Basic definitions for soil

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The next post in the off the grid series:


The following definitions need to be made note of in the blog because I tend to forget them.  For example, I looked up the word "clay" awhile back.  What does it really mean?

Here's a few basic definitions:

clay:  a stiff, sticky fine-grained earth, typically yellow, red, or bluish-gray in color and often forming an impermeable layer in the soil. It can be molded when wet, and is dried and baked to make bricks, pottery, and ceramics

silt: fine sand, clay, or other material carried by running water and deposited as a sediment, especially in a channel or harbor.

loam: Rich, friable (crumbly) soil with nearly equal parts of sand and silt, and somewhat less clay. The term is sometimes used imprecisely to mean earth or soil in general. Loam in subsoil receives varied minerals and amounts of clay by leaching (percolation) from the topsoil above.

Also saw where an adobe house can be built for $75 per sq foot.  The assumption is that people were paid to do the work.  If you did it yourself, it should be much cheaper.  At least, I would think so.

Before all of that can be done, it will be necessary for a lot of preliminary work.  Actually, this is getting ahead of myself a whole bunch.  I'm not even able to camp on the site yet.