I wanted to share this great video! It documents the restoration of an old German "fachwerk" house. This is a building style I'll be doing myself on my upcoming barn and kitchen projects. If you watch this video, you'll see the many traditional uses of timber, clay, straw, and lime!

Fall 2025 Cob & Straw Workshops It's been an amazing Spring and Summer of workshops! I'm glad to announce that my upcoming Fall 2025 Workshops are open for registration. Come and join me in beautiful eastern Tennessee for our next Cob and Straw Workshops! We will be constructing with both cob and straw-clay. These workshops are perfect for beginners and experts alike! You will get the expert knowledge to build with cob and straw! Either for small-scale structures or large-scale projects like homes and buildings. Please click the link below to get the schedule and class details. Click Here for Schedule and Workshop Details I have NOT raised class prices, and I've added even more great benefits to the classes. For September and October classes, we will also be doing a hempcrete demonstration and making Dorodango polished earth spheres. So, you can still enjoy our low pricing and incredible value ratio! I look forward to meeting more of you here this Fall! Alex

Last week was another great class! Just wanted to share some of the photos. We covered cob, straw-clay, strawbale, earth plaster, lime plaster, natural paints, and more.

This is the first lift of cob that our workshop class did back in April. I peeled the forms off a few days ago, and it looks great! The next class comes in on Monday to learn how to do the next cob lift.

Hello guys, has anyone been in a cob building that doesn’t have electricity in a hot, humid climate? I just watched the Building Academy video on insulation vs thermal mass ( Thank you Alex for the generous discount). The first building I’m planning to build will not have electricity; I will not be able to add air-conditioning. Would insulation be beneficial at all versus a thermal mass that will at least regulate the temperature as we still get some very large temperature swings in the summer.