We have an outbuilding at home — we call it the Little House.

It's a small old barn that sits out in our back yard, maybe 25 feet from the back door. It was a barn for animals at one point, then a garage, then an apartment. There's a lot of interesting energy in the Little House. It's been many things over the years: an art studio, a bakery, a jewelry-making place. By 2018 the Little House had given birth to this very podcast. The Little House has been an epicenter of entrepreneurial spirit and love for a long time.

When I got home from my recent trip to Poland, I found out there was a water leak in the Little House, which sent me on a mission of ripping and tearing — rugs, floors, decking and drywall. And before I knew it, I needed a new wall on the west end. And of course, it was going to be a hempcrete wall, right?

Hempcrete is hemp hurd — the woody inner core of the hemp stalk — mixed with a lime-based binder and water and packed around a wood frame like insulation. It's breathable, naturally resistant to pests and fire, and because hemp pulls carbon out of the air as it grows, a hempcrete wall can be carbon-negative. It's about as close as you can get to building a wall out of a farm field.

After years and years of following the industry, reporting on builders like Cameron McIntosh, Micaela Machado, Danny Desjarlais and Matt Marino, these people are my heroes. And now, after having made seven batches of hempcrete by hand, anyone who has ever built something out of hempcrete is my hero.

Luck favors the prepared, so I sought knowledge. I drove down to the Ice House in Ellicott City, Maryland, to learn from Gayle Killen. She taught me how to mix by hand, how to pack the edges better than the middle, and how to stay safe — PPE always, and a jar of vinegar handy to neutralize the lime.

Cameron McIntosh, up at his shop in Bally, confirmed the numbers and sent me home with hurd, buckets, tampers and a saw. Drew Oberholzer and Ana Konopitskaya of Coexist Build donated nine bags of lime binder. Acts of kindness bind us all together.

So I mixed and packed and mixed again, all through the Fourth of July weekend, sweating it out in the backyard, covered in lime burns, until a hempcrete wall stood where the old one used to be.

My kids tell me it smells like corn. But whatever it smells like, it looks like agriculture. Imagine if we could build our houses with locally sourced, annually renewable resources so we can survive, so our children can survive, so our children's children can survive. That's what this is about: the future, and learning how to do things so we can face it together. This hempcrete wall is emblematic of the changes you'll see coming. We're building, growing, making and doing.

Learn More

LimeWorks.us – EcoLogic HempCrete Binder Platinum

https://www.limeworks.us/product/ecologic-hempcrete-binder-platinum/

Americhanvre

https://americhanvre.com/

Hemp Building Institute

https://www.hempbuildinginstitute.org/

HempBuild Magazine

https://www.hempbuildmag.com/

US Hemp Building Association (USHBA)

https://www.ushba.org/resources

International Hemp Building Association (IHBA)