In the story of the three little pigs, the house of straw was the first to be blown down by the Big Bad Wolf.
But neither the huffing and puffing of northern winters nor the relentless western summers stopped Mary Biggs from building an organic, ecologically sound house out of bales of straw.
She was inspired by a magazine called Baling Out to build her 2,000-square-foot home, the first of its kind, out or rye straw.
“All the load-bearing walls are made of 18-inch-thick straw bales covered with chicken wire and then coated with plaster,” she explained from her new home in Coronation, Alberta.
Concerning fire-hazards, Biggs said, “Straw bales don’t burn very easily because they’re so compressed there`s not very much air in them. And besides, all my electricity boxes are encased in galvanized steel.”
