Inner City Farmer

Despite appearances, this blog has inspired a slew of comments that have made the journey I’m on so much easier. Funny thing though, the majority of these comments have been sent to me via email. I’m not sure if this has been done out of modesty, fear, or laziness… but it must stop! The answer to many of the problems we face as a species can be found in our highly developed ability to communicate with each other, so, for christ’s sake, let’s start talking, even if it’s only to say: “You haven’t flushed your toilet in a week? That is so gross!”

The latest batch of comments to put a smile on my face was sent by a man living in one of the hotbeds of sustainability, good old Vermont. A woodworker and a musician, this man’s got serious skillz, whether he’s making a table or strumming a guitar. Here’s what he had to say:

Re: imperfect cob arches: It’s the unofficial motto of my woodworking biz, “Imperfections reveal and highlight the mysteries of the process.” Hell, yeah, a human made it, from natural materials that behave a little differently here and there. If you want uniformity go buy molded plastic, but if you value interacting with a formerly living, organic material then it’s going to have variations, texture, oddities, character!

Re: meeting the neighbors, egg swaps, sharing gardening tips, whatever: Nothing will be more important as we go than relearning how to give and take and share and trade and support the people we live next to and near. In the future our lives take place at home and in the neighborhood and at the village commons.

Re: okra: Pickled okra kicks ass.

Re: packaging: Packaging can go fuck itself.

Self-Sufficiency Meter: 30% (I lost a chick this weekend to the jaws of an opossum, which means there will be a slight drop in egg production in the future.)

My love affair with cob continues. Not only did my growing adeptness at building with it empower me to rip my garage door off and construct a wall in its place, it encouraged me, last fall, to completely transform the façade of my house by turning the concrete slab leading to my front door into a porch-like chamber with an arch over the entrance. Unfortunately, one of the (very minor) drawbacks of cob is that it shrinks quite a bit as it’s drying, and while I was working on the wall of the garage on Sunday I was informed by my most dedicated cobbing assistant, Ms. N, that a large crack had formed in the arch, one big enough to put its structural integrity into doubt.

Once again, I was forced to alter my plans in response to events beyond my control. I immediately switched gears and start plastering the arch, a project I’d been putting off for months. It went fairly quickly. Evidently, I’m getting better at it, but it’s still a chore compared to cobbing. The biggest difference is the materials you use. Cob is a mixture of sand, clay, and straw, three of the most user-friendly materials you’re ever going to see, while plaster involves the use of lime, the stuff Mobsters sprinkle over dead bodies to hasten their decomposition. The stuff bubbles when you add water to it and can burn your skin so you need to wear thick rubber gloves when slapping it on. And you need to beware of getting it in your eyes. And it’s not good to breathe in the powder when you’re mixing up a batch either. All of this adds just enough stress to the process to make it a lot less fun than cobbing. The worst thing that can happen when you’re cobbing is you might step on a pebble and hurt your foot.

You’ll notice in the picture that the arch is far from being perfectly round. I actually embrace such imperfections. It shows that a real human constructed it. I find the perfect straight lines found in most modern architecture to be boring. In the cob wall that supports the arch I added a screen window, several oddly shaped glass windows, and a couple niches. The ability to add these sorts of design elements is what makes cob so thrilling to me. That the process of making it emits almost no greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is an added bonus.

Until just a few years ago, few people realized that our buildings, not our cars, were one of the main causes of global warning. Then in 2004, Edward Mazria, an architect from Santa Fe best known for his 1979 book, The Passive Solar Energy Book, made a shocking announcement: automobiles only accounted for about 6.5 percent of the energy consumption in the U.S. while buildings consumed over 40 percent of the energy and emitted 50 percent of the greenhouse gases.

Is it too mawkish of me to say that learning how to cob changed my life, that it made it better, that if everyone used it to build their houses our planet would be in infinitely healthier? Probably, but I’m saying it anyway.

Self-Sufficiency Meter: 31%

The more I read about other people’s attempts to live more sustainably (the latest is Heather Flores’ book Food Not Lawns), the more I realize how far I have to go, how much I need to learn. But the one thing I have learned is that you have to do things when it’s the right time and not a second before.

For example, I started my stucco project just after it had rained because I knew the ground wouldn’t be as hard. Then, sensing that more spring rainstorms were on the way I set up a rain barrel (which has since been filled to the rim). So when it came time to decide which project to embark upon next I, once again, let nature decide. This time the “decider” (thanks for making up such a neat word, George W.) was the opossum I found in my garage. Sigh: it was time to take off the old, crappy garage door and seal up the entrance with a cob wall.

I’m either crazy to be doing this or very wise. I started to think it was the former minutes after I’d ripped off the door and discovered much of the wood frame had been destroyed by termites. Uh oh: this was going to be a bigger job than I’d anticipated. As I was prying a piece of the rotted wood away from the wall a man walking down the middle of the street lugging a lawnmower and a gas can asked me if I’d pay him to mow my lawn. I actually laughed and said, “Man, do you think I’d be doing this if I had any money to spare?”

He told me about his family getting thrown out of a motel.

I told him about someone stealing my brand-new chainsaw out of my garage (my other inspiration for wanting to replace the old, crappy garage door and replace it with a thick, cob wall).

He told me he didn’t do it, which made me laugh again. I should have tossed him a five spot just for cracking me up because no one else has been able to do it lately.

The whole encounter reinforced my belief that we as a society are living a big fat lie. This is the richest country in the world? Really?

After ripping away the termite-ridden frame, I set about laying a course of bricks at the base of the future wall. You can’t put cob directly on the ground because, even if it’s protected by plaster, the rain will quickly erode it. You need to make a foundation plinth. I had never laid brick before, but for some reason this didn’t deter me one bit. I laid three courses in all, using up an entire 80-pound bag of mortar. I was too tired to do any cobbing so I simply put the old, crappy garage door back into place. It’s not attached to anything so the only way it actually might deter a thief is if it falls and lands on him, which, if it happens, might make me laugh for the third time today.

Self-Sufficiency Meter: 31%