Remembering Matts Myhrman 1938-2024

Matts Mhyrman, 86, Tucson-based geologist and natural builder who helped reintroduce America to the straw building movement, died Oct. 15, 2024.
With his late wife, Judy Knox, Mhyrman researched and taught about the straw-bale building method, perfected in the late 1800s in the Sandhills of north-central Nebraska, where trees were scarce and rye hay bales were used to build “straw house” buildings including churches, one-room school houses and homes.
The couple published The Last Straw for many years. In 1994, with co-author Steve MacDonald, Mhyrman published Build It With Bales: A Step-By-Step Guide to Straw-bale Construction which was updated in 1998.
Matts and Judy were credited for the resurgence of straw bale building, which was written about in the  U.S. News & World Report, Christian Science Monitor, Wall Street Journal, Reader’s Digest, National Geographic and finally appeared in 1991 on the front of the Home section of the New York Times with the headline “Houses the Cows Would Love to Eat.” 
Straw bale building gained popularity, peaking in the 1990s and early 2000s. There are thousands of straw bale homes across the United States, including more than 1,000 in California alone, according to the International Code Council. 
Friend David Eisenberg wrote on Facebook, “Matts’ curiosity, his incredible sense of humor, his varied skills and interests, and his willingness to try things, figure things out, do research, and his persistent wisdom were ever-present. He is going to be missed but not forgotten by a huge number of people.”
Matts was born in Maine to a Finnish immigrant father and New Hampshire-born mother. He attended Dartmouth College and the University of Arizona. 
In 2022, The Last Straw interviewed Matts for an “Oral History of the Straw Building Revival”: 
“…I happened to run into a very brief piece written in the Sonoran Permaculture Association newsletter in the spring of 1988. There was a little squib in there about a couple, Steve and Nina MacDonald, who were building a straw bale house in Hilo, New Mexico. And I thought, nah, that can’t be. But then I figured, you know, what could be easier to teach somebody than to carry one end of a bale and put it in place on a wall? So, I thought, I better find out about this thing just in case there is something to it. … After about 10 minutes of being in their house, I was off the edge for straw bale.We joked about the bale bug. I’d been bitten by the bale bug within 10 minutes, and I thought, I’ve got to find out more about this.”
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