Slideshow: This Fall- It Was So Glorious I Couldn’t See
Here’s a slideshow of The Dacha Project this fall. Enjoy! Note- Play with music for increased joy.
homestead
Art Installation of the Month: The Gates at Dacha Project
The copycat art installation of the Gates serves two purposes.
The Dacha Project recreates The Gates at Central Park in an attempt to bring big city culture to the stix. You can see a visitor, Joe, enjoying the site and the magnificence.
Also we discovered that The Gates- luckily- serve a further function of marking where our footers will be dug. Thx Gates.
Also enjoy this photo of Gals Digging Footers, to prove that we don’t just make art installations but also dig footers. Thx Gals.
Gals digging footers for the addition.
-Lea LSF
Progress Report: West Side with Footers for the Addition
North side of the main house with footers and the start of foam for the addition.
If you check for the previous photo of the week you will see almost the same view, but some things have changed. For one the wing wall has been knocked out to make room for the addition. The berm, which is the earth piled up behind the wing wall, has been removed. The area next o the house has been leveled, and graveled. The back and side footers have been poured, and what we see Danila and Joe doing in the corner is stacking block. The pipes you see by Danila and Joe are for septic. They are currently working right by the bathroom. I will try to remember that one day when I’m brushing my teeth in that bathroom with some herby toothpaste or something else that makes brushing teeth more fun. Yey.
The foam on the ground is for insulation, and eventually the entire area will be covered with it.
The front footer has not been poured with the rest, b/c it will be poured with the slab (floor) itself to ensure extra strength. The foam on the side of the building is to insulate the wall where bermed earth used to fulfill that function.
More updates soon!
-Lea LSF
It’s Alive!!!! (Well… it should be in 6-9 months anyway)
On April 10th the Dacha hosted it’s very first workshop led by Danila on inoculating logs with oyster mushrooms! The event proved what a group of 15-20 novice naturalists can accomplish with a little knowledge, 750 spore infested dowels, and several drill guns. Although many of the attendees were new to mushroom growing, almost thirty logs were successfully inoculated.
To maximize efficiency (and to let everyone try their hand at each aspect of the process) the students formed a loose assembly line: drilling holes on all sides of each log (the hardcore part), whack-a-moling the dowels into the holes (the fun, anger management, part), and painting the holes with wax to keep them moist (the messy part).
To witness this feet of fungal mastery, check out the little wooded patch at the dacha, where the logs are casually leaning in a patch of dappled sunlight preparing to pop little white oyster heads.
-Torikins
Striking a pose with your inoculated mushroom log is said to encourage mycelium growth.
Recycled Wine Bottles Add Good Churchy Feeling
Visitors beware when you step inside the Dacha Haus you’ll see colors and glowing orbs. While not quite the illumination of the divine, all hail the awesome sun as it catches the diffused color of all-dry-now wine bottles.
Yes, after seeing many pictures on homestead blogs and in straw bale building books, we have joined a movement of people using recycled wine bottle as passive energy light fixtures.
We’re just at the beginning stages of this, but these photos are cool! For more visit my flickr Dacha Project set.
-LSF
Marina plugs up wine bottle-sized holes in the oh-no-zone layer (our insulation) with wine bottles.
Wine bottles! Cut in half, with the bottoms of each bottle tuct taped together and fitted into a wall.
Earth-bermed, passive solar Common House .vs. Snowmaggedon 2010
Before we forget how awesome the Dacha Haus Part One preformed in Winter ’10 here are a couple of photos of February. They are also to remind this summer’s building crew that as we build Dacha Haus Part Deux a winter in the Southern Tier is no joke, but that we got it on lock down!
-LSF
All photos by Joe Fisher.
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The key to solar passive is full frontage windows facing the south. They are placed at such a height that the house gets direct sunlight in the winter and indirect sunlight in the summer. This technique works around the sun's busy but well-established and much preferred primordial travel schedule- that is low in the sky during winter and high as a pie in the summer. The placement and size of the windows optimizes for maximum comfort, while minimizing energy use.
Danila and I are in shock that the Common House is so warm (see below) when outside it is like 18 degrees F! The snowbank behind us is caused by snowmagedden falling off the hell roof and onto the front field. I'm just back from Mexico, and feeling like this is warm enuf but where's the coconut tree?
Old Barn Boards Meet Restoration
We purchased some old for-cheap barn boards from the Fingerlakes Reuse Center to throw up as the ceiling of the straw bale cottage we built. Check out what some sanding and polyurethane and/or linseed oiling can do to a board. Will post photos of completed ceiling when that happens.
-LSF
Straw Bale Hijinks
The Dacha Project presents a short by Lea LSF. Starring Joe Fisher-Price, Danilatron & Lea LSF. For more info visit. dachaproject.com.
Strawbale Hijinks- A near silent comedy about the countless opportunities to act like a monkey one can miss if they choose not to build a straw bale cottage. Critically acclaimed as the must see monkey short of this fiscal year. Sponsorships welcome.
-LSF
[vimeo 10397150]
The Dacha Gets Plastered
Since our straw bale shed has been upgraded to the “Winter Palace,” it is time to plaster the structure and to fossilize our work for future archeological findings. We put on our clay covered uniforms and head out to work. Our main sources of power for mixing the sand, straw and clay are our hands and feet. And to prove that there really is straw under all those layers of plaster, we built a truth window.
The Truth Window