Remember last post, when I mentioned that we were excited to pass the baton to the crew coming for our Field Study, and perhaps get a little break after six months of non-stop prep?
Ha.
That was funny.
I was talking to a long time client last week during our standing meeting, and I started off the meeting by thanking her for allowing me to show up in a frazzled state. Because, the past few weeks have been a LOT. And this is coming from someone accustomed to balancing lots of high stress scenarios, sometimes in dangerous places.
While we’re excited by the progress and don’t regret the choices that brought us here, it’s been much more demanding and exhausting—emotionally, physically, financially, logistically, relationally—than we’d expected. I’ll be writing more about this after the project comes to an end.
When I took the moment to thank my client, she took a look at me and said my face looked like that of a mother with a newborn (or possibly, twins). Now, I say this lightly as I don’t actually know that lived experience, but it’s possible that this month of intensity is the closest I’ll ever get to understanding those intense first few weeks of having a new small human in your life.
Talking to another friend, she asked how work was going for me (which is the origin of the title of this post). While I have an (intentionally) slightly reduced workload this month due to one contract coming to an end and a new contract with an October start date, I still have plenty on my plate and with the constant interruptions of supporting the Field Study, I’ve been in active work triage mode all month long: working at night and on weekends much more than I prefer to, and making sure I meet deadlines but unable to keep ahead as I usually prefer. I told my friend that, ironically, working remote while traveling the globe is a thousand times simpler than getting everything managed from my home base in New Mexico in the midst of this intensity.
So, onward: let’s talk all about our first two weeks of hosting an Earthship Field Study to build our new home. I’m planning to share our experience in three installments: the first two weeks, the second two weeks, and a final look at the experience as a whole. Here we go…
Week One
It’s so rare in adult life that we have the chance to come together with a group of strangers for such a short, intensive experience. We have loved getting to know the people who are here to share their time, energy, sweat, and stories. And it’s pretty incredible to step back at the end of each day and see so much progress. It’s a very visual representation of how small steps by individuals can add up to something incredible.
We were also thrilled with our first week of weather: while it was hotter than we’d hoped, it stayed dry and overall the weather was pretty good for living conditions and work. Our solar system performed well so far, and everyone appreciated the camp conditions—especially the shower!
The first two weeks were heavily focused on getting the tire walls: with around 900 total tires in the house, that was a lot of work. Other initial priorities were the footers (and a successful inspection!), installation of the rear thermal wrap, and dirt work. Beau’s become more proficient on the backhoe than he ever expected to be, moving hundreds of yards of dirt around and into place as part of the back berm and thermal battery of the house. Here’s a quick day-by-day look at what happened in week one:
The bottom layer of tires are packed with gravel, and subsequent rows with cardboard and dirt. While most of the student volunteers and many crew worked on the tire wall, our foreman was making sure everything was placed correctly and some of the crew got started on the footers.
Beau started to haul dirt with the backhoe to provide more dirt for tire pounding and the eventual back berm. Meanwhile, foundation prep continued and the cooling tubes — a core part of the passive solar heating & cooling system of the Earthship — were placed.
Thermal wrap is placed a few feet behind the tire wall, providing an additional insulating barrier within the earthen berm. These panels came to be a bit of our nemesis, between loading dirt over and around them with the backhoe, and Bruno’s desire to whip them around the property. It’s never fun to see thousands of dollars worth of material get thrown around and broken by the wind and rocks; fortunately, it doesn’t impact the performance especially in the back berm area, and we were later able to use the broken pieces in other parts of the house that needed smaller portions of thermal barrier.
As the tire wall is built, the spaces between the tires are packed with concrete and aluminum cans. Our back wall is now studded with everything from Modelo (the project beer of choice) and Athletic Brewing to Barq’s and Bubbly: all of the interior walls will eventually be covered with adobe for a smooth, beautiful finish.
At the end of week one, we’d made great progress on the tire wall and the building was starting to really take shape. Every Friday we buy beer (and N/A drinks) for the crew and volunteers as a thank you for their hard work: this is intense physical labor, and while Beau and I both took part (him primarily on the backhoe, and me with assorted help when I could step away from work for a few hours), our house is coming together thanks to the labor of this group of great people.
Saturday is an optional work day for the student volunteers, but the crew typically works at least a half day based on the number of contract hours with us and Earthship. They made more progress on plumbing prep, the tire wall, and finalizing the footer forms for concrete pour. One of the crew also brought a large shade structure to set up for both the students and tools: with our location in the middle of nowhere in the New Mexico desert, shade is hard to come by, so this was greatly appreciated. In addition to a bit of building work, Beau took a bunch of people up on a hike, and many rocks, fossils, and even a dinosaur bone were found, to everyone’s delight.
Week Two
As we embarked on our second week of the project, our friend Bruno returned. While the intensity didn’t rival our spring experiences, it was enough to be annoying, frustrating, and uncomfortable. On the upside, it helped keep everyone cool on the worksite during the week.
Week two included more tire work, placing the cisterns, and the great concrete fiasco.
For reasons that are still not entirely clear, our concrete order did not arrive in the condition expected, and it ended up taking all 10 crew members nearly three hours to shovel and pour the concrete into our footers and foundation elements. Everyone was exhausted and frustrated, and ultimately the company and our Earthship coordinator couldn’t come to terms with what caused the problem and who was responsible. At the end of the day, we were still on the hook for the full bill, despite the poor delivery and the extra work it incurred for the team, but we were at least assured that the product would meet performance expectations.
We won’t be doing business with that company again in the future, but in a rural community like this, it’s sometimes tricky to not have many options to choose from. And as with our previous experience with construction projects, sometimes you just have to grit your teeth and write the check.
I also made my first solo outing (with our coordinator, but without Beau) driving our 16’ trailer to Amarillo and back, in order to pick up scaffolding and a metal brake. While that might not be a big deal to many, it was a big checkbox in my homestead self-sufficiency skillset (although I still need to do a lot of practice & learning when it comes to backing a trailer…)
By the end of the week, the team had completed the tire walls and started to install the framing. It was starting to look like a house! We closed up the week with another Friday night party, and Tracy and I headed to Roswell for an overnight in a hotel (much needed after Bruno kept her awake in her tent for a few nights) and a big restock for the next two weeks of lunches. We also spotted some aliens along the way and enjoyed some margaritas and tacos!
It was exciting at the end of each day to see the rising wall of tires. (In the middle photo above, one of the student volunteers, Mal, wouldn’t quit at the end of the day and had a bit of a personal vendetta to get her tires done. She’s such a tireless worker with a great attitude and we’ve loved having her here.)
The cisterns have been sitting in our driveway for nearly a month and we’ve (I’ve) been constantly paranoid about them getting damaged / run into / etc, so it was a great day when they were placed behind the house! These will collect rainwater from the roof and serve as our primary water source, with our well as a backup. With all three cisterns, we have just over 5000 gallons of water storage.
This day did not go as planned: because of the concrete delivery issue, all of our Earthship crew (and a few students) were totally consumed with getting the concrete into the house in a useable (and reliable) condition. So it was a bit of a lost day of work: not only did it take over 200 man-hours to do a job designed to take 5 or 6, the students weren’t able to make progress with dirtwork and tire pounding because of both the truck’s impedance of progress and the crew’s focus on getting the concrete in place. It’s been a long time since I’ve been as frustrated and angry at a process as I was by the great concrete fiasco.
Fortunately, the next day was a good one as we completed the rear tire wall (and were just one or two tires short of the front wall!) The crew was also able to start putting up the interior window boxes, and we could start to imagine our house taking shape. We wrapped up another week with relief and exhaustion, happy to be at the halfway point while also anxious about whether we’d meet our goal with two weeks to go.
Thanks for reading along with our Earthship journey. If you enjoyed reading this piece, you might also enjoy following our earlier adventure in sustainable living, Winter is Coming (which I’ll be resuming publishing once September is over.)
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Love following along on this incredible journey of yours. So much fun 😘
Nights and weekends indeed – I know well the struggle of keeping up with work while also living an actual LIFE.
And yeah, I was chatting with a New Mexico friend this last week and told her one of the seasons down there is Wind. She laughed. Of course that wicked trickster is also unpredictable and can come any season… Bruno’s a cute name (but also brutal enough)
Thinking of you and sending grace and mojo in this final push!