Earthship, anyone?

Mr. Ranch has recently become fascinated with the idea of the Earthship style of building and living.  We think that the basic premise of the official Earthship is that one acquires a ton (literally) of old tires and then fills said tires with dirt (sometimes with rocks or cement?) and uses them as the walls of your house.  People seem to use water bottles (and other recycled glass/plastic) for "windows" and most that we've seen have a giant greenhouse as part of the plans.  I like the idea of the greenhouse.  And the idea of living off the grid, but still having functioning plumbing and electricity. And heat.  I like heat.

Since our library doesn't seem to have any "Earthship" specific books (we think it might be a name only used by one author/group?), I picked up a bunch of other sustainable living books there for Mr. Ranch to look at in his spare time (spare time...ha, ha!). One of our "favorites" so far has been Sustainable Living for Dummies.  Our giggles started when we realized the book was written about and published for the "Australian clientele".  Mr. Ranch said, "Um, why does our library even own a book written for Australians?".  The book really might be designed for dummies though...it suggests things like "consider having only 1, 2, or 3 tvs instead of one in every bedroom" and "open your windows in the evening to cool your house instead of using air conditioning, especially during cooler weather". It does suggest a couple things we've never thought about--such as "don't use bricks or concrete because they are heavily processed, use locally produced mud bricks instead" (where does one find locally made mud bricks, other than the local sandbox?)  And it suggests that we only use sheets and comforters made from hemp. Mr Ranch says, "oooh, hemp sheets...sound so soft...not!".  He also made some other hemp sheet comments, related to Colorado's new law(s) that I'm not going to include here.

There were some good ideas for "someday" and lots of pictures of really cool structures. We were a little mystified when the writers of several books said things like "this place would never pass a code inspection so its a good thing it was built before they had such things".  They all seem to have lots of plants and livestock, too...but I still refuse to have urban chickens though...I draw the line at chickens.  We also discovered that we are probably actually looking for "off the grid" books, not sustainable living books, so I'll be headed back to the library for another pile some evening this week!