Who Will Care for the Empire?…through 5/31/2012

by leafrunningrabbit

Oooh boy.  The building police were here again today.  But lookey how they come all drivin’ up in a Hybrid, no less.  Show-offs.  But green show-offs, at least.  I like it.  I don’t think hybrids are the key to anything, batteries always have their costs, maintenance, and downsides.  Not to mention it takes coal, more times than not, to charge them up in an on-grid home.  But if you were to charge the batteries up at my house, now that would be righteous.  Solar charged from the Sun direct.  Actually, if the hybrids just stepped it up another notch and became Purebred Solar Electric, then THAT would be something.

As it is though, this car simply brings Robin, the building officer,  out to the job site, in a half green sort of way.  Which is better than a no green sort of way.  Alice is chuckling I think because she knows I am trying to steal a photo of them without them noticing.  It didn’t work…

One morning this week I went to Gold Hill first thing in the morning on my way down down down the mountain.  We are getting ready to help Karel and Alice’s old next door neighbor up there, Nana, to rebuild her house, which also burned down in the Four Mile Fire.  My Project Manager, Margot, has been volunteering a lot of her time in the design, engineering, and budgeting of the project.  And now we are going to let Nana have 3 members of our crew, Alex, Wade, and Ramon, for a discounted fire victim price.  Her budget is way tight, and her insurance company didn’t exactly treat her right.  In fact she has a shame on you naughty naughty billboard spray painted in HUGE letters right across her burned basement slab.  So you literally could read it by flying directly overhead, like from a plane.

Anyhoos, notice all the green in this photo.  Come Labor Day it will be 2 years since.  It now is really starting to regrow with vigor.  I saw trees, even, that you would’a thunk burned and dead, all black and charred.  But at the tippy top, little green buds were popping out like popcorn.  I would say somebody, or something, is looking out for the Empire.

This is the Stareks’ old house site.  Those monster-sized panels you see are their old solar hot water panels.  Somehow, they did not burn.  They don’t have any water to heat anymore, true, but they did not get burned.  Nana’s burned house site is just beyond those panels.  And that’s Nana’s tent, where she is currently living, and has been living, for 2 years now.  She is certainly taking care of her empire.  She refuses to leave her burned property.  She will stay there, and she will rebuild, one way or another.  She has fought the insurance company, cleaned up her burned house and site, designed and even drawn some of the building plans from which we will build and that she submitted to Boulder County for approval, and is just one determined lady.  We are glad to be helping out.

This iron fencing, like rocks, also remained unhurt from the fire.  A little black and charred, but still full of integrity for future use.  Or just to leave right there, pretty as it is.

For those of you who don’t live round here, I stopped in my truck to show you what it looks like, if you stop and turn around and look back behind you, when leaving Gold Hill toward Boulder.  That there is the Continental Divide, bigger than Dallas, in all its glory.  Pert near fortunate, I feel, to live here and get to look at scenes like this on my way up and down the mountain.

Down here we have  the third story loft framing going on in the AG House.  That’s Adam and Daniel there with their framing hats on.  We are moving right along…

This here is showing the AG House fascia.  Mister and Wade started out on this side, but Wade has now been doing the majority of it by himself.  It really, REALLY, looks nice.

Here’s Pancho himself, in the act, get’n’er done.

Dang!  This looks gorgeous!  Lovin’ this stuff guys, good job!  Vidal and Ramon are going to start oiling it very soon.  Tomorrow I will try to get by Western Disposal’s commercial yard to have a looksy at what they got.  Every Wednesday at the Boulder yard is hazardous materials/recyclables day:  paints and batteries and computers and stains and cell phones and motor oil and wood oils, like tung and linseed.  Which is there for the taking.  I’ve been there and seen as much as 15 gallons of free linseed oil, for example.  So tomorrow I try to score us some free oil of various kinds.  And if there are more than one kind, we just mix them together to make one consistent color and we’re off to the races.

I should’a caught a picture of this only a day earlier.  Jesse had his machine taken all apart.  You would’a thought he was changing out the motor as many parts and such were laying scattered about.  His machine started over-heating and he couldn’t figure out why.  But after super detailed inspection he found the radiator was all plugged up with clay and straw.

We basically surmised that doing the clay liner all around the raised leach fields put a lot of clay dust inside the radiator thing.  Then rain and other moisture wet it down and it hardened.  But all the while this was going on with the clay, loose straw was also getting blown or sucked up there, mixing with the wet clay, then getting stuck in there as the clay dried and hardened.  It was like his radiator had been adobed, the same as they’re putting on the houses now.  And to get inside the engine housing that deep to where the problem was, was a chore and a half.  But he did it, and now we’re back up and runnin’.

We have also moved our temporary electrical panel from the Main House to the AG House.  We had our electrician put this together for us at the very beginning of the job.  On a building site such as this, with as many skill saws and compressors and nail guns and table saws and mitre saws and planers and such, we need to have our own dedicated electrical supply.  There’s hardly any other way.  This one has 8 plug-ins coming off a 2 gauge wire 100 feet long so we can move it around wherever we want it.

This is the Main House service panel sinched up tight to the bale wall.  We basically have 1/4″ all-thread running through the back of the metal box and all the way through the bale wall.  Then you put a 1″-2″ washer on each end with a nut, and sinch’er tight.  And once an inch and a half of adobe goes on the bales around that box, it will be sitting on an adobe shelf as well as captured all the way around the box.  It becomes very permanent and strong.  And of course we have to fill that hole back in, wet and compact it, and it’ll be done. 

This is standing in the living room of the Main House, looking out the bay window.  The “couch” you see there is straw bales covered over with adobe.  In the end it will be a lot smoother and probly covered with cushions and pillows stuffed with sheep’s wool sheared right off their own sheep they raised and grew on the farm.  You can do anything you want, I guess, when you’re in charge of your own empire.  Which, my attitude is, that we all ARE in charge of our own empires.

This right here is a cool deal.  This is a hand-made draining/drying shelf made by Rick Maddox of Albatross Woodcrafters.  It is made from a plank of wood we milled right here on site, from a tree from this site too.  I think it is the Cottonwood.  But it hangs directly over the kitchen sinks, three of them like commercial style, so they can set their washed and wet dishes up there to…

…drip dry and drain through these holes and right into the sinks.  Very cool Rick and Alice!  Super neat.

This here is the bay window to the AG House that Alex finished up this week.  Custom milled posts between the windows and boy howdy it looks nice.  Well done Alex!

I’m trying to show the Sharkskin roofing underlayment going in this photo, but I can’t keep my eyes off that fascia.  Man that stuff looks great!  Dang.  But yeah, check out that underlayment!  🙂  Fernando and his helper are doin’ that job.  This particular Sharkskin is a self-adhesive type.  It has its own adhesive, which is food grade, by the way, that sticks it right down to the deck.  Perty nice stuff.

Well, there was a harvest, a beet harvest it looked like, and carrots and onions, put on by the farmers who are still living in the original farm-house.  Farm workers come usually in the afternoons with all their booty they’ve collected from another farm at another location, to wash, sort, and bunch them together.  They take 3 or 4 different kind of colorful beets, one red one gold one white one yellow, or three beets and a large carrot, rubberband them together in a pretty presentation, and sell them at the farmer’s market.  They also use them in their own restaurant, farm-to-table style.  They truly are beautiful vegetables, like giant edible gems.  Makes one want to consider becoming a vegetarian.  Not really.  But maybe.

The Earth is an Empire.  We are all its caretakers, whether we are farmers or builders or office chair workers.  It doesn’t matter what job a person has, or where they live, or how much money they have.  It is up to ALL of us to be caretakers of this planet, and beyond.

In fact, I once heard (in a dream) William Wordsworth say:

“The poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as it is spread over the whole earth, and over all time.” 

The Earth is an Empire.  We are an Empire.  We take care of each other.  And so I say,

“He who loves the world as his body may be entrusted with the empire.”

And likewise,

“He who loves his body as the world may be entrusted with the empire.”

Because they are one in the same.  What we do unto the Earth we do unto ourselves.  And what we do unto others we do unto ourselves.

Help us to build this Empire we call Earth, along with everything contained there-on and there-within, in an entrusted way.  May we all be entrusted with the care of the Empire.  Everyone’s Empire.

Bluebird out.

My number is:  303-229-7202.