“No.. keep digging!” 
Tee hee.
Well, we’re this far in now:
and already I’m wondering whether it’s in the right place. “Is it wise to build so close to the path?” “What if the baby falls off the edge? We’ll need to fence it..” and “When you take into account the [straw bale] thickness of the walls, is it even going to be big enough?” being just some of the questions that plagued my mind as I worked yesterday. (Yes, I did some too!) It’s also fascinating to see what’s down there, to wonder how close to the surface the rock shelf is, and how far we’re going to be able to get.
There’s already a bit of an issue about where to put the subsoil. The topsoil is no problem: that’s going on the mound of cut brambles at the bottom of the field, to make a kind of midden of them. But you can’t do that with subsoil; it needs keeping with the other infill-type debris, though that mound is full and now complicated by the addition of some proper wall stones that don’t belong there at all. Aaargh! I keep telling the kids we’ve got to be organised!! But it’s falling on deaf ears, for the most part.
OK, I reassured my worried mind as I worked. So, we make a ledge and then decide it’s in the wrong place for Al’s house. So we’ve got a useful ledge! We need one of those (to store subsoil if nothing else.) Also, if we then carry on and build the house and it turns out not to be big enough, we can extend it. In fact, the plan is to extend it as soon as we can. We want to start small to get the hang of the building method first and work out how to source the materials without bankrupting ourselves, etc. To prove to ourselves that we can do this. Even if the first build ends up just being a tool shed or a glorified water harvesting system, it will be worth it because of the experience we’ll gain.
So I’m not worried. Really I’m not. 
1 Comment
March 22, 2009 at 9:50 am
Duh, of course the right answer to “Are we in Australia yet?” is:
“No, but we soon will be if Graham Badman has anything to do with it!”