A trademark of hay houses is the deep window sills.
We spent time today in the garden at Blue Heron Farm. Murray, a resident and ex-Canadian, showed us his amazing haybale house. He used local materials to build it and it has a lot of special touches, but a nice, clean simplicity, too.
Windows along the roof line help provide light. The cabin is set up to work on passive solar heat meaning the sunlight comes in the cabin to warm it in the winter.Wood joints on the timber frame.The floor is dirt, but finished with a mix of essential oils and other natural stuff. It feels neat to walk on because of the little bumps and imperfections, but it's quite clean.
Murray also took me through the garden and taught me about cover crops that help bring nutrients back into the soil. Then I asked what these things hanging on the fence were and he opened them up and showed me that they were loofahs.
What are those?Loofahs - those spongy things you use to exfoliate in the shower.
I dug up some sweet potatoes with Tony which was fun. And Kate got a new puppy, 8 weeks old, and he is so cute! Eleven-month old Cedar liked him, too.
Sweet potatoes and dock.
On the way back home, we stopped at a restaurant called Chili’s. The portions were HUGE and we felt very stuffed after eating ribs and mini-burgers and a huge plate of tortilla chips.
Sweet puppy and his proud owner.Cedar loves the puppy, too.
This morning, we explored Chapel Hill. There’s a great street of shops right by the University of North Carolina.
The university.
Then we stopped at a mall so Ghis could go to the Apple store, but they weren’t really any help. Morgane and I went to a cool lego store where she was able to fill up a small bucket with her own picks.
Then Ghis noticed that Santa was at the mall and there was no line-up, so Morgane saw him. He asked her if she wanted her two front teeth for Christmas.
Morgan St. in Raleigh.
Then we drove into Raleigh, the capital of North Carolina. It’s not that big a place, just a few high rises. We saw a sculpture of a giant acorn in a park. There seem to be some nice museums, but they were all closed (Mondays…).
After our driving tour, we headed out to Falls Lake because we’ve been invited to stay at Eliza, Jim and Tom’s house. They have even come up with a few tasks we can do! The first one Ghis is taking care of is fixing the remote for a fan that is otherwise impossible to shut off.
It’s beautiful, quiet, and well-forested here. The lake is close by and hopefully we’ll go see it soon. We are also going to help Tom to begin learning French because if he wants to take it at school, he has to to into a more advanced class. The beginner class is only offered for Spanish.
Right now Morgane is sitting on her bed reading a pile of Curious George books. Eliza and Tom left out the most wonderful books and things for her.
Today we are headed back to Blue Heron Farm for a garden work party. Morgane loves it here, but she also loves the farm.
A city worker in Chapel Hill installs festive snowflakes. With the hot weather, it seemed kind of surreal.
