[1]CARRYING PLACE, Ont. (02/02/12) - Janna Burford and Jon Hiscock are the owners of Owl Farm Studios near Carrying Place, Ont. Seen here on Thursday, Feb. 2, Hiscock and Burford built their studio and home using straw bale walls to create an eco-friendly, local-product building. Photo by Rachel Psutka.
By Rachel Psutka
Prince Edward County has long been a Mecca to emerging artists and artisans, but few come prepared to build their own sustainable-living studios out of straw bales.
That’s just what owners of Owl Farm Studios, Janna Burford and Jon Hiscock, did in 2009, creating an artist’s paradise using straw bales as insulation in a brand new structure on Victoria Road.
The straw bales, purchased from a farmer near Big Island, are just one part of the locally produced property that the artists have created near Carrying Place.
“The straw bale thing happened because we wanted to do something eco-friendly, and while new buildings never are completely eco-friendly, we still wanted to do this,” explained Burford.
The young couple, who have been together since high school, started off by building a straw bale studio, which housed them for the first winter in the county. They then moved on to building a straw bale house the following summer, with timber structural support.
“This building took two years to put together, but we weren’t working on it full-time,” said Burford. “You can only really build with these materials in the spring. The plaster needs to dry, and if you do it in the in winter, it freezes. You have to do it in warm weather.”
The straw, while being local and eco-friendly, is also a heat efficient way of insulating a house.
“The walls are 18 inches thick,” said Hiscock. “They retain a lot of thermal mass. It’s cool in the summer and warm in the winter. There’s the esthetic reason too.”
“I think it’s beautiful,” said Burford.
The straw is not structural to the artists’ home, serving mostly an esthetic and insulating purpose.
“If the walls got knocked out, this place isn’t going to fall down. It’s supported by wood. If it’s not done properly, the bales will rot, just like wood. So we have a really large overhang, and that helps protect the wall against rain,” said Burford.
Burford, a potter, and Hiscock, an acrylic painter and framer, started the plans for the structure while living in Toronto. Burford had long been coming to Prince Edward County with her family to stay at a cottage in Wellington, and the draw was natural when the couple decided to set up their studios.
“We were familiar with the area,” said Hiscock. “We would come up here on weekends with friends.”
“There’s a good artist community up here,” said Burford. “We were both comfortable with being here. We wanted to leave the city.”
This year, the artists are continuing their straw bale enterprise with the completion of a guest suite, aptly named the Owl’s Nest, which they hope to open this summer. The suite will allow guests to take in the county from an eco-friendly view, according to Burford, as well as hopefully bringing business to their studio.
“We wanted to share what we’ve built with other people. We enjoy it so much that it’s nice to enjoy it with others as well. A lot of people don’t have the opportunity to live or stay in a straw bale place,” said Burford.
“It’s good to expose people to the natural building, and everyone is always blown away by it,” said Hiscock.
The couple has already started plans to have an organic garden and is hoping to have chickens on the property in the future, all part of their plan to draw tourists to the property.
“We’re not in the main area down in the county, so it’s harder to get people to come up here to the studio. We’ve been on the Arts Trail and the Studio Tour. I know it takes a while to build business. People don’t really know about us yet, it’ll just take time,” said Burford.