When Gavin Tenold started in the construction industry in his early 20s, his sole focus was finding a job where he could make good money but not cut into precious skiing time. Little did he know these ...

BILLINGS – Tara and Jerry Wolf’s straw bale home dispels one key notion. Building with straw doesn’t mean you have to stay small. “You can be Earth-friendly and still have your dream home,” Tara said, ...

Planting vegetables in straw bales can be a lot easier – especially on the back – than traditional gardening in the dirt, according to local master gardeners. You don’t need containers and only a ...

David and Carrie Chew live in a house made of straw. It has two bathrooms, a modern kitchen and a packed earthen floor. The exterior walls are made with stacked wheat straw bales covered in plaster.

PORT ANGELES — Michael and Spring Thomas want to demonstrate how strong a house built of straw can be. Straw bales, that is. Compressed and covered in plaster, straw bales stay dry, resist fire and ...

Built a decade before today's green building vogue, Oakland's only straw bale house has emerged as a showplace of ancient methods, modern technologies and Bay Area sensibilities. Now, the ...

LIVE OAK – The hum of a tractor’s motor fills the forest as a worker heaves an armful of pine needles into a rusted red baler. He flips a metal lever over the tawny leaves and pushes down sharply, ...

In a telephone interview from his home in Roseville, Minn., Karsten explained how he came to share his love and knowledge of straw-bale gardening with the public. He was born and raised on a tree ...

People like to say that John Wise grew his own house. The farmer - who tends strawberries, raspberries, market vegetables, cattle and a few turkeys on 200 acres in Centreville, Ont. - used the stalks ...

Gardening in straw bales is a flexible, waterwise way to plant a garden. Photo courtesy of strawbalegardens.com Is there any gardener who hasn’t fallen for a marketing claim that sounds too good to be ...

When their friends heard they were building a straw-bale house, Ken and Laura Geisen were peppered with "Three Little Pigs" jokes. "They asked if we were afraid a wolf will blow it down," said Laura.

Sharon Van Hassel still remembers the laughter, the meals and the dirt flying through the air roughly 25 years ago as she, her late husband and neighbors built a home, straw bale by straw bale. That’s ...