Enchanting Straw Bale Cottage & Tiny A-frame Rentals Save Farm!

I'm Talia, I'm a proud Airbnb superhost, and we're here on my land, Jean Marie's Garden. We are certified organic herb farmers. This land that we tend is 12 and a half acres. We've got two A-frames, and then this is our straw bale cottage. Airbnb hosting has really changed things for me, and I am so grateful for it. I, and I'm not, I'm not just sucking up to Airbnb. I'm so legitimately grateful that Airbnb exists, and it's an option for people like me. You know, we started a small farm from scratch, and I don't think that our small farm would still be in existence if we didn't have Airbnb. Honestly, we were just hemorrhaging money and decided we needed an income stream, and we needed it now, and so we started renting out camping units, essentially just to have that income stream coming in allowed us to continue building our farm up to the point where we were able to add, you know, this structure. We redid those structures, so they're more of a permanent thing. We've added the pavilion. So as you enter the property, the first thing that you see is our open-air pavilion, and this is what has our kitchen and our hot shower. There's a grill. There's a fire pit. There's just kind of a communal space, and then under the awning of the barn, right behind that tractor, is our very small, modest farm store, which has some goodies, you know, snacks and herbs for sale and things like that, and then our bathroom facility is actually located between the pavilion and the cottage, and so it's its own separate facility. So we're here at one of our A-frames. We have two of these, and they're both situated in the woods so that they're very secluded from the other units, which I think is really nice that you're not right on top of one another. Each of our places also has a private area in the woods with hammocks and just kind of an outdoor shaded area where you can hang out and have your own private space if you don't feel like hanging out in the communal spaces, and then the side actually opens up, and the side is clear, so if you wanna keep it closed, you can still see outside and look at the stars, or you can open it up and have more of an outdoor experience. So this is the inside. It's pretty simple but really comfy. We have the locally made mattresses. There's a couple shelves here, which you might see a little later, that have just some useful articles on them for your stay. This window opens up to allow a little airflow, and then obviously this opens. This is all clear so you can see outside while you're lying in bed, and then I love this window above us because it just gives you a perfect view into the night sky, and it's just a really comfortable, comfortable small space. My very first Airbnb guest was the night I gave birth to my second child, and I was on a three-month unpaid maternity leave and kind of worried about how we were gonna make ends meet, and then I was actually able to, with my toddler and my brand new baby in tow, for the next three months during the season that we were open here, come up and take care of things with them, and I'm not gonna say that it was always easy. I had my baby strapped to me, and I was changing sheets and doing things, and it could be hot, and I could be sweaty, and I was emotional because my hormones were shifting back down to what they normally are and all of the things, but I actually ended up making more than I did at my job through my Airbnb for that summer, and it took that pressure off immensely because, like I said, I was worried about having an unpaid maternity leave. It was really great. I felt really fortunate, and then it's been really fun. I don't know if I expected it to be as much fun as it has been, and people come up here, and they're on vacation, and they're happy, and I'm giving them joy, and then they're giving me joy, and I was explaining it to a fellow student that I've been working in such a love fest for so many years now that I've kind of forgotten that the work environment isn't always a love fest, and we're about to walk down to a straw bale cottage through these glorious plants, doug fir, and ocean spray. So this is our custom straw bale cottage. It was built with the idea that we wanted as much of it as possible to go back to the earth when we were finished. Obviously, we want a sound structure, but someday when it's no longer sound, we didn't want a bunch of additional building materials lying around cluttering things up. So we dug a trench and used rocks from our property to build up and mortar in place, and then we laid a thin slab for our floor, as thin as we could. It's post and beam. We got all of our lumber from a custom sawmill that's local, family-owned. They sustainably harvest their wood. Great people. We used a lime plaster, which allows the straw bale interior to both breathe because it's important that the straw bales can breathe and allow moisture in and out. We also used it because it's a fireproof and waterproof substance. You'll notice as we walk around, the line of the roof is curved. We have cedar shingles. And the roofing insulation, we used sheep's wool insulation, which is also really a great insulation because it is a pest deterrent naturally. It's a natural fire retardant. I would be honored if you joined me inside. Welcome. So here we are. The straw bale cottage. It's designed specifically to feel like you're sort of on the edge of this hillside, which we are, you know, looking out at the valley below us. It's a tall structure, so you feel a lot of that space, although it's really only 200 square feet or a little under that in actual size. So it's a small structure. This space doesn't have a kitchen or indoor bathroom. There are those facilities here, but just not in this particular space. There is power. This cottage is on a very limited solar power system. And I mean, it's limited. You know, we've got a much larger system at the pavilion where most of the power needs can take place. It's really meant to just provide some, a little bit of extra light in the early morning and evening. You know, but when you're here, the hope is that you're kind of connecting to the natural cycles. And so you're not leaving the lights on all night long anyway. You know, the hope is that you're kind of just being more connected to that. And if you're not, you're here for your own reasons. So you can do whatever, but just know that you're not gonna have power all night. So then we have our bed. We get it from Cotton Cloud, which is a company in Portland, Oregon. So not too far away. So these beds are made with a layer of wool. It doesn't smell like a barn. It just is this layer of wool. You don't even know it's there. So they're not off gassing any of that. So that's a really neat feature of these beds. And I always try to leave, you know, little treasures for guests, you know, lip balms or lotions or fresh berries or whatever. It's fun. That's the really fun part of it. What's this? What if something knocked back? Now that would be weird. This is our truth window. So it shows, we're not lying. There's actual straw in the walls. Now you know that we're telling the truth. Now, typically, I'm just gonna say, for those of you interested in straw bale, you would normally have a layer of plexi here because this is a place where moisture can get in, but because we don't have a shower in this particular room, we don't have kitchen, all of those things that create moisture, we're not too worried about moisture in here. We have a vented propane heat stove. If you've ever stayed in a place that has a non-vented propane stove, you'll really appreciate a vented one, but it's super easy. You flip a switch, you flip your temperature, it's on. It makes it so easy and it heats up, as you could imagine, in a 200 square foot straw bale structure fast. We also laid out the windows so that you can sit and gaze. This is an awesome bear skull I found in the woods and it needed to be in here. And it's fun, because people will come and they'll leave little things, like people will leave fun little things they found in the woods as part of this, and it's really great. Yeah, I definitely can't promise that you're going to see certain animals specifically, but the animals that I see as a resident here include all sorts of things, big and small. I think if you sat here long enough and you looked, you'd see some stuff. What if right now Sasquatch walked right in front of these windows? Wow, now that would be cool. So when you're sleeping in this bottom bed, we kind of planned it out where if you're in the bottom and you have the curtains pulled, it actually stays pretty dark in this bottom area, which is kind of nice if you want to sleep in, because when you're on vacation, a lot of us want to sleep in. I'm going to just head on up to the loft. This is our loft, and this is where, I mean, everything in this cottage is handmade by my husband. He's just dreamy, you know, but this is where it really shines through, because you come up this handmade staircase to this beautiful loft, and it's got these cherry limbs that he took, and there's even still pieces of lichen hanging there, and it's just really fantastic. And really up here, it's just a cozy bed, and it's a place to have your quiet, peaceful night's sleep. There's a window looking out at the path coming in. My favorite thing to do is to sit up here and then sort of look out at Mill Creek Valley below. It's pretty nice. You know, we kind of, we wanted a majority of the space to be windows, because it's pretty glorious here. It's glorious. It is not pretty glorious. It's amazingly, fantastically glorious here. And so we just wanted that to be part of it. When you're in this space, you're mostly just looking at the outside. We wanted to keep things in this space pretty plain, so that you're, and colorless for the most part, so that your eye is drawn to the color that's outside. You know, when you're around just sort of browns and muted whites, and then you have this green and purple popping outside, you're sort of like, what's going on out there? And then you also have your own private patio down here with also amazing views of Mount Hood from the patio. We also wanted something that was going to be fun. The majority of the building was through Dave, you know? And so we wanted something that he was going to have fun with because this is his creative outlet. You know, this is his way to build art. And so I kind of gave the general idea of what I had in mind like how I wanted it to be kind of this D shape to a certain extent, you know, circular as much as we could, the windows here, blah, blah, blah. But then the rest of it, he did. I mean, he came up with all the, you know, ideas for the woodworking and how the loft was going to look and how, you know, we would talk about materials a little bit, but it's fun to be creative together. And then the floor is hand-thrown tiles that we were given by a friend and they are a really great addition to this cottage. You know, the floor is a little uneven and because they're hand-thrown tiles, you know, they're not perfect. They're not made on a machine and they're each unique and they're a little worn. They're used. They have a really great feel to them. I love them. Three of the windows in here open to allow for some airflow. These are handmade windows that my husband made. I just, everything is handmade, you know? So when you, just every little detail, you know, obviously we bought these, but now I'm looking for things that we, you know, but like everything's, you know, it's the bed frames he made by hand, you know, everything. It's just really special. So straw bale is very insulative and the sheep's wool as well. So it really retains cool in the summer and it retains heat in the winter. And it also doesn't take long to artificially make those happen. So that's a really great property of straw bale. You know, we get a lot of people asking us about the building process because they're interested in building straw bale. When you start building with straw bale, it just takes a lot longer to do things. And, you know, there's costs associated with that. It's also, they're thick walls too. And we decided, we sawed our straw bales in half and retied them. So they're not the full thickness of a full bale because in a 200 square foot footprint, that would make the inside even that much smaller, you know? And we realized that it's not a living space. It doesn't need to have that huge thick bale. And it's also this structure, I should reiterate, it's actually held up by a post and beam. So the bales have no sort of structural, they're not working in a structural capacity. Let's say that. We built, we laid the floor and then we made the post and beam structure, put the roof on. And then from there, we were able to build the walls and do the plaster and all of that. You know, and I think that's a really nice way to go because we found ourselves in the situation where it took a little bit longer than we thought. And we found ourselves where it was raining. And so then we had this roof over our bales and we could tarp it and allow for, you know, the rains to pass and then kind of finish, which was great. We started it in October and finished it by August. So almost a full year because we finished it at the end of August. So really, yeah, 11 months. I'm so grateful for Airbnb. I'm so grateful that it took off the way it did and that people who use it are looking for that experience because staying with us is, it is definitely not just your regular run-of-the-mill stay. Like it is an experience from the get-go, from the drive up here to the noises, to the lack of noises, to the everything. I mean, it's just the whole thing is an experience. And I feel as if I'm getting the people through Airbnb who are looking for that. And so it's just been a win-win because then it turns into that love fest that I was talking about earlier where it's just this like loving exchange between us that I just didn't picture hosting a house would be like. But it is. Thank you for watching our video and for stopping by Tiny House Expedition. I'm Alexis. And I'm Christian. Don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe. And for more tiny home tours and stories, click the videos below. And join us on Patreon for bonus content. Including face-to-face conversations with us. We hope to see you there. Thanks guys. Have a good one.