[Cob] Cob Student Travels

[Dorothy Cordochorea]

Dear Sky and Laura,

We sold our home in 2009 and purchased bare rural land with year-round
streams in 2010.  Our plan is to build a maximally environmentally sound,
self-sufficient, local-community-strengthening homestead, utilizing cob and
strawbale, and my husband's professional training and experience as an
electrician, including in the area of renewable energy generation (home-grid
stuff), and permaculture principles.  The land we purchased is in the
foothills of the northern Coast range in Oregon, in the NW corner of
Washington County, one of the two most uptight and difficult counties in
which to build in Oregon.  So far, we have had the land perc-tested (it
passed), and have hired engineers (civil and geotech) to create a site plan,
applied for a grading permit and access permit for the driveway (both
approved, but pending hiring a grading contractor) and have received bids
from excavators to install the driveway and grade the two building pads (one
for dwelling, one for an agricultural building). With all those expenses, I
am currently working on more funding for the grading and further work.  I
have also attended a meeting of the Graywater Rule-making Advisory committee
for the state, and a couple of meetings of the State Environmental Quality
Commisioners and the Department of Environmental Quality to educate myself
regarding their current rule-making regarding graywater reuse and disposal,
and to speak in the public comment time and hopefully positively influence
the final rules they establish for the state.

Assuming scheduling works out, you are welcome to visit my husband and I to
hear more about what our experience has been so far, including how our plans
have been and continue to be shaped by the land, cost considerations,
personal factors, spiritual considerations, our perceptions of current and
future climatic, cultural, social and economic changes relating to global
climate change, peak oil/fossil fuels, etc. and governmental/bureaucratic
issues.  We will also be delighted to give you a tour of the land we
steward. We currently live in a rental house near Portland, Oregon.  Feel
free to email me at dcordochorea at gmail.com.
Dorothy Cordochorea