I’m not taking design/build projects at this time as I am finishing up the new cob house.
I have been interested in building craft since college and have attended many workshops which have ranged from 2 days up to 3 weeks long:
1997 Straw bale at The Farm in TN, 3 days
1998 “Materials and Tectonics” at Yestermorrow Design Build School in VT, 8 days
1999 Complete Natural Building with Cob Cottage Co, Sawpit, CO, 20 days
2001 Thatching at Fox Maple School, ME, 1 week
2001 Hosted Cob Workshop, 9 days, taught by Ianto Evans, Cob Cottage Company
2008 Timberframing at Yestermorrow, 1 week
2012 and 2014? Blacksmithing I and II at Tillers International, Kalamazoo, MI 2 days
2012 The Art of Stonemasonry at Tillers, MI 3 days
2013 Stained Glass Intensive at Yestermorrow, 1 week
2016 Historic Lime Plasters and Renders at the Weald & Downland Open Air Museum in Singleton, West Sussex, England, 2 days
2017 Blacksmithing III at Tillers International, Kalamazoo, MI 2 days
2019 Wood Fundamentals: hand tools, Tillers, 4 evenings.
Gregory Lehman 
Hello,
I came across and replied to an add on craigslist for a rental that also linked to this site. As strange as it sounds I just wanted to be sure this was in fact your ad.
Also, everything on the site is really cool!
Hi Thomas,
I emailed you back today regarding the rental advert. I studied art at Goshen College; graduated class of ’93. I was into ceramics, jewelry, sculpture. Not so much into the 2D stuff. You had mentioned you were coming to Goshen to do a pottery internship. Any chance that is with Mark Goertzen? Or someone else? Goshen has some good momentum going these days with the arts. When you get into town, feel free to look me up.
Greg
Hi Greg! Barb and I have been coming back to Goshen a couple of times a year to bring our daughter to school… and again in a few weeks. It would be great to see your amazing place! Tim
It would be great to see you. Let me know when you will be in town.
Greg
We will be there Sunday 20th to 22nd. Do you know a place we can pitch a tent? My email is tdyck@bmts.com.
Cool stuff!
hi!
I wonder if I could hire you to help me design my green small home? I am thinking of a similar design but redwood bark infill and some extras for CA earthquakes. How can I reach you?
Thanks for your interest. I’m not taking on any design work as I’ve got a lot on my plate and plan to continue working exclusively on my pocket neighborhood over the next number of years. I’ll private message you as well. Greg
Hello! I love your site! I was wondering where I can find out more information on building cob-bale hybrid? In a few years my husband and I plan to purchase land to build a hybrid cob-bale house. I have researched a lot into cob, and into straw bale homes, but I cannot find a lot of information on hybrid homes and building. I know it is a few years away, but I like to plan everything out as much as possible ahead of time. My husband has a construction business so we want to try to do as much of it by ourselves.
Hi Rachelle, thanks for your interest in my projects.
The new cob house is a hybrid in the sense that some walls are cob and some are framed. The south wall didn’t make sense to do in cob as it will hold solar thermal panels and the west gable end will have a bedroom added later so it made more sense to do these walls in conventional framing. Sometimes people refer to “cob hybrid” meaning “bale cob” in which they have a straw bale walls with cob on the inside for thermal mass and the straw on the outside for insulation. Our cob walls on the new house have 2 layers of 3.5″ R15 mineral wool in the middle to give a good insulation value. The first house has straw bale walls to the north east and northwest, and the cob wall is the southwest wall. The cob wall is cold to the touch in the winter, so as we and others have discovered, cob has almost no insulation, and is not an appropriate material for cold climates, unless insulation is added in the wall system. As far as information on hybrid wall construction details, I don’t really know what resources are out there which are current and accurate.
One other option for adding insulation to a monolithic cob wall would be to replace a large percentage of the aggregate in the wall mix with something like perlite, expanded clay, or pumice. My hesitation with doing this is that I mix my cob with a bobcat and am not sure if I would crush the lightweight aggregate in the process of mixing and losing the insulative value. I haven’t been able to find any information on that, but would love to know if someone has tried it.