Raising a kitchen

March rolled into April which was then consumed by May. Time has folded in on itself, while we have busied ourselves over these months... fixing up the temporary camp. We keep justifying this to ourselves that it's OK not to be starting to build our house, because we need some on-site facilities first. So we can host volunteers, friends, workers, ourselves too!

So here's a look of what we started with in early March, when Ruth and Paulo arrived for some early Spring sunshine, and we all got to work.

As usual, the toilet took precedence, and we all started on that, in fact I have already posted something about the compost toilet process, a few weeks ago. The point is that everyone who came through got involved and we

You can see in this pic that we built two different chambers, when one will be filled, we'll switch to the other, and let the first complete its biodegrading process into compost, after which we'll get at it from little doors Paulo built into the back.

So ourcamp-build programme was more or less like this:

- get toilet up so we can take a "civilised" dump
- build a platform for a yurt that Paulo acquired before bailing the UK
- build yurt "in a few hours" (yeh right)
- throw up a kitchen
- dig in drainage for outdoor bath, make a shower
- construct a solar hot water system for these and kitchen sink
- biuld a grey water drainage/irrigation system
- organise and plant a simple kitchen garden around this camp area
- build outdoor tables and benches
- erect solar electric (PV) panels procured from reasonably priced and most helpful supplier, Horsebox Renewables. Highly recommended for all your off grid energy needs.

Well it goes without saying that each of these has taken way longer than we expected. In fact we are only about half way through this list, and various other things have taken over, like watering trees, planting strawberries, buying materials, finding free ones, and so on.

Kira in front of our first hot water cylinder





Hauling the trunks for the yurt base. This was a mighty task. there were 3 of them...










Yurt base, oak no less










Yurt going up. and up














Stephanie, my mum, standing on a completed deck and yurt. Checking out the old wind barrel we sacrificed to make 2 herb plant boxes.

On to the kitchen. Here João, a local stonemason gets going into the rocks, to rebuild the wall behind him and his apprentice. Then Monica and I finshed up the wall and Natalie built a cool shelf using some offcuts (!) from a nearby factory (they literally throw these away:)













Then after another couple of days of figuring out structures, dimensions, weight loads and all that we bought some wood on the Spanish side of the river (way cheaper) - happens to be Finish pine. Local friend and carpenter Merush, shown here doing the actual work, says the local pine rots too quick. Anyway, we throw this thing up within a morning, kids coming along later to help with the tiles, Nikita getting to do the cool stuff - learning to how tile.














wee space left for the tree

Then we finish off the table. A massive 3,7m long, enough for a few feasts...

Kira doing a few jigs while Nikita sands off the corners
before we oil it. Merush says use linsead oil then wax.
Sounds good to me

Then he made the benches.
More photos soon, maybe