Earthbricker

The farm’s first mud-head and his work with Kleiwerks International in Haiti

earthbricker — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 11:57:16 +0000

Dear friends.

Kevin Rowell was the guy whole brought the adobe-building-technique on the Vang Vieng Organic Farm around 2002. He built the first mud-house house on the farm:

http://mudhutter.com/

Today it still exists, but it had to be renovated by Yongou a few years ago.

Kevin is now involved in the reconstruction-programmes in Haiti after the earthquake destroy big parts of the country. Please take a look at the work of Kleiwerks International and support them if you can.

http://www.kleiwerks.org/wordpress/

http://www.kleiwerks.org/

The pizza-oven and the kitchen!!!

earthbricker — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 13:40:12 +0000

Today I got a picture of the kitchen and the oven from Eddy!

Please click on it. You have to see it full-size. The face behind behind the oven! The mosaic-wave along the table! It looks absolutely fantastic! Eddy, Kahlyn, Andy, whoever was involved: We need more pics! Do you heat the oven from the outside? What does the tab look like? And how was the first pizza?! I can’t wait to cook there together one day!

The house before I left

earthbricker — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 22:07:05 +0000

Finally an update which is probably totally outdated. From Eddy I got the news, that the oven in the house is finished. As soon as I get some pics of the kitchen I will post them here. Pedro’s house seems to have a have a new bed and the bath-room was finished too by Eddy, Kaylin and Andy who stayed after I have left.

So at first a picture of the house before I left in the middle of december. The new balcony was built before I came. It is quite massive and the roof was extended too. The new concrete-pillars forced the constructors to move the terracy-door to the right. The bamboo-fence-railing in the front will hopefully be covered soon with climbing passion-fruit-plants and the ugly concrete-wall will be gone!

Siesta on the “front”. The walls of the house got a completely new coat of paint and some parts were replastered too. I was very happy to see that even after two rainy-season there was no area on the walls where the paint and the plaster were gone.

The entrance with the new mosaic, door-mat and bench.

This is the view if you open the front-door beneath the extension. In the back you see the new bottle-design-tree where Eddy started to build the oven and the kitchen. The “mud-tube” on the floor is the basement of the mud-pizza-oven. We covered the ugly concrete-cement-pillar with varnished wood. The lamp-sheds are from Luang Prabang, the plastic carpet from China.

And now the view from the opposite sidefrom the terracy-door to the front door:

If you leave the balcony door you are on the “Mulberry-leaf”-Mosaic and facing the “The Beach”(-cat-toilette).

If you are lying in the hammok you have a nice few on the leaf-mosiac. Perfect place for SMOKE-GOOO!!! (please help me Australians! How do you write this tradition what we call Brotzeit?!)

If you go back into the house to enter the bath-room, you are in facing the sink:

On the right you have the toilette.

This is the view from the toilette to the shower. We had serious problems here with the slope of the whole bath-room. Kaylin, Andy and Tanja put pieces of broken tiles in the kaylinian mosaic-style between the rocks in the concrete-floor and could really slope the whole bath-room to the drain.

Now we are upstais. The table still exists and got recently a new varnish-coat. Penguan found in the last week the curtains Clemence sew two years ago what made me so happy.

Just to give you an impression how hugh the new balcony is! Thanks to Mr. Thi (and China again) for donating these brilliant red plastic-chairs.

My sister will visit the farm in the next week, so I hope to get more pictures too. Whoever has pics from the buildings-sites, please send them to me (mudhead[at]mulberry-tea.com] or add them in the Vang Vieng Organic Farm Facebook-Group. There you can find already more pics:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2045355&id=1051550348&l=dff355215a

Enjoy 2010!

earthbricker — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 07:51:28 +0000

Sababaydee pii mai falang! I hope for the most of you 2009 was full of adventures. If not: Enjoy 2010.

I can’t find the connection-cord of my camera, so no new pics, except for one I saved on the computer before. Just that you get an impression of Leh in Northern-India’s Ladakh, I put this picture on earthbricker. The next days I will show you how people are building here. Unbelievable. I thought I can find some ideas about building with mud in Bavaria, but…. How can you absolutely not care about insulation in the trans-himalaya?! Ladakhis rule the winter!

The Mulberry-Leaf and The Beach are finished.

earthbricker — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 08:59:54 +0000

On the terrace we made another mosaik. Sarah, Renaud, Nico and I decided for a mulberry leaf.

Sarah, Rafa, Nico and me built a bamboo-railing on which we want to grow passion fruit in future.

The terrace with the Beach and parts of the Mulberry-leaf.

This is the latest picture of the house from the front.

Pedro’s house-warming-party

earthbricker — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 06:55:29 +0000

So on the 21st of november was the house-warming-party of Pedro’s house. I don’t think the pictures need a lot of comment from my side.

We had about 35 guests excluding the goat on the grill.

Sure we had some Lao Hai and the legendary Mr. Sai himself is preparing it.

Kaelyn and Runar built a small cart-board Pedro who will watch the house while the real one is gone.

News from Pedro

earthbricker — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:25:10 +0000

Pedro moved into his new house! It is not finished yet, but the roof is on. We made the floor a few days ago, so he took a long machete with him and moved in! Tomorrow is the house-warming-party. Don’t miss it! On the picture below, you see us preparing everything to put in the concrete-floor. For the roof, we used corrugated iron, but Pedro wants to grow passion-fruit from below over all the house to keep the heat away. Mr. Thi said, he will have to make his peace with the tree-snakes!

On the terrace in our house, we made another concrete-floor. The other half will remain the Beach.

Our new voluntiere moved in. We had a big fat rat annoying us during the night-time, so we got now Mummy-cat named Mora and her three little horses. I thought our cats at home would be crazy, but these ones are wild in the meaning of the word. They really eat everything. A few weeks ago they left a present for me in front of my bed. A colourful gecko longer than my hand!

The new Mosaik-bench-floor-matt-entrance

earthbricker — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 11:46:19 +0000

Sabaydee. We started to make the entrance nicer. Kaelyn, Andi and me had different ideas, so out of an half a day project became a five day project. Everything is finished now, but I couldn’t take a nice picture now in the dark, so I just give you some from the building process and you can start to imagine what it looks like.

Kaelyn started with a nice mosaik design and Andi made the bench.

I hope that I can upload tomorrow another picture of the finished result. Also for Pedro’s house. There is only one week left to finish it, but the roof is on!

Pedro’s center-pillar

earthbricker — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:48:19 +0000

So today Goe, Maan and Pedro brought the log for the center-pillar of the new house. It looks quite impressive now and they are looking forward to build the roof. The last days I just prepared paint for the renovation of the house we built before, so the work was relaxed, but not very dramatic.

We grew a new tree!

earthbricker — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 13:51:42 +0000

Goe, Gunnar (sorry Runar) and me are very proud to present the new bottle-straw-design, we made in the last two days. It is now the new eye-catcher after you open the front-door. Three meters high and two meters wide.

Pedro’s house is growing pretty fast! Goe from the Phoudindaeng village joined the building team. I am very happy with that. He was helping about two month, building our house last year. I think he is now the most skilled lao Mudhouse-constructor. Even if he has no idea about that!

Enjoy your weekends you lucky westeners!!