Happy new year! Another year (of mud) has come and gone. They move quickly, these years. After 10 years of living in the Berea area, and 8 years at South Slope we’re past the point of getting established and firmly in the routine phase of living life. Our life is here. There’s a familiar flow to the seasons. The details may change, but we know more or less what to expect with each passing season.
This was a summer of firsts in some respects.
After many years without animals, we finally got chickens on the land. We haven’t raised chickens or ducks in years, and I have to admit that the sound of the chickens alone adds a new dimension to the day that I appreciate. (I was very very reluctant to add a new “daily project” this year.)
This was also the first year in a while that we haven’t started a new building project at home. And thank goodness. We still have plenty to finish up between the few on-going (and yes, some long-running) projects. I’m fine with that. It’s my personal goal to spend more time finishing what we have and getting to some much-need maintenance. The temptation to do something new is always there, but it can wait. Patience. There’s plenty to do already.
The bustling summer and fall seasons are finally coming to a close. We just wrapped up our final Natural Building Essentials Workshop a few weeks ago, gardening season is long past, and it’s nearly time to start hatching plans for 2023 already. It’s been a year to remember.
Well, here we are again. Another year (of mud, timber, gardening, challenging weather, the pandemic, parenting, life on earth) for the books. In many ways, 2021 was a continuation of 2020. So many ups and downs. So many glimmers of both hope and despair. We all need a collective pat on the back, unironically. It’s impossible to pretend that things are “normal”. It’s hard to know what to say after a while without repeating myself. And so this annual recap exercise takes on some new meaning.
Beyond the pandemic and the continuing torrent of challenges, there’s a host of things to remember and celebrate. I can fall prey to pessimism pretty easily these days, so this is good practice for me. Life is indeed full, and here’s a glimpse of some things worth remembering in 2021.
As we all know, it’s been a rocky year (uhhh, at best). However, I want to take this opportunity to share some updates about workshops and natural building happenings. I also want to take a moment and find something positive to celebrate about the past year. I hope you can do the same.
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This summer, April & I were interviewed for the winter issue of New Pioneer magazine. In it, we talk about our natural building journey and experiences living at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage and moving to Kentucky. It’s been a long time since I built the cob house that started all of this business (9 years ago, in fact). And even though it was only recently that we sold our straw bale house, we began work on that structure 5 years ago.
Doing this interview conjures up all those weird feeling associated with time and memory — like, some things feels so far away yet so recent at the same time. Anyway. Jereme did a great job with fact checking and this story gets my “yea that happened” stamp of approval. The article captures our story of learning how to build with mud and straw and all the mistakes and successes along the way.
You can purchase the winter issue of New Pioneer magazine here.
The number one rule of trying to maintain a homestead seems to be this: there’s always something else you could be doing. Even when there’s a lull, really, it’s just relative to the busier times… because it’s not that there’s nothing to do, it’s just that stuff won’t fall to bits if it doesn’t happen this second. Thankfully, April and I are getting better at not taking on too much at once, and having a toddler has certainly been helping us to hone that skill. We joke that we operate at 40% capacity with Hazel in tow. Well, it’s actually not a joke as much as it is the truth. Naturally, priorities are different now.
Where am I going with this? Well, in our second year on this land, the deeper realities of being a landowner/land steward/enter your preferred term here is definitely settling in. It’s a pendulum really. One moment I feel like there’s no way we can keep things up, and then the joy of even the smallest bit of progress washes my fears away… only to be repeated again and again.
This is just a bit of a thought experiment. I’ve been pondering the differences between the words “sustainable” and “resilient” lately, and if either of them apply to how we’re trying to live. I used to throw around the word “sustainable” a lot more than I do now, and I’d like to try to explain why I feel more cautious these days.
In textbook terms, sustainability means “the ability to continue a defined behavior indefinitely” (source). The key word here is “indefinitely”, which is defined as “lasting for an unknown or unstated length of time”. A synonym for indefinite is infinite. Practically speaking, what’s implied here is that if something is defined as sustainable, it means that it can be continued forever into the future.
Well, that’s a pretty heavy statement, huh? Going by this definition then, the phrases “more sustainably” or “less sustainably” don’t exactly make sense — there is only “sustainably”, since how can you do something “more infinitely” or “less infinitely”?
We finally have a name for ourselves…
After many months of head scratching and deliberating, our little piece of hillside in the Kentucky foothills finally has a name: South Slope Farm. Not only that, we’re now incorporated, too. My dream of becoming a corporation is finally coming to fruition… now, isn’t that strange to say?
Actually, South Slope Farm is not just the name of our homestead, but our small egalitarian community in the making. This is more than just a place to hunker down and grow food and plant trees and build cool stuff. April, Jacob, and I have been actively planning to cultivate a small intentional community for a couple of years now, and getting incorporated is just one of the steps towards that goal.
Hi there, I’m Ziggy. In 2008, I launched The Year of Mud while building my first natural home. This website is a collection of personal stories and experiences building with clay, straw, and wood over the past 15+ years. A few of the things that get me fired up are natural plasters, timber framing, & Japanese architecture. In 2012, we started offering Natural Building Workshops, so you can learn essential hands-on skills to build your own natural home.
