By Anthony Weston
At our October 27th Last Saturday event, the Planning, Design, and Development Circle presented the Schematic Designs for two prototype HM residences to an appreciative crowd of about eighteen members plus a few toddlers.
To set the context, Hope led us in a review of the key values that are guiding the development of our architectural plans. It’s a wonder that there are more than 50 of them! Using a large Wheel of Sustainability taped to the wall, participants selected pre-marked post-its and placed each value in the most appropriate category. Here’s a sample: Social values in play include shared spaces and resources, shared dwellings, supporting diversity, a balance of public and private spaces, accessibility for all ages and abilities, and connected flow between homes. Ecological values include compact village layout, orientation to sun and wind, low 
energy demands, natural, local, and recycled/able materials, attractive outdoor spaces, kitchen gardens. Culture/Worldview values include intimacy with the natural world, a movement from “I” to “We”, inspiration, beauty and creativity. Economic values include economic viability, small homes, fewer possessions and more sharing, affordable housing and low building costs, self-build options, multi-use spaces, cooperative ownership model, flexible housing to meet different needs, and fairly comparable dwellings — no built-in inequality.
Next, I came forward (electronically, from Chile…) to briefly review the last six months of intensive planning work that have brought us to this point and that informs the plans we were about to unveil.
The “Building Block” plan is one: people who need a refresher (which us probably most people: it’s a complex thing) please refer back to this blog post from the Spring. and be sure to review Katy’s excellent slideshow linked to it.
I went on to explain how we came to be working with Jonathan Lucas of Asheville’s What on Earth Architecture. Under Jonathan’s guidance, PDD this spring worked out a set of “Design Goals and Considerations” to define the schematic design work that is now nearing completion. Among other things, we decided to move forward with two prototype designs: what we are now calling the Shared House (common living/dining/cooking/porch area with four 1-room suites that may or may not be lived in independently) and the Small Family Flex House (one-story 2 bedroom house with a 2-room attached suite, ditto).
Again a previous blog post reviews this in more detail. Key takeaways for now are: 1) These designs are only schematic in the sense that they are just first sketches. We’ve taken a long step toward specificity – we can now see what some of the residences might actually look like – but these designs are certainly not “set in stone”. We want feedback! And 2) There will be other residential options. We chose these two for our first designs because they are quite different from each other and therefore help define a range of possibilities and also set some general features of layout and style, but there will be others: next up is probably a two-story and duplexable 2 bedroom family house.
Katy then unveiled the floorplans and elevations for the two prototypes. She walked us through each of them in turn. You can find them here and here. Please take the time to review them carefully, notice that both have multiple pages and quite a bit of detail. The elevations are several pages in.
The Last Saturday session continued with break-out groups to explain the plans in more detail, and to gather reactions, suggestions, and general feedback, which they then brought back to the whole group for a debrief.
The general reaction was overwhelmingly positive and enthusiastic! People 
repeatedly pointed to the thoughtfulness of the layouts, the flow of the spaces, the prospect of well-lit interiors, many outdoor spaces, and the earthiness of the colors and finishes as very attractive features. In fact the biggest complaint we got was a general dislike of the wet bar in the bedroom of the two-room suite, which is easily changeable with a few strokes at the architect´s keyboard. Those of us who have had our noses to this particular grindstone for months (OK, actually, it´s really fun sometimes too, but still a long haul) are gratified and grateful all around – to the community, to Jonathan Lucas, and to each other – for a job done well. And now, onward!
Any HM member who did not have a chance to attend the Last Saturday meeting is also welcome to come by Hart’s Nest (with notice!) and review all of the attached documents including larger printouts of the plans. Email inquires are also more than welcome to me at weston@elon.edu or Katy at katy@hartsmill.org.
Please do take the time to respond – this is the moment when things can be readily changed, and we need to hear everyone´s thoughts and suggestions before taking more definitive responses and suggestions back to Jonathan.
Hope and Paul walked the trails and did some minor clearing. They reported that a large dead pine came down between the tractor shed and the pump house, thankfully missing both structures as well as the trailer holding our two precious solar panels. I was also pleased to see that this was not the dead pine the Pileated woodpeckers had chosen for a home!
workday dawned clear, bright, and cool. The major workday plan was for trail maintenance. Hope and Maria tackled our newest wetland trail while Jeffry, Margret, Lisa, George, Vanessa and Lizel worked on the McGowan Creek trail. We met Paul and visitor Jamie coming from the opposite direction, and we all converged on the cob house to admire Joe and Randy lime-coating the nearly-completed structure. Randy was called upon to give an impromptu explanation of this project. 
It was not until Jeffry backed the tractor out of the shed so I could mow, that we noticed Michael’s more extensive effect. A large pine tree had fallen onto the roof of the tractor shed from behind, crushing a portion of the metal roof and cracking three rafters! With Vanessa’s “seize the moment” attitude, a team was assembled to tackle the repair on the spot. With George acting as foreman, he, Vanessa, Jeffry, Paul and Lizel utilized our hydraulic jack and existing scrap lumber and nails, and Voila! The shed was repaired. Spontaneous cooperation in action!
Our Architect, Jonathan Lucas of 
workday/workshop to raise the slipstraw walls of the pumphouse. Terry, Joe, Randy, Amy, Sean, and me, all of us led by NC’s cob guru and HM advisor, Greg Allen, got ourselves thoroughly clay-covered and all literally had a hand in the building of walls between the frame structure that I have been patiently assembling with the help of others — most recently George. You can see the first steps — some cob beginnings, and some of the forms for the first layer of slipstraw, basically straw coated with a thin film of clay — in the first photo. 
In the event, Florence was not so bad. I have been able to take off the tarps and the wrapping, let it start drying out again, and am resuming work again before I head off to join Amy in Chile. In fact if anyone wants to join — helping put on the roof especially — I expect to be at it all weekend (29 and 30 September) and would welcome the help — just let me know. Regardless, though, stop by and have a look next time you are on the land. The stone bench built into the front is meant for sitting — give it a try!
Wednesday, September 19, was sweet-potato-digging day at Hart’s Mill. What began in June as 3 1/2 orderly rows of sweet-potato slips had become a solid blanket of tangled purple-blossomed green vines. Here and there “volunteer” watermelon and tomato vines popped out of the mass, and bees buzzed happily around the flowers.
You may have noticed that we did not send out an announcement or a plea for help. It is an unfortunate aspect of small farms that many tasks occur on a “seize-the-moment” basis. We knew they needed harvesting soon, but the 6-plus inches of hurricane rain we got Sunday and Monday moved the task to the front of the line. Prospects of wet, rotting roots were all the motivation we needed!
There was no question of taking the tractor into the muddy bed. Jeffry and I spent a good part of the very hot day using clippers (to cut vines), spading forks, and our own two hands to pull the potatoes out of the wet soil. We spread them onto a tarp as they came out, to get a start on drying. Most of the potatoes were beautifully-shaped thanks to having an unusually sandy clay soil. 
Next we crated up the potatoes and toted all three hundred pounds of them to the container shed for curing (consisting of a week or so in dark, very warm conditions), which will be followed by cooler storage at home.
We grew 5 varieties. Top-to-bottom in the photo they are Hernandez, Purple, Carolina Ruby, Mahon and a mystery variety moved from Anthony’s plot in the former community garden. If all goes well they will eventually find themselves gently washed and for sale at the Chapel Hill Farmer’s Market!
Early on we decided to run the water system entirely on solar panels – we’re an ecovillage, after all – and Jeffry has been hard at work wiring them in and plumbing the water system. As of 4:44 pm on July 20th, the system went live!!! One pump pulls fresh cold pure water out of our 350-ft well and into the storage tank; the other pumps the water from the storage tank into a smaller pressure tank that then feeds the irrigation hoses at the proper pressure. Solar panels run the first pump when the sun’s out and charge the batteries that run the second pump on demand. Sound like complicated wiring? It was! Jeffry claims to be neither electrician or plumber, but you’d never guess from the results. Of course, since then it’s mostly been raining, but still, water is ready to go.
please watch for notices of special workdays and workshops in September as we experiment with this earth-building technique with the help of Greg Allen, our cob guru. Eventually there will also be a produce-washing sink area near the tank, and an outdoor shower around the back – yes, a full-service pumphouse! 
Our intern Jess and an old student and friend of mine, Nate, are shown hard at work in this photo. Randy is donating slip and some roofing left over from Cob Haven. Thanks to you all! Anyone who’d like to join in the building effort, please be in touch -– there’s lots more to do!
Hart’s Mill joined the crowds at this year’s Festival for the Eno, on July 4th and 7th at Durham’s West Point on the Eno. A number of our members helped out at a Hart’s Mill booth, greeting a steady stream of passersby and leading our “Seed Bomb” activity for children. Kids took balls of clay from our land and packed them with milkweed seeds, many of which also came from our land. Then, we invited the children to take them home and plant them in their 
yards. We explained the important connection between milkweed plants and monarch butterflies. (Actually, most of the children already knew about this connection. Do you? If not, check out 
enthusiastic to learn about us, and perhaps to join us in the future. We also had some of Margret Mueller’s gorgeous note cards for sale. In addition, we were able to network with people from other nonprofit organizations such as animal rescue groups, other intentional communities, and (my personal favorite) a nonprofit dedicated to promoting electric vehicles. To top it off, there was plenty of live music and wonderful food.
she and Anthony did the heavy lifting (literally!) of 
