This morning started with breadmaking for me again – today was raisin bread with cinnamon and sugar, it was delicious and tasted like hot cross buns 🙂
Then more building. A final application of render and then the start of the cob layer. We were working with Wilf today and two women who have been on one of his permaculture courses and instead of paying full rate have bartered some hours work instead – they are here tomorrow aswell helping with veg box picking and packing. I love this alternative tender to cash for things that happens round here :). They were interesting people to chat to; both very much with a foot in both the conventional world and the alternative community type world and both agonising over where they belonged. It’s always interesting to see ourselves through others’ eyes and chatting to them reminded me that most families don’t go off in a campervan for a year but hopefully reminded them that there isn’t really any good reason not to if it’s what you want!
The cob layer is the same mix of sharp sand and clay with added chopped up straw, applied much thicker to the wall on top of the clay render mix to fill any gaps and create the undulating but smoothed finish prior to the lime render level. There is something hugely pleasing about this type of building, very reminiscent of playing with mud or playdoh as a child and almost instinctual in the smoothing and shaping. We had an interesting conversation as we worked about how most historic building was done simply using the land content in the area and how many large buildings such as cathedrals have a quarry next to them where the stone came from – often the only remaining sign is streets called Quarry Lane in the vicinity but it was the way all architecture was formed. Certainly all of the green buildings we’ve come across this year are using reclaimed, local materials – stones or clay dug up from the land itself.
We all had a go at all aspects today, from mixing the cob in the bathtub which involves treading it in, shovelling it from one end of the bath to the other and generally agitating it, sieving the clay to get the stones out (which will be used as drainage material elsewhere on the land), applying the render or cob or spraying the walls in preparation for each new layer. I did a full on up a ladder right at the top stint of cob application which was slightly daunting as you had to wedge the heavy bucket of cob between you and the ladder, rest your head on the roof struts and lean out to apply handfuls of the mixture. Very rewarding though 🙂
Lunch was a shared affair and then after work we walked to Matt & Jo’s flat which is just around the corner from the land and was bought fairly recently with an inheritance. It is a small two bedroom flat that Matt & Jo sleep in at weekends and they all use for the washing machine, bathroom, getting away from the land when necessary and a postal address – a toss up between a haven and a reality check into suburbia! We all had a bath – blissful, I brushed my teeth with running water, we stuck a load of very dirty washing through the machine and then walked back again. A friend had bought over a huge salmon he’d caught yesterday so that had been cooked for dinner and a large chunk of it offered to us for our dinner which was a real treat :).
We had new potatoes and salmon and a cheesy sauce all rather grudgingly cooked by Ady while I read through a folder Beth had lent me containing all her celebrant work, copies of her notes and services and the thank you cards people have sent her after her services which was all really interesting, and often very tear jerking to read, particularly the memorial and funeral services. Definitely something I want to look further into in the future.
I can’t believe we only have two more days left here, visiting the flat today was a stark reminder of the outside world.