Wednesday, the 14th,  we enjoyed the hospitality of Friendsview, as our new home, the Chehalem Cultural Center, was hosting a job fair, which I heard was pretty successful.

Stan Kern brought along four young men from George Fox Serve Day.  He thought he was just driving them to their worksite to help out a widow with lawn work, but you know Stan, he got right in there and worked alongside them.   Serve Day also had groups at Avemere cleaning wheelchairs and walkers, Friendsview helping with physical therapy, the Library cleaning, and all over town doing a variety of things to improve our community.   Thanks George Fox.

Michael Pollock, who’ll be inducted next week, joined us for the last time as a guest.   Next week, Wednesday the 21st, is Peace Day and Rotarians are encouraged to participate in the Act of Kindness Day.

The Early Birds are having their 5th annual Oktoberfest this weekend (16-17) in Memorial Park.  Volunteer or attend this event that is a fundraiser for their international projects.

It was Jim McMaster’s 61st Birthday (he’s the one who announced it) and apparently residents of Friendsview are wondering when he’s moving in!

October 12th, we won’t be having a lunch meeting as that is A Family Place’s fundraiser during our normal meeting time/place.  BUT… we are planning an afterwork “fireside/social”.  Mike Boock and Grant Austin are working on the details, but mark your calendar for an afterwork event on October 12th.

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Building cob walls

Our program today was the Learning Garden at PCC.  Rotarian Lynn Montoya Quinn, head of PCC Newberg, arranged for the program. She wasn’t able to join us in person, but shared her welcome via power point.   Student Michael Miller (son of Early Bird Rotarian Dave Miller) started off sharing how the PCC Newberg Center is adding a Learning Garden to be used for a lab for environmental classes as well as growing food for students and the community.  One of the things they are doing is building a storage shed in a sustainable fashion.   Briar Schoon is the PCC Sustainability Officer and she related that PCC has a real focus on sustainability and the PCC campus is Leed certified.   Bernhard Masterson, is the PCC faculty member that is leading Michael and students and community members in building a sustainable storage shed.  They are doing it with cob building, which isn’t building with corn cobs!  It’s a welsh word and it is basically building with clay, straw and even a bit of horse manure!

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PCC Newberg Shed

The storage shed at the Newberg campus started this summer with a good foundation of cement blocks, and then the clay and straw building process starts which is pretty much just piling up mud, kind of like playing with mud pies.   That’s one of the advantages of cob building as it doesn’t take a lot of training to get people building.    The shed is built with a good roof and deep overhangs and that keeps the rain off and lets this mud building survive Oregon’s wet winters.    They’ve just started building and will hopefully finish the shed next summer.    It’s an amazing process to build.   Here in Oregon, you can build a small shed with cob as it doesn’t meet earthquake requirements, however,  Bernhard showed pictures of cities with 10 story buildings made from mud.

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PCC Sylvania Cob Oven

Bernhard teaches natural building at PCC Rock Creek and got into the field as an clay artist and you can see his artistry in the designs of his various builds.

It was a very intriguing program and it will be great to see this cob shed in person at PCC Newberg.