This time, my oldest was able to participate in a cooking class for kids and came home wanting to make dinner. Yum! She went out in the garden and picked basil and rosemary and made an herb cream cheese.

She also made vegetable quesadillas. She wanted to use tomatoes and zucchini, but we had neglected to purchase zucchini at the market. So she went with cucumber instead and cooked that with the tomatoes and onions. That was one good quesadilla.

Local foods have become an important part of Durham’s culture. The Farmer’s Market keeps getting bigger. More restaurants are not only using local foods, but bragging about it. I’m finding more and more that my prime criteria for restaurants is that they focus on local foods and I know I’m not alone here in Durham.

So what does this have to do with Carolina Cob? Well, two things. First, we were at the Farmer’s Market meeting folks and talking about natural building. We had a table with some cob and a few folks (other than my kids and I) got their hands muddy. I really enjoyed meeting new folks, some who were already very familiar with cob and other natural building materials and others for whom this was totally new.

Second, I think an even better term for natural building might be local building. A lot of the same reasons that make local foods so important also make local building just as important. Ok, maybe not the one about avoiding eating chemicals, but what about not wanting chemicals in our walls?

Maybe a new slogan: Eat local – build local – live local. Or, perhaps, given the parallel need to be an active part of the larger world community (and my predilection for using computer technology):
Eat local – build local – live local – communicate globally.

What do you think?

Note to self: next time bring a bigger umbrella – it was a touch hot sitting out in the sun.

Elizabeth

Some of my favorite memories growing up involved going out with my mom and perhaps one or two of her friends in her old Falcon to dump sites they had heard of and seeing what we could find.  We’d wear old boots and jeans and bring a shovel along and start digging where others had been dumping stuff in out of the way places for years.  

My mother favored old glassware and counted it a good day when we would dig up old brown Clorox bottles or blue tinted canning jars with bubbles frozen in the glass. 

I was always attracted to old ironwork or wooden butter molds or, my favorite, old glass candy containers, glassware in the shape of trains or dogs or old fashioned telephones.

Sounds like fun, doesn’t it???  I can’t wait to do it again!

Wynn

An innukshuk, a pile of stones on the vast landscape, helped mark where one had been and became a marker for where one might go on the vast tundra; it helped hunters mark territory, noted a place to store items, and helped them not get lost in the wide expanse of the tundra.

I love the image of  a marker on the vastness of now and the potential  of where we can go.  This venture of Carolina Cob is just beginning but there’s not telling where it will take us.

We, the ones who metaphorically lay these stones at this point in time for the beginnings of this evolution into natural building invite you to join us.

Come visit our home in North Carolina, learn about building with natural materials, and help create a new marker, a circle of sacred space.

Wynn

I’d studied cob building, talked to friends who had done it, and read about what it feels like to be in a natural structure – the comfort of the gentle curves and being surrounded by the earthen walls.  This was the first time I experienced it for myself.

Elizabeth