Tomorrow morning (January 21st), I’m heading to Baltimore for the Winter Institute, the annual American Bookseller’s conference for independent booksellers. I’ll be signing copies of The Half-Acre Homestead for book buyers. This is the book lovers’ book conference, always with a wonderful spirit of independence and love of real hold-in-your-hands books from real live dedicated book people. I’ll be posting from Instagram during the week: www.instagram.com/lloyd.kahn
My first trip to Baltimore; have always wanted to go there. Hey, if anyone has suggestions of things to do there, please comment. (Are there cold water swimmers in Baltimore?)
From Uncle Mud, who wrote: “I’m off to the mountains of Jamaica to teach mud building again next week. The village of Nine Mile is very sweet to us. The little kids call me ‘Meesta Mood’. People there make $20 a day but a sack of cement costs $10 so no one every finishes their house. When we were there in 2018 we taught them how to make windows out of bottles that get thrown by the side of the road, putting up a rough ‘Tree of Life’ window in the dead of night before our flight home. When we came back in 2019 we were treated to this lovely view of the finished window.”
Louie Frazier’s sauna under construction in Mendocino county. Built on Toyota truck chassis so it can be pulled back from river in winter. Windows at eye level (a technique used by Lloyd House in Canada), that creates feeling of spaciousness in tiny buildings. Siding is cedar 1×6 fence boards from Home Depot. Rafters are staves from old wine barrels.
Log cabin with hip roof, central Nevada. Squared-off logs, nice joinery. I shot this in the early ’90s, on one of my 4×4 trips in search of remote hot springs in the American southwest. It was out in the middle of nowhere, making it even more special.
Note tacked-on addition in back. Even with that, the simplicity and beauty of this little building shine through. Note also floor joist tenons routed in to bottom girder/log.
This little beauty down a side street in Torrey, Utah, stopped me in my tracks. It’s in our book Home Work. The log work is perfect — a master builder at work. (Check out notched-in log partition in center, and notched-in cross-ties — look at second horizontal log below eave.) Perfect proportions. No architect in sight. Shot in 1989.
