In 1995, Hanuman Bertschy was introduced to the idea of building homes with straw bales during a permaculture workshop. She immediately took a fancy to the concept. “I’m just basically natural,” she says. “And I’m somewhat allergic to anything synthetic. So this sounded like a great idea.’’

About a year later, when she moved to Yogaville, an ashram founded by Sri Swami Satchidananda in Buckingham, Virginia, Hanuman began to pursue her new passion in earnest. She bought The Straw Bale House, by Bill and Athena Steen, David Bainbridge, and David Eisenberg (Chelsea Green, 1994), and began talking to other area residents who had researched this building method. What she learned from her neighbors wasn’t exactly encouraging—opposition from the conservative county building commissioners had kept would-be straw balers at bay—but Hanuman decided to take the leap.

“Until I went to the building inspector, I was really nervous that inspection would make the house impossible,” she says. “But the inspector was new in his position, and he was really willing to work with us. He even watched a video I gave him that I had ordered from The Last Straw, The Grassroots Journal of Straw Bale and Natural Building.” Hanuman recalls that the building inspector’s usual response to each phase of her unconventional plans was, “Oh, that’s interesting.” And in most cases, he let the plans move through.

The result is a simple, sweet 950-square-foot home (the breadth of the bales means Hanuman has about 730 square feet of interior living space) that Hanuman managed to build for about $30 per square foot. Hanuman’s friends and neighbors from Yogaville and Twin Oaks, a nearby commune, helped raise 3,000 bales, and Hanuman laid the floor of locally fired bricks.

For more about this affordable house, check out the March/April '01 issue of Natural Home.