Tree Hugging and Dirt Loving

The first week's foray into the world of natural building was action packed!  We spent the week discussing our current environmental situation, conventional building practices, the green building trend, and natural building styles and techniques.  After many site visits and slide shows, we finally had an opportunity to get down and dirty by building large scale models of natural wall systems.  After collecting all of the materials needed for our models in our local environment (straw from a local farm, wood from our campus forest, clay from the side of the mountain across the street) we divided into two groups to build a post and beam structure with straw bale infill walls , and a stud frame wall system with wattle and daub interior finish, and a woodchip/clay insulation system in the wall cavity .  Creating a natural plaster for the straw-bale walls from clay, sand, and water was by far the most enjoyable part of the entire week. (Next week, photos of these models will be posted for your viewing pleasure!)

The project for this year's Natural Building Certificate/Intensive program is to build a barn at Knoll Farm for the Center for Whole Communities.  Over the past couple of weeks, the site has been cleared of trees, and excavation and trenching have begun.  The trees from the site are being milled at Yestermorrow's campus for the structural frame of the barn.  

This coming week, we will be pouring a 8" concrete grade beam for the barn, while also evaluating all things good, bad, and ugly about concrete.....

Vermont is absolutely beautiful, and I am fortunate to be surrounded by positive and inspired people.  I am working out the kinks with this whole blogger technology, and you can look forward to seeing some photos in the future (once I get my card reader for my camera!)