Kyle Yoder couldn't afford to buy a home, so he's been building one himself — by hand, with earth, rubble, and reclaimed materials — on a shared piece of land in northern Missouri.
His first structure was the Gnome Dome: an 80-square-foot earthbag igloo he rescued from demolition after it was abandoned by its prior owner and condemned for mold. Kyle solved the moisture problem with interior barriers, rigid foam insulation, hand-cut wainscoting fitted to curved walls, and a custom masonry mass heater with a dual-purpose chimney — wood heat in winter, passive cooling fan in summer, with a secondary flue pathway that routes warmth beneath the bed.
Total out-of-pocket cost of the Gnome Dome: around $3,000. Now he's moved into a second, larger semi-buried earthen structure - part of a broader homestead still under construction - with a green roof for warm-weather sleeping and food growing.
Dancing Rabbit is one of the longest-running ecovillages in the US, built around a mix of owner-built experimental structures. Kyle's corner of it is an ongoing experiment in what one person with limited cash but plenty of ingenuity can pull out of the ground.
He also walks us through the coop kitchen he helped build with neighbors, one of several shared facilities at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage that residents use collectively — cooking, bathing, resources — so individual households can stay small and simple.
