If you were local to the area, that would actually be pronounced "propity", but then I digress.

This trip out to the property was supposed to last about six weeks, but what hasn't been mentioned yet is that Mother Nature was lining up on the wrong team. The hope is that the house will eventually collect enough water from runoff even with as little as eight inches of rain a year, but what happened was, shortly after our dynamic duo got together, the weather started getting rough. A single storm dropped seven inches of rain in an hour or two, and the long range forecast showed nothing but rain. Not only that, but the conditions that were causing the rain showed no inclination to move on, making the future quite uncertain.

On the one day the brothers were actually able to work out at the land, they were attacked by chiggers. Now, we all know that Texas is famous for growing everything big, but these tiny little mites were definitely something to be reckoned with. Those bites are still healing up even after more than a month. Talk about nasty little buggers. If you've never had to deal with them, consider yourself lucky. Despite the fact that chiggers aren't known to carry any diseases, mosquitoes were starting to sound like a better choice. As if they had a choice. Anyway, peak time for chiggers in Texas is (surprise) June. Hmmm, it's as if the boys were aiming for trouble.

The other event to cut the trip short was bad health at home. No one is ever ready for unhealthful times, but they still have a habit of cropping up. That was the final straw that shortened the visit to less than two weeks. That all by itself makes the future plans much harder to see. Maybe things will improve and let the boys get back on track sometime soon.

So, at the end of the visit we have Mother Nature 3 and the boys, hmmm, maybe a half. We have to give them something for getting in the access road, fixing up the well, and improving the "honeymoon suite". Of course none of that gets them any closer to actually building what they set out to build, so it's still less than one. Well, hopefully, they can fall back and regroup.

At last the time had come for the boys to take a second swing up at bat. The health issues had all been resolved, they were armed with more information about how to fight the bugs, and there was room for hope that the weather would be a little milder. An internet search for bug killers came up with a concoction that could either kill the bugs or be used to make a salad and wash the dishes afterward. It was one part vegetable oil, one part Ivory liquid, and ninety-eight parts water. The plan was to mow the tall grass and spray everything that was left,but very little actually got mowed and sprayed, so the question of effectiveness is yet to be answered.

This particular time of year was chosen very carefully. Being springtime, there was at least an even chance that the temperatures would stay within a tolerable range of something below blast furnace level. As far as the rain goes, anything is possible in that neck of the woods, so you take your chances and get what you get. Luckily the weather held with morning overcasts giving way to clear skys most of the time. There were some occasional light rains, but nothing too significant which let the brothers work 'till their heart's content.

With all the clearing and leveling of the land, some trees had to come down, which both of them hated to do, but you have to have room to work. Luckily, they were able to salvage some of the wood to keep warm in the winter.

Lots of questions seem to come up as to how they lived on the land while they were out there working. That was part of the reason for improving the access road. This allowed them to put a trailer on the property for a place to rest, and boy did they need a place to rest. The trailer was nice enough, but there were definitely no plug-ins. They brought their own water and contained their own waste water. Cooking was done with propane when they had the strength to cook. Otherwise, there was a quick trip to town for the local all-you-can-eat pizza. They did manage to get a couple of solar panels connected to keep the battery charged up. That helped a little. Well, at least it did when they got the right wires connected to the right spots. Initially, they had things reversed, and the battery kept slowly sinking over the first few days. Once they straightened that out, everything went right back up to 100% state of charge. It worked like a champ.

Finally, there was just one more thing to do before starting on the building itself, and that was to lay in a supply of quality building materials. So far, the tires have been free. If their luck continues to hold, there will be more to come.

Now, I'm not sure exactly how many of you have ever tried to swing a sledge hammer before. It can be a lot of fun for the first few swings. You get a chance to swing with all your might and take all your frustrations out on something that needs to be hit. But after the first few minutes, that hammer gets to feeling mighty heavy, and a couple hours rest starts to sound mighty good. These boys had a chance to find out what real work was all about. It's one of those things you can't really grasp until you're actually there doing the work. It takes three wheel barrows full of dirt to fill up just one tire. When you're done packing, they're big. I mean really big. Each one weighs about 300 pounds.

Those who are a little more experienced at packing these tires say they can do one tire every fifteen minutes, but these boys took so long that tire number one pretty much finished them off for the day. As I remember this whole project started to take on biblical proportions. They packed one tire, then they rested. The next day, they packed another tire, then they rested. On the seventh day, they were so tuckered out, the only thing they were able to do was rest for the whole day. But eventually, with a little practice, this little army of two was able to work up to a whoppin' five tires a day. Phew! It makes me tired just thinking about it.

One of the subsequent tires was so big, it needed to be recorded for posterity.

Now, I suppose it's not completely fair to have so much fun at their expense. The fill dirt was full of rocks bigger than your fist and were packed so tightly that a shovel would just bounce off when you tried to dig anything. The only way they were able to do anything at all was to sift all the soil through one inch chicken wire. That didn't get rid of all the rocks, but it did make the remaining ones a little more manageable. Once they had one wheel barrow full they could take it over to the tire and start packing. The screened out rocks were then available for later projects.

One of the more interesting tasks the brothers managed to do was to plant a rock garden. Much to their surprise, every single one of them sprouted and grew.

Stepping back just for a moment, after finishing the first tire, they started on the other side of the garage. Since dirt had been pushed onto that side in the leveling process, those tires had to be set down into the dirt to try to hit something a little more solid. With that level established, it took two more tires on top to come up to the level of the first tire.

The whole row on that side of the garage needed to sink down into the ground.

With the left side being two courses lower than the right side, there had to be two steps to go from one side to the other. Since digging was futile, they had to try their hands at yet another previously untried task...the art of cement.

At the end of six weeks, the outline of the garage is finally visible. The main garage door is the wide front part, and a smaller side door is the break on the left wall. One side of this door is a course higher than the other. With the step in the back, there are a full two steps. One of the more interesting spots is the place in the back where the tires overlap. Two of them are empty, but one of them is fully packed, and it is the only tire to rest entirely on top of other tires. To keep the dirt from coming out the bottom during packing, the bottom is lined with cardboard. Surprisingly enough, the dirt stayed in and packed just as fully as the other tires. It will be interesting to see what a year of rainy weather does to this tire. Eventually, all the tires will be protected on the outside by a berm, while the inside will probably be cemented over to make it a permanent flat wall.

There is still a need to build wing walls that turn at right angles to the walls that are seen in this picture. They turn out from the garage and hold back the berm in the areas where a person is expected to walk, but hopefully, those won't take too long to put into place. After that, all subsequent work will be to add on additional courses, so one can hope that progress will be faster from this point on. I guess that too remains to be seen, but I think it's only fair to be a little optomistic and give the boys a cheer. Ra!

Well, another year passed and it's time once again for the bio-brothers to start up the old ballgame. It's amazing how fast time passes while you're sitting there reading the internet isn't it? Anyway, what they didn't know is that the other team had never really ended the game from the year before. As a matter of fact, maybe it's time to get the entire game into perspective.

A tire house like this has been called an Earthship by it's inventer and architect. In case that's of any interest, you can look up Earthship on the internet and get a whole lot of additional information. The boys are trying to build one of these Earthships so let's call them team Earthship.

The other team is pretty much everything else that has worked against them in a grand way. Let's call them team Nature.

Mother Nature is tireless in her attempts to keep things the way she intended, so while the boys were gone for the summer, fall, and winter, she just kept plugging along as she always does. When the boys got back, the worksite had that homey lived-in feeling that Mother Nature seems to like so much.

Here's how the ballgame was shaping up:

I think team Nature was trying to tell these boys that they were in way over their heads. Still, the brothers continued their journey-of-a-thousand-miles one step at a time, daunted but unstopped. The game was still on with neither team conceding.

They worked mighty hard during their visits too. Sometimes they were swinging sledge hammers and other times they were using a jack hammer to get better water drainage. And they worked long hours. Sometimes they'd start at the crack of Noon and work till the sun disappeared. With this much effort, they were lucky to move at all by the end of the day. It was often quite fun to watch them walk. Two steps forward, one step sideways. One step to the other side and one step back. It's a little dance I like to call the "Earthship Shuffle".

As the work continued, cement work was needed on the lowest level. The first cement session is probably what sent the one brother to the disabled list, but after a recovery they were ready to try it again. Each day seemed to bring a new lesson for the boys to absorb, and with the next cement session being somewhat higher than the first, they pondered long and hard to figure out how to get that cement up to a higher level. Here's the higher cement work and the solution they devised.