The Year of Mud in 2011

Ok. So the “Year” of Mud has now been nearly three years since its inception. Whoa. But I like the kinda quaint, although perhaps misleading name of this little project of mine, so I’m sticking to it.

Anyway. 2011 is here! Time flies as fast as ever, if not faster, and before I know it the time has come around again to start planning for the new season. Unbelievable.

Each winter I like to come up with a list of projects I plan to tackle. Last year April and I kept a master To Do list with all of the larger projects we wanted to accomplish. Amazingly, we were able to cross off most of them.

This year, I plan to do the same. I have a few ideas of what will keep me busy building-wise this year.

The cob woodshed is currently unfinished and needs soil on its roof, plaster, and possibly a floor, depending on if I decide that it’s actually necessary. I don’t expect those things to take too much energy, thankfully.

I’m eyeing up the house and planning on constructing a very tiny greenhouse addition – mostly for the purposes of supplemental heating in wintertime. This will again pose an interesting creative opportunity — how does one add a greenhouse to an existing cob house? I have no idea. Yet. But I’m excited to think about having that source of free heat!

The kitchen has a lot of work left remaining, certainly more than just this year’s labor. Wabi-sabi (the sub-community I am part of) is going to seek out work exchange help from folks with timber framing experience. Maybe that person is you! Anyway, in the coming weeks I will post an “ad” seeking help with our 2011 kitchen construction. Those with timber frame experience, take note. This is an exciting project that will hopefully get its due attention this year.

And then there’s always the non-building side of life… all the gardening and food preservation, beekeeping, potential chicken raising (this may be our first year raising poultry), and all of the million other day-to-day activities and responsibilities of life at Dancing Rabbit.

It’s gonna be another fruitful year, I think.