Natural Building Colloquium East 2011

From my Peaceweaver family:

"From natural building to permaculture techniques to water and energy conservation...from alternative fuels to sourcing your food locally...this event is important for everyone who is concerned about how their lifestyle impacts our Earth.

Join us for the 2011 NBC - July 26-30 at Thunder Mountain!
This year's Natural Building Colloquium East: Building with Spirit will take place July 26-30, 2011 at Thunder Mountain Peace Sanctuary in Bath, NY.

The NBC is a fantastic opportunity to learn hands on natural building techniques from talented instructors from all over the country.

Workshops will focus on cob, strawbale, earthen plasters, timber framing and more. Come join us for a spirit filled event in the beautiful Finger Lakes region of NY.

Fee: $350 includes all workshops, camping, bathroom & shower facilities, and vegan meals. ($150 deposit due with registration. $200 balance due by July 8th.)

Please email the PeaceWeavers at pw@peaceweavers.com or call us at 607-776-4060 to sign up or for more info."

My photos from the 2010 colloquium are above.

Earthen plaster workshop

Come join us for a weekend of fun and mud in Caledon East just north of Toronto this summer, as we apply earthen wall finishes to a timberframe/straw bale workshop. Topics covered will include sourcing and processing of ingredients, and their mixing and application, with an emphasis on hands-on learning. Tools and materials are provided. Please bring good work clothes and boots and rain gear and prepare for all to get muddy. Fee includes instruction, camping space, and meals. Kids are welcome! There is no separate child care, so please plan to keep an eye on your young 'uns. Contact me at muddygeorgie@gmail.com for more information and to register.

Workshop details:

Location: Caledon East
Date: Saturday, July 16 to Sunday, July 17, 2011, 9:00am to 5pm each day
- Plan on arrival for Friday night to allow for a quick start Saturday morning
Meals: Provided Saturday and Sunday
Accommodations: Camping (BYOTent and sleeping supplies)
Facilities: Indoor Washroom and Shower
Other activities:
- Saturday night: Communal meal, fire
- Sunday morning: Morning stretch
Cost: $200/participant
Accompanying Children: $20
*Discount of $50 per additional participant*

Photo by David Eisenberg

Feasibility study online

Over the winter, City of Toronto Parks, Forestry and Recreation hired Spaces by Rohan, Inc. to complete a composting toilet feasibility study for city parks. The completed study is available here for download. In case you have forgotten the details, you can read background about the project here.

Compost toilet feasibility study public consultations

Click on the picture to enlarge the image

The project to build a community-created earthen building and composting toilet facility in Dufferin Grove Park has been on ice since we completed the earthbag foundation in 2006. The City has recently contracted local architect Rohan Walters, along with me, some engineers and other professionals, with CELOS giving guidance, to go through the design and approvals process for the biotoilet project.

Next week, there will be information about the feasibility study and design proposals posted at the park in the rink house, the playground, and by the toilet foundation (aka Gossip Rock). Come to the meeting and make your voice heard; whether you are for or against, we want to hear what you think. In case you have forgotten the details, you can read background about the project here.

Timberframing

When I first learned about cobbing, I thought, "Aha, I'll never need to face my fear of wood or measuring again! I'll just cob it until it's right." However, I have found my lack of knowledge and proficiency in this area to be more and more limiting as time goes on. I first faced up to my fear this summer by building a solar chimney dehydrator.

With that under my belt, I was lucky enough to get the chance to return to the Thunder Mountain Retreat Sanctuary, this time to attend a timberframing workshop. Led by Sarah Highland, assisted by Liz Johndrow, and hosted by the PeaceWeavers, this was a week of intense learning, hysterical fun, and blossoming friendships. Sarah's gentle and precise teaching helped all of us (six women and two men or so) gain an appreciation for the wood and a beginning understanding of timberframing. I learned how to see increments of 1/16 of an inch, and how to split a knife line with a (very sharp) saw. Seeing how Sarah ran the workshop, and how PeaceWeavers ran their lives with us in their midst, I am ever more grateful for my natural building family and all they have to teach me.

Yet more plastering in Washington

I say Washington, but it's really Maryland. This was my third trip down, and this time Eric and I did some lime plastering over earthen base coats, on the back side of the strawbale studio he's been building there for the last couple years.

We used Red Top Gauging Plaster to speed up the lime set, along with some Set Retarder to slow down the set up of the Red Top. This gave us about half an hour of working time before the material became too firm to spread. I'd never worked with these additives before, but the lime seemed well behaved in their company. Cactus juice and rice flour paste rounded out the mix, making the plaster smooth and creamy.

You can read more about this place on Eric's blog, and also in some of my other blog entries below.

Straw/clay toilet wall

Before going full steam ahead on my plan to build a straw/clay partition wall in our house, I thought it prudent to practice somewhere less obtrusive first. Our bucket toilet is due for some renovations, to fix the rather visually permeable partition wall, and to re-do the toilet to make for a more comfortable sit.

Sophie and Kat pulled apart the old set up, and we amended the wall frame to work for straw/clay. Once the rather arduous prep work was finally done (lumber's in the barn, tools are in the house, hammer's nowhere to be found), it took only a few moments to stuff the wall cavity. I learned that, for a wall this thin (4"), I'll want to compact the straw more firmly than I did, and will also be more generous with the slip. I had a fair bit it re-packing and patching to do where things didn't hold together to my liking.

Slip and base coat plaster went on smoothly, though the plaster shrunk more than I figured it might. For the back side of the wall, I added piles of chopped straw; thought it might offer my sometimes squishy wall a bit more support. We'll see. Finish coat is next, and I'm thinking of using some clay that I picked up in Maryland; it's pink as pink can be.

My plaster recipe was:

Sand (32, 56 & 74 mesh) 2, 3 and 1 parts respectively
Clay (EPK) 4 parts
Soaked paper 3 parts
Casien 0.125 parts
Chopped straw less on one side, more on the other

I've been reading Carol Crews' new plaster book, Clay Culture, and I'm finding it to be an excellent resource, full of history, recipes and encouragement. Any questions I had during this process were quickly answered by flipping through her book. I highly recommend it.