PHOTO BY BARTON WILDER CUSTOM IMAGES WILDER CUSTOM BARTON BY PHOTO Natural Building and Building Community by Jeanine Sih Christensen Quiet Valley Ranch got a new chapel on I started writing about green building in 1994, started Chapel Hill. Logs were fi tted together inside the forks of the supporting posts. work at greenbuilder.com in 1996, later marrying its own- The local live oak timber used in the project was specifi cally harvested er and geek-in-chief, Bill Christensen. For over a decade I because those trees had died a natural have been involved in the green and natural building com- death. The cedar decking was site milled, and the juniper on the roof was munities, where I have made some friends, including many culled from the ranch. The hill-like living roof on this Hill Country chapel is made people mentioned in this article. Bill and I also performed of compost from Quiet Valley Ranch, publicity work, web work, taxi service, and loaned blan- native plants, and a sheet of pond liner to keep moisture away from the cedar kets and sheets for the Texas Natural Building Colloquium roof decking. In addition to the spiritual implications of having living roof on a in exchange for admission but with no fi nancial compensa- chapel, the earth provides a good insula- tion. My husband and I have performed paid work for both tive barrier between the sun and the chapel’s interior space. Center photo, Gayle Borst of Design~Build~Live and Pliny Fisk III of the above, by Leslie Moyer. All others on this page by Barton Wilder Custom Inages. Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems. THE GOOD LIFE ■ WWW.GOODLIFEMAG.COM ■ FEBRUARY 2008 59 n a cold October a magic tie-in with the permaculture dra Welch of Austin-based Clay Sand morning, the second practices,” Wright said. “It all ties Straw and enthusiastic support crews. day of Texas’ fi rst in with what we’ve got going: reus- Welch took time out from a cob Natural Building Col- ing materials, relying on local materi- construction project in Lockhart to loquium, engineer and septic prob- als, cost saving. Colloquium projects talk about her history and a turn- Olem-solver extraordinaire Tom Wat- were labor intensive but this saves on ing point. “I was trained as a con- son of Embudo, New Mexico, sat sip- construction costs dramatically…a ventional architect. I did what I was ping hot chai under the metal roof of perfect match with our volunteer la- supposed to do: sit in an offi ce with the ranch canteen, which would end bor force. It just takes longer.” a computer. I was a CAD (comput- up feeding local, organic, vegetari- Frank Meyer of Austin-based er-aided design) monkey for one and an fare three times most days to more Thangmaker Construction compa- a half years.” She shook her head than a hundred people. I just had ny is a natural builder with long ex- and smiled. “I was at Princeton au- asked him about his ideas about deal- perience and a fair bit of media ex- diting a class with (sociologist) Rob- ing with a post-petroleum, weird-cli- posure. He’s been quoted in a New ert Gutman, the “Theories of Hous- mate, social upheaval kind of world, York Times article on earthen fl oors. ing and Urbanism” guy. He showed because in the years I’ve know him, His part-straw bale, part-bamboo, all- us a slide from the nineteen-fi fties: he’s been right about many things. heart home made the cover of Natu- ‘Best new product to improve your “Well,” he said, gesturing over his ral Home magazine. He’s also a pro- home: asbestos!’ I thought to my- steaming cup, “you couldn’t ask for fessional musician with three CDs out self, ‘What we are doing today that a better group of people to be with and stage time with some big names. we’ll regret in twenty, fi fty, a hun- when things get bad.” During the 2004 Kerrville Folk Festi- dred years?’ We’re dealing with the I had only to look at the rows of val, Meyer and a volunteer crew built sins of the past generation of build- people at the long wooden picnic ta- a limestone and cob oven for baking ers. And we’re trying not to create a bles, likewise hunched over steam- pizzas. (Cob is made of high-clay- crisis for future generations. I start- ing drinks and hot organic breakfasts, content soil, with straw, sand and wa- ed doing direct service design for… to feel his words ring true. The cre- ter, often mixed together by foot, then migrant workers and people in west dentials and successes of the natural applied and shaped by hand like pot- Philadelphia. What I learned was that builders and leaders all around us that ter’s clay.) “People were eating them the products of a building can be in- morning were impressive and reas- as fast as we could pull them out of cidental. It’s the process that makes suring. Learners were also abundant. the oven,” he said. something beautiful. Whenever I see Colloquium participants came from Meyer got the idea of holding a a carpentry project in progress, I have Taiwan, Canada, Mexico, California, natural building colloquium at the watched the people who know how to Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Col- ranch after noting the cob oven’s operate power tools literally push ev- orado, even New Orleans, Louisiana, warm reception. He had been to eight eryone else aside. When you have a and Brooklyn, New York, points be- previous natural building colloquia natural building, where mud gets in- tween, and all over Texas. I felt I was held all over the United States, and volved, everyone gets to come in and Frank Meyer of Thangmaker Construction A Straw, Wood, Stone and Mud Party at a Texas Ranch on the set of an alternative lifestyle Ranch Manager Rick Wright said, knew their power to inspire and moti- work. Natural building is an inclusive movie called Mission: Possible, Fun “Everything out here in the last thir- vate. “I felt obligated,” he said, when process. It’s equalizing.” and Deeply Green. Lacking black le- ty-four years was built with volunteer asked why he took on the job of orga- Welch echoed Rick Wright on otards, fantastical electronics and rap- labor and donated materials. In the nizing the Texas colloquium. “No one costs for materials and labor common pelling equipment, our crowd car- last ten years we’ve replaced every else seemed to want to do it. We have to natural building projects but em- ried its own drinking mugs, and wore original building…Everything before wonderful resources here: caliche phasized the bigger picture. “When jeans, Guatemalan fabrics, waterproof had been portable buildings.” clay, juniper, limestone, and a huge you pay for materials from out of sandals, wool and polar fl eece. And In 2003 Wright began implement- chunk of population…(from) San An- state or the region, that’s money that much less long hair than you might ing permaculture practices and hold- tonio, Dallas, Houston.” And Austin vanishes. It can no longer be of local otherwise imagine. ing “Kerr-maculture” workshops at of course, one of the green building- benefi t. Natural building has small- Natural Building Colloquium: the ranch: composting, building soil, est towns there is. “Living sustain- er costs for materials and bigger la- Texas 2007 took place over ten wild reworking land contours to deter ero- ably is doable,” Meyer said. “It’s ex- bor costs. This means you’re feeding windy days at the end of October at sion, overhauling the ranch’s waste tremely important, and fun, and nec- your local economy.” Quiet Valley Ranch, near Kerrville. system to favor reusables, collect- essary if we are to survive. Natural But why help lead a natural build- The ranch, home of the well-known ing rainwater, recording ranch weath- building is a piece of that puzzle.” a-palooza of hands-on construction Kerrville Folk Festival and more, was er statistics, getting the ranch certi- Meyer spent nearly a year of projects, speakers with book sales already a work-in-progress. Volunteer fi ed organic. “This colloquium was preparation with co-organizer Kin- and PowerPoint presentations, night- 60 THE GOOD LIFE ■ WWW.GOODLIFEMAG.COM ■ FEBRUARY 2008 time drum circles and jam sessions, and says, ‘Start where you are now, fl oat trip, sauna, camping out together work with what you’ve got.’” on a ranch with novices, friends, and Richard Morgan is manager of Discovery colleagues? Austin Energy Green Building, the Architectural Antiques “When I agreed to help orga- program started in the early nineties The Largest Store of nize the colloquium, I had spent two that put Austin on the green build- its Kind in the USA years traveling and learning from oth- ing map. He noted common ground All antique—No Reproductions: er people. I wanted to get those peo- between natural building and the Stained Glass, ple together, and I wanted them to see green kind. “Green building and nat- Flooring, Beams, our natural building community in ural building both focus on sustain- Tubs, Sinks, Texas,” she said. “There were people able design. They both are place-spe- 6,000+ from northern California who came in cifi c and respond to location needs Doors, expecting the worst. One guy’s mom and climate. Both are about being 1,000+ said to him, ‘If you are going, bet- aware of how to meet needs in least Styles of Doorknobs, Hardware, ter put away those non-conformist T- intrusive ways,” he said.