Learn to build with earth during construction of master earth builder Quentin Branch's home.

Instruction includes:

• Designing and siting a home for passive-solar function
• Reviewing earth building engineering principles
• Choosing and testing materials
• Preparing earth mixes
• Forming, tamping and stripping walls

Participants may bring half-full 5-gallon buckets of any soil they might want to use for building. This will be tamped into regulation-formed cylinders for later testing at soils labs in participants' home towns.

Classes continue Mondays through Thursdays, through March 27.

Fee schedule: $200/day, $500 for three days, and $600 for four day. This includes breakfast and lunch each day. Groups of 2 or more get 10% reductions.

For more information, please call Julie at (520) 896-3393.

I would just like to thank everybody for the great school and social event this past weekend. Everything was great. (I'm already missing Julie's breakfast burritos.) The unselfish sharing of your vast knowledge and the desire to teach others is incredible. I almost felt like family. Thanks again.
-Tim Engholm (Three Points, Arizona)