Knowledge is power, as they say. Serious natural builders will want to draw from the best pool of knowledge available. You see, earthbag is just one part of natural building. There are design and site issues to learn about, how to best use sustainably harvested wood, how-to information on roofs, plastering, and so on. It’s good to have the best books available, but it’s not realistic for most of us to buy dozens of books. I suggest buying CDs of back issues of leading magazines. To buy the CD sets listed below with thousands of the best articles written over the last few decades would only cost about $300. What a bargain. The links take you directly to the pages where you can buy the CDs.
Mother Earth News Archives:
You can choose from several available CDs – 1970-1980, 1980-1990, 1990-2000, 2000-2008 for $19.95 each, or you can buy the complete set of 4 CDs with over 8,500 articles for $59.95.
The Last Straw – The International Quarterly Journal of Straw Bale and Natural Building:
The first ten years of The Last Straw, issues 1-40, 1993-2003, is available as a fully searchable, downloadable PDF. That’s 1,329 pages (140 megabytes) of great information on natural building for $40.
The Owner Builder: A CD of 87 fully searchable back issues, including 1-25, is available for $200.
Also note, the magazines listed above have thousands of free articles on their websites if money is really tight. But obviously having all the articles on your computer will be much faster and convenient.
Wow, this thing you’re building is marvelous.
We’re just offering suggestions on how to build up a good collection of natural building resources at the lowest possible cost.