Article 2: The straw harvest: when wheat becomes your home

July is a busy month, but one of its most significant times occurs at the end of July. This is the moment when our project ceases to be abstract: the wheat harvested that day will literally become our walls.

I went there to witness the harvest. Seeing these images and this reality on the ground, something crystallizes in me: it is no longer simply a project on paper, it is now a tangible reality. The straw that will welcome us is literally born in the fields before my eyes.

Straw: a precious waste

The wheat is harvested when it reaches maturity, and we recover the straw, the byproduct of the harvest that would otherwise have been waste.

This straw must be stored carefully under cover until we need it to make our walls in October. More than three months of storage in a barn. We need to find the right place, prepare the barn, and above all check that our stock is protected from bad weather and excessive humidity. This protection is crucial: we must have a very dry straw when we start manufacturing.

An important detail: the straw is not chemically treated or water-repellent. She arrives raw from the field. However, once compressed and pre-stressed in our workshop boxes, then assembled in the walls, the lime insulation which covers the exterior and the interior finishes effectively protect the straw from humidity. It is this protection that we must ensure meticulously – it is not the straw itself that is treated, it is its final configuration which protects it from water.

The call for volunteers

To accomplish this colossal task, we are launching a call for volunteers. The weekend of August 3 and 4, we are looking for people ready to “do a little sport”. In reality, it will involve putting hundreds of small bales of straw in the barn to store them under cover until October. The bales arrive in bales of 14, which will facilitate transport.

We promise a great day: sport, of course, but also good times of laughs, cold beers, and grills if the weather permits. This is more than a call for labor; it is an invitation to participate in something special, to be part of a collective adventure.