Spring 2021
TREE PLANTING
Having spent the winter away from Colorado, in order to design the next stages of building and integration with the land, a vast amount of progress was made with the momentum upon which we returned.
With the help of a select group of dear friends and allies that made the trip to participate in our mid-May work party, we made prayers for fertility and abundance by planting hundreds of native saplings (made available through the Colorado State Forest Service) atop crystals in the clay-predominant soil. This collective act was an offering to the spirit of the land, and an experiment to determine which species would be best suited to life in this particular micro-climate. Through this process, a great deal of patterns became recognizable, creating foundation for future planting.
Regular missions were undertaken to bring back much-needed biomass to cover the bare clay at Skyhill. This year, we covered the ground with a considerable amount of wood chips, straw, leaves, and manure into which we pitched cover crop seeds. Hopefully soon the difference will start to become evident that where we cover the bare clay ground, precious moisture is stored, giving rise to a flourishing of the native vegetation.
Summer 2021
NATURAL & RECLAIMED MATERIALS ~ ACQUISITION & BUILDING
The scorching summertime gave rise to many foundational projects, while simultaneously making the labor more challenging due to the intense heat and rays at 5600 feet elevation. Fire season in the American West was considerably more mild this year than in 2020, which made it more tolerable to be out in the elements every day.
This summer, steady progress was made on a wide variety of projects:
- construction of primary and secondary outbuildings for storage
- building materials were brought to Skyhill through consistent truck and trailer loads
- acquisition of hand tools, power tools and necessary infrastructure, including small cisterns
- mulching efforts were continuous, covering one patch of earth at a time
- vast numbers of seeds gathered and broadcast into the mulched landscape
- fortifying trail systems with wood chips
Integration of Reclaimed & Natural Materials
Wooden pallets are a consistently sized, consistently free building material that can be sourced regularly from just about anywhere modern humans congregate. Pallets became the ideal building blocks for a few of our initial low-cost, low-pressure outbuildings due to its cost effectivity and relative ease to work with. The reclaimed pallets and lumber were free and the locally-milled live edge lumber was very cheap!
By far, the most expensive aspects of the structure were the roof and the screws.
Light Straw Clay
Installing Light Straw Clay (LSC) in the tool shed that was fashioned from 16 discarded pallets. LSC provides a surprising amount of insulation and this is already obvious inside the shed, even with only a few walls half-finished.
Materials Sourcery & The Bone Yard
Rocks, bricks, poles, sand, straw, fencing, palettes, lumber, windows, doors, scaffolding, piping, shade structures, etc.
Acquiring materials necessitates the exchange of time, energy, money or a combination thereof.. depending on the material itself. Rocks are free but heavy. Aggregates can be cheap, but delivery costs can be more expensive than the materials themselves. Public message boards have become a consistent way to source free materials, reducing the waste stream while developing first world scavenging skills that are so relevant these days.
Frequenting salvage yards and repurposed materials outlets provides access to a wealth of unique options, where the building process can feel more like a mystery than a map. Lots more to come next season from this building materials treasure hunting reality show…
Autumn 2021
NATURAL MATERIALS & SOIL BUILDING
Skycrete
The images below show a few of the ways we’ve started to work with the local earth. As an ongoing experiment we are constantly honing our mixtures of a few basic ancient materials, integrating as much of the Skyhill clay as possible into a cementaceous aggregate we lovingly refer to as “Skycrete“.
First a threshold was cast in place for the tool shed:
Next we poured a 4″ slab floor in the shed, fine-tuning our mix along the way :
In addition to these raw construction potentials, Skycrete is a substrate for casting outdoor pavers, tiles and architectural ornamentation. The sculptural potentials of this unique medium have just begun to be explored. The image below shows a few of the Skycrete casts that our Patreon supporters receive as benefits for their ongoing contributions.
Soil Building
life emerges where where there was once bare clay.
mostly left in the ground to nourish and aerate the soil
The North Fork Valley is a rich agricultural community, presenting many opportunities to acquire much-needed ground covering biomass at Skyhill. Within a very short radius there are a lot of options to work with. Alternating layers of straw, goat & other animal leavings from nearby organic farms, and pitching a vast number of seeds into the mix has shown signs of promise over the course of just a few seasons. Constant local seed collection and spreading encourages native species to propagate and diversify a previously over-grazed piece of earth.
