A love for Mud
begins...
I
recall playing with metal tin can lids as 'plates', preferring them
over my fancy toy dishes... because I hated cleaning up
the mud off the pretty dishes after 'cooking' dirt.
I could just throw the lids away. [An early sign I wasn't going
to enjoy housekeeping.] I solar 'baked' gingerbread men
of dirt and water, shaped onto the hot cement sidewalk at home, with
rocks for raisin buttons.
My early books and fairy
stories came from British books with fine tissue paper over the
color plates. The drawings were of thatched cottages,
with earthen walls, and little homes handmade with curvy wood,
and tiny windows. This was so appealing a memory that
when I went to England as an adult I totally fell in love all
over again with 'cob' cottages and organic building.
In 1997 I escaped the corporate world for good, and
started my own small publishing business.
The rest came naturally, from writing
a small booklet about alternative, low cost building in 1998,
to writing and producing 13 Information Guides, booklets and CDs,
plus selling more than 400 different books and DVDs
worldwide at dirtcheapbuilder.
Now, on a small scale with
www.papercrete.com I offer only my written publications, unique
booklets from others, and the DIY USDA booklets from the 1920s
through 1960s on home and farm building .
