Thank you to all who came to see our earthship on November 2nd. After a year hiatus from tours – at the request of our children – we convinced them to open up the house again.

We had two, two-hour tours that day.  It was a lot of fun. We got to meet some long-time Darfield Earthship followers from as close as Clearwater BC and as far away as Hazelton BC.  There is as much interest in our budding permaculture adventure and how it ties into modern homesteading, as there was in the earthship itself.

Helen zinged Chris when the discussion at the morning tour turned to who had actually met Mike Reynolds. As some might remember from our posts in 2010 we visited Grant and Linda’s build where Earthship Biotecture was putting up the earthship. Before we left we quickly introduced ourselves to Mike and Chris told him, “I never thought I’d be able to meet somebody and say ‘I’ve read all your books'”.  Helen (who is 13-years-old) deadpanned, “Yeah, Dad totally fan-girled on him”.

We had about four people attend who are seriously planning their own builds in the spring in various parts of BC. We also had folks from Clearwater, who were probably our most local official visitors to date. (We have had lots of friends and family from Darfield and Barriere see our home unofficially).

We sold out the tours about a week prior…and I turned away about 15 people who wanted to know if they could “sneak” into one of them.  One couple who could not make it tried scalping their tickets…it was pretty funny and dare I say, gratifying?

I felt badly turning people away but 20 people is about all that will fit in the earthship before people are peering around each other to see our home’s features.  I would hate to have people complain that it was just too crowded to be enjoyable.

We were pleased by how the tours went and hope to have more in the spring. We have some projects planned for inside the earthship over winter, so there will hopefully be more to see in April/May both inside and when the goodies start popping up in the hugelkulture.  We will post about these projects here and on our FB page as things progress! We have also resumed some work on a few e-books. It is always slower than we’d like but we continue to balance our consulting work, the kids’ school and activities and our need for some down-time from all of the above.

Please stay posted for dates as spring arrives!