This is the year when Earthships and living green become the “in” thing to do.  Spend the day at Blue Rock Station to learn more about these topics and how topics like thermal mass and passive solar are going to influence your life over the next few years.

Ever thought about building a house out of tires, or cans or bottles?  Blue Rock Station has, and you can take a tour of Blue Rock Station, home of Ohio’s first Earthship to learn the techniques necessary to create structures, retaining walls and pillars out of “pre-cycled” materials such as bottles, cans and tires.

Earthship & Sustainability Tours:

Re-thinking is the first step in your journey to create a sustainable living way of life.  Take a  tour of the 2,200 square foot house  that utilizes tires, cans, old barn wood, bottles, straw bales and mud to form a home heated by the sun, earth and wood.

Hands on Activities:

Enjoy a Cup of Tea:

After the tour and hands on activities enjoy High Tea, Blue Rock Station style – a proper  cup British tea on the sun porch, and talk with Jay and Annie - consultants who have traveled the world to live their dream.

Tour begins promptly at 1 PM with hands on activities happening mid-way through the tour.  Tea is served following the presentations.  Reservations are requested (so we can make estimates of how many to expect for tea), but if you don’t have an opportunity to reserve a spot, come on ahead…we’ll welcome you.  Tour and tea:  $10 per person ($5 for kids under 12).  Booklets and other items will be for sale.

Tour Blue Rock Station:

We will...

• Tour the Earthship - a 2,200 sq. ft. home made of tires, cans, bottles, salvaged lumber, mud, sand, sweat and tears.  Annie & Jay will explain the various construction techniques and how the building uses the earth and sun to provide a comfortable place to live.
• Explore the vaulted Straw Bale “Chicken Chalet”.  This building houses our rare breed chickens (you may even get a chance to feed them).  It is built with a pounded tire foundation, straw bale walls, beer bottle front and back walls and a mud plaster finish.
• Learn about rare breed chickens.  We will discuss the changes in agriculture in America that have lead to the near extinction of most of the most common and popular farm animals of our recent past.
• Meet Eleonore and her kids, our milk goat - and discuss homestead milk production, making cheese, yogurt and other healthy and natural products.  The goats should be kidding at this time - so lots of little ones around.
• Say hello to the llamas.
• Learn a bit about natural gardening.  We are exploring a number of creative (and common sense) ways of gardening here at  Blue Rock Station.  Learn to work with nature, not against it.  Also, discover how we keep our plants growing year-round in our wetlands and pop-bottle greenhouse.
• Rediscover or see for the first time some neat, good old common sense stuff like composting, cooking in a solar oven, weaving fences from brush, making maple syrup... or whatever other else takes our fancy that we happen to be doing at the time.

The tour will start promptly at 1 pm - so don’t be late (or you will miss some of Jay’s jokes).

Changes?  If you haven't visited us this year then you're going to be in for some big surprises.  Tour the Firefly tiny straw bale cabin in the woods, or sit in the sun room and admire the new bottle window. The spring kid goats will be bouncing around and ready to be cuddled.

It is the perfect time to drive the rolling hills of this area and meander along the river on your way to us.  You can enjoy a tour and then the view as you savor a proper cup of British tea.

The cost is $10 per person ($5 for kids under 12).  Tours take about 90 minutes to 2 hours and include refreshments.  Plan to relax with high tea (proper British tea served in proper British tea cups, and some chocolates and cakes).

Open day tours are limited to 40 people.  Please RSVP to ensure you will be able to go on the tour.

2012 Open Days: April 21st May 13th June 16th July 21st August 18th September 1st October 20th November 24th

Click here to RSVP or call us at 740-674-4300 Or to really ensure your spot, you could pre-pay Tour Date April 21st - Earthday May 13th - Mother's Day June 16th July 21st August 18th Sept 1st October 20th - Harvest Time Nov 24th - Holiday

Reservations are not necessary (nor is it necessary to prepay, but nice), but if you could warn us you are coming (we would appreciate this especially if you are bringing a larger group - so we can make sure we can accommodated folks), give us a call  at (740) 674-4300, e-mail annie@bluerockstation.com