*Susan Beal poses in front of her not-yet-completed hempcrete home on a 235-acre former Vermont dairy farm last autumn. The siding was later replaced with cedar shakes. Photo courtesy of Susan Beal*

By Jean Lotus

A second Vermont winter is in full swing as a New England couple awaits the completion of their hemp home on a former 235-acre dairy farm property outside of Bennington.

But after a series of contractors and bad luck, owners Susan Beal and David Pearson still say their “enthusiasm is undaunted” to build and live in a hempcrete home on Shadow Brook Farm.

The small hemp home, where the couple will live after moving in their grown son to the property’s old farmhouse, is designed in the typical New England “salt box” vernacular. The family has owned the property since 1899, but most of the acreage is conserved.

Now that the walls and windows are finished, a small fireplace and an electric heater are demonstrating the heat efficiency of the hempcrete, Pearson told HempBuild Mag in December.

“All of the heating contractors were dubious, telling us we needed a really big heat-pump system to keep warm,” Pearson said. “But we can already see the hempcrete is performing very well. It’s nice and cozy in there.”

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*Whimsical touches to the Shadow Brook Farm hemp house include embedding in the plaster walls dozens of heart-shaped rocks Susan has collected over the years. Photo courtesy of Susan Beal*

The couple fell in love with natural building, but rejected straw bale, cob and adobe as unsuitable for New England weather. They finally settled on hempcrete after a 2018 visit to two hempcrete homes in Asheville, NC.

“We looked at the two houses from the outside,” Beal told HempBuild Mag. “We didn't get a tour or anything. We ardently wanted to build a hempcrete house, but no one was really doing it that we could find.”

They finally met with Tom Rossmassler of Massachusetts-based HempStone, LLC and Shelby Howland, who built his own family hemp house in Goshen, MA.

Rossmassler showcased the house in the US Hemp Building Association’s 2023 hemp home contest and especially featured some whimsical touches such as embedding into the walls the heart-shaped rocks Beal has collected for decades.

The small house is south-facing to capture solar heat, but the owners didn’t want to achieve air-tightness by meeting Passive House standards.

“We’ve lived in a 200-year-old farmhouse,” that’s already drafty, Beal said. The couple also rescued doors, kitchen cabinets and flooring “from the landfill” by buying them second-hand from other local sources.
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HempStone’s Rossmassler recommended looking for a greener roofing system and the couple chose the innovative Ottawa, Canada-based Euroshield roofing system.

“The roof is beautiful. It's made out of recycled tires, and it looks like slate,” Beal said.

The project has admittedly taken longer than they expected. The Bennington project’s architect and one of the early contractors sadly died before the project could be finished, and early contractors didn’t measure correctly for the home’s windows, meaning the window frames had to be re-cut. There were also some issues with the walls not being plumb, the couple said.

Contractors were skeptical because Bennington doesn’t have the “groovy vibe” that has blossomed in other parts of Vermont, Beal observed. Early traditional contractors were trained at a workshop at Waitsfield-based Yestermorrow Build/Design School and “came back enthusiastic” but were frustrated by the challenges of hand-casting a hempcrete wall around a frame.

“‘I could have built you two houses by now,’” Beal reported that one contractor told her.

*Co-owner David Pearson poses with family dogs inside the Shadow Brook Farm hempcrete house last autumn. Photo courtesy of Susan Beal*

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Additionally, the cladding the couple had originally chosen didn’t take well to the natural pine-tar stain the couple chose. They’ve since re-shingled the house with traditional cedar shakes that fit the local vernacular architecture.

Even though the project has taken longer than expected, Beal and Pearson are still excited about the project. The couple’s new contractor is performing well — and after two years, the couple can finally envision themselves living in the new home.

“There's something about earthen houses,” Beal, who considers herself a “Luddite,” told HempBuild Mag.

“I think that it just feels so grounded. We like mechanical things that we can understand.”