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 We've been seeing pictures on the Internet of this crazy house outside San Antonio Texas so when we were down there for the mother Earth News Fair we stopped by for a tour. The idea for came to Brittany during a stint as a park ranger at a local historic site. "These beautiful old buildings were built by the people who lived in them, from materials on site. Why can't we do that?" So while she was working her…

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We've been testing different heaters on this mass bench and this is a very nice setup if you want a Rocket Heater and don't want to feed the fire every few minutes.

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 There's a special moment when we get to fire up a heater and see how it runs.  Go here for the full review.

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 In February 2020 Chris Strathy The Capable Carpenter invited Uncle Mud to visit the treehouse he was building for Fen in North Carolina. It was just barely warm enough to teach a quick cob class  and grab a tour of Chris's mobile shop for more of his amazing work check out…

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The hardware store up the hill from me in my home town is called Hill Hardware, um, I guess because it is at the top of the hill. It is a four minute drive that is almost totally uninteresting. I will never take it for granted again. This is just a little bit of what it takes to get to the hardware store if you live in Nine Mile Jamaica.

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 Chris Strathy has my dream job. My other dream job. If I wasn't Uncle Mud I would totally want his job. He gets to hang out in cool places, with cool people, building cool stuff and making videos that actually have decent editing and special effects. Then there's the beard. Serious beard envy here. But the the thing that makes me most jealous of of Chris Strathy is this mobile shop. I don't actually need a mobile…

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On a gorgeous fall day the Mud Family is racing "The Big Freeze" to get a truck load of cob mixed and stored inside for a big job next week. Our faithful electric mixer has given up on us so we have called in the troops and rented a big gas powered mortar mixer. Lets see how this works.

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So we've been burning this heater for about four years now but finally got around to hooking it up to a thermal mass and giving it a good firing and a review. Sky Huddleston has done a good job balancing the needs of mass production with the fine tuning that lets rocket heaters burn so clean. You COULD build your own rocket heater out of mud and scrap metal and it MIGHT work as well but it would probably not be code…

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In 2003 I was a struggling young entrepreneur with my own computer business that may as well have been a non-profit, and four small children and a wife I loved but didn't get along with. We got better, but at the time I was a more than a bit overwhelmed. So when I saw the ocean for the first time at a software conference in California it wasn't the vast beauty of it all that got me, it was the Help Wanted sign in the…

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As I sit here in self quarantine surrounded by my family with good Internet and plenty to eat and (even so blessed) a bit of a whiny attitude, I'm reminded of this experience from a Mud Family trip to Jamaica where nothing seemed to go right with the car, or did the car know better than we did what was needed? If you are going to break down in a bad spot....

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Join us for a relaxing (not) drive through the mountains of Jamaica

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In Jamaica making cob is a public sport. Everybody wants to know what you are doing. The kids come by on their way home from school and ask to help. They don't want to get their uniforms dirty but they don't want to go home and change because then they will have to do chores. No different from when I was a kid.

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Its been really dry in Nine Mile Jamaica this year so the tanks are dry. If you want to get clean after making cob it might involve a bucket.

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At the last Oregon Mother Earth News Fair I got my hands on this excellent rocket stove from Africa that uses a small solar panel and battery and fan to gassify small scraps of wood for cooking. I'm making a cheesy egg with a handful of wood chips instead of electric.

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 The Mud Family got a special treat at the 2020 Texas Mother Earth News Fair where we got to unbox our second Bulgarian Gamera Rocket Heater, the "Tiny" and fire it up with two of its tinyhouse cousins, the camp version of the Liberator from rocketheater.com (tell them Uncle Mud sent you) and our own versatile DIY CottageRocket. 

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 January 2020 was the Mud Family's 4th mud building trip to Natural Mystic Farm in Nine Mile, Jamaica. We're starting to see our work coming together and getting a life of its own between our visits. 

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 What could possibly be more fun than a pizza oven? How about a pizza oven AND a Tandoori Rocket Oven? Check out https://youtu.be/z7_hmwTyW2w to see what we make with it. 

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Dan from The Grass-Fed Homestead got this great footage of the builds from the 2017 Rocket Mass Heater Jamboree at Permies.com's Wheaton Labs. at minute 8:22 I start talking about the Greenhouse Rocket aka Season Extender, which is one of the three rocket heaters I designed/Built at the Jamboree. Great Fun.

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On our way to the Topeka KS Mother Earth News Fair we stopped by to see our friend Sky and see the latest innovations. The Liberator is unique in that it is (as of early 2020) the only UL Listed Rocket Heater sold in the US. It also burns wood scraps or pellets (without needing electricity) and plugs into a thermal mass battery bench to make a Rocket Mass Heater. The video shows a lot of exciting upgrades on the second…