Cristobal Cristo

Chris,

Please try to add insulation to the outside of the thermal mass, otherwise you will lose its ability to work as the buffer of heat and cold.

If your dirt has sufficient plasticity when wet (contains enough clay) you could use it as your cob. Sometimes adding a very small amount of clay dramatically changes the properties of the mix. Year ago I have plastered three rooms of my house with a plaster made by grinding remnants of the CEB bricks that I used for building the house, 5-10% of cement to reflect the mix used to manufacture the blocks and some rice straw. It turned out to be a very bad mix that looked bad, was soft, dusting and did not want to get lime washed. I decided to chip it off and since the plaster was such a low quality it was quite easy. I have reground it and mixed with the same amount of cement and ONLY 5% of clay. It turned out to be smooth when plastering, hard after drying and after lime washing it gave a gorgeous looking wall.
I would start with determining the clay contents (doing a jar test: mix dirt with water, shake vigorously for few minutes and leave for a few weeks and then measure with the ruler the ratios of sand, silt, clay). Then you could just buy 1 bag of clay in a ceramic supply store - locally or online and it could be enough to amend your dirt to make good cob.

My experience regarding mulberries is different. Out of 19 apples I had I have lost 6 due to summer stress (or disease). None of my mulberries died, despite dropping leaves when hit by a late frost. They get little bit less water in my orchard than my apples. Persian grows the best (probably too cold sensitive for your zone).
Regarding bird detraction, it may work if you are coping with small birds. In my case crows will try to get my plums and they would not care about small mulberries.

Jennie,

Do you know for sure that this is Vitis vinifera and that it produces normal sized grapes in your vicinity? Some grape species will produces sand sized grapes and nothing more and they are used as rootstock, for example Vitis rupestris (St. George). I don't know if there is chance that your area could have some escapes from grape cultivation.

You would need to cut or form a port in the firebox that would create gas velocity increase that would create turbulence that would combust the exhaust in the riser. Also, the proportions of the firebox would have to meet some minimums for this to happen. It may be more effort than building from scratch, but you are welcome to try and report here.

At your latitude shading in the summer, when you need it the most, will be marginal - unless you plant the tress very densely or they will be very tall. I would rather look at water management. If I had to redo my orchard (also on a gentle south facing slope) I would plant the trees along the contour lines, so every time I run the disc with my tractor I would create mini-swales that would help to retain moisture that I need badly when it's completely dry for 6 months. In your case it can be also helpful to control potential erosion.

Hary,

For wood wool you could try:
Excelsior Company
They have location in Washington state.

Hary Shelton wrote:As well, any idea how you can generate so many shavings relatively easily?
And does it have to be spruce or can it be any coniferous tree?

I don't know how they are produced, probably with some linear movement shaver - as the regular jointers/planers produce short chips
The product is sold as "wood woo;l" and is also used as packaging material. One manufacturer states that the shavings are 3-5 mm wide and 200-500mm long.

Wood Wool

Traditionally they are using spruce, but I think other conifers could replace it. I would be careful with deciduous shavings as they may be less resistant to moisture than resinous conifers. Quick search returned some wood wool made from aspen. I would not use it for the purpose of log insulation.

For a natural house I would only use natural materials.
The traditional method of using knotless spruce shavings to fill the gaps of a log house:

Hary,

When we were erecting heavy timber roof structure for my house, we have been using WoodOwl Tri-Cut bits. They are triple fluted and drill aggressively. If used on thin lumber they would destroy the material, but on anything with at least 15x15 cm (6x6") they drilled swiftly and smoothly. I have used corded Metabo drill and Kanzawa drill guide.