Inner City Farmer

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.

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.

That’s all it took to transform my rodent-infested garage into a nearly habitable part of my house. I have never cobbed so quickly or with such determination. The dry heat that’s been sitting on top of Texas certainly helped. You can only cob so fast in the winter. Your hands hurt, your eyes water, and the cob dries so slowly that adding too many layers too quickly produces that great cobbing no-no, “splooging,” wherein the top layer bulges over the edges of the layer beneath it. But during the summer when it’s hot you can get in a nice rhythm and just fly.

I only slowed down when I was debating how to incorporate the window. A wiser man would have built a frame for the window to sit in, but I just went ahead and embedded it into the cob. I connected both sides of the window to the wall of the house with wire that used to hold some of my straw bales together. This idea was first suggested to me by a drunk passing on the street. I ignored him, but then Jenny mentioned the same idea and, because she was sober at the time, that was enough to convince me that the window needed some more support. To shore up the integrity of the cob wall, I placed some long pieces of metal in it to act as rebar and I connected the wall to the house by hammering a bunch of old rusted nails to the house’s wooden frame. The nails give something for the cob to hold onto.

The real fun began when I started making little niches on the inside of the wall. These spaces will be great places to stick candles or pictures. I also embedded some glass jars into the very top of the wall, which will allow light to pass through. This is an easy and beautiful way to inject some natural lighting into a room without adding any heat from the sun.

Yes, I still need to plaster the wall—sadly, I haven’t even finished plastering the arch on my front porch yet—but once I do the wall should blend in almost perfectly with the rest of the house.

For those interested in checking out more detailed pictures of the project, you can click on this link.