How Not to Relax

After bicycling 27 miles yesterday, I thought I would take Sunday off to just kick back, relax, and get up at 7 AM to go pour concrete at the farm.

A friend of mine, Jaime, who runs Everlasting Marks invited me out to see the pour, hoping that by playing on my interest in building construction to get some additional help. I accepted, and met her out there. Usually, I spend my entire time trying to keep kids focused on building tire walls and not killing each other with sledge hammers, but this time I didn't need to play leader. A small group of girl scouts and a few of their leaders/moms were out there, and everything was under control. They had adopted a few sections of wall and have been coming out every weekend to build it. These were some of the most industrious 13 year olds I've seen in awhile. They spent four hours mixing finish plaster and stuccoing around the cans and bottles, and then carefully wiping all the bottle and can ends clean.

While this was going on, I and another team lead put the formwork around the rebar sticking out of the foundation of what will become the next seven wall sections. Two contractors, Jim and Don from Hunter Contracting came out and braced the column formwork after leveling them. They come out from time to time to help with the more technical stuff like major foundation pours and installing and tying rebar.

After the girl scouts and the contractors went home around noon, a mom and her daughter stayed behind with Jaime and I to pour the columns. To be honest, I hate pouring concrete. It's messy, you end up inhaling or eating concrete dust, and surprise surprise it's really heavy stuff. I am not an upper body strength kind of guy, so hauling buckets of freshly mixed concrete and pouring them into the tops of columns by lifting them above head height was a bit of a challenge. How could I complain though? I'd volunteered for this, and besides, the 13 year old daughter was throwing 60 pound bags into the cement mixer.

It took about an hour to mix and pour the seven columns, and by the end, I was wiped, filthy, sweaty, bloody, with my hands full of cuts and splinters and irritated by the wet stucco and concrete. Vinegar will dilute the harmful effects of wet concrete, but its not much fun putting it on open wounds.

The Pastoral Life

This afternoon, I made the long trek out to Superstition Farms for a thank-you event hosted by Everlasting Marks. I got there early and helped set up a little bit, taping up posters of the various groups who have contributed to the organization. Fundraising by a sponsored hiking group, labor and designs from various groups including Dobson High and a chapter of Girl Scouts, team leads, like me, who put in a little time now and then to show volunteers how to build and how not to bodily harm each other with the tools. It was nice, there was cake and fresh ice cream provided by the local farm coop Udder Delights, and at the end, the farmer whose family farm we were building on gave us a hayride tour.

Some interesting bits the farmer told us on the tour:

• United Dairymen of Arizona (the cooperative of which they are a member) is the fifth largest business in Arizona. (I'm having trouble believing this one, considering all the major aerospace/defense contractors out here. Maybe he meant local.)
• Each of their cows produced approximately 4 gallons of milk a day, although some cows produce up to 15. 
• These cows are milked three times a day, every day. 
• He seemed very defense of dairy farming where the treatment of cows were concerned. He pointed out how the corrals and shade structures all had numerous fans and mister systems while the farm vehicles lacked air conditioning. He defended the practice of taking the calf from its mother as greatly reducing the calf mortality rate. It really made me wonder if he got lots of people on the tour who accused him of animal cruelty. In turn, it made me wonder how any of those people have a leg to stand on, considering cattle have been genetically engineered (domesticated and bred) for thousands of years to have very particular characteristics. Yes, we need to treat all creatures in a humane way, but I would imagine the life of the of a locally owned dairy cow to be pretty pastoral. 

Everlasting Marks

Sometimes I post items on facebook or here about 'working on the farm' or more often, 'pounding tires.' These are actually slang terms for illicit drug use. No, not really. These are things related to a nonprofit group I joined called Everlasting Marks. This is an relatively new organization with the stated intent:

To promote cultural understanding and environmental awareness through service learning programs involving teens in the hands on construction of sustainable projects that benefit the community.

But the ultimate vision of the nonprofit goes beyond community boundaries:

While Everlasting marks is currently working locally in Arizona, the long term vision is to create international youth camps in which teens will work for and with a community to construct a sustainable build for the community.

By bringing teens of different cultures together through kids’ camps we offer them the opportunity to experience what other parts of the world are actually like. By doing so, we hope to create more compassionate, understanding and confident youth, who in turn will leave a positive mark on our world.

I got involved with it through its founder, Jaime Collins, one of my classmates from ASU architecture. When we were all in Buenos Aires, I shared an apartment with her and another classmate. The focus of our semester long studio was the street children and the deplorable urban conditions in which they lived, and this in turn, inspired her to develop this nonprofit.

I got involved because I think that sustainability and community working with teens are both vital causes. Additionally, for purely selfish reasons, I wanted to learn more in a physical way about different types of building sustainably, and also to develop my ability to coordinate and lead groups.

What this really means is that about every other week, I make the trek out to Superstition Farms, who donated the land for the project, and I lead small groups of kids in building a tire wall. This is pretty intense work, although I am slowly getting better at it. I work from morning until early afternoon, pick up some fresh dairy from the farm store, and head home to a shower.

Making a tire wall is a lot of work. The basic concept is pretty simple, pack, pound, and level. You start by laying a piece of cardboard in the center to keep the dirt inside the tire, and then fill the tire with dirt. Then, you pull up the inside rim of the tire and start packing dirt in as much as you can. When the tire is so full, you can't push any more dirt into the rims, you pick up a sledgehammer and start pounding, striking at an angle to compact the dirt into the rims. When the entire tire looks overstuffed and ready to burst, then you level it.

By level it, I mean you take a level and turn the level around at various positions across the tire to make sure the top of the tire is as level as possible, and that it matches the level of the tire next to it. It's tricky, frustrating work, since the tire sends to take on a sagging donut shape which makes the top of it a geometric saddle. To raise up the height, just takes more pounding. When its finally done, these tires weigh about 200 pounds each and become structural elements. I can tell you, that's a lot of pounding and a lot of dirt.

Whew!

It's been a fast week. One of Saori's high school friends whom she hasn't seen since high school, was touring the US on vacation with her boyfriend. They are both Japanese and spent a few days in NY before deciding to come visit Saori in Phoenix over going to LA. They brought me a surprising amount of stationary/office items from Muji, which was really nice of them.
Their first night here, Saori took them to Filibertos for dinner. Then the next day, she took them up to the top of south mountain where they were astounded by the raw desert beauty and exposed rock. Afterwards, Scottsdale fashion square and old town Scottsdale before finishing the evening at Malee's on Main. Yesterday, she drove them up to Sedona where they wanted to know where the Big Mountain Thunder Railroad was. Apparently, Sedona is a very hot destination to the Japanese. Last night, was their last night here before flying back to Japan, and so I made foccacia and ravioli dinner. Saori's friend's boyfriend, Yamada, traded me his hoodie, which had a really cool print, for my ASU tee shirt. Apparently, both of them are fans of American Football, and Yamada used to play as a linebacker in a Japanese club team.

Anyway, we dropped them off at the airport around 4 AM and then I was up again at 8 to go help Jaime with another volunteering thing at the superstition farms. We pounded tires, mixed mortar, and laid a few rows of cans in the can walls, and then I picked up some fresh milk and cheese and ice cream for the ride home.