Cal-Earth & Midwest Permaculture Workshop

Final Week
October 13th - 18th

Our final (3rd week) at Cal-Earth was just as busy, if not even more busy, than our first and second week here. We had very long days, sometimes 12-14 hours days, filled with lots and lots of hands-on training, classroom time, and fun with new friends. We were able to finally complete the building of our dome on Tuesday and enjoy the feeling of success. We completed the course Friday morning with a final permaculture design presentation and graduated from the course. And we are now proud to say that we are certified and official.

Below are some pictures of the Dome we built. Please Enjoy!

The construction of the Dome

Setting the Door form & mixing earth to begin the build

   

Filling earth bags, tamping, setting & building window forms 

Half way through the build

 Finishing the building of the Dome

 

 

  

The finished Dome and Crew!



 Officially Certified!

 Cal-Earth & Midwest Permaculture Workshoppers & Instructors

 

Combined Cal-Earth & Midwest Permaculture Workshop

Week One
October 6th - 12th

A good portion of the workshop students started arriving Sunday evening. It felt pretty chaotic as we were adjusting to all the new students coming in, trying to find a dome for them to settle into, giving them a quick tour of the campus, and offering rides to the grocery store as most of them flew in for the workshop. Aaron was kind enough to make plenty of chili to feed everyone that evening while they all were getting situated and settled.

We got up extra early at 5:30am Monday morning and was able to enjoy a beautiful sunrise. Breakfast commenced at 7:30am and we had our first introductions with the rest of the workshop students. Once introduction were done, we went straight to work learning about the principles of arches and building arches with just brick, rocks/gravel, and sand. It was a great start to the workshop.

Tuesday was dedicated to Permaculture, where we learned all about contour lines, A frames, and swales. We finally got to the hands on portion of building the dome Wednesday. We learned to mix the earth to just the right consistency, however, we got rained out that first day of building and so we went back to learning more about permaculture and building communities. The rest of the week flew by.  It was filled with classes and building.  We were busy each day, but each day was full of fun and friends.

A Beautiful Desert Sunrise at Cal-Earth

 

 Day 1 of the two weeks workshop

Permaculture Class on Swales & Contours

Bill (one of our permaculture instructor)
 

Learning the Principles of Arches

Hooman (one of several instructors)

 Our 1st attempt at building an arch out of brick, sand, rocks/gravel

 The finished lancet arch 

 and our first attempt to stand on it 

...FAILED!

 But never FEAR...we tried a second time using a bigger Roman arch

  

The finished arch

 and our 2nd attempt at standing on the arch...

 

 ....which was a success!

 Placing bricks on the arch to find out how much it can hold

 before it started to collapse

 under the weight

Cal-Earth Work Exchange Week

September 30th - October 5th

This week we were given the opportunity to have a partial scholarship for the combined Permaculture and Super Adobe workshop in exchange for several days of work on the Cal-Earth Campus.  This gave us a great opportunity to familiarize ourselves with the staff and the layout of the campus.  We also got first pick of where we stay while we are attending the course.  We chose to stay in the "Homeless Deluxe" and it is an amazing 70 square feet on the interior.  It has two sleeping pods, a fire place, and a comfortable cave like feeling to it.  Even though the desert sun can be brutal during the days the foot thick walls keep it nice and cool on the inside.  We share one of the sleeping nooks and use the other to store our luggage.  When we light candles at night, the building reminds me of Yoda's house.

The Homeless Deluxe

Our work exchange week has ended at Cal-Earth, and we had an amazing time.  We didn't even notice how much work we did because we enjoyed it so much.  The days were long, but full of good energy and laughter.  The group that we shared our week with was amazing and we made friends for life.  There were a total of five work exchange students to include Aaron Catrett, Danielle Fuller, Ed Tellis, and ourselves (we also adopted 1 long-term apprentice into our group). We shared wonderful meals each morning and evening while talking and laughing.  Our group was able to accomplish everything that was asked of us and it felt good to contribute.  The staff and apprentices are very friendly and positive.  Everyone that we have met has been open and friendly.  Raking and collecting gravel, demolishing domes, general cleaning, and a few specialized tasks was what kept us busy throughout the week.  We went about our daily work with a relaxed yet consistent pace.  Even though the work was challenging, we were sad when the week was done because of how peaceful we felt and how much we enjoyed it. We have definitely been fortunate to have this extra week and hope you all enjoy some photos from our work exchange week.

 Meet the Crew +1 Long-term Apprentice

   

                                           Aaron                               Danielle

   

 

                                      Emine (our +1)                            Ed

 

 

Working Hard 

 

With Friends...

 

And Crushes!