RIVER Bourne Community Farm was established in 2009 on land adjoining the River Bourne at Cow Lane in Laverstock, Salisbury.

It’s aim was simple – to create a sustainable working farm based on a 1950s/1960s model.

Chickens, pigs, sheep, cattle and goats have now taken up residence. Run by full-time staff and a team of volunteers, education was always going to play a large part of the project and school groups are regular visitors.

Thanks to 80 per cent funding from Natural England, the farm’s straw bale classroom and eco toilet block were completed at the end of 2011. Suitable for school groups and community courses, the classroom, built from 550 straw bales, is going to be put to good use.

Farm manager Jane Wilkinson says: “We always wanted the educational side to the farm and the classroom gives us greater access to this. We are running a lot of BTEC courses through local secondary schools and eventually we want to run apprenticeships.”

Forget the story of the three little pigs, modern straw bale buildings cannot be blown down, though you do need a specialist builder.

David Boyden is such a builder. Having acquired a MSc in green architecture, he now runs Equinox Services (UK) Limited, based in Dinton, and is committed to creating the greenest possible buildings using modern methods. “The goal was to make the buildings as green as possible,” he tells me. “A straw bale building is about twice as efficient as a conventional building in terms of insulation.

Straw bales lock in carbon and so the building is carbon negative.”

“One of the problems we faced was that the ground was full of rubbish so we used car tyres for the foundations with gravel. All the timber has been locally sourced and the straw bales came from an organic farm at Upavon.

The bales are held together with hazel staking which has come from a coppice in Winterslow and that holds the bales together. The windows used in the building were rescued from going to landfill.”

The straw bales have been rendered outside with a lime and horsehair render and the roof tiled with cedarwood shingles. Recycled plastic bottles provide the roofspace insulation and so lots of green boxes are ticked with this building.

David’s team were also commissioned to build the new eco toilet block. Complete with green roof, Jane can reassure users that any odour is prevented by the addition of sawdust, and the resulting compost can be used on flowerbeds (though not the vegetable plot).