Yesterday Brad Masi and a helper dug up clay to mix with the straw. And they do. The Eastwood Elementary Strawbale Toolshed Project is the name of the venture. But big ideas have gone into the design.
Straw is the stem of cereal grains after the seed heads have been removed.
Strawbale walls are excellent insulators and virtually indestructible, and strawbale houses over a hundred years old are still standing in Nebraska, where they evolved in the 1880s. Lorain County is high in grain production, so local straw is inexpensive and abundant. The George Gund Foundation and the Ohio Environmental Education Fund support the toolshed project. The project is an offshoot of the partnership between Seventh Generation and Oberlin College and their Watershed Education Project, a place-based environmental curriculum for Lorain County schools created to educate area children about the Black River Watershed.