Just like chocolate icing, only mud

South wall, first bit o render

It all worked out, those three tubs of fermenting mud.  It worked!  When I arrived the tubs of mud had risen like bread dough, and were bubbling with air.

The mud turned into render that spread onto the wall like trowelling chocolate icing onto a cake.

It wasn't even smelly.  Just a slight sweet-sour smell, that the butterflies really liked.

Butterflies like sour-dough render - also, that's an expansion joint on the left.  Fancy. (Edited to add - relax, they're not stuck, just resting and maybe having a sip of fluid. Dozens of butterflies came and went all day.)

I'm not sure the week of fermenting added any actual magic.  I think clay generally benefits from a good soak. But it went on the wall easily, stuck well, and it was a generally pleasant task that I was able to do on my own in one morning when I was at the property by bicycle.

I've made a big deal about the render in these blog posts, but it's a big deal in my head.  I've planned this and worried about it, read about it, and taken the responsibility to do it. The building will fail if it doesn't work.  So it was a relief to see that it was working. 


Where I really got excited was at this point, where the mud wall meets the rock footing, because working with irregular rock shapes was a big decision I made that I worried would backfire.  But it was good. It was easy.

Beautiful rocks

And this point:

This stuff defies gravity

This is the first I knew that I'd be able to render the top of the circle window, without the render glopping off onto the ground under its own weight.  It was really quite a moment.

South wall, nearly completed

I ran out of render mix just before the whole wall was completed.  But it looks good, yes?

I've got so used to looking at the fuzzy shaggy light earth walls with the drying wheat grass growing out of it, I'd almost forgotten that the building will have these smooth walls.

I'm not sold on the brown colour - it will dry to a lighter dusty brown.  Next year the whole building will get a thin coat of fine render, which we can colour with oxides, and maybe a coat of mud paint ('alise').