A Straw Bale House and Fantail Grove

This week we jumped on a bus went on a field trip to see a straw bale house and Fantail Grove. The children were very excited to see a house made of straw as many of them had made clay and straw models last week. We are now in the explorative phase of the project and we are visiting examples of best practice. This week we were lucky enough to visit two sites a strawbale house and an organic hazel and olive farm.

One of our students Samson Dell lives in an incredibly beautiful strawbale house, he and his dad gave us a tour of their farm and house.

We met the pigs, Muscovy ducks, chickens and cows, strolled through the orchard, learned about how to build a pizza oven ...

We learned about the hot water tower and the solar hot water system. Inside the house there are touches of magic and repurposing everywhere ... The children were captivated by the window showing the straw beneath a layer of mud and clay. We learnt about solar panels, summer and winter solar gain, composting toilets. We got lots of ideas about how we could make our building sustainable.

We then jumped back on the bus and made our way to Fantail Grove in Greytown. We were lucky enough to all have a chance to pick and take home organic table grapes, sample a variety of olive oils, and crack hazelnuts using their new industrial machine.

The olive oils were delicious and the students really enjoyed tasting the difference between the different olive varieties.

This gave the students lots of food for thought about what we could do with the back field. A school olive oil farm? A hazelnut butter farm?