民家学校 静岡県伊久美 Felling a tree and milling lumber with a portable chainsaw mill

November 6 and 7 attended a forestry workshop as a part of the Japan Minka Revival Association's Minka School.

Selective thinning

Measuring circumference

Cutting wedge

Cut back with saw above wedge

Falling tree

Moving logs

Peavey

Milling logs with a portable chainsaw mill

民家学校 埼玉県幸手市 Japanese Joinery

December 10, attended a joinery workshop in Satte (幸手), Saitama-Prefecture.

Stepped Gooseneck Splice

Osaka Castle-Otemon Gate's Pillar Splice

Mortised Rabbeted Oblique Scarf Splice

Blind Stubbed, Housed Rabbeted Oblique Scarf Splice

Double Plug Connecting Joint

This last Joint can splice or connect.

民家学校 大平宿

September 18-20 stayed three days in a hundred-year-old Japanese folk house in 大平 (Odaira) in Nagano-Prefecture.

神向寺さん (Mr. Jinkoji) cooking over an open fire indoors.

銀座農園

September 15 met with Mr. Iimura of Ginza Farm. Ginza is Japan’s version Manhattan’s 5^th avenue. Ginza Farm is involved with rooftop gardening, environmental education, and connecting rural producers and primary urban consumers. The following is an article from Nihon University's 桜縁 magazine.

Timber Framing and 富山ストローベイルハウス協会

September 4, spoke at a seminar sponsored by the Toyama Straw Bale House Association. The week after the seminar, September 5-9, I worked with Akihiro Yoshimoto, founder and director of the Toyama Straw Bale House Association. Hiro is professionally trained as a carpenter.

Preparing columns for a straw bale building to be built fall 2010 – summer 2011.

Remove bark

炭付け before cutting the tenon

September 10 presented at the Architectural Institute of Japan’s Annual Conference which took place at Toyama University.

Earthen Oven 飯舘村 8/29, 9/25

August 29 and September 25 helped with an earthen oven workshop led by Suzuki-san at Iitate Village (飯舘村) in Fukushima Prefecture.8/29

Build opening with firebricks

Form dome with wet sand

Earthen-sand mix

Cover with wet newspaper to separate sand from earth. Cover dome with earthen mix

Yoshi-kun and Kyle shaping oven

End of Day one

9/25

Cover thermal mass layer with an insulating layer of vermiculite, straw, and earth.

Hand-prints

Ideally, the earthen plaster slowly dries over several weeks to prevent drying cracks. Then, heat is slowly added to prevent expansion cracks. But we couldn’t wait.

Fire oven and bake pizzas

美味しいPizza

End of day two

Natural Building in Thailand

Saw many examples of natural building in Thailand.

Thatch roofs are very common. The thatch roofing can be bought as shingles, and then lashed on to a frame.

One-room bamboo homes sold along the road.

Visited a natural building demonstration project sponsored by the king.

Bamboo frame plastered with a mix of soil, water buffalo manure, and cement.

Jeff of Chiang Mai

On Friday, August 20th, Neil and I took the overnight train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai. The next morning, Jeff, a lecturer at a Chiang Mai University, met us at the train station.

Jeff with bamboo fish trap in irrigation channel

Jeff's home is a beautiful, small permaculture farm outside of Chiang Mai.

Water hyacinth, a fast growing accumulator of nitrogen and phosphorus, flourishes in the irrigation channel and is periodically removed and used as nutrient rich mulch on the adjacent garden beds.