The workshop ended with a bang/gust/downpour on Saturday evening, as we all stood soaked in the kitchen, looking out onto the weathery mess of a sky and laughing as a line of maggots migrated among our feet like lemmings. All day it was sunny and the clouds were puffy and innocent. But as we slowly lumbered back to the site post egg-salad snacking, drops starting falling, and before long there was a circus of flexing winds and rain blankets that had come without warning. We were scattered but quick in our efforts to cover the half-finished hobbit hole that had arrived on this earth seemingly just as fast as that storm.
The week was an incredible success, and a very inspiring combination of quick community, determined efforts, and quality results. It makes me want to do it again.
We started off on saturday with a quick cob-mixing demonstration:
As expected with such a democratic material, folks picked it up quickly and we had a good amount of material on the wall by the end of a day:
It's not often that you see a sleeping baby swaddled across the chest of a construction worker:
The cob really shows off that stone foundation:
Starting to form the built-in cob bench and desk supports:
We had a very loose schedule, letting the workshop evolve around questions and bodies and weather. To take a break mid-week when people were starting to feel drained, we took a field trip to Danielle's nearby start-up farm (where she plans to build a cob house someday soon) and ran a siting exercise, to help pick the perfect spot for her future dwelling. We got out her shovels and dug holes everywhere, and were pleased to find many different colors of pure clay all in different veins within her tiny plot of land:
This long and clever piece of glass is at the foot of the bed area, so that Margaret's bed view will encompass the ground all the way up to the stars:
Sean bugged us all week to rent a gasoline-powered mortar mixing to assist in speedy and foot-saving cob mixing. Both Mike and I were skeptical, but wanted to give people the experience, and it ended up working really well and raising morale from people's toes on up. Below, Mike is taming the devil, as it spits out cob from it's dark and gated belly.
Strawbale/cob hybrid walls:
Check out the thickness of those walls! The "spine-and-ribs" technique (the blocky/bumpy style of building you see on the close wall below) allows the wall to dry faster and lock in to the next layer of cob. The holes in the wall also speed up drying, help weave straw together between adjoining cobs, and will provide some "tooth" for the plaster when it goes on in August.
The arch gets built little by little, and is a very delicate process, over which people often fall in love:
We were really happy about how the whole thing ended. We were planning to have a candle-lit dinner inside of the half-house with cheese and wine and chocolate and ice cream and beer. For ceremony's sake, we were going to steal a mason jar from the kitchen and create a time capsule to "cob into the wall." But because this is so corny and overdone at cob workshops, Mother Nature obliged to take over and send us our storm, ripping down all sorts of things around the farm, but leaving our little house looking as if nothing had happened. It passed the test.
More photos to come next weekend.
