Revolutionary Ideas Part 20 - Cob houses and other natural buildings

So... I took a little break there from posting and was on the verge of wrapping up this whole series of posts with a generic "everyone just stop being greedy and shortsighted, share resources". But then I realized there are a pile more ideas.  

Meanwhile we've been getting ready for garden year 2.  I found my camera so should take some pics of art I've been making, seeds that I've started.

I've been rethinking whether or not the world of commercial art is for me after all, I'll write more about that later.   The same day I did all that thinking I stumbled across cob building, something that I looked at before.  But, in the past month I've discovered that the person who purchased the cabin that used to be part of our land has had it listed for sale on kijiji with a nice chunk of our land with it.  We wanted to buy it from her, for a place for guests, but then discovered it needs a lot of work and we actually own a really nice chunk of riverfront that the cabin owners had claimed as theirs.  Thank you, survey company.

So in looking into how we could perhaps save the bags of cash we were prepared to give these people, and put up our own cottage there, I rediscovered cob building and now I'm super excited.  Cob = earth + water + sand + clay and is a very old form of house building.  People make cob ovens, garden walls, benches, chicken coops and houses.

Here's an example of a pretty elaborate cob house I found online, sorry I forgot include a links to my sources but I will in the future:





And here's one that made me super excited in terms of being able to incorporate sculpture, though this one is a straw bale house in Somerset England with a cob facade:




There are other methods of natural building, but I think cob is for me, and makes sense with my background in clay.

In browsing the web about all things cob it was pointed out that it is a very earth-friendly way to build, not to mention cheap.   Apparently cob is cool in summer, warm in winter, and durable. A cottage is a bit ambitious to start with, so we're thinking of starting with a chicken coop, or even just a bench.

http://knoxvillepermacultureguild.ning.com/photo/chicken-house?xg_source=activity

In wanting to mark our territory down by the river, we looked around for a picnic table and paid for a 'picnic table kit' from Home Hardware.  When we picked it up, we discovered we'd been sold a bundle of lumber for $120 with no hardware, so we returned it.  Building materials are expensive!

And then I saw this on Facebook, so we're going to try and figure out a table using river rocks:

  

Anyways, ta da! Discouraged by high costs of building supplies? Get down to earth!