Off the Grid

A few months ago Keith and I were able to visit an off the grid organic farm. They hand built most of the buildings out there, including a yoga studio, (cob and straw roof) outdoor kitchen, (coke walls) guest house, (cob and light weight concrete) and guest outdoor kitchen(straw bale and light weight concrete roofing) farm house for the workers(straw bale), root cellar, ect. Above is a picture of one of the guest houses they had built, this is a picture of viewing the hand sculpted bathroom from the outside.

This is the shower from the inside looking out, it was very open, with the toilet on the left of me same curve concept and the open slat windows.

Here is the wall made of wine bottles, beautiful in the sunlight!

Hello Pony

Here is the only structure the owners themselves didnt build by hand. It's their house! He mentioned that when they first moved out there they were unaware of the organic building you could easily do yourself. They had this house designed and built for them to accomodate a low/no energy lifestyle, built higher to catch the wind. The family have been living on the 70+ acre property for 20 years, completely off the grid, using solar energy and hand dug wells for water. The water supplies their family of 4, the farm workers (6 plus family) all of the organic farming, pool, and animals.

Talk about living off your land :) They sell their produce to local restuarants as well as Austin and Houston Farmers markets.

It was pretty neat learning how they make this work, from organic septic solutions to living off the sunlight and groundwater. Inspiring to say the least.