I was instantly attracted to building with straw, probably because as a kid I lived in rural Wisconsin and spent many afternoons building bale forts in the hayloft. The moment I heard about Kate Brown's straw-bale pottery studio-much less beheld its elegant practicality-I knew I had to build something with straw. But what?

Compressing a loose bale with a home-made lever system.

My husband Mike and I already owned a historic lodge with plenty of floor space, here in the mountains of southwestern New Mexico. But our rambling, stone lodge is notoriously hard to heat in the winter, and its thick brick south wall is perfectly suited for solar gain. I'd long wanted an attached solar greenhouse, but could never justify the cost to Mike. Building with straw seemed like the answer.

When I told him whole houses had been built for as little as $7.50 a square foot using straw bales, and that we'd build it in a weekend workshop, he was skeptical."But Kate Brown's studio went up in two days, roof and all," I explained, "built mainly by women over 60. People will pay to get hands-on experience, and those hands will be building our greenhouse. And part of it will be a laundry room, and it will heat the lodge in the winter. And I'll grow tropical fruit, and we'll turn that old stock tank into a solar heated hot-tub...."

Mike perked up, allowing that the hot tub sounded good, and gave the project his blessing.

Next I met Sue Mullen, an herbalist from Gila who built her own straw-bale home, and Ted Buchart, an architect/builder. They raved about the comfort and aesthetics of living in a bale home. And Sue's home is beautiful. Set above the Gila River with the majestic Mogollon Mountains as a backdrop, it has the look of a timeless old adobe.

Sue agreed to be a workshop leader, and Ted agreed to design the structural drawings we would need and provide me with a materials list. It was my task to organize the workshop, assemble the materials, and handle the pre-workshop preparations.

Vicki Marvick of Permaculture Drylands agreed to sponsor our workshop and advertise it along with their other classes in exchange for a percentage. The cost of meals was factored into the workshop fee, and the remainder went to Sue and Ted, as workshop leaders. Having the lodge meant that participants could be housed comfortably, and our common room is perfect for screening videos and slides. I decided to throw a completion party at the end of the weekend as a thank-you to all who had helped.

Having dreamed of this addition for years, I already had a good idea of the design basics: The room would extend nearly the entire length of our south wall (42' long) and slip up under the roof just below the third floor (16' high). This would allow us to create a thermosiphon effect with cold air entering the greenhouse from the first floor windows, and warm air entering the lodge into the second floor guest rooms. A wall of double- parted windows on the south would collect the low angled winter sun-when we need extra heat-but an opaque, well-insulated roof would reflect the overhead summer sun. The east and west walls would be solid straw bales, except for doors at each end, and passive vent windows to prevent overheating. The thick lodge wall, on the north, would act as a thermal mass to store heat. And the straw-bale walls would prevent that heat from escaping.

Forming the “stem-wall” for the 18" wide straw bales. The frost-line is about 1-1/2 feet, so their footer was 18" below grade, plus a minimum of six inches above grade.

Ted designed the post and beam skeleton, which was to be filled in with bales. Post and beam was the obvious choice for three reasons: we were attaching to an existing structure, we were building two stories high, and the large number of windows in the south wall required stability and precision. A concrete "footer" underneath the straw wall was all the foundation we needed, as a dirt floor in the greenhouse would allow me to plant directly into the ground, and patio blocks should work fine for a walkway. The 13-foot width (outer dimension) was a compromise: I sacrificed optimum heat collecting properties for extra floor-space. For the roof we went with "traditional" corrugated steel-economical, and it blends right into our existing metal roof.

I ordered rough-cut lumber from the local mill in the Mimbres Valley to our west. Networking with Steve MacDonald provided a source (Mueller Supply in Texas) for custom cut, heavy-duty corrugated steel (due to shipping vagaries allow some lead time.) We picked up hardware and stucco supplies by shopping around Las Cruces. For windows and doors, I was extraordinarily lucky, as a carpenter friend had rescued a garage full of matching hardwood windows with hand-rolled glass (complete with storm windows) from an old house in the mid-west. He needed to vacate the garage, so was selling off his stock-pile, cheap. I made him a deal that included installation. My brother in Albuquerque sold me a set of antique doors he had in his basement-tall and elegant, they compliment the windows and proportions of the greenhouse perfectly.

Ironically, finding bales of straw turned out to be rather difficult! It was now August, and I discovered that most straw is baled in June, when the winter wheat is harvested (or oats, or barley.) Many farmers don't even bother to bale their straw, due to the low price it commands. (I recommend searching out a local farmer before he harvests, and have him deliver.)

I phoned all around, and even contemplated shipping in straw from Arizona or Colorado! Finally, I located a pile of oat straw near Deming, a 160-mile round-trip. The farmer couldn't deliver, so Mike and I and some friends made two trips with two pick-ups and trailers, hauling the 140 bales we needed to the site. But even though it was a bit of a hassle, stacking up those straw bales made me feel again like that kid in the hayloft.

A detail of the foundation. Note the coffee cans where they would later plumb in water and drain pipes and the 1 x 2 strip with nails to “grab” the concrete—it will later be the bottom nailer for attaching stucco wire. They found the bead board perimeter insulation was a mistake because it absorbed water.

We poured the footer the Tuesday before the workshop, with Ted there to supervise and set the door and frame bolts into the wet cement. (I'd had the trench dug and footer frame built to his specs: 18" deep x 18" wide, with at least six inches of concrete above the ground, to prevent water infiltration.) Along the inside edge of the frame, Ted loosely nailed pressure-treated l x 2s on both sides-which were to become the top edges of the footer (to staple the chicken wire to.) One inch Styrofoam (Note: Better if extruded polystyrene) lined the exterior trench wall, for insulation, and we inserted rebar spikes sticking out every 1-1/2 feet, on which we would later impale the bales. Ted also wired rebar together lengthwise in the trench, and we tossed in some big rocks for added stability. On the east end, we inserted three large coffee cans duct-taped together across the trench, to allow for a drain pipe to be slipped through the foundation.

Rather than try to mix the seven yards of concrete required ourselves, I ordered a cement truck up from Truth or Consequences. It cost $58/yard, plus an extra $90 to drive up to Kingston, but with lots of work to come, I reasoned, why tweak our backs shoving around wet cement?

The Friday of the workshop, Ted supervised removing the concrete forms and started erecting the post and beam supports. By evening, as participants began arriving, an impressive framework was substantially in place. A potluck supper encouraged all to get acquainted, followed by a showing of the inspirational video, "The Straw Bale Solution."

After breakfast Saturday, Sue showed slides of her house and Ted introduced design considerations and straw bale basics. Our solar expert was my mother, Betty Wanek, who discussed the passive solar considerations of our new addition. Nearly 20 people of diverse backgrounds attended, including several friends with carpentry skills who came fee-free, to help and to learn. Also, in exchange for another friend supervising the meals, her husband came to the workshop, also fee-free. (This bartering had been agreed to by the workshop leaders up-front.)

After much inspiring discussion, all were eager to get out into the sunshine and begin building. Ted led a few guys with carpentry skills and continued framing, while Sue demonstrated a homemade bale press-a two-person technique to compress loose bales. (A firm bale is crucial to a sturdy wall.) Standing a bale on end, one person would squash it with a 2 x 4 lever (bolted onto our tool shed) while the second person would tighten and re-tie the baling twine.

Installing the last bale.

We eventually had three presses going at once, as nearly every bale was a little loose. We also created custom bales as needed, with a 2' long, 1/4" plywood invention which was inserted through the bale, wedging it open to allow baling wire or twine to be easily slipped through, and re-tied. (These time-consuming processes can be reduced or eliminated by buying tight bales and designing your structural dimensions to the size of your bales.) For our workshop, however, this turned out to be a good way to begin working hands-on, and were useful techniques to learn.

Meanwhile, the walls started going up: First we applied a coat of roofing tar, then tar paper, to the foundation to prevent water wicking up into the wall. As they came off the presses, we impaled the bales onto the rebar sticking up from the cement footer, stacking them like bricks, and hammering a 3/8" rebar stake through each course. We used an old-fashioned hay saw (a find Ted discovered in an Arkansas feed store) to cut notches in the bales around the wood frame. Since lodge dimensions dictated the length and height of the greenhouse, we found we needed a number of custom-sized partial bales. Even so, the walls grew fast! On each end above the seventh course of bales, Ted framed in a structural one-box beam, to provide support for the door frames and three more courses of bales.

Sue supervised as we stapled chicken wire to the top supports, stretched it tightly across the bales, then stapled it to the foundation. Carol demonstrated how to further strengthen the integrity of the walls, by "sewing" the chicken wire and the bales together with baling wire and home-made "needles" of 1/4" metal rod. By the end of the first day our new addition was substantially in place, and we knocked off for a vegetarian feast and a video screening of Bill Mollison's permaculture series, The Global Gardener.

Sunday morning we lingered over breakfast, and another hour or so of solar/straw bale discussion, before picking up where we left off. The last bales were hoisted in place with the aid of the scaffolding I'd borrowed from a friend of a friend. (Watch out for those rental places - they really gouged us on the big drill we needed to bolt the greenhouse to the lodge.) Other handy supplies proved to be spare gloves, dust masks and antihistamine tablets, for when the straw dust is flying.

The first coat of “scratch” stucco has been partially applied, and windows and doors are in.

Once the walls were chicken-wired and sewn together, expanded metal lath was formed around the corners of the window and door openings, and crimped into the chicken wire with Carol's custom made tool - a flat screw-driver with a "V" cut from its center. More tar paper was stapled to any exposed wood surfaces, and we were ready to begin stuccoing.

To buoy up everyone's post-lunch fading energy, our friend Bill Bussmann led the stucco crew, challenging us to "beat the mixer." A borrowed cement mixer was fired up and, with a variety of borrowed plastering tools, a frenzy of stuccoing began! A lot of stucco ended up on the ground before we got the hang of smoothing it onto the bales. (A clean board or plastic tarp stretched under the wall-in-progress can catch these globs for re-use.)

All afternoon friends had been dropping in to check out this radical building concept, including John Simmons, the farmer who had grown the straw, and our local baker with her three boys. Eight-year-old Daniel picked up a trowel and stuccoed a good part of the wall by himself.

While straw bales are forgiving, two details worth paying attention to are precise wall alignment and filling in any gaps with loose straw as the chicken wire is stretched. This is much easier and cheaper than filling the depressions with stucco later, trying to get an even surface. As dusk approached, I ducked in to chill the beer and put out some more food, for a completion and birthday party, as the workshop happened to fall on Mike's birthday. (He had been busy all week-end videotaping the workshop for posterity.) When I got back outside in the fading light, almost all of the interior and exterior walls had been stuccoed! And the wonderful folks who had helped build my dream-greenhouse had signed their names in the drying stucco. Thank you Ted, Sue, Carol, Bill, Tom, Jack, Russell, Daniel, Amber, Jim, Jane, Dan, Jeanne, George, Pricilla, Jake, Ed, Bill, Vincent, Mary Ann, Howard, Anne, and Mom!

The greenhouse is put to work, even though it’s not finished.

Over the next several weeks, the roof went on and the windows and doors went in. (Compared with the speed of the walls, this work seemed to inch forward.) Still, tying the roof into the 1880s lodge wall proved tricky, and while they were at it, we had Jack and Tom add a modest deck up-top, outside our third floor bedroom window. The slower pace also allowed us to change our minds about the opaque roof: We decided to include several "skylights" of corrugated fiberglass on the west end, to add more light where there were fewer windows. We had R-30 insulation installed in between the ceiling joists, and a back-up wood stove put in, just in case. We've yet to fire it up!

Yet to come are the laundry hookups, the solar panels and plumbing, the water harvesting and storage system, and the tropical fruit trees, planted right in the ground. I guess the moral is that straw-bale structures can be built in a weekend, but the finish work takes time. Still, our greenhouse is currently home to a potted fig tree and most of my house plants. On sunny winter days it regularly gets up to 70º or 80ºF, even with some cracks left to fill. And when we remember to open the windows (passive solar requires an active owner!) the warm air virtually pours in.

So, little by little, our straw bale addition is reaching fruition. This time next year, we plan to be harvesting papayas while soaking in the hot tub!