Good day - I have randomly come by several times over the last few years to read around in the forums - very interesting. I'm not sure why I've not registered before but here I am! I'm a retired old woman, married to a disabled vet. We have a bunch of acres in the middle of nowhere in SE Colorado, about 35 miles to the nearest town. Our house is a quasi-earthship, build to be off grid but not quite there yet. We plan to be fully self sufficient within the next five years. As long as we get there before I hit 50, I'll be happy with that. Trying to get started on extending the house using earthbags, possibly hyperadobe. I need more storage space, lol. We are in the midst (ok, at the very start) of building a 40x20 underground greenhouse, a walipini if you will. Currently we have under 100 chickens but nothing with hooves. I just gave my son half of our acreage and he'll be building a house there for his family. Then should anything happen, we'll be able to take care of each other. It'll be less worrying for me to have them out of the city and living nearby. Well that's a bunch of babbling and if I haven't scared everyone away, it's great to be here. I hope to learn a lot! Ryuk
Welcome to the tree @Colorado , Our other east slope monkeys should be offering their own greetings soon enough. You have, no doubt, noticed that we are a friendly troop of apes and are willing to offer up our opinions and advice for all ..
Not yet 50 is not even close to old in this group. I had a drivers license when you were born and I am not even close to the oldest here. Welcome to the tree...
Do we have to tell how old we are? I'm 29 and holding, sometimes not very well at the holding part. Rancher
Less than L? I'm only as old as the woman I feel.....OMG, am I channeling Donald, or just experiencing a little gender fluidity?? Welcome, to the monkey tree....more women are always most welcome here....even if just to balance out the testosterone of course.
Morning @Colorado from the foothills of Colorado. Nice that you finally joined. I have some questions about your walipini. What are you using for the cover? I have seen plans with plastic sheathing but wind and weather, I would think it would not hold up. Also, did you amend the dirt inside? Or will you have raised beds?
Good morning and thanks to all for the warm welcome. As to the walipini, when I say we are at the beginning, we are at the very start, lol. We rented the equipment last weekend and my son was good enough to give up his entire weekend to dig it out for us. It's 100% sand where we live, no actual soil at all. We plan on keeping the floor as packed sand since it's rock hard and we'll go with raised beds. For now. That plan could change as we just took a tour of an aquaponics operation in the Springs and it's quite appealing! We'll be building the underground sections of wall out of earthbags. As for the roof and wall sections above ground - that's still being debated. We get winds up to 75 mph pretty often out here, it's nearly always blowing to some degree so whatever we decide on must be sturdy. We are also starting to dig out our cold storage/root cellar but we need to wait on most of it until we rent the excavator. The walls will also be earthbags on that. I love earthbags! My house was built using rammed earth tires and honestly, they are terrible to build around. Especially in the house. Again, thanks for the warm welcome!!! Ry
