01-14 Feb 2013

Rashinfrashinrishenrashen! ...in the immortal words of Muttley of Wacky Races fame. We had to miss a week at the earthship because, back home, we had the mother of all winds which took out our beautiful false pepper tree (right across our drive) and tipped over a russian olive, as well as ripping a roof panel off our workshop. When we did manage to get back to earthshipping we found that wind had taken most of the papiemache off the dome as well. I was not best pleased!

So, we're trying our very best to get the insulation and final papercrete layer on the dome asap.

Not much left of the papiemache - sob!

Sacks of cork insulation wired onto cane

Then covered with papercrete

Fidobe and sacks

We're doing fidobe under the windows so that when we eventually live in the earthship and have to clean the windows the fidobe will have more strength than the sacks to support ladders.

Overlapping chicken wire to strengthen the join

Papercreted over

Oneday, in the distant future, I would love to do a final layer of papercrete with a mosaic of tiles and the pink, white and orange quartz rocks we have on the land. So I'm not too worried about the patchy finish so far.

And lastly, I just have to mention the almond blossom again - it's been out in full force for nearly 2 months and is a delight. The bees are filling up!