Establishing firm foundations!

In the last weeks at Mount of Oaks we have been focusing on refashioning our Common House. And we used this opportunity to teach a Natural Building workshop. Besides this, we have been busy welcoming people, sharing, living community and conducted our first official Open Day. 

Click below to enjoy the pictures...


Roof

Barbara is the best person to explain about the building process but she is too busy building. We hope you can get an idea about the process through the pictures.

The roof seen from beneath - isn't it beautiful?!

Foundations

A lot of digging!

Installing the drainage pipe

Gravel bags techinque

Walls

The walls are mainly done with straw bales 

Windows

 

The windows were one of the things that required more patience and time - Barbara is the sort of builder who makes art from her work - it requires time to reflect, try this, try that and she is always 'learning by doing'


Helpers

Edith helped us for a couple of weeks in the garden and construction in late September.

Eric's friends, Michel and Hannes biked all the way from Germany and stay with us a few days, just in the right time to help with the roof!

Our dear friend Pia also made us a visit and gave us a hand

Eric's dad, Jens was unstoppable and really gave us a precious help with the straw bale walls

Thank you all for your help, energy and joy you gave!

Garden

We had a great harvest of delicious sweet potatoes

New family members! Pedra had 5 chicks!

Open Day

Even though the weather was not the best, we had lots of fun and really enjoy welcoming new people. We plan to have more Open Days to give a chance to others to come and see how we live and what we are doing.

 
Thank you for reading! 
We look forward to any feedback from this post. If you are thinking of coming for a visit, just so you know we are winding down towards the winter - from mid Dec on we are officially closed. We will open our doors and hearts again in the early Spring.
 
At present  we are really focused on the OLIVE HARVEST - which will be the focus of the next post in a week or so......

Até já!