Midgård – Friday July 22th, 2011 – Day 12
Today Willy and I continued working with plastic at the frontside of the south wall.
After having attached the plastic properly, I continued on my own building up the facade, while Willy focused on getting the lath up on the roof.
After building up the front facade underneath the windows, me and Daan attached a chicken wire just up to the bottom, and continuously attaching it further and further up as we filled up with straw behind it.
Karl and Daan made a new batch of cob to plaster this over the chicken wire, while I continued with the plastic on top of the windows.
Karl accidentally stepped on a nail and had to go to go to the hospital to get a tetanus shot, so Daan and I plastered the chicken wire with the cob and started to build up the triangle-wall that makes the angle of the windows, also using cob.
As we have such a low amount of clay in the soil on site, we are unsure about how it will keep up in the end. This is an interesting experiment though it may point out that clay isn't that important; if the soil and sand is mixed with cow manure.
Willy reached a point where he could no longer continue with the lath without removing the simple timber structure that held the tarp as our roof, so we had to disassemble it.
My father also pitched in on the roof for a few minutes.
Willy nailed the last lath just as the first drops of water came and we had to put the tarp over the roof.
Tomorrow we have to continue with the ceramic roof tiles and get it done before we leave.
It feels sad to leave. This is what I want to do for the rest of my life and everything else back in "reality" seems unimportant and completely insane. I already long for coming back here next time.
Midgård – Saturday Julyth, 23 2011 – Day 13
Today we worked as fast as possible, putting the tiles on the roof. The reason was today we will leave. We soon realized that the ceramic tiles where of different sizes and there even were some made out of cement in the pile.
Willy got on with sorting it out while I continued with the facade over the windows.
After Willy got a view on what tiles where available, Wesley, Alex and Daan looked further for available tiles and brought them to the Loo. Willy layed the tiles assisted by Daan.
After it was done, Willy and I nailed some chicken wire just like we'd done underneath the windows. Meanwhile Sebastian and Daan made finished off the roof with wooden edges and soon it was time to start cleaning up the site a bit.
I will return here within a month to try and finish what I can but for now the toilet at least has a roof and the cob-mix can dry out completely. Then we will see how it holds up. Maybe we even could get hold of some bales to close the whole building.
It doesn't look like much but that was not the goal. The goal was to build an Earthship-compost toilet from as much materials found on site as possible. We had to buy some wood and screws, but over all, this project has so far costed us about 1000 SEK ( € 100,-) and that's not much for the experience we all gained from this project.
I long to see Midgård flourish as a community with lots of interesting buildings and people that all work together in harmony with its surrounding nature. And I hope to be a part of this all.
We said goodbye to Kevin and Sandra, our friends from Belgium, Estonia, Latvia and Denmark and went back to Gothenburg. I hope to see them all next year and perhaps we will have our own project started up by then.
Text: Marcus Lewitzki, Earthship Sweden
Photos: Sebastian Strasser, Earthship Sweden and Jos Brone, Earthship Belgium
Thanks to Earthship Sweden
If you can afford to help 'The Midgård Blackship' with a donation we will make sure Kevin and Sandra receive the money.
This might actually provide the much needed money for the roof insulation in time to get them into the earthship before winter as they have reached the limits of their own possibilities and are facing hard times.
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