Dates: June 21 – June 25, 2021 (YES. We are still having the workshop as scheduled.) Location: Jonesborough, Tennessee Come and join us in beautiful eastern Tennessee for our next Introduction to Cob Workshop! We will be constructing a cob house. A perfect project for beginners and experts alike! You will get the knowledge to build cob projects scaling from smaller things, such as cob ovens and benches, up to large projects like homes and buildings. This workshop is a…

$375 Early Bird Discount (register before May 5th, 2020) $450 Regular Fee 10% discount for family + friends participating together! We will cover a lot of material in 3 days! Our focus will be continuing work on a meditation hut and a natural garden wall, at a beautiful rural property near Saxapahaw, NC (about 20 minutes from the Mud Dauber Campus). This includes learning all of the basics of building with cob and straw wall systems, as well as mixing…

VersaTerra Workshop with Earthen Oven Go here for full workshop description including our Covid Policy Maximum Class Size: 16 students Instructors: Conrad Rogue & Kyle Isacksen Location: The House Alive homestead, Jacksonville, Oregon Cost: $1400 This includes all (vegetarian) meals, coffee & tea, a nice place to pitch your tent, our book “House of Earth” (we’ll send you a copy before the workshop in the Spring), transportation to & from Medford airport/bus terminal.  Overview This is the most comprehensive natural…

We introduced this Short Course in 2019 and it has been a great success since. You’ll get a full sense of our Fast Cob technique, and you’ll know how to finish buildings naturally, from base layer to finish layer and even whitewash. Everything we use is completely natural and everything you learn can be done anywhere on the planet. Just be warned, this short course is not enough to go off and start building a home on your own without…

PROJECT We will be building a complete 6m2 to 7m2 sauna (depending on number of students) from foundation to roof in 3 weeks with 15 days of workshop learning and weekends for relaxation and exploring. In this workshop, students will learn all the skills and knowledge offered in the longer Advanced Training on a smaller scale. It is a more affordable and less time-intensive opportunity to get a complete cob building experience, though clearly with much less practice time than…

Learn to make and apply your own earth-based finish materials as we put the finishing touches on an earth and straw bale building! We will make earth plaster from site-harvested clay, as well as finish plaster from pottery clay, mix and apply lime plaster, and pigmented plasters and paints. We will also mix and install an earthen floor, giving students the opportunity to learn different ways to incorporate earth finishes into their more conventional home. What to expect: Our days…

– Cob – Straw Bale – Light Straw Clay – Slip and Chip – Ricecrete – Mushroom blocks – and more! … Instructors: Michael G. Smith, Colin Gillespie, Blair Phillips … Learn skills, techniques, and design theory to create your own beautiful, durable, energy-efficient home from local and site-harvested materials. Most of each day will be spent practicing a wide range of hands-on natural building systems, some ancient and time-tested, others experimental. This workshop teaches a wide variety of techniques…

PROJECT This 3-week workshop offers students the opportunity to design and build a clay-based wood-fired cooking complex. Using locally sourced materials, students will collaborate to create a traditional ‘beehive’ oven adjacent to a rocket stove-fueled, Lorena-style multi surface cook top. A prep counter and earthen benches are included as well, time and energy permitting. This workshop is an opportunity to learn about the operational principles of wood-fired cooking, both through the traditional oven, and the rocket stove. Terribly practical and…

In this permaskills Natural Building Workshop we are building an outdoor kitchen, an earthen oven for Lotte and Floris’ in central Portugal. There are no skill requirements. You will learn everything you need to build an outdoor kitchen from foundation to roof. From Jul 26th – Aug 22nd, 2021 we will start another round of permaskills Natural Building Workshops near Benfeita in Coimbra district, central Portugal. These workshops will provide you plenty of opportunity to get hands-on experience in Natural…

Come and experience our small natural building community in the cloud forests of El Salvador´s highest mountain! This workshop is being hosted by the Clouds of El Pital Eco-Tourism Collective. Our collective of five rural families from El Salvador has collectively built eight separate cob houses and cabins to host tourists in the beautiful El Trifinio Biosphere on the slopes of El Salvador´s highest mountain. The nearby cloud forest offers a beautiful site to learn about natural building techniques, permaculture,…

Dates: August 23 – August 27, 2021 (YES. We are still having the workshop as scheduled.) Location: Jonesborough, Tennessee Come and join us in beautiful eastern Tennessee for our next Introduction to Cob Workshop! We will be constructing a cob house. A perfect project for beginners and experts alike! You will get the knowledge to build cob projects scaling from smaller things, such as cob ovens and benches, up to large projects like homes and buildings. This workshop is a…

The Fundamentals of Fast Cob At a relaxed pace, we’ll learn and practice mixing and building with Fast Cob.  As the week progresses, you’ll gain the skills, confidence, and inspiration to build your own structures. In 2018, a workshop of 4 people built a 12′ high by 8′ wide wall…and that was only half of what we accomplished.  Last year, a workshop of 6 built a 16′ x 12′ wood shed (6′ tall) and got the rafters on! Every workshop…

This workshop will be the longest, most diverse and most comprehensive one we have yet offered to our students. We will be completing a 2-story building with a criptomeria (local structural wood) post load-bearing structure, that will be permitted as a “warehouse/workspace” with cob (first floor) and light clay straw (2nd floor) walls with a covered (pocket) balcony, cob wall-embedded stairs, a tamped-cob floor, a rocket mass heater and a reciprocal green roof, our trademark workshop finishing touch. This is…