Introduction

The 57 acres that comprise Cedar Ridge Farm are located in the beautiful rolling hills of South Central Kentucky. My wife, our four children, and I are on a homesteading adventure as we work toward increased self-sufficiency. We grow much of our own food and enjoy being in touch with the agrarian roots of our lives.

One of the major projects we have undertaken is the building of our own home. The house we're building has three major distinguishing features: 1. we're building it without incurring any debt; 2. it is a timber frame structure; and 3. the exterior walls will be plastered straw bales. We live debt and mortgage free, and building our house with that approach makes perfect sense. Large timbers in a home possess a beauty and project a sense of strength, stability, and warmth that we want in our home. Straw bale walls provide insulation and make ecological sense. This blog is a record of our home-building project.

Monday, August 30, 2010

The straw bales are here!

It’s been a long but productive day. My dad, Jon, and I framed some interior walls defining the mudroom, laundry/utility room, and sewing room/study. We put blocking in around the edge of the porch between the vertical stringers. There were a couple other things that we also accomplished today, but the biggest thing was unloading 300 straw bales and stacking them in the house.

I don’t have photos yet – I’ll endeavor to post some tomorrow showing what we got done. We’re almost ready to start stacking bales in the walls.

Thanks to Tyler for delivering the bales and helping unload them.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Woo-Hoo on the bales!! Can't wait to see pics :)