Work parties and Visits with Inspectors

Life here at the Villa has been busy, apparently too busy for us to make time to post to our blog. Last weekend we had out first official work party, and it was a huge success. It deserves its own story, but the short update is that we have amazing friends who came and worked hard, and (I think) had a lot of fun. We got several garden beds dug, countless loads of manure brought in, and our first earthen wall built. The hybrid cob/adobe wall is on the street, delineating our parking from our garden. The reactions from the neighbors have been great, including people driving by, slamming on their breaks, and backing up to stare and look closer. 

The wall was built on Sunday, and on Tuesday we had our first building inspection for the foundation of the back unit. Our inspector turned out to be the supervisor named Tom. The first thing he said to us as he approached was "nice adobe wall". A good start. The foundation did not pass the inspection, and we were left with a list of things to do to fix it. The next day we got two inspectors, our regular guy named Joe, and another man. They were a bit more scrutinizing of the foundation and gave us yet another list of things to change. 

A while after they walked away we realized that they were standing on out driveway staring at the wall. Still without an inspectors stamp on our plans, and with two building inspectors staring at  our cob wall, our spirits were very low. Massey and I began the conversation of how easy it would be to disassemble the wall. As we were trying to decide whether to go talk to them or not, they started down the driveway towards us. With a bit of excitement in his voice Joe said, "How in the world did you get the idea of doing an Adobe wall?" Quickly realizing that they were not about to tell us it had to be removed, we talked for a bit about cob, adobe and earth bag building. 

The next part of the story is titled "how to get Massey and Sasha out of their really bad moods."  The next day Joe returned with yet another inspector. We thought perhaps we were so high maintenance with our never ending questions they needed two inspectors, but as it turns out they are just low on work they are taking the time to cross-train people from different departments.  After retying and moving seemingly endless wire and re bar (mostly Massey 

but with the help of all of us) in the most awkward positions under a house that you don't fit under in all places, we got the inspectors stamp of approval. As soon as the paper was signed, we started our bombardment of questions about out buildings, how to go about permitting experimental plaster, and wall height restrictions. Apparently the word had made it out about our wall, and despite the fact that it might not be totally legal, the supervisor from the first day had told them not to worry about it. So as Massey and I are talking about alternative methods with the building inspectors, one of them said to us, "this is very exciting, you guys are on the forefront of where everything is headed". We had to agree with that. We make our way to the front yard to again take a closer look at the wall, we show them a few books, and talk for about another half hour. 

The conversation ended with Joe saying he is going to see if he can arrange for us to give one of their weekly 1 1/2 hour seminars that all the inspectors have to sit through every Wednesday morning.   Apparently usually its someone from the industry, and fairly boring. We had to agree that our talk would be far more fun then listening to someone from Simpson talk about brackets. Joe proceeded to tell us how excited he is to watch the progression of the sheds in the back, and started his photo documentation by talking photos of the front wall and of the adobes drying in the back.

We didn't realize it at the time, but doing our first earthen project in the most prominent place was a really good idea. There is no possibility that we are trying to sneak something by anyone, and the conversations that have arisen from it have been fantastic.

Favorite quote of the day

"Stephanie₁ has a duck egg, and I have a pod₂ design " --Trilby, about 6pm

1.  Stephanie.  nine-year-old soccer superstar next door

2. pod.  adult version of a fort

Our newest arrival

We have a new addition... today 5 indian runner ducks arrived, and stepped out of a pet carrier into their new home in the southeast corner of the backyard.  Besides being facinating and humorous, they are good layers (a greenish-colored egg a day/ per hen), and love to eat snails and slugs, which we have in abundance. They will certainly be an entertaining addition here.  There is one drake, (male duck) who is distinguished by his voice, a curled up tail, and a green bill, and 4 hens.  Let me know if you have good duck names to suggest!

The ducks came to us rather quickly because I happened to be biking by the eco house in Berkeley just a couple of weeks ago and the duck keeper was moving, and looking for a new home for his ducks.  So, finding plenty of material to harvest from our very yard, I built a pen, which is hopefully critter-proof.   It is built from old chain link fence that was unnecessary (double layers of fence along several walls), old chicken wire I happened to find just hanging on that back fence, and the door is built from a dead tree on the property, and scrap wood (again, from those boarded up windows... all that wood sure is coming in handy). It continues to amaze me just how much material we are able to put to use that was already here.  The beautiful guadua bamboo you see is part of a recent find- someone's old burning man project in the bay area that needed to go immediately, and we were the lucky recipients.

Other exciting non-duck happenings include: a productive greywater planning session with a greywater guerilla,  Sasha breaking ground on her pod and getting ready for starting the earth bag foundation this week, bamboo bike trailer building, prep for foundation work on the  granny unit that should begin this week, and a great party, thanks to all you amazing people that were here!

Radishes: instant gratification!

I've grown radishes so many times, all the way back to when I was just a kid  squatting in my mom's garden and plunking seeds into holes, yet they will never cease to amaze me.    I gathered my first handful of radishes from our garden here today, and was filled with the same sense of excitement and awe I felt the very first time I ever harvested something.  I had to run around with the bouquet of brilliantly colored roots, a wild grin on my face, showing everyone the bounty.  They really are a gardener's instant gratification, easy and quick to grow,  beautiful to harvest, and deliciously crunchy and simple to eat right away sprinkled with salt.  

The soil here is heavy clay, great for our building projects, not so great for gardens,

so there are various ways we have been experimenting with building our soil and creating garden beds.  Today with the help of some volunteers, including our first traveling visitors(all the way from England and Ireland!), and our 9-year old neighbor (probably our biggest fan), we dug a couple of swales and built up two new garden beds in the back yard, using a method from  Toby Hemenway's book Gaia's Garden.   After using picks and shovels to break up the clay, we built up the following layers, wetting them thoroughly in the process:  

1) nitrogen, in the form of grass clippings a volunteer kindly clipped from the most lush place in our yard where the grass grows tall; 2) a layer of cardboard to suppress any grass seeds/weeds from growing through; 3) another layer of nitrogen, this time in the form of local horse manure; 4) flakes of straw laid out to be about 3-4 inches thick though double that would have been great had we had more straw; and lastly 5) a few inches of finished compost, that if deep

enough, makes it possible to go 

right ahead with planting while all the layers underneath decompose slowly overtime as roots and microorganisms make their way through.  We are wondering how root crops like beets and

 carrots will like this method. 

Full Moon Over Wildcat

A little before sunset tonight, the four of us set out for the hills.  One of the highest peaks in Wildcat Canyon is just about an hour away from our front door if you are going at a pretty fast clip. 

Within the park we walked up the slope, sidestepping grazing cows, and glancing over our shoulders at town below us as we walked higher.  Cresting the ridge you can see San Francisco across the water, and the big landmarks; Golden Gate Bridge,  Alcatraz, Angel Island, and on this side of the bay you see scattered bits of Richmond, El Cerrito, and even Berkeley (well the Berkeley Pier).  To the left the ridge grows higher, and rising and falling like a roller coaster, the Bay Area Ridge Trail creeps along towards Berkeley in the form of a brown ribbon on the vivid green late winter hills.

We walked to a bump on the ridge with a 360 degree view, and settled in to watch the evening show.  Spring peepers sang down below us in the marshy areas (although apparently Californians don't call them so) and we could hear the eerie cat like calls of a peacock far off, though no coyotes, which puzzles me.  Has anyone actually heard coyotes in urban areas? The sun sank in striations of color behind Mt Tam, and behind us, the golden orb of full moon changed from a glimmer on the ridge, to a misshapen blob, to a glowing orb that sat for a moment balanced on the crest of the hill before launching into the darkening sky as if pushed by little people standing on the next ridge over.  

Just another night in El Sobrante...

Gin and Rainwater

On the north side of our parcel (see photo to the right) there is about a ten foot span between the property line and edge of the house, which is full of juniper bushes. (I should say was full of juniper, until Trilby courageously tore them out with a few cuts and scratches to show for it).

Next year we plan on wrapping the north side of the house in straw bales to insulate the house, but figured that we can also use the shaded and underutilized north side to store our rainwater catchment cisterns.

Next Tuesday four, 550 gallon cisterns will arrive at our doorstep, and we'll replace the juniper bushes with 2,200 gallons of roof-caught rainwater - enough to provide us with about a third of our food-growing water for the summer (assuming we get more rain...).

Check it out! Ain't she a beauty? The cisterns are only about 4 feet high so we’re going to build storage cabinets on top of them, interspersed with some work tables as well. Always looking for ways to stack functions and efficiently use the space for as many purposes as possible...cabinets, workbenches, a dancefloor perhaps...

P.S. Hope you’re coming to our equinox party; we’re making a batch of homemade gin with the juniper berries we pulled out.

Villa Sobrante: What's in a Name?

We find ourselves making a home in El Sobrante, a fairly nondescript portion of unincorporated West Contra Costa County with a rich history - a mere 10 minutes from Berkeley (the big city!), a stone's throw from thousands of acres of open space in Wildcat Canyon, and just inches away from the wild turkeys and domesticated chickens that freely roam our street.

The name of the area, El Sobrante, comes from the Spanish verb sobrar. In common Spanish, sobrar translates as "to be left over." Local legend goes that El Sobrante was named “leftovers” because it’s the randomly outlined area nestled between Richmond, San Pablo and Pinole.

But the literal translation of sobrar means "to be more than enough." Thus, the literal translation of the noun el sobrante means “that which is more than enough” – or, simply said, abundance. Which is exactly what we intend to cultivate here. Quite fitting.

And our picturesque courtyard feels so very Mediterranean, protectively enclosing citrus trees and an endangered Guadalupe palm, that’s where the vision of the Mediterranean villa emerged. The word villa also connotes a retreat, or a family house surrounded by farmland. So that sort of works...

Hence, Villa Sobrante – the place of abundance!