Elderberry Progress

Well, in spite of my best intentions it has been several weeks since I've update the blog!  We have been working on the common house, and it will be a project that we will continue to work on over the next year, building as much as we can on our own and hiring contractors for the work we can't or don't want to do.  Our foreman, Tony, will be back in August to do some construction for us and we'll schedule a workday or two for those that enjoy helping out with construction.

We've been working more intensely with our architect and builder on getting the home plans finalized and we're close!  Hopefully within the next few weeks we will have some plans to put up on the site.  Members who wish to build a home can use these plans, can change them or can design their own home.

This past Sunday we had a great time with members of both Elderberry and Potluck Farm clearing the area that will be the commons (lovely space with old farmhouse and barns and lots of redbud and walnut).  We also spent time landscaping - weeding and mulching the many trees we planted last fall near the parking area.  The hot, dry summer has been hard on these new plantings, but most are surviving.  One member gave us some elderberry seed, but getting from elderberry seed to seedlings looks like a challenge!  One way or another we be sure we have elderberries growing at Elderberry!

We now have 18 members but most are associate members who are interested in building a home, but not yet!  We will be ready to begin home construction by the end of the year so are looking for members who are interested in building their home soon.  If you are interested in learning more, please contact us!!

We had an extraordinary week building the common house together!  We worked for nine straight days and only had rain at night.  The weather was lovely and we had many great helpers every day.  The main house is up and almost dried in. The next big job will be roofing shingles.  The laundry room is up and tied into the main house, but there is still a bit of plywood needed on the roof and we still need to buy and install all the doors!  I've sent photos to our great webmaster Judith, and hopefully we'll have something up soon for those of you out of town and unable to see the progress in person.  We will be having a workday at the site on the 4th Sunday of every month from now on to keep working on site beautification and to continue with the common house construction.  We're also expecting there to be an article in the Durham N&O in the next week (fingers crossed!) and this week we published a little ad in Mother Earth News and had our first booth at the Durham farmer's market.  The quest for new members has begun!