take a minute to stand back every now and then to appreciate your progress! Hey, look at that cool thing you did!

Don't forget to take progress pictures as well!

So far to go still

Windows of all shapes and sizes.

About to lay the remaining bottles and windows in this wall all by myself.

Nearing the top on almost all fronts.

So exciting to have a completed corner!

Bottlenecks are surprisingly strong; I spent the top rows clinging to the wall like a monkey.

Next to come: rafters and then a roof!

"Well, this gives new meaning to the term 'Winter Wonderland'"

(title courtesy of Anna)

Winter has come late this year, but this week it finally arrived. After weeks where the nights barely dipped below freezing and days where I was working barefoot in a t-shirt by 11 am, the cold season is now here with a bang. Yesterday, after a nighttime temperature in the low 20's, I found the bottle washing station iced over and the previous day's leftover cob frozen in the cement mixer. Took me nearly all day to thaw it. And this morning, this is what I walked outside to find:

What happens when you forget to turn off the sprinkler at night.

Grass doesn't usually look like this...

(It sure puts the brakes on an early start to work when the hose is frozen solid!)

I promise promise promise that soon there will be a nice big post about greenhouse, with a building progress report and pictures of the greenhouse and so on. But can you blame me for wanting to share this first? As much as I'm enjoying the near-constant sunshine of the desert, I've been feeling nostalgic lately for snow. This is probably as close as I'll get for a while.