Family Farm Hostel now in stage two

Hey there happy campers, Mr. Mark back to the old writing thing, posting on the blogging.
We are happy to announce that our website http://www.wonfamily.net/ is now mostly ready to go and provide the main arena to show who we are, what we do and what we hope to achieve. The blog will now become the moment to moment life on the happy homestay hostel that we are trying to form. So thank you very much to Katherine for helping me, a total fuddy duddy on this machine in front of me that the younger generation have attached to them like an unopperable appendage!!! Blessed  me to them, for they help in the formation of our centre, where we hope to inspire all who come to engage themselves in creative, proactive coparticipative sustainable lifestyles. Words, words, words....Yet come and visit us to have acts as well, and then we are complete...
Later!

What is happening in November 2011?!?

Hello All!


Katherine, an ecovolunteer here, updating what has been happening. Some projects have been completed, and new ones are starting.

The pool has been cleaned, and is up and running, thanks for Tom, a volunteer who hung around and helped out for the last three weeks. We were sad to see him go, but everyone is thrilled to have the pool up and running in time for the upcoming Summer months!

One main project that we are all working on is the wall for the new shower house behind the main house and hobbit holes. Using earthen building techniques (wood palettes that serve as the foundation, with a plaster on top consisting of soil, clay, and manure to make a strong and eco-friendly wall) to build the back supporting wall. After we complete this and add the roof, there will be a shower stall, two toilets, and a sink.

Of course there is still the general maintence of everything, as well as soaking in the scenery and eating lots of yummy lacto-vegetarian food!

 A general view of the house. The hobbit hole and main house on the left. Plowed rows of plants in front. The pool on the right.

 The start of the back wall with wood palettes for the shower house.

 Adding the organic plaster substance to the wall, giving it strength!

Mark directing Jeanie and Nele to stomp. Squishing around to mix the manure and make the paste!

 Sol and Andy (daughter of Sol) hanging out with volunteer Mona and some neighbors, cooking in preparation for a food festival Sol sold her delicious tacos and pancakes at!

 Tom working on cleaning the pool, an event we were all quite excited for.

Some berries on nearby trees. We have been using them with other fruits for yummy juice midday!

One funny afternoon adventure was spent looking for the miniature horse of a friend of Manwell. Apparently the horse walked off the farm after someone accidently untied him. We split up into three search parties and did a couple of the walks around the block before it was decided that we could not find it. Fortunately, for us, the horse, and the boy that lost it, the horse had walked right back to his home nearby, but the opposite direction from where we were looking. A classic Argentine moment!

Until next time! Ciao!

Doin the Poo Dance

Monday we all had an exhausting but fulfilling day. In order to make the shed a more weather-proof place for seeding, Mark decided we should build adobe walls around the sides. Large windows would be left in the east and west facing walls so that sunlight could reach the seedlings that would be growing inside. Adobe construction uses all natural materials. First we dug up some rich soil and added leaves, water, hay, and oxen manure. In order to mix these ingredients together, Mark and I donned rubber boots and began stamping about in the mud. The proper name for the mixture is Cob. And the mixing process is called the Cob Jig. Or, as we oh-so-maturely preferred to call it, the Poo Dance. Mark and I would grab each others forearms, lean back so our heels were digging into the mud, and then swing each other around in a circle, stamping our feet into the mud and pulling them out again with a satisfying squelch as the liquid stuff trying to suck our boots from our feet. Once the cob was fully mixed we would collapse panting onto the nearest bench.

Where we wanted to build each wall we would first lay a rubble base made from stones, broken bricks, chunks of concrete, and broken ceramic scavenged from around the property. The base of rubble will allow water to pass under the wall without being soaked up through the adobe, which would weaken it. Once the rubble base was laid, we began to shovel handfuls of cob out of buckets and smack it down on top of the rubble. At first, digging our hands into poo-mud was gross, but it quickly became hilarious and fun instead. We shaped the wall with our hands, patting, squeezing, and knuckling it into compliance. The first wall rose amazingly quickly. We used glass bottles that Mark and Sol had been collecting in the wall as well.  The bottles allowed the wall to gain height more quickly, as well as making the wall more aesthetically pleasing.

Throughout the afternoon Mark and I repeated the Poo Dance more than a dozen times. By the end of the day we had brought the east-facing wall to window height, and had begun to raise two other walls as well. We were all exhausted.

Laura, working on the bottle wall in its early stages

Alix and Mark doin the poo dance

Everyone hard at work on the walls in various stages

Josh building up an adobe wall

Mark playing in the mud

Toby working on the wall

Alix getting her hands dirty

 

Toby and Laura finishing the bottle wall

New Faces, Old Materials

Greetings faithful and first-time readers! I'm Alix, a 22-year-old American currently volunteering at the farm. I guess this blog will host a long series of different authors since there's a pretty constant rotation hostel occupants. I'm here with my boyfriend, Josh, for 2 weeks. Also here are Laura, 26, from Holland, and Toby, 22, from Germany. Laura and Toby are planning to stay for a month. Josh and I have been here for a week already and we’ve really enjoyed the experience so far. Mark and Sol and their kids are all warm and welcoming, making us feel right at home, and more like guests than workers. Some days we work really hard all day, and some days are more relaxed. Rarely does everything work at once—a light bulb burns out just as the second toilet gets fixed, or a heater stops working just when we finally find the sweet spot that allows us to connect to the internet. But these little inconveniences keep life interesting, and there’s always a way to work around them.
Over the weekend we rebuilt the tool and seeding shed. We erected logs and salvaged metal poles as posts, digging into the ground to make them more stable and connecting them with bits of wire left over from some other project. We then attached mismatched corrugated metal sheeting overhead for the roof. At times the lack of proper materials and tools was frustrating, but ultimately, finding a way around these shortcomings was more rewarding. When the rusted hole in a sheet of metal lined up perfectly with the forked branch of a log, we celebrated the coincidence as an accomplishment. The whole thing was essentially improvised, but by the end we had a pretty decent-looking shed. 

This idea of working with what you have and using recycled materials instead of always yearning for perfection, to me, exemplifies what Family Farm Hostel is all about.

Alix

Josh

Laura

Toby

A Quaint Little Gate

We were building a little roof to go over the little pedestrian gate in front of the farm. Ian and I had lots of debates over what type of roof should preside: a conical dome-shaped mushroom? a thatched roof? a symmetrical one?

We finally decided on this one: a lopsided, simple triangular arrangement. It seemed to fit best with the current Hobbit theme of the farm. 

Ian had me stand beneath him and hold up the planks while he cut them to size. It was one of the scariest moments of my life, with my frail fingers just an inch away from a chainsaw. But it was also very fun. Life should be a little bit dangerous. 

Ian hammered in two planks on either side of the gate, and then the morning after we hammered small planks on top to finish the tiling. The wood we found from a local wood dump. After walking around for about 15 minutes, the perfect wood appeared before us. It was this beautiful, red-tinted decking that had been abandoned in a corner. The individual pieces were extremely well cut and smooth. And it was only 3 pesos.

In total the Little Roof took 2 days to build. By sunset, it was time to call it a day. We picked up the few tools we used--a hammer, some nails, and a chainsaw, and went back inside for tea break, cookies, and dinner.

Mr. Mark

Hello there. Well, we are getting the hostel ready now for the start of spring and then summer, so it is time to introduce myself - Mr Mark - as the family head, Sol being it's heart, and her food being in our bellies...yum yum....
So, really those who write on the blog here are the ecovolunteers who come here and take on this job as part of the project. Ada started it, then Mina continued it and got it to the excellent state it is in today, so thanks a whole bunch to them. The thing is that I am now 43 years old and really I would like this blog to be more of a reflection of what this place is about, in the young and vibrant language of those who stay here, following the theme of the organic network. So my writing will probably be found more at http://www.wonfamily.net/ which is at the moment being written and formed as an umbrella organisation, to set up a trend of family farm hostels, where any family, or familiarity group, can copy our model and find a way to get out of the rat race and log onto the grid of autonomous decentralized cooperatives by building hostels, sustainability acadamies, wellbeing centres, one world therapy centres, or whatever takes one's fancy..

I love this picture. It looks almost like I'm stuck inside a room, and Ian is the guard. Or my face would be a photograph on the door. Or Ian could be looking into a mirror.

None of the above are actually true.

We were actually stripping paint off of the front door to the hostel in order to prepare it for future paints.

They bought paint stripper and we spent a few minutes just covering the door with a viscious, cream colored liquid. And within minutes the old painted started to crinkle up and froth. We then grabbed chisels and started scraping away at the door.

It was so much work! But very good exercise. There really aren't that many opportunities to share a deep conversation through a hole in the door.

I just realized I never really introduced myself. I'm sorry--I guess it would be nice to know who has been writing these posts all along.

Well, my name is My Ngoc To, pronounced Me Knock Toe. But at the farm, and everywhere else in South America, I go by Mina. I'm currently 19 years old, born in Vietnam, living in Georgia, and currently studying economics at Harvard. During the summer I took a break to go to South America to volunteer, and I found this jewel called Family Farm Hostel. If you want more information on my experience here or just about my travels, just email me: myngoc.to@gmail.com!

We made a sun out of natural materials. To start, we found a piece of charcoal next to the fire place and sketched out a general vision. Next, we hammered nails in so that the plaster would stay. 

This is where the fun started. We stood about six feet from the wall and threw fistfuls of the cow poop/earth/water mix onto the wall. You would think that it would smell bad and feel gross. But I, a city girl who had never done much dirty labor before, found this to be completely liberating and relaxing. The whole time I was laughing and giggling nonstop.

This was a good opportunity to practice my aim too. A few times I was laughing too hard and threw the poop too high, and it soared above the wall and onto Ian's bed.

Once we had enough plaster stuck to the wall, we started on the delicate matters, stroking the sun and pinching out the edges until we had sculpted the perfect spiritual sun.

To add color, we held spices in our hands (moron and curcuma) and blew them on. It's amazing how much of a ceremony this project became. It was almost as if the the sun moved through our bodies and onto the wood.

We finished the sun in about an hour and a half, and we worked without stopping, without doubting, without fearing. I think all art should be this way: a bit dirty, a lot of fun, and done in groups.

Last night I played hide and seek with all the kids. I shouldn't call them kids, because they were my age: it was Seba, Maxxi, Andrea, Jose, Daniel, and another kid whose name I forgot. We started playing at around 9 and didn´t stop for two hours.

Hide and seek is called Esconder y Buscar.

The whole yard is so fun to play in because you can hide behind the well, behind the pool's fence, behind the house, under hay stacks, beneath tables on the porch. I am lucky I am small, because twice I hid beneath the bench right next to the base and surprised the seeker every time.

Seba liked to climb trees to hide. One time he climbed the roof, too, to hide, and brought his friend Maxxi along with him. His poor friend didn´t know how to get off the roof by the end of the game. I hid behind a curtain covering some old hardware behind the main house. At this time, Seba was the seeker. I think the game was approaching the end because I heard some kids telling him where I was staying. Through the curtain I saw him coming, singing and humming as he went, and when he was about to pull up the curtain, I screamed and exploded through the curtain like a crazy animal.

In the end I beat him to home base. The poor thing--I scared him half to death.

At another time I hid behind the fence at the swimming pool. I layed flat down on my back and just watched the stars. It was a half moon, and the light illuminated an almost imperceptible ring of clouds surrounding the moon. The stars are different in Argentina, and I am constantly fascinated by their arrangements. And then, bursting out of nowhere: a shooting star. My heart felt happy, and I decided to find my way back to home base.

I came back after 2 weeks of travelling around South America, and, honestly, I missed my farm family the whole time. When I came back Sol cradled me in her arms as if I were her own child. I was sick from crossing through 6 countries in two weeks, but they took care of me and made sure that my health improved.

The Hobbit House is so cute! It now has very polite-looking decking, flowers at the base of the front door, and clean windows. The air of the place is warmer every day. If I had the option, I wouldn´t mind living in the Hobbit House.

We recently added a sun to the Hostel. (Pictures will go up soon.)  A plastered sun made of earth and other natural materials. The spirit of the sun. It looks like a lotus flower, the earth, a pregnant lady's belly, an eye, and a spiritual sun all at once. And what was amazing is that it created itself from our own hands. The inspiration to make a sun in the Hobbit House came suddenly, and Ian and I set to work on it in silence. We both knew what to do, and within an hour we had transformed a pile of dirt into a brilliant sun shining in the Hobbit House. In the end we blew colored spices from our hands to color the rays and the center.

We also fixed the fence leading into the house. Ian made the small pedestrian gate workable again, and then we both made a little roof on top. Using recycled wood, we made a quiant little pointed roof on top of the gate. The wood we found was rose tinted and perfectly cut.

We have taken many many photos. I´m waiting for my computer to be fixed as to upload the photos.

Today it rained. and the most peaceful cloud set over the hostel. We all stayed indoors today. Sol and Ian made a bed for the two oxen, and at night I could see them all, Jay, Bijay and the four dogs, nestled together on the big mass of hay.

As for the humans, we sat together in the family room and read, talked, worked on the computer, listened to music, and basically did our own things, enjoying our own solitude, in each other's presence. I drew a portrait of Sol and Seba today, and those will be up soon, hopefully along with more portraits of the whole family.

The other day I made lunch! And it amazed me how easy and fulfilling and fun it was to cook in the kitchen. This kitchen has not the best equipped. The pans are old and dented and humble. There is no stainless steel. There are no fancy appliances and top-grade silver ware. The fridge is not stocked, and neither is there an abundance of food. Also, the counters are never truly clean because we live in a rural house without air conditioning and good cleaners.

BUT

I've never cooked a better meal. It seems all new-agey to say this, but this is a kitchen of love. Even though the pans were old, they cooked the food so well, and they didn't stick! Even though the counters were not perfectly sanitized, I could wipe them down and use them as a cutting board (we didn't have a cutting board). Things fell together so easily, the way they should, and I made a meal of sushi wih marinated mushrooms and rice, vegetable pasta, and herbed potatoes.

We have been doing much work in the past few days: laying out the deck, finishing more cane walls.

But the most amazing thing happened on Saturday, when we had a dance party until 2:30 in the morning. Seba had his friends over for the night, and the boys, four in total, set up a bonfire in the yard. They lugged out the television along with some music discs and played spanish dance songs all through the night. Sol, Ian and I went outside and danced for three hours. The fire was huge at times when we added enough branches with leaves. It was a full moon, and watching the sparks fly up into the night was simply sublime. It's too bad I didn't get photos of us dancing. At one point I was so happy that I danced on top of the pile of decking  boards, and then jumped into the tree. Mind you, this was all in a state on non-intoxication. :)

Today was more or less the same. I'm almost done with the bamboo walls--only half an hour of work left, and all the dividers will be installed. Today we found several new bamboo forests. Seba and I went to gather a few canes, and we came across a very sweet father and son harvesting vegetables from their garden. Their patch was small, but still very beautiful. Seba is holding half of the canes here. He's only 12, but he acts 20. 

Ian is finishing up the roof, though apparently this morning he got stuck in it--he was standing inside the roof nailing down planks, and then he realized that he had nailed so many planks down that he couldn't get his knees out. So he escaped by removing one of the planks. I ran into him "meditating" on the roof.

The Hobbit Hole gets cozier every day. My project has been to install cane dividers for each Hobbit Hole. That work is actually quite fun—I go to the bamboo grove and cut down what stalks I need, and then shorten them to size at the farm. To install them I just hammer in two nails on either end, and then after maybe 50 poles, I’ve made a beautiful wall. The canes really do add a nice accent to the Hobbit House, with a mix of earth and greenery.

I had a random idea to make a sign for the World Café out of the leftover bamboo canes. After a lot of experimentation with strings and all different sizes of bamboo sticks, this was the final product. I tried painting the letters on, but that was a disaster. Thanks to the wonderful insight of Ian, we finally decided to use bamboo to make the letters. I learned what “glue” was in Spanish when Sol gave us a tube of silicon to glue down the letters.

So as I’m doing this, Ian is continuing to structuralize the Hobbit House. I gave him my aviators so he could be safe and fashionable as he works.

And this is Bijay. <3 The two oxen plowed the field the other day. It’s a shame I wasn’t there to take photos. More to come. They’re playing futbol at night now.

Futbol

Today we organized the yard, collecting wood and raking the leaves to place over the land. We were about to start a fire pit when a bunch of children came from the neighborhood and started playing futbol (soccer) with our goals. We ended up playing for almost two hours. A few other people joined us and left in between the game, and some of the older kids started tripping on these tiny ones. This just goes to show how tight this community is.