Straw bale building - the inside story...

The new toilet and shower block at Treflach

Straw bale building seems to have an image of being a cheap and easy way for people to build themselves a house. Having been involved in various low-impact buildings I'd say it's not just as simple as that...
The main points that aren't immediately obvious to people are:

• Straw bales aren't load-bearing so your building will need some kind of a frame to take the roof
• People seem to forget that they'll still need doors, windows, plumbing, wiring etc etc
• You need some kind of footing to keep the bales off the ground and dry
• Hazel spikes are often used to secure the bales as you build up the walls but they lead to various problems - they're dangerous, difficult to work in at the top layers and they may be a weak link in the long term life of the building
• It's important the straw stays dry so your building is best designed with a generously overhanging roof, much more than you would need with other materials
• Rats and squirrels have to be kept out with boards or render covering all straw surfaces

Really the bales are mainly there for insulation but they do a great job of that and might save you loads of cash. So if you're building a house and have a source of cheap bales it's definitely worth checking out but look into the whole thing very carefully!

The back wall mostly finished.

Azzi, who build himself a wonderful oval straw bale house at Sych Pwll, working with me on the frame last year.

You can see it all here, the brick and block footing, RS board boxes to take the spikes for the first layer, the timber frame and the first row of bales on the way.

Ian Steel and Azzi putting in the first row of bales

Azzi's way of restringing a bale to make it shorter

Dave Bibby working on the original trusses with help from Faze

With Azzi moving abroad and the pressure from other work our straw build progress came to a halt at about the point in the picture above. The frame sat exposed to the elements over the winter and having two hen houses blown into it in the winter gales didn't improve it much. Then the man in the picture below, James the Rocket, with many years' experience of roof structures and woodwork generally came to give us a hand and the project has moved forward again. We'll all breath a sigh of relief when it's wind and watertight.

James and I putting in the first row of bales... again...

James' magnificent redevelopment of the roof

James sledge-hammering in a spike into some of the top bales, a very awkward work space

Leslie lending a hand filling in the gaps between the bales on the back wall

Difficult getting to the top layers to get the spikes in

GETTING OUR HEADS ROUND INFINITY

Photo from Global Illumination Council

The experience of linking up energetically around the world in the Thursday group and others like it with no time lapse has mind-boggling implications for me... One of them being that every point in space is concentric with every other point, and that every point is contained by every other point and contains every other point. In other words, everything is infinitely enfolded. I expect that what we've grown up calling the universe is just one of an infinite number of similar "universes" continually appearing from points within other "universes".  We are part of a revolution in understanding of space, time, scale, enfoldment and infinity which will make the Copernican revolution look like a toddler's first steps.

!! NEW !! Energy Healing Session on Sundays, 9 to 9.45pm.

I've decided to start hosting a new regular session on Sundays as well as our Thursday sessions. My instinct is to explore and develop our work on two paths: I'd like to focus the Sunday sessions on sending and receiving healing energy and building on our already amazing Energy Medicine work, and I'd like to focus the Thursday sessions more now on developing our psychic skills, exploring global consciousness and our evolution on Earth.  I know the two paths go in the same direction, it just feels right to explore and develop in both ways now. Our work has the potential to help so many people everywhere and deserves all the energy we can give it.
Love to all and see you in the ether xx

Thanks, Ushka, for putting me on to the work of Tomasz Alen Kopera - his website here

Flooding down in Shropshire

A watery look to the Shropshire plain

What a strange, mild, wet, windy winter here, just a few flurries of snow and the odd frosty night so far. I know there's plenty of time for a late cold spell like we had last year but all the same it's been strange. The big feature of Jan and Feb in the UK has been the wind and rain. Here in Shropshire, we don't have anything like the flooding further South but we can see a lot of standing water out on the plain below us - and the winds howling around again at the moment.
We've had some damage to the farm buildings and several trees blown down:

Sad to see this weeping birch down, it was lovely sight on the skyline

One of the trees down in the ancient woodland, Bluebell Wood

A tree comes down between our car and Wes's - no one hurt even though Wes was in his at the time.

But to me this winter will be the Winter When Climate Change Became Mainstream. Having listened to, read, talked, written about and even sometimes done something about climate change issues since the 1970's, it's tempting to jump up and down and say "I told you so!" It's good to hear, for example, people on the radio talking sense about what to do about flooding, ie not to build Canuteish walls to keep the sea and rivers out of our houses but to do the Permaculture thing, to keep the water as high in the landscape as possible for as long as possible. We're going to need every drop of it sooner or later. Goodness me, it's even dawning on some politicians that it's a bigger issue than keeping the corporations happy. How out of their depth they are though, are there wellies high enough for David Cameron?

Energy treatment and medication

One thing I wonder about is how people in the developed world who are on long term medication will cope as and when some kind of collapse of our way of life happens. Reportedly, in some parts of the UK one adult in six is taking antidepressants. Four of the five most prescribed drugs in England are for cardiovascular disease, the fifth is a thyroid treatment. What happens when thousands of people don't get their pills?
Not long ago in Greece pharmacies started to run out of medications, the drug companies hadn't been paid and were refusing to supply them any longer. Then there's concerns around the world with the over-prescription of antibiotics and the appearance of  "superbugs” for which there will be no antibiotic treatment.

So why don't we start exploring ways to do things differently? Maybe at least some of these patients can be treated with a focused energy medicine. I've been delighted at how people joining in with the Thursday Lightworkers Group can receive help focused for a particular area, also how different people will receive what is appropriate for each of them. My dream is that we develop a network of groups and individuals all round the world who combine their energy healthcare skills with universal healing energy so that anyone anywhere can tune in, at any time of day, and ask for and receive help in many different ways, including energy that will take the place of some of these medications.

Imagine Global Consciousness...

Imagine a world where each of us can tune in with a global consciousness which includes everyone on Earth and links with all life everywhere. Imagine if our decisions, choices and actions were based on a collective understanding of how best to regenerate natural wealth globally and locally. What if we don’t really need politicians, police forces, armies, accountants, lawyers, bankers etc and all those peoples’ energies could be focused into helping to build a sustainable way of life? Is there actually any other way of avoiding mass extinction?

Regenerating Natural Wealth

First steps: revoluion in a little crate - local food, no pesticide, save money, use some of your waste to make compost... win, win, win

Listening to politicians and corporations you could think that wealth only means financial wealth. This is bollocks. There is no financial wealth that doesn’t depend on natural wealth to generate it.
Tragically, in pursuing financial wealth alone we've considered natural wealth, people and the environment as expendable, and look where that’s getting us.

This is an everyone problem, we’re all responsible for our materialist/consumerist/corpocratic system and attitudes. If it’s not what we want we can change things by our individual actions, stop buying stuff wrapped in plastic flown in from the other side of the world, start growing some food and regenerating abundant local systems that give us our basic needs for a start.