Another week, another offering from the pages of my Natural Building Diary. This is where I document the steps my partner & I are taking to build our future home with mostly recycled materials and those we are gifted directly from Earth!
Just like last week I wanted to show you all how our tiny workshop is going. This time our bottle wall is nearly completed. Now that the bottles are cleaned and the earthen plaster around them dry you can really get the feel for how this wall will look as the light shines through them each day.
Besides the pretty light they emit, we have another big reason for wanting to use bottles in this way. Unfortunately, we live glass isn't recyclable, so our only option is to put used bottles in the trash or recycle them ourselves somehow. This wall is a testament to all of the vodka-based tinctures I have made over the years.
And, of course, the left over of our wine tastings are being included as well. Here you can see the bottles surrounded by the cob mix as it dries. A lot of time and care went into molding this wall.
It isn't the fastest of techniques, and I certainly wouldn't build an entire house this way, I think the bottle walls are a lovely feature that we will admire every time we pass through to grab a tool from this shed.
The Bamboo Fence
Construction of the workshop/tool shed is our main priority at the moment though we do have several side quests going on too. Back home at the farm we have been slowly building a portable privacy fence with a local material called caña which is basically a type of bamboo. I am just gonna call it bamboo from here on out.
This project has been a team effort. I really need to shout out to my partner who cut the majority of this bamboo down (though I did help!). None of my natural building diaries would be possible without the support and guidance of my loving partner, Jona <3
And while I am at it, I should also shout out to our future neighbor's landscaper who cut down the hedgerow that was so beautiful and not only provided privacy and windbreak between our lands but also tons of habitat for wildlife. If it wasn't for him we wouldn't need to build this privacy fence in the first place. (A little dose of sarcasm).
But, alas, the damage is done and here we are weaving a privacy fence to go over the chainlink fence we installed last year.
This technique of weaving bamboo with wire isn't difficult but it does take a long time and a bit of concentration. We have three lines of wire that we double-helix-weave to keep the bamboo together. The weave has to be tight but not too tight. In the end we felt like it was "good enough" though far from perfect.
And alongside the other roll of bamboo fence we made a few weeks ago we have set it on the driveway where they will wait until we have two more and someone can help us out and haul them all up to the land.
Over the next two weeks we will be cutting down more bamboo from where it is overgrown and blocking the sunshine from the east to make a couple more of these rolls. We will also be continuing on with other phases of the workshop building process so, stay tuned for more Natural Building Diaries coming soon!!