News From the Hill

Archive for June, 2009

Help is a wonderful thing, especially help from friends.

Asking for help is easier for some people than others and does not always come naturally. I had to learn how to ask for help, it was a hard lesson and one that I am glad I learnt.

It has certainly made my life easier to be able to ask for help and to be able to graciously receive it – the two do not always go hand in hand!

Now I also need to know when to say no to help.

We have been getting offers of help in building our house. We have also been advised by people that have already been down a similar road that it is not always  helpful to have help – perhaps I had better explain that one!

There are times when you are building with help that you may spend more time teaching the helpers/volunteers than you actually spend working.

It is important when you are working on a project that is new to you that you take the time to learn how to do it properly yourself before you can safely or easily instruct someone else in what to do. Perhaps you are working by instinct or feeling your way, which is fine when you are working by yourself but not easy when someone is watching over your shoulder to see what you are doing!

It may be that it is easier to do a particular job yourself rather than train a volunteer, especially if that volunteer is not there all the time or may even be a different person each week!

Sometimes you may have someone there to help and you don’t have any jobs for them so you can feel under pressure to find something interesting for them to do. You can feel that they have come all this way to help you and the least you can do is create some work for them. This may result in you not concentrating on the task at hand or worse – rushing a job which needs careful consideration.

You also need to match the job to the person, this takes time. If you know the person well it is much easier because you may have a feeling for what would suit them, what they are capable of making decisions about without always asking or checking that what they are doing is ok.

People have different natural skill sets, things that they have  a natural flair for and are comfortable and confident doing and it is important to try and match these skills to the job.

We can easily underestimate the simple things that one can do to be helpful. We had a friend visiting with us last week who really wanted to help and also to learn what she could about we are doing so that when she finds some land and the time comes for her to build her own place she will have a sense of confidence about the possibilities.

She did very simple things for us. Each morning she washed up all the dishes and pots from the previous night’s dinner. This might seem like a small thing but it was so much appreciated. It meant that after dinner we could all just socialise and hang out, play music or dominoes or watch a movie.

She came grocery shopping with me and organised big salads every lunch-time  and then cooked up a great big lamb curry that lasted for two evenings with the simple addition of a side dish of potatoes the first night and rice the second so that we didn’t have to think too much about food.

She understood that we were having problems working out some aspects of  setting out (squaring up) the frame for the building and left us to it, we needed the space to be cranky!

However, I have to say that her decision to organise the outdoor bath was the coup de grace! It meant that firstly she wasn’t hanging around waiting for something to do and secondly it was one of those things that I had often thought about and not gotten around to so I was really delighted that it was happening! It also meant that we were not feeling guilty about not having an interesting building job for her to do!

So the things we have learn are to say no to help if we are not ready to use it. If someone is really enthusiastic about coming and we don’t have anything for them to do we need to make sure that they are capable of working by themselves on non-building related things and if not then they will have to put off their visit for another time.

We need to be organised about having help.

It is really important that we have a list of jobs to do for people with different skill sets.

If something needs to be taught then it is better to teach it someone who will be a regular volunteer rather than teach it over and over again to once-off visitors.

If people really want to come just to learn then we need to barter something in return – food brought and meals cooked or second hand useful building materials as an example. It needs to be acknowledged that we will loose a good deal of time in teaching so I think that we really need to look after ourselves in this regard.

It is also important to look after our helpers by ensuring that all on site eat well and have fun, we would like the house to have happy builders who enjoy hanging out, helping and learning from each other. We also expect that we will  learn from those who come to help us.

Let’s not forget we need to have some energy left to play music and tell stories!

We do not just expect people to help without return, we are more than happy to barter for help given. If someone is prepared to give us a lot of work-time then we will return that favour after the house is built by helping when they are building themselves or by doing something that they need like assisting them to set up their own renewable energy system for example or helping with web design.

Help is wonderful, especially from people you want to hang out with, it’s just not as simple as it first seems…

We had good weather to work on our house building project today after I got back from getting some building supplies.

The first floor joists were put in this afternoon and it is really satisfying to see them sitting on the beams that span the “stilt” style foundations. We have a very sloping site and so the southern face of the house will be close to six foot off the ground on sturdy stilts which are on concrete pads. The concrete pads are set about three foot into the very solid clay subsoil.

We really would have liked to avoid using concrete however we really could not afford the alternative of cut stone and there is no stone naturally occurring on our site. There are some compromises which we find we are making, mainly due to budget constraints – our budget actually being almost non-existent!

Our floor design will be a little unconventional - quelle surprise! We are fixing galvanised chicken wire between the tops of the sturdy beams and on top of this we will spread a breathable fabric which will in turn be fastened to the tops of the beams. The floor joists will then sit on top of this fabric, nailed to the top of the beams and the spaces created will in time be filled with insulation and the floor boards screwed down to the joists.

We will not be adding the insulation just yet for two very good reasons – firstly we need to get the roof on in order to keep the insulation dry and secondly at the moment we do not know what sort of insulation we will use.

The second consideration will depend on budget – if we win the national lottery – highly unlikely but not impossible – if only we remembered to buy tickets!! I digress – if our budget changes we would love to use sheep’s wool or something similar.

What is more likely is that we will source some local timber and use our free electricity and an electric planer to create wood chips which we could mix with lime and maybe some hemp hurds and a little water to create a sort of woodchip insulation.

Any suggestions about alternative, easily sourced, environmental insulation will be most welcome

I had the most amazing bath this evening, in fact I had the first ever bath in our place!

A friend came to visit to help us build our house and the house building did happen, it’s just that the work we were doing was slow and really only needed two people for most of the work so she was a little bit at a loss as to what to do.

We had finished the foundations so while we were setting out the house frame and playing with string and maths she busied herself with one of the many bath tubs that we have collected.

We have often thought of organising an outside bath and I have just the place in mind – it’s a wee hollow near our stream with a beautiful whitethorn (hawthorn) tree growing at it’s edge. One night that I stayed outside to watch the full moon move across the sky ’til dawn  and I sheltered in the hollow when a north wind blew for a while, it was a beautiful place to shelter and felt really magical.

Nice and all as that spot will be for a winter or spring bath it is too sheltered for a midge season (summer) bath so my friend and I walked around a bit and found a great spot for the bath tub when it is humid, misty and midgy.

I went back to working on the house project and my friend got seriously stuck in to building up two clay banks to hold the bath and supply insulation. She also dug a fire hole under the bath and then dug a channel to drain the  fire hole as it is likely to fill up with rain.

She made use of two lovely little stone walls which were simply sitting in the middle of the field to support the clay banks. The walls also now make a great place to put a mug of tea and a night-light for night-time baths.

The fire was started with local fire-wood gathered in the woods and then we used turf to keep the fire going. It’s a job for patient people, the fire was going for about four hours and the job of walking down to the stream and carrying up water also took some time.

It’s great when friends come to stay and bring great energy and motivation with them!

Eventually the bath was piping hot and as the evening was coming to a close I got the pleasure of being the first into the bath. It was a windy and rainy evening and it did seem a little odd to be going into the garden in a bathrobe and a hat when it was raining!

It was SO worth it! What pleasure it was to be in a hot bath with the rain gently dropping all around – glad I wore a hat to keep my head dry and warm because the wind picked up and I found myself in the bath-tub laughing as the wind blew my hat off, the rain became heavy, the water was piping hot and the turf smoke wafted around!

After some time the rain stopped and the sky became blue with white billowy clouds gently moving across the rainbow above me, as I lazed in a hot bath enjoying the view.

Aw, the simple pleasures in life…

There are some great websites out there for giving away free stuff. It’s a great way to declutter, you can offer your extra or no longer wanted stuff to people who may be in a position to make use of it. You don’t deliver the stuff, people collect it unless you want to deliver. It’s a great way to ensure that things get re-used instead of going to landfill or the recycling centre.

Obviously it makes sense to ensure your safety at all times and not to give your phone number if you are not comfortable, make sure there is someone there with you when stuff is being collected etc – the usual common sense stuff applies.

Of course, these sites are not just for decluttering – it’s also possible that you may end up with more clutter so think carefully about what you are offering to take home with you. Make sure that you really will make use of the item and that you have the space to accomodate it. If you think that you know someone who would just love the item then don’t just offer to take the item for them – check with your friend first or you may end up simply offering the item again.

Most people probably are familiar with freecycle.org it’s been on the go for years both here and across the water and is a localy based give away system – you join your local area group and you can sign up for regular emails if you choose or just check the local group listing to see what’s on offer.

Another option is gumtree.ie which is a national website that lists items for sale and also freebies for collection. Many of the users are based in the bigger cities, however if there is something that you really want that shouldn’t be a deterrent as long as you are prepared to travel to collect the item.

Another national free item site is jumbletown.ie and it is also well worth while keeping an eye on this one. Jumbletown is orgainised on a forum basis with lots of different sections so that searching for items of interest is not difficult.

If you haven’t found what you want then try boards.ie as well. This is a national forum with discussion areas for lots of things and it has an area for freebies.

So there you have it – lots of websites to look at if you want to check out things that people are giving away for free. Enjoy…