Inner City Farmer

Like just about everything I have done around here, my using light clay straw to insulate the Man Cave has taken far more time than I had originally envisioned. The work goes much faster than cobbing, but it’s a lot slower than tacking up rolls of the pink fiberglass stuff. It hasn’t helped that I’ve never done this before, that I am basically following an amalgamation of several descriptions of the process I found on the internet.

One person advises to lightly coat the straw with clay slip, comparing the amount of slip needed to the amount of dressing you would put on a salad. The thing is I like to put a lot of dressing on my salads. In fact, lettuce is simply the vehicle I use to get salad dressing into my mouth. This predilection definitely affected my work in the past week. Most of the light clay straw I stuffed between the studs couldn’t be classified as “light” at all as large clumps of clay appeared throughout. Because the straw was so thoroughly soaked, some mold appeared on the outside of the straw. Supposedly, this is nothing to get alarmed about, and in fact as the straw has dried out the mold has disappeared. Shoots of green grass have also started sprouting out of the straw in places, but once again this is supposed to be a fairly normal occurrence.

And so I keep plugging away at it. It’s exciting to think that one day I might actually be able to work and play in this room and realize that it wouldn’t exist if not for the many hours, days, weeks, of labor I devoted to making it happen.

Like many owner-contracted remodels, the Man Cave Project is taking forever and a day to complete. I am not entirely to blame however. The bulk of the time lost in the past several months has been spent waiting around for plumbers and electricians. In fact, at one point I contemplated starting an electrical apprenticeship so I might get the work done faster.

Really, I should be blaming myself as I tend to choose workmen who are as non-corporate as possible. The way the electrician I had been using scheduled his visits was to tell me that he would “holler” at me on a certain day at which point he would either give me an approximate time he might be coming over or he would declare his intention to holler at me another day. Frustrated by this procedure, I finally called in a crew of four who rewired the Man Cave and installed a new circuit for my dryer in a single afternoon.

And now, finally, I am back to doing the fun work, the stuff I can do myself with natural materials. Yesterday I started insulating my walls with light clay straw, which is simply straw with a light coating of clay slip. When you pack it into the spaces between the studs on a conventionally framed structure, it makes incredible insulation and creates an environment that’s nearly soundproof. It will also provide a great surface for adding earthen plaster, which, when completed, will make the framed walls and the cob wall (where the old garage door used to be) look like one.

While light clay straw is becoming increasingly popular around the world, it’s new to me so I am learning on the fly. My initial reaction is that I am going to end up using a lot of straw, far more than I have making cob walls. So it’s a good thing I found a guy on craigslist selling wheat straw bales. I had him drop off ten yesterday, which should be more than enough to finish this project. At least, I hope it is. You just never know for sure until you actually starting doing the work.