Inner City Farmer

I just heard about and signed up for an Earthen Plaster workshop hosted by the good folks at Design Build Live. It’s such great timing for me because I am eager to start plastering the inside of the new room I made using cob, but my plastering skills are a little rough. I’m looking forward to learning more about the art from Tempe Sikora, who specializes in natural plaster as well as custom European faux finishing. There is still room in the workshop, which is being held Saturday August 23 from 9-5 in a house in East Austin. For more information, contact Gayle Borst at gayle@designbuildlive.org.

Who knows from one day to the next what project I’ll be working on? It all depends upon factors out of my control. Now that it’s so freaking hot I find myself doing far more inside activities. With the kitchen window complete, I’m now preparing to work on the interior of the new Garage Room, aka the Man Cave.

I had envisioned using cob to make my interior walls, but was set straight during a conversation with Tony Beurskens, an itinerant cobbing guru and natural building artist I met at the Natural Building Colloquium. He suggested I attach lathe to the exposed studs and use cellulose or denim as insulation behind it. On top of the lathe I could smear an earthen plaster just like stucco. This immediately made so much sense to me. It will provide the same look and feel as cob with less work and waste of interior space. I can still build in niches and it will be healthy and affordable.

Meanwhile I dream of building soil and planting shrubs and trees. As much as I want vegetation that I can eat, I also wish to be surrounded by plants that lift my spirit. I am particularly looking for bushes that flower during this time of year when the oppressive heat is trying to drain your will to live. Texas Sage is a native shrub that really comes to life during the summer. This one, at the intersection of Nelray and Chesterfield, is going off right now. It makes me want to plant a row of them on my front lawn….

Until I started this latest project, I forgot how much I enjoy working with wood. All building materials have their pros and cons. As much as I hate concrete, I readily admit that for certain jobs it’s perfect, and as much as I love cob, I’ll also admit that it’s got its drawbacks, namely how labor-intensive it is. But wood? I can think of very few negative aspects of building with wood other than the lack of foresight involved in its harvesting and the wastefulness surrounding its use on a typical construction site. If you use wood that has been harvested in a sustainable manner, i.e. only cutting down trees of a certain size and then replacing them with saplings, and find a use for every bit of the tree, you’re not going to find a better building material.

As much as I can, I try to use building materials that are locally sourced, which here in Texas means using mainly oak, cedar, and mesquite. Ideally, I would be felling and milling the trees myself. Cutting out the middlemen, in this case the lumberyards, would cut down on the total amount of embodied energy expended in the process as well as the monetary costs, which is how Matt was able to trim his entire house several years ago. His uncle harvested thousands of square feet of wood from his property in Ohio and gave enough to Matt to allow him to redo the trim on all 44 windows inside his house. Oh, what I would give to have such an uncle right about now.

On the Austin Permaculture listserv I did hear of a woman in East Texas who was offering to let anyone come to her property and harvest trees that had been downed by Hurricane Katrina. Unfortunately, hauling that much wood to Austin would require the use of an ungodly amount of gas. Would the procurement of that much sustainably harvested wood offset the amount of energy I would spend hauling it all the way to Austin? I don’t know. When it comes to building materials, there are no easy answers.

Are you looking to buy a “green-built” house? Does this sign entice you? Well, don’t be fooled. Slapping “green-built” on a new housing project is the marketing tool of choice for shady real-estate developers these days. These condos just down the street from my house are about as green as a slimmed-down Hummer.

The builders started off with a very noble and environmentally friendly idea. They tore down the old inefficient condos that once sat on that lot with the idea of building fancy new condos on the existing concrete slabs. But then a problem arose. The old slabs were falling apart and didn’t pass inspection so the builders had to bust them up and start anew, which required the use of an unfathomable amount of cement. I don’t want to rehash the argument against our society’s overuse of cement here. Suffice it to say that it is one of the most energy-intensive materials around while its production is responsible for 8 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

In my book, as soon as the builders poured new slabs they should have lost any right to be called green-builders, but if you’re still not convinced just take a look at the industrial dumpster the builders are using. I’ve watched it get filled and emptied at least three times in the past several months. While that might be standard practice in the American construction and demolition industries, which produce 140 million tons of waste each year, over a third of the country’s entire solid-waste stream, true green builders pride themselves on producing as little waste as possible.

And then there’s their use of Tyvek, a Dupont-produced “housewrap” that is one of the most controversial building materials on the market today. While it does make a house “tighter” and therefore more energy efficient, it has also been linked to mold growth and rot inside of walls. Its long-term impact on the environment is also largely unknown. Does it break down in a landfill? Can it be recycled? No one knows for sure because the material hasn’t been around long enough for its life cycle to be studied in the real world.

This is not an isolated case. This is trend. People are growing increasingly aware of the detrimental impact our houses have on the environment and so more and more are happy to pay a little extra for a green-built house. Just make sure that if you’re the one doing the buying that the house was made green by designers and not by a marketing department.

It’s hard to see ourselves for who we truly are. It must be some biological thing. When we sing in the shower, we think we sound great. When we have b.o., we never seem to think we smell as bad as we really do. I am no different. I think my house looks like the coolest place ever. I mean, I’ve got an arch for an entrance and I just increased the square footage of my house by like 30 percent, using mostly natural materials and doing all the work myself.

But then there are those days where I see the mess I’ve made and have yet to clean up–just look at all that sand! I see the junk I’ve stacked up along the side of my house, waiting for a use that will keep it out of the landfill. I smell the stink emanating from the sand pile in front of my house because my cats think it’s a giant litter box. These thoughts, this doubt, were racing through my mind as I went to introduce myself to Chris and Megan, who just moved in two doors down from me. “They must think I’m a real freak,” I was thinking as I said hello.

But instead of scorn or judgment this is what came out of Megan’s mouth instead: “Do you think you could teach me to do that sometime?” She was pointing at the front porch I made out of cob. You’ve got to love it when that happens.

“Sure,” I said. “I can teach you as soon as I start building a cob tool shed in my backyard.”

Now that I have have some help I am more excited than ever to start that project, but first I need to finish plastering the exterior of the wall of the room that was a garage and is now called The Man Cave. I put a second coat on today, this one sandier, smoother, less prone to cracking. It’s looks pretty damn good, but that opinion is based on my own vision and could be slightly prejudiced.