There are so many good things about building with straw bales. First, they are a by-product of standard agriculture, so they are very common in most parts of the world, and pretty cheap which makes them very affordable. They don't require any transformation apart from the straw being choped and baled, which means they have a very small embodied energy level, that is the energy that it requires to produce a material or product, including extracting or harvesting resources, transforming, assembling and transporting them. Another good thing about strawbales is that they are completely natural (apart for the pesticides sprayed on the crops, which there usually is in traditional agriculture, so may be look for organic or natural farming to solve that point), say compared to concret which contains a lot of toxic stuff (especially when industry fuels its combustion process with toxic waste, which they do legally in Europe, not anywhere further than in my hometown in Belgium, see "Eourres, an alternative village" the story about that couple from my hometown who tryed to bring awareness about the factory although legally but yet burning toxic wastes for their production). Strawbales insulate very well compared to any other manufactured material considering their cost to efficiency ratio.

Strawbales insulation usually comes together with earthen plasters, not because it has to, but because those who chose to go with strawbales have a point about natural materials and health issues related to toxic building materials. But the thing is that strawbales go much better with an earthen plaster, as it allows the wall to breath humidity and thus regulate the humidity levels of the walls, but most importantly, of the house. The combination strawbales and earthen plasters seems brilliant: it's mostly natural so healthy both for us dwellers and the planet, allowing your entire house to breath out the excess humidity. For that purpose, both the inside and outside need to be earthen plastered. The use of concret on the walls seems to be the worst one can get about the humidity breathability of a house.

Back to our workshop, it took us about one day to raise the walls. None of us had really done it before but it's almost as simple as stacking bales above each other... very much like construction blocks, or Legos. One day, it's rather quick really. Plus it's good fun and it's a good opportunity to hang out together, build a home (it sounds like my TED talk). The labor intensive phase really starts with the plaster: it takes many layers of clay/sand/straw = standard earthen plaster to finish a wall. And covering all the walls of an entire house takes even more. You need to prepare the clay as fine as you can get, mix it up with water, sand and straw, and apply it by hand (unless you get professional and you've got the machine). But even then, it took us a day to put up the first layer all around the outside of the entire house, counting 30 unexperienced people. Another week-end workshop got us to put other layers, and the couple finished it up moslty themselves, getting sick of it but yet. Now, they've got their natural strawbale earthen plastered beautiful cosy home.

This is what my partner and I are aiming for, once we figure out where we are going to live and how to afford a piece of land. One thing at a time, but "all shall come in time for whom can wait".