We are not just building a Cob House…..
…….We are building a new Way of Life
Hello and welcome to Alan and Girija’s world of cobbing, baling, digging, mixing, tilling, hiving; viz.; we are building a fairly self-sufficient homestead in the outskirts of the Washington DC metropolitan area.
When we first started toying with the idea of building something, it was a vague idea that involved leasing a bit of land on a farmer’s backyard to do some composting, building methane digesters, having a few bee-hives and other small projects and experiments. One thing let to another and 3 years later, here we are! Now we are building a cob house with a vegetable/fruit/herb/berry garden on land that we purchased – a homestead with its own septic, well and solar system. Technically, it is going to be a mix of straw bale and cob because we live in the NorthEast and need a house that has excellent insulation for the winter months. Composting toilets unfortunately will have to wait since they are not legally permitted; but we hope to add to the growing number of voices that are urging the county to accept these greener technologies by providing information and generating a demand for them.
I’m sure you are itching to know the story behind the name PeachCobbLair. We first came up with this idea when we were looking for land on Peach Tree road. Unfortunately, the land got sold to another buyer the day we put in an offer. We lost the land; but the name grew on us. Peach trees are very commonly grown in this area and in fact, there is an orchard within minutes from our land that grows a lot of peach trees. Needless to say, we will be planting quite a few Peach trees on our land and then we will have our own Lair built of Cob amongst the Peach Trees! Of course we celebrated by baking a peach cobbler using peaches from that very orchard. Check out the recipe on this blog post.
When we first spoke of our plans, some of our friends ignored us; some laughed at our crazy ideas (since we seem to come up with these schemes every other day); but for the most part, they simply didn’t believe us. But now that our dreams are becoming a reality, almost everyone we know is excited about what we are doing. Many of them have kids and responsibilities that prevent them from any hands-on involvement in this project. But the interest that people have shown is inspiring none-the-less. We hope that we in turn can inspire the next generation to work with their hands, build systems from the ground up, apply first principles to solving practical problems , think out of the box and go against the grain for a worthy cause. I’m getting carried away with all this poetic writing. Better get off the couch and start on some actual work. Hope to see you on the land and if you can’t make it; do follow us on our blog @ Building Updates.
