David and Carrie Chew live in a house made of straw. It has two bathrooms, a modern kitchen and a packed earthen floor. The exterior walls are made with stacked wheat straw bales covered in plaster.

Stucco can be damaged just as in any other home, allowing the straw inside to get wet.“If you have a loose board or your vinyl is loose and moisture gets behind there, there could be problems,” ...

Richard Venberg owned a custom furniture/cabinet shop in Colorado when he took a major step toward becoming an architect and one of Minnesota’s leading advocates of straw-bale construction. “Basically ...