If I had a hammer…

If I had a hammer…

 

If I had a hammer I’d hammer in the morning
I’d hammer in the evening all over this land
I’d hammer out danger, I’d hammer out warning
I’d hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters
All over this land

If I had a bell I’d ring it in the morning
I’d ring it in the evening all over this land
I’d ring our danger, I’d ring out warning
I’d ring out love between my brothers and my sisters
All over this land

If I had a song I’d sing it in the morning
I’d sing it in the evening all over this land
I’d sing out danger, I’d sing out warning
I’d sing out love between my sisters and my brothers
All over this land

When I’ve got a hammer, and I’ve got a bell
And I’ve got a song to sing all over this land
It’s a hammer of justice, it’s a bell of freedom
It’s a song about love between my brothers and my sisters
All over this land

(Pete Seeger / Lee Hays as sung by Peter Paul & Mary)

To the Straw Build Squad,

First of all, congratulations!  You did it and I am proud of you.  I am proud of your hard work, your kindness to me and each other, your faith in me and in the team, your dedication to the project and of course – the beautiful results.  You successfully built a strawbale house in 29 days!

Hammers. We have been talking about them since January. As well as saws, pliers, nails, and drills. You now know the difference between finishing hammers, claw hammers, waffle headed hammers, and framing hammers. Circular saws, table saws, sawzalls, jig saws, hand saws, ripping saws, cross cut saws, chop saws, and concrete saws. Slip joint pliers, needle nosed pliers, channel locks, and vice grips. Cordless drills and hammer drills. Hilteys. Chalk lines. 16 penny nails and 8 pennies. T-25 versus T-30 star bits, square bits, philips bits. You had hammering homework. You hammered in the morning. You hammered in the evening. You came in wanting to know about making a house and now you know. You are smarter and stronger than those tools – you can now boss them around to do your bidding. They are part of a new tool kit. Dance tools, dance!

Green. What does that even mean now? You have explored, researched, and built green. Is sustainable different than green? Certified buildings? Is UM green? Are you – or your family – or me? You now see buildings differently. You can critique them pointedly. You know buildings represent energy, and place, and culture, and people, and land, and materials, and carbon. How are they put together? Who built them? Who designed them? What where they focused on? You dreamt of your own designs. Keep your creative concepts fresh and responsive. Please push the green needle further. Show people what it means.

Change. You changed the landscape of UMBS. You created a legacy that will outlive us all. You did something that hasn’t been done in more than 100 years. As a majority women crew, you did something at UM that has never been done before. You changed the perspectives and attitudes of peers and faculty and administration. You made a beautiful space and the world is better for it. Please continue to push for more change.

Hammering for Justice. You learned you are stronger than you thought you were. You are more comfortable with risk and the unknown – not to mention power tools. You know the pride and power of making stuff and the creative process. You aren’t afraid of getting dirty or working long days until you are exhausted. You know how to better communicate; you know how to work better as a team. Group projects aren’t as intimidating now. You have new muscles – literally and figuratively. You can visualize bigger goals. A large thesis project or grad school might not seem that bad now. Push to think big. Push to be less intimidated by big, wicked problems (like climate change). The house is a 30 day stepping stone – you have 30+ years ahead. I take solace in knowing you are strong. Solace in that you are better prepared to be more productive and braver than you were in January. That is great since there is much work to do. I hope you inspire others to hammer. I look forward to seeing you continue to be a hammer of justice (you can also use words, songs, bells, Photoshop, or whatever works best for you.)

Rest and Recover You deserve a break. You worked hard. Catch your breath – but don’t sit still too long. Get ready for a new and bigger project. I believe in you.

Your strawbale mentor,

Trumpey

 

 

 

To Whom it May Concern

Dear Design Build,

Six months ago, I was determined not to have a Friday class and definitely not a 3 hour Friday morning on North Campus class. As you can see now, I did not hold myself very accountable to that determination. Now, I would not hesitate to click that sign up button.

I remember the first day walking into the classroom wondering if I made the right decision. I knew nobody and other people seem to know each other. Of course, I remembered nobody’s name from the first day. The only thing I did remember was that I was the only freshman in the class. Even in the beginning of this month, I was nervous that we would get along since we did not even know everyone’s names. Now looking back, that worry was unnecessary. Now I know all your names: Courtney, Ethan, Fiona, Hana, Jake, Jarbed, Jessica, Joey, Kathleen, Kingsli, Kristen, Lauren, Lianne, Livvy, Marg, Maya, Rachel, Sarah, Siena, Sonya, Teggo, Will, Zoeyy, Lady and Lisa.

I love hearing about the everyone’s life story, experiences and feelings. Every time I wish that I met all of you earlier. I love hearing all your great opinions and plans, talking about the universe, poop, our house and complaining about everything that hurts. Being the youngest in the class, everyone was a role model to me. I had so much to learn from all these wonderful and thoughtful people.

This month turned out to be one of the best experiences of my life. It was the first time I built a house, the first time I wanted to be friends with everyone in the class, the first time I went canoeing, the first time I woke up at 6:30am six out of seven days of the week for a month, the first time I felt like I was exactly where I wanted to be, the first time getting to know people so well so quickly, the first time being sore every day and still pushing through, the first time….

Words cannot express the experiences and feelings that I had this month.

Thank you for taking care of me. Thank you for staying up late at night with me. Thank you for encouraging me when I’m down. Thank you for giving me a hug whenever I need it. Thank you for giving me piggy back rides. Thank you for massaging my sore back. Thank you for accepting who I am. Thank you for listening to me ramble. Thank you for taking part of my little jokes. Thank you for baring with me when I messed up all the zip ties. Thank you for accepting that I fall asleep every car ride. Thank you for having my back all the time. Thank you for building a house with me. Thank you for just being you. Thank you Joe for making this experience possible and teaching us everything!

This month we experienced friendship, love, teamwork, laughter, tears and so much more. This month we experienced being a part of a big family.

We all struggle with the fears of the future and problems the past. We all worry about judgements from others and not being good enough for ourselves. We all want to be the best we can be as soon as possible. The most important thing is we are all here for each other.

I hope you all had as much fun as I have and got as much out of it as I have. I’m not the very best at expressing my feelings but you all are the best and I want to hang out with everyone. I hope this experience does not limit us to just this month. I will always have your back whenever you need me. Next time any of you want to build a house, I’ll be there, you know where to find me!

Finally, WE DID IT! WE BUILT A HOUSE!

Love,

Your little freshman

Wendy

We built a house.

I think the word of the day is 

o v e r w h e l m e d.

My body is overwhelmed from the late nights we have spent pushing and pushing to finish the house on our deadline; nights when we had to use headlamps to apply adobe in the dark.

My mind is overwhelmed, thinking about how four weeks ago today, we put four orange stakes into the ground on a hill overlooking Douglas Lake and said, “Here.”

My heart is overwhelmed, knowing that now there stands a 400 square foot building with a full deck (go deck team!) and a completed porch and roof, all made with human hands, creative resourcefulness, mistakes and sideways nails and cuts that had to be made and then made again and then made again. A building forever imbued with our love and generosity and forgiveness and patience and lack of patience; the music we danced to and the curse words we swore and the endless laughter we shared will always live within those walls.

Our house is indeed finished today (alright, ‘finished’ might be a strong word. Many of us are planning to pack up and drive to the UMBS over Fall Break to paint the gable ends, install a porch swing, install the ceiling and add wood to cover up the all-thread in the windows. Oh, and the front door doesn’t quite close). 

But it really is finished. We have created a building that we can walk inside. We can hang out on the porch under the fairy lights. We can sit in the windowsills that have been sanded and stained. It has four finished walls; it withstood a downpour yesterday. It has beautiful handmade tile ready for the installation of a wood stove. It feels warm. It has a sun-shaped truth window to reveal the straw bales underneath the three-inch thick adobe. It already has the ability to run on the solar power that we are generating ourselves. We have created, in the process of an entire month, a space to exist in. How many people can say that? Not to mention, it’s not just a space – it’s a beautiful space, full of tiny details, from the micah flakes that shimmer in the walls to the fairy door on the backl that pays homage to Ann Arbor. 

What we have done here – we twenty-two undergraduates, a graduate student instructor, and a professor – is see a project through from beginning to end. We have taught each other and passed on knowledge in the most organic way possible. We have spent every day outdoors, earning callouses and bruises. We have, in our small way, restored harmony between ourselves and the Earth, and we honor that harmony in so many ways in this building and in our lives. The sand from the trench we dug in the first week now glues our walls together in this final week. This final workday. We designed the building with the place in mind; the same way it is unnatural to eat a pineapple in Michigan in January, it is unnatural to build with certain materials or create poorly insulated walls in the Midwest. It goes against the Earth’s natural cycles and processes. But here, we started with place, and built with it in mind the entire time.

I can count hundreds of times my teachers, parents, coaches, relatives, and friends have told me I can ‘change the world.’ And then you grow up, and realize that you’re small and the world is big and fixing all of its problems is hard and exhausting and defeatist. 

But this time, Joe Trumpey said, “You can change the world.” And we did. We changed our small corner of the world. We created something that will outlive us. And sure, it might just be a small corner of the world, but as Krysten would say, we are indeed at the center of the universe.

I think gratitude might be the other word of the day. We are so thankful for this opportunity; for the people who believed in us and the people who didn’t but gave us the chance to try anyway. For the gifts of the Earth – the fallen trees that became our posts, the clay and straw that became our walls, the water from the hose, the energy from the sun. For the friendships that we built alongside the house. For the generosity of all of the people at the Biostation. For Joe, for embarking on his biggest student project yet. For the hot water in the showers that restored us, for coffee, for the feeling that comes with looking at a building that you literally built.

When I was looking at the house yesterday, someone asked me, “So what part did you do?” And I pointed at a few details – the baseboards I installed, the adobe I plastered, the rafters I worked on – but it doesn’t seem like much. That was the real beauty of the project. It took all hands on deck, every day, for the entire month of May, to bring this house into existence. We all chipped away at small details, fighting over the power and the measuring tapes and the speed squares, and then, both suddenly and slowly, a house formed before our eyes.

Tomorrow, we are taking the day off to celebrate our enormous accomplishment on Sugar Island and coming back to the site to clean up our tools and admire our building. Wednesday morning, we’ll be caravanning back to Ann Arbor, and it is challenging and saddening to imagine not walking up the stairs from hell every morning at 7:30 am, not hearing Will barking at someone, not hearing the resounding chorus of “JOE?” or the whir of the saws and drills and the dreadful planar. 

But thankfully, this is something that no one can ever, ever take away from us.

We built a house.

-Rachel

Never Have I Ever

Before coming up to the Bio Station, never had I ever…

– been to Northern Michigan

– visited the UP

– roasted so many perfect marshmallows

– made up multiple versions of “the first cut is the deepest”

– sang karaoke in public

– eaten Cheerios with fruit juice

– eaten oatmeal almost every morning

– been consistently covered in mud

– mixed adobe for hours

– listened to so many podcasts

– felt the muscles in my fingers and hands ache

– gotten so many black fly bites

– heard of, seen, or eaten a morel mushroom

– learned so much about mushrooms and lichen

– played Settlers of Catan

– played Hammer Schlogen 

– been surrounded by straw

– shoveled hundreds of pounds of rocks

– had such a strong hatred for a set of stairs

– dried work gloves over the fire

– watched Peace Love and Basketball

– used Arnica or Tiger Balm

– broken my computer screen

– been in temperatures below 60 F during the month of May

– seen a slab of concrete be poured

– mixed concrete or lime

– cut so much lumber 

– done intense manual labor for more than 12 hours straight

– used solar power to play the Beatles

– broken up so much clay with one hand (Sondra)

– listened to Serial (Jared)

– planed wood for three days straight (Livvy)

– eaten this many Cheerios (Maya)

– found a morel mushroom while nature peeing (Maggie)

– fallen asleep at 7 pm (Rachel)

– built something (Corey)

– set tile (Tegwyn)

– liked this many people in such a large group (Lian)

– seen robots in the woods (Jack)

– applied adobe for 12 days straight (Kingsli)

– accidentally invaded a loons nest via canoe (Wendy)

– looked at moss and lichen so intensely (Laura)

– blown dust off a jig saw (Will)

– talked about farting so much (Hana)

– been harnessed to a roof (Krysten)

– been jumped over (Zoe)

– comfortably talked about poop (Fiona)

– stood on the roof in the rain (Siena)

– planed wood for three days straight (Livvy)

– been so exhausted; mentally and physically

– gotten close with so many people in such a large group

– built a building 

Today we had our open house, and had a great turn out despite the rain. Friends, family, people from the BioStation, even people that saw us on the news came to see all the work we have done this past month. Sadly, everything is coming to a quick close, but we are all so incredibly proud of all the work we have done and grateful for the friendships we have gained.

Many thanks for all the help and support that made this project possible!

-Jennifer

Day 27 (Recap)

It was an awesome day friends! The entire crew was working hard and putting in some long hours. I left the site at 10:00 pm, and there were still people in the housing working. We finished placing almost all of the porch roof on the front of the house, and we got started on the other three sides. We also had an awesome group sanding the windowsills on the inside of the house. Also, tiles are in!!

 

I spent the day working on the deck with a solid crew—Hana, Maya, Jennifer, and Zoe. It was definitely a struggle in the beginning, but once we figured out how to cut the angles to best fit our other boards, we were cruising. By diner time, we had finished the decking on the entire right side of our building. Then, after diner, we cruised through and finished a solid chunk of the left side of our building. Tomorrow morning, hopefully we can finish the rest on the left side!

 

I do want to take a moment to appreciate how amazing all the girls on this crew are. They are some of the strongest women I have ever had the privilege to be around. There is nothing they can’t do. I have seen them operate power tools and hammer in nails with ease—oftentimes better than the guys on the team. Also, they are the masterminds behind all the amazing designs on the house. Even today, I saw Katie and Rachel hammering in galvanized nails with no problem—while also paying attention to the plum and levelness of the joists. And there is absolutely no way the deck could have gone in today without the amazing people on my team. I love each and every one of them, and I couldn’t imagine building a house with any other group.

 

–Will

 

P.S. Stay tuned to the social media accounts, tomorrow is our big open house!