Cob: how do folks handle other responsibilities duringbuildin g?

[Tom Fetter]

>
>Funny how it seems a problem that building a cob house would take a
>couple years of full time labour. People spend 20+ years of full time
>labour just paying for their crummy innorganic boxes they live in.
>
>Of course, most people are already caught up in the rat-race and only have
>the choice of pouring their hard-earned cash into rent or into a morgage
>on a conventional home. If I was in that situation, and let's say I had a
>familly too, my strategy would be to try and make it as much a communal
>effort as possible. I guess you could say I'd start a club.  The club
>could fundraise, buy some land, and build.
>
>So the question has become a more general one of how do people find time
>to do things like be in a club AND work full time, AND raise a familly.
>The answer, I guess, is to not watch TV and join a club your familly can
>join too.
>

John and Tony, the trouble is one can't necessarily "get out of the rat 
race" painlessly, once there are dependents involved.  It's one thing to 
choose personally to live in voluntary poverty, for the sake of the 
environment, various worthy political beliefs, or even sheer cussedness.  
It's quite a different thing to impose that view on one's family, and in 
effect cut your children off from significant aspects of what is, after all, 
their own culture.  This isn't an apology for consumerism - I'm wild against 
over-consumption.  It is saying, though, that all choices have costs as well 
as benefits.

Tony, it's simply not so easy as you suggest to have my family "join a club" 
that would help build my house.  My eldest is almost 8.  There's no way on 
God's green earth that significant work could happen at a quick pace with 
all of my 3 around (baby included), and neither of the older 2 would sustain 
the work for more than a half an hour at a time.  What then?

I didn't BELIEVE the significance of life changes, once kids came along ... 
it's gives simply remarkable benefits in terms of personally growing up, but 
you're not "free" in the same way ever again.  And so far as I can tell, 
folks can't grasp the enormity of this 'till they become responsible for 
ongoing everyday caregiving in some context (children, elders, folks with 
disabilities, etc.).  I sure didn't, and nor have my childless friends.

Tom.


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