Strawbale house built and ready for use

You can huff and puff, but you can't blow a strawbale house down - especially not one that was constructed by over 200 local Eastwood Elementary Students, teachers, parents, Oberlin College students and professional tradesmen.

At 10 a.m.today, a dedication ceremony for a newly-finished strawbale house took place on the northeast side of the Eastwood school campus. The house will serve as a toolshed for the school's garden tools and equipment.

The dedication included performances by kindergarten through second grade students and speakers such as Brad Masi, project coordinator for the environmental studies program, Mark Hoberecht, a NASA designer and lead designer of the toolshed, Sarah Lee, Eastwood school teacher, and George Espy, executive director of Lorain County environmental organization Seventh Generation. David Eisenberg, a national expert and author on strawbale construction and one of the original builders of the Biosphere 2 project also spoke.

The toolshed is made completely from locally harvested and recycled materials. Its slate roof is recycled from materials from an old downtown church and was installed by Pat Ives, a third-generation roofer from Oberlin. The timber frame supporting the roof comes from an Amish-owned Ohio forest and a local lumberyard. The walls of strawbale, made from straw from a local farm, stands on a sandstone base made from sandstone from the old conservatory building. The plaster covering the walls was made from clay from a local housing excavation, sandstone and water. Eastwood students mixed the plaster and applied it to the structure themselves. They also painted the front door.

The project of establishing the garden and toolshed is a collaboration between the Environmental Studies Program at Oberlin, Lorain County public schools, Seventh Generation, and the Watershed Education Program. It was designed to promote environmental education by engaging youth with their own local environment. The garden, which has vegetable crops and wildflowers which attract bees and birds, serves as a site for school children and teachers to interact with adults and learn about natural cycles.

Oberlin students who participated in building the toolshed researched strawbale structures and interviewed local craftsmen during January in order to gather information to write a children's story about the toolshed. Hopefully, this will help future generations of Eastwood students understand its history.