Straw Bale Construction and Natural Building

with Melanie Scott of Evolve Builders Group

with Adam Krop of Evolve Builders Group

With a little know-how you can learn how to select the right soils to make cob and start sculpting the built environment around you.  Cob and various mud-straw building techniques have been used for thousands of years.  It is a free form technique that can create beautiful organic shapes and lines. This introduction to cob construction will start you on your journey to building undulating benches, flowing walls, sculptures, load bearing walls and other features for your home and garden with all natural materials. This workshop will cover how to test your soil, how to mix cob, how to stack it into load bearing monolithic structures and various cob building techniques to turn a pile of mud into a thing of beauty.  This is a very hands on workshop so be prepared to get muddy!

This workshop has been cancelled. For more information, please contact Jennifer Lennie at info@everdale.org

With Ben Polley of Harvest Homes

Plastering is an art unto itself. Learn skilled techniques to become proficient at mixing and troweling traditional cement-lime plaster to provide elegant and professional finishes. Colour tinting, stucco spraying, interior finishes, reliefs, inlays and mosaics will also be discussed with some hands-on opportunities.

Location: Everdale Farm, please go to the Contact Us section for directions.

Please wear long sleeves and long pants to this workshop.

This workshop has been cancelled. For more information, please contact Jennifer Lennie at jennifer@everdale.org or 519-855-4859 x101.

With Ben Polley of Harvest Homes

Straw bales can be used to build homes and other types of buildings that are extremely durable, beautiful, energy-efficient, low-cost and well suited to our four-season climate. We will focus on important construction details difficult to glean from books and important for Ontario Code and climate context - perfect for the future homeowner builder or professional builder. You will gain lots of theory and practical experience building a small straw bale cabin. This weekend workshop is really hands-on, so expect to get dirty!
Note: this will not include cement lime or earthen plastering. We recommend you take the plastering and finishing workshop set in July.