Some of the negatives of building anything is that there is a footprint. We tried looking as many locations for the building and the one we settled on happens to cover 2 beautiful cedar trees. This location was the best location for future solar and disrupts the property's habitat the least.

IT was great to know that we could find a way to use the wood in the trees. A local business, JD's tree service was able to mill the trees right on our property.

It was sad to see the two trees go, but felt good that they were not going to the dump.

The following is a video I made on the process:

Thank you all for keeping up with our progress. The blog posts will come long after they are completed, this is partially for security of the site as well as to give us time to write the post.

I would love to start right in on Rammed Earth, as that is why we are so excited about this project. However we have found so few resources on actually completing a Rammed Earth project that we want people to see all of what has to be done for the project, from clearing the land, to dealing with permitting to finding a source for the Rammed earth mix.

The first step in the process (after deciding where the building will be) is clearing the land for the building. As you can see in the pictures below, we have a wonderful habitat for our property. Unfortunately some of it is where we will be placing the building (right where the car in the picture is).

With that said my father and I worked for several days and cleared the site for the building. My next post will be on the 2 trees we had to git rid of for the house. We will be making lumber.

Here are some before and after photos of the property:

Before:

After:

This is a Test of our new blogging program... the above picture is of a Ram it yourself class taught by Quinton Branch in 2006. Great workshop