Every Sunday I've been getting together with some friends to work on various permaculture projects. It's something that's become a trend for several years now. There have been several ebbs and flows over the course of that time but the general trend has been ever climbing. These days, Sunday workday/potlucks are the norm for me and my circle of friends. Just over this past year we've built several gardens, re-landscaped a housing co-operatives front entryway and built a few aquaponics systems. During the month of February, we took to a natural building project that will soon become a large new greenhouse. 

For this project we knew we wanted several strong, well insulated, walls. Going into the project we already had an idea for a natural building technique using woodchip mulch of which, we just happened to have a surplus. Also on hand was a large bale of weathered paper pulp left over from a previous papercrete project. Mixing in a little lime and concrete we came up with a surprisingly strong structure that sets nicely and shows very little evidence of slumping!

Check out this fun video I put together!

This is definitely an experiment and I look forward to the results... whether they be full of successes or failures (or both!) they will most certainly be educational!! 

The good news is that we have a structure to experiment with that isn't intended as a living space. So, should there be failures on any level (even catastrophic) we'll be able to recover and, best of all, we'll learn a great deal about how to do it better the next time!

After the "mulchcrete" wall is plastered we'll add the greenhouse panels and plastic over the top and begin to build our new aquaponics system, propigation table and guinea perch (we need a warm place to shelter the guinea hens when the weather turns bad.)

Stay tuned for updates to that project and others were working on as they develop.

Some of the things on our list include...

More aquaponics!
a DIY rampump
a street drainage filtration system
grey water
outdoor kitchen and shower
food forestry
passive irrigation for your kitchen garden using mini-swale double-reach beds (a design favorite of mine!)
the list goes on... please stay tuned!

And if you live in Central Texas or the DFW areas and would like to get involved contact Community Cultivators through our listserv at CommunityList at communitycultivators dot org