September and our northwest wall started about the same time. See the tab that sticks away from the wall, behind the small pallet of bricks? It is one side of a divider-wall that will join its larger counterpart over an arch later on.
My brothers Eric and Van and Van’s wife Kathy were in town over the Labor Day weekend, so we had a family work session.
Van drove the tractor as Eric and Eva loaded broken blocks and leftovers from cut blocks. Van hauled them to our big dirt pile, where they eventually break down. Driving over them with the tractor helps. So does rain.
Once the broken bricks were gone, we worked on walls. Here, Van and Eva have finished laying the outside part of the wall. It takes the longest, because we have to line all the bricks up to a mason’s string in order to keep the wall straight. (Or in our case, straight-er.)
Van also mixed slurry for us. This mix of dirt, sand, and water is the consistency of thin pudding. It makes the most fabulous noises when you pour it into a bucket. Gloop–gloop!
Here, Kathy and Eva discuss how best to place bricks. We try to avoid having too many seams in the same place, even though the bricks are interlocked down the middle of the wall.
Later, as the dirt from cut and crumbling bricks and slurry drips piled up, Kathy valiantly swept the work area. Keeping an earthen block building site clean is very, very difficult.
Eric and Eva had great fun squishing mud slurry between bricks. You’re supposed to lay the brick in the slurry, then shove it against the previous brick so that the slurry fills the space between them. It often splatters up, much to Eric’s chagrin, when he got an eyeful of slurry.
Most of the time, the slurry just splatters everywhere else, especially onto Eva! Little did she know that she was inspiring her young cousin, Alanna.
After seeing a photo of muddy Eva, Alanna asked, “Will I be able to help build the house when we visit?” The lure of mud is very strong.
Meanwhile, across the way, Charles and Alex put another layer of lime plaster on the well-house. They also plastered the inside with dirt, sand, and mud. It is a most beautiful, hand-made building, and we are very proud of it.