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[Michaelangelica]

THE HEMP HOUSE

They had everything they needed -- except straw.

Construction on the 1,760-square-foot house was to start in 2003, the same year Alberta's drought made headlines across the country. The couple found that Alberta farmers, unable to grow their own bedding for their livestock, had gone shopping in B.C. That meant regular straw-bale sources were sold out.
The Rokeby-Thomas house on Saltspring Island was built with hemp-bale walls on the main floor, providing an insulating value of R30. Large windows run along the south side of the house, helping it to gain solar heat throughout the day.
The Rokeby-Thomas house on Saltspring Island was built with hemp-bale walls on the main floor, providing an insulating value of R30. Large windows run along the south side of the house, helping it to gain solar heat throughout the day.
Ray Smith,
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"We started calling family and friends in the Kootenays," says Drew, an inventor, "looking everywhere and anywhere for straw."

They never found it, but they did find a rancher with 2,000 hemp bales -- and snapped them up.
Local art adorns the home, including some of Drew's wrought-iron work from his blacksmithing days. A botanical weave of iron twists up the staircase, depicting flower petals and seaweed in the same frame.

"I don't pay much attention to the rules when I'm creating something," Drew says of the seabed and garden mix. "I just decide on the form as I go."

The artistry extends outside, with garden borders fashioned from bent rebar. A spring-fed pond, rose vines and iris gardens surround the house.

A bohemian atmosphere pervades the home in stained-glass frames, felt tapestries and vivid wall colourings in contrasting purple and yellow tones, chosen by Jaime.

"A lot of people are tired by the time they're finished building a home, and they end up with beige or white walls," says Drew. "I told Jaime to go wild, be daring."

Looking at the brilliant walls in his wife's studio, Drew laughs and says, "Perhaps I shouldn't have said that."

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The house that hemp built