Building the Soddy

We follow an old legend of laying out our rectangle foundation for our sod house by moonlight, sighting the North Star to get the desired alignment of walls - straight north and south, east and west.

Next morning, we invite the neighbors and begin our building "bee". Each block of sod is laid with grass side down and the layers of block are staggered like brickwork. Two rows are placed side by side so that the finished walls are 36 inches thick.

At the corners, intersecting layers are lapped together and an iron rod that is hammered down from the top to pin the corners together. We leave spaces in the walls for windows and door frames which we hold in place by pegs driven into the sod.

Our walls are so thick that some of the casements are beveled outward to catch the sunshine and funnel it into the darken inside. Our walls will compact up to 8 inches in the first year, so we stuff the window and door space with rags to absorb the settling and keep the horizontal layers of soil in line as much as we can.

Tomorrow we put a roof on our soddy!