Our Natural Building Essentials Workshop has come to an end. What a fabulous four days. The focus of our efforts included light clay straw knee walls, clay plaster over wood lath, and an earthen floor in the timber frame “Hammock House”. Students also had a chance to make a cob oven, and experiment with finish clay plaster and clay paint. Click ahead to see more photos.
In case you haven’t seen it already, our 2019 Natural Building Workshop schedule is up. We’re trying something slightly different with scheduling this year. Each class is happening around a national holiday, so hopefully folks can use fewer vacation days to join us. During Memorial Day weekend, we’re hosting our Natural Building Essentials class. And during the week of 4th of July, we have another 7 day Timber Frame Workshop. Check out the details here and drop a comment with any questions! Hope to see you soon.
We just wrapped up our 7 day Timber Frame Workshop and I’m finally catching my breath. Whew. Timber framing has a steep learning curve so it’s not the kind of thing you can easily jump into, willy-nilly. It takes some warming up and getting used to lots of new terms, tools, methodologies, etc.
Timber framing is, first and foremost, an exercise in visualization. Looking at plans and applying layout to a timber, imagining a timber oriented in the building — these are all skills that take some time to hone. It’s a totally different way to approach building the bones of a house because everything is laid out and cut in advance of the pieces being assembled. So it’s immensely helpful to be able to see things in your mind, before they exist in front of you. Essential, even.
White oak is impressively heavy. Green white oak timbers are that much heavier. Today we got our order of white oak, pine, and sassafras, in-between massive bouts of rain. There was flash flooding for most of the day except for a tiny window in which we were able to get 10,000+ pounds of timber on-site and loaded off the trailer. I’m thrilled this day is behind me now. Jeez. Onto the next step! (All of the wood is not pictured here, by the way.)
p.s. The “wedding tent” is still going strong after all these years! Granted, we replaced the canopy once, but… this thing has been a lifesaver for shade and rain protection during our workshops. So goofy looking. Maybe a barn is in order next year?
p.p.s. Oh, how do I know it’s about 10,000 pounds of wood? This handy dandy lumber weight calculator, of course.
We’re just about one month out from the start of our July Timber Frame Workshop. Happily, the pieces are starting to fall into place. This year we’re collaborating with Brice of Timber Frame HQ on this very simple and beautiful pavilion design. Brice is doing the drawing work — we’ll have super tight plans that students will be referencing during the course. I’m excited to have these plans available. Clear drawings contribute to a better understanding of the entire layout process.
In case you haven’t noticed, I recently posted our full 2018 Natural Building Workshops schedule. This year we have two dates for our popular Natural Building Essentials Workshop, and one Timber Frame Workshop in July. It’s hard to believe, but this is our seventh year hosting classes and year three at our homestead already. (And it’s year ten for this blog, too. Whoa.)
If you’ve been planning to come out and join us, this would be a great year to do so. We find inspiration and room for little improvements every year, and with each passing season there are more projects to see here at our land and elsewhere in the community at large.
Have a look at the full schedule here!
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.
Working on the site of our 2015 Straw Bale Workshop
I’m writing from the past for the future — I should be in Vermont as you read this. I scheduled this little post to self-publish so you’d have some fun photos to look at while I’m PDCing it up during this latter part of August.
Here’s a photo gallery and slideshow from our recent July Straw Bale Workshop in which we built the straw bale walls of a small, off-grid octagonal cabin in the Kentucky foothills. It’s always amazing to me to see the walls go up and instantly take the house to a whole new level of completion. I love the gradual defining of the space from digging the foundation trench, to building the frame and roof, and then the stacking of the walls themselves. Even once the straw bales are up, the house is still ultimately a ways away from actual “completion” (whatever that means), but my goodness it feels good.
Read ahead to see the evolution of the small straw bale home in the woods during our course!
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We’ve got some very exciting news to share with you. This fall we’ve been busy behind the scenes, organizing our first workshop for 2015 — a Straw Bale Workshop next July outside of Berea, Kentucky! We’re really happy to be teaming up with Mark Mazziotti again to offer another 7 day course on straw bale construction. This time, our workshop site is a small octagonal straw bale house. It’s an off-grid home being built here in the stunning Appalachian foothills.
We’ve got some very exciting news to share with you. This fall we’ve been busy behind the scenes, organizing our first workshop for 2015 — a Straw Bale Workshop next July outside of Berea, Kentucky! We’re really happy to be teaming up with Mark Mazziotti again to offer another 7 day course on straw bale construction. This time, our workshop site is a small octagonal straw bale house. It’s an off-grid home being built here in the stunning Appalachian foothills.
Hi there, I’m Ziggy. In 2008, I launched The Year of Mud while building my first natural home. This website is a collection of personal stories and experiences building with clay, straw, and wood over the past 15+ years. A few of the things that get me fired up are natural plasters, timber framing, & Japanese architecture. In 2012, we started offering Natural Building Workshops, so you can learn essential hands-on skills to build your own natural home.
