Earthineer Spotlight (2012)

Tell us a bit about yourself.

Jay and I have had two lives together over the past 30 years. Our first life was in the south – more opportunities financially – where we both ran non-profits. My job as executive director of a number of women-focused projects was to raise money, manage employees, create a budget, and generally change the world for women and their families. Jay’s was to run an emerging telecommunications association.  

In my young adult days I was married to a farmer who was very violent towards me, so I ended up in a shelter for battered women (I’d left 22 times previously only to be found). As the mother of a young child my responsibilities were many, but even in those days I believed that if I could run a house, I could do almost anything that involved managing a project.  

My work with battered women won many awards, I even did a news conference with then President Clinton to announce the opening of the National Domestic Violence Hotline. Eventually I created a project that won the release of many women who acted in self-defense but were in prison. This project was copied around the world, and gave me the confidence to start a new direction in life – building an Earthship.

I wanted to have land in my native Ohio: the entire time I lived in the south I was longing for a place like Blue Rock Station. My mind’s eye could see what it would look like, and in our tours I often tell people that I was walking to this place all of my life because I could see where I was going.

There were lots of detours, but mostly I was gathering information and new skills so I could re-think how I wanted to live. Jay loved to tease me when we were first together because I saved glass jars and unusual boxes to reuse. Our family life from the beginning has generally revolved around meals together, a little TV watching, and lots of excuses for parties with friends.

When Jay and I decided to share a life together over 30 years ago, we exchanged our goals. He wanted to be a millionaire by age 35, drive a Mercedes (I think it was an XL), and travel. When he looked at my goals – laughter in our home, a dependable good mileage car, ability to buy what we needed at the store, and travel – he said, “Is that all you want?” and I said, “That’s everything and it’s going to be a lot of work to make it happen.” I was wrong about the hard work part, because my life with Jay has been an amazing adventure.

We’ve traveled the world together, lived in Europe, spent many journeys in Central America to learn language, and never stopped sharing our thoughts and dreams. The day I met him I knew he was my soulmate – things always make sense in hindsight, don’t they?

Tell us about a typical day at Blue Rock Station.

There might not be a typical day here, which is why it is the most exciting place I’ve ever lived. Most of my life I’ve been bored easily with my surroundings, but not here. Generally we get up early, drink tea together, listen to the news on NPR, and talk about the day. On Mondays we try to do planning for the month, review finances, discuss marketing, and look at where we are in the year statistically.  

Jay goes off to Green Acres to use the Wifi so he can work on his website consulting with clients around the US, and, if we have interns I sit down with them to plan the day of work. Then off I go to do farm chores, including feeding chickens, turkeys, llamas and goats. Currently I milk two goats for fresh raw milk, and to make cheese.

We eat lunch together at home – in good weather we gather round the table at the Overlook where it is shady and a gentle breeze blows most of the warm months.  This is our time to reflect and discuss emails, or maybe spend time visiting with guests, or reviewing plans with interns.

The afternoon can involve working the garden, mucking out stalls, earth plastering any number of unfinished projects, processing food for winter, attending the Chesterhill Produce Auction, leading a tour, or working with interns on their projects.  There is never any shortage of things to do.

Around 3:30 in the afternoon we stop for a proper cup of tea at the Overlook, and to catch up on our day. One of us will prepare food from the menu so we talk about that, and generally take a breather. Then back to work until time to make supper. Evenings are generally spent doing chores, watering in the plastic bottle greenhouse, pulling weeds, harvesting produce, and then ending chores by feeding the five cats and three dogs that live with us. Their feeding takes some time because we give them raw food, which has to be cut up or processed in some way.

By this time I am pretty tired. Jay likes to watch a DVD, which I join in if I can stay awake. We both like British mysteries and occasional films, which we are able to access with the help of Netflix. There is no broadband here – we’re in a black out area so we depend on the movie service for our entertainment.

What makes our days so interesting is the constant change – visitors, media folks doing stories, interns, the critters, and our time together. This life is a gift.

Annie – Jay calls you the "diva of the dumpster" and credits you with providing the ambition for creating the Blue Rock Station "earthship". Tell us how you got started.

As a frugal person, and the daughter of depression era parents, I learned to conserve as a child. We saved buttons from discarded clothing, glass jars, and anything else my mother thought would be useful.  

In the fall of 1993, Jay and I became grandparents. It was clear to me from my work with wealthy women that one thing we could do for our family was to create a retreat. So, when our grandchild was going to be born in Ohio, we set out to find some land. This was an amazing time in our life together because we both wanted to live in the country. The week she was born we bought the land that was to become Blue Rock Station.

When it came to thinking about putting a house on the site, I felt strongly that we should not build carelessly. While we could have afforded to build a conventional house, it seemed best to consider how constructing something unique could have an economic impact on this part of Appalachian Ohio. For this reason, we waited and considered our options.

The next spring, I heard the architect Micheal Reynolds talking on WMNF community radio in Tampa, FL. He described buildings he designed that incorporated clean waste – tires, cans, bottles. The idea that I could do this jumped into my head. I’d always been crazy about making little buildings – I used blankets over the swingset, or snow forts to do this when I was kid.

Tell us about the construction of the earthship (what materials you used, how long it took you to build, where you learned to build the earthship, etc).

It is hard to say how long it took to build the house because we only worked on it in the summers, and then when we permanently moved to Ohio we took a year to make it livable. For all practical purposes it is still under construction since the plastering of some of the walls, and the laundry room are not finished.  

The house is built with rammed-earth tires – around 2,200 of them. Each one weighs about 300 pounds. The initial walls of the building took four months to build. The next summer we built the face of the house, and bought returned patio doors to install – 30 of them total – as the entire front of the building.

After that I spent a lot of time laying up bottle walls to create the openings for the doors that led to the out doors, and then the walls for the laundry and shower rooms. It was all such a big adventure and worth all of the time and effort it took to mix up literally tons of mud to build those walls, and to plaster the tires to create a smooth beautiful surface.

In 2002 we moved to Europe to watch America from across the pond and I didn’t see Blue Rock Station for three years. Jay came back one summer to install insulation in the ceilings and wade through the jungle I’d created in the wetlands (proving that thermal mass works because those plants took over the living room and bedroom making it look like some kind of tropical mess). During our time in Europe we worked on a one-room Earthship in Scotland with Sustainable Communities Initiatives. We learned a lot from this process, and it made us feel like experts based on our experience pounding tires in Ohio.

When we returned at the end of 2004 we were ready to dig in, so to speak, to create what has become the brand of Blue Rock Station. We built brush fences, finished our grandchild's bedroom so we could move in, and experimented with how to finish the kitchen area by placing odd pieces of cabinets in different spots to see how things would work. When we finally bought the stainless commercial cupboards from the old high school (to be torn down) the kitchen had done nine years of “temporary” duty.  Today it’s an efficient working area that surprisingly can hold ten people working around the island to cook food or watch a demonstration on cheesemaking.

We’re still working on the interior – almost everything we do is with either interns or in workshops with people who want to learn more about sustainable building techniques. Living sustainably requires some patience, but the rewards are tremendous because there’s no need to be in a hurry.

You get bus-loads of people visiting Blue Rock Station, so your way of living clearly resonates with people. What is it that most visitors are looking for, and what will visitors see at Blue Rock Station?

We’re located in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains so people come here for a variety of reasons. They sometimes want to learn first-hand sustainable living skills. Or maybe they just want a tour that includes a look at our livestock raising methods, water collection systems, gardens and buildings (made of natural and re-used materials). They almost always want to see our passive solar home – called an Earthship –  the first of its kind east of the Mississippi River. We also have media that visit regularly, so we’ve been featured in a variety of publications and video projects. Every day is filled with some sort of question or request to visit. I would say that most folks who visit come down the lane with a longing for something – some know what they’re looking for, while others are researching with their hearts.

What is the one thing that you hope visitors will take away with them?

This is our creed of principles:

1) Re-think almost everything we’ve been taught. 

2) Focus on what we have in common with others. 

3) Live without taking away from the future. 

4) Work to live.  

5) Share our resources with others.

If folks find something in this creed then we’ve succeeded in exchanging ideas, cares and thoughts with our visitors. Sometimes they return as new friends, sometimes they write to say what they are doing with their lives.  

Jay has written a Green Technology textbook. Tell us a bit about that.

Actually, Jay and I wrote the book together – he was the voice and I was the editor. It took six months to generate the 800 pages and three months to edit the “big book” as the publisher calls it. Green Technology Concepts and Practices is the first textbook of its kind. We are just finishing up our latest book When The Biomass Hits the Wind Turbine: How We Got Into This Mess and How We'll Get Out of It, which will be released in April 2012. We hope to have The Happiness Factor: Giving Thanks for Nothing by the holiday season 2012. In January we spent a month without resources – spent no money (20 cents for a book fine so Jay could keep his library privileges), and only electricity to run the computers that are the heart of our business (during daylight hours only). We had a couple of other exceptions for emergencies (transportation). We cooked on top of the woodstove that heats the house, used an amazing little thermal mass oven from an old Model T, and enjoyed lots of time with candlelight, eating great food, and the good moods of many friends who visited. It was the best January I’ve ever had in my life, and in 2013 we hope to do it again, but with more people joining us.

You run workshops and tours throughout the year. What is your favorite and why?

There is no real favorite since everything we teach for skill-building is what we enjoy doing in our everyday lives. It’s great fun to work with earth plaster, make cheese, walk with llamas, and work on marketing projects. My favorite part is the people. Our visitors walk down the lane looking for something they can’t find anywhere else. They walk into our lives for a brief time, and often take home something they were seeking. How great is that? And, because our business plan states our mission is to have fun and not to do anything we don’t want to do, we are genuinely happy to see everybody who joins us for a moment in our lives.

Tell us about some of the recent projects at Blue Rock Station.

We just completed the first phase of our new goat barn. We’re building a new privy for the week-long straw bale build in May. This year I will have planted over 400 trees (our normal goal is 75 annually). Our grandchild is going off on her gap year, so we’re beginning to think more about how to travel a bit to see her. Our summer fun in July will be a reunion for Jay’s birthday and to celebrate her graduation, so we’ll be hosting lots of old friends, and a few new ones. We are hoping to have more interns as well, coming from around the world. There’s a lot to do to keep everybody going in the right direction.

What do you think is the most rewarding thing about what you do? 

Living every day with a focus on the whole picture of life, and a big part of that is preparing food for everybody (I love this as long as someone either helps or washes the dishes). I really enjoy writing, but probably the best part of life here is all of the time Jay and I have together to share ideas, and explore how to carry them out. We don’t work physically together that much – I’m the farmer and he’s the main builder – but we write together, share meals (sometimes preparation), and enjoy each other’s company. I love working with goats, and generally feel that every day of this life is a gift I was walking towards all of my life.

What advice to you have for someone just getting started in sustainable living?

Create a plan with goals and write it down... tell everybody who is within shouting distance your plans. Don’t go into debt, but be creative in how you reach your goals – it isn’t about buying things. A happy simple life is about cherishing the basics: so food, friends, family, community, education, health and your outlook are the tools you need to find your way.