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.
A while ago I finished curving the straw bales around all of the windows downstairs and installing 3/4 plywood window sills. Upstairs, I hadn’t gotten all of the window sills/seats put in and had one windows to curve the bales on either side. I got those done today.
After finishing packing slip straw in all the walls, some of the plywood I had been using for forms was now available. I just had to rip the pieces to the proper width and cut them to the right length so that I could install them. There was only one window that needed the bales curved, the one on the west end upstairs.
It looks good to have the windows finished. I still need to do above them, but that will entail putting in some nice boards rather than rounding bales like I did downstairs. I’ll do that later.
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