Manifest Destiny and Sod Houses

When I agreed to come to Chile, I understood that I would be relocating myself to the very ends of South America, and I understood that the seasons were reversed here.  I also understood that Chile as a country was not as industrialized as the United States.  Moreover, I promulgated that we utilize a system of construction based on straw bales, loosely similar to the "soddies" of the early pioneers in the Midwestern United States.  However, what I didn´t know was that my entering Chile meant that I was entering a timewarp of what seems hundreds of years into a production culture similar to that of the days of Western Expansion in the United State.

Please do not be misled or deceived by this article, not parts of Chile exist in the year 1910.  In fact, Chile has made itself known as one of the most developed and stable Latinamerican countries (second of course to Brazil) and has recently announced it´s goal of being fully recognized as a developed nation by the year 2018.  However, the region of Chile to which I arrived is still somewhat organic in their style of production.  Here are a few details to give body to my claims:

1.  All of the wood for this project was cut  from the local forest by me and Fredy Torres.
2.  All of the wood for this project was removed from the local forest by me, Hector Paredes, and two oxen.
3.  All of the wood for this project was milled with a chainsaw by me and José Paredes.
4.  All of the wood for this project was brought to the site by me, Maña Marcegue (see photos below), two oxen, and a wooden cart.

Needless to say, the experience was a bit different than ordering lumber from a building supply company and having it delivered four hours later.

For those who still are interested in the more artisan facts of life, both the oxen and the yoking procedures are different in South America than those we are used to seeing in North America.  In North America we are used to seeing neck yokes (also called Withers okes), but here in South America they use a head yoke, which utilizes the strength of the oxen´s head and neck and less of the shoulders.