Thriving Earth Farm and Development’s Natural Building Services
Thriving Earth Farm and Developments Natural Building Services seeks to merge time tested traditions with new insight to create truly sustainable homes that are healthy for both the humans that inhabit them and the ecology in which they reside.
***We are currently looking for Natural Building contractors who are willing to work in the middle TN area and are familiar with hybrid approaches of natural building that can conform to local building regulations***
Why Build Naturally?
In todays developed nations we often find homes built out of materials that are mass produced through highly ecologically destructive and extractive processes, that somehow seem to pollute life throughout almost every stage of the process. Whats more is that as we continuously become conditioned to build in this way, we find ourselves becoming increasingly vulnerable by our dependence on building materials that cannot be produced locally or ethically. This leaves us yet more disempowered in our ability to wrap our minds and hands around the actually building of our own structures. Furthermore, the health and environmental ramifications of building with an unending array of polymers, adhesives, plastics, polystyrenes, petrochemicals, biocides, preservatives, VOC's, formaldehyde, urea, creosote, synthesized coppers, etc; are ramifications whose effects may not truly be seen, or acknowledged, until the damage has already long been done. And yet despite our use of so many chemical products to add "preservation" and "strength" to our structures, we find that our modern construction techniques rarely stand the test of time.
But despite the uncertainty of todays conventional building methods, one does not need to look back very far to find healthy, empowering traditions of elegant and beautiful natural building. Throughout our country and right here in Nashville TN, we still see the remnants of a building culture that empowers the individual and community, and brings them into contact with the elements of natural life. Log homes and timber frame homes that have stood the test of time still scatter our landscape reminding us of a time when homes and buildings were authentic, strong, and artfully crafted. These homes combined the simplicity of working with natural wood, locally sourced from our forests, with the use of natural plasters and insulations, as well as the natural elements of stone and brick, creating homes that not only had longevity, but also emerged in an artful and beautiful character indigenous to the very landscape in which they reside.
As more and more people become disenchanted with conventional building and become enchanted by our traditions of natural building we see an inspiring revival of older ways of building merged with the style and needs of our modern day.