The Highland Hemp House is a “hempcrete” home in Bellingham, Washington. The project started in 2014 with researching healthy insulation for a small renovation. Discovering that hemp hurds and lime could be combined to achieve a near ideal building material, Pamela Bosch was propelled into a renovation and construction project with the intention of transforming the way we build. Today, nearing completion, the house is offered as a model of energy efficiency, carbon sequestration, ecological design, aesthetic beauty, endurance, and hopeful transformation.

Hemp Democracy

by Pamela Bosch

Here in the Northwest, when the days start getting longer and the first blossoms appear, I feel the energy moving like the sap of a tree. Eager to shake off the winter slowdown and the covid isolation, I am yearning to re-energize nurturing relationships. Along with lengthening days, a new political climate invites a change in the public conversation. We are displacing the horribly chaotic, disintegrative, life rupturing distress with an awareness that we need to move, to work together, to employ some genuine problem-solving regarding how we are going to thrive on this planet.

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I have learned from the experience of building and living in my hempcrete house that what is possible can be so much better than what we have settled for. Why don’t we build buildings that are healthy for inhabitants as well as for the interconnected systems that support life on earth? We have gotten used to fiberglass and OSB and petroleum-based fabrics, paints, floors, . . . As if there were no choice. As if hydrocarbons were easy to process—deceptively cheap and abundant. As if buildings that will mold, and off-gas, and deteriorate in a short time made long term economic sense. And as if materials that grow from the sun, and soil, and water, and seed, with minimal processing and endless regeneration were too radical. The hardest part of persuading people that hempcrete houses are, indeed, solutions to toxic, wasteful buildings, is convincing them that change is not the painful option. Not changing is what will cost. We are in a climate crisis.

Though business-as-usual may feel safe, I am here to tell you that working at the upside of innovation is much more gratifying. The things that we need to do to make healthy building materials from plants and simple minerals are not mechanically, technologically, or logistically difficult. They are politically and psychologically difficult.

• We need, first, to stop treating hemp as a crop that should be so regulated and controlled (it is a good deal healthier for humans and for agricultural systems than GMO corn and soybeans).

• Secondly, we need to invest in some processing, manufacturing, and distribution infrastructure—nothing as sophisticated as developing a new vaccine, but decorticators and mills like were operating 100 years ago. (We will improve them, of course, but the technology is easily within reach.) Facilities would best be sized to serve nearby farms and rural economic development.

• Next, we need some education; from public awareness to workforce training. (Aside from the skill of plastering, most of the labor involved in building with hempcrete could employ the current workforce that would be displaced—insulators, laborers, painters).

• And finally, we need vision, confidence, and cooperation; we need to recognize the win/win that is both necessary and reimbursing when we share the challenges of reimagining the way we build.

It is increasingly clear that we need each other. We thrive when our life support systems are in balance. Humans are in balance with nature when we get our food, clothing, shelter, medicine, connection, and meaning from the above ground resources that we cultivate together. It may sound trite when expressed that way, but for a nation of such wide economic disparity—a nation built by conquest and slavery and wasteful exploitation of natural resources, for the dominant culture sharing is a paradigm shift.

If you think of the real advances that have benefitted all of humanity, they have not generally come from the dominant culture. Sure, prosperity produces marvelous things, but civil liberties, labor laws, voting rights, women being educated and owning property, democracy, . . . these things that made the quality of life better for those who were exploited, these movements of the people are what has bolstered quality of life for the whole spectrum of humanity.

Fundamental human equality is a natural law as much as it is a moral code. Just as the risk of new covid variants is high when large populations don’t have access to vaccines, and as borders and boundaries are overwhelmed when we permit human rights abuses in foreign lands, instability and alienation creeps into every neighborhood. Denying our commonality is suicidal. Extreme wealth juxtaposed with populations who struggle to meet basic needs belies an ignorance of our natural condition. Whenever some humans benefit from the exploitation of others, the whole system suffers. It is time that we really grasp the many ways that everyone and everything is connected.

What has this to do with building with hemp? I can tell you from the experience of building my house that I have been disillusioned that support for this very pragmatic and achievable solution has not been from those in high positions. Not yet.

Those in positions of influence, who could rapidly promote utilizing the multidimensional potential of the hemp plant to build healthy, carbon capturing buildings --with the added benefit of cleaning the atmosphere, the soil, and the water--are ambivalent at best. The priorities of architects, governments, NGOs formed to accelerate “green building” have not shifted from designing with materials that perpetuate petroleum dependency. Unfortunately, where the money is flowing, the imagination is weak, disruption is scary, and talking heads are stuck in the tar sands.

How can life itself be less important than stock portfolios and individual prosperity? The support that I have found has come from the margins, from dreamers and risk takers, hemp building pioneers in the international community, and from artisans and young interns who want to participate in creating a better world-- whose own hands have helped put some love in my walls, some vision in their plans, and whose interest has helped me to see more clearly. If a grandmother with a little help from some fellow dreamers and some millennials can build a model of housing that could restore health on earth, where are the people with the resources to accelerate this healing?

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In the springtime, when the night temperatures are below freezing and the days are warm and sunny, the Maple tree pulls the water and nutrients up from the earth, through its roots, trunk, and branches to awaken the cycle of growth, transforming sap into leaves that will capture the energy of the sun. There is a short window, a few days when humans can tap into the tree’s abundance, this regenerative pump, reaping the reward of Maple syrup. I recently watched a video of young Native Americans tapping the Maple trees in Minnesota as part of a virtual conference put on by Alex White Plume and Winona LaDuke. It brought me back to my childhood when, not 50 miles from where the event was filmed, my father used to tap the trees. I remember how animated he became when, after a long Minnesota winter, it was time for the rising of the sap.

Now, an old woman myself, I have built this house that I hope will inspire humans to align with each other and with the generosity of nature to shift our thinking, to elevate the value of balance and equality. Only by sharing our skills and our resources do we have the hope of restoring a healthy life for humans on Earth. There is nothing more gratifying than collaborating with the interconnected dreamers who will manifest the wholeness that sustains us all.

Where are the architects, industrialists, legislators, investors, and builders who are positions of influence to direct our values toward thriving? What is of greater value? If they are unwilling to let go of the erroneous belief that money must come first, perhaps we should amplify the voices of Grandmothers who understand the benefits of nurturing, Millennials who want to have a future, and Nature that sustains us all.

“The support that I have found has come from the margins, from dreamers and risk takers, hemp building pioneers in the international community, and from artisans and young interns who want to participate in creating a better world.”

— Pamela Bosch, owner Highland Hemp House, Bellingham, Wash.