Kelly is unofficially calling the two building designs ModPods. She and Pam were inspired by some similar structures they came across while traveling by motorcycle on Orcas Island, Wash.

“I nearly went off the road on my bike when I saw these tiny houses,” Kelly said.

The two offices are 10×12 (120 square feet), are 15 feet high on the back end and 12 feet high on the front end. The roofs were designed to accommodate solar panels (to be installed soon) and are situated for solar gain through the sliding glass doors in the winter. When the farm staff began to move into the first office, they didn’t have heat, so they covered the existing walls with cob for insulation. On the day I was there it was unseasonably warm outside, but at least 20 degrees cooler in the finished office – even up in the loft. The loft (accessed by a ladder) is large enough to stand up in and will be used for a working and lounging space. Downstairs in the finished office is a small bathroom, a sink, a desk and some storage space. Kelly would like to install a small kitchenette by Avanti in the second office.

The structures were built by the local Boy Scouts and volunteers over a couple of months, but Kelly said the structures are designed to be built in about four days and for around $15,000. HabeRae will build each unit for approximately $27,000. Each of the buildings are on a slab foundation.

In addition to the two offices, the Urban Roots staff also built an experimental greenhouse/storage shed out of old wood pallets covered with cob and a tin roof. A bunny named Dandelion lives in a cage in front of the cob structure. Dandelion will be joined soon by a goat, some bees, a few chickens and a pond full of frogs. Urban Roots receives most of their supplies from donations, Habitat for Humanity, Craigslist and they depend on volunteers affectionately named Worker Bees.

The farm sits behind a former hotel on 4th Street that HabeRae Homes converted into one-bedroom apartments called 14 on 4th.

The pallet/cob interior of the storage shed

Photos by Christina Nellemann

By Christina Nellemann for the [Tiny House Blog]

Lammas is the United Kingdom’s first planned ecovillage and is sited on 76 acres of mixed pasture and woodland in Pembrokeshire. The houses use low-impact architecture which uses a combination of recycled and natural materials. The village will contain five detached buildings and one terrace of four dwellings. The homes will be built of straw bale, earth, timber frame and cob; they will have turf roofs and wool insulation and will blend into the landscape.

The videos (also available as podcasts) cover everything from searching for land, working with local codes, inspectors and design councils, examples of different types of natural building including straw bale and cob, surviving cold weather, self-sufficiency, growing your own food, and keeping community intact. The ecovillages profiled are Cae Mabon, The Village, Ireland and Findhorn. That Roundhouse by Tony Wrench is also featured.

The videos are filmed and produced by Undercurrents, an alternative news blog, and presented by Paul Wimbush, an architect who has lived in several intentional communities where he learned gardening, horticulture, goat-tending, land management and simple living skills.

You can support both organizations by purchasing a 50-minute DVD of all the videos.

Photos courtesy of Lammas Ecovillage and Undercurrents

By Christina Nellemann for the [Tiny House Blog]

In 1990, I moved back to my home state of Oregon intent on living in a tipi and getting rid of mortgages or rent. I looked for a suitable piece of property for months and finally located a 2 acre meadow next to the Wallowa River near the town of Joseph. The owners agreed that I could set up a tipi there in exchange for clearing downed trees and repairing the fence lines. A few months later I moved out of a small room up town and into the tipi full time. I spent three seasons in that 16 ft tipi.

In order to simplify, I sold the tipi and built a 9 ft X12ft red willow hut, complete with carpeting and blanket door and proceeded to live in that space for 2 years. Luckily I was able to put in underground electricity early on so was able to have lights and a small heater which helped in the winter months. The came a time when my Moonlight Chronicle zine got a corporate sponsorship from Simple Shoes in California and I spent the next 4 years mostly traveling around drawing and writing.

Back in the meadow I took down the hut and would erect a 4-season mountain tent when staying there. Eventually I built a tiny building (6 ft X10 ft) and lived in it for a year or so until it got robbed. I lost $5000 worth of cameras and computers!

So I dug into the hill side and made a tiny (8 ft) underground room with a skylight. This structure is basically burglar proof and I enjoy the coziness of such a small space, which is also easy to heat and cool. I have now been in the “Hobbit House” for almost 10 years.

To learn more about Dan visit http://www.moonlightchronicles.com/

I would say that it may give our planet a big, much needed rest if more people choose to scale down on their living spaces. For me the old saying “Less is More” has become a motto. Less always makes me a happier human.

About two months ago my boyfriend, Shane, sent me an odd text, “Can you take off from work July 8 – 11?”

“I think so, why?”

“We’re going on vacation.”

And so began the Super Secret Vacation saga. For weeks I guessed where we might be going and worried about what to pack.

“Are we camping?”
“Maybe.”
“Ok, we’re camping. We can’t be going South – it’s too hot. Are we hiking?”
“Maybe”
“Do I need a bathing suit?”
“Yes.”

And on it went until July 8th when we got into the car. All I knew was that we were camping in West Virginia. But what on Earth was in West Virginia?

When we pulled into Taproot Farm (taprootfarm.info) I thought we were lost and asking for directions to a nearby state park. Then I met Beth Reese, a gracious and friendly woman who greeted us as if we were old friends – not strangers who had just pulled down her long drive way, uninvited, to ask for directions. She and Shane were chatting away when I saw Sigi Koko’s green VW bug with Build Naturally scrawled across the back bumper. It clicked.

Querencia

Shane and I were the first of 40 people to arrive for Taproot Farm’s a cob workshop. I had been looking for a cob workshop within driving distance to NJ for some time (I’m certain the Pacific Northwest is lovely, but it’s such a long way from where we live in the North East!) and had finally given up for the season when Shane found out about Sigi Koko and her company, Down to Earth Design (www.buildnaturally.com).

Workhop Participants

Kasey and Shane, the happy cobbers

Shane, thankfully, had other plans. The Reeses, our hosts, were wonderful. After 25 years living, working, and raising a family in Arlington, VA. They moved to Capon Bridge in Tim Reese’s home state, West Virginia, to start Taproot Farm which will one day be a 20-acre sustainable farm. Querencia is Beth’s whimsical artist studio currently being built on the property. I have to be honest when I walked through the tree line and saw Querencia for the first time I fell in love. Shane and Beth were still happily chatting away, but I was stunned silent trying to absorb my unbelievable Super Secret Vacation reveal.

Architect, builder, and teacher Sigi Koko helped design Beth’s dream studio and facilitated our workshops. Sigi was a blast! Her teaching style was engaging (complete with Sigi produced sound effects) and patient (she gracefully handled children’s interruptions and thoughtfully answered our many questions). Throughout the weekend I was impressed by the amount of individual attention Sigi, Beth, and Tim gave workshop participants by answering questions, giving feedback on our developing technique, and just enjoying the company!

Here is the schedule we followed (loosely) at the workshops:

Friday:
Check-in.
Workshop attendees make camp and enjoy a fantastic dinner prepared by Leenie, a local herbalist and amazing cook.

Cob Lesson

Mixing Cob

Saturday:
Breakfast prepared by Beth Reese (who despite modest protesting prepared a fantastic spread).
Check-in with Kate Reese, Beth & Tim’s daughter, who helped organize the workshop. Cob lesson by Sigi Koko on preparing cob, testing soil for clay content, and testing clay soil for sand content.

Cobbing! Forty workshop participants broke into small groups to sift clay, mix cob, and build cob walls.

Lunch, including a long break prefect for those who choose to nap and/or swim to re-energize.
Mini cob lesson, Sigi makes minor adjustments to cob technique’s based on her observations. She also introduces two new projects: a cob bookshelf and cob bench.
Dinner prepared by Leenie.

Sunday:
Repeat of Saturday’s schedule.
New cob lessons include: trimming walls, shaping a cob bench, and imbedding objects (such as glass bottles) into a cob wall.

Imbedding Objects

Niche

Monday:
Repeat of Saturday’s schedule.
New cob lesson included: building a niche in a cob wall.

It was a fantastic experience! The camping area on Taproot Farm was well cleared, with solar footpath lights along the walkways. The outdoor shower was perfect at the end of a muddy day (although chilly the first evening, which served me right for being among the last of 40 people to shower!) and the port-a-john was what you might expect.

Tim, Beth, and their kids Kate, Jenny, and Allen, were great hosts. There was ample shade thanks to easy ups placed around the worksite, easy access to water, and lots of sun and bug spray available for those who forgot theirs at home.

During meal breaks Shane and I were happy to peruse the library of natural building books Beth and Sigi left on display. I’m certain Shane and I weren’t the only ones who left with a list of 5 or 6 books we will be adding to our library in the future!

We hope to attend another Taproot workshop and are looking forward to the release of the straw bale and cob documentary, which was filmed in part during our workshop, this fall. We are also looking forward to Leenie’s workshop inspired cookbook which will include the many amazing dishes we enjoyed during our say, including gluten free and vegan options that were to die for!

If you are in the area and looking for a natural building workshop I suggest you check the remaining Taproot farm schedule. These are an excellent value and a great experience!

Taproot Farm Workshops http://taprootfarm.info/natural-building/
Sigi Koko, Down to Earth Design http://www.buildnaturally.com/
Shake Test video by Sigi Koko http://buildnaturally.blogspot.com/2011/06/shake-test.html.

Cae Mabon’s principal creator is Eric Maddern, who was inspired to create the community after spending time with the Aboriginal people in Alice Springs, Australia. He wanted to create a place that was not the ostentatious beauty of the wealthy but the humble beauty of the simple and natural. The buildings he created are mostly made from timber, stone, reed, straw, grass, lime and clay and they blend in with their surroundings.

The Cae Mabon (Mabon’s Field) community consists of several different types of alternative buildings including a geodome, a Mongolian yurt, an Iranian shavan, cob cottages, two roundhouses, a straw bale hogan, a cedar cabin, a thatched shower hut with river water heated by a wood stove, a “loo with a view”, a sweat lodge and a wood-burning cedar hot tub.

People who live in Cae Mabon take part in working, building and gardening parties, and yoga and meditation retreats are regularly held here. The philosophy behind the community is to create a place of creativity and healing as well as a model of low impact, sustainable living.

Photos courtesy of Cae Mabon

By Christina Nellemann for the [Tiny House Blog]

Earth is still the world’s most common building material. The word cob comes from an old English root meaning a lump or rounded mass. Cob building requires the use of hands and feet to form lumps of earth mixed with sand and straw. This is a sensory and aesthetic experience similar to sculpting with clay. Cob construction is easy to learn and is inexpensive to build. Because there are no forms, ramming, cement or rectilinear bricks, cob lends itself to organic shapes: curved walls, arches and niches. Earth homes are cool in summer, warm in winter. Cob’s resistance to rain and cold make it ideally suited to cold climates like the Pacific Northwest, and to desert conditions.

A modern cob home- Cobtun House- in England won the Royal Institute of British Architects’ sustainability award and went on to sell for well over a million dollars (750,000 pounds). And cob is just a simple mix of clay and straw (though sand or some sort of grit is often used as well).

Cob is cheap- the walls of Cobtun House cost just 20,000 pounds- and infinitely recyclable. It’s also a very green building material for plenty of other reasons.

It’s a local material: the clay and sand are most often extracted from the property where the building is built. It’s energy efficient: cool in the summer, warm in the winter and fire-resistant. It’s efficient with space since cob buildings are smaller than the average American home.

A cob home is also a perfect DIY project since the materials can be mixed with your hands and feet and molded freeform- without support structures- to create a house (See books like The Hand-Sculpted House: A Practical and Philosophical Guide to Building a Cob Cottage).

In this video, Margaret Krome-Lukens of North Carolina’s Pickard’s Mountain Eco-Institute shows us the cob home- refreshingly cool on a hot summer’s day- that interns Mike and Greg are building for her on the property. They talk about the horse manure used as an additive to the walls, how the material is so easy to sculpt, the green roof and living small. Since her new home is less than 150 square feet, Margaret talks about the joy of giving up stuff to move in.

The house was built in 1997 by Tony and featured solar power, a wind turbine, composting toilet and reed beds for gray water. Tony based this house on American Indian designs he had seen in history books. In the past, he had had experience building “wacky structures” and wanted to live as close to the land as possible. Even though he built it inside Pembrokeshire Coast National Park, with agreement from the owners of the land, he never got permission for the structure from the local planning board. After several court appearances, he and his partner, Jane, decided to demolish it in 2004, but changed their minds after public demonstrations persuaded them not to. The Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority attempted to get a court injunction to force Tony to demolish it, but were persuaded to allow it to stay up until July 2006, when they could re-apply under the new Low Impact Policy. In 2008, the committee voted to give Tony a conditional for three years. So – the roundhouse still stands.

The house cost £3,000 (about $4,700) to build and is located on the edge of a wider sustainable eco-village. It’s about 6.5 meters (21 feet) wide. Tony and Jane try to get 70% of what they need from the land. They grow their own food, make wine from local berries, use a composting toilet, collect downed wood to make woodcrafts which they sell, and their water is piped from a mountain source and heated by a woodstove. Electricity comes from three photovoltaic panels on the roof and a small (200w) wind turbine situated about 70 yards away in a field. For cooking they use an old gas caravan cooker, the woodstove and a dutch oven. Guests sleep in another roundhouse called “the Den” nearby. They live on several hundred pounds a month and have no bills.

Wrench has a book for sale called “Building a Low Impact Roundhouse” on Amazon.

“We are not going to survive in these numbers for the next few hundred years – people will have to live a lot simpler.” -Tony Wrench

By Christina Nellemann for the [Tiny House Blog]

Case de Barro

Cob Together

Meka Cottage

Cob Cottage Company
Photos by Marisa Pereira

Photo by Kristi and/or Jimbo Diebley.

Other tiny cob home links:

Cob Project

The Natural Tiny House Top 10

By Christina Nellemann for the [Tiny House Blog]

Shift is an organization in Portland that brings people together for bike based fun. Every year Shift facilitates an amazing event called Pedalpalooza, that spans a 2 week period.

With 291 events, most organized by individuals, bikers of all persuasions are likely to find many events of interest. Nearly all events are free.

A few weeks ago Eli Spevak, from Orange Splot, LLC, organized a Pedalpalooza ride featuring tiny homes. A group of 150 cyclists gathered for the tiny home tour, in Southeast Portland.

Beginning of Ride

We stopped at six tiny homes and saw a number of different housing styles, including: a 14 x 8 gypsy wagon, a little house made of cob, a nanny’s house on wheels, a straw-bail tiny house that is being used as a detached bedroom, an urban village, and a cute little home that was converted from a garage to a little cottage.

Converted Garage

The homes were incredible and the builders relied on the following concepts when constructing the little dwellings:

• Using salvaged and sustainably produced building materials whenever possible.
• Using design to make it easy for neighbors to share resources.
• Incorporating durable construction materials to minimize the need for ongoing maintenance.
• Re-utilizing existing structures whenever possible.
• Locating the structures to make it easy to live without a car.
• Incorporating artwork and quality craftsmanship to make projects beautiful and unique.

Also, a few of the ride attendees mentioned that the city has reviewed a number of reports focusing on smaller homes; specifically that smaller homes are more efficient and have a smaller carbon footprint, in comparison to larger Leed certified homes that tend to be tremendously cost intensive.

Gypsy Wagon

The ride was inspiring and informative, thanks to Eli’s efforts. And I was happy to learn that the City of Portland’s Planning Department is fairly flexile when it comes to tiny house zoning specifics (e.g. waving fees, assisting in approving innovative designs, etc.).

Little House at the Urban Village

There is a lot of good news for all things tiny in Portland!

You can check out my photos from the ride by clicking here.

Straw Bail Tiny House

A Nanny's House on Wheels

The Cob Dwelling