The Apprentices

Emerald Earth has an eight week Natural Building in Community apprentice- ship. It started Monday so there are now five new people living here. There are six apprentices but one of them was here for a few weeks as work trade before the apprenticeship started. They and Darryl and Michael, who are teaching them, have taken over most of the building on Strawberry House, along with Liz and Brent, whose house it is going to be and who have been doing lots of work on it all along. They build/learn five days a week and have one afternoon when they have a sit-down lecture/discussion class, and one evening with slide shows/videos about natural building. Work Traders used to work on Strawberry house two mornings a week, starting this week we are instead working there Wednesday afternoons while the apprentices are in class.

The apprentices all seem like very nice people, although we have mostly been too busy to hang out. This weekend we should have more time. Of the six apprentices Anne is from Canada, Stephanie is from Ireland, and Anastasia, Mojo, Steve, and Justin are from the US, although Anastasia's mother is from Colombia and she has spent a lot of time in Guatemala. This is the third year they have taught a two month long class and in the past it was mostly men so they started a scholarship fund for women, to try to even out the gender balance. It seems like a great program with lots of learning from people who know what they are doing, focusing not only on how and what to do but why so in other circumstances you can know what to change.