People that love these sorts of things also vote for the politicians that make it illegal to build these sorts of things.

​@@ban80Both sides uphold that way of running things. Half the country isn't the enemy, a culture of trading liberty for false security is the enemy. Left and right both do it, just in different ways.

@@dallasswoveland4466 you are not wrong, the left seems to be far worse at it right now. It's probably to far gone at this point to save.

I think you *could*, though, depending on where you dug and what you'd settle for. Middle of a city? No. Out in the country? Who's going to ask you why you're digging a cave on your own land? Now, you might not have wired Internet or even electricity, but not everyone needs that 100% of the time.

Amen. Even trying to build the way 'they' want is becoming exorbitantly expensive. My dream is an adobe house similar to the 100s in our state that were built 100s of years ago and still standing. State won't allow it.

Yes, this is what it reminded me of! 💜

The clay at Coober Pedy looks nicer than that hard pan, plus the possibility of finding opals 👍

I wish the whole 20 acres had been preserved. I bet there were some pretty interesting rooms acres away from this 4 acre plot now.

Same here, I’d love the chance to see both.

“They pave paradise and put up a parking lot.” 👍

I worked in archeology as a digger. There's a trick involved in shoveling clay. It involves using the knee closest to the handle...lift your heel and leaning in with your weight. It takes a lot of practice but it makes heavy duty digging a lot easier.... like half. My boss taught me this neat trick.

❤ The underground building he done its awesome plus fruit trees its amazing

Or was it already here and they've concocted a story about an Italian immigrant doing this?

@@SB-uw1cr Yea.. it's aliens....for real...some people will make everything into something nuts.

​​@@alainvosselman9960 I wonder why not just use the knee as a fulcrum, why lift the heel? I've done a decent amount of shoveling stone debris/dirt.

Too bad he Never had a family to stay with him and help him.😢

Was it scary like Moria to you? I imagine it more like a Hobbithouse when Balthazare lived there with his guests

this cannot be 10 acres village!

If 1 man with poor equipment can created amazing architecture, i believe with 100k people, we will create more amazing than 'Great Pyramid of Giza', it need dedication.

@@EnergiA854 The entire property is 10 acres but the house portion is not a full 10 acres but does snake around the 10 acres. 50 subterranean rooms! You need 10 acres. Google it! Knowledge works best when you go look for it.

I lived there also, between '63 and '72. Off of Bullard and Blackstone. Never got there though. It was always fascinating to us, but Mom and Dad never took us. I remember the 100+ deg. summer days. We had the only true A/C in the neighborhood. Everybody else had those old, rooftop "swamp coolers". Our house was always a good ten degrees cooler than everyone else. Kinda made our house the popular place to be in the summer.

The tour guide is so excited in explaining the place or the man's project,that she gets you involved.

Thank you for covering this. This has always been one of my favorite "underground" homes. I used to live not to far from there and the weather can get unbelievably hot. What he did is a master plan in how to use what you have to make a better world. If only we could apply the same kind of thinking to modern construction.

Stuff like this is why I'm glad I found your channel. soooOOooo coool haha

what does he do about snakes? i would think this would b a problem

@@bettypergerson1070 dinner

Yes, agreed. She's fabulous

I'd love to as well. We have gone past this many times most likely & had no idea this was here. How magnificent. My sister & I used to dig underground forts when we were 7 & 8. We would have thought this was amazing. Our poor mom used to worry the ground was going to collapse because it wasn't hard clay like this. We wanted to dig tunnels all over the yard but our parents were too worried we'd get hurt. This man was so talented. I know many people live underground in Australia in the Opal mining towns. We live about 4.5 hrs from here. I think this is a highly underrated way to live. The natural light is amazing.This man had such perseverance! So happy his family was able to finish this dream for him. It reminds me very much of a Cenote minus the large amounts of water. The light has that same ethereal vibe. It's so amazing. 😊💕.

Besides not understanding the venturi effect, lol. It doesn't bring air down, the concentration at the opening speeds up the air and creates a vacuum behind it. It PULLS the air in the room out so air will be pulled in from adjacent rooms. It would create air movement thru out the entire complex.

I agree she is wonderful, she is drawing on the original inspiration of this unique man and shares it in a lovely welcoming way... which. does this amazing creation justice thank you

Exactly. "old world". Dug out what already existed.

It's literally in it's prime right now. Back then it was barely a settled dirthole with nothing around it.

😅

Almost big enough for a plane. Complete passages.

@@mfcobb1 😁 I love your UKposts name!

Hard to believe one man did this by hand . I don’t believe it. Beautiful regardless

hard to swallow a ditch digger coming home to dig. its like the pyramid stones were carved n not just cement. i bet he had a machine n it was his day business to use it. he had money to buy this land. why not a machine to make business.

He must have Irish genetics to dig holes like that

Kinda like the coral castle

@@itsadoggydogworld8974 She did say people in the community at times help move the dirt & rocks probably even help dig also his brother family most likely help to.

I'd venture in most places county would make you fill it in with concrete. Building code, ESPECIALLY if it involves ancient building tech; ie yurts, rammed earth, cob, etc, has to get drug kicking and screaming into factuality. It feels like the bureaucrats have bought in completely to that false notion of modernity; that history is over, everything's been figured out, the current ways are the best ways - STOP ASKING QUESTIONS - that is at the core of late stage capitalism.

I used to live near a field orange trees in Fresno county that were 100 years old. They got some kind of root disease and were pulled out.

Same

Coober Pedy Australia is an underground town dug into the Opal Fields. Very nice project.

@@robertschmidt9296 that is so sad.. I lived in Eastern Washington State. We grew a lot of cherry, apple orchards and so many where pulled up for urban sprawl .. some of those trees grew the best fruits .. unlike western wash . Eastern wash is desert and gets up in the 100 f on a regular basis in the summer months .. now they grow wine grapes .. I’m 61 and I get nostalgic thinking of the old days🫶❤️‍🩹

I LOVE it! Never seen anything like it before, but after spending 10 years in CA, I like some of the ideas people are coming up with to grow in areas that are too hard or dry. We found buried Ollas to be very handy on a small scale. This is genius!

That sounds so amazing! I would have LOVED to attend one of those. It had to have been so so fun, especially during Halloween!

That is so cool

They still have special events in the ballroom. Last summer they had a 20s theme party down there shortly before we visited

WOW.......That's beautiful....

Amazing it's such an accessible spot . Does this spot ever get damaged during earthquakes? Obviously it's held up super well just amazing

And I strongly suspect he spent some of the posts fourth grade period helping out a mason in his home community. This is not a wheel one reinvents.

@@gigiwills7851 he didn't really need to work as a mason, and you can see that his firsts builds weren't as good as later ones, farmers and rural folk have a lot of knowledge in a lot of areas. I also feel in the video they really underestimate the intelligence of people 100 years ago. You need no formal education to do this, just decent parents and/or a good community that raises you, common sense, and a willingness and passion to do it

@@nirodper - I agree 100% with your point (minimizing/underestimating practical knowledge of people 100 & more years ago. I also know these type of arched rooms are common in much of Italy (on the ground floor of houses). I can imagine the possibility that they made an indelible impression on him, and he might have also seen them built.

@@sfstucco Yes, the technique of building those incurved skylights reminded me of the dry stone domed 'trulli' in Apulia, on the SE coast of Italy.

@@nirodper for sure

This underground tunnel is nothing new and, if you do your research, all these tunnels look the same. No he just happened to find it and dug the dirt out. Way too many tunnels around the world that look exactly like this one.

He left an impression on me as well. I seen him showing it on film before. He was old then but im glad he was found and willing to show us his unique built home! I'd love to do this too.

@@kris6695exactly! What a cute narrative though 😂

💯

You’re right of course. But the literal demons who run Hollywood would never permit it.

You are so right!

You have to get to work, I expect you to at least direct the film.

Yes, I think this story would make a great movie!

Happy Birthday Sandra! (whenever that may be 🙂)

80 yrs old and you can still write type is awsome

@@shelleyThomas-dy6nl is this patronizing? Genuinely curious.

What a beautiful place....🙏💖💪✌️🇺🇸💞

I read that in the voice of the king in _Conan_ .

Go there ! Obviously it(s open for visiting and California is a perfect place to innovate in architecture : there is a lot to learn from. In time of climate change we must take ideas from everywhere and then sort them depending of what we can do and what we need…

Me too! And I like your name..

Let's go!

I've been twice! it's very interesting and definitely worth seeing. I wish they had more of it open.

Day trip!!

Thank you for the fascinating journey. I never knew this existed. Are there other similar places you can recommend?

40 years of hand digging 20 acres of hardpan earth, that is amazing.

He was also in his twentys when he was doing that.

Beautiful ❤️

if you're still young and can get some cheap land it would totally be doable with the power tools we have today to help, wish i was 60 years younger i'm all inspired now

Contemplation? No time for that.

Imagine being down there when the earthquake hits.

And the hardbpan looks to be stable enough to have made his underground home safe to live in. Most places would have caved in long before now.

How can a tree grow different fruits?

They didn’t have an academic formation( indoctrination) but didn’t mean they were not intelligent. In my lifetime I have known farmers with hardly writing and reading skills but they were fountains of knowledge.

He was raised a farmer and his goal was to grow oranges, build a home and enjoy life. He bought the land, found enough soil to root his trees, and really worked out some aggression on those rocks. Idon't think anything was going to get in his way! Fully invested!

Unfortunately the water table in those areas is also pretty high. There's a reason the people who traditionally inhabited those areas didn't have many permanent structures, and the ones they did have were round and low.

​@@MemeMan_MEMESQUAD that would definitely pose an issue 🤔

There are homes like that. I know two families who have them. Both homes are very prone to water leaks in rain no matter how the owners try to fix it(mold then grows if not caught quick). Historically where water tables allow; basements were completely underground which is safest. Modern builders keep making basements that are 50-25% underground with the back of the basement opening to the back yard. This really sucks in a tornado. Also builders save money everywhere they can and that includes using metal straps on the wood that would help the structure withstand a twister.

@@sam12587 Hi, thank you for the insight on tornado areas. Did you know at one time the water table in the "great valley" of California, in the area near Fresno, Modesto, Bakersfield there was a large lake? They artificially drained the lake in the 1900s. Because of the heavy winter and spring we had, Lake Tulare has filled up and is threatening a small town because the dike failure. That means that the lake would have been active during the time Baldassare was working so the water table would have been high....i think. His way of "open air" living might be an answer, just like the 1st Americans. יוי

@@yowwwwie I read that the water from Tulare Lake, which was formed by the Great Flood in California in 1862, was dried up by the 1880's in the Fresno area. It would be interesting to know how high the water table was.

I wonder if there's a botanical society in this town that is preserving the trees planted by this amazing man. and vines especially. For the future? These plants are after all accustomed to this situation and there should be more places like this including public housing., where to give hope to those who are prepared to dig and to learn would change the world as we know it. Just a little bit of a start with an opportunity to buy a place of one's own just with some basic infrastructure in place. Digging wells one can find gases build up to toxic levels but l saw recently a video where a man built a lagoon in the desert., and that said it it still worth the trouble to have wells intermittently strewn across a large site even to find out what you got. About the subterranean geology of the area. Qld government in Australia is currently having some thousands of tiny or "small" , houses manufactured for public housing and although it us said to be an emergency measure and temporary l think we all know that it is the way of the future. Finding sites for extensive regional housing where there's no job opportunities is easy., and that's got to be the first priority l think and the sweetness of doing nothing is ofcourse not to indication that nothing gets done but only indicates that what one does hasn't any adverse effects on anyone else., or on society. The logistics of placing a number of tiny houses in shallow holes in the earth with the prospect of building up the ground level with a height limits and with freedom to experiment on one's own land *potentially with lease holding))comes with some problems with the use of modern materials like sticky plastics for e.g.., for this age where every drop of water must be accounted for and re'purposed and similarly the only machinery used should rechargeable hand held devices which should in the main be only used for a short time period with an alternative VILLAGE machinery shed located further afield that has wire walls and a roof water tap and electrical power supply. All heavy machine work., eg excavations and trench digging work being in place prior to habitation commencement and is a fair thing to say that every time a truck or bulldozer drives over the ground it becomes more compressed and every time a spade lifts earth the ground is loosened as such the deeper and more extensive the digging the greater impingement there is on the stability of the subterranean geology., and this as such means that alot if attention needs to be paid by the government in keeping all things equal., so that not by quick solutions and lack of attention to these details there is created a circumstance for one lease that the neighbour can not understand and which leads to the creation of more and more regulation and more regulatory bodies towit this leads to favours for friends and all sorts of special exemptions which ultimately result in citizens leaving their village for reasons of dissatisfied and those others seeking to make a profit on their property which has been favoured by the organisation, by selling it as the increase in favours for friends including trading favours makes what was homes for like minded citizens who want to work at being human into terrace houses for the rich and famous and there's nothing wrong with this and elderly retired citizens deserve opportunity to purchase a lease holding or any other home at whatever stage it has reached in its purposefully best created design too., but not at the expense of other people in the village. The thing about this man Mr Foresturreri and his hand and mule excavated home is the size of the land he began with and is like a miracle that he actually lived in a time when motorised personal transport *Ford model S and model T'ss were making their mark on the landscape and he considered the exhaust fumes and the effects on the plants and animals including himself and his brother and his family and with his best mule on a given day he made provisions to keep the area as free of toxic fumes as possible without making it impossible for the elderly or the disabled ♿ to visit this vineyard and orchid growing under the desert sun in the heart of his home made in the ground. It's like those houses built on the hillside in those places in Italy and Greece where time allowed the gradual expansion and with the addition of another house the streets and lanes became cooler and as is happens a bit darker from shadows and bit more moist and slippery so that woman had to scrub more often and the view ofcourse was an issue but if it is your son or daughter one didn't mind so much in losing a vision of the lower laying land or lake or sea. But this is about choosing from the millions of hectares of land where there are no dominating un-addressable weather conditions or forces of nature that can be utilized to give the United States citizens half a chance at securing a a peaceful and productive future for themselves and their offspring and as l said hope is life and the sweetness of doing nothing at home surely must make the streets a safer place across the escrow country.

I 100% agree. This type of building should be commonplace instead of this 'one of a kind' place.

Such a good idea. Build under - not up.

@@geraldjuvejr.6171 it's because of building codes and permitting.

@@castellanskeep9564yeah because if it goes wrong, it will kill people, and the survivors will sue the living hell out of anyone who was engaged in building this.

Yes certainly. I went from Bergamo (wow) along Cinque Terre coast (omg) to Sienna (:-O), and back over the Alps. Everywhere in Italy seems steeped in ancient history and they maintain it that way and keep building oldtime structures of stone. So very inspiring, and completely amazing.

😀 I visited a community Damanhur in norther Italy. They've built a big underground temple with many rooms and pathways. This one man however overshines anything I've ever seen one man build.

That IS sad. I'm surprised there wasn't a woman who could appreciate his vision.

My theory is he was unfortunately infertile. I think it's reasonable to assume he had relations with his girlfriends. Sure there was a strong culture of no sex before marriage but in reality alot of people got married because of pregnancy.

The fact that you (and virtually everyone) believe that story is a testament of how far humanity has come to Idiocracy.

I once lived in a two story condo that had a stairway light. It required an almost story and half ladder to remove the cover and change the burned out bulb. Three years later, I just moved. Eff that light bulb.

@@brothernorb8586 You don't think he did this?

@@TheHonestPeanut critical thinking

@@brothernorb8586 not an actual answer. Sounds like you just have soft hands.

How does a plant grow 7 different fruits?

@@nofurtherwest3474grafting different trees together. One main trunk, 7 fruits.

Me too!.. on both ideas

He had no contemplation time…just anticipate and follow through with confidence. A rare trait!

It's nothing to do with modern distractions. If you tried doing that today you'd be stopped within a week and you'd have thousands of dollars in fines for not complying with a million different meaningless building codes. And even if you did do it by the book it would take you 10x longer, and you'd be bankrupt from paying for city/county inspectors.

Yes💸'They 'system' needs x___$$ from every person & payments(taxes) on every square foot to 'feed the gov't debt' machine( I.e. Redistribution) , get off-grip asap...🌅🗽

hahaha, you reminded me of a movie where one of the characters had the superpower of Shoveling! He was definitely a superhero

Mystery Men

People used to play minecraft in real life in the old days

That is exactly what I felt, She is an amazing tour guide. I truly felt that I was with her throughout the entire visit and was inspired by his dedication throughout his life ! Truly the Michaelangelo of Hardpan ❤️😇❤️ It saddened me that he died from a hernia at 67 years of age 😥 The government should dedicate it as a National Landmark Treasure never to be destroyed.untouched, dedicating it to Balthazar s dedication and life's work if they haven't already ❤️ Tours would more than cover the costs of preserving it 💯%

Thanks for that perspective!

This is my Partial Dream Home.

39:13 "once he started making friends in the community, he would accept help with pushing the wheelbarrows up to ground level"

Good to know! Thanks

I feel the same way. She has shown us a lot of impressive places but this one is simply amazing.

there is probably more to the story that is not told. i tried to dig in my yard several times for different purposes, it's a VERY HARD WORK; i'm def not buying this story as it is presented

@@christinealessandrini4280 remember people were used to hard work back then, not like the wimps that think they "work hard" while doing office tasks... most won't even cope with harder jobs like brick layers, concrete pourers etc. etc. these days... humans have grown soft over the last 50-60 years

@@LiLBitsDK they also had nothing else to do I think that was a large contribution to it I mean work was basically recreational activity at times

@@christinealessandrini4280there has to be so much more tot he story! How was he working all day as a day laborer, then coming home to dig through this hard substance. And all have it done in 2 or 3 months. She stated that he started in July and the first section was done by the summer. So he was able to get out the heat…

​@@christinealessandrini4280 I'm an elder garden professional and I tell you, it's not as hard as you think, when the soil is fresh and you just keep on your scratching, sweeping and collecting the dust in the evening. I can dig out tree roots. My iron tools aren't inferior to the little claws of a field mouse. Each morning I'm annoyed about the newest achievement of the little animal in my garden. Makes its tunnels under the lawn.

Don’t believe it, I’m sure the guy just discovered structures from previous civilization

More likely, he wasn't working alone.

Unlikely .He was a workaholic .I hope he sat down long enough to admire it .

Lol

There are also ones in Arizona and Nevada earth homes 😊😊😊

@RedactedMisinformant Thanks for the recommendation. I checked it out - it's cool but without the trees it doesn't have the same charm as this abode

A community like this would have challenges with humidity during certain times of the year. However, a bit of HVAC work, roof irrigation and a rain deflector over the edges of the larger circular holes would likely do wonders. We could live above ground on hot nights and below ground on hot days/cold nights. If we coordinated our irrigation, we would not only sidestep much of the humidity, but we would empower agriculture.

It's because it requires extremely hard labor... Normal construction is hard enough, doing THIS. Is hard.

That's what the immigrants did in the old days--they worked their asses off. And if they needed help, they would turn to family and friends. They wouldn't go to the government looking for a handout.

… and the incredible amount of determination

Only the transplants. If you were raised here more than likely you had a school field trip here at some point in your life. The LA transplants are clueless like you said.

@@plantfeeder6677 How old are you, if you don't mind me asking? My school never went there for a field trip, and I'm 30 now.

@karlwithak. There's so much stupid in such a small comment I think it's probably the only thing you're good at.

this place could draw international tourists. it's awesome

probably a good thing, people would litter and graphite it and generally trash the area

I feel like living in a cave would be fun for about 3 days.