Walls going up

A good use for old, bent nails is as anchors between wood and cob. We just drive them in an inch or so, and then cob around the exposed section, so the two materials are locked together in a way.

In addition to the nails, clay slip is the glue of natural building. Anytime cob is attached to stone, wood, plastic, metal (or anything else other than cob itself), the non-cob material is coated in clay slip to help with bonding.

Kids love cob:

Even babes love cob:

I always enjoy how the gorgeous and artistic a dry-stack foundation looks once there is a nice bond beam of cob running over it.

I went to pick up a couple concrete blocks from the urbanite field this morning and was greeted by a flock of geese!

Mike ripping the tarp with a monster load of cob:

The walls go up quickly with a "bale-cob" system (a hybrid of a strawbale and cob wall). Notice the first course of bales under the blue tarp below: