The Barn

Ionia’s Barn serves as a local vocational center and folk-school for traditional crafts. It has a large construction shop set up for building naturally efficient homes from timbers, straw and clay. The barn holds timber framing and clay plastering workshops, woodworking and pottery enterprises and projects. It has wide open airy spaces for drying of the harvests. It has a dojo for yoga, martial arts and peer support circles. This is the largest straw/clay building in this country and perhaps the world.  The breathable walls are a radiating heat mass and have three times the R value of log or conventionally insulated buildings. Most of the materials have been sourced from Alaska: quality clay from Kasilof and barley straw from Delta Junction, log beams from Kenai, and cedar siding from Prince of Wales Island.