Reciprocating roof roundhouses are pretty darn cool. They look gorgeous and they are a very good way to quickly make a strong structure with simple, available materials, the right knowledge and a bunch of willing hands.
We’ve been researching reciprocating roof structures, but hadn’t as yet had a chance to build one. Luckily Harris has been champing at the bit to get a roundhouse up since attending a workshop on them in New Zealand. This last week became the window of opportunity… Read More
The deal with Rose the permachef returning to Milkwood Farm this Spring is this: apon her return (which is imminent) she will move into the completed (ok nearly) earthbag dome, ensuring her personal seclusion and wood-fired comfort for the coming season.
The earthbag dome, while awesome, has been somewhat of a side-project since the first big gush of effort dedicated to its bag-raising (if that is a term) in Feb 2011. But now it’s time to get it done.
Partly because done is the engine of more, and partly because we want Rose to have a cosy haven after a big day of cookery. Nearly there now….
This is my favorite tinyhouse book that the moment. Even in the age of instant access to a gazillion glossy photos of natural building, tinyhouses and all the rest, this publication stands apart as a book worth having, because of its composition and its coming together of so many different strands of knowledge and knowing.
It’s written by one of the great publishers of natural building, Lloyd Kahn, who back in 1973 wrote the seminal Shelter, a user-friendly overview of traditional building techniques from across the globe. Tiny Homes is both a progression of that book, but also an important book for where natural building is at, right now. Read More
Yurts (and more interestingly to us, Gers) are front and center on the Milkwood research table currently. We’ve identified these structures as a likely cost-effective, climate-appropriate solution for our coming need for weatherproof, windproof, cosy crew-space come Spring at the Farm.
While there’s many solutions to easily yurt oneself if you have a reasonable budget ($8-$10,000), we need to find a solution more in the DIY realm. So we have searched far and wide, and here’s what we’ve come up with in terms of build-it-yourself-from-scratch Yurt and Ger resources. Read More
Welcome to Winter, everyone! Winter at Milkwood Farm is research time (in addition to winter farm chores) and currently we’re nutting out how to create super affordable, warm and not necessarily permanent housings for our crew come Springtime.
We’ve been mulling over yurts primarily, but recently, the beauty and economy of reciprocating roof roundhouses are got us thinking about hybrid natural building projects that we could realize next season. There’s a lot to love in these constructions… Read More
Over the Easter weekend we had a little shindig at Milkwood Farm, with camping and artists and lots of food. Dave and Phoebe brought their yurt, which they made themselves, from scratch, for under $2,000. It was an amazing and a beautiful thing.
‘Oh yes’, i thought, when Dave said they were bringing it… ‘I know all about yurts – hole in the roof, concertina walls, all that’. But actually I had no idea just how gorgeous in it’s simplicity and elegance of design a hand-crafted, DIY yurt could be… Read More
While I have heard from multiple sources that cow poo is a fine and admirable structural component for cob render mix, I never thought we’d try it.
But thanks to Harris, we have finally given the Earthbag dome we started building in February 2011 it’s first complete outer render, featuring mud, sand, silt and cow poo. And it seems to be working! Read More
It was entirely incredible to welcome 400 folks into an auditorium to hear Michael Reynolds talk Earthships in Sydney recently. Thanks to everyone that came – what a night!
Regardless of whether you have inclinations to take on an earthship building project or not, I think this evening was really valuable to lots of people. Mostly because it got a large number of people thinking and talking about resilience and what the future of sustainable building might look like… Read More
Earthship in Brighton, England
Guess what? We’re hosting a great evening talk with Michael Reynolds, that world-leading sustainability pioneer of Earthship Biotecture, in Sydney on the 26th Feb. Do you want to come?
This community event is going to be a uniquely inspiring & informative evening of radical architecture, ideas and discussion about Earthship building and living. >> Book tickets here.
© bustan qaraaqa
Look at this amazing bottle wall work by the crew at Bustan Qaraaqa in Jerusalem. Now these are folk who know how to make a feature of the waste they produce. Their bottle walls represent the entire through-put of bottles at their permaculture site.
On a remote farm such as ours, there is no rubbish collection. What you bring in, you must ship out, unless you can use it on the farm, or compost it. This arrangement means that we are very connected to how much waste we produce. At Bustan Qaaraqa in Gaza, they clearly have the same situation.
