News:

We had another amazing workshop experience over the past weekend. As I’ve said before, it’s my great privilege to get to work with an intelligent, diverse group of folks who are looking for alternatives to  conventional building methods. Seeing a group come together and begin networking and fermenting ideas is a beautiful thing. One of my students stated, “This is the future,” and I couldn’t agree more. As we enter a warming global climate phase of more frequent and powerful storms, extensive drought, and higher fire risk, earthbag building seems more appealing than ever.

We were working on a fairly large, 28′ diameter earthbag round house. The weather in coastal North Carolina this time of year was warm enough (read – HOT!) to inspire me to try to do all of our future workshops during cooler times of year. The build went well, though, and the group caught their stride quickly. 

Recently, I read an interesting perspective on evolution. The author stated that biological evolution is a slow process, making incremental progress each generation, but that cultural evolution is almost instantaneous. Each time we are exposed to a new idea, it expands our “palette” of what we know to be possible. I feel fortunate that my day-job is helping to show folks more possibilites. Our culture is changing so fast now. The change can’t be resisted as it is inevitable. The more prepared we can be for these rapidly changing times (and rapidly changing climate), the better off we’ll be.

I am planning on doing at least four workshops a year for now and am scheduling one for later in 2021, probably in late September. 

Thanks for reading! 

Morgan.