Archive for April, 2010

[ June 26, 2010; ] Earthen ovens are made out of a mixture of clay-soil, sand, sawdust, straw and firebrick. They’re simple, low-cost and fun to build. After taking this workshop, you’ll soon be baking your own wood-fired bread and pizza in your beautiful new work of art! This one-day workshop will cover earthen oven construction from start to finish. [...]

[ July 24, 2010 to July 25, 2010. ] Rocket mass heaters are, simply put, the natural building version of a masonry heater (aka Finnish stove or Kachelofen). In a weekend, we’ll take clay, sand, straw, sawdust, firebrick and a few old steel drums and turn them into a super-efficient wood-burning stove that stores almost all the heat from combustion in a bench or [...]

[ June 14, 2010 to June 20, 2010. ] Learn how to build a house of cob! Cob is a building material made of clay soil, sand and straw. Join us, Andi and Ian Miller, at our farm, Bergbauernhof, as we build our home and teach you how you can build your own cottage, house or tool shed out of the earth beneath your [...]

[ August 7, 2010 to August 14, 2010. ] This workshop will familiarize students with the basic family of natural building materials: clay or earth, straw, wood, and stone, and what can be accomplished with each alone and in combination with the others. At least half of each day is spent on hands-on building with a high ratio of experienced instructors. This year’s projects [...]

[ September 11, 2010; 9:00 am to 6:00 pm. ] (9am to 5pm)

Learn to build your own wood-fired oven from inexpensive natural materials including clay, sand, straw, and bricks. An earthen retained heat oven can be built in a day for less than $100 and will give you years of fun and the best pizza ever. Prized by bakers for making crunchy, chewy crust, these [...]

[ June 14, 2010 to June 19, 2010. ] In this practical workshop you will learn a range of techniques for building your own beautiful, durable home from simple natural materials. Featured wall systems include cob, slipstraw or light straw-clay, wattle-and-daub, and clay wattle. You will also learn how to make and apply clay plasters and get to explore a straw bale home on [...]

[ July 4, 2010 to July 9, 2010. ] Central KY

Lime Foundation
Building Cob Walls
Solar/Geothermal A/C system
Rocket Stove Heating System

$319 includes registration,
camping & meals for six days.
$199 – 30 day advance price.

Lime Foundation -

Learn how to build an earth friendly, natural stone and lime mortared foundation, and ‘learn by doing’ as we build a foundation.

- Prep Stones
- Slake Lime
- Make Lime Mortar
- Shape Stone
- [...]

[ September 19, 2010 to September 25, 2010. ] JOIN Becky Bee for a fun week in the fall colors of the Arkansas Ozark wilderness!
Sept 19-25 Equinox and full moon
CALLING ALL WOMEN interested in creating healthy healing
homes and sacred spaces! Builders, designers and women in related
fields; artists, musicians, net workers and activists concerned with the
environment and affordable housing who would like to experience
cob building.
CO-CREATE [...]

[ August 20, 2010 to August 22, 2010. ] Would you like to connect to your cooking in a more profound way? Embrace our instinctive relationships with, earth, water, air, fire, and food to create artisan breads, pizza, stews, roasts and joy in an earthen oven. Get the benefits and exceptional baking of commercial ovens at a fraction of the cost. [...]

[ June 16, 2010 to June 23, 2010. ] We’ll be building a Rumford fireplace as well as a rocket mass oven with a heated bed and bench at an amazing beautiful location in the forest by Zensee, some 90 km from Berlin. We’ll also make an earthen bread/pizza oven, start a cob structure and likely some initial layers for an earthen floor.

The workshop [...]

[ June 19, 2010 to June 27, 2010. ] A complete cob workshop that provides the skills necessary to transform the earth into a cottage or studio. We will cover design, passive solar, foundations, soils/materials, cob mixing, straw-bale hybrids, doors and windows, sculptural details, roofing, plastering, flooring and more. Using inexpensive natural and local materials we’ll create a garden studio of great durability [...]

[ July 31, 2010 to August 8, 2010. ] Join Diane Slutzky and Ryan Deuschle in the building of a cob courtyard bench with fireplace and cob oven. Over the course of 8 days you will learn the basics of building with cob, dry stacking stone or urbanite, plastering, and how to construct a roof to cover the bench and oven. The workshop will [...]

[ April 25, 2010 to May 1, 2010. ] Start Date / End Date:: 4/25/10-5/01/10Over the last two decades, the historic craft of timberframing in residential construction has experienced a revival. Students will learn the fundamentals of designing and constructing a timberframe using mortise and tenon joinery. Layout techniques, tool use and sharpening, and joinery cutting methods are taught as we work on a [...]

[ April 30, 2010 to May 2, 2010. ] Learn the basics behind mixing and building with cob. We will spend most of the weekend getting muddy at our cob mixing site, learning how to make an appropriate mix out of the most local materials.

This is the second cob workshop, so we will be applying cob a couple feet up the wall, and beginning [...]

[ April 2, 2010 to April 3, 2010. ] Learn the basics behind mixing and building with cob. We will spend most of the time getting muddy at our cob mixing site, learning how to make an appropriate mix out of the most local materials.

Workshop Schedule
7:00pm to 8:30pm Friday
9:00am to 4:00pm Saturday (lunch provided)