Gábor,
15-20 years ago, I tried to do something similar, over across the
pond in the US. I wouldn't discourage you from it -- I don't regret having done it at all -- but I do have a little bit of practical raining-on-the-parade for you to consider as you choose a direction.
By and large, natural building is highly labor intensive. Therefore traveling builders are much needed! Unfortunately, by and large, people wanting to do natural building have little to no money. Therefore traveling builders are often *unpaid.* I found several opportunities to work for room and board, but, uh, basically none that offered a living wage. It's a bit of a catch-22: there is SO MUCH labor needed in a lot of natural building methods that it's almost impossible for anyone other than the very wealthy to consider hiring it out. It makes sense if you have time and gumption to do it *for yourself.* Once you add in a paid crew, it becomes prohibitively expensive, fast. At least in my experience.
If you find the circumstances offered to you in Europe and the present day (rather than the US, two decades ago) to be similar, you'd be looking at something like the WWOOFer program mentioned above: You get lots of skill-building, opportunities to try things out, a place to be, usually meals. You can live without requiring much money, and it's not a bad way to live, for a few years at least, especially when you are young and curious to learn and experience more about what's out there. As I said, I don't regret doing it. Buuut ... I did not find it to be a viable long-term career.
When I encounter people who DO make a living at natural building, it's usually done one of two ways:
1) They set themselves up as "consultants," helping owner-builders with planning and sometimes helping organize volunteer crews. They charge for these services. They usually do not remain present throughout the whole construction process, because the owner-builders usually don't have the cash to pay them for that long, but they get them going and let them fly from there. I'd think you'd have to build up a pretty strong reputation through volunteering on well-publicized projects before this would be viable. You'd probably be looking at more than a couple years. You'd probably also be expected to solve some of their problems with, say, building codes and other such headaches. Or sourcing appropriate materials. You might even need a contractor's license. It'd be something to think about.
2) They work as
workshop instructors, teaching the skills for a fee. Often a hefty fee. I am of decidedly mixed opinions about the ethics of this. On the one hand, I think taking a workshop is a good option for someone who wishes to build their own place and needs to gain the skills to do so, and I think it's great that there are people who teach these workshops. I understand that doing so requires superhuman patience and is flat exhausting, so even people who do "make a living" teaching workshops don't do them anywhere near like "full time." It often remains a relatively small income stream. As far as learning though, I think paying for a workshop is a *less good* option than volunteering to help someone else build, because workshops are usually compressed into a week or less and you find out a lot more over the construction of a whole
project, several months. Now of course not everyone has several months of volunteer labor to spare, and a well-run workshop is certainly the next best way to learn. Where I start to feel ethically squidgy about the whole "workshop leader" line of work is:
1) where you are asking people to pay YOU money in order to help YOU build on YOUR
land, instead of you paying THEM for their labor!
2) or where you are promising them that if they pay you for your workshop, they will then be able to ask other people to pay them for their workshops, and so forth and so on. The word for that is "pyramid scheme" and it is dishonest. The world needs teachers, no doubt about it, but if teachers exist to teach other teachers who teach other teachers who .... there's a math problem here. (Self help "life coaches" seem to fall into this same trap a lot.) I respect teachers who set out to create builders, but within the natural building world, what I have seen is mostly builders being empowered to do for themselves rather than tapping into a lifelong career.
I'm afraid that *after* I already had enough
cob and general construction experience to be going on with, Ianto Evans assured me that if I paid him some thousands of dollars to attend his workshop, I would be able to then find paid work in the field. This turned out to be, frankly, untrue. The workshop was beginner level, and what he had meant, apparently, was that by attending the workshop I would have done more (expensive!) networking within the natural building community, which I could try to use to start my own consulting/workshop-leading business from scratch, subject to all the usual expenses and difficulties of starting any business from scratch. It's partly my fault; I should have been old enough to know better by then, and I should have heard the hesitation in his voice when I asked about actual paid work, before he began making those assurances. I did hear it, actually. I just didn't want to.
NOW LET ME SAY I COULD BE WRONG. There may in fact be very successful traveling builder crews looking for reliable labor! There may be owner-builders willing and able to pay for the hours of help they require! I may just never have met them! I'm a hermit, so that's totally possible!
But if you poke around on this forum, I think you'll see lots and lots and lots of people asking questions about their own DIY projects, and very few looking to hire any of it out.
The world is big, and it is still beautiful. Traveling around and volunteering is an excellent way to see more of it, meet good people, explore ideas and options and ways of being. If you want to do these things for yourself someday, there's *NO* better way to make that concretely happen than to get your hands dirty now. Just ... make sure you have a financial backup plan.
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