It’s only day three at Dancing Rabbit, yet it feels as though I could have been here for a month already. Anyway, I’m sitting here with some clay and sand remnants stuck between my toes and underneath my fingernails, because we all just finished up with some good ol’ cobbing. (Check out the link, I’m sure it will provide a better explanation than the one I am about to provide.)
One of the food co-ops here, Ironweed is busy constructing a kitchen using the cobbing technique. Essentially, it consists of mixing local clays and some sand, stomping some straw into the mix (using your feet, no less - think wine-making) to create a kind of earthen material that is then manually shaped to form the walls of a building. When the mix hardens, it turns to stone. The entire process is done by hand, and the kitchen itself is constructed almost entirely out of natural materials. The clay is directly from the ecovillage, and the wood beams that provide further support (you’ll see everything in the photos linked below) were found with the help of a friend at a forest where trees were being taken down.
Anyway, Ironweed’s estimated cost for the final structure is less than $10K. It looks great, and it was exciting to be able to take part in the building process. It’s fascinating since everything is done by hand, and to see the walls grow larger after hours of pounding clay is quite rewarding. Also, the amount of thought the folks put into the design is quite impressive as well, and I hope to see the final structure once it is completed. It uses passive solar, and a greenhouse will be built into one side of the building. A small chicken coop will be implemented into one of the walls, too. Ironweed has actually been working on the kitchen for nearly two years already. Lotta work.
The Ironweed Kitchen from afar.
The entrance to the structure. Check out the alchohol bottles embedded into the cob post.
The cob wall: sand, clay, and some straw. That’s all it is.
A thumb: a very simple, wooden tool for pounding the cob material into place.
All it takes is some sand…
…and some clay.
Everything else is going great. We did a bit of vegan cooking yesterday, and the food was pretty amazing: General Tso’s seitan, scallion pancakes, and some awesome (vegan) peanut butter cookies. Super tasty. I myself am an omnivore, but I can’t say I’ve been missing meat much at all.
More writing to come later.
Note: Please find all of my cob building related content at my new blog, The Year of Mud: Building a cob house. Thanks! See you there!
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