why rising earth?

The title of this blog draws from my time as an apprentice at the Cob Cottage Company in costal Oregon. If you spend time with natural building folk, you'll eventually find yourself around a fire, sing silly songs about cob and natural building. Folks usually refer to these oftentimes improvised tunes as "cobsongs". I often sang..."There is a house in old coquille, they call the rising earth, it's been the work of many hands, and you know what that's worth..."

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Cob Garden Wall

Now that the treehouses are complete and Hideaway Woods is open to the public, I have more time to post other projects from the year. One highlight was working with the kids at the SEEDS educational garden to build a cob wall at the entry of their new garden plot.


This project was a great combination of so many aspects of natural building that I love. The work was done by wonderful people, for a great cause, and in a public location where the beauty of natural building has the opportunity to inspire many hearts.


We had different volunteers and friends helping every week, and I enjoyed introducing folks to cob and providing their initial natural building experience. The youth gardeners were the impetus behind the project, wanting a beautiful way to accent the gate in the fence of the new garden. It was a joy to build with kids taking pride in their work, and having fun of course.