Couple's self-built greenhouse home in farm country is oasis of plenty

When Roja Brimalm and Johan Holmstedt set out to build a home for their family on the windswept plains of rural Sweden, they weren’t builders or architects — Johan is a mechanic and Roja a chef — but they had a vision: to create a self-sustaining bubble of life that could thrive even in the bitter cold of a Scandinavian winter. What they built is a modern-day naturhus, a home inside a greenhouse, inspired by Swedish architect Bengt Warne’s 1970s vision of biodynamic living. Their 400-square-meter glass structure now protects a timber home, gardens, and a complex water recycling system — all built mostly by the couple themselves. On the outside, it's surrounded by open farmland. On the inside, it feels like spring. Even on a blustery March morning, bumblebees buzz through fruit trees, and Roja tends to her winter peaches, persimmons, and garden beds. The greenhouse keeps the temperature stable year-round, allowing them to grow most of their own fruit and vegetables, even during freezing weather. To cut costs, Johan assembled the entire greenhouse with rented equipment- a crane and skylift- and suction for the glass, and with help from Roja and friends, they built the rest — from the passive-solar core house clad in local fir, to the semi-underground summer bedrooms that stay cool in heat and warm in snow. The side garden doesn’t just feed them — it also filters all the water from the kitchen and bathroom and returns it, clean, back to the pond. It’s a full-circle system: rainwater becomes greywater and blackwater, becomes irrigation, becomes food. Roja, who had never lived in the countryside before, says she now loves this little bubble in the middle of nowhere — a place where she can observe the seasons from inside her own climate. Today, we visit their home — the Rosenlund Naturhus — to see how a chef and a mechanic turned a dream into a thriving ecosystem. https://www.instagram.com/husetivaxthuset/ On *faircompanies: https://faircompanies.com/videos/couples-self-built-greenhouse-home-in-farm-country-is-oasis-of-plenty/