Let’s talk about it
What a week! We broke ground on Wednesday with a prayer and have thoroughly broken in an entirely different set of muscles than last week, but at least we're not still building a fence. Some of our crew had to leave for a few days so we've been going at it with just two of us, still managed to get a sixteen foot hole nearly three feet down in 3-1/2 days, and just in time the rain gave us a half day off. Looks like we hit a better sand ratio once we got down there, and an evening with our spiritual community brought us a wheelbarrow, some gravel, and even a bundle of bags leftover from another build nearby. We've still got to finish leveling the floor and then dig the rubble trench around the inside perimeter, we've got a few tampers made and once we line up some four point barbed wire we'll be about ready to start building. The weather has been awesome and it's not quite as cold and windy in the evenings, there should be another wave of volunteers heading in soon and some of our folks have already lined up windows, doors, nails/screws, rebar, buckets and some more bags. And to top it all off we've been eating ourselves silly after a long day's work, all the fresh fruit we can stomach including some delicious champagne mangos, tons of veggies, brats and rotisserie chickens, having steaks tonight and making frybread tomorrow. Now if all that's not enough to get you excited about coming out then I guess we can save a bit of digging for some fresh arms, see you soon!
For further information on earthbag building just do a simple google search, there’s a vast catalog of resources available from an active online community. Our favorite website for this kind of stuff is www.earthbagbuilding.com, our favorite YouTube channel is My Little Homestead, and here’s a beautiful photo gallery of another earthbag village concept.
Or if that’s too much homework for you, then you can check out the fictional novel Liberation’s Garden, a free download featuring earthbags, activism, and life on the reservation. Authored by one of our core members, it holds a vision for the future as we take the first steps toward bringing that vision to life.