It's more like CASBA found me.

You know, there were five or six of us who had dabbled in straw bale construction, and naturally, since we were all just flying by the seat of our pants, we were sharing notes and, you know, "What have you tried?" You know, "I tried this and it seems to work," and, and so on.

And so we finally said, you know, "Let's sort of formalize this sharing of notes and experience." And so we formed CASBA.

One of those people was architect David Arkand, who along with Annie Tilt, his wife and partner in their architecture firm, made the trek down from the Bay Area.

The 20 or so of us gathered here in California Valley in the heart of the Carrizo Plain February 1996, and it was over the course of that weekend that the California Straw Building Association was born.

Those exobalbs, or bales on end between studs, may have led David to his newfound clay religion, but the system was also part of a bigger overall strategy, fire resistance and preserving square footage.

Working on that existing foundation, we didn't want the rooms to get smaller.

And you know, a straw bale, when you're working with it in bale form, is at a minimum 15 inches.

That's its narrow dimension, whether it's on edge or on end.

If it's laid flat, it's actually 23 inches, which is why it fits between those studs.

So rather than making those rooms on that wing smaller by putting the insulation of the straw bales to the interior, we reverse the system, put the studs in plywood with the plywood to the inside of the room, and then stack those bales on end from the exterior.

So that was one reason to do it, was just the reality of reusing the foundation and not wanting smaller bedrooms.

Often, it's all of the above.