What’s in the ground:

I can’t believe this is our first August installment. The season’s flying. Traditionally, August is the hottest month in these parts, but from what I heard, it may be the coolest of the summer. So, I think it’s possible to get a jump on your lettuce season by starting some seeds now, and transplanting into a bed with row cover on top. By doing them inside, you can regulate the germination temperature and then protect the transplants from getting scorched with the row cover. Give it a shot.

What’s going on in sustainability:

It’s great to write for such a talented and sustainably minded band. Thanks to Sean Hoots’ curiosity from PASA, he and his partner took a great trip out to New Mexico for Earthship building classes. Please enjoy what he learned.

The Earthship Get Down

Earlier this Summer, the lady and I took a trip out to the desert of New Mexico to explore a funky concept, Earthship Biotecture. It’s a revolutionary new approach to designing, building and living in homes that are both sustainably built and entirely self-sufficient. Over the course of that weekend we sat in on lectures, toured the various structures on-site and got sweaty with some hands-on labor.

Upon our return, we were bombarded with questions about our experience out west, so we decided to throw a little shindig at our place and give a presentation of sorts to curious friends all in one fell swoop. Since the themes involved dovetail nicely with the m.o. of our Urban Homesteader’s blog here, Nic asked me to recount the essential points of our evening for you, dear readers.

While I regret that we can’t somehow transmit the experience of our tasty beet bites or creamy homemade hummus, I’m more than happy to give you the nutshell version of our presentation…

Simply put, Earthships are domiciles as living organisms. The concept is that your house should provide for your every basic living need because it is an extension of you. In building an earthship, you are building around yourself, utilizing materials from your environment, in harmony with that environment.

So, let’s think about your environment. The obvious “trees and rocks” come to mind as suitably stable construction materials, but to use them, we have to extract them, effectively working at odds with the harmony we are seeking to create around us.

Expanding the notion of environment, think about all the trash that fills it. Garbage has been with us for so long, it’s become a substantial part of our surroundings. Why not reconsider the notion of garbage…instead of accumulating it in worthless piles that only serve to clutter and destroy our world, why not put it to good use?

Tires. Rubber automobile tires. If you ram dirt into a tire with a sledgehammer, you eventually end up with a 300 pound brick with which you can build an entire house, no foundation, earthquake resistant. Seriously. It sounds overly simplistic, but it truly works.

Similarly, bottles and cans are suitable materials for finer work such as garden walls and archways. These materials are all surrounded with what is essentially adobe (dirt + water + straw), giving it all a very fluid, clean aesthetic. The look and feel is elegant.

Integrated into the construction of the building are the various systems that provide the household with electricity, heating/ac, water filtration, plumbing/sewage and food. Yes, there’s even a greenhouse built into the design of every Earthship. It’s tied in with the filtration and heating systems. Then again, everything is tied in with everything in this house. It’s an incredibly efficient machine.

Over the next couple installments of the Urban Homesteader I’ll detail each of the house’s systems and how they all work together. In the meantime, please check out Earthship.com for more details and info. They have lots of great pictures there to give you a better idea of what’s going on, too.