Positive Action
Positive Feedback Positive Action
By
Sep 23, 2008, 10:10

Michael Buck tells us how he built a cob house for himself entirely out of local and reclaimed materials.

“The stones for the footings of my cob house came from the next door field cleared several years ago, when we started a vegetable box scheme in North Aston, Oxfordshire. The cob for the walls came from the actual site. The poplar roof rafters came from a vegetable patch screen planted eight years ago and the thatched straw was grown on the farm, cut by scythe and threshed by hand. The threshed wheat will be used for bread – I will, in other words, eat my roof!

“I want to live in the house the way I have built it – in an entirely place embedded manner. I will work in the village micro dairy for cheese, milk, butter, meat and on the box scheme for vegetables. I have built a clay bread oven in the wall of the house and have enough corn for a good few years. An old chestnut came down which should supply me with fuel and warmth for a good while. My water will come from a well which we uncovered on site.  I will cook on a wood stove and do my laundry on an old copper. My compost ‘Dunny’ is circular and thatched with wattle and daub. The wattle, made from cleft Hazel, is coppiced from the stands that surround the house, which has a panoramic view across ‘Paradise Valley’ – yes, this really is its actual name! Indeed, a room with a view.

“I want to live this simple way to prove to myself and others that such a lifestyle is perfectly possible. In fact, extremely enjoyable. I am an artist and I see my house as a land sculpture in which I am going to live. The process of living there is in itself, a piece of performance art. Each action from grinding corn on a hand mill to sleeping on a wool mattress – sheep’s wool from the surrounding fields – will be my spiritual practice.

“If I am successful, I hope others will join me. I envisage a small cluster of similar type houses, each supporting the existing box scheme and future land-based businesses bringing seasonal celebrations to the village – a new version of the monastic way of life, celebrating unity through nature and ecology; an ‘Ecostery’.

“The farm already supplies meat, vegetables and milk to Oxford, as well as the nearby town and many surrounding villages. Apart from buying some extra thatch straw and a bit of natural clay paint, the house has cost next to nothing.

“I believe that in the future, the Transition Movement will need to make it possible for people to ‘re-ruralise’ and work the land. If we are prepared to live simply enough then this process is not beyond the means of anyone. When we harvested the wheat for the thatch, some 20 of us were scything, tedding and sheathing. At the end of the day we gave thanks, drank cider and sang.”

Photo: © Michael Buck



© Copyright by www.positivenews.org.uk