This marks the end of Thursday, day 4 of my trip. I am currently the guest of Shaun and Nobiko Murphy, with whom I felt at home from the very first. Their house is beautiful, built over 15 years by Shaun's hands. Actually, it was built in 5 then promptly caught fire and burned down. He took a few years to recompose, then rebuilt it. You can see where he sandblasted off the charred timbers and reinforced them with iron. Like the pheonix, the house was reborn from the ashes even more beautiful than it was to begin with.
The Murphys live in a co-op, which is divided into 8 shares. The land (about 120) acres is cooperatively owned and managed. There is a hydro-electric generator that provides power for everyone. However, for the past 10 years the rainfall has been steadily decreasing (global warming), so it no longer runs year-round. All of the houses have solar arrays or petrol generators to supplement.
We are working on two projects while I am here. The first, which we started yesterday, is a chicken house. It is to be concrete block walls and a concrete shell roof. So far we have dug and poured some shallow footers for the walls (above). While we are waiting for the block to arrive, we have started excavating for the second project, which is to be a stone retaining wall on the north side of the house. Its not much to see yet.
I'll post more soon. My connection is slow here, so it takes a long time to upload pictures. Otherwise there would be more. Until next time, enjoy!
No comments:
Post a Comment