This week’s podcast is a special hempcrete double feature.
Hempcrete is a building material made from three ingredients — hemp hurd, lime binder and water — which forms a lightweight cementicious material with insulating properties.
First we talk to Monica Medina-McCurdy, executive director of All Together Now Pennsylvania, an organization focused on building resilient self-sufficient regional economies, with hemp playing a leading role.
Earlier this year, the organization was awarded a $48,000 grant from the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture to promote hemp building materials and textiles.
Medina-McCurdy said a portion of those funds will be used to host a hands-on hempcrete workshop May 6-7 in Barto.
The two-day workshop will be lead by hempcrete builder Cameron McIntosh of Americharnve, Pennsylvania’s leading hempcrete installer.
“We really want to attract people who are established already in the building trades because we think that there's a huge need for education,” Medina-McCurdy said.
Our second guest is Kim Croes, a contractor from Michigan who attended a hempcrete workshop with McIntosh last year and has since completed work on the first hempcrete house in Michigan.
Croes has been running a painting business for the past eight years. Her interest in hemp for building comes from her health concerns about toxic materials used in construction.
When she heard about hempcrete, she reached out to CBD hemp farmers who had extra hemp for sale.
“I needed specific hemp, Croes said. “I needed hemp that was grown for fiber. I needed it to be building-grade quality. And so just getting hemp was not as easy as it initially seemed.”
Croes said there are efforts underway to bring processing capacity to Michigan. She said she hopes to source local hemp hurds within a few years, but she said there is need for investment in the local processing infrastructure, especially as the automobile industry eyes hemp as a sustainable material for cars.
“One little processing facility is not going to do it,” Croes said. “It’s going to take a buildup of things to get to that point, so someone's got to step up to the plate. It can't it be someone like me. I'm in the building sector and that's where I belong.”
Learn more:
FiberFort https://fiberfort.com/
Register for Hempcrete Workshop, May 6-7 LINK TKTKTKTKTKTKTKT All Together Now Pennsylvania https://alltogethernowpa.org/ Americhanvre https://americhanvre.com/ Farmer Jawn Philly https://www.farmerjawnphilly.com/
News Nuggets
Bill Aims to Cut Red Tape for Industrial Hemphttps://www.lancasterfarming.com/farming-news/hemp/bill-aims-to-cut-red-tape-for-industrial-hemp/article_8764d032-c9d5-11ed-91b7-4bd93bf02333.html
Hempcrete ASTM C-518 Test Results https://www.hempbuildinginstitute.org/post/americhanvre-ereasy-spray-applied-hempcrete-astm-c-518-test-results
Thanks to our Sponsors
IND Hemp https://indhemp.com/ Mpactful Ventures https://www.mpactfulventures.org/ Farm https://www.farmland.fi/