The deal with Rose the permachef returning to Milkwood Farm this Spring is this: apon her return (which is imminent) she will move into the completed (ok nearly) earthbag dome, ensuring her personal seclusion and wood-fired comfort for the coming season.

The earthbag dome, while awesome, has been somewhat of a side-project since the first big gush of effort dedicated to its bag-raising (if that is a term) in Feb 2011. But now it’s time to get it done.

Partly because done is the engine of more, and partly because we want Rose to have a cosy haven after a big day of cookery. Nearly there now….

Shane applies what we hope is the final coat of clay render to the outside of the dome

Small windows in the southern side, made of terracotta pipes ended with pyrex glass dishes

Nick and Shane with their low-fi but effective measuring apparatus for checking that the woodstove will fit in the domelet

Always make sure your wood stove is on level ground. Find this out before you install a very heavy lump of cast iron, it’s better that way.

Nick and the fab old Metters woodstove, kindly donated by Nick’s sister (a shed find, I believe). Lots of bits to clean out before installing it in the earthbag dome

Inside with final clay render, and domelet ready to receive woodstove (and storing floor bricks in the meantime)

Skylight with air vent pipes just beneath (to be capped when not in use), before the final inside render

Flue for domelet vaguely in place, Shane sorts out the waterproofing of the roof…

Flue installed, just the inside to complete now…

Sorting out the floor. We were going to do a poured earth floor, but it’s tricky to get right without experience and in our current weather would take weeks and weeks to complete. Time is of the essence now, so getting it done, using what we have available (gravel, bricks, concrete).

The back curve of the bed hoop

Our friend Tree designed the bed solution for this space – it will give Rose a good-sized bed and lots of storage underneath…

Done is the engine of more…

There’s a bit of an in-joke going around the farm about the earthbag dome… it’s been re-christened the effort dome. While we all appreciate that earthbag building can be an awesome building technique for earthquake and tsunami-prone areas, and is definitely fabulous insofar that it can be done with only some bags, barbed wire, local earth and a whole lot of human energy, the total human effort involved is quite immense.

Like anything, this building technique has it’s upsides and downsides. If you have very few building materials available and heaps (and heaps) of available and enthusiastic labor, then earthbag might be a great idea.

Given that this experimental building hasn’t been crucial to the seasonal goings-on for Milkwood Farm thus far, getting the earthbag dome completed has just not made it to the top of the list. And during the active and ongoing establishment of our, well, our everything at this farm, if it’s not up the top of the list, it probably won’t get done.

There’s no real downtime here where we wonder what we should do today, and get to work on non-essential stuff (like prettymuch everyone else I know in a farmish scenario, particularly if that farm didn’t come with a bunch of pre-built buildings and general infrastructure). Lucky no-one told me that 6 years ago or I might still be in inner-city Melbourne.

But anyway. Rose needs a cosy spot, and a cute little caravan, while lovely, just won’t do the job with our sometimes nutty Spring weather. Better finish the effort dome and move her into a cosy and truly unique abode.

For our particular scenario, having just about completed both this earthbag dome and a very beautiful if somewhat experimental wattle-and-daub tiny house, it’s been a huge and awesome learning process about what constitutes effective use of time and available energy for us, as well as what we’re prepared to bear ethically in terms of embodied energy, for the sake of building new structures.

Suffice to say we expect to focus on building small strawbale boxes with good passive solar aspect as our primary building technique from here on in at Milkwood Farm.

On the upside for the earthbag dome, it will definitely outlast us all. When the tinyhouse has crumbled in generations to come, the earthbag dome will still be sitting, hobbit-like in the landscape, providing solidity, warmth and cosiness to whoever cares to start a fire in the domelet.

And very soon, it will be a small and gorgeous place for Rose to rest in, nestled amongst the trees, impervious to wild storms, providing a cosy, soundproof and solid nook of peace and quiet on the hillside. So we’re learning from what we now know, and appreciating the earthbag dome for what it is. I’ll post photos once it’s finished in the next week.