Mud Dauber School of Natural Building

01/02/2026

Our Spring/Summer 2026 Schedule is now live! Details are on our website (link in bio).

We’ve added some new offerings, plus repeating some of the same popular ones from past seasons. If you want an immersive introduction to straw bale walls, this is the first time since 2014 that we’re offering a dedicated straw bale course! If you’re curious about natural building, but not sure if you want to take a hands-on workshop, join us for our Campus Tour and Pizza event. And if you want to try out several different building techniques all in one weekend, our Cob Oven course at is great for that.

Sign up now to reserve your spot with early bird discounts! We hope to see you this spring 😊

07/24/2025

Join us to build a cob oven! We’ll be hosting people here on our Mud Dauber campus, and constructing the oven at .

You’ll get hands-on experience with all of the functional layers of the oven - from the initial insulation layer on top of the foundation, through the first layer of earthen plaster on the dome. Plus we’ll be simultaneously installing a connected countertop, using straw and cob.

Cob ovens are associated with pizza and bread, but can also be used to bake pretty much anything else that you’d bake in a conventional oven - veggies, meats, cookies... even overnight slow-baked beans. Cob oven pizza nights are such a fun way to share community!

Learn more details on our website (link in bio)

05/18/2025

05/17/2025

We just finished our first 6-Day Cob + Straw Immersion of the season. It was an absolute blast! There are still last-minute spots available in our second Immersion that starts next Tuesday (May 20-25th) - come join us for more natural building and shared community! All of the details are on our website (link in bio) ✨

04/30/2025

Join us for our 6-Day Cob + Straw Immersion! We just extended the early bird pricing (until May 10th) for our May 20-25th offering, and there are 5 spots left!

You’ll get an intensive, hands-on experience with cob, straw bale, slip-straw, wattle-and-daub, clay plasters and more... This is a great course for anyone who wants to take on their own natural building project, and is seeking in-depth learning + more information about different wall options.

All meals are provided, including a cob oven pizza party! And we have several tiny sleeping cabins that can be rented for a comfortable stay on campus (or free tent sites!). All details can be found on our website (link in bio) ✨

04/08/2025

One of our beloved materials for foundations is salvaged chunks of broken concrete - which natural builders lovingly refer to as... “Urbanite!”. It’s a great resource that can be relatively easy to find access to (especially if you live in or near a city). Like a lot of natural building methods, it is high in labor cost, and low/free in material cost!

There is more than one way to use it. Sometimes we stack it flat, and sometimes on edge. Sometimes it has been installed directly on a rubble trench footing, and sometimes there is a concrete bond beam poured first. It can be dry-laid or mortared. It all depends on the building application; we use it a lot for garden walls and small outbuildings.

This past season I began experimenting with pouring my own concrete “end caps” to these urbanite foundations, so that I could have more control over the width and shape of the foundation around doorways.

We find it to be as fun to use as stone. And although it doesn’t always have the character of natural stone, it can still be really pretty, and provides a beautiful contrast with a plastered wall. We like to emphasize this transition with a sculpted plaster edge, to create a beautiful shadow line.

A lot of waste concrete ends up being used in road construction as infill, or taken to landfills - we think foundations are a much more meaningful way to use this great resource!

03/09/2025

We had a couple times this winter when it snowed enough to actually stick - our kids were thrilled! And it’s always lovely to see our buildings covered in fresh snow. Here is a collection of campus photos from the most recent snow day ⛄️ ✨

01/27/2025

We are running two of our 6-Day Immersions this spring, in which participants will learn intensively about cob, strawbale, slip-straw, wattle-and-daub, earthen plasters, and more! We’ll be working together on site, sharing wholesome meals together, exploring options and ideas through discussion + presentation, and just enjoying the community aspect of spending a week with a group of great people :)

Both Immersions are in May:
- May 9-14th
- May 20-25th

Find all the details on our website (link in bio)

01/20/2025

This will be our second year offering a 1-day course about “Permitted Cob”! Cob is now included in the residential codes as an appendix, but still has a long way to go before it is fully adopted by building codes. Therefore, for people who choose to build a fully legal cob building, it is important to know what extra steps are required in that process, and what design considerations to keep in mind.

We are again collaborating with our friend Stephen Hren, who has built two permitted cob residences, in two different NC counties. He’ll be sharing lots of great photo documentation, plus tips and tricks for working with the building department and planning realistically with timelines and budgets.

In addition to Stephen’s sit-down presentation, we’ll be getting hands-on experience with cob: mixing it, and installing what we mix in a form-cob wall system!

01/02/2025

We’re excited to be instructing a cob oven workshop in 2025! This one will be built at , which is a lovely family farm located about 15 minutes from our campus. An oven is a great first project for anyone interested in natural building.

Over two days, we’ll be constructing a 36” oven, with a connected earthen countertop. Students will install everything from the initial base insulation layer up through a layer of earthen plaster on the dome (which represents all of the functional layers you need for an efficient oven!), plus the adjoining countertop.

On the Saturday night of the workshop, we’ll be enjoying a cob oven pizza party at our Mud Dauber School campus, using our large pizza oven that students built in 2022.

Check out more workshop details on our website (link in bio)!