Straw Clay

Sunday 7 November 2010

Notwithstanding some slight fatigue after the night before, we were up early-ish to see Pauline off on the road to Athens, then decided to go for a cup of tea at Goat Bottom and revel (calmly and sleepily) in the newly positioned shed base.

But the cup of tea spurred us into unexpected action.  It was so good to be through to the next stage we couldn't let it alone, Dave got on with painting wood stain onto the top of the base, while I started sieving soil to make mudslip for the straw-clay.

 Painting the base:

 My mudslip-making paraphernalia: two layers of wire mesh, pre-soaked earth, little trowel for rubbing through the mesh, bowl to catch the slip, and a comfy chair ...

 A bowl of prepared slip - should be the consistency of chocolate milk (Mmm - yummy)

As it was Sunday when the shops close in Greece (yes, they do in the winter) and we didn't have a garden fork, Dave imaginatively constructed this homemade pitchfork from twigs











A big moment - opening the first bale of straw.  And very disappointing - most of the bale was unusable, full of mould, possibly as a result of our storage as the tarpaulin was dripping inside (should've made a proper thatched haystack, obviously)

 We salvaged what we could, and poured a couple of cupfuls of chocolate milk into it before turning over with the pitchfork to mix

Dave then constructed a tamper (he's getting very good at rustling up tools at need)

And put in the first line of insulation.

After this our hangovers caught up with us and we called it a day.