After a rather long month of stacking strawbale walls, I am happy to report that it finally feels like we are making progress! The saga of the strawbales (and really the whole darn month) almost seems not worth rehashing here, but how else to account for what has felt like one of our darker months building our home? And what, exactly has made it feel so wearisome and worrisome? The almost constant rain and unexpected storms that jolt us from our sleep in the middle of the night so that we can once again cover our bale walls with tarps? Or maybe discovering that our 100 final bales (that we had purchased from a local Amish friend as a favor) were full of wet moldy bits, manure bits, plus had the unfortunate habit of distorting into banana shapes? Or maybe the constant overwhelming threat of the proposed high voltage line right next to our pond, and our awkward early attempts at organizing our neighbors into a resistance group? Or the stomach-lurching discovery that several of our friends have been thinking tentatively about leaving the Missouri area for greener pastures? Or maybe the mosquito population explosion? Or the stray cats that keep adopting us? Not our finest month, for sure. But we have survived, with two cats in the yard... life used to be so hard.... One thing is for sure, our house is (going to be) a very very very fine house!
For one, thanks to the help of my parents (who have heroically showed up to help for a few weeks), our friends Fran and Leah who have been helping us out Thursdays, and several work parties, we are almost finished baling! Like within 10 bales of being done! What seemed so easy at the beginning got progressively more and more tedious and slow going. The bale course that took us above the door/window height was really hard, involving lots of pesky little retied bales and ingenious problem solving as to how to even out courses and work in wood lintels, plus all the usual notching around framing. If you are ever contemplating embarking on a crazy strawbale building project, do yourself a favor and don't put in any windows or doors! It will be easy and rewarding, not to mention plenty warm...
Another step that we've been working on is tedious detailing with tar paper flashing and diamond lath (otherwise known as blood lath since it is apparently a lethal weapon that has yielded us countless gusher-scratches!) The tar paper acts as a preventative against air-leaky cracks in the plaster as it shrinks away from the wood, and the lath is necessary since plaster doesn't stick to tar paper. The layers are beginning to get complicated as we prep the wall for our rain screen oak siding which transitions halfway up the wall into straight plaster. But my dad and I have kept at it and we just installed our first few windows today! Okay, getting ahead of myself... plaster. We have almost one long wall finished, having gone through almost a dozen large tubs full of plaster, mixed by hand and foot. This is one messy phase of the project for sure, and we have been leaving the work site thoroughly coated in mud (which, it should be noted, is actually kind of effective against the mosquitos!)
While this recent burst of progress on the house is exciting, what is even more exciting is our progress resisting the power line! A few of us concerned and closely affected neighbors began meeting, with more and more surrounding neighbors joining in. We decided on some small action steps to consolidate as a group and get out the word to the northeast Missouri community, which culminated last night in an open meeting that we hosted in a public building. We did a pretty mediocre job advertising and flyering for the meeting, and weren't quite sure who would show or what would transpire, but the turnout was huge! Well over a hundred people came (standing room only) and all sorts-- college students, public media, farmers and their families, heavy hitters like the former university president and a state representative showed up even, and everyone was livid about the power line, sharing powerful stories about how much their ancestoral farms mean to them and such. A lot of information was shared about the situation and a lot of brain storming happened. It was way beyond my highest hopes for the event and we were able to come out of the evening with huge momentum--five action committees (legal, health, PR, political, fundraising), the state rep's word to help us set up public hearings with the Mis. Public Service Committee, and another meeting slated in a week. A bigger meeting in a bigger venue. Suddenly our little neighborhood committee with a piddly budget has blown up big! Still, we didn't do half bad, having scrambled to have yard signs printed, beautifully designed flyers to hand out (thanks Jerry), media in attendance with interviews set up, and our friend Ethan leading and moderating the dialogue (he did an amazing job tracking everything and moving us toward organized action and consensus!) I have not before now been a part of much community organizing, so all of this is new and pretty exhilerating to be a part of. There was a moment in the evening when I realized how very... American it all felt, in the best possible sense, truly democratic, a power-of-the-people moment, especially in concert with having a local politician in attendance who actually seemed to be interested in representing our positions in the matter.... fancy that! So watch out Ameren, we are coming at you from every direction with guns blaring (and knowing some of the folks in the crowd last night, that may be taken literally!)
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