I’ve been way behind on posting lately! I’ve been working a lot, gone out of town to visit family, and well… I’m just about 6 months pregnant, so on my days off I’ve been resting a bit more than I would be in my normal, non-pregnant state of being. So this post is long overdue…
A few weeks ago I had the perfect surprise for my 28th birthday- my good friends Joelle and Alexor came to visit, and help with the cob house. On their first day here they started off by getting a couple different clays soaking. One batch is a beautiful deep red clay, which is what we’re using for the exterior plaster, and the other batch is a really nice yellow clay, that we plan on using for plastering the interior of the first floor. Both clays were dug from our land here, where we’re lucky to have a lot of variation in clay colors.
For my plaster/birthday party, Steve and Greg came out as well, and the five of us had a lot of fun plastering. Our mix was one bucket of soaked clay to three buckets of sand and 1/4 bucket of chopped straw. Working with the earthen plaster was a lot nicer than working with the lime plaster. I enjoyed not having to worry about wearing gloves, or getting lime in my eyes, or having the plaster set up too quickly. Clay is much more forgiving than lime…
Joelle mixing plaster
steve, greg, & joelle plaster the west wall
joelle buffing the wall with a wet sponge
We got a lot of the west wall plastered, as well as a first coat of plaster over the balecob north wall, and the exposed bale in the east wall. And since the bales are all covered with plaster, we were able to finally take the tarps off those sections! Yay! And then, to celebrate a hard day’s work, and my last childless birthday, some more friends came over for some hanging out around the fire, some trampoline jumping, and for sharing all the amazing food Noel made, including his pumpkin black walnut frozen goat yogurt…
Thanks to everyone for all your help!
earthen acres 