May 3-4: A Hundred People at the Ecovillage Convergence

As part of the natural building interns' escape from the Ecovillage Convergence, we had an 8am to 4pm workshop on Project Management for Homeowners with Randy on Saturday and Sunday. He gave us a great intro to what and who is involved in the building of a house. It can be overwhelming and intimidating when one learns just how many blocks are presently in the way of natural building. We talked about what makes a good site manager, who is good to have as your architect if you want/need one, what papers do you need an architect or engineer's signature on, how to schedule the critical path of a project, insurance, budget, and some other stuff.

I hopped out of the workshop from 2-4pm to lead a cob mixing workshop for the Convergence participants with Dawn. Cob is a mix of roughly and quite variantly 1 part clay to 2 parts sand, some water and some straw or other fiber, like hemp stock. It was fun. A couple folks took off their boots and socks and got right in the mud to mix it up real good then we started building a cob bench and garden wall on the stone foundation the Convergence folks built together under Elke's instruction.

I expected myself to get really excited about having so many interesting people here and would get to know the visitors. But almost all the interns, including myself, retreated into hiding from it all. I guess 100 people in your living space can be a little overwhelming, especially when they're not used to living communally. The Convergence actually went really great. Check out the call out for participants here, if you're interested in what it was all about. There will be another one in September.