Guest Author: Virginia Carabelli

Hello everyone, I am delighted to be invited by RAXA Collective to participate in such a wonderful community! My name is Virginia Carabelli. I was born in Italy and raised both there and in France. I moved to the US in my late teens to attend college and fell in love with this beautiful country. I have always been more comfortable in nature and silence and have never been very interested in the rat race and busi-ness. I would much rather be than do.

I’ve always found our human ways mostly destructive and superficial, and had a plan since childhood to live life on my own terms as much as possible. In 1989 I achieved one of my childhood dreams: I bought a beautiful piece of property in a verdant valley in New Mexico, where I could live at least partially off the land. The community was mixed Spanish/Pueblo Indian, and many families lived in trailers (by that I do not mean a nice double-wide, but rather a large shipping container on cement blocks). Ecologically speaking, the valley was a fragile environment. With those two things in mind I said a simple prayer asking for guidance to build a home that would be in harmony with nature and also provide some good affordable housing for those in need. I had no idea how to do this, but I had only to wait a couple of weeks for Matts Myhrman to coincidentally walk into my life.

He was on his way to the Nebraska Sandhills to look at some historic hay bale houses built at the turn of the century. My ears perked up and I bombarded him with questions. This was the answer to my prayer! I had never built a thing before then, but I want to stress that all along this process I never once doubted what I was doing. I also want to be clear that Matts Myhrman is the “father” of modern straw bale construction — but due to his humble and low-key approach and appearance, he has often been overlooked and his research has been used without giving him proper credit. At that time (1989), no permit had ever been issued in the US (or anywhere else) for a straw bale construction project, but Canada had experimented with it and run some fire tests. This was before the advent of the Internet, and information on the Canadian experience was hard to obtain.

Load bearing workshop

I realized not only what a wonderful building material this was, but also how ecologically friendly, efficient, and long lasting it was: this was a win-win situation. In order to benefit both the ecosystem and the people in need (though straw bale construction is not limited to low income housing), I knew I had to build this house legally (it would have been easy to just build it illegally as I was in a remote area of NM, a very large state covered by a small number of building inspectors). I also had to get bank financing and insurance. Eventually I succeeded with both. I knew this would open the door for others to follow easily. In Part 2 of this post, I’ll explain more about how straw bale construction works, and try to debunk some myths about it!

About the author: Eco Peace Solutions with emphasis on Straw Bales Building – Artist – Contemplator “Don’t think, don’t make effort. In between the two is the diamond” Papaji – Sri Hariwansh Lal Poonja