I am currently gathering materials for the construction, and I need your help! I anticipate that most of the materials will not pose big problems: of course, if you have any leads on free clay, sand, or straw please let me know. More importantly, if you know of a source for glass bottles in odd colours like red, orange, blue, purple, and pink, PLEASE gimme a shout.

But here's the kicker: for the roof of the cottage, I have decided to use recycled satellite dishes. Yeah, you heard right, SATELLITE DISHES. Why the hell not? They're made of metal, so they should be strong enough to hold up a few feet of snow. Now that smaller, pizza-pie-size satellite dishes are available, I figure that there'll be tons of people who would be happy to have me take the obsolete eight-foot clunkers off their hands.

On top of the metal roof, I plan to lay down a thin layer of recycled packing cardboard, then a six-millimeter-thick layer of waterproof plastic, and then four inches of soil and native grasses! On the inside of the dome, I intend to suspend a ceiling by one foot, insulate the space between with old rags, then plaster over it with the same mix that I use on the walls, and finish it off by painting a beautiful starfield!

I cannot claim credit for this ingenious idea of using recycled satellite dishes for the roof of a healthy house, it's the brainchild of straw bale pioneer Chris Magwood of Camel's Back Construction. He's already built a playhouse for his daughter with a 14-foot diameter satellite dish for a roof, and it's lasted through one cold Canadian winter already.

So, to summarize: I NEED NINE BIG-ASS SATELLITE DISHES! Ask anyone and everyone you know in the Greater Toronto Area, I'll be happy to save you the hassle of paying someone to remove the damn thing from your property and take it to the dump. Plus, you'll get eco-points for recycling your trash into my treasure, instead of adding to landfill.

The sooner I get these satellite dishes, the better, because I would prefer to put up the roof first, before I work on the walls. That way, I'll have protective cover to work under, so I'll be able to spend every possible day cobbing, come rain or shine. (I would rest the roof structure on big-ass round bales until the cob wall is complete). So holler back at me soon with some satellite dishes!