Consider the Shovel

Consider the humble shovel as an alternative to the  noisy, fuel guzzling, plant-killing, soil-ripping backhoe.  

Dig by hand?  Are you mad?  Actually, no.  For millenia, before the advent of fossil fuels and modern machinery, digging and excavation was done by hand.  Yes, it's slower, but yes, it got done.  It's time we all slowed down anyway;  stopped believing that  getting  things done requires us to rush.  Rushing stresses us out.  Many times, I've stood on a building site while backhoes and bulldozers careered across the landscape, noisily crushing everything under their huge wheels and metal tracks, feeling the panic of watching as hundreds of dollars an hour were sucked up and praying that the men behind the controls knew what they were doing.  

A machine needs room to move,  thus always an area 3 or 4 times the size of the machine ends up stripped bare of any plant or animal life.  When an earthmoving machine is on site, the noise blocks out everything else.  No one can think clearly.  Often mistaken decisions are taken, and these usually cost money.

Consider the humble shovel.   Digging is an art; digging is a science.  Digging can  be a  true pleasure.

 At the age of 20,  I learned to dig from a master.  I was living in Philadelphia and was between colleges (I'd been kicked out of one, was taking some time off before starting at another) and had gotten a job at a tree nursery on the  Main Line.  Most of the work involved planting trees - some of them full grown, with root balls up to 8' across, on  the estates of well-to-do locals.  Moore Nursery was an old, well-established business, and was known for its fine work and minimal impact on the landscape.  Thus all digging was done by hand.  Crews of Puerto Ricans worked in the nursery, digging up and wrapping the root balls of the trees.  The all-anglo crews that went out on the estates worked under one or another of the Moore brothers, all of them in their  sixties and seventies.  They were an Irish, hard-drinking bunch, who nevertheless knew their craft.  In addition to learning how to handle a shovel, I learned to drink shots of cheap rye followed by a short beer.  One of the Moore sisters had married a landscape architect, a  white-haired gentleman, who dressed in suits and wore a fine fedora.  It was he who really ran things and who sold the jobs to Moore Nursery's elegant clientele.

On-site crews were composed of two laborers and a boss, usually one of the Moore brothers.  On arrival, we would mark out the locations of the trees for planting and begin by laying burlap about 4' wide  around the perimeter of each hole.  This was where the dirt from our excavation was laid, so that when we were done, we lifted the burlap, sprinkling the final dirt near the base of the tree, and except for the temporary flattening of the grass, it looked as if we had never been there.

It was Earl Moore who first taught me how to handle a shovel and who bought me my first boilermaker at a saloon in Gladwyn, Pa.  I learned from Earl how to dig a straight-sided hole, how to work sequentially from one shovel-full to the next; how to let the weight of the pick work for, rather than  against you;  how to use your legs more than your back;  how to take your time: rest, reflect, tell a racy joke, play a prank, yet get the work done.  Earl was a tough man, a traditional boss, a bigot and a sexist. He was often mean in the morning, probably from being hung over, yet what he taught me about honest work has served me well all my working life.  

Since then, I've done a lot of digging: planting fruit trees on our property, water trenches for drainage, cleaning up after backhoes(the inevitable on any job done by machine) and more and more lately, digging and excavating for foundations or other earthwork:  Big digs.  In digging by hand, by the nature of it,  you go slowly, efficiently and considerately.  Earth is heavy: you plan just how much to dig and no more.  You observe the contents of each shovelful; learn the nature of the soil and the plants and creatures living on it and in it.  You work at your own pace.  Because it is tiring work, you stop frequently, look up, across the land, into the sky.  Smell the soil and the trees.  The birds stay close, not chased off by racing engines and diesel smoke.  You reflect, ideas come into your head.  You bend to the soil again.

Allow time for digging.  If you are in a hurry, ignore these words, or perhaps you should heed them.  Don't try to attack the work all at once.  Dig for a few hours a day, perhaps in one or two-hour sessions.  It's good exercise.  Food tastes better.  You sleep well.  Hire a helper or helpers.  A man with experience with a shovel(as most men I've known do, who come from the south of our border) can move a lot of soil in a day.  They'll move as much as a backhoe will in an hour and cost you the same amount, and at the end, you may have made a friend.

John Corcoran

Plaza at Chimayo

Anselmo Jaramillo "the last adobodero of Chimayo"

 

We took a little road trip to  to meet "last adobedero of Chimayo," Anselmo Jaramillo. Anselmo is an instructor at Northern New Mexico Community College (where they have a great inexpensive Adobe building program), and a man passionate about adobe . Anselmo was born in Chimayo thus born into northern New Mexico Adobe. He has traveled extensively in Mexico restoring many adobe structures. His project that he showed us in Chimayo though is inspired by the buildings of Hassan Fathy who he learned of through "his hero" Simone Swan of Adobe Alliance. Anselmo is passionate about using only the materials he can find on his 5 acres in Chimayo thus  he has employed a foundation of stone and mud mortar and the vaulted and dome roofs of Egypt. He has his on website that will  explain more of what he is up to. adobeclass.blogspot.com/ 

What I want to experiment with after talking to Anselmo is with making insulation from straw. I have done a little experimentation making straw clay blocks as insulation but what he talked about sounded simpler. Make a wheel barrel of clay slip and dip wedges of straw as they separate from bale, air dry and there you go. My only hesitation is mice, the philosophy of straw clay is to coat each piece of straw to make it mouse proof.

Adobe Conference 2009

My partner, John Corcoran, will be presenting a paper at this year's Adobe SW Conference in El Rito, New Mexico. John's paper will be on our personal experience of getting  through the approval process  for an adobe house without insulation on the exterior walls and built on a rubble trench foundation.  As outsiders to  New Mexico we thought of these traditional practices as integral to building with adobe, and came to adobe building perplexed at seeing new adobes covered entirely with  sprayed urethane insulation, wire lath and concrete stucco.  Lucky for us and lucky for all New Mexicans, it is legally possible to  build a snug warm house in the traditional way.  Come to John's talk.

The desire to build an adobe house without additional wall insulation came from both a personal and philsolphical place.  We were determined to avoid  toxic  and non-renewable materials wherever possible.   As artists, aesthetic considerations were at the forefront; quite simply, we wanted to build a soulful house made of earth. We wanted to work under the premise of honesty in materials and allow adobe to be adobe: to go beyond its known and quantified properties and to experience what it  was to live in a house made of mud. 

As knowledgeable builders we did not come to the question of not insulating the walls blindly. We knew of the energy advantages of having R19  in your walls face to face with the only .34 per inch of adobe. But  adobe had what is called the effective U-Values which were measured and codified by the Tesuque Thermal Project; great thermal mass. And for me, which was most convincing, was the experiential evidence of the comfort of living in a solar-oriented adobe house with a well-insulated, modern roof. Fortunately, through careful consideration of the house orientation, window placement and size, as well as maximally insulating the roof,  we were able to comply with the New Mexico Energy Conservation code and build the house we wanted.

 Unfortunately what was most disturbing in this process was a telephone conversation I had with a man who owned a "green"  cellulose insulation  company here in Santa Fe. Without getting any other details about our house  other that that it was adobe and that we were not planning to insulate the exterior walls, he refused to sell us insulation for the roof cavity.  He didn't want to discuss or even consider what we were doing.  In his mind,we were wrong and he was right.  It was rather heart breaking to be thought so ill of  especially by someone who was ultimately on the same "side" as us.

 As we all wrestle with the question of global warming and our addiction to oil, I think we must rely on our own  instinctual and experiential knowledge as much as in scientific and technical information. For us, building small  and living simply was equal part in our decision making. To live in a small house, we knew it had to be beautiful and sparse and that, for instance, though a fireplace might not be considered "energy efficient," for us it would be our winter heart: a place to  gather, to read, share a  evening meal or play a game. In essence what I am trying to address here is the importance of knowing yourself  and family when building a home, and as great as Hers  and Leeds are for our commercial  and developer-built buildings, they may not be the right bench mark for us as individuals. 

Incidentally our south,west and east walls are laid at the 14 inch direction with another 2 " of plaster while our north walls are double 10" walls with a 2" airspace with 2" of plaster, and our roof is insulated to R 40.

For more on rubble trench foundation.www.buildnaturally.com/EDucate/Articles/RubbleTrench.htm

Some great links to learn more about adobe and the people we learned from

It seems a bit odd that I have begun a blog about Adobe building with a recipe for oil paint but I guess that is in part the nature of a blog as my introduction each day is moved further down the page. I will skip around with information I have to share just as you will  skip around the blog  and internet looking for the information that may be helpful to you.

Today though, in an effort to start at the beginning, I wanted to share a little background on how John Corcoran, my partner, and I  came to learn how to  build with Adobe and some  background information on us.

Background:

John Corcoran, my partner in life and building,  and I came to New Mexico to build a small house of Adobe. John has built many homes as a contractor and on his own. He is a graduate of Goddard College in Vermont , a school that had a great program in the early 1970 where students studied home building and where he built his first home as a senior  thesis project. The experience I brought to the table was as a house designer, and as someone who spent most of her waking hours in and around the home, thus had a lot to say about a homes design and flow. This house is the third house we have built together as a team. 

On arriving in  New Mexico and as the closing on the land we wanted to purchase took a longer time than we had imagined, John and I set out to learn everything we could about adobe.

We took field trips visiting such notable historical adobe structures in and around Santa Fe and Taos:

Taos Pueblo

 

The Martinez Hacienda 

The Rancho de Taos

The  Ranchos de Los Golindrinas

The Acoma Pueblo 

Georgia Okeefe's Abiquie Home 

We took country drives  and  fell in love with all the small adobe villages along the Pecos River. 

We read everything we could get our hands on:

John perused  the used bookshops of Santa Fe  finding numerous out of print titles while I perused the Santa Fe    Library southwest section and  the internet. 

good used bookshops:  Gunstock Hill Books   308 N. Guadalupe                                        

                                           Nicholas Potter Books  211 East Palace

                                                                                                   

We read Ed Crocker's monthly "Understanding Adobe"column in Real Estate Guide of the Santa Fe New Mexican, and all his back columns we found on his internet site. 

We met:

Quentin Wilson the Head of Adobe Building Program at The Northern New Mexico Community College in el Rito New Mexico, an inexpensive hands on college program to learn adobe building.

And joined his yahoo  International adobe chat room, a must for anyone serious about adobe building.

Through this chat room we met  and became good friends with two invaluable player in our Adobe building: 

Simone Swann, Adobe Alliance 

Claude Hayward the guy who with a team of guys from Anton Chico put up the  adobe block and built our fireplace,  

And  I took a weekend plaster and alis paint workshop with Carole Crews where what I learned gave me complete confidence to to take over the entire plaster job inside and out on our home. 

Conferences:

We attended the Adobe Association of the Southwest  conference in el Rito and met people from all over the world truly passionate about adobe. There is another conference coming up this May 15, 16 and 17.

If you take the time to follow all the links I have created above and get out and drive the New Mexico countryside I whole new world will open up to you. I am only sorry I didn't discover adobe sooner.

Homemade Oil Paint

Outdoors

I used this paint to paint our outside window trim. I wanted to paint them to add color to the house, if you call white color, and to give the wood more protection from the elements. My thought and hope is is that the white painted wood will  weather beautifully, never peel and as I used titanium dioxide as the pigment it will be further protected from the sun. Titanium dioxide is the sun block ingredient in expensive natural sun screen. I can see giving the wood an occasional re- oiling if it warrants any care. 

 For years I have been looking for something to paint and/or stain wood to give it that look of an old northeastern house or barn faded with time. 

Indoors

I used this paint to paint our interior doors.

I used the same recipe but used the walnut oil/citrus thinner combination to preserve indoor air quality. I combined a grey earth pigment I purchased  from earthpigments with the titanium dioxide I purchased at the local ceramic supply company  www.santafeclay.com. The walnut oil may be purchased online at libertynatural or bought at your local health food store, the citrus thinner at bioshieldpaint

Recipe

1/2 cup boiled linseed oil or food grade walnut oil 

3T pigment more or less to taste

1/4 cup turpentine or citrus thinner

This paint has long drying times, here in New Mexico it is dries to touch after 48 hours. Here you can add a second coat if desired.

More about me

My interest have always revolved around home and simple living. This was my play as a child and  has been my work as  an adult. I am a 47 year old mother of a grown child and a child still at home. Living around and amongst beauty has always been paramount to my life. When most people my age were concentrating on careers, I was planting gardens and learning about foraging for wild foods.  Throughout the years I planted many gardens both professionally and for my family and co-designed 4  homes in New York's Hudson Valley. It was only in coming to New Mexico and building with adobe, cob  and earthen plasters and paints that I  began to feel fully encaged and cable in the structural aspects of the building process. Unlike conventional building methods and materials adobe and earth building allows you to control the rhythm of the process and involve very few if any power tools. For a woman with children  and with concerns broader than what  is right in front of me,  this method of building is perfectly suited.  This is not to say I haven't been  dependent on my partner John Corcoran, an individual completely competent in all aspects of building, but for me I have taken a great leap in my abilities and independence in discovering earth building.