British Columbia for the Summer

Logan and I accepted positions this summer at O.U.R. Ecovillage in British Columbia, Canada, about an hour north of Victoria.  It's a beautiful place to spend the summer. We are on the "building team" as assistant instructors to Pat Heneberry, founder of Cobworks and an amazing builder (see photos below). In addition to one other assistant instructor, nine 4-month building interns, and at least four 8-week interns (starting in late June), we are building a small cob cottage! It'll end up being close to 500 round feet and include a bedroom, bathroom, living room, kitchen, greenhouse, and utility room. It will be a timber frame structure with cob walls. So far, we've excavated the site and put in the rubble trench foundation.  Can you see a house emerging?

Excavated site with urbanite (waste broken concrete) ready to go in the trench

Urbanite stacked along the edges of the trench
and spanning the bottom (where the drain pipe is)

OUR modified rubble trench foundation system

One day, we took a field trip to see several of the beautiful cob houses that Pat has built on Mayne Island... 

Patrick Heneberry

                Pat and his family lived here for the past 5 years

The smallest of his houses we saw

This one is on a farm, built into the hillside

Connected bathhouse

The inside of the farmhouse. So gorgeous!

Eva the goat.  It's fun being around farm animals!

Our very humble abode.

There are all kinds of building projects going on here.
This is a larger house that is nearly finished.

one of the pretty ponds here

A partial view of the gardens.

This is a "micro-climate" we are also overseeing so a dwarf orange tree can survive the winters up here...
have I told you much about cob's passive solar qualities? 

For the next two weeks, starting tonight, we're taking a break from building and endeavoring to receive our Permaculture Design Certificates! Logan already has his, but he'll be helping to teach.  I'm excited to learn all the principles and practices and dive in with the other interns and participants. 

Here's a little intro to the concept: Permaculture is a branch of ecological design, ecological engineering, and environmental design which develops sustainable architecture and self-maintained agricultural systems modeled from natural ecosystems. More on that after I take it! 

I'll be here until mid-August and Logan will be leaving in mid-July, as he has decided to pursue his Masters in Environmental Management (Connecticut is up next for us).