Earthen Plaster for Natural Building

Earthen Plaster:

Playing in the Mud

Strawberry Mountain Music Festival in '69 or so, up in Canada, and the music is getting good when it begins to rain. People don't mind at this point and continue to dance as the earth beneath hundreds of bare feet, churning the dirt with wild abandon, mixes with the rain. It's a clay based soil that's getting worked on here. Clay has the unique property of being made up of little plates that bond well, really well, with water. When wet, the surface of clay becomes like a skating rink because the little plates slide easily over the water bonded to the clay in the next layer of plates.

As the music got wilder with the frenzy of the storm and it rained harder and harder those dancing feet worked up quite a slippery soup. It didn't take too long before people were falling face first into this earthen plaster and became covered head to toe.

The music had to stop because of too much rain but by then folks had discovered that rolling in the mud was just as fun as rock and roll.

We also began to discover something even deeper for ourselves that day. That the earth is not dirty. It is not something to get away from or rise above. It feels good on your skin sometimes. It is safe to touch and be touched by. It doesn't leave a permanent stain on you or give you headaches.

It washes off easily.

Earthen plaster, this simple process used by our ancestors since forever long ago, seems to be the only wall surface that allows the walls to "breathe" excess moisture from high density to low density. This is usually from the inside of a dwelling (we give off gallons when breathing) to the outside. At the same time surface water from rain is kept outside because those little plates in the clay, bond to form "bridges" of water tension between the clay platelets that then shed further water. Imagine a house that "breathes" with you.

Earthen Plaster is made from clay/earth, water, sand, and straw. There are other quite organic and often quite local materials that can be added to harden the finish. It bonds well with straw bales and with a clay slip finish, can even be polished.

The clay binds the sand and straw together when it dries, the sand provides structure and the straw creates tensile strength and wicks moisture back and forth through the walls.

The clay soil can be dug and screened usually quite close at hand. Sand can even be gotten nearby. Straw is not too expensive.

So here it is. Perhaps one of the most sustainable ways, certainly one of the oldest ways to create a comfortable living space that is probably the cheapest, most gentle on the planet, and right under our
feet.

But......you know....who wants to live in a mud hut ? (see pictures)

Now, I wonder what it is supposed to feel like when mixed right. Look like. What are the amounts of each ingredient that I add to balance the mixture for best quality? How do I work it into the straw and then come out with a nice finish?

Fortunately there is someone to actually show us these things this weekend.

Feral will be teaching this very thing at the Frog Farm. People can participate in an in depth workshop that will give you some real basics of the whole process or folks can stop by during the big skillshare and get their hands muddy.

Don't be shy about this.....it's just mud (Earthen Plaster).

Click on upcoming workshops for this site to register for the Earthen Plaster workshop.

T.D.