ROBERTS CREEK — Peer into the low-slung oval-shaped windows in Amanda-Rae and Chris Hergesheimer’s studio and you wouldn’t be surprised to see a hobbit staring back.
The Middle Earth aesthetic works well in their Sunshine Coast neighbourhood and feels completely natural in a structure that is made by hand, mostly from a muddy blend of local clay, sand and straw.
Amanda-Rae has been a member of the Mudgirls Collective for eight years and after working on dozens of structures from outdoor ovens to code-ready homes on the coast and throughout the Gulf Islands, she was finally ready for an earthen space to call her own.
The Mudgirls build traditional cob homes for clients, though they prefer to build with their clients’ participation, so they learn how to create and maintain the structure for themselves. The Mudgirls also volunteer days and weeks of labour and expertise building for each other.
Coastal cob homes combine earth-friendly building, large-scale art installation and just a little doomsday prepping.
“When the idea was born it was approaching the year 2000 with all the Y2K fear and the peak oil crisis was looming, there was this sense that the world was about to change dramatically,” she said. “We wanted to make sure we could survive and shelter ourselves in whatever this new world was going to be.”
Civilization has not collapsed — not yet — but the climate crisis is driving a revolution in the way people will build and live in a low-carbon future.
“Earth is the most low-impact building material there is and it’s right there, so it’s a really affordable way to build,” she said.
The Hergesheimers excavated a large deposit of clay on the property owned by Chris’s parents, creating space for the 600-square-foot studio and securing their most important building material at the same time.
“We moved 80 tonnes of soil in the process and recovered about 12 tonnes for building,” said Amanda-Rae. “The challenge we set was to find out how much material can we recycle, how much can we divert from the waste stream and how much can we source locally.”
The structure is designed to support a living roof and food garden, but recent droughty summers convinced them that the roof would be better used to collect water. They plan to add a storage tank and install gravity-fed running water in the building’s kitchen.
The front wall of the building is traditional cob which absorbs heat, while the back wall is a light clay version with compacted straw that acts as insulation to naturally regulate the interior temperature.
It took a little while to obtain permits for building, but the Sunshine Coast Regional District has been supportive and even curious, said Chris.
The foundation is poured cement, while the bones of the structure are massive 12″X12″ posts and logs recovered from a nearby beach. Amanda-Rae was already learning to weld as a blacksmith’s assistant and used those skills to build custom metal braces for the posts and beams.
Friends from all over the coast came to help with post and beam work and basic framing. The walls were built over a series of work parties by the Mudgirls and volunteers eager to learn the cob building process hands on.
At times as many as 30 people were on site and about 200 people have pitched in over the months of construction. “We had a lot of absolute strangers show up to help out,” said Amanda.
Cob homes are relatively rare in North America, but the method is still used extensively in Africa and Asia where they are known to last for decades and even centuries.
“People have been building with cob and earth since the beginning of time and there are whole communities built like this all over the world,” said Amanda-Rae. “Here, it’s a movement, but in other parts of the world it’s as simple as ‘I need a home, what can I use to build it?'”
So, who are these Mudgirls? Are they feminists? Yes. Do they reject patriarchy? Absolutely. Are they angry? Not so much. The Mudgirls are daughters, wives and moms dedicated to creating the world they want to live in.
A Mudgirls construction site is noticeably different from the Canadian convention. There are children, because childcare is built into every Mudgirls event. Building is typically done in a barn-raising model with many hands building walls and many bare feet stomping cob mixture to just the right consistency.
Their book, Mudgirls Manifesto is a blend of political philosophy and practical advice for building and repairing traditional earthen homes.
“The Mudgirls have taken bits and pieces from other cultures and created something that works here,” said Amanda-Rae.
Copyright Postmedia Network Inc., 2019
