Mud Magic: Get Plastered
Natural Building ♦ Art ♦ Spirit
May 29th to June 1st
Join Starhawk and Delyla Wilson for a long weekend of natural building in the beautiful Cazadero Hills of Northern California, with a focus on finishes. We’ll focus on ways to complete, maintain and beautify natural and ordinary buildings with earthen and lime plasters, learn to apply frescos and lime wash, and make home-made chalk paint and glazes with natural pigments. There’ll be time to walk in the hills and woods, and all of it will be done with lots of magic, ritual, and meditation time. Come learn practical skills that you can apply to your own home, enjoy the hills and forests, and refresh your spirit!
This class is closed for the year.
Click below to join the Notification List to get an email when registration reopens.
COURSE CONTENT
Students will
- Learn about the palette of natural building techniques: cob (clay, sand and straw), adobe, light straw clay, straw bale, wattle and daub, earthen and lime plasters and other finishes
- Make and apply browncoat to add sculptural elements to cob structures
- Make and apply earthen plasters with wheatpaste for waterproofing
- Make and apply lime plaster
- Decorate lime plaster with natural pigments in a fresco technique
- Decorate lime plaster with lime wash and natural pigments
- Make chalk paint and glazes with natural pigments
- Learn how to apply these techniques to conventional surfaces such as sheet rock and cement board
- Share rituals and ceremonies to honor the land, the creative work, and renew the spirit
- Have time for walks in the woods, meditation and contemplation.
- Eat delicious, home-cooked food—including food from the land.
- Meet our animals: cows, sheep, goats, chickens, ducks, and livestock guardian dogs
Arch of the Weekend
- Thursday, May 29
Arrive in the afternoon.
Evening slide-show and opening ritual. - Friday, May 30
Day of earth: make browncoat and earthen plaster - Saturday May 31
Day of color: Make lime plaster, fresco, limewash - Sunday June 1
Day of completion: Finish projects, closing ritual
WHO IS THIS FOR?
For you, if you:
- Enjoy working with your hands and with tactile, natural materials
- Want to increase the beauty of your home with natural finishes
- Want to build with natural and traditional materials
- Are a creative artist interested in new media
- Are an interior designer wanting to learn about natural finish options
- Are a builder, carpenter, or architect wanting to expand your skills
- Want a fun time in nature to relax, learn new skills and play in the mud!
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
Course Information
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- Location: Golden Rabbit Ranch, Cazadero, California
- Start: Arrive in the afternoon w/ diner@6pm May 29th
- End: 3pm June 1st
- Lodging: Camping on site
- Meals: 3 meals a day. Meats will be ethically sourced & we will provide for vegan, vegetarian, & gluten-free diets. We will do our best to accommodate other dietary needs
- Location: Golden Rabbit Ranch, Cazadero, California
Typical Daily Schedule
8 AM – Breakfast
9 AM – Morning Ritual
9:30 AM – Building Session
12:30 PM – Lunch
2 PM – Building Session
4 PM – Break
6 PM – Dinner
7:30 PM – Evening Activity—Slideshow, Ritual or Discussion Time
PAYMENT
- We offer sliding scale tuition and payment plans to make our courses as accessible as possible
- Abundant Tuition: $500
- Standard Tuition: $450
- Resilient Tuition: $400
- Work Trade: details below
- All amounts are in US dollars
Course Size
Due to the hands on nature of this course and the personalized focus of this course, space is limited. Only 20 spaces available for this course. Once the course is filled additional students will be put on a wait list.
SCHOLARSHIPS & DISCOUNTS
Group discounts and Diversity Scholarships available? Yes!
See below for details
QUESTIONS?
We are here for you. Reach us at: support@earthactivisttraining.org
MEET Your Teachers
Starhawk (she/her) is the co-founder and executive director of Earth Activist Training. One of the foremost voices in Earth-based spirituality, Starhawk is an author, activist, and permaculture teacher and designer. Her 12 books include such beloved reads as The Spiral Dance, The Earth Path, and The Fifth Sacred Thing. Starhawk drew from 30 years of living collectively to write The Empowerment Manual, which is the basis for her social permaculture course, Empowering Collaborative Groups.
Starhawk has been recognized by the Permaculture Institute of North America (PINA) as a leading figure in permaculture and has been awarded dual diplomas for excellence in education and permaculture site design.
Best known as an articulate voice in the revival of Earth-based spirituality and Goddess religion, Starhawk is the co-founder of the Reclaiming movement, an activist branch of the modern Pagan religion. In partnership with Donna Read, Starhawk is the co-founder of Belili Productions film company, whose most well-known project was a trio of popular films on the Goddess religion.
Starhawk’s work in progressive activism has spanned generations and geographies. As a global justice and peace activist, Starhawk co-founded RANT: Root Activists’ Network of Trainers, and has taught non-violent direct action across North and South America, Europe, and the Middle East. She has been on the front lines of anti-nuclear actions at Diablo Canyon, Livermore Weapons Lab, Vandenberg Air Force Base, and the Nevada Test Site. She has been a witness for peace in conflict zones across the world, including Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Palestine and Israel.
As a teacher of magical activism and permaculture education, Starhawk’s life work takes her across the globe. She currently lives part-time in San Francisco in a collective house with her partner and friends, and part-time in a little hut in the woods in Cazadero, California, where she practices permaculture in her extensive gardens and writes. Her website is http://starhawk.org.
Delyla Wilson, engaged Grr-Parent and resilience visionary, began her journey into resilient living as an environmental, social justice, and animal rights activist. Her path includes farmstead learning and living, community street medicine, disaster preparedness, permaculture, and decades of animal management experience with a special focus on all things dogs. Delyla acquired an Earth Activism Training Permaculture Design Certificate; developed and directed the Skills for a New Millennium Tour (a three-year traveling resilience education tour), and earned a Masters in Interdisciplinary Studies focused on Resilience Education for Disaster Preparedness.
Delyla’s energy is focused on resilience education both as a teacher and life-long student. Delyla seeks to weave resilience into every system throughout the web. Delyla currently is developing lines of homestead working dogs and keeps cows, goats, chickens, and sheep for land management, soil building, carbon sequestering, and dinner.
FUNDING YOUR EDUCATION
Payment options
SLIDING SCALE TUITION
This includes weekly live sessions and access to online class materials.
- Standard Tuition: $450
- Abundant Tuition: $500
- Every Abundant Tuition helps support a Diversity Scholarship.
PAYMENT PLAN
This plan is for students wanting to take the Full Certificate Program.
- Payment of $150 when you register.
- Two monthly installments of $150 ($450 total).
- Our Student Support Team will assist you in setting this up.
LOCAL TO CAZADERO HILLS?
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- We offer a 20% discount for locals who will be providing their own lodging
- Locals Tuition $360
- Check out option is located in the registration form below
- Additional discounts are available if you wish to provide some or all of your meals. Please register below using the promo code: CAZ LOCAL to reserve your spot if you will provide your own meals (you won’t be charged to reserve a spot), then contact Starhawk or Delyla for additional discounts options.
- We offer a 20% discount for locals who will be providing their own lodging
WORK TRADE
- Work trade positions play a crucial role in keeping the cost of our classes down, we are grateful for those who are willing to dedicate their time in support of our course for a reduction in tuition.
- A partial work-trade option is available for $310 plus 7 hours of work trade.
- Alternative work trade arrangements can be made, please contact Delyla Wilson.
- Work trade can be a lot work and may require work at times other students are taking a break.
Diversity Scholarship
DIVERSITY SCHOLARSHIPS
- Earth Activist Training is committed to increasing the diversity of global permaculture and regenerative land movements.
- We recognize the history of this land called the United States and Canada and seek to do what we can to rectify the deep injustices and systems of inequity that formed and continue to shape society today.
- Diversity Scholarships are available for Indigenous Peoples and People of Color working in or wanting to work in environmental or social justice.
- To apply select the “Diversity Scholarship” in payment section the registration form below.
- These scholarships are pay-what-you-can with the recommended value of 50% of standard tuition ($225), but any amount will be accepted and appreciated.
- Earth Activist Training’s Diversity Scholarship fund is supported by donations. Visit our Diversity Fund page if you wish to support our Scholarship program.
If you have any questions, we are always here to help: support@earthactivisttraining.org
Register
This class is closed for the year.
Click below to join the Notification List to get an email when registration reopens.
YOUR LEARNING JOURNEY
You may also be interested in our Advanced Permaculture course, Advanced Permaculture. This course is a year-long course broken up into three six-week modules focused on: design, water management, soil care and building, incorporating animals into a system, building food forests, and managing woodlands.
Empowering Collaborative Groups
We will need to do the hard, long-term work of making systemic change. Online or in-person, the work of change and transformation must be done with other people–those annoying beings who do not always agree with us, and want their own way!
Collaborative groups may be healing, nurturing, and inspirational—by understand their patterns and challenges, we can design structures that favor supportive, nurturing relationships.
In this six-week online course, Starhawk guides us through her book,
The Empowerment Manual: A Guide for Collaborative Groups.
Have a question?
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