I heard the alarm go off for another hour or so with so many snoozes that I kept thinking it must've been me, but it wasn't (I've been pretty alarm free for the past week). I got some ridiculous song stuck in my head - I'd rather not try to recall it (or even ask how it got there) for fear of reviving it. This morning it was a bit earlier than the past few - 8:30 or so which seemed pretty reasonable. Alex was up and had made some Greek coffee for us which I have been grateful to receive each morning though I can't help but pine for a big ass 20 oz cup of it, followed by a refill or two. Ugly American? Ok, fine!
The weather was beautiful; moderately warm with blue skies all around. We started off moving wall building stone from the pile in the driveway to the building site, strewing it all around so we'd have some choices once we started building. I wanted to catch up on some internet stuff I'd left unfinished from the night before, so I wrote a message to some of my friends an colleagues back home trying to remotely help plan our Burlington Permaculture Fruit Tree Giveaway (good thing this is a 'working' vacation) and then putting together a tree order for one of my clients and trying to figure out how to send it to the company electronically. Things took a bit longer on the internet than I'd anticipated - big surprise - and before I knew it, it was 10:30.
Alex and I kept moving stone and not too long thereafter, I began placing it, roughly laying out our building's perimeter walls. It was exciting to start to see the building grow, but it grew a bit daunting as I began to see how much more work we had to prepare. Alex graciously offered to continue to lug stone over while I set to setting out the stones. Trying to balance aesthetics with practicality and speed was a challenge as I couldn't help but feel well behind things and a bit stressed by the fact that the workshop started in less than 48 hours. Much of the day is a blur at this point so I'll spare you the details.
I basically did my best to lay out the first course of the foundation - about 50 cm wide (18 or so inches) and as high as I could make this first course - 12" or so. I tried to vary up the stones every so often to create visual interest, use the one appropriate hammer to do a bit of shaping so they'd fit better, use the nicest stones on the south, west and east exterior walls with the ugliest ones on the north and do it all as quickly as I could while still feeling half decent about myself. It's some type of local limestone which I found really interesting to use - it had a pretty blocky form and broke fairly irregularly with the hammer - pretty similar to the Panton stone I've worked with back home. I did enjoy the occasional fossilized shell and other ancient relics embedded in it.
It got pretty hot today and I think the sun started to get to me at one point. I made the first test brick using the silty clay that we have access to here and then encouraged Alex and Stamatina to do some more. We tried 1:1, 1:2, 1:2.5 and 1:3 (clay to sand) and while we don't have any dry bricks yet to check, I believe we have an effective winner - 1:2.5. Seeing as how the clay is our most inaccessible material, this ratio works great as it'll stretch the clay that we do collect and bring back. Thankfully Alex spent several hours in the afternoon loading up the back of their family wagon with clay he harvested from the old local source in the village - a place people used to go to get clay for their ovens and which they actually call 'clay'. We've been talking about actually using daily or so trips to the clay source as an educational tool during the course, bringing students to the site and collecting it with them so as to optimize the use of our time prepping the foundation.
Once I'd gotten the entire base of the wall roughly set, I started mixing some mortar and doing my best to play wet stone mason. Equipped with some beautiful lime putty from the local building supply, our mix was 1:cement, 1:lime, 6:sand. We made do with a partially broken plastic trough for a mixing rig and a hoe of some sort to mix with. About 3 liters of water seemed to create a perfect consistency.
I then set about resetting each stone I'd laid out, leveling it and setting it well in the gravel base (to economize on mortar, I chose to set the stones in the gravel bed, rather than mortar them in. Gravity seems to be a plenty strong force to keep them from moving - especially considering there'll be several tons worth of cob on top.) I felt like I was re-inventing the mortar wheel and after watching progress move incredibly slowly, I started to feel defeated, with 13 more lineal meters left to go in the first course. Stamatina must've detected this and asked if I'd like some fresh squeezed orange juice - like she squeezed it. Well, I bet you can guess what the answer was.
This definitely helped but I still wasn't going to get much done at this pace. So I set Stamatina up with mortar while I mixed up another batch and proceeded to move ahead of her, setting each stone along the way, making sure it was 'level'(ish) and stable before she reached it. It was really the first time so far that we'd had a chance to work and talk and it was very relaxing and enjoyable. I'm really glad we had a chance to do that. She'd been spending the earlier part of the afternoon burning up some of the remaining brush around the site and roasting the lamb for our eastern celebration. When Alex returned from his first clay trip, we broke for lunch and enjoyed a veritable mini feast with juicy lamb (Stamatina - a staunch vegetarian even eats it for the easter celebration), and other goodies - I've since forgotten - but it was really good and it dramatically improved my attitude.
After that meal and a bit of strategizing about tomorrow (students should be arriving in the afternoon), we set back to work and proceeded to continue with mortaring and stone setting until the light no longer enabled me to read the bubble in the level. We did well (or at least the best we could). Equipped with clay and most all of the materials we should need for the workshop, tomorrow we'll be putting the finishing touches on the foundation stemwall with Alex and Stamatina laying mortar while I start to fill in the second course. We're definitely taking it down to the wire and I'll be so excited if I have a few hours of 'doneness' before the students start to arrive. It's been pretty full on ever since I've been here.
I headed straight in for a shower and while I chose not to use my salty seawater soaked loongi towel from yesterday's trip to the beach, the drip dry wasn't all that unfulfilling. I devoured some leftovers and wine, talked a bit about work, determination, dreams and burnout and then I set to trying to catch up with all the blogging that I've fallen behind on so far this trip. I've got a few minutes planned with my racquetball (shoulder massage) and then it's time for bed. One more day of prep. The four day foundation!!
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