Mushy Bananas: Earthship Problems

Disclaimer: The term "Earthship" in the below writings is used to describe our Earthship-inspired ​home.

Fact:  I LOVE the spotty, slightly mushy bananas that no one else seems to have a penchant for.  I feel this says a lot about me.  I haven't always had a taste for them though.  Rather, it was acquired as I cannot seem to eat bananas fast enough.  I could be like many others and toss them when they start to turn, but I can't fathom the thought of wasting them so down my gullet they go.  If they have turned nearly completely brown, then I make banana bread out of them or if I'm feeling lazy, I'll toss them to our chickens.  All of the above options make me happy and all of the above options I can live with.

Our earthship build has thrown one spotty, mushy banana after another at us since we began in April 2014 and I'm proud to say we've eaten them all and have acquired a taste for whatever life has decided to toss our direction.  You can peruse past blog posts to see what heartaches I'm talking about but to be clear: THERE WERE A LOT!  

Last week, another was thrown at us when we were informed that several residents of our town felt our home-in-progress was an eyesore.  Someone actually thought we had stopped working on the home altogether because they didn't feel we were moving quickly enough.  Now, this isn't the whole story, but we don't feel this public of a venue a place to fully air out the details and so I shall cut to the point.  We were essentially given a bit of a shove to get under-roof as quickly as possible or our present life would have to change drastically. 

Part of the dream behind building our earthship home was doing every single bit of it ourselves.  Zac is one of the handiest, most determined, clever people I know and so after hearing this news, we were both quite devastated because we knew that our dream, as we had imagined it, was about to slip from our grasp.  We knew that if we hoped to be under-roof in time for winter and if we wanted to appease the individuals who weren't pleased with our progress, that we needed to kick it into high gear and be done with the shell of our home once and for all.  The first step in this direction was explaining our earthship dream home and the process that goes along with building such a home to all of our nearest neighbors in the hopes of winning them over. 

And so, after sobbing together for several minutes and allowing a small pity party to take place, Zac and I packed the family in the car and knocked on neighbors' doors, sharing with them how our home-to-be is different from the typical stick frame homes being tossed up in suburbs everywhere.  We had to show them the family whose lives were being affected by complaints and explain how hard we had actually been working on our house despite the fact that progress from their point of view wasn't apparent.  We weren't trying to conduct a witch hunt and weren't concerned too much with exactly who had complained and we wanted to ensure that came across.  More than anything, we felt we must not have done a good enough job sharing our process and progress with our neighbors.  Fortunately, everyone appeared to respond positively and were comfortable with allowing us to proceed how we had been and so came the next step: Figuring out how we were to work more quickly than we had been.

Interestingly enough, when we received this news, Zac was only just beginning his first day of his month-long hiatus from work.  We had decided in the spring that he would take off one month to hyper-focus on our home and so this news put a bit of a damper on our spirits, as I'm sure you can imagine.  After winning over our nearest neighbors (or seemingly so), we spoke at more length with our families about the matter and were given the option of borrowing money to help us work more quickly.  We had turned this down in the past as we wanted to do each bit ourselves, but with mounting pressure from the powers that be, we decided to take the loan to see if we couldn't work to get under-roof by winter.

We've gotten better at taking whatever life throws at us and now that this upheaval has calmed, we're hoping we'll have the stomach for the next mushy banana that gets tossed our way.