When my husband, Steve, and I moved from the UK to Portugal’s Silver Coast, we certainly didn't plan on buying an entire ruined village. Our original idea was just a small house and an Airbnb conversion. But then Chumbaria caught my eye online—it was love at first sight! We bought the small cluster of derelict stone buildings for €200,000, and our epic renovation journey began.

The 13th International Hemp Building Symposium (IHBS) is scheduled to take place from October 3–5 on the Lower Sioux Indian Community reservation in Morton, Minnesota. The event marks a historically significant collaboration, positioning the Lower Sioux Community at the forefront of sustainable and regenerative construction in North America.

At the 2025 Rocky Mountain Natural Building Conference in Bozeman, Montana, last week, three leaders in hemp-based construction shared their perspectives on the material’s future: Greg Wilson of HempWood, Matt Marino of Homeland Hempcrete, and architect April Magill of Root Down Building Collective. (Full disclosure: I serve as executive director of the conference hosts, the Colorado-based Natural Building Alliance.)

A group of natural building code experts and building pros submitted updates this summer to the US residential model codes that will make it cheaper and simpler to build with hemp-lime (“hempcrete”). An online fundraiser seeks to raise $12,000 to fund the updates to the 2027 International Residential Code (IRC) that will include ASTM tested 1-hour fire-resistance rated walls.