Earth Homes

Earth Homes Food Forests and Natural Wellness – A life worth living

We are fascinated and passionate about building natural shelter and dwellings from the log and sod earth lodges to the architect designed earthship wonders.

And while we admire these amazing adaptatons, we’re particularly interested in doing it on a budget, using natural resources, discard and community help.  Just as  a group of North Dakota Native American residents did when they built an amazing earth lodge from log and sod, in just 12 days. 

 It’s a wonderful feat and didn’t take a heap of people.. just a group willingness to make something happen.  We are not experts, but we are investigators, and creators and we pull together information and begin to form our own ideas.. knowing that help is always around when we need it.

These people have the spirit… no wonder their project was so successful…

Earth homes – the new trend?

All over the world more and more people are building homes and villages from cob, straw bale, adobe, logs and other natural materials. 

Some of the modern bio-technology is astounding.  Earthships are our ‘top of the range’.

Earth lodges are built on walls and foundations of tires packed with earth with integrated solar systems, collection and recycling of water and waste, temperature control, gardens and irrigation, greenhouse systems.  

At the other end of the scale people are building underground shelters or tiny log cabins to shelter and keep them safe.

And nowadays enterprising earth builders are combining repurposed modern goods [discarded windows, doors, cans, bottles, tires, picture frames, metal etc] and combining them with time-tested natural regional building methods.

People are making their own solar panel systems, like this one on the left, hardly visible as it slopes up to the face the sun, set up on a log from the forest, above and behind the earth log home it will service.

Living like this doesn’t mean living with no facilities. It means adapting ways to create energy and losing less of it. Instead of plugging in a heater, you gain exercise and free fuel by cutting it in the forest and using a wood stove [we got ours for free on craigslist]….

Instead of turning on the oven, we cook meat, bread, soups, coffee on the stove. We keep a pot of water boiling constantly on the stove.

Instead of using the city sewage system there are loads of plans and videos out there on how to use a composting toilet system that provides after a year of decomposing a rich natural fertilizer for the garden, complete with worms, microbes and fungi of the most useful kind for soil enrichment.

We, for example would keep our satellite internet for as long as we can… and conserve our computers by using battery power and not leaving them on all day.  

An RV based Earth Home – One of our plans

We have two RV’s bought and paid for.   One of them is a Fleetwood Southwind with a bedroom area, shower room and small kitchen area.  It’s shabby but all the bits work.  The other is a larger Bounder  which is light and airy  inside with a leather sofa and chair, plus a separate bedroom, DC appliances, a bathroom and outdoor shower.  Like all RV’s they’ve got lots of storage inside and underneath and even above..

 We have this idea to find somewhere we can dig the RV’s into and earth them over in some way.

We are looking at modern technologies such as special paint which, with one coat, provides serious insulation from cold and heat.  

We are also looking at packing the Rv outside with tires, or other discarded materials.  

We could build a log earth lodge kind of covering which would completely cover the RV’s…and blend them into the background.

We may stuff hay underneath the RV, covered with something to keep it out of the works, and use that as natural insulation.

We may use old windows [we have the windows discarded from a remodelled house]  to form a passive solar type sunhouse that warms the inside during winter.

We will surely find a way to harness the energy of our amazing Fisher wood stove. This may be on the deck between the two RV’s side by side but at one end coming nose to nose.. thus creating a v shape..

We can cover this area with something we’ll come up with, leaving a chimney vent of course, so that this becomes our heating, clothes drying, cooking area…with wood stored just outside..and inside to dry and like that the kitchen connects to the closest part of the garden.. the greenhouse.

Perhaps next to this we will secure the portable 6′ x 3′ x 4′ lightweight plastic greenhouse so that it can benefit from the heat of the stove…In the greenhouse we can sprout, grow seedlings for spring planting and experiment with growing warmer-climate foods.

All around there is stuff that you can use from forests full of seasoned deadwood and standing deadwood for logs, supermarkets putting out heaps of cardboard, old tin roofing, barnwood..

And then there is the natural sod, and bales of hay readily available locally.  All it takes is imagination, adaptability, an eye for discard, the willingness to ask , and the courage to just do it…like Lamar Alexander. We suggest you get his amazing book on how to create a cabin in the woods, with explicit simple instructions for EVERYTHING in there and a lot more.

Please tell us about your earth homes…and earth home ideas…in the comments