A ROUND HOUSE OF STRAW BALES
(Page 2 of 4)
Then we notched the tops of the uprights, collected eight
more longer and thinner (12 feet by three inches in
diameter) poles and notched the out-end of each to fit the
uprights as shown.
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A pyramid of bales (later used as building blocks) held the
roof supports—and us—while we set, nailed and
wired the poles in place.
The center-ends of the roof timbers were then nailed and
wirebound together in a superimposed two-sets-of-four
pattern that had a hole in its center for a stovepipe to
stick through.
By that time we were really high. We hadn't known for sure.
we could build anything when we started . . . and
here our pole frame was, already starting to took like a
house. We were meeting and enjoying the special problems of
round form, too: instead of walls and square corners and
parallel lines, it was a new world of curves and cones and
diameters and centers.
The next step—putting up the wall—was even more
exciting!
We had bought and hauled in two pickup loads of straw . . .
90 bales for $21.00. Each bale, turned on edge, was 1-1/2
feet high . . . which meant that a stack of four would give
us a wall six feet tall.
It was easy to make the oversized "bricks" of straw fit the
circumference of our circle: we just leaned each bale
against another and bent it by jumping on it to make it
sag.
As each tier of our four-layered wall was completed, we
bound the circle of bales tightly into each other and into
the frame with a band of twine.
To stagger the bundles of straw like brickwork meant using
a half bale at one end of each layer. We made these
pint-sized building blocks by driving a stake (with new
twine tied to it)
through the middle of a still-uncut full-sized bale. Out
came the stake on the other side—like a threaded
needle—making it easy for us to tie up the first of
the two "shorties" we got from every bale we split.
We left an opening the width of the door in each of the
layers and—in the third tier—we left gaps the
width of the windows we'd found (for free, again in the
dump). We made supports for the top layer of bales by
laying boards over the window openings.
