Strawbale plastering

Maya and I attended a strawbale plastering workshop yesterday learning a little about strawbale construction and getting some hands on experience with the clay/straw mixture that gets put on over the bales. Maya very delicately helped out with little splodges of clay here and there but mostly watched and ate all the food I had brought along! I however did get stuck in there and after a brief 'how to' was plastering the bales with many other hands. To keep up everyones's enthusiasm there was a DJ complete with turntables blaring some cool reggae music. This paticularly helpled out the folk making the clay mixture which involved a lot of dancing with bare feet on the clay and straw until the right consistency was achieved.

This is a studio space that has been built with a post and beam construction in an ecovillage called the Sirius community in Shutesbury... along the lines of Findhorn in Scotland. All the materials were found locally including the wood which was from their property ( apparently most of the wood used in house construction gets trucked from 3000 miles away). It was really interesting to learn a little of the process and encouraging that people are doing it here in the North East. I'm keen on the idea of David and I doing a small strawbale studio on our property perhaps next year. This of course would involve some bale raising and plastering parties! I'm now on a strawbale buliding focus and plan to learn what I can in order that we can do as much of the work ourselves ( with local help) and save some money.