Goldie Mariola

This is the 33rd year of the Crestone Energy Fair that has continued to be a FREE event for decades. This year we aim to reclaim our interdependence and share our community gifts with the greater population.
Join us this year for alternative building workshops, permaculture panels, discussions on water rights and waste management.

We have live music, a kid zone, local vendors, home tours and much more.

Get involved or just come to enjoy.

CrestoneEnergyFair.org

We built our Earthship in the desert and used the local sand on our property. It’s called blow sand and it is very fine. It worked really well for tire pounding. We would get it a little wet so it would stay in place. In earthship design, the TIRES ARE THE FOUNDATION. The tire acts as a form for the earth. They are very strong and unless you use a blown out tire, it’s unlikely that it would have any problems. Once filled the tires are like 100 pound earth bricks.

As far as offgassing, it’s a non-issue. Off gassing happens when the tire is exposed to sunlight, oxygen or water, non of this happens when they are finished with plaster. We have finished our Earthship and there is no odor or offgassing.

Earth bag and strawbale and even tire bale are all great ways to spend less time on the structure of the home. It took us two summers to finish the tires for our 1,600 sq foot home.

Maybe this is too late already… but you would lay out your empty tires in their ideal positions where they are at least mostly staggered. Leaving spaces where it makes sense. Then you fill and pound the tires and in the spaces that were left open you can pour cement or use a much smaller tire to squish in between them. At Earthship they call these squishies. They can be quite hard to get in place but a crow bar can help and they will work.

i would like to post in a forum but can't figure out how. i saw something about having enough apples, how can I get apples? help!!!

As another student of CRMPI I feel compelled to share about my experience with their PDC, as it was much different than Johns...

I took their PDC in July 2015 and it was one of the best courses I have ever taken. I am someone whom needs to see things in action in order to understand them, and that's why taking a course works for me, instead of just reading information about permaculture. Before the course, I had only a basic understanding of the permaculture principles, and I left with so much information, a notebook filled with ideas and concepts.
I felt that the course was completely comprehensive, I loved that the instructors addressed topics beyond agriculture.  Sure, I could read all of the books written on permaculture and probably learned a good chunk of whats out there, but a bonus to doing a course is the connections you get to make and ideas that come from the others there.

I can see how someone might think Jerome is maybe unprofessional or sarcastic, but you know what, he's not a business man, and thats one thing I loved about meeting him, you see his love for life and plants beam out of him when he is doing his work. He loves nature, he loves simplicity, no wonder he hasn't focused on setting up a paypal system for the course!

I also loved the facilities (I will admit, we did not have to use a porta-jon). The intimate setting of the class room in Jerome's house made it easy to get close to each other and make connections. It was awesome for me to see that this place was primarily a home, and then secondly, an education center. It made it clear that a home can be an education center. The green houses were amazing, I mean, to have tropical fruit growing int the high desert is an accomplishment. Doing the actual work was a bonus for me, too. I enjoyed when we made swales, grafted trees, mulched the garden and acted out scenarios. This helps solidify the information in my brain.

I also loved the field trips we did. We got to see a variety of alternative buildings in the area which instilled so much inspiration in me.

I am someone that does a lot of research before committing to something, especially when the price is high, and I thoroughly read the CRMPI website before signing up. I did not feel misguided at all. Camping is camping, personally, the fact that we had access to a home, made it not even seem like camping...The activities we did were engaging and dynamic. We got to do actual projects for actual clients in the area. I felt taken care of and supported the whole time. It was a beautiful experience and I would really hate for someone to miss out on it. It's not your average university course, it's an interactive experience at living a permaculturally-focused life. I am forever grateful for the facilitators at CRMPI and my experience there.

Hello!!
I am in Colorado too (Denver) and I have been wanting to either join an ecovillage or help start one. I have been trying to figure out the best way of going about organizing this and I realize there is a lot that goes into it. I am ready to put energy into a project like this.
I have lived in an intentional community and have experience in Earthship building.
I am most interested in creating a life where I can be part of a community that wants to be sustainable and work together.
If anyone wants to meet up and make moves on this I am really excited to do the same. Lets make this happen!!
Goldie

Hi there! I'm from Coal Creek Canyon, 25 miles west of Denver. I just finished the Earthship academy an am very eager to continue learning about/building sustainably. I will be back in Colorado in April and would love to come an help you Keith! And see what everyone else is doing too. Although I grew up in Colorado, I haven't lived there in a few years but I'm excited to come back and spend some time there because it looks like there's a lot happening.
Hope to meet you all soon!
Goldie

Hi there,
In January I completed the Earthship academy in Argentina where we did a start to finish build of a two room 'simple survival' Earthship. I continued to work with the government here in South America where we completed a rammed earth tire retaining wall which was made with 3,000 tires, so I feel confident in sharing what I learned in these projects about tire walls.
The tire wall itself is not insulation. It is thermal mass, so it helps regulate temperature but you still need insulation (if you want it to be auto-sustainable).
When building the retaining wall, we used all sorts of earth. I (and most of the people I worked with) liked working with dirt that had more clay, rather than more sand. When pounding the dirt in, clay will stay in place, and sand has more of a tendency to fall back out of the side walls.
Hope this helps:)
I'm going to try to attach a picture of the completed tire retaining wall.

I will be spending a few months in New Orleans this winter, November -February and I am trying to find some projects to get involved in. Looking to volunteer/intern/learn anything really. Does anyone have any helpful resources? I appreciate any help. Thanks