Inner City Farmer

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.

When I first discovered natural building, I kept hearing the name Ianto. At the Natural Building Colloquium in Kerrville, Texas last fall, it seemed every other conversation started or ended with Ianto-this and Ianto-that. “Who was this guy?” I asked myself. Unfortunately, out of all the celebrated natural builders who attended the Colloquium Ianto Evans was the only who couldn’t make it. My interest was piqued, however, and as soon as I got home I ordered his book The Hand-Sculpted House, which I credit for my desire to remodel my entire homestead using cob.

There’s another name that keeps appearing in my life, and it’s Masanobu Fukuoka. While reading books and articles about different philosophies of gardening, I keep seeing references to this man. Curious to find out more about him, I checked out his book The One-Straw Revolution from the library. For anyone with an interest in permaculture and organic gardening, it should be required reading.

Here’s Fukuoka’s life story and philosophy of farming in brief: As a 25 year old in Japan, he was working as a plant pathologist for the Plant Inspection Division of the Yokohama Customs Bureau when he had an exhaustion-induced epiphany that modern agriculture was FUBAR. He promptly quit his job and returned to his family’s farm where he practiced “do-nothing farming,” which didn’t require plowing, fertilizing, adding insecticides, or even making compost. His philosophy of farming mirrored his philosophy of life, that human beings, full of ego and arrogance, are prone to meddling where they shouldn’t, that if left to its own devices the natural order will be just fine, thank you very much.

As basic as this idea is, it was revolutionary at the time. It was also effective. Fukuoka’s farm produced just as much rice as ones of equal size that used modern practices, and it did so with only a fraction of the inputs and labor. He let nature do all the work and provide all the nutrients, and he used the time he freed up to write books and further develop his philosophy. “There is no time in modern agriculture for a farmer to write a poem or compose a song,” he writes in The One-Straw Revolution.

In the 1970s the world finally discovered this man and anointed him one of the pioneers of the organic farming movement along with Sir Albert Howard and J.I. Rodale. But Fukuoka was never in it for the fame. He wrote several books and lectured on occasion but slowly dropped out of the public light. At 95, he is still alive today, living somewhere in Tokyo, but he no longer farms and even his fan website has no direct contact with him. Who is Masanobu Fukuoka?

Almost finished the first layer of plaster on the Garage Wall Project. I am getting quicker and more proficient at slapping the stuff on. I did myself no favors when I made a wall with countless windows and an arch my first plastering project. I still haven’t finished that one, and what I have done isn’t very pretty. But my garage wall is looking good, at least to my forgiving eye. Yes, there are cracks but these will get buffed out once I apply the finishing coat, and, yes, the wall sports three different colors but this will be rectified when I paint the entire house (Project #89).

Like cobbing, the key to plastering seems to be figuring out the texture of the perfect mix. Too much sand and it doesn’t stick to the wall very well, too little and the resultant cracks (it’s nearly impossible to avoid them entirely) will be more pronounced. I know a batch is ready when it begins to resemble a Wendy’s Frosty and the color (at least with the sand I use) is nearly the same as well.

I’m pretty proud of myself. One of the most essential tools you need for plastering is a “hawk,” defined by my dictionary as “a small board or metal sheet with a handle on the underside used to hold mortar.” They sell them at Home Depot for about twenty bucks, but I made one for free out of a scrap piece of plywood and the end of a mop handle. All I did was drill a small hole in the center of the plywood, and then I jammed into that hole the part of the mop handle that screws into the mop head. I keep expecting it to break in two, but the darn thing refuses to die. I’ve used it about fifteen times now, and it’s in as good shape now as it was the day I made it. Another simple solution.