Intro to Ecological Construction This six day workshop will cover considerations on picking a house site including passive solar design, building a rubble trench and natural rock and lime mortar foundation, wattle and daub wall construction, earth bag construction, cob construction, natural, earthen plasters, and rocket mass heaters. For thousands of years, people have been building their homes out of the dirt beneath their feet. Natural and vernacular building techniques have roots in every culture around the world, but share…

Earliest Bird (register before January 28th): $70 Early Bird (register before March 28th): $85 Regular Fee: $100 In this one-day introduction, we will be mixing and building with cob, as well as discussing straw-based building techniques. Look forward to morning and afternoon hands-on work, with a discussion/presentation after lunch. The day will conclude with a pizza dinner, using our cob oven! We will cover the basics: mixing and applying cob mixing and applying natural clay-based plasters strawbale vs. cob concepts…

Want to take your natural building curiosity to the next level? If so, join The Year of Mud for our 4 day introductory Natural Building Essentials Workshop. In this course, you’ll get hands-on experience building light clay straw walls, mixing and applying various natural plasters, and stomping and sculpting cob. In addition, we’ll tour several beautiful natural homes in the local community. If you’ve been inspired by natural building and need a jump start, this is the course for you. Here is some…

$800 Earliest Bird Rate (register before March 21st, 2019) $875 Early Bird Rate (register before May 9th, 2019) $950 Regular Rate *10% additional discount for family/friends participating together   Join us as we add onto one of our strawbales cottages in the woods! We will be extending the footprint of the building with a strawbale-insulated bedroom, as well as a slip-straw insulated bathroom. Earthen and lime plastering work can be done on both of those wall systems during the week.…

Ever wonder what it’s like to build a timber frame from the ground up? Join The Year of Mud this June for a 7 day Timber Frame Workshop near Berea, Kentucky. In this totally hands-on introductory workshop, students will use timeless techniques and traditional hand tools to lay out and join a beautiful timber frame pavilion. Learn valuable new carpentry skills in a gorgeous mountain homestead setting, and discover what it takes to build a long-lived timber structure using mortise…

PROJECT This will be the very first workshop hosted on this beautiful new sacred land purchased in January 2019.  The only existing building on the land is a 30m2 agricultural support structure made of clay bricks/blocks.  While the plan is to develop a small Ecovillage community, the first officially habitable building will not be built until November/December as there is a permit process that I am choosing to adhere to.  Thus the first structures we will build in this 4-week…

(The workshop start with dinner on the first day and end with lunch on the last day) ​Fee: $1275 Maximum class size: 16 students ​     Included in the fee: Instructions camping spot 3 vegetarian meals, Coffee, tea, water Our book “House of Earth” VersaTerra Certificate Transportation from Medford airport or bus station. Instructor Conrad Rogue and Kyle Chandler-Isacksen ​Overview This is the most comprehensive workshop you can find. Decades of teaching on four different continents has helped us design this rich learning experience,  giving students the tools…