NBCNY 2010

I usually hedge my bets when committing to do something; "I will try to make it" or "I plan to be there", never guaranteeing outright that something won't come up (you parents out there know that something unexpected always does). When it comes to the PeaceWeaver's Natural Building Colloquium however, I am more categorical: "I will see you there, definitely". It has become an important tradition for me, supporting both my practice in building and my practice in being human.

The week starts with an opening ceremony where we all come together and the sacred fire is lit. Supper and evening presentations follow, with lots of conversating whenever possible. Mornings begin with a gong (!) at 5:45a, a sunrise ceremony, and a hearty breakfast. Then we all disburse to get involved in the various projects, stopping for lunch, the occasional nap or presentation (sometimes nap and presentation) and 5 o'clock swim (the pond is longer when you are in the middle of it than what it looks like when you are on shore). A kick-ass vegan supper is followed by more presentations, with a fire circle afterwards for those who can stay awake.

As usual, there was a whole pile of projects to get involved in.

Sauna
Last year, the straw bale sauna was erected down by the main building. With a tarp-covered roof held up by a gorgeous and complex timberframe, it was just crying out to be completed. The single coat of lime plaster that coated the exterior had not fared well over the winter, so the first task was to knock about half of it off to expose the bales, leaving that which was stable enough to remain. Clay slip was applied to the bales, and then a couple coats of earthen plaster, bolstered with Ed Raduozo's shredded government documents, went on over top. The Thunder Mountain crew will likely finish it off with a finish coat of lime before the weather turns. Jim Luckner oversaw the whole operation.

Inside, Deanne Bednar led a crew of enthusiastic plasterers in laying on two coats of tawney earthen finish plaster over a base coat of lime. Ready for benches and a fire in the stove!

Eric Hempstead and Jim Luckner devised a clever canopy to shade the roof, and then installed battens over the roof substrate. Then crews went to work installing white pine shingles, getting the whole roof done by the colloquium's end. In spite of my intense fear of working with wood, I did succeed in spending a whole entire day nailing shingles onto the roof (and sneezing), and I ended up having a blast. Thanks, John, for your patient teaching.

Ceremonial building
Frank Meyer and David Eisenberg were among those leading the charge to spruce up the plaster on the ceremonial building. Flaky lime plaster was scraped off and new cement stucco applied and coloured. The building's exterior wall plaster also got a face lift in parts, covering over the mottled green exterior with a smooth and sophisticated plaster/fresco combination. Can't wait to try that at home.

Inside, Steve Paisley and Kevin Connors went to work, cutting out a hole in the strawbale wall to make room for a Rumford fireplace. Now at last the building will have a heat source and be usable year round.

Birdhouses and tree people
Ed Raduozo mixed up his sumptuous clay plaster which owes much of its richness to the high paper content: shredded government documents procured from the US patent office. Wattle and daub birdhouses and tree people ensued, much to the delight of children and adults alike.

Ger making
Kylie Baker, fresh off the plane from Mongolia, spent the week leading up to the NBC, and the entire week of the colloquium engaged in building a "ger" (the Mongolian word for "yurt"). She made it all, from the lattice walls and rafters, to the door frame and the smoke hole. Dedicated helpers kept the ger going and it was finished in time to raffle it off on the colloquium's last day. At the same time as she was constructing the frame, Kylie was also leading felting workshops and managed to create several large pieces of felt that will form the door of the ger when they're stitched together.

Timberframe barn
Sarah Highland designed another treat for NBC-goers: a timberframe barn. I spent a couple sessions using Sarah's ancient drills and chisels to form mortises in a post. At the end of the week, we had a barn raising, installing two of the five bents that will make up the form of the barn. This work requires many hands and lots of focus, and Sarah led the raising with clear instructions, calm demeanour and a sense of humour.

Sessions
In addition to all that work, we enjoyed a number of sessions and conversations including:

• The high art and subtle science of scrounging: Jim Jutzak
• Zero energy housing in Buffalo: Kevin Connors and Dave Lanfear
• Green Maps: Deanne Bednar
• Process-oriented worksites: Erin Condo
• Codes update: David Eisenberg
• Building and travelling: Sarah Highland
• Desperately searching for gers in Mongolia: Kylie Baker
• Music and open mike: Frank Meyer

I am so grateful to the PeaceWeavers for creating this space that I where I can be every summer, and to my family for supporting me in having this time away.

Bronx Zoo

I recently came across this video about The Bronx Zoo's composting toilet facility. As you can see by the video, the opportunities to educate around water use, sanitation and sustainability and are immense. If only Toronto would follow suit and get behind (no pun intended) the earthen building/composting toilet project at Dufferin Grove Park, it could benefit from the kind of extensive publicity and goodwill that New York City generates at its facility. I have hope that Toronto will see its way clear to taking advantage of this opportunity in its own back yard.

Dufferin Grove Park

In 2008, I wrote a piece about an exceptional project I was involved in about five years ago that involved kids, dirt, and and the approval and support of Toronto's (then named) Parks and Recreation Department. I wrote:

"That all of this could happen was the result of a fruitful partnership between the City of Toronto Recreation staff and me, the project organizer. The recreation staff took this to be part of their mandate to provide free, drop-in activities. They expanded the boundaries of "recreation" to include activities that draw in many more newcomers, across cultural lines. That made the park so much livelier, and this drop-in activity resulted in a permanent, useful and much-loved addition to the park.

Forming a project around these principles requires something very important from the organizers/administrators: trust. They need trust that people are able to decide for themselves what is best for them, trust that people can be counted on to do good work, trust that people will come and take advantage of an opportunity presented to them.

A program free of coercion is one that truly honours the participants, and one that will reap benefits well beyond the original expectations of the organizers. Do we have the enough trust in each other to offer this of ourselves and our city?"

Parks, Forestry and Recreation (PFR) is currently in the process of making sure that something this creative and inclusive never happens again. By shuffling Recreation supervisor Tino DeCastro and many other supervisors to new jobs and away from the communities within which they have worked, sometimes for decades, PFR is effectively severing the connection that allowed the kind of collaboration between people and parks that made the cob wall project possible.

You can read my original post here, and you can read more about the current PFR situation here. If you'd like to add your voice to the chorus of those concerned about these developments, click on that second link for more information.

Rumford fireplace visit

I am fascinated by the concept of a Rumford fireplace; an open hearth that sends more heat into the room than it loses to combustion air, and one that charges the thermal mass around it to store and release heat radiantly (and conductively, depending on the design) long after the fire is out. I have built an outdoor Rumford, and have helped with another outdoor model and an indoor proof-of-concept retrofit, but I have not yet had the pleasure of enjoying a fire in a full-blown masonry fireplace of this type.

Last weekend, my family and I had the chance to visit some folks not far from where we live who have a Rumford fireplace in their off-grid strawbale home. They lit it up for us and, wow, it was a revelation. The room, already comfortably warm on that chilly night, became instantly cozy, with a handsome and robust fire blazing in the hearth. The fire hugged the back of the fireplace, and smoke was whisked up the chimney without straying from the amazingly shallow firebox.

In the paper

Photo by Bill Henry

Reporter Bill Henry came by the other day to interview my family about our new "low impact" lifestyle. The resulting article was published today in the Owen Sound Sun Times. Can it be that my arms are really that long?

NBCO 2009 Highlights 2

Wood brigade from Georgie Donais on Vimeo.

A few more highlights:

Open Space: Colloquium means "to talk together", and we natural builders had a lot to talk about. To make sure everyone got a chance during the afternoon sessions to have the conversations they were craving, James applied a process called Open Space. Anyone who had a topic they wanted to cover/presentation to make/question to ask, wrote it down on paper and posted it on a board. Then we were all invited to come read the postings, and put a dot beside the events that we wanted to attend. Then, all events were arranged by venue according to the number of dots; lot of dots meant a bigger venue, fewer meant a more intimate space. I've never seen a process work so smoothly or include everyone so readily. Very impressive.

The Law of Two Feet: Directly related to Open Space, this law states that, if you are no longer getting out of a presentation/lecture/conversation that which you would like, then it is your prerogative to (respectfully) remove yourself – with your two feet – and take yourself where you would rather be. No insult implied nor inferred. This reminder to take responsibility for our own fulfillment at the colloquium made sure that attendees were enjoying themselves, finding challenges that were appropriate and interesting to them, and avoided a whole load of potential bellyaching by participants that wished for something different than what they were getting but imagined they were obligated to stick it out.

Silks: I struck up a friendship with a couple of attendees who also study aerial silks, and they were only too happy to join me in silking most afternoons. They've been taking classes for much longer than I and so had much to teach me. I had a couple of moves for them too, but mostly they just kicked my butt. Four years older than my own kids, and also unschooled, they were a blast to hang around with and learn from.

Conversations: At one point, organizer and natural builder James asked us, "How many people's most memorable conversations here at the colloquium so far have involved just one or two people?" Many of us raised our hands. Indeed, casual conversation during unprogrammed time is where much of the down-and-dirty sharing of information happens. It's also a chance to connect in with old friends who, like me, have been attending these events for years and count on moments like these to maintain those friendships.

NBCO 2009 Highlights

Music at Camp Latgawa from Georgie Donais on Vimeo.

A few of the many highlights of NBCO 2009:

Fleming College: I never get to see Chris Magwood and Jen Feigen except in the far reaches of the US, even though they are practically neighbours (well, at least spiritually; I think it would be a five hour drive from where I am to where they are, but at least we're in the same province). They presented on the Sustainable Building Program that they run out of Fleming College at or around Peterborough, Ontario. They have so far built something like five public buildings using every natural building technique I have ever heard of and even inventing several while they're at it. Their website is well worth a look, and you can also check out the pictures I took of the building they created in 2008, the Madoc Performing Arts Centre.

Natural building tip: Looking for a place to relieve yourself on your natural building job site? Consider designating one of those straw bales as the "pee bale". Apparently, it will never smell no matter how much it's peed on. Just make sure that its purpose is clearly indicated; you wouldn't want that particular bale making it into the wall.

Authentic living: In front of the fire in the mess hall, Bill Copperthwaite fielded questions about woodworking techniques, yurt-building and simple living. He also had plenty to say about education and, though he was not familiar with some of the terms that we unschoolers/life learners use, he was plenty familiar with the concepts. He also spoke about the evolution of his carving style, going from mallet and chisel to, eventually, a crooked knife with a toggle on it. And he demonstrated his technique throughout the talk, getting pretty far into creating a bowl by the end of the afternoon.

Code writing in Portland: There are a couple of kick-ass things going on in Portland in relation to building codes and natural building. Joshua Klyber presented on an organization called Recode that is working with the city of Portland to to help it support building practices that are sustainable but not necessarily, at the moment, legal. He is also a member of a city committee called the Alternative Technique Advisory Committee which "reviews sustainable technologies against building code requirements, to help applicants utilize innovative products and construction methods", which includes natural building.

Earthen floors: Sukita Crimmel talked about her experiences as a professional earthen floor installer. Her gorgeous work has been featured in both residential and commercial applications and range in size from a couple hundred square feet, to a couple thousand. Sukita shared with us images of her many successes as well as one or two learning experiences, including a floor where grains in the straw sprouted to such an extent that the room looked like a spring field planted to wheat. That one was a do-over.

The Elegant Collapse: The subtitle to Rob Boleman's presentation was "toward a complete bottom-to-top restructuring of human civilization". These types of presentations can be so depressing, but Rob gave us lots of hope amid the assertion that there isn't much time left for us to carry on the way we are. And then I hopped in a truck to take me to the plane that dropped me off by my car which I drove the rest of the way home. No cognitive dissonance there.

Facing code officials in Oakland, CA: Massey Burke shared with us her adventures in renovating an old stick frame home using natural building methods, and how she is working with code officials to make it happen. Seems like it's a combination of friendly persistence and obvious competence on the part of Massey and her friends, combined with some genuine curiosity on the part of the attending officials. Adding to the intrigue is the fact that her group is also building a collection of little nat-bild sleeping pods in the backyard at the time; not strictly code- and zoning-sanctioned.

Building a strawbale accessory dwelling in Portland, OR: Oh, the things you can do in Portland. Lydia Doleman and her crew have been building a small strawbale home in behind another house adjacent to hers in her Foster/Powell neighbourhood. Conforming to the look of the main house, the accessory dwelling is designed in the same Arts & Crafts style, and is sided instead of plastered. It is a full-on strawbale building, with earthen interior plaster, earthen floors, straw/clay dividing walls, recycled wood ceilings, and whatever other alternative building technique they could squeeze into this little place. Code officials come and go, finding very little to comment on, showing mostly curiosity and an interest in helping get this project done. As in the California project mentioned above, there is a little building referred to as a "napping facility" in Lydia's backyard that could attract unwanted official attention but, magically, does not.

Contrast these experiences with the ongoing tug of war in Toronto over granny suites as evidenced in this piece written by Rohan Walters, a Toronto architect who is doing his part in moving our city towards a more sustainable and more humane future.