In 2021, Mathieu Munsch walked away from the “normal” script— rent, bills, loans, a regular job— and headed for a sloping meadow in northeast France to build something radically simple: a small home made from the earth under his feet, wood from nearby, and straw bales from local farmers.
He kept it to 50 m² (538 sf) so that he could draft the plans himself, and build without hiring an architect or engineer. He simply asked a friend studying engineering to double-check his calculations.
He spent about €15,000, with no mortgage.
Mathieu is building an entire life around low inputs—less energy, less money, less dependence. He lives off-grid on roughly €200/month, powered by solar panels, with solar thermal for hot water in summer and a wood stove for winter warmth (and water-heating when needed).
For water, he gathers groundwater into an underground pipe and stores it in a cistern halfway down the hill.
For food, he grows what he can, forages what he can’t—and then he goes a step further into what he calls “tending the wild.” Instead of clearing and controlling nature, he collaborates with it: inoculating mushrooms on logs, encouraging edible plants to thrive, even turning a wet patch of land into a cattail pantry. “Tending the wild is sometimes easier than erasing everything that’s there and starting from scratch,” says Mathieu, “it does all the farming for you.”
And the site keeps evolving. In the pit left from building the house, he created a submerged greenhouse—a walipini—to extend his growing season.
He’s also now building a second earth unit, Japanese-style, as a bathhouse.
This is a story about natural building, yes—but also about something deeper: “It’s actually the whole possibility of emancipation from labor… If I don’t have a 20-year loan, that’s 20 years less of my life that I have to work.”
The home is heated only by a few logs burned each day.
If you’re curious about earth-and-straw construction, off-grid systems, permaculture, wild foods, or what it really takes to live with less—this one is a full, grounded tour.
You can watch the video at www.youtube.com
—Check Mathieu’s project and philosophy of life: habiterlaterre.com