Douro Farmhouse

There’s something captivating about a farm on the edge of town. I always do a full head-turn when passing one — imagining a life balanced between rural calm and community connection: morning bike rides into town, evenings on a wide porch watching the sunset, and afternoons split between farmers’ markets and quiet time in the fields.

So when two families bought a farm just outside of Peterborough and needed a second farmhouse, we jumped at the opportunity. Farmhouses, greenhouses, veggie storage barns, and apiaries — projects that support farmers — are some of our absolute favourites.

In 2023, the homeowners teamed up with Straworks to design and build a two-storey straw bale farmhouse on a walk-out basement, delivering all the charm and comfort of a traditional farmhouse — but without the cold drafts, roof leaks, or massive firewood stacks.

Thanks to BEAM (a material carbon estimator) and our focused innovations to reduce embodied carbon, this home achieved an impressively low Material Carbon Intensity (MCI) of just 28 kg CO₂/m² — a major step toward truly climate-resilient housing.