Rice Hull Earthbag Tipi Photo Gallery, Page 1

HeartLand needed a garden storage building near the greenhouse. Here is the site before we started. A volunteer had already put down a wooden frame for an 8' x 10' steel building a few years earlier, but we decided to go with a greener, more sustainable solution. The dead tree trunk to the left had been saved from years ago to be made into a totem pole. That, combined with a mission HeartLand is developing to bring its forgiveness healing work to a Lakotah healing center, led us to the tipi design.

Here is the site viewed from ground level. Notice the uphill slope in the background. HeartLand is the east side of a mountain in the Ozarks.

The slope on this part of the mountain is about 1 inch to 1 1/2 inches per foot. We can work with that.

The straw in the background is old mulch from the greenhouse garden and not part of the building project.

We roughly staked the outside of the building, a 14 foot diameter.

We used a round stake in the center, around which we put a loop of twine and put a knot in it at 7 feet. This is our first crude compass. We will make a more precise one after we get the site prepared.