Day 2, Saturday

Cold in the am, we were graced with a low buzzing that turned into a 20 minute display of the local crop duster dumping its pesticides on the local orchards and his turn around point was right over our property!

The weather is chilly and windy, no rain in the forecast although. Day 2 of the adventure we are all sore and tired. Today we levelledthe earth shelf and rammed the 22 tires we had placed on the earth wall as a foundation for the 3 levels of strawbales that would follow. We chose to ram the tires with a rammed earth mix which included 20% aggregate of 5/8" minus, 32% silt, 30% sand, 3% cement. The tires contained about 400 pounds of mass once they were completed. A piece of 4' rebar was placed in the center of the tire and rammed into the earth shelf for lateral stability. We also used5/8"  polypropylene strapping for compression and connection below the tires to the top of the topplates and these straps were placed under the tires before ramming (well all but 2 were, those were a little tricky to get under once rammed, but we did it).  In the aftenoon JT finished the wiring of the 4 solar panels we were using for power. We watched a strawbale construction video underneath the stars thanks to the solar power we had stored earlier in the day.

    Akai and Tracy pinning the strawbales with bamboo pins

    Bob cutting the viga with that handy-dandy chain saw after the sawzall didn't "cut like bud-da"

    Two levels of strawbales up

    Theresa making a half-bale

    Topplate up

    Making half-bales

    Theresa drilling rebar

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