Nanohedron wrote:
Geez, An Draighean, I've dreamt about that sort of home all my life! Good for you. And with a natural waterfall on the property, it doesn't get much better than that.
Thanks!
Nanohedron wrote:
What's the wildlife like?
Very rich and diverse. The family we bought the land from, homesteaded it here in 1853, and before that it was Indian territory (Comanche and Kiowa). Back then, they dairy farmed a large valley, but they have done nothing with the land for 3 generations so it has just gone back to being wild. The "neighbor" to the west is a 4,000-acre cattle ranch, so there is nothing around here to disturb any of the wildlife. We see whitetail deer, turkeys, cottontail rabbits, coyotes, bobcats, red-tailed hawks, and owls frequently. There have been credible sightings of a mountain lion, and one was killed by a car a few miles away on a paved county highway. And a diverse population of other birds and reptiles. Several varieties of wildflowers that bloom at different times of the year, including Texas bluebonnets, and the native pollinators that go with them.
Nanohedron wrote:
My own vision of an earth-home always had an enclosed courtyard, but that would mean either mounding or digging down, rather than digging laterally into a hill.
There's many different ways to approach building an earth-sheltered house. The majority I would guess are more like what you want. Building into the hill just seemed the natural thing to do here, because we had a number of north-south oriented hills to choose from, so that our windows could face east.