When we build a home we are faced with trade-offs. We can use our savings or we can take out a mortgage. We can pay someone to do it for us or we can build it ourselves. Same goes with materials and how we source them. Our ancestors mostly didn't have these choices, they had to do with what they had at hand, or simply do without. Thankfully, they figured it out and we can learn from them. Thanks to modern tools, handbooks, educational videos and global friendships, many of their methods and techniques are eminently possible for us to pick up. It takes a lifetime to master (for example) thatching, but an apprentice can thatch a roof well enough to charge money, with a patient master overseeing the work. Or you can learn it yourself, from videos and handbooks by starting small (thatch a chicken coop or a play house for the kids). You won't be able to do it well enough or fast enough to get paid, but you can do it well enough for yourself. The same goes with materials. You can order wheat straw or reed or palm fronds and have it delivered from anywhere in the world. That will save you a lot of time of course, but it isn't cheap. Or you can harvest your own materials if you have them growing nearby, or if not, start by growing them (you can buy a few kilos of thatching wheat seeds online for example). It all depends on your circumstances, how much time you want to spend on it and so on. Obviously, when I say that it is technically possible to build a beautifully charming and robust thatched roof costing you nothing at all, I am not saying that it makes commercial sense at all. It doesn't. When I sell hand harvested thatch my customers are paying for the ultra high end of quality because I can pick the highest quality thatch in the world and deliver it to the exact specifications of the highest paying customers in the world. There is no way you can win on volume in the exciting world of thatch harvesting. I enjoy discovering how our ancestors built environmentally friendly sustainable homes without a mortgage and without waste. And I use this account to share this with anyone else interested. If your dream was to live in a cob cottage like Thomas Hardy or a Georgian townhouse or a solid timber cottage with grass roof or a cool Nubian vaulted homestead, it might be impossible to find or afford a mortgage for it, but it isn't impossible if you are willing to learn the skills necessary to do parts of it yourself. And most likely you will end up with something that will endure without wasting.
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