Innovative development will house 45 families, a farm, businesses
Brian Lewis, The Province
Published: Sunday, August 17, 2008
Original article

One of the Fraser Valley’s better kept secrets is the picturesque village of Yarrow, where even today it feels more appropriate to drive down its main street in nothing newer than a ‘56 Chevy.

However, just across from “Hank the Barber” on Yarrow Central Road, you’ll find a unique development project that’s capturing attention from as far away as Kansas and California.

Yarrow EcoVillage is still in its early days. But if everything turns out as planned, the 10-hectare site will house about 45 families, home-based businesses and a working organic farm.

It’ll be a “village within a village” where residents live, work and play, while leaving as small an ecological footprint as possible.

The development will utilize the latest technologies, but its fundamental concepts are definitely rooted in a time when earliest immigrants in the Fraser Valley — including the Mennonites who founded Yarrow in the 1920s — lived much more in harmony with the land.

Michael Hale, a spokesman for the Yarrow EcoVillage Society (www.yarrowecovillage.ca) who showed me around the property last week, explains that this is much, much more than just an environmentally friendly housing development.

There’s a strong sense of communal living. But for the co-operative that owns the former dairy farm, this is also a working laboratory of sorts devoted to taking current environmental trends in construction and lifestyle to an entirely new level.

The houses will be constructed using environmentally sustainable materials and techniques.

The walls, for example, are 40-centimetres thick and formed by cordwood laid crossways between large wooden beams on a bed of masonry mix that includes straw, wood fibre, clay, sand and a little cement for bonding.

It’s similar to an ancient wall construction technique known as “cob” building that needs no insulation.

“When finished, it looks very much like stonework because the butt-ends of the wood are the inside and outside surfaces of the walls,” Hale says.

Construction of the first two duplexes began recently. The building techniques are so unique that the City of Chilliwack, whose jurisdiction includes Yarrow, had to devise and pass a zoning bylaw exclusively for the development.

A large heritage barn on the property, which now has a new roof made of recycled automobile tires, will become the community and recreation centre and will also house a learning centre and cottage industries, such as pottery and other arts and crafts.

The existing farmhouse will also become part of the new development, and plans are to use parts of it as a bed and breakfast. The residential area also includes a village square covered by porous material so rainwater returns to the aquifer.

Solar, geothermal and wind energy are being considered for the development site. Waste water will be reclaimed using a high-technology “solar aquatics system,” where essentially water plants in greenhouses perform the purifying.

“Outside interest has been phenomenal and we’ve had visitors from places like Kansas and California,” Hale says.

He says the entire project should take about five years to build and that total costs are estimated at about $12 million. Homeownership will be on a long-term, leasehold basis.