*The Hemp Casita, built by Kansas State University students has traveled around the state on an educational mission. Photo courtesy Right Coast Hemp*

By Jean Lotus

A small student-built hemp demonstration structure nicknamed the “Hemp Casita” has criss-crossed the state of Kansas educating about the potential of building materials made of industrial hemp.

Now, some of the collaborators are working to bring that knowledge to New Jersey with an educational seminar in Manahawkin, NJ. May 10-12 that will cover industrial hemp from growing the plant to building with it.

“We are ready to create an East Coast Casita to educate about a new, healthy style of building,” Manahawkin, NJ - based Right Coast Hemp co-founder Kristin Orr-Santorelli told HempBuild Mag.

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KSU students and hempcrete instructor Angel Romero Jr. (front in black t shirt) squeeze into the Hemp Casita for a pose. Courtesy Right Coast Hemp

The two-day seminar will include instruction by longtime hemp construction expert Tom Rossmassler, founder and Chief Embodied Officer of Northampton, MA-construction company HempStone. Also instructing will be Angel Romero, Jr., a Dodge City, KS-based hemp building contractor who helped build the original casita.

Orr-Santorelli, founder of New Jersey children’s charity Hearts of Mercy, has developed her interest in her family’s farmland in KS into a full-blown obsession over the potential of industrial hemp, and brought that back to her home state of New Jersey.

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Students Richelle Brunner and Leandra Fischer apply hemp lime to forms in the walls of the K-State Casita, a traveling hemp structure meant to show off building materials. Photo courtesy of Michael Gibson

In 2022, Orr-Santorelli and House of Mercy sponsored students at Kansas State University who built the Casita in a special graduate seminar under architecture professor Michael Gibson.

Since then, the structure has traveled the state of Kansas. After it was built on the Manhattan, KS-campus of Kansas State, it was displayed at the Kansas State Fair and then in Augusta, KS at Midwest Hemp Technologies and then made its way to Dodge City, KS, where it has been displayed at Romero Jr.’s RAAX Dryvitt, LLC.

The next stop for the casita will be the state Capitol in Topeka, where the structure can give lawmakers a chance to see the potential of adding industrial hemp to the state’s agricultural economy.

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“This is a critical time that Kansas lawmakers are going to be looking at hemp laws,” Kelly Rippel told HempBuildMag. Rippel is co-founder of Kansans for Hemp and a member of the Kansas Department of Agriculture's hemp advisory panel.

One of the proposed new laws will bring Kansas hemp license fees down, Rippel said. “For [lawmakers] to be able to look with their own eyes and touch this structure, it will change their perspective,” Rippel added.

Orr-Santorelli and the other sponsors of the Casita are hoping it travels around the Midwest and are seeking sponsors to purchase a mobile trailer for the educational hemp structure.

“We are working to create a new healthy-building mindset,” Orr-Santorelli told HempBuild Mag.