Back to work at last - for now!

It's been about five weeks since we got our big snow storm. We've had a lot of snow on the ground until maybe a couple of weeks ago (upwards of 10") then we had muck and ice - lots of it. There are still patches of snow here and there but the ground has FINALLY dried up enough for us to get out and get some work done! Yipee!!

So today we set the posts that go on either side of the Trombe walls. For those of you who have never heard of a Trombe wall, Wikipedia defines it as "a sun-facing wall separated from the outdoors by glass and an air space, which absorbs solar energy and releases it selectively towards the interior at night."

We are installing two of them; one in the office and one in the garage. The design we're using comes from Mark Chalom (a friend, neighbor and architect from Santa Fe) and should allow us to stay warm and cosy without using additional heat in the winter - especially in the office. (Rick is really looking forward to this as he's very tired of having cold toes in his current office!) We're putting one in the garage to help keep it warm because that's where our water pressure tank will be and it's the place where we will start a lot of our seeds in coming years.

Here you can see the posts for the Trombe wall for the office on the left

and the one for the garage on the right.

The weather report is for mostly sunny and unseasonably warm weather for the next week (fingers are crossed) so we're hoping to get the adobes laid for both walls. The process should go a lot faster than the full adobe wall we did in the fall as both walls are not as wide and shorter.

I know we're in a drought and we need moisture but I'm really glad it's currently dry enough for us to work. I've been sitting around enough!