Hut Hamlet Work Project: Ferrocement Cistern Tank Gets an Upgrade

Written by Courtney Brooke on May 25, 2021. Posted in Community Service, Hut Hamlet, People Care.

Transcript of Hut Hamlet Work Project: Ferrocement Cistern Tank Gets an Upgrade

Good morning on the cusp of spring and summer.

Today is an exciting day. Not only is it my favorite little person’s first birthday, but also we’re having a neighborhood work party to continue building this ferrocement cistern which is where all of our beautiful water comes from so.

We all drink the spring water from this land which is just such a honor and a blessing and I really feel how you know to to bathe in clean water to like wash my body and wash my thoughts and you know drink and cook with clean water is like what a gift and what a privilege and so we’ve had to learn over the years how to take good care of that, you know.

There’s got to have be some systems it’s not like we just get to automatically turn on our faucet and then there’s water so.

This here this big tank which is burmed into the earth is a ferrocement cistern tank. So this tank was built um in the style of ferrocement like 20 years ago and then it didn’t get any maintenance other than just you know checking the water level and so on until about two years ago.

So it was 18 years old didn’t need any maintenance and had been feeding our entire neighborhood which was about 20 people for all that time and then we last or two years ago we got down in there and we cleaned it out and filled in some cracks and we drained the whole thing and like pressure washed it and took care of it but then now we have more people in our neighborhood and legally we can’t have more than 24 people on one one water source so we had to get creative and what we’ve done is come together to build a new cistern so that we can have that’s going to get filled from a different water source so that we can be you know following all the proper rules.

So today is us continuing to work on this new beautiful cistern so what happens with a lot of things in our neighborhood is that we have a sign up sheet we have a work party someone volunteers to cook lunch people volunteer for shifts and then we get together and make it happen so here we are this is the construction site we left some offerings here back in the fall before we started to dig this hole and now we’re building this new cement cistern how many gallons that is a cistern hold…

Hey Paul! Paul. Paul how many gallons is the cistern how many gallons is the cistern?

10 000 more or less.

10 000 gallons that’s a lot of gallons so now we’re going to have about 20 000 gallons of capacity in our neighborhood.

So how’s this go,,,,,Yeah so there we are so what you do is you put you put up some structure you pour it we poured a cement slab then we put up some structure of rebar and wire and then we just used cement to travel over that to make it the shape that we want so you could make I mean you can make really anything out of fear of cement at any shape sometimes people use cans like squashed cans to fill that in and so yeah yay for collaboration cooperation and learning what it takes to be able to take care of the water you know meeting us in the middle of where we where we are and where we’re going and yeah so this is the midway strategy so in a lot of gratitude also for the like intergenerational aspect of it like this brother Paul we wouldn’t be able to do without him he’s been here since the dawn of time helping us figure out how to make these things happen and you know and then all these laborers and you know all that has to come from somewhere and the children have been up here and it’s just been really sweet we’ve all been learning and having a really joyful time .

So celebrating that happy birthday to my favorite little person.

cement tank, cistern, ferrocement, maitenance, water, water system

Courtney Brooke

Courtney Brooke (she/her) is an ancestor who was a Social Ecologist, Regenerative Designer, and educator whose work aims to reconnect people with a sense of belonging to place. Her work in the world aims to address the root cause of today’s overwhelming ecological challenges – that humans are starved of a sense of belonging to the places they live. Courtney Brooke was raised on a small farm in North Georgia, and has been guided by a lifetime of living close to the land. Her greatest teachers have been the Appalachian Mountains, the land of Aotearoa, and Selu, the Corn Mother. She holds a degree in Ecology from the Odum School of Ecology, University of Georgia, and has 10 years of experience facilitating earth-based education, ecological landscape design, women’s rites of passage, and cultural healing. Courtney Brooke has taught and facilitated environmental education curriculum, Deep Ecology, Permaculture Design Courses, hands-on craft and farming workshops, and Holistic Management to a wide range of audiences in nine countries from toddlers to adults and everyone in between. Deeply committed to spreading the healing that comes from belonging to the places we live, Courtney Brooke is passionate about designing learning opportunities that celebrate life. She lives at Earthaven Ecovillage where she tends the land, raises food, participates in communal ritual agriculture, swims in wild water, enjoys the mysterious blessing of being alive, and tends her own wild Hearth. She loves cooking home-grown and wild foraged foods, playing her flute to the sunrise, running on mountain trails, making compost piles, crafting from natural materials, and bringing people together to create beauty that feeds the holy.