Thriving Creation Kins Domain, Fall 2016
Putting the roof on our timber-framed workshop structure has been on the agenda for a long time now. But I had two weeks to do it all this time around:
Working in streaks when the focus is high works best for me. Larry Haun’s famous carpenter’s tutorial describes a fast method of making “birds mouth” cuts. All rafters are stacked side-by-side on their edge. Then just two cross cuts are made by setting the saw blade at angles appropriate for your roof pitch. Once I started on the roof frame that morning, I did not go to bed until all the rafters were up and secured:
I rested the next day and then covered the roof with metal R-panels the following day:
My camera was my laptop there:
I also fancied up the cabin a bit, putting in cedar shakes on the upper level:
A friend of mine joined me for plastering the south wall of the cabin with site-made lime-earthern plaster. Other ingredients include sand, fine-chopped wheat straw, aged horse dung, two types of local clay and wheat flour paste. Plastering is usually done in three layers, and this is the first one called the “rough coat”:
We use reed screens for the reinforcement matrix set in plaster:
A hive of honeybees moved into this top-bar beehive of ours. They were attracted to lemon grass and a bit of beeswax I left inside the hive. The Fig tree on the right was the first one to set fruit among all our Figs trees.
The tipi was the very first structure at Thriving Creation. It has served us well, but soon will be converted into a gazebo with an earthen hearth:
Our pomegranate trees have gotten big now:
And produced a pretty good harvest this year:
We use free pallets wherever we can. One of my friends calls them “Lego for adults”. And I like that name for it. Here we used them for a privacy screen on an outdoor shower:
Next year we plan to host a plastering workshop. Stay tuned!