Chris Farmer and Brian Love are the two main builders of Pokeberry Hill, a two story dwelling built using ecological principles.

Farmer started by noting that many innovative building techniques are used at Earthaven, including a house at Bella Via using cob, adobe brick, and plaster, and the  Medicine Wheel house that uses lots of recycled materials – plywood from pallets, metal beams from railroads, and recycled flooring.

Stud framing

“Brian and I are fans of stud framing. We used 2×6 low-quality poplar felled here at Earthaven for the framing. Studs are the basis of the cheapest, easiest walls and are especially efficient for a complex building with plumbing, electrics, closets, and cabinets. This is a complex building, but the studs went up in a week.”

Q. What about using recycled plastic for framing?

Farmer: Recycled plastic beats treated lumber, and it’s certainly rot resistant. But we have lots of timber at Earthaven. Here, we air dry the wood then treat it with Boracare, which is low toxicity, to make the wood resistant to termites, powder post beetle, and other boring insects.

Heat

For insulation, we spray cellulose (paper) into the walls – the thermal index of the ceilings is around R23 –to R25, and the walls, R50. The walls are finished with earthern plaster – clay and lime. We used natural finishes – plant waxes and oils.

We put in concrete countertops. We don’t like Portland because it takes so much energy to make it, but we wanted this second story room to have lots of mass to store heat from the sun.

The building design maximizes passive solar heat. The south facing windows get no direct sun in the summer due to the overhang. But in winter the sun is lower and floods through the windows. The heat from the sun is absorbed by the floor (a floating concrete slab) and the countertop.

On the north, there is wood flooring, and on the south, cement. Underneath the floor, there is the potential for radiant heat. Also, insulated pipes bring hot water to heat the floor. In the winter, on sunny days, it’s warm enough to warrant cracking the windows.

Q What about noise?

The building is not as noise proof as we hoped. We’ve been running band saws which does disturb the folks downstairs. Ah well, the music lovers will have to curb their taste for loud.

Q What are your power sources?

Earthaven is entirely off the grid, relying on a small hydro-electric plant and solar panels for current while maximizing passive solar for heat. Pokeberry shares solar panels with the Village Terraces building. Most appliances run on 24V DC, including the lights, the refrigerator, and ventilation. There is a huge battery back up, storing the power. There are also AC outlets, powered by DC current run through an inverter, but the inverter is susceptible to lightning.

Q. Would you build elsewhere?

We prefer to build in and around Earthaven, but if there is work further away, we can go there. We have a box truck with solar panels (name of truck) and a storage battery. There is also a 200 amp fire truck battery. The truck runs on bio diesel.

Our goal is to improve our cash flow to the point that we can retire to farming and raise turkeys, sheep, and vegetables. This year we are growing a lot of squash and melon, and raising Icelandic sheep and turkeys.

Q. How many rooms are there?

There is the big open room, including a kitchen alcove, that runs practically all the way across the southern exposure, a bedroom, two small offices, and a bathroom. It’s basically a 1,000 sq foot, three bedroom house.

Cost

Building on ecological principles, everything takes longer. And it is all hand done – all the wood panels are joined as is the carpentry. The building itself costs $125 per square foot. About half of cost is labor.

The downstairs tenant comments, “It’s beautiful, and it is so quiet here.” The notetaker responds, “At least when the band saws are off and the building is done.”

Chris Farmer is a full member at Earthaven, a builder, and a farmer at Gateway farm.

The post Natural building profile: Pokeberry appeared first on Earthaven Ecovillage.

Bruce, Rudy, Alice, Eva, Julie, Johnny, and Mana have become full members!

Culture’s Edge hosted a wonderful Village Harvest Festival last fall and are looking forward to the second annual festival on October 12, 2009.

Arjuna’s beautiful Leela house is nearing completion and is getting its final coat of interior plaster this summer.

Ivy and Michael celebrated their wedding at Earthaven!

Useful Plants Nursery cleared an area in the old campground for a nursery expansion. The fruit trees have moved in, with many more plants to come.

The Forest Children took their spring play, Fantasia, on the road this spring, performing at the Lake Eden Arts Festival (LEAF).

The Pokeberry building at Village Terraces is complete, with Bob, Debbie, and their two fuzzy house cats in residence. (see article)

Geoff and Debbie cleared a site for an orchard near the new campground and are busy planting apple trees and ground cover crops.

Imani farm has a new Jersey cow named LC (Large Cow), who produces most of the milk for Earthaven. Imani and Yellowroot farms are raising pigs, and three neighborhoods have new bee hives.

At Gateway farm, the five Shetland ewes had nine new lambs, and after completing the Pokeberry building, Brian and Farmer are building new homes for themselves in the Gateway neighborhood.

The post News notes – Spring 2009 appeared first on Earthaven Ecovillage.

In February of this year, Farmer, Brian, and Mike finished the first phase of a small, two-story house (18′ x 20′) in the Lower Rosy Branch neighborhood for long-time Earthaven member Ivy Lynn. The dwelling has a foundation, floor, walls, roof, windows, and doors, and covered with a coat of earth-plaster, which means it’s closed-in and weather-tight. Ivy and the builders will finish the second and third phases of the building over the next several years.

And in May, Arjuna da Silva will get more help building her two-story natural-built home in Benchmark neighborhood. The roughly 900 “round foot” house-in-progress has a timber-framed structure, rubble-trench foundation, walls of adobe brick, cob, clay straw, and strawbale, and a brick- red metal roof. Most walls on the first floor are built, with openings for windows and doors. Arjuna will host 4-5 interns over the 18-22 week natural building season, helping build as they learn natural building techniques from Steve Brodmerkel, Mollie Curry, and others. For more information: www.thenaturalbuildingschool.org. All buildings at Earthaven are south-facing passive solar buildings, heated by the sun. They’re off the grid, either powered by individually owned photovoltaic systems or Earthaven’s micro-hydro system, and most have metal roofs for roof-water catchment. See Natural Buildings.

The post New Buildings Sprout Up in Spring appeared first on Earthaven Ecovillage.

Yellowroot Farm in the Hut Hamlet is up and running again, with seedings for what will become lush and vibrant biodynamic vegetables. (See “Yellowroot CSA Begins Second Year”)

In late April, Cailen Campbell’s goats, April and Luna, had their kids, and now moms and kids are sharing a pen in front of the Tribal Condo in the Hut Hamlet. Cailen, Lee, and Mihaly rotate the grazing of their animals at various sites around Earthaven, including the Village Green, the fallow side of Yellowroot Farm, and the “New Lumberyard” site near Gateway Field.

Recently a crew of loggers and farmers, including Brian Love, Mike Odel, Chris Farmer, Mihaly, Cailen, and work exchangers Galen Ballantine, Drew Hoffman, and Bruce Johnston, further cleared the New Lumberyard site and prepared it for grazing. The logs from the trees that were felled were milled as lumber for the Pokeberry Hill duplex at Village Terraces (see “New Buildings”), and the stumps were left in the ground. The pasture was fertilized with organic fertilizers and planted in perennial grasses and clovers. This one-acre site (called the “New Lumberyard” because it once was going to be a lumberyard), is ideal for grazing rather than crop cultivation because it’s on a slope and too steep for a tractor, has stumps, and is north-facing.

Last spring, Brian Love and Chris Farmer (known as “Farmer”) started their four-acre integrated-agriculture project, Gateway Field, by clearing four acres of forest, adding organic soil amendments, and growing and tilling under two “green manure” cover crops. Their next step is a grass rotational pasturage system with Icelandic sheep, and probably endangered heirloom breed turkeys and chickens. This requires a sturdy fence to protect livestock and provide a fixed point for attaching lightweight moveable fencing for when the animals are sequentially moved around the field in the rotational grazing system. This spring, with the help of Mike, Bruce, Galen, and others, Brian and Farmer built a 2220 ft fence around their field, using woven wire fencing attached to charred locust posts every 15 feet. They’ll soon add two electrified wires around the perimeter to complete the fence, and, perhaps as early as November, will bring in their small herd of sheep.

Last fall, Michaeljon Drouin and Andy Bosley converted an existing pond along Rosy Branch Road, just uphill from the hydro station, into a trout pond. They built up the dam so the pond would hold more water, and ran more water into it from nearby Rosy Branch Creek. “Trout need cool, aerated water to survive,” Andy says, “and raising the water level and increasing the pond size meant we could grow more trout in the pond.” In late March of this year Michaeljon and Andy stocked the pond with 200 3-to-5-inch rainbow trout purchased from a regional trout breeder. “By April some of the largest trout sited were already 7 to 8 inches long!” Andy reports. The plan is to begin harvesting the trout when the biggest ones are about 12 inches long, perhaps by mid-July. The trout will be sold to Earthaven members and neighbors, and Michaeljon and Andy will experiment with making smoked fish for longer-term preservation.

Michaeljon and Andy are currently arranging with the Forestry and Agriculture committee to create a second larger pond downhill from the first, in order to expand their aquaculture operation.

The post Agriculture is Blooming! appeared first on Earthaven Ecovillage.