Peter Wade-Martins has visited all 649 of Norfolk’s surviving medieval churches to study the stone types used in their construction. As a result, he has identified the use of conglomerate, grey quartzite, millstone grit, and tile, much of it reused from ruinous Roman buildings. There were few stone churches in that region of England until … Read more
The founder of 3 Moons Earthbag Community in Nevada, Jeanne Rucquoi, is now 92 years old and ready to hand it over to the next generation. The key is to find someone who believes in the dream. The 3 Moons project is a magical place an hour from Las Vegas in the desert. It includes … Read more
Not far from a bustling seaside town, on the banks of one of Wales’s most picturesque estuaries lies a stone building with an interesting story. The now derelict structure is tucked away from the main tourist hub and once served as a summer house for a woman from a South Wales coal mining family who … Read more
Matts Myhrman, co-founder of The Last Straw Journal and a natural building legend, passed away peacefully on October 15th 2024. I first met Matts and his wife Judy Knox at the 2000 Natural Building Colloquium in New Mexico and was immediately captivated by the sparkle in their eyes. Matts is an elder statesman in the … Read more
For thousands of years survival in Norway’s countryside, where farms were miles from each other, meant complete self-sufficiency. Farmsteads were like small villages with several families living together and building their homes from logs and turf. At Oslo’s Norwegian Folk Museum, entire farmsteads have been transplanted log-by-log by master carpenters who use traditional joinery techniques … Read more
The marvelous Great Wall of China is a cultural icon deeply entwined with myth and legend. The Wall has been a military defense structure, a symbol of imperial power, and now a tourist monument. Ancient stories tell of a powerful sorcerer who shaped the Wall to ensure its invincibility with the aid of earth spirits … Read more