Making a home...Uruguayan style

Do you ever wonder how many ways there are to make a home? 

The Handlers had to wait until early spring to bring in this specimen of a home...formerly to about a thousand hornets. It was slightly elevated from the ground as basically the surrounding underbrush act as built-in stilts.

A duck has found one of the rows in the orchard to be ideal for her home (she obviously didn't scout the location well enough to realize that she and her babies are in danger as fox rule the nights in the orchard. We hope that they all make it).

Honeros, a native bird of South America, brown with short tails and long bills, have decided mud is their material of choice. They have built a home on one of the almond trees.

Back View

Front Door

Other honeros have even built a home under the chimney cap.

As  you can see from the horneros nest, Uruguayan dirt is clay-like, very dense and heavy. Matter of fact, this same dirt, mixed with water and organic matter (soggy hay, cow manure...), is used to make bricks.

Mixing stage

The clay is molded into brick forms, and then stacked in a tower with plenty of vent holes and areas to load additional eucalyptus wood for the 3 day firing of the kiln.

After the burn, it's time to take the new bricks and create walls.

This particular house is farther along, with the thatched roof being worked on in a rather artistic fashion.

Add loft story windows...

....and a flue pipe for the stove, and you're set.

I've often wondered where we could build the perfect home and out of what material.

One built up here might not be sustainable with the Uruguayan winds.

But the view is awfully nice.

  In the meantime, I guess this one will suit me.