Laughing Heart Living : Summer is moving on...

Summer has been full and festive at Laughing Heart! There's been lots happening that we all would have loved to share...but who wants to sit on the computer with all that fun work & play happening?! A brief catch up on the past several weeks...

The compost toilet tower was completed, the garden was thinned and fall starts & seeds planted, the kids started back to school, Hanna's foot healed a bunch, and there were many river adventures and lots of building!

Judy is now cozily tucked into her new home extension--the "barn", previously used for storage, was insulated, painted, carpeted and her trailer parked next to it with a portal built between the two. She's quite excited to have so much more space!

Earthbag domes completed!

And of course the earthbag building has continued...the domes were just completed a few days ago (more about the process coming up in a future blog). We've been blessed with many lovely folks coming to help with the building, either popping in for a day or two, or staying on for awhile to soak up the Laughing Heart loving vibe. Dinorah & Martin (Mar-teen) from Spain & Gloria from Italy were here for a couple of weeks to learn the earthbag building process...they were amazing builders and fun to have around! Our current crew consists of Andres & Ember, J.P. is here from Alabama, Dave from southern Cali (his third time here to help out with the build!), and Danielle & Ryan from Minnesota arrived on Monday...just in time to help out with the last day of dome building and just one day before Danielle's birthday!

This week we've been busy with many tasks to begin winterizing and setting up a better flow on the farm...patching the canvas tent roof, moving & cleaning solar panels, repairing irrigation systems, pruning & clearing brush.

J.P. clearing brush

Danielle & Ryan cleaning the solar panels

And we've started plastering the domes! We're using a cob mixture of earth excavated from the building site, fine aggregate, water and straw to create an insular layer over the earthbags. When this layer is complete, we will add one final layer of earthen plaster that will also have lime and prickley pear cactus juice in the mix to add to the water resistance, fire proofing and elasticity of the finish. We'll be plastering and adding other finishing touches over the next few weeks. If anyone would like to join the crew, contact Logan.