5-Week Complete Cabin Course

Number of Students: up to 14

Cost: $4800

$4500 early bird special if you register by February 15th

The Building Project

During this once-in-a-lifetime natural building experience we’ll build a 400 square foot earthen cabin alongside local craftsmen at beautiful Farm Finn. We’ll also build and use a cob oven.

We’ll start with the foundation and go up to the roof covering a host of wall, finishing, floor, and artistic techniques. The course will include instruction from local tadelakt and rammed earth experts and deep dives into the sustainability systems on site.

PAUL: small paragraph about creating a climate resilience…learning center?? …project? …

And would love a pic or two of your moqdar cabin

About the Site

From the Farm Finn website:

Farm Finn is something of a dream. A dream to combine agro-tourism, organic farming and experimenting with climate change adaptation processes within the spectacular surroundings of the Rif Mountains in northern Morocco, only 10 minutes drive from Chefchaouen.

During your stay we hope to introduce you to the surrounding nature and traditional life of the people who live in rural Morocco, the Jebli of the Rif mountains.

Located in the village of Loubar al Fuq, aside the peaks of the Talassemtane National Park, Farm Finn looks down on the world-famous blue city of Chefchaouen – easily accessible by car, on a well-established unpaved road or on foot, on a beautiful walking path from Ras el Mar and the “Spanish Mosque” of Chefchaouen.

Our seven modern en suite, single or double bedrooms, each with their own private garden terrace, are designed for you to relax in contemporary comfort, leaving behind the stresses of the modern world, in exchange for the natural beauty and traditional rhythms of life in rural Morocco.

At Farm Finn, we strive to produce our own seasonal organic fruits and vegetables for our vegetarian and vegan “farm to fork” menus. We also raise an assortment of farm animals; chickens, goats, donkeys, dogs and a cat called …”Cat”, sharing our space with a wonderful array of lizards, butterflies and birds that help pollinate and maintain our organic gardens.

Overview

We love teaching natural building, and particularly these longer workshops, and by the end of each one we’re left with renewed hope for the world and humanity. And our students feel that, too, as we come together in a community of learners around this almost magical process of shaping earth (and other natural materials) into beautiful and useful creations. That we get to do this at all is amazing but that we get to do it in Morocco this time is even more special.

We’re confident in saying that this is one of the most comprehensive natural building workshops you can find. Over five weeks you will develop a deep understanding of the materials and how they interact to produce desired results. This workshop provides the “time on the wall” that is essential to developing a fluency with these ageless approaches. The knowledge you gain will help you create spaces that honor the earth, our ancestors, and craft while helping us chart a better course into the future.

Our instructors have decades of experience on four different continents. This has helped us design rich learning environments giving students the tools they need to become confident earthen builders.

Earth is the mother of all building materials. For millennia, and all over the world, people have used earth to build beautiful, simple, efficient and inexpensive homes. It's plentiful, ecological, and non-toxic. Plus, it can't burn, won't rot and is much simpler to build with than conventional construction.

We will teach you how to use clay-soil to build just about everything: from strong structural walls (cob and adobe) to plasters and light-straw-clay (slipstraw) walls. Because the materials are fireproof, they are ideally suited to sculpt ovens, fireplaces and cook stoves.

The essence of your learning experience will revolve around developing a deep understanding of how to process and combine a few simple materials: clay-soil, sand, and straw. How you apply that in your building adventures is then up to you, but you will the find the possibilities endless and exciting.

What you will learn

After this workshop, you will feel confident that you can

• Design and build a cottage using earth and other natural materials

• Remodel or renovate an existing home using natural materials

• Build and use an earthen oven

• Use natural materials to create garden walls and sculptural art pieces

• Teach a natural building class

Specifically, you will get hands-on experience and skill development in the following areas:

• Foundation systems, rubble trench, stem walls, earthbag construction (as a stem wall)

• Identifying the right materials, screening, processing, testing, costs, amount calculations

• Mixing cob efficiently

• Making adobe bricks (“moqdar”) and using straw bales (“balecob”) and cordwood cob

• Building with rammed earth and plastering with tadelakt

• Building with cob: strong sculptural walls, arches, windows and doors, niches, and sculptural artwork 

• Electricity and plumbing, how to install wires and pipes in the walls

• Roof attachment and roof design

• Light-straw-clay/Slipstraw: this is an infill technique perfect for code-approved buildings and natural renovations of existing homes. You will learn how to make the right materials and how to install them

• Natural plasters and tools, making your own plasters and paints, colors, applications, how to apply it on earthen walls, drywall, wood, concrete

• Tamped floors, finish earthen floors in natural buildings, earthen floors in existing homes on plywood, oriented strand board, and concrete

• Earthen ovens: from start to finish and how to use them (plus lessons in baking bread and a pizza party!)

• Different design strategies, natural design essentials, passive solar, using cob to make models

• Building codes, how they work, how to work with and around them

• Appropriate technologies like solar showers and thermosiphon hot water systems, composting toilets and an alternative septic system, greywater, blackwater, vermicomposting systems and more

During every workshop we make time for specific issues related to individual situations including from students. This usually includes a careful look at different climates and regions, living with families or in communities, dealing with the building code, physical and financial challenges, appropriate technologies and more.

Kyle’s book, “Build it with Earth: the Cob Pizza Oven” and Conrad’s, “House of Earth” are both included with the workshop and will be mailed before we begin. They will serve as guidebooks for the workshop.

Lodging

Double occupancy in Farm Finn’s well-appointed rooms.

Farm Finn has 7 modern, en suite double bedrooms, divided over 2 locations. The main farmhouse has 5 bedrooms in addition to Dar Zeytoun, which has 2 bedrooms. Each ensuite bedroom is individually furnished to include handmade “bejmat” clay or rock tiled floors, wood burning “rocket heater” stoves, a “ferash”, or traditional Moroccan sofa bed and a private garden terrace.

All bedding is of Egyptian cotton and feels great! Pillows and duvets are filled with down feathers, unless specifically requested otherwise.

Food

Tuition includes three meals a day along with coffee and tea Monday-Friday. On Saturday and Sunday just breakfast is provided.

Organic food is at the heart of Farm Finn. They practice a seasonally based “farm to fork” philosophy, so their menus depend upon what miracles have been produced by their head gardener and chef.

They believe that when you use fresh, tasty ingredients, even the simplest of dishes can be extraordinary. Their menus aren’t just bursting with flavor, they are centered around health, well being and sustainability. As far as possible, Farm Finns’ home-grown produce goes into all their menus. If they are unable to use their own produce, they source locally from farms in Loubar or from the souks in Chefchaouen.

At Farm Finn, we offer a vegan and vegetarian menu based upon traditional and contemporary Middle Eastern and North African recipes. They produce their own olive oil, bread and seasonal jams, chutneys, juices, teas and infusions.