June Update

Namaste everyone and welcome to another monthly update. As the climate heats up we have had lots of progress on our Smauses (small houses), as well as good consistent development in many of our farm areas.

As you will see in the attached photo gallery, one smaus is very much up and in the process of being dried in. The other 'feminine ray' smaus was mostly framed yesterday June 2nd, with straw panels framed in with a first coat of plaster on them, and roof trusses in place. Remember that these two identical buildings are being assembled by Natural Resource Construction using straw bale insulation--a natural material that includes much less carbon emissions than usual methods of insulation.

These buildings will also be plastered on the inside using earth plaster, which will be done in two stages: rough plaster and finish plaster. This will happen during two Ashram events, on the 13th and 27th of June. This will be a great opportunity to learn about natural building and/or visit the ashram. Visit our 'events' tab on Facebook or our website for more details.

Additionally, due to budget and labor concerns, we have decided to delay final construction of one of the smauses, the 'masculine ray' smaus. Preliminarily, our goal is to finish it in spring next year.

We are also building an indoor laundry and shower facility. It will be a 12' x 18' structure and will be built out of cinderblock, with proper insulation for year round use. Construction will begin this month with the pouring of a slab.

Speaking of plaster, we got to experiment with colored exterior finish plaster on the south wall of Saucha and Gudu's house. Fun fact: colored lime plaster is what the Sistine Chapel ceiling is made of.

Our silvopasture work has continued with even more mulching! That means that over many weekends from Fall '25 to now, we have mulched almost every tree in the silvopasture with a burlap sack and hardwood wood chips. This effort involves everyone who is a community member, and is very important for the short and long-term health of our trees. As I continued our summer mowing yesterday, it was great to see almost no dead or struggling trees, with lots of new growth after around 2 weeks of heavy rain.

Our vegetable garden has also been producing lots of food for us during this time. The eight people on the ground are consistently eating all of our leafy greens from our garden, due to great stewardship from Adhii and continual harvesting and processing of the veggies by Vishada. Vishada also harvested hundreds of Goumis on Saturday from our Goumi shrub, and will be making jam from them soon. A great window into future years at Hiranyagarbha Yuga Ashram.

Finally, we have expanded our chicken flock with ten more chickens. They are being quarantined behind the Ajna Cabin for now, just in case any of them have any diseases, and will be introduced to the existing flock on Tuesday. Because we had a few chicken deaths we decided to add to our flock which brings us to 15 chickens and 9 ducks.

Thanks to everyone for reading, and don't forget to check out our Plaster Weekend events!

Namaste'