The Project that got Too Big

​It is said that a little bit of knowledge is worse than ignorance, presumably because you think you can make decisions and do things that you don’t quite have the insight for.  Something similar can be said for having a little bit of skill.  Some people, once they have a smidge of skill, start to feel confident.   They start to think about what you could do with those new skills, dreaming up awesome projects.  Then they start on one of them … and it just turns out to be way more complicated and take much longer than they had thought it was going to.   That is how I feel about our lovely straw bale studio - as lovely as it is. 

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​According to the scrum plan for season 2022, the straw bale studio was planned to be more or less finished by mid-summer, which is now.    Then we would have time to focus on all the other important projects on the farm related to our plants and animals.  As it stands, we are probably, oh, another 60-80 person days of work from completed.  Oops.   There is no way to complete it this season even with all the time our workaway folks will bring plus all of my weekdays plus some help from Mark.   This makes me nervous because I want to make progress on the farm aspects, but we also need to have the studio winter-ready before the frosty days set in (plaster work is no longer possible below 50 degrees). 
 
How do I get into scrapes like this? 
 
The deception provided by half-baked skills is an element for sure.   And some other factors also played a role.
 
For one, green building is an ongoing passion.  In the 1990s I designed and managed building a penthouse in Vienna (Austria) full of salvaged antique building materials and energy conservation features.  In the 2000’s I was head of the design committee in a co-housing project and we added many green features, with me countless evenings drawing and planning (the project later even won a Boston Green architecture award).  In the 20 years we have lived in Needham we transformed our old 1867 farm-house into an almost net-zero building.   I truly believe buildings can and should be zero net energy, durable, ultimately recyclable, beautiful, functional, and make a positive contribution to their surroundings.   To me, the land on the farm has been calling for an underground hobbit house or a cozy den made from raw materials you can immediately recognize.
 
I may also have been a little envious of Mark.  In 2020 – total quarantine COVID summer – when we were not going to go anywhere for vacation other than our farm, Mark got bored and frustrated.  After some rumination, he said, “I am going to build a little shed”.  I think he had been looking at all the fun Charlotte and I were having putting up our chicken hoop house.  So, he bought a plan, got himself some lumber and a bunch of tools and started out.    Day by day it went up – the floor went in nice and plumb and square; the stick frame walls went up 10’ tall; rafters came on; the roof with all its layers, on and on it went.  It looked fantastic, like he had been building for years instead of this being his first ever building project.  Jesse, our professional builder who was putting up our timber frame house, admired it.   When we decided we needed another small building, I may have thought, “I can build one too!”  But mine wouldn’t be just any old garden shed – no, this would be a natural build, timber frame straw bale studio!   With a stone foundation.  And an earth floor.  And a green sod roof.   Obviously.  Plus, Mark said he would help, and he got quite excited about cutting the timber frame for the building :).
 
I knew I didn't quite have the skills, but a workshop would fill in those gaps.  After all, I had built a little hoop house barn the year before.  I designed the barn and managed the workaway teams in building the wall frames and enclosing them with shiplap panels, putting in posts and beams for a hay loft, and building two doors.  It is solid and looks good.  It is an exquisite little barn that has about ten functions integrated into it – talk about the permaculture principle “stacking function”!   It serves us admirably and deserves a letter of its own (note to self).  I was justifiably proud of how far I had come compared to just a year before when I had been afraid to even think about building a simple wall for our first hoop house (we instead engaged Robin, Charlotte’s friend to do it for us). 
 
Reading about how-to put-up straw bale buildings, the general impression I got that this is something moderately handy folks can do themselves.  It does not require special tools, and a small building does not require professional skills.   The straw bales are manageable to move and cut.  The plastering is forgiving.  You can put in a simple non-concrete foundation.   I ignored the part about very labor intensive. Plus, I was able to engage an experienced straw bale builder to come and give a workshop to boost my confidence, and to help us make progress on the project while providing an educational experience for the participants.
 
As I said, the perfect mix: passion, some kind of competition, and half-baked skills all contributed to taking on a project that was slightly too big for my shoes.  The other day, I was in the barn we built last year, and I compared the hoop structure, the simple hay loft, the single metal roof and uninsulated walls with the straw bale studio and I realized: Huh, that was quite a leap.    
 
With some planning to leave certain aspects of the build to next year, some reductions in  non-essential farm-related work, and some help, we will eventually get the straw bale studio to a place where it can survive the winter.  Will I have gained some humility and improved planning insights?  One hopes.  On the other hand, I have a gained few more skills …