Cob Building Missed-Adventures

First let me explain the title of the post. If you’re a regular reader you know that my wife Teresa and I are interested in building a cob house but don’t have any experience (yet). So over the weekend Teresa found a local group on MeetUp.com that was holding a cob building workshop today. We both tried to register but we needed to be admitted to the group first – something that has still not happened.

No worries – I’ve never been one to shy away from crashing an event that could benefit from my attendance so after checking yesterday to make sure it was still on – off I went in the 94 degree heat on my bicycle to learn how to make cob in the unforgiving summer sun.

Or not.

See when I got there 2 minutes late (is that fashionably late or still on time? I have a hard time knowing) I was alone. I was not even joined by crickets. Just me, the blistering summer sun, and an urban garden with some dudes in the alley behind said garden tossing horseshoes. I did think about asking the horseshoe fellas if they were there to learn about building things out of cob but they didn’t seem the type so I rode right past them heading for home.

On my way home I stopped in Espresso a Mano which is great little coffee shop in Lawrenceville about half-way between where I live and where I found disappointment in the face of Cob I checked the meetup group again and saw the event had been marked cancelled. Bummer. I wish they’d have cancelled earlier – like a few days ago maybe but I can’t get too upset since they didn’t know I was coming.

While I was really looking forward to the workshop the fact that it was cancelled has given rise to the idea that the Schmutz Company could maybe host a cob building workshop. I plan on running this past Dave to see what he thinks of the idea but seeing as how he was talking about building an oven for baking bread and pizzas and things I don’t know that I’ll need to twist his arm too much. If you’d be interested in attending leave a comment below or email me from the contact page and I’ll be sure to let you know what the plan is. Oh, and if we schedule and then cancel it we’ll let you know several days in advance.

For some great photos of what cob and other natural building materials look like check out the Natural Building Flickr group or just do a Google image search for cob – there are a ton of pictures of amazing things that are and can be built out of the stuff!