the fusion of house and human

The big spiders are emerging from wherever it is that big spiders go in winter. They really love the couch...unfortunately for me. Soon i'll have all those little baby spiders suspended on many threads from the ceilings.
Sure sign of springtime.
The birds are getting louder too. Including the red tail hawks with their emotionally charged screeching.

So i'm finally allowing my brain to begin a list for the warm season of things i'd like to get done. I've decided this year is to focus again on my house, (after i fence the damn pasture ofcourse...ok...i'd like to get chickens too...ugh) its faaaaaar from finished and it's obvious in the super cold that i need to deal with the ceilings and some other drafty old house things. Last year went almost entirely to improving life for the animals...now its my turn.

The first summer was all about the house out of sheer necessity.There were no windows or doors, the roof tin was flapping in the wind and the house was full of garbage and manure and rat shit. In the above pic thats myself and a friend putting new tin on the roof. It was all i could do to have it cleaned out, re-tinned, windowed and doored by the time the first snow came 'round. I was finally installing the woodstove and chimney in mid-october....still living in a canvas tent/dome and starting to freeze.
I didn't get around to mudding till the next summer and i'll tell you that first winter was really fucking cold. There were holes in the walls big enough for a fist. Bats lived in the holes in the walls.



The following summer that i spent mudding the house my weight dropped to a nerve wracking 114lbs,which was 15 lbs below my already too low weight....i was a wirey, muscley, too skinny, mudding machine. my hands have touched literally every earthen inch of this house...and shaped it...brought it back to life.The interior still needs its final plaster and god only knows when that will happen. Which is the hazard of moving into a house thats far from finished...but then i doubt it will ever really be finished. When i was doing the exterior i experimented with a llama poo plaster which seems to have potential. I think it needed more sand than i had on hand as it is a bit flakey.
This is the house nowadays.The porch i built a couple of years ago...thats local red fir...such a gorgeous wood.I'm hoping to finish my ceilings with the same.

All of this intimacy with and dependancy on my shelter is why i feel like a part of me is missing when i leave here. I'm so accustomed to the forest views out the windows, the sounds the attic makes in a high wind...where the sun shines in the windows depending on the time of year, the creaks and shifts of the old wooden floor.We've been through a lot together. Its a deep connection. If i hadn't come along this house would be falling down....so would i for that matter.