These past few weeks, we’ve been busy planning our Natural Building Workshops schedule. 2016 is a particularly exciting year because this is the very first time we’ll be hosting courses at our new homestead location outside Berea, Kentucky. I’ve been anticipating this day for several years now, and it’s finally happening. The Year of Mud’s new headquarters will be the source of a lot of amazing building activity and workshops for years to come.

The Year of Mud 2016 Natural Building Workshops

To kick things off, we’re having a Timber Frame Workshop to build a very sweet little structure. It will be a Japanese-inspired intern shelter, designed to house future homestead interns in the coming summers. Similar to our previous Timber Frame Workshops, we’ll be focusing on the use of hand tools. We’ve had a lot of total beginners come through these courses and I’ve been consistently amazed at how quickly people pick up these extremely valuable skills. Once you’ve done some timber framing, it’s hard to look at 2x4s the same way ever again…

Additionally, we’re hosting two new brand new courses we’ve never offered before. We’re calling them “Natural Building Essentials” Workshops — these are aimed at beginner builders who want to learn what all the fuss is about with clay, sand, and straw. We’ll play with cob, mix and build some light clay straw walls, and try our hand at clay plaster. We’ll even make and apply some clay paint, which I’ve been really excited about lately.

We have a 5 day Essentials course that will include tours of natural buildings we’ve worked on in the local community, and a shorter Weekend course aimed at folks who have tighter schedules and less opportunity to take time off from work and other life responsibilities.

The choice is yours, and I sure do hope you can make it out to one of our courses this summer! It’s going to be an amazing year here at the new homestead.