Starting Over Again

So it has been an interesting month around here again. Our friend got a backhoe last week and we tore down the cabin that we started building last year. It was very upsetting to watch it being knocked down but it started falling in because we didn't finish the walls. So there was pretty much no choice. We are going back to our original plan of a straw bale house with a living roof so it should be easier on us physically. I just want it to be done so we can move forward with life. So this year should be interesting to see how it all turns out.

Sad Face :(.....

A walkthrough of the cabin so far

This is going to be the front door.

This room is the bathroom, we are putting more bottles in the walls on the next round. 

This is the living room and it leads into the greenhouse. 

That stove is a 1892 Caboose Stove someone gave to us. We wrapped earth around it like the walls to hold the heat in. Like a mass heater. It actually works really well. Even with no roof.

So this is my bedroom, When I saw this picture I thought wow the window looks crooked, so i walked out there to look at it and was like, wow the dam window is crooked. Crap.

This little doorway goes from my bedroom into what we are calling our utility room. This is the room our batteries and water tank are in, so they don't freeze. Can I just say what a pain in the ass it is to build a room with no guide on the walls around a water tank and batteries. 

Thats it so far on the cabin. We are going to probably have to take a break on it today because we woke up to this...

This was 6 AM

It wasn't supposed to snow this much yet. I guess we will just have to work through it again. 

Fun....Not...

Cabin is going up fast now...

So we have had a busy couple of weeks. We finally got some dirt brought out and a huge load of trees, for firewood and building. It is mostly White Fir Pine, it smells so yummy. It reminds me of Christmas and the whole yard smells like it.
A friend of ours also gave a half of a deer, so that was a learning experience on how to cut up a deer. So I thought I would show our progress at this point. Tell me what you think.

Had to show a pic of Lala with Scarface, He is weighing in at about 85 pounds.

We finally have windows in the walls. Love the Habit store. Need more windows though

Austin was learning to cut the deer. I think he actually enjoyed it.

Backhoe Time!

So one of our neighbors got a backhoe for a week and he told us he would help clear some of our land and see is we can dig a hole in the creek bed till we find water. So we got a bunch of clearing done, all the big piles of brush are no longer an eyesore so that is awesome. I even drove that huge machine for an hour or so while he took a break. It was so much fun. If I was in the city with that machine, I would have torn up so much, lol, but luckily for everyone else's sake I was out here in the mountains with nothing to destroy. After all that which was a full day Friday, on Saturday we started on the creek. Now the creek bed has 2 Huge Ass holes in it with no water yet, we are 10-15 feet down. We Have been busy for the last few days on top of all of that, We went out to the ranches and cut a cord and 1/2 of wood and loaded up the truck then I went to work and the kids came home and worked on fire wood all day. We are worn out. Back to the grind today on the cabin.

These are all me driving that beast. It was so much fun

This is the giant hole we dug

This is the really weird grey clay we found at the bottom of the hole

Greenhouse is Done...Bring on the veggies

So we finished putting the panels up on the greenhouse today and let me tell you, it wasn't easy. We had to fight the wind and rain but it is up. So tomorrow we are back to work on the cabin. We got some dirt moved up by the cabin and we are hoping it makes the process go a little easier for us. Just need about 30 times more dirt but some is better than none most of the time. Yes I am a glass half empty kind of person sometimes.
Here are some pics of the finished greenhouse, It ended up being about 14ft tall because we made the rock wall 2 1/2 feet high and it is 10 x 12. Its not very big but it will do for now.

The Greenhouse is going up

So we stopped working on the cabin for a couple of days to get the greenhouse put together. We realized that the cabin walls couldn't keep going up until we got the greenhouse together because we wouldn't be able to get between the walls. We have got the frame put together, now its time for the poly carbonate plastic walls. Yay! Then Back to cabin building. We are hoping to have the first three rooms built in the next 2 weeks.

We got a horse, YAY!!!!!

So I finally after 20 years got a horse. Of course she is all of ours and thats ok. She is beautiful, she needs a lot of TLC right now but she is slowly gaining some weight. She was on someones ranch and the people she belonged to were not taking care of their horses so the ranch owner got mad and gave them two weeks to show that they were going to take care of the horses. We he first saw them at his ranch they had absolutely no food and no water, so the ranch owner went and got a couple bales of alfalfa hay and filled the water trough, After he called the horse owners, then he went back a week later and it was the same thing. So he called them and told them he found a home for them because they were neglecting their horses and he was mad as hell. So he called my neighbor who immediately went and got them. They are so skinny for their size but they are doing much better than they were. Both of the horses are trained and you can hunt off of them, so that is awesome. They love the kids and they are both so sweet, I can't imagine anyone not taking care of them the way they are supposed to. Anyways so my neighbor told us we could have one and they would keep one. We named her Luna because she is white and has spots like the moon. She is an Arabian Flea-Bitten Grey. She is about 15 hands high and has a great temperament and personality. I can't wait to ride the horses. Gotta fatten them up first though.

Finally feel like we are getting somewhere

We got a chance to work on the cabin a bit yesterday finally and we got walls a little higher yesterday. The weather has been kinda crappy and between the kids fighting all of the time, the weather and Dr. appts, we finally got something done. We put the wood stove in the living room yesterday and have been building around it. We also went ahead and put the water tank in the back utility room. Just in case we cant lift it over the walls later. It is very tricking building around things and keeping your lines in the right place. It is also harder than it looks to build in a circle. We are going to be putting up the greenhouse soon, It is going right up against the cabin and the only way in is through the house. People are always trying to get in other peoples greenhouses here, no matter what you are growing in them. They think everyone with a greenhouse is growing cannabis. So here are a couple more pics of the progress with the stove inside. 

Working on the Cabin

So we have been working hard on the cabin and have a few walls going up. We laid the whole thing out and now we are working on the living room, my bedroom and the 'utility" room for right now. It is getting cold here really fast and we are hauling the dirt ourselves, little by little so it is going slower than we want. We decided to work on these three rooms first just in case it got too cold to quick and we needed to use it instead of the camper. We just got a wood stove for the living room, It is cool, It is an old caboose stove. Anyways here are where we have gotten to so far. We take more pics later and post for your viewing pleasure.

Layout of the cabin

So we have almost got the entire cabin laid out with the mesh tubes, it is turning out to be bigger than we thought. But we are trying to give the kids plenty of room because they are growing up so fast.
Yes, We are stilling dealing with our mountain lion problem. Apparently there are two of them I am thinking Mama and cub, but the cub being at least 100lbs+. The paw prints are big but not as big as the mamas. They crushed 3 different parts of our fence 2 nights ago and left many prints.
So between the lions coming around and being just plain sore we had to slow down a little. It is all a learning process so that slows us down too.
Well, enjoy the pics below and help me pray that a guardian angels will bring me a couple truck loads of dirt so maybe we can get this thing done before it snows.
If you have any questions about the process, please ask. We are learning as well and this is an interesting way to build.
Oh and I threw in a couple pics of the dog house we built for Kashmir, our Pit Bull, We still have to plaster it but she loves it.

Lions VS Walls...

So we had a slow and not very productive day today. As we got busy building the cabin walls we had to stop for about an hour and try to chase of a Mountain Lion. We were just working away when all of the sudden all you could smell in the air was cat urine and dirty socks. (that is what they smell like) So we got the kids away and took the guns up the hill but of course found nothing (except huge paw prints) about 20 feet from where are building the cabin. So we went inside for a little while hoping it would go away. About half hour or so later we went back out and went back to work and then there was the smell again. SO we decided to burn a fire and turned on the radio trying to make more noise but of course that only works so well. So we gave up for a little while, then we decided to hell with the dam cat and went back to work on the walls again. It circled around for a little while but I think it got bored and wondered off finally for a bit. Hopefully we get more done tomorrow. I refuse to let the cat win again tomorrow. I think we really need to clear some more of this property so nothing can sneak up on us. Its kinda scary. The paw prints were the size of my entire hand. OMG...

Starting our Hyperadobe Cabin

FINALLY!!!

We started our Hyperadobe cabin today. It has been a process to get it started, but it is started. Yay!! We started off by cutting into the hill and leveled out the land as much as we could. Then we laid out the whole cabin in rocks to decide where we wanted each room to be. he big pole you see in some of the photos is a giant compass made to make sure we are measuring the walls correctly and that they are all the same distance to the outside walls all the way around. We used a chain link fence post and pvc to make it. We have it marked out to different measurements all down the pvc by inches. 

We are using a mix of 70% sand and 30% clay. The bags/ tubes we are using are called rachelle netting. We only got four rows today but it is all a learning process. This first room we are working on is mine and Jon's bedroom it is 12 feet in diameter. Each room is what is called a honey house dome. 

Wish us luck on transforming the earth into a cozy living space. 

Enjoy the photos from start to now.

OMG! All the Hummingbirds

Ok so we have been putting up hummingbird feeders and every day there seems to be a couple of new birds. We started putting them up to help with the mosquitoes and lets just say, there are no more mosquitoes in our yard at all. Any way so we got a bunch of these little feeders and made this stand for them out of scrap wood and apparently they love it. Last night I just happened to walk outside and I swear there must have been 30-40 hummingbirds outside on these feeders. Then again this morning there were just as many if not more and when I started to refill the feeders they were flying up to my hands to drink out of the feeders. We have 4 different breeds coming up from what I can tell so far. It was so cool.
I wanted to share the pics of them because I have never seen so many of these little things in one place before and it is so awesome.