What’s in the ground:

After a snow storm this weekend and due to the length of the next installment, I’ve decided to forgo the gardening tip this week. Tune in the next for the recovery from the crazy weather.

What’s going on at the homestead:

So I promised a surprise last week, and a surprise you all shall get. Two winters ago, while on the road with Hoots and Hellmouth at the PA Association for Sustainable Ag conference, we were all privileged to hear the keynote speech by garbage warrior and earthship builder Michael Reynolds. He spoke of these amazing closed system houses that provide their own heat, cooling, water, electric, and sanitation systems all while being built out of recycled trash such as tires and plastic bottles, as well as the earth.

It left a huge impression on all of us. Sean Hoots and his now wife (congrats you two) went to Taos to do a week long internship with Mr. Reynold’s company Earthship Biotecture. Their future plan is to build an Earthship on Sean’s family property in Georgia one day. I had the same idea. Not on Sean’s land, but on my future farm. However, being the impulsive sustainable maniac I am, I decided I couldn’t wait. So for the past two weeks, I have been building in my back yard what I am pretty sure is the first Earthship Greenhouse structure in a major US City.

The idea came to life after I met the amazing and talented Rashida Ali-Campbell. Along with being the executive director of the non-profit LoveLovingLove, she is also in the process of bringing the first Urban Earthship house in the United States to Philly. Her vision is simple. An Earthship not only will divert the mass of tires and trash that are routinely dumped in poverty stricken sections of Philadelphia, but it will also provide an affordable housing option for residents who live in these depressed parts of the city. After one afternoon with her, I was convinced that earthships could change this city.

So we kept in touch and I invited her to come do an Earthship demo as part of the Philadelphia Folk Fest green initiatives. While doing the demo, she brought along Eric Fulks. Eric resides in Richmond but is a student of the world. He did an Earthship Biotecture internship for the month of September and also has plans to start his own building and design company. After conversation between the three of us, the idea was born to build the Earthship Greenhouse at Emerlad St. Farm.

After riding up and down Hancock St. for 1 hour, I was able to find 70 tires just on the street. But contruction went much slower. It took us three days and countless volunteers to pack the tires with earth, which is an extremely frustrating task. But as I told a group of really awesome young boys from Germantown who had come out with one of the boy’s father, not only were we building a super strong wall, but we were also building a built in battery. Once those tires and thermal mass charge from the sun, the will be a very powerful heat source.

But how does the sun come through you may ask. Well, to allow for solar energy to pass through, but to make a barrier a bit stronger than a sheet of plastic, we stacked plastic bottles in between the studs of the south wall.

Once they were stacked in, I then sheather them with another layer of plastic, thus making a clear wall that traps air while letting light shine through. On the South east side of the greenhouse are reused windows and the roof is made from recycled corrugated plastic. That was our biggest cost at $220. But the rest of the hardware came to about $80, meaning we built a functioning greenhouse for $300. For those of you who have never worked in a greenhouse, that’s outrageously cheap.

And here’s a cool side view into the finished product. As you can see, we are running rain water off of the roof into rain barrels that we will use to water the plants. I’ve also begun putting wood chips on the floor and soil in there for heat. And I plan to do vermicompost, as well as cobb the tire walls for heat retention. I will admit that this design is by no means perfect. It takes a good deal of experimenting. But what Michael Reynolds has accomplished in the last 30 years is amazing, and I hope that his brilliance comes to Philly. Both to solve our problems with poverty and waste, but also to inspire us to the possibilities of human ingenuity on this planet.

So please, stop by anytime to check out the greenhouse and look for more about Earthship Biotecture coming to Philly in the next few months. Until then, this is the note from Urban Homestead.