Ahead we go:-)

Much has been done again since I wrote here for the last time...time is running and so does Gede's crew and sometimes I feel that the speed of development is nearly too much, a constant challenge...but it's good of course, nothing to complain about:-)
The search for the right materials is sometimes very time consuming, now I am after copper pipes and fittings and affordable tanks of the right size for the hot water systems I want to build...last week good quality pipes for waste water systems and again fittings, not so easy here on the island... Next week I plan a trip to Banyuwangi - East Java for that purpose...

The walls of the farmshop are up:-) Kids have school holidays now and our builder Gede had the great idea to involve some of the junior high school kids of the village, also some of their mothers were in the team, all together 35 people. As you can see on the pictures they had a lot of fun throwing the mud loafs to - and of course sometimes as well at - each other;-) So they could make some money in their holidays, got a foot in the project and learnt that it must not necessarily be very difficult and expensive to build a house with a group of people working together. Unfortunately the girls were missing, they did pop in to have a look but still seemed to be shy...

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Now the craftsmen are back again making the tables and inside walls.



Kitchen roofs and roof tiles are on, next comes the roof construction of the actual restaurant.



The garden hut got some more plastering and the young pigs start roaming around, they are about 3 times the size they were after birth. Very much fun to watch, they are really fast and therefore difficult to have their pictures taken...;-)



Brigitta's house is coming close to an end, finally the scaffold is down. Looks like we can move to the land pretty soon:-)



Views I love...

Let's get dirty;-)

Started "cobbing" 2,5 weeks ago. What a great experience!:-))) Hands and feet, mud, water and some rice straw and you are ready to build a wall. It is very satisfying, easy and basic and going along very well. And - as the Balinese would never miss a chance to make a joke - the job is a lot of fun and in times pure slapstick;-)



I decided to build a garden hut first as our trial project. If everything runs well until the end - which I am pretty sure of by now:-) - I will go ahead with this technique for the other buildings as well. Great room climate which you can feel by now already, no single piece of steel, no concrete;-) Love it!




What's next - the vetiver grass is drying in the sun to be used for the roof, I do some further research on a "recipe" for the plastering. The building and the vibes in it give me a very special, absolutely pleasant feeling:-)

The Gardens

One thing is for sure - it's not gonna be some bungalows and a garden. It's gonna be a huge garden and some bungalows;-)
The big orchard is being prepared, we plant "undis" - local black beans - for nitrogen supply and "ubi" - sweet potoatoes - as a ground cover for the young fruit trees. The vegetable garden will be a big mandala shape with 30 m in diameter.

The Grass Roof

The alang - alang grass is made into mats by village people instead of buying the already finished ones as actually during the last years it turned out that the quality of the bought ones was getting worse and worse...