10 am-3 pm

Kylara Miene has been studying cob while teaching in Baltimore city public schools and has left the teaching life to further her knowledge and practice her cob-making skills building a house out of it in Virginia. During her brief return to Maryland before setting out for Canada, she is willing to share her hard-earned knowledge and experience for a one-day cob workshop (or work party, depending how you look at it) at my house in Owings Mills.

The project is a bench with an oven on the side (the oven will not be addressed in this workshop). The trench and foundations are partially laid, so that students can get to the fun of pure cob quickly.

materials and vegan refreshments will be provided.

Bring shoes you don’t care about, water shoes (that you can wash) or really thick callouses for the cob-mixing part.

Come experience the muddy miracle of cob!

This post was submitted by Erin Whitt Hilker.

Come to sunny eastern Oregon, and learn to do miraculous things with dirt! EORenew will offer three Workshops in John Day, Oregon this July on natural building techniques. Camping is available on-site for workshop students, and most meals will be provided. Sign up for one, two, or all three workshops! Join us in making new friends, laughing, and turning the new cob bench at the fairgrounds into beautiful, usable art.
In the Cob Bench Sculpture and Construction workshop July 19-22, students will build a beautiful, durable, and thermally massive cob bench using soil, sand, and straw. The class will cover all aspects of cob construction through lecture and hands-on building. Issues and techniques to be covered include: mixing, application, materials, test bricks, and how to connect cob to other parts of a structure. Lectures and labs will cover foundation, drainage, siting, passive solar, roofs, and tools. The workshop will prepare participants to use earthen materials to build anything from benches and ovens to cottages.

This post was submitted by Jennifer Barker.