Rough Plaster on Strawberry House North Wall

Lyn, who is going to work trade here for two months, got here last weekend. She has done natural building before and likes to plaster. On Wednesday we worked on putting a rough plaster over the east end of the north side of the north wall, a strawbale wall, at strawberry house. At this point I like to apply rough plaster more than finish plaster, it dries more slowly so you have more time to smooth it and fix mistakes, and you don't have to worry as much about making it perfect.

We wet the wall where we were going to plaster, it had a thin coat of mud on it already, put a bunch of plaster (wet blended clay soil and chopped straw, about two to one) up on the wall with our hands and smoothed it out somewhat then use a pool float or trowel to smooth it out more. Since we wanted it a certain height we used little pieces of wood of a the correct height on top of the pins holding the strawbales tightly together, and smoothed the plaster to that height using boards and or a trowel. It is important to really make the plaster stick well to the wall under it so it doesn't flake off and stick it to itself so it doesn't crack.