The Monticello College Campus Construction Progresses In Spite of the Recession

 

DSC01058A miracle occurred last month at the Campus of Monticello College.

With a very small crew and limited resources, over 130 yards of concrete was poured for the foundation and floor for the 5,000 square foot commercial kitchen and dining hall.

We are constructing all of the buildings on campus to last at least 200 years.

With this in mind, we erected 18, eleven foot steel I-beam posts, each weighing more than 200 pounds and each capable of carrying tons of weight which is several times more than the roof load itself. Each post was imbedded 3 feet into the foundation.

The actual walls will be layered rammed earth, 18 inches wide and sealed in a clear sealant, resulting in a building of incredible natural beauty with several times the strength required by code.

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Examples of Rammed Earth

The design for our building, was created by Eric George, owner of the construction company, Old School, LLC with its offices located in Monticello, Utah.  Eric is the construction manager for the MC campus construction.

Cleve Smith of CRS, Mechanical, a Park City based plumbing company, donated all the labor for the plumbing and provided significant concrete expertise for this very large 84 feet by 44 feet pour.

With a combined total of nearly 400 hours over a week, Mr. Smith, Mr. George and crew (Chris Parker, Sloane Perkins, Joseph George, Decker Perkins, Ben Brooks, and Shanon Brooks) literally exhausted themselves to finish this project on time.

DSC01040In other Monticello College news, two beautiful doelings were born on May 13, 2013.

They are the first on-campus addition to our goatherd.
photoThe campus barn received its first coat of paint last week and we are hopeful that enough donations will come in to pay for the metal roof before the end of the year.

We are excited for our upcoming events, the Georgics Seminar and The Family Retreat.

Both are a week long and nearly full, so let us know this week if you plan to attend but have not registered.

Register Here

6 Responses

  2. Bro, if you need any labor in the future let me know, man!!! I would have loved to help. If you have any project like this let me know and I’ll take a few days off work to come help. OK? Un abrazo hermano. Hasta Pronto

    Marcos Uboldi

  4. your new babies are beautiful! we are excited for some baby goats in the fall…you should teach the students to make soap from the milk, it’s fantastic to use and really simple =)

    1. We are so on the same page. We have exclusively been making and using our own soap for more than a decade!

Krislyn Elliott & Lauren Swanepoel

Krislyn Elliott and Lauren Swanepoel act more like sisters than moms as they take really slow walks through the woods together, looking at and taking pictures of every plant they see & wishing they could remember their names and uses more thoroughly. They also like concocting herbal teas, salves, tinctures and strange drinks.

Krislyn is from Utah and has loved learning about plants since an unusually cool high school biology teacher took his classes on neighborhood botany walks. She has always been fascinated and constantly amazed at the power and beauty of plants.

Lauren is from South Africa, she and her family emigrated to Utah almost 10 years ago. They have fallen in love with the area and know more about this state & the great places to explore here than most Utah natives.

We both feel strongly about taking care of our families with natural methods and the abundant medicine we have growing right around us. We are trying to learn as much as we can about our magical local plants and are looking forward to sharing some of our favorites with you.

William DeMille

Director of Georgic Develeopment

William DeMille is a lifelong vegetable farmer. He studied Horticulture and Agronomy at Northwest Missouri University, Maryville. He holds a certificate in aquaponic engineering and production from Cornell University, NY, and another from GrowHaus Aquaponics in Denver, CO. He also studied soil regeneration and is a graduate of Dr. Elaine’s Soil Food Web School. He is the Director of Georgic Development for The Center for American Legacy Studies.

William is a farm consultant establishing several agricultural startups since 2005 in Missouri, Oregon, Colorado, Utah, and Nevada and he currently manages 2500 acres of grassland for the Ruby Mountain Foods Company.

His latest venture is a market gardening school called Georgic Revolution where he teaches a 17-week course onsite in Nevada covering soil health and vegetable production without the use of fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, etc. and where he operated a soil lab.

William lives with his wife Vernie in the snow capped mountains of Northern Nevada.

Lloyd Nelson

World Renown BD Expert

Lloyd Nelson has been practicing the art of Biodynamic (BD) Agriculture for over twenty years. He is a BD preparation maker, builder, artist, farmer, arborist, BD educator & consultant. He is co-founder of Biodynamic Source – a Colorado based non-profit specializing in high potency BD preparations – and he owns and operates a Biodynamic spray, fertilizer and consultation service. He has worked with small and large scale farms, vineyards, and orchards to transition to sustainable Biodynamic land management and Demeter BD Certification.

Vern Cox, PhD

Educator

Vern Cox is married to Joyce Christensen and they have 8 children. He has 3 earned degrees, a BA in psychology, and both a Master’s degree and a Ph.D. in marriage and family therapy.

He has had a diverse and interesting career that started with the Bureau of Land Management, followed by a stint as a Learning Disabilities teacher, and finally a marriage and family therapist, working his way up to executive director of the High Country Counseling and Resource Centers that served two counties in Wyoming.

Dr. Cox served for several years on the board of a charter school. Dr. Cox remains heavily involved in his community and the home schooling movement.

He has extensive background in marriage and family counseling, having held a number of administrative positions during his first career. He holds a BA in Psychology and both a Masters and PhD in Marriage and Family Therapy. He lives with his wife and several married children on their multi-generation farm in Southern Utah.

Joseph Lofthouse

Educator

Joseph adopted the principles of landrace gardening in response to the harsh growing conditions in a high-altitude, short-season, desert garden. Instead of relying on expensive poisons, labor, and materials to coddle the plants, he encourages genetic diversity, cross-pollination, and survival of the fittest, allowing the plants to adapt themselves to the current and ever-changing ecosystem, thus simplifying gardening and seed saving. Joseph is the author of Landrace Gardening: Food Security Through Biodiversity and Promiscuous Pollination. Joseph loves eating, farming, swimming, hot-springs, sunbathing, bird-watching, running, yoga, leggings, kilts, playing guitar, singing, and living habitually barefoot.

Dan Brooks

Educator

Dan Brooks was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest. During his first career, he spent 20 years working in and managing high-end restaurants and golf courses including extensive banquet/special events services and ice sculptures.

For the past 23 years, Dan has been a successful entrepreneur and family business owner in Las Vegas. He and his wife have 4 children and 11 grandchildren. He serves as a trustee for The Center for American Legacy Studies.

Shanon Brooks, PhD

Director

Shanon Brooks is the director of The Center for American Legacy Studies, an institution dedicated to helping families embrace and incorporate the Five American Ideals; Georgics, Liber, Providence, Public Virtue, and Liberty into their lives and communities. America exists because of Americans. Americans are the beneficiaries of a peculiar culture and way of living.

Over the past 75 years, that culture and way of life have been lost. Restore that culture and Americans will rebuild America to once again be worthy of John Winthrop’s 1630 admonition, “For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.”

Brooks has been a leader in alternative higher education for over 30 years, and is the author of two books: AMERICAN: Killing the American Dream and A Thomas Jefferson Education for Teens.

Dr. Brooks is a veteran of military service in the United States Submarine Fleet and holds a Bachelor’s degree in business administration, a Master’s degree in education, and a Ph.D. in constitutional law.

He and his wife Julia reside on the 80-acre conference facility of The Center for American Legacy Studies.