BOISE (Idaho Statesman) — Driving around Idaho, you’ll find countless barns filled with straw bales. These big blocks of plant fibers make great beds if you’re a horse, but they could also line the walls of your forever home.
One such house is Bitterbrush, a house built with straw bale walls that sits at the end of a cul-de-sac in the Foothills above Boise. Built by Boise firm EarthCraft Construction, the property features several low-tech solutions to familiar problems, such as environmental controls and heating water, and is built with centuries-old techniques to produce a luxurious property.
At $600 per square foot, the sticker price of the property — which includes a 2,500-square-foot, three-bedroom house and a 1,200-square-foot workshop — exceeds $2.5 million. But Jon Clark, president and CEO of EarthCraft Construction, said his company does far more than just build a house…