Permaculture blog #1: Wofati Eco Building

One of the things I like to read up on is permaculture. As I live in Southern CA and the population is quite dense, I’m not able to truly be one that practices permaculture on a full time basis. I’m able to dabble in gardening on my balcony and help out friends where I can. If I had a backyard, I would be landscaping it to include swales for moisture and water capture as well as making a customized food forest that complements the growing zones where I live.

You’ve seen my desert succulents, moringa tree, and persimmon trees growing on my balcony from previous posts. By the way, the seed pod is growing nicely on the Moringa tree! It’s around 2 feet in length. Once it hits maturity, which is about 3 feet, I’ll be harvesting it and showing what the seeds look like in the pod. And, I will be attempting to germinate another tree or two for the future.

One of the Kickstarter campaigns I saw several years ago was started by Permies website founder, Paul Wheaton. He’s very big into permaculture and I followed him quite frequently on his website. I don’t frequent the site as often anymore due to family responsibilities and other focuses (can star wars be a focus?? hahahaha..). But, I digress. The Kickstarter campaign that Paul Wheaton ran was for a line of permaculture playing cards. The content of the cards was created by Paul Wheaton and the artistry was designed by Alexander Ojeda, Jr.

Images taken by my iPhone

If you wanted to get a pack of your own, you can reach out to Paul Wheaton’s richsoil.com site to see if you can grab a pack. His website is: https://richsoil.com/cards.jsp and should provide some instructions for buying some.

This permaculture blog series is going to focus on the content of each playing card. I’ll give a summary of the card, add some other information, and any personal experience I’ve had with the either the concept, the food, or whatever the card identifies. This should be fun and very informational for those who like the permaculture idea. The artistry by Alexander Ojeda, Jr. is also AMAZING. So, a definite plug for his artistry skills.

So, let’s begin the blog with the image above with the Ace of Hearts: Wofati’s.

A Wofati is an earthen made building that utilizes the environment and the natural surroundings as a home structure. The base structure of the Wofati can be be any typical, natural home frame you decide to build. What you then do is surround the structure with earth. Lots and lots of earth so that I resembles something like the following picture.

Image retrieved from: richsoil.com/wofati.jsp

What is nice about wofati’s are that they provide a constant temperature within the structure. It’s cooler in the summer time and warmer in the winter time because the earth provides a tremendous insulation barrier.

My experience with a true Wofati is nonexistent. I’ve never stayed in one or visited one. But, I have been involved with making food cellars that rely on the earth to keep temperatures constant for food storage. But, I would assume you need a very strong frame when making this structure. You will have several feet of earth and soil on the top of the structure

One common example that might ring a bell to those can be the home of Bilbo Baggins from The Lord of the Rings films.

Image retrieved from: i.ytimg.com/vi/N1icEHtgb3g/maxresdefault.jpg

The home looks fairly non descript from the outside, minus a door and some windows. But, the interior can be spacious and comfortable.

If you live on a property and have a desire to be in an earthen structure that is moderate in temperatures in all climates, this is worth to take a look at. This home is probably not suitable for most city environments. But, if you have a nice plot of land and want to take a try at this it looks to be fun. Next permaculture blog will focus on the 2 of Hearts from the permaculture playing cards.

Image taken by my iphone.

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