| Building with Strawbale |
 On the weekend of 5th and 6th December,2009, community garden volunteers and participants gathered at the Community Garden in Railway Street, Moss Vale, to take part in a workshop erecting a shelter shed. The men and boys from the Mentoring Towards Manhood project, which takes place at the garden on Mondays, had already erected the corner posts and roof of our proposed "infill "strawbale building and the garden volunteers had constructed the base plate of gravel-filled recycled tyres and hardwood upon which the strawbales would rest.
This project is funded by a grant from the NSW Environmental Education Trust and is one of the many workshops and demonstrations scheduled over a two-year period. The shelter shed will provide a pleasant protected area during inclement weather for the volunteers and visitors to the gardenÐ a nice spot to "chew the fat" over a cup of tea and a bite to eat.
Angus Stephen, of Angus Constructions, is a local builder with strawbale building experience. He ran the workshop and took us through the processes of strapping, twitching, and shaving the bales, with the result amazingly solid walls thanks to the base, middle and top plate holding it all together with wire. By the end of the weekend, the walls were up and the secondhand window in place, ready for the rendering. To protect the structure from wet weather until it could be hand rendered in February, the bales were spray rendered with a sand/lime mix.
The hand rendering workshop took place at the end of February and soon a coat of mineral paint will make it more weatherproof as well as more aesthetically pleasing. The floor will be paved and the servery completed with a beautiful mosaic motif by the Mentoring Towards Manhood team in the coming months. We envisage a pergola draped in fruiting vines and a cob oven attached to the building within the year. Just canÕt wait to christen it with our first wood-fired pizza! A huge thanks to all who participated in creating such a lovely and useful structure for us at the community garden.
If you wish to know what other educational workshops we have already held, plus those that are in the offing this year.
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