Friday, December 7, 2007

Our Strawbale House

If you’ve ever wondered why there is a house on the front of our packaging, the answer is that it’s our house. It’s a Straw bale house, that we built with the rice straw out of our fields that surround the house. This is one of the photos we gave to the illustrator when we were designing the bag. We wanted to show you that we were living with our numerous children in the middle of the fields, which is why we work so hard at farming in a safe and healthy manner.



The house has been a labor of love, and one that unlike our children, we actually birthed. We are reliving that process now because we have outgrown the original 1600 square feet we built. We started with two kids, and now have five.




Gestation begins with baling the straw, and since rice harvest is just over, we baled the straw a couple of weeks ago. Looking out over the field of bales, you start to imagine how all those individual blocks will come together, and visualize the finished project. Mostly I dream about the extra space for beds, toys, computer and piano. Maybe Daddy with even get his office back.


Having a whole lot of baled straw around is pretty fun. The kids played for hours on the big stacks over the Thanksgiving break, and we even loaded up a few on the trailer and took a “hay” ride around the farm. (We don’t have livestock, so we don’t actually grow hay.) Stay tuned for the updates on the building process. We’ve almost got the permits and contractor ready to go (we’re not doing it all ourselves this time). Sometime in the late spring or summer we’ll be having a “bale-raising”, a community building project to get the bales stacked in the walls. See you then!

3 comments:

Tricia said...

Love the whole birthing a house concept.

Sheesha said...

Are you building new - or adding on?.....

Greg said...

We are adding on! The original house is three bedrooms, so we have two kids in each room and one of the babies with us. We'll be adding on three new bedrooms and a bathroom, but we'll lose one bedroom as it becomes a pass-through room on the way to the new wing. The net effect is making a 3 bedroom house into a 5 bedroom house.

We're actually going to start any day now. The permit is done, the contractor is lined up, and we're good to go! We'll let you know when you can help us put the bales in the walls.