I went to a sustainability conference Saturday, then Sunday took the little guys out to a new house being made of straw bale construction. It’s going to be part of a church, actually, on Grand Island and it’s being collectively built by congregation members under the direction a contractor who also knows how to do living roofs. I’m going back to help plaster and then there is going to be an earthen floor, which is not at all like dirt, it’s all the clay excavated out to make the foundation mixed w slag and whatever and then hydro-stamped flat and oiled repeatedly to a sheen that’s as waterproof as lino and looks like leather.

The contractor says he’ll let me help w each of the steps so I know what they entail and then can repeat the process with my own friends [ha] someday whatever. Having something built from scratch out in the country has been one of my longest-running desires, but [aside from the lack of man power, so to speak] when it comes to standard new builds, the wood and other materials are so expensive and also inferior to old growth woods of older houses that then I fall back on a fixer upper farmhouse train of thought, then lose my mojo. I looked at micro houses for a while, but . . . well they’re cool from an environmental point of view, but they’re more nifty than beautiful and not very durable. The bale houses are sturdy as fuck and are god sooo beautiful, and o you should smell it (though straw makes my nose run like hell, but still worth it), it’s like that new-construction cut wood smell mixed with clover of hay and if you’re into this kind of thing it’s like porno practically, like the equivalent of a cottage dancing around a pole.

The one I saw is about this size, though without kitchen/etc. bc it will be more like for weddings and other worship gatherings etc.:








But I like this one, which would be something like 25-30k (minus land), or 15k if you did it entirely yourself:

and this one is cool
(I'm not kidding.)

In other news, I was up at a grueling 6 am this morning for another one of those emergency meetings at work. After nagging FPH to worry 3x (my self-imposed limit), I went Zen/limp about the EDU dept kicking the bucket etc. - that's good because the situation has a decent chance of shutting the place down entirely, so t'z probably wise to be thinking 'say la vee' about it all as much as possible.