Right now we are waiting - for the Electricity Board to hook us up, for the builders we have asked to quote us to come back to us, for someone to shift a 5 ton tree stump so we can put a hardstanding down, to be able to move into the caravan, and to make a decision about how to build it.

There are, in case you hadn't realised it, downsides to self-build - the main one being not having a proper house to live in during the process. Our cottage is tiny and I long for a big proper kitchen and a huge comfortable bed. The caravan will be better because it has a lot more light, and is better organised for small-space living, but it is still a caravan - it will get us wanting to move even faster towards vastu, if that were possible.

Also the slightly scary fact that in this case we have a choice between two systems of construction, both of which are new and without much precedent.

We really do like the idea of tying up tons and tons of carbon in our house by building it out of hemp and lime. This works in two ways: the fast-growing hemp with its carbon is locked into the lime, and the lime, as it goes off, extracts carbon from the atmosphere. Most housebuilding puts CO2 into the atmosphere and we would be removing it. Plus it's a very simple system. Zurich Insurance have just given their consent to a building warranty for Hemcrete as an infill to a timber frame. That means that the timber frame needs to be strong enough to bear all the structural loads, but that's okay. This is quite a big deal actually, because I don't think we would have gone ahead without that.

Anyway, I should look on the bright side - there is a bloke coming tomorrow to take a trial sample of the soil, which means that we will soon know exactly how deep the foundations need to be, which means that we can soon get the old muhurt application off and get our Foundation stone in place. So that's all right.

Plus we have a postbox coming tomorrow. This may not seem a major event but it has the following consequences:
the postbox means that the postman won't have to walk around the garage to post the letters
this means that we can take up the paving slabs which make up his path
then we can put the slabs down to make a base for the temporary metal shed
then we can put the shed up
then we can move the stuff out of the brick garage into the shed
THEN we can knock the garage down!!

As the garage covers the south east corner of the house, this is a Good Thing. We are planning to invite The Girls (and The Boyfriends) to a demolition weekend as soon as we can. And indeed anyone else who fancies wielding a sledgehammer....

We have discovered Freecycling and joined two local networks. People who want to get rid of something post to the local Freecycle messageboard and people who want it contact them and go and get it. We collected a whole load of blown-down fence panels at the weekend to make a skirt for the caravan - not because it is feeling modest but because it's a lot warmer without the wind blowing through. Anything for extra warmth.

Below are a few pics of the van.