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a few photos from our workday last week (we have open workdays every wednesday, 11-4), including some of our new raised beds in action, under the expert care of our new volunteers from Revive - an organisation working with refugees and asylum seekers.

Work Weekend @ the HEAP, Sat 10th & Sun 11th January 2009, 10am-4pm

We built the frames for a set of raised beds at the front of the plot, topped up the woodchip on the paths, prepared beds for planting and generally melted the frost with the heat of our allotment excitment…

more photos to follow!

Manchester Asylum Action came to the HEAP for a session of planting broad beans, harvesting french beans, painting signs and roasting potatoes and squash in the fire

in the summer of 2008 we ran a free low-impact  building course at the HEAP, teaching skills including building with cob, cordwood, strawbale, as well as drystone-walling and lime plastering - all skills that some of us had learned at the course we went on in April 08 down at Heartwood Eco Community.

Over the week-long course 36 people came to the HEAP to learn, experiment and build, and by the sunday we (nearly) had a finished structure.

here’s a few pictures of the structure:

applying lime plaster to the cordwood below the low work surface

front view before lime plastering

sanding down the cordwood under the work surface

Some of us went on a week long low-impact building course to learn the following skills;

•   Designing with natural materials
•   Cobbing, cob oven and rocket stove heated bench
•   Building Strawbale walls
•   Stone walling
•   Cordwood/ recycled bottle walls
•   Lime plastering 
•   Thatching Wood tile and  Cob floor

 Now we are fully equipped to move ahead with building our own cob structure, including cob oven. Contact us if you want to get involved.                                     “Cob is gentle on the planet,” … “It reduces the use of wood, steel and toxic building supplies. Buildings are solar oriented and energy efficient, warm in the winter and cool in the summer, no air-conditioning is needed, and minimal heating is required due to the exceptional thermal quality of the cob.”