Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@gilanet.com>]

http://essenes.net/fry2.html

Growing Your Own Home: Natural Buildings for Natural Gardeners
by Kirby Fry


A venerable Japanese rice farmer once said, "The ultimate goal of farming
is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human
beings". This was a profound thought for me, who as a permaculture designer
valued so much the practical and functional aspects of my labors. Then it
dawned on me that just as individuals can only find spiritual balance
within themselves by resolving internal conflicts before resolving external
conflicts, so too can we only find environmental harmony in our settlements
by turning inward to fulfill our physical needs before turning outward.
Instead of depending on remote sites and resources for water, food,
shelter, income, education, and medical care, we should first turn inward
to what we already have available on site and all of the potential uses we
can design into our settlements.

If you had asked me a year ago whether or not I could turn a field of grass
into comfortable and safe home I would have chuckled and asked if you knew
the tale of the three little pigs. Today I live in a straw bale house built
from a pasture of klein grass grown less than a mile away. If you had asked
me if it was possible to obtain drinking water from anywhere else than a
well or a municipal water purification plant I would have looked to the sky
and only shook my head. Now I look to the sky with eager anticipation for
the drops of rain which we harvest off of our roof in a ferro-cement
cistern, and when we are done using that water for drinking and washing we
will harvest it yet again in the form of food and water for our fruit
trees!

At the Cross Timbers Permaculture Institute of north central Texas (my home
and place of work), we decided last August to build a straw bale residence
to better accommodate our staff and growing number of apprentices. We felt
that the emphasis we placed on creating a natural garden to grow our foods
applied equally to the homes in which we grow ourselves. Consequently we
have combined three designs which we hope will merge into a well centered,
natural dwelling - a straw bale house, a ferro- cement cistern to collect
rain water from the roof, and a pumice-wick system to aerate and harvest
our toilet and sink's "black water".

Natural building like natural farming encompasses the ethics of
permaculture - care of the earth, care of all species, and the return of
excess to the land. It calls for a greater awareness of the materials we
build with, urging that they be indigenous, and locally available. Building
materials should also be human friendly and non-toxic, and our techniques
of construction should be sound and enduring. A designer should not rely on
over-manufactured products which are high in toxics and energy inputs.
Building naturally involves the intelligent siting and orientation of our
settlements and requires that they be designed into the landscape rather
than super-imposed on it. Natural building is also less expensive, better
for us, and more fun!

We find the origin of straw bale construction tucked away in a chapter of
our own North American history. This building system was begun by settlers
in the Sand Hills of Nebraska during the late 1800's, coinciding with the
advent of the horse and steam powered baler. The Nebraskan settlers used
bales of prairie grasses (stacked much like a mason lays bricks) for their
walls and covered them inside and out with an adobe plaster. It was
advantageous then to use grass as a building material because timber was
not abundantly available and straw bale homes could be built larger and
more efficiently than sod homes. These wall systems were structurally sound
and supported the entire weight of the roof. We now refer to straw bale
homes with load bearing walls as "Nebraska-style" homes. Some of the
original Nebraska-style structures are still standing, now nearly one
hundred years old.

Straw bale construction faded from popularity between the 1950's and 1980's
probably because of the increased availability of massed-produced
construction materials. Today, however, the US is experiencing a natural
building renaissance and the revival of straw bale construction is evident
in the states of New Mexico, Arizona, Texas and California. This
renaissance is quite likely due to today's prohibitively high cost of
building and our waxing interest in more ecologically sound homes and
gardens. With the abundance of information now available on building with
straw bales, the straw bale house is one of the most affordable and
feasible options for the owner-builder.

Our institute's straw bale house for example - we have managed to build a
560 square foot residence for approximately $2,500 dollars or $4.50 per
square foot! We relied on our own labor, and salvaged most of our
materials, which demonstrate that if you have the will to do so, affordable
housing has not escaped our generation. By using straw bales in our walls
instead of timber studs and sheet rock we will also save substantial
amounts of energy on heating and cooling due to the bale wall's high
insulative properties (R42 for straw vs. R24 for timber and sheet rock).
For the owner-builder there is hardly a more elegant solution. If you would
like a definitive reference on straw bale construction, you may want to
acquire The Straw Bale House, from The Canelo Project (a non-profit
organization) in Elgin, Arizona at 520-455- 5548.

The wonderful thing about a permaculture site is that everything is more
than it seems. For instance, the roof of our straw bale house is not just a
roof to keep the rain off of our heads, but also a collector to catch and
deliver the rain into a ferro-cement water cistern. Rather than spend the
effort and money to drain the rain water off of our land and then import
water back into our homes from wells or far away treatment plants, a
permaculture settlement holds onto rain water and uses it as many times as
possible before allowing it off site. Using rain water as drinking water is
usually its first and most valuable use, and though it is difficult for
many people to believe drinking rain water is safe, with a few precautions
it can be the purest water we ever encounter. Rain water is also excellent
for watering gardens as it has a lower pH than ground water and better
enables the uptake of minerals, especially phosphorous, in plants.

At Cross Timbers we have built two cylindrical, domed cisterns made from
iron re-mesh, re-bar, stucco lathe, and masonry cement - the common name
for this type of cistern is a "ferro-cement" cistern. For our 650 square
foot roof, and annual 26 inches of rainfall we have built a 6,500 gallon
cistern. It needs to be spacious enough to hold all of our spring and fall
rains and last through our drier winters and summers. To keep the water
clean for drinking we divert the initial wash-off from the roof which may
be contaminated with bird droppings into our gardens. The cistern is also
opaque which keeps sunlight out and prevents the growth of algae. For added
precaution, many folks filter their cistern water at the tap with a
standard water purifier.

When we are done using our rain water for drinking, washing and flushing
toilets we are challenged to discover even more uses for it. A good
permaculture designer views this load of moisture and nutrients as a boon
not a bane and sets about incorporating it into a sound, and useful food
producing scheme. One of the most effective and least expensive designs I
have come across to date is Tom Watson's pumice-wick system - essentially a
canal filled with volcanic pumice rock and covered with soil. Just as the
wick of a kerosene lamp pulls kerosene upward against the flow of gravity,
so too does the porous pumice rock draw the water out and over the rocks'
surfaces so the nutrients can be devoured by millions of aerobic soil
organisms and taken up by the roots of plants and trees.

There are two important distinctions between the Watson-wick system and
conventional septic systems. These distinctions also illustrate the
principles which make it so successful. First, the pumice-wick does not
depend on an anaerobic septic tank which will often clog up with waxy soap
residues and fibrous solids, but instead creates and relies upon a very
aerobic substrate, the pumice-wick, where soil organisms are much more
active and effective in breaking down nutrients and pathogens. Another
distinction relates to the roots of trees and bushes which are naturally
drawn to and work their way into the "leaky" dispersion pipes of a
conventional leach field. Where the activity of these root systems hinder
the performance of a conventional leach field and often cause it to back up
or rupture, the roots of plants play a key role in the pumice-wick system,
taking up dissolved nutrients and water, and turning them into fruit and/or
transpired moisture which may one day rain back down upon us!

Tom Watson's wick system takes what we would normally consider a very
smelly mess and turns it instead into the richest garden bed in our
landscape. He has built 75 of these systems, the oldest of which is 16
years old and still functioning well. Though root crops are not recommended
for growing over a wick system, just about every other type of plant can be
grown and will most likely flourish.

All of these designs, the straw bale house, ferro-cement cistern and
pumice-wick system, illustrate how we can center ourselves in our landscape
by connecting and harvesting the natural flows of energy through and around
us. At Cross Timbers we have found that connecting ourselves to natural
systems has given us more than just an efficient homestead, it has given us
a sense of belonging and contentment. The ultimate goal of being
spiritually and physically centered in the landscape is both the
cultivation of humans and their settlements - our landscapes are but the
reflection of our souls.