Owner-Builder Conversations

By John Rowe. Blair Meerfeld and I met at the “Old Men’s Breakfast,” in Moffat, several months ago. Blair gave off a gentle, friendly vibe making me want to get to know him. I discovered he is building his own home in the Grants. He has been getting lots of help from the guys at breakfast — both technical expertise and labor. Blair is apparently the kind of fellow that people just naturally want to help. He is the classic case of a guy getting by “with a little help from his friends.”  Blair and I sat down in June outside...

By John Rowe  I wrote a series of articles five years ago about people who were building their own homes in the Baca. The Crestone area has a long history of folks homesteading here, building all manner of homes, usually environmentally friendly ones. I am going back to speak with them again, just to see how they are doing and how the homesteading experience has been for them.  This month I interviewed Juniper Good, who built a colorful and eclectic home in the Grants. It seems part pagoda, part greenhouse, part castle.  It is part frame, part cob, and I don’t know...

By John Rowe. I wrote a series of articles about five years ago about people somewhere in the process of building their own homes in the Baca. The Crestone area has had a long history of folks homesteading here, building primarily experimental and environmentally friendly houses. These include homes made of strawbale, cob (mud and straw), adobe block, earthships (tires, rammed earth, and glass), repurposed grain silos, and other materials.  Pete Van Horn is one of those who came here with little building experience and a modest amount of money and who has successfully built his own place. I thought it would...

by John Rowe Susannah Ortego and Harun Magnuson were the first friends that Cheryl and I made after purchasing a home here ten years ago. We have enjoyed them immensely over the years and it has been particularly fascinating listening to Harun  talk about building an experimental papercrete dome house and hearing about how he and Susannah scrambled to make a living and put aside enough money to build their off-grid dream home out in the Grants. Their spectacularly unconventional house is a landmark in the eastern Grants, greeting everyone coming down the hill and onto the flat. It is...