Excerpts from a Light Earth Building Workshop Diary: 

Light.Earth -

A beckon of hope for the homeless, a cause for the community....

...We were shown one of the first walls, which was built using beer bottles and a clay mix, still standing even if cracked in places. 

All around, people were busy with activity - like honey bees buzzing around the richness of 'The Farm.' Children played on the deck, food was being prepared and those we spoke with were emitting a calm but productive energy. 

I would describe the light inside a freshly insulated Light Earth room, to be soft. Rich yet soft and permeated with a kind of stillness. Light turns a russet red, velvety orange. The room glows. I felt held. Marian says "I love how peaceful it feels in here when you are working, this is a place you can come during the building process to reflect while quietly working away - the conversations are different in here.”

"The Brew." 

A mud and water slurry mix. which we tipped onto a blue tarp in quite dramatic fashion, using a tractor bucket to push the huge barrel of 'brew' over, spilling out the contents which were described as honeyed treacle. Into the mixture went sawdust and gorse mulch. Then the real fun began as we used our gumboot shod feet to stamp the mixture into a heady thick, consistent sludge which needed to form 'snowballs.' 

Baking in the sunshine - less than one hour later - 65 'Gorsecrete.' bricks. Enough to build half a 10 msq hut. Next up, we went milling. The smell of woodchips layering the fresh air around us.. Calves mooed from banks of impossibly green grass. 

A Peterson Portable Sawmill is a sensible investment. Certainly, a group could purchase one and share it among them. It ate through a thick tree, carving up approx $1000 worth of timber in an hour.

So far, impressed. 

I chat with a Columbian women about relationships, love, being a Mama, not being a Mama, as we eat several feijoas, discarding thier skins on the ground below. 

Finally, we watch Mike put up the Framing. Grant stands nearby and interjects where he finds appropriate. Between them, they have got it sorted. Mike waxes lyrical about "Bush Building," a whack it up, she will be right attitude to framing. Stuff the council and Bobs ya uncle. Despite this, the class agrees - it looks solid. Job done. 

Then, we feast. And dance, And sit around a fire. 

Later, we find a treehouse to sleep in and fall asleep close to midnight, trails of crumbly dry red Earth falling from our legs and arms and peppering the sheets.

There is community here in all of this.