When it comes to building with mud my favorite words of wisdom come from Beyonce who taught us the important lesson "If you like it then you shoulda put a roof on it." But of course when you are close to home you get to busy to follow your own best advice. We did put a roof on this oven we built for my parents, but just barely, and it blew off in a big winter storm. Being winter we put off fixing it, which meant we had more fixing to do when we got around to it. Fortunately cob is forgiving and easy to repair. We simply cut off the saggy bits and soaked them in water to make…

Uncle Mud here with Mother Earth News and some fun facts about cob:
--"Cob" is an Old English word for "lump". 
--Cob buildings are made from lumps of sandy clay subsoil and straw smushed together into bigger lumps until you have a lump big enough to live in.
--Some of the oldest houses in the world are made out of cob.
--More than half of the people in the world still live in houses made out of earth, but the craft of cobbing nearly died out in many places because living in a mud house was thought to be a sign of poverty even thought they are often more comfortable. 
You can build a pizza oven or rocket heater or even a…

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 Elaine has made a short video on harvesting your own clay soil for earthen buildings (including cob, slip, rammed earth, earthbag, pise, earthen floors and plasters) to go with our more detailed "Sourcing Earthen Building Materials Cheat-Sheet" found here. Support us on…

Our Mud Brother Mark Trinitapoli reports from Columbia where he has been building this lovely oven. He says without firebrick or flat stone or good brick the baking floor was challenging. He ended up compressing the mostly clay hearth several times daily for two weeks before we moving on to build the rest of the oven.

See more photos on Patreon.

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Many of the oldest buildings in the world are made out of mud. They last centuries not because mud is super durable, but because it is super repairable. Join us as we do a little TLC for this cob fireplace we built a few years before and gets a lot of hard love from the kids who attend this farm school. Be sure to join us for more fun Natural Building at unclemud.com and as always…

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Our fearless Mud Sister Elaine has made a helpful video showing the entire process of making cob by foot stomping. Check it out. Then join us for more Natural Building at unclemud.com or support our work and get free exclusive content at patreon.com/unclemud

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One of the best parts of teaching at the Permies.com Rocket Mass Heater Jamboree in 2017 was meeting the Amazing Attilio. Here he interviews me about the design/build in process of the WorkshopRocket, an early version of the CottageRocket.

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In 2018 our friend Attilio joined us on the first part of our outdoor kitchen build in Nine Mile Jamaica. I wanted to share his snapshot of the gentle village life we miss so much when we aren't there. Bless Up Nine Mile!

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The video we did of Sarah's tree house got a lovely treatment from  Derek “Deek” Diedricksen at RelaxShacks.com. Real editing and production. Ohh Ahh.

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I just like how that fire looks.

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The Casserole Door is an Uncle Mud original that probably other people have come up with also. A $1 thrift store glass baking dish lid that replaces an expensive and time consuming fiddly bit of work to make a batch rocket door. Sculpt a slanted cob lip to set the lid in, let it dry, and you have a closed fire chamber with a bit of a flame view.

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With the fire really jumping we can talk more about what makes this heater special.

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In which we have the Double Shoebox Cookstove put back together and we fire it.

Click here for part 1

Here for part 4 

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The cook surface of the Wofati Double Shoebox was pretty caked with creosote from being fired repeatedly without sufficient airflow so Kirk Mobert gave it a bit of elbow grease.

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 In October of 2018 I got to work with Kirk Mobert on a rebuild of the Peter Van Den Berg designed Double Shoebox Rocket Stove. The rebuild gave us a chance to clean out and inspect the innards, as well as tweak the design, removing the radiant bell that was taking too much heat out of the exhaust and installing a better manifold and chimney. Click here for part 2.

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 Behind an old door rebuilt from a cast off frame and scrap metal is a simple but beautiful bathroom built from natural materials from the site and industrial scrap. Click here for part 1 of the Uncle Mud Tour of the Steen Compound.

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In the fall of 2018 Mrs. Mud and I had the beautiful experience of attending a plastering workshop at the Steen Compound south of Tucson, AZ, USA where this First Family of Natural Building shares the plastering arts with students from all over the world. The buildings of the Canelo Project are works of art that teach and inspire. Part 2

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 Part 1

Part 2

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Click Here for Part 1

Click Here for Part 3

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 In 2013 we decided to build a cob rocket mass heater of our own. We made the 8" core out of autoclaved concrete--not the best material for the interior of a super hot woodstove that can burn out metal, but we had the parts and wanted to see how it would work. Fast forward six plus years. The heater has performed very well but it was needing some repairs and our renters needed a batch heater that could be fired before…