Inner City Farmer

This blog is very nearly a year old. Looking back on the year that has passed, I am proud of the work I have accomplished and excited to begin all the projects I have briefly touched on here. I am also much closer to achieving my goal of attaining complete self-sufficiency than I was at the beginning of the year, although I still have a long way to go. The garden has been producing a bounty of tasty veggies lately–snow peas! carrots! the first pepper of the season!–but it will be several years at least before I am able to eat the fruit right off all the trees I have planted. Overall, I would say the long-forgotten self-sufficiency meter has jumped up to about 30%.

With the Man Cave Project nearing its end, I am ready to jump into the next ridiculously time-consuming venture that will at some point threaten the bond I share with my girlfriend as well as my own sanity. Building a cob tool shed? Ripping up all the grass in the front yard and planting more drought-tolerant native plants? Turning the clay pit into a fish pond? Raising a pig, a goat, or perhaps even a miniature cow? Installing a rainwater-harvesting system? All of these ideas sound good to me.

The Design Build Live Earthen Floor Workshop I hosted this weekend was another great success. It’s amazing what a difference having a floor in the Man Cave makes! At this point in the long process I’m exhausted so I’m going to walk you through the day using more pictures than words.

In the morning we assembled around my fire pit to discuss the history and uses of earthen floors. Our instructor Frank Meyer talked about the differences between various kinds of clays and gave some anecdotes about his previous experiences making these floors.

Next we mixed up some batches. Initially we used a ratio of two parts coarse sand to one part sifted clay, using the clay from my back yard.

Then we hauled it inside.

And dumped it on top of the bed of gravel I had brought inside, bucket by bucket, over the course of the weekend.

Then we tamped that layer down into the bed of stones.

The next layer we added some red clay added to it. We started smoothing this layer so that it was perfectly level.

Some clay slip was added to ensure that the layers bonded together nicely.

And at the end of the day we’d made a nice-looking floor.

It’s not entirely done. I hope to finish the penultimate layer this weekend with the help of Diarmuid and Aaron, two budding natural-building superstars. The floor will then need to dry for several months before I can slap on the last smooth layer and seal it with linseed oil. I’m hoping to be able to start using the room as early as next week altthough the space will still be quite rustic. No matter. I already love hanging out in there as has every single person who has entered it.

It recently came to my attention that some people thought I would never actually finish the Man Cave. This lack of faith stunned me. Sure, it’s taken me a little longer than I had initially thought–I ripped off the garage door and started making a cob wall in its place fifteen months ago–but never once has the plan deviated drastically from my original vision. I imagined a soothing room with an earthy feel, and here it is, very nearly complete. I never had a doubt.

Actually, that last statement is not entirely true. The ceiling in the Man Cave proved to be my white whale. If I had to do it over again, I would surely do it a different way. What made it so difficult, besides the constant battle against gravity, was that half the sheetrock was over twenty or perhaps even thirty years old and tended to crumble at the slightest touch. This didn’t work in my favor when I was stapling the reed matting to it or when I was pressing the base coat of plaster into the matting. Some spots still sag, but every bit of it is covered with the finish coat (thank you, D!) and now I can look ahead to putting in the earthen floor.

It won’t be easy. Between now and Sunday morning I have to move most of the rocks in the picture below into the Man Cave:

It’s a Herculean task, but I have performed many of those in the past couple years. Here are a few more. I hope to turn my clay pit into a pond this summer:

I am also in the process of ripping up all the grass in my front yard and turning it into a food forest:

Does anyone doubt that I will able to do all this? Surely, you know better than that.

What started off as a long, drawn-out process has suddenly turned into an all-out sprint for the finish line. This weekend I hosted a Design Build Live workshop that concentrated on how to make and apply a finish coat of earthen plaster. The instructor was the patient and talented Tempe Sikora, who is quickly amassing an impressive portfolio of projects, which can be viewed on her Rarest Bloom website.

The morning started with a discussion and slide show about earthen plaster and then moved on to demonstrations about how to make the mix itself. Participants were able to get their hands dirty, preparing the three basic materials needed for the job. I finally had to abandon the clay I have been using from my backyard in favor of a caliche that’s far less expansive and a lot prettier to look at as well. The clay had been soaking in a trough for several days but still needed to be worked through a sifter and stirred with a mixer.

I was pleased that we were able to make a bit of a dent in the large pile of sand that’s been sitting in my driveway for the past year. As fine as this sand is compared to the coarse sand I obtained at a local fraternity house, we still needed to run it through a screen to remove any rocks or silt.

The final ingredient was chopped straw, which we ran through a leaf mulcher two times in order to get it to the proper length.

Once all the materials were ready to go we started making batches of the mix. Elena and Aaron proved to be Most Valuable People when they cranked out four batches in under an hour, a new world record as far as I can tell. The rest of the participants started slapping the mix on the walls using hawks and trowels, and suddenly the dark and broody Man Cave began looking like the inner sanctum of a church. “D,” an abbreviation of the indecipherable Irish name Diarmuid, shocked us all with his proficiency with the trowel. As it turned out, he has worked as a professional plasterer on and off for the last ten years.

With such an All-Star team of natural builders assembled, we managed to get all four walls done when we only thought it possible to do two! It was an incredible effort and an enjoyable and instructive day, and I am still blown away by the energy created and the knowledge that was shared. It was a special convergence of people that helped bring my old dusty garage that much closer to being a work of habitable art. Thank you, one and all!

And now there are only five more days to go until we do the floor. There may still be room available in that workshop.

Only four days remain until the final plastering workshop and I still have a few patches on the ceiling to, but all I can think about right now is how sweet it is that winter is all but over and spring is firmly ensconced in my backyard. First, my lemon tree started flowering and now it is starting to bear fruit. Then my Mexican White Oak started sprouting leaves. And now one of my pear trees, the Ayres Pear, has started flowering. Check out the pretty white flowers, which hopefully presage the bountiful harvest of fruit to come (most likely in a couple more years). I am so happy about how all my fruit trees are doing I am tempted to go to the farmer’s market tomorrow afternoon and get some more. But I really should be plastering….