First, there will be a house, and then..,  yes.., then what?

Then we have a wonderful beautiful house and a humongous piece of land to do “something” with.
What that something is I will try and tell you.

Size Matters

I guess by now you have all seen the lay of the land.
At the front of the land, the first 50 meters are for building the house the rest of the 150 meters is “farm” land.

I have to admit it looks a bit weird, small and very long but I can tell you that I ran the 150 meters to the end of the land and I was out of breath after doing 3 quarters of the land. Now, that can mean that I am out of shape, which is totally true, but it can also mean that 150 meters might not seem so big on paper but is huge in real life.
We had this romantic notion to make a terrace at the end to enjoy the view, but I am pretty sure that when you take a cup of tea from the house and walk to the terrace, the tea will be cold by the time you get there.

Growing Stuff

So what are we going to do with all this:
At the end which slopes a bit down we are going to plant some willow trees. Willow trees have long thin branches which are fantastic for weaving fences etc. which is what we want to use it for, sure it will take a while before we have enough willow to weave a fence but who cares, we’ve got time.

In front of the willow trees, ( where the land is not sloping down) we will plant an orchard with apple, pear and plum trees. Maybe even a cherry and walnut tree. Although I am not sure about the walnut because it will take a very long time before we can harvest walnuts.

will try and plant these fruit trees this winter because it will take a few years before they will produce fruit. This way we will get a head start and they won’t stand in the way while build of the house.

Somewhere between the willow trees and the orchard we will have bees, I know next to nothing about bees so I don’t know yet which spot would be best for them but there is still time to learn about that and enough land to find a decent spot to settle them.

Animals too

In front of the fruit trees we will have the chicken coop and maybe in a much later stage, goats (still not sure about the goats though, I need to read more books on that subject).

I haven’t calculated how much land we will have left but I guess it will be plenty for a good size veggie garden a shed and a greenhouse.

I am so very much looking forward to the veggie garden. Right now I am trying to grow some vegetables in pots on a balcony and a 4×4 garden with 4 hours of sunshine a day.

There is a good chance that we still will have enough land available for a natural swimming pool but that is last on the list. We might be able to enjoy it for 3 weeks in a year but it would be fun right?

So there you have it. Bold plans but doable.
It will take lots of hard work, but if I close my eyes I can imagine how it will be like.

If you have any suggestions or ideas, please leave a comment.
And if you have a green intrest and want to help with the garden, instead of building, you can do that too. Again, please leave comment, or subscribe to the site.

For us it is clear that something needs to be done to sustain our way of living and one of the huge impacts on our environment is the way we put a roof over our heads.

In order to create a clean personal environment and to minimise our footprint we build “green”.

The goal of our adventure is to be as neutral to the environment as possible. We want this to reflect in everything we do. And our house is the largest and longest lasting part of the project. So it will get a lot of attention.

Earthships. A short personal history…

You may well be aware that for a long time we’ve had the intention to build an Earthship, hence the name of the blog. It completely fulfilled our needs the first time we laid eyes upon it.

And our needs at the time were getting off the grid. Earthships are capable of doing just that. Not all the systems they use and the way they’re integrated are completely original, but an Earthship is more than the sum of its parts and the combination works.., beautiful buildings can be made. I even made a floor plan based on the Trott’s Earthship.

But, as time progresses so do plans evolve. We meet people, read books and educate ourselves. Ironically, or maybe it’s just the way of the Universe, we met a young woman during a volunteering week working on an Earthship who studies to become an architect specialized in sustainable housing. Isn’t that brilliant? And isn’t that one hell of an opportunity, even our time-lines kinda match.

So, what are we going to build? Honestly.., no idea…, yet. The house still has to be designed.

But I can tell you some of the criteria, and obviously it has to be build as sustainable as possible:

Materials

The materials are, of course, very important, they define the building. As a consequences the choice of material is paramount to anything else, thus they have to be:

• locally purchased (getting it close saves on carbon)
• recyclable (for when the house is torn down, or rebuild)
• from a renewable source (minimizing our carbon and resource footprint)
• non toxic (we do not want to poison ourselves or the environment)
• recycled (mind you, a lot of stuff is already being recycled, disrupting existing recycle chains might do more harm than good)

They can’t, of course, comply to all of the above, but when all materials apply to at least one of the points we win something. When more can be applied even better. Getting our wood, for instance, at a local mill would tick of three of the criteria: locally purchased, renewable, recyclable and non toxic, ahh.., that’s four… not bad.

Not Expensive

Well, this is a cheeky one. Off course we don’t want to spend to much.., one of the reasons is, we don’t have that much to spend. Another reason is an exemplaryone. We’d like to show that people can build a self sufficient and sustainable home.

Off the Grid

As mentioned before, we’d like to be off the grid.
It is possible to buy “green” energy from the utility companies, but you’d still be depended on them. I would like to suggest that anybody who wants green power should choose that option, not everybody can go off the grid, or completly self suficient. I know we can’t in the house we live in at the moment.

So, in conclusion: We still have find a piece of land. After that we start designing the house. But, work is in progress, the architect is investigating possibilities and we are still searching.

Don’t forget to read the previous episodes: Process of Elimination and Off the Grid.

Comments and/or questions are welcome…