Who’s afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? Not Suzanne Belongia, social action director for the Diocese of Winona, who is building a straw-bale house in the picturesque lakes region of southern Minnesota with housemates from a Catholic Worker community. Suzanne began volunteering with the Catholic Worker ten years ago and later moved into a Catholic Worker community. Friends have pitched in on the construction, and the home will be ready to move into in the Fall. The house will be spacious but quite efficient, taking advantage of passive solar heating of living space and geothermal heating of water. Suzanne explained the construction process during a tour earlier this week prior to the diocesan Ministry Days. On a day like the one we toured (75 degrees and partly cloudy), home construction sounded like fun!

Below: Suzanne with mud plaster mixer and a close-up of a wall shows how the mud and straw adhere to make a strong bond. It was solid, I can testify to that!

From the outside, the house looks like many houses under construction in the U.S.

And on the inside, too.

Suzanne and her housemates camp out at a field nearby when they work on the house.

– Jeffry Korgen