Earth, Wind, and Water

We definitely made some decent progress with Oz, our earthbag shelter, over the last few weeks. We're on course 11 (more than half-way finished) and as the bags move inward the number of bags per course decreases. Unfortunately, it's been so dry that our clay, road gravel, and water fill has been a nightmare to replicate & has greatly added to our mixing time. Luckily, it's been raining all afternoon here in the Driftless!!!! Here's to a new week...



8 courses


So when you live off-grid (we're not hooked up to the municipal water, electric, or gas), you become very attune to simple changes in Mother Nature that you previously took for granted. Although, we don't have running water in our cabin, we are able to secure some liquid gold from our landlord's house spigot which provides water via an Amish-installed windmill. No wind & empty well = no H2O. The process is pretty simple & quite amazing--here's some photos of the whole system. Windy afternoon also = clean dishes!

Lever to turn windmill on

Cement Well cover

High-tech measuring apparatus to measure depth of water in well