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Feature Articles:
Tierra
Madre: A Community of Straw-Bale Homes
by Greg Bloom, FNS Editor
From its beginnings in 1995, in a Catholic church in Sunland Park, New Mexico, Tierra Madre has become the largest straw-bale home
community in the United States, according to Lothar Fastje, Tierra Madre's construction manager. Despite this notable status, Tierra
Madre's residents and administrative staff don't spend much time emphasizing the size of their 20 home community: they are much
more interested in talking about how inexpensive and energy efficient
their homes are and how they built a community instead of just another subdivision.
Building with Used Tires: Anthony, NM's Women's Intercultural
Center
by Greg Bloom, FNS Editor
Old tires sitting in fields: they probably scar most communities throughout the US and Mexico but their numbers are a particular
problem along the poor US-Mexico border. Not only are the tires ugly but they are also a health threat as they partially fill with water during
summer rains and can become the breading grounds for
encephalitis-carrying mosquitoes.
While in Ciudad Juárez the used-tire unions have gone out and
collected many old radials and retreads from empty lots and fields, in Anthony, New Mexico, a poor community just miles from the border,
the Women's Intercultural Center has been dealing with the problem of excess tires in its own unique way: it's filling tires with 300 pounds
of dirt and using them to form the walls of a new community center.
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