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Midwest Permaculture

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Commenced:	01/03/2011
Submitted:	21/11/2012
Last updated:	19/10/2020
Location:	125 Crescent Lane, Stelle, Illinois, US
Phone:	815-256-2215
Website:	http://midwestpermaculture.com/
Climate zone:	Cool Temperate

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Midwest Permaculture

Stelle, US

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EarthCamp Village

Project: Midwest Permaculture

Posted by Bill Wilson about 11 years ago

Construction of the first cob building in our EarthCamp Village has begun!

Timber Frame Up!

Why ‘EarthCamp’ Village is part of This Permaculture Design

In William McDonough’s book, Cradle-to-Cradle, he talks about the importance for us as humans to reexamine the way we build our homes and other structures/buildings. The big question is, how much waste and pollution is generated while building, maintaining and finally demolishing our structures? It is about 40% of the entire waste stream of “civilized” cultures.

Our objective in building EarthCamp Village is to see how close we can get to creating structures that last a very-long time but create and generate very-little waste or CO2.

EarthCamp Village Explained

We are coining a new word and calling this area of the design EarthCamp Village because it will be a camping area for short and long-term visitors (guests, interns, students) and… every structure will be built out of the earth beneath our feet.

16 inches below our topsoil here in Stelle lies an ocean of clay. In a recent jar test we came up with about 65-70% clay. I know that most gardeners would faint from the thought of having to have to grow food in such a subsoil, but for the building structures…we hit pay dirt…!!!

How do you use clay to build a house? The three major approaches we intend to use are:

Clay Brick (sun dried, stacked like regular bricks, stuccoed exterior)

Cob (clay, sand and straw mixed into a solid mortar and formed into walls)

Slip Straw (loose straw dipped into a clay slurry and packed into forms to make walls)

For more details and the complete blog click here.

How would you like to spend a week…or a month…or heck, even a lifetime in a cottage that looked like one of this? And what if you built it with friends and out of pocket money so that you never had a mortgage. And what if you supplied all of your own energy (no utility bills). And what if most of your food and friends were just a walk down the path? This is an idea we like to call AGRARIA. It’s not agrarian, isolated farming… and it’s not suburbia. It’s Agraria.

Root Cellar

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