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, May 7, 2012

Work continues: packing walls

035Although it has been 7 months since I last posted, things have continued here on Cedar Ridge Farm. There is always something to do. When I last posted, my hope was to continue working on the house during the winter. That plan, however, didn’t really pan out, even with a heat source in the house. Nevertheless, since spring has arrived, the boys and I have been working on it.

The primary task we are focusing on right now is getting the rest of the interior walls packed with straw. Once they are packed, we will move on to things like plastering and plumbing. There is still a lot to do in order to be able to move in, but we’re hopeful that we will be able to get things completed by this fall.

Today, we finished packing the mudroom walls and the upper portion of the last wall to be completed in the master bedroom. Previously, we packed the walls in the laundry room.

Currently, downstairs we have to pack the wall between the bathrooms (part of this wall is packed), the two walls in the hallway (pantry and main bathroom walls), and one section of wall near the back door. There is still one room upstairs that needs the walls packed. Our current schedule is to work full days on the house three days a week. It is possible that we’ll have the walls all packed in a couple of weeks. It’s not a hard job; it just takes time. I still need to make an informative video on slip straw.

Here are some photos of what we accomplished today:

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Posted by dp at 6:17 PM
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