First Week on the Rancho

Hello all,
so we completed our first week at our first WWOOFing location. It is about 15 acres of land in the hills outside of San Miguel. After finishing class last friday we took a bus saturday morning to the big grocery store in town to meet the owner of the farm. Dorothy is a lady about 45 years old from san diego. We got into her 1971 VW bus and headed out of town to her farm. It was only about 12 km away but took about 40 minutes because the roads are pretty bad. We drove onto their property and were greeted by her husband Andy who is from england and their two dogs, puja and spangle. They also have two donkeys, whose job is to mow the wild grass around the property. There property is a beautiful desert area at about 2000m elevation (about 6700ft) We set up our tent and went straight to work.
So we thought this place was going to be an organic farm but it is really more of a natural construction site. They do have a pretty big organic garden and a green house but it is the dry season so they really only have carrots and a few types of lettuce left from the rainy season. Anyway, what they mainly specialize in is earthbag construction. They hold workshops for anybody who would like to learn how to build buildings out of earthbags. This basically consists of filling old livestock feed bags with a mixture of different types of dirt, then stacking them on top of each other and putting up a cob finish to cover and protect the bags. The structures are very sturdy and look almost like normal concrete walls when finished.
Everything on their property is spread out and made out of some sort of natural or recycled material. The kitchen is a circular earthbag thingy with a tin roof over it. It is outside and can be quite cold when cooking breakfast in the morning. The owners live in a tent made from yak's wool that they brought back from Tibet. There is an earthbag hottub which is heated by a solar water heater. Although we haven't been able to use it yet because it has been raining and freezing all week. Not enough sun to heat the water. They also have a greenhouse made of used old wood pallets. Very cool. Other things: sawdust composting toilet, a mongolian style yurt under construction, a very cool outdoor cobb shower, a dome type tent thingy for the dining room, a solar oven, a solar water bottle purifier, and another wood pallett tool shed.
Everything is outside and there is no electricity. They get water from a well and is cold if the sun hasn't been out. But if your lucky the sun will heat some of the water in the above ground hoses so your shower won't be freezing.
Typical day: We get up each morning at 7:30 or so make breakfast, and start work at nine. We work until noon, have lunch, do the dishes, and then continue work until about 3 or 4. Hang out reading or walking around until Andy makes some sort of delicious vegetarian dinner around 5;30 OR 6. Then we do the dishes from dinner and the sun goes down pretty soon afterword. It has been cold this week so we usually read a little in the dining dome with our headlamps and get in the tent around 8 or 9.
Tasks So far: we have built a yurt out of wood and then learned how to cob to make a little front stoop thing. The cob they use is 1 part black earth, 2 parts donkey poop, 3 parts sand, and 1 part concrete to bind everything together. We have fixed up their greenhouse with new plastic and reinforced the walls to make it more sturdy. We have done a lot of digging up or big huge rocks and filling in the holes with smaller rocks to make little drainage holes for rain water around the yurt. We do our laundry by hand, and also fill up 2 liter soda bottles with well water to be purified by the UV rays and heat of the sun (a very cool and really simple system to get clean drinking water). Next week we will start building this little cicular earthbag building and cobbing the walls of it. Should be a good time.
We are hoping for more sun this week as it has been pretty cold last week. Then next weekend we are going to travel to Queretaro, and Guanajuato before kenny heads to Michoacan and I head down to the beach in Oaxaca to meet Vicky. Pretty excited about it.
Hope all is well in the states. Take care.
love,
mike and kenny