Serah Mead and Gabriel Woytek have worked with Community Rebuilds (CR) in a remarkable number of different capacities over the years. They were involved in the program’s early, most formative years and helped craft the soul of the program. They stirred that primordial soup of infinite possibility and helped generate the energy that would propel the program into the future. They worked as interns, administrators, public relations, builders, designers, supervisors, and eventually they wound up living in a CR home themselves. Alex Henderson of The Last Straw talked with Serah, Gabriel, and their daughter Delly about the journey of building a life in a straw bale home in Moab
Gabriel moved to Moab in 2010 and quickly got involved in the local non-profit scene. It was in those circles that he met the founder and director of Community Rebuilds, Emily Niehaus. Gabriel didn’t have a construction or natural building background, but was inspired by the vision of CR, and eagerly jumped on as an administrator. He joined the board of CR just after ground was broken on the first CR home build. “At the time, one of the biggest challenges for CR was finding recipient families to join the program,” said Gabriel. Straw bale construction was still relatively unknown to most community members, so there was hesitation to apply. “It’s kind of hard to imagine now because there’s a waiting list and obviously different types of demand for affordable housing,” said Gabriel, “I was brought on board to be involved on the oversight level, but also to be a presence for outreach and hopefully get some more people to sign up.”
Serah moved to Moab in 2011. A couple of years prior, Serah had spent time living in Hale County, Alabama where she worked in affordable housing with Habitat for Humanity and befriended a number of the architecture students from Auburn University’s Rural Studio. “I was incredibly inspired by my time in Alabama and developed new understandings around shelter, and what a home
Delly and Gabriel inspect formwork.
is, and who gets to have one,” said Serah, “I began to see home ownership as a way that a community can help lift people out of poverty.” Upon moving to Moab, Serah applied and was accepted to the 2011 CR internship program, joining the team that would build the second CR house. While interning, Serah wore many hats. “I split my time between the office and the job site,” said Serah, “I helped start the Community Rebuilds blog and organize the first permaculture conference with Joel Glanzberg. I also helped Emily Niehaus with admin and the website while helping the team build on site. “I was psyched to work with the team,” Serah said, recounting the communal and playful heart at the center of Community Rebuilds, “We were all living in a bunk house. It was this weird old house with a bunch of people living in it. We were having parties and doing creative activities together and just becoming like a family. It was really amazing.”
Once the internship ended, Serah and Gabriel moved to Oregon and spent time living on a sheep farm. But the pull of the high desert was strong. Within a few years they returned to Moab and Serah rejoined CR as a full time office administrative assistant to help expand the internship program. Meanwhile, Gabriel decided to apply for the CR internship. “By that time I had become a lot more familiar with tools and general construction, just as you naturally do as a farmer. I was always really fond of the internship program and I thought, well, if we’re going to move back to Moab and Serah’s going to work for Community Rebuilds, I wonder if there’s a chance for me to actually just go through the internship program myself.” Gabriel was accepted and honed his natural building skills. Upon completing the internship program he became a building supervisor with CR, helping coordinate construction during the first year that CR built two homes at once. Serah worked in the Community Rebuilds office for one year. During that time it became apparent that the organization needed a loan officer in order to process the USDA 502 loans so that Emily could focus more on development and fundraising. “One day it suddenly became clear that I was on the path to being a loan officer,” said Serah, “so right around that time I stopped working there and Gabe finished up being construction supervisor.” Serah went on to work with the local Moab radio station KZMU and Gabriel spent the next few years working in conventional construction gaining insight into the world of general contracting and affordable housing, and eventually got involved in local politics.
A couple of years went by and Delly was born. For Serah and Gabriel, finding stable housing in Moab over the years hadn’t been easy. Serah and Gabriel had lived with a number of different roommates in at least six different houses. “We started to feel the need to make a home in Moab,” said Serah, “At that point neither of us had worked for Community Rebuilds for a few years, so we decided to put our name in. Both of our incomes happened to fit in this very narrow window of qualifying income to debt ratio.”
The family’s application was accepted and a new and unexpected journey began: Serah, Gabriel, and Delly would be building their own straw home with Community Rebuilds. “We just got really lucky,” said Serah, “It started happening really fast. Delly was four months old when we broke ground.”
The CR build team finishes exterior plaster.
Building a Straw Bale Home
Community Rebuilds built three homes the year that Serah, Gabriel, and Delly were recipients. Two of the homes were built as twin homes with a shared wall, and the third–Serah, Gabriel, and Delly’s home–was a standalone structure. The home was based on a floor plan that had been developed by CR over the years. The interior square footage of the home is a modest 729 sq ft and the exterior footprint (which includes the thickness of the straw bale walls) is 915 sq ft.
After many years working with CR, Serah and Gabriel had developed a deep love for natural building and skill in the craft, and they invested themselves fully in the build. “I was doing the best I could to build,” said Serah, “but there was only so much I could do with an infant strapped to my body. Once I could put her on my back, then I could do plastering, so I got to work on the plasters for the three homes.”
Serah and Gabriel worked alongside interns through each step of the build. “Our crew was so conscientious that they bordered on perfectionist. They would spend way too long on a very small section. So we developed a mantra: level, but not flat. We don’t mind the curves, we just don’t want it to be bumpy and jagged. We were saying that about the floor, about the walls, about the ceiling, about the corners, about everything. The interns really wanted to do a good job, but when you’re working with natural materials, sometimes it’s just going to do what it wants to do. When I look now at our floor it has so many imperfections and waves and grooves and swishes where you can see the trowel marks and I can see our friend Marcus working the floor as he’s doing it.
So many of the materials used in conventional building have been designed to hide the presence of the hand. Working with paints and sheet material and square corners and right angles and things like that, you don’t see it. [When] working with natural materials, the presence of the hand is the first thing that you see. It’s our dream to live in a natural built home and that’s a big part of it.” Building well is far more than a technical process. There is a shifting mood and magical dimension to the work that constantly needs tending. Serah and Gabriel described some of these fluctuations in energy and some of the ways that they kept the spirit of the work lifted. “There was the day where we were laying down the first lift of the adobe floor. Community Rebuilds always celebrates these days. There’s a big community event fire, our local marching band usually shows up, there is some kind of dance party playlist going on and I remember that day was epic. I mean there were so many people who came out to the floor stomp. A lot of people are barefoot, a lot of people are just in their hiking boots, and there are Conga lines and certain people are stomping certain corners. I actually have a video of some dear friends that are helping with this floor and they’re dancing to Madonna and they’re down on their knees and it was so emotive. I remember actually getting very emotional. It was just people from all different facets of our lives in this community, you know, not just the quirky hippie, natural builders but even wealthy folks that we rarely ever see were showing up and it was really special.”
“We also called in a lot of favors from our natural building friends along the way,” said Serah, “our whole bedroom was plastered in one night by a big group of very close friends.” “Throughout the process Delly kind of took on the role of mascot for the crew that was building the house,” said Gabe, “She gave a lot of great motivation to the crew, and it framed their work knowing that the home was going to be a place that was going to imprint really heavily on this young person’s life. That was really special. We’re lucky to have Delly on our side in that way.”
Serah and Delly plaster interior walls.
Living in a Straw Bale Home
Having now lived in the home for over five years, there is little that Serah, Gabriel, and Delly would change. “We spent so much time visioning and sketching. Once we got the furniture that we needed, we haven’t changed it. We’re really using this little rectangle the best that we possibly can and we’ve really put things in the best places that they could be. When people come to visit us one of the first things they note is how comfortable it feels. It feels like home. I feel so welcomed here and natural and comfortable and cozy and I think that has a lot to do with how much we thought about the shapes and the objects and the proportions and the colors. We really put a lot of effort into that, and it paid off.”
Many major design decisions were centered on Delly growing up in the space. “We weren’t so hip on different forms or schools of thought around childhood development, but we did make a lot of choices based on our instinct of what we thought would be good for her,” said Serah. They built special niches in Delly’s bedroom, one at an adult’s chest level, and another carved underneath the windowsill about a foot off the ground that Delly could use to keep her treasures. They installed blocking behind the plaster in Delly’s room to support the eventual rearrangement of the room and construction of a bunk bed.
”We also decided to create this day bed in the living area. We worked with our dear friends Doni and Kaki to build it using earth bags. The thought behind it was that the little zone under the day bed would be the perfect child cave. We put foam pads under there and some books for Delly, and it was her little fort when she was smaller. As she grew up, it was a place that she could hold on to while she was walking. And then she got bigger, and she was able to climb up the bench and then onto the day bed. It’s also a big place for having sweet moments and being able to be in the sunlight or by the window.”
“We’ve both noticed as our kid has grown how the house continues to provide for us. At every level of her development and every level of our existence as parents, the house has felt like enough,” said Serah.
“Sure it might be nice to have one more extra room, but I find myself being content with the size of our footprint and I resist the urge to fantasize about extending the building or making an addition or anything like that,” said Gabriel, “I find that I’m not only satisfied with what we have, but I’m proud of demonstrating that a small family can easily live at this size. I hope and wish that this would be viewed as more of the normal status quo when it isn’t.”
Because of their skill sets, Serah and Gabriel are also able to maintain the house, patching any cracks or broken plaster that might appear. “We actually decided not to put a glue wash on our wall as a protective coating because that takes away some of your ability to make nice seamless patches.”
“Our dog does this weird thing where she licks the walls,” Serah said with a laugh, “there are a couple of places like this one in particular,” she pointed at a small section of wall, “those are dog licks.”
“I wonder if it’s the modified cornstarch that’s integral to the mix,” said Gabriel. He laughed and looked around at the home, “It’s perfectly imperfect, right. That’s natural buildings. They have a way of making that a beautiful thing. There’s something artful about them. When I walk into a lot of natural built homes or homes that have natural plaster or similar features, there’s self-expression involved from the people that built it and it feels like I’m admiring a work of art as well as a dwelling.”
Day bed in living area with child cave beneath.
Serah Mead, Gabe Woytek, and Delly live in a straw bale home in Moab, Utah. They are involved in community radio, local politics, and play groups.
