Inner City Farmer

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.

Just about every single thing I have made out of cob still needs to be plastered. Why has this taken me so long? What’s the delay? The truth is that I’m just not very good at plastering. Yet. Compared to the mindless ease of cobbing, plastering requires a certain finesse that doesn’t come naturally to me. One of the biggest problems I’ve experienced so far is that chunks of plaster that contain rocks or other large debris tend to immediately peel away from the cob. Hard-headed mule that I can be at times, it took me about five frustrating plastering experiences to figure out that I needed to sift all the large debris out of my sand before I added the lime to it. Duh.

The answer to my problem came to me as I stared at the pile of “junk” I recently removed from my garage. One of the items was a large screen window. I immediately recognized it as the perfect solution for the plastering problem. Now before I start plastering I spend about three or four minutes sifting random stuff out of my sand. The result is a perfectly smooth plaster that goes on without a struggle. Now I just need to figure out how to stop the plaster from cracking so badly. I’ve been spraying each coat with a mister, but it’s 95 degrees here and dry as a bone and the water nearly disappears before it hits the wall. I’m sure it will come to me with time and practice.

On Friday, Jen, creator of the Rutabaga blog (one of several blogs I’ve recently discovered and enjoy, the others being Garden Girl and Trailer Park Girl), made a comment noting the distinction between self-reliance and self-sufficiency. In case you missed it here’s what she had to say: “Self-reliance is exactly that. Relying on your skills, wits, knowledge, and savvy to get by, even when that includes banding together with other people. While self-sufficiency implies providing for every one of your needs with your very own two hands. Which is damn near impossible, if not isolating.”

Up to this point I have been all about self-sufficiency, but in my original vision of this urban farm project I was hoping to adopt something that more closely resembled self-reliance. This was my plan: while relying on some of the precepts of permaculture to turn my land into a self-sustaining forest that would feed me and my son in perpetuity, I would at the same time be expanding the habitable space on the lot using my skills at natural building. I aspire to build another house on the back side of the lot using straw bales or cob (I believe in urban infill; this land can certainly house more people), but because I’ve never built a house before I knew I needed to take it slow and practice making smaller buildings.

So I built the gazebo all by myself. Doing this I learned how to make footers and a (really basic) roof. The end result looks a little Gilligan’s Island-ish, but it’s functional. It works. It keep the rain off my earth oven and cob bench. It also gave me enough confidence working with cob that I could instruct others how to do it.

The next project I hope to embark upon is building a toolshed out of cob. It will vaguely resemble the gazebo, but it will be much larger and will have a “real” roof on it. To ensure that the reality matches my vision, I know that I’m going to have to recruit some outside help. To make that much cob, I’m going to need many extra hands, and to design and build a roof that will ensure rain never touches my tools I’m going to need the assistance of an experienced carpenter.

But, laughably, before I can even start building the toolshed I need to finish the Garage Project. After replacing its crappy old door with a cob wall, I am now trying to integrate the room into the house proper, which means I need to talk to an electrician and a plumber. These are skills I simply don’t have. And yet I’m not just going to get on the phone and call 1-800-P-L-U-M-B-E-R-S-B-U-T-T. I’m hoping to use either the Austin Time Exchange Network or Skillshare Austin, two organizations that champion the exchange of labor for labor instead of for money, to recruit some help. Or perhaps someone reading this will know someone in Austin who might be able to assist me in exchange for….?