Sustainable Compromises: A Yurt, a Straw Bale House, and Ecological Living

11. The Straw That Broke The

100 11 The Straw That Broke The When Harold showed up a couple of days later, he got down on his knees and spit on the concrete. He took out a rag and began to rub at the banana-yellow floor. He spit again. More rubbing. He stood up. “It’s coming off,” he said. He was right: the yellow seemed to be a kind of powdery coating on the concrete, and underneath it was the earthy-brown color we had hoped to have. “I’m on my way to another job site,” he said. “You might try washing the floor to see how much more you can get off. That might put Linda at ease. I’ll send out a crew with a power washer first thing tomorrow morning. It’s going to be fine.” And it was fine. Although dubious, Linda spent that day with mops and water. Then the men came and, with high-pressured water, washed off the last of the yellow, exposing the beautifully marbled floor. Linda, to say the least, was temporarily relieved. Me, I didn’t even have enough time to breathe a sigh of relief before I got a call from the farmer. Ten months earlier I had called a dozen area farmers, trying to locate someone who could provide the straw bales. Armed with a 101 The Straw That Broke The list of questions, I quizzed each one about whether they had sold straw for house construction before (several had); what kind of string they tied the bales with (some materials are stronger than others for construction purposes); how they harvested their straw (if it was with a rotary blade, there might be more damage to the straw); how dense and how heavy the bales were; and, importantly , if they could store the bales until I needed them. I chose an organic farmer whose farm was less than forty miles away. That would cut down on the cost of transporting the bales, and I liked that the straw would never have been exposed to pesticides and other chemicals. The word straw dates back at least a thousand years to Old English . The word was used then, as now, to denote the stalk of cereal crops. But straw also used to mean, “to scatter something loosely about.” Hence it was proper English to say that you strawed the baby powder or that the table had been strawn with cracker crumbs. Centuries later, when straw hats came into style, people often referred to them as your “straw.” Even in the old days the singular—one stalk—was called a straw. At some point early on, someone discovered you could use a straw to sip a drink. The “drinking straw” has been around for at least seven thousand years; but in the middle of the nineteenth century, it became fashionable for men to drink their rye whiskey using— you guessed it—a single straw of rye. Apparently, using the natural tube gave the whiskey a hint of the fresh flavor of the plant. The problem with using a natural straw, however, is that before very long the thing begins to wilt and shred. In the 1880s, to combat this problem, a man invented a machine that wound paper into a tube. The paper straw was then coated with wax to make it last longer in a drink. The stem of a stalk of straw is remarkably strong. Pay attention to the next patch of dry weeds you see. Those dead stalks are still 102 The Straw That Broke The standing because of their strength. Cellulose, a sturdy chemical molecule, forms the walls of the plant’s cells. When packed into bales, the tough straw forms an incredibly durable and strong material . A bale of straw weighs around forty-five pounds if dry, closer to seventy if it isn’t. Straw is different from hay. Straw consists of the stalks that remain after grain has been harvested. Hay includes both the stalks and the seeds. You don’t want to build a hay house, for the seeds might attract rodents and other pests. Although the most common types of straw for building a house are wheat, oats, barley, and rye, many other kinds can be used. My organic farmer grew winter rye (Secale cereale), and that suited me fine. I also chose him over other local farmers because he had told me he...