Versaterra 10-Day

At Prakruthivanam Farm in India

Date: January 7-16, 2027

Number of Students: up to 12

Cost: $850

The Building Project

We’ll build the walls for an outdoor community space and classroom with an attached cob oven. We’ll use several wall techniques including cob, adobe block, slipstraw, waddle and daub, cordwood cob and strawbale-cob. The walls will be structural and beautiful while also being educational for all who use the space. We’ll carve and sculpt and use an assortment of plasters to finish them. We’ll include a cob oven in one wall section and use it for a pizza party as we finish the class.

We’ll be working and living with “westerners” from Europe and the US as well as locals - people from the farm and community as well as Indians from farther afield. It will be both an amazing building experience as well as a cultural one.

Overview

This is one of the most comprehensive natural building workshops you can find. Together, our instructors have decades of experience on four different continents. This has helped us design rich learning experiences giving students the tools they need to become competent natural 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 to ovens to plasters. We’ll also show how to incorporate strawbales for super insulative walls and cordwood for faster building.

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 yourself a cottage using cob and other natural materials

• Remodel or renovate an existing home or cabin using natural materials

• Build and use an earthen oven

• Use natural materials to create garden walls

• Teach a one-day natural building event yourself!

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, calculating material quantities

• Mixing cob efficiently

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

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

• Natural earthen and lime plasters, tools and trowels, clay and lime paints, pigments, applications, how to apply it on earthen walls, drywall, wood, concrete…

• 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.

• Tamped floors, finished 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 (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, root cellars, and more

During every workshop we make time for specific issues related to individual situations. 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.

Registration, Payment, & Refunds

This workshop requires a $400 deposit to hold your space. When a deposit is made, Kyle will reach out to you, welcome you to the course, and get you in the email loop with all the details.

Click on the “Register Here” button to sign up and find payment options.

Or, once you register, send a check for $400 made out to Cobitat and mailed to c/o Kyle Isacksen, PO Box 127, Westminster, VT 05158. Full payments are also gladly accepted.

Deposit is refundable (minus $50 for books and mailing cost if they’ve already been shipped to you) until 6 weeks before the start of the class. If you cancel with less than six weeks before the start of the class and your spot can be filled, we will issue a refund minus book costs. If your spot can’t be filled, your deposit will not be refunded.

Full payment is requested by two weeks before the start of each class.

Instructors

Lead instructor Kyle Isacksen has been building with earth since 2010 and teaching natural building since 2011 with House Alive Natural Builders and the Be the Change Project. He has worked with and learned from Conrad Rogmans, Carole Crews, the Steens, James Thomson and others. Kyle has a background in construction, teaching, and simple living.  He’s worked in the conventional construction realm as a framer, carpenter, and commercial roofer, and has built two conventional homes in the last several years. The first of those was the first single family home to be part of a community land trust for affordable housing in the state of Nevada. He was a science teacher for 7 years, is a frequent speaker on sustainable living, and is a contributing writer for Mother Earth News Magazine. Kyle enjoys basketball, hiking, reading, and martial arts.  

Jonathan Vocke started natural building with a Versaterra course years ago and has since built and taught with us in India, Mexico, Kenya, California and Nevada and on his own in his hometown of Baltimore, Maryland. When not slinging mud he’s a professional musician and music teacher and an avid traveler and adventurer. Every workshop he’s a part of benefits from his musical talents, his energy, and his skill as a teacher