All Blog Posts (445)

Followup of Heathers announcement of WSU conference on herbicide contamination readers might be interested in this poster I prepared for a conference last year. 

In the experiment I was comparing biochar from a known sources to grosafe, a commercial type of activated carbon used to clean up pesticide spills. So far I have tried with several types of preemergent herbicides and all work well. 

Also very interesting to me is evidence that biochar and AC…

Can We Create Solutions to Protect the health of the soils & waters of our homeland? 

Can we resist & eliminate toxic abuse from corporations selling products that do Not have strong scientific evidence showing our lands & waters will be kept pure & safe for the children?…

Hey Vicki Lake et. al.

Do NOT post offers from corporations like Wall Mart in Transitions Whatcom.  It absolutely goes against everything we are trying to accomplish here.  We are transitioning away from corporate rule, especially corporations that destroy communities by putting small businesses out of business.  Talk to people you know who are part of Transitions Whatcom and find out why we are here.

Keith Fredrikson

Egypt is free! What a historical day! Throughout the day, send your positive thoughts over there for a peaceful and smooth transition. 

And things are going well at WWU's AS Environmental Center too. We've had tons of great events lately. We all got together at the end of last quarter and talked about what our main goal for the year was going to be. Our finished product came out to be raising awareness for our office and letting people know who we are and what we do. We…

Chris Martenson has the ability to discuss things very clearly and logically and without excess verbiage.  I recommend his latest post. 

Egypt's Warning: Are You Listening?

by Chris Martenson

One day, a fruit and vegetable seller was arrested in Tunisia, sparking social unrest, and a few weeks later the government of Egypt was set to topple. 

Such is the nature of complex, chaotic, and unpredictable systems. The stresses…

Ah, I’ve noticed that the days are a little longer. My mind begins to anticipate them being a little warmer and thoughts of spring start to arise. This immediately brings up my panic as my greenhouse plans are not ready, my trees are not pruned, my new garden path is not complete and basically I am not ready for spring! Work is still slow so I should have lots of time to do all those things but here it is approaching March and I need to get my act together to be ready for…

Gardens of Destiny (creating edible forest gardens & seed-saving)

http://transitionwhatcom.ning.com/video/gardens-of-destiny-with-dan…

Being a locavore means trying to eat foods grown locally, say within 100 miles from home, but in much of USA, local agriculture is cattle ranching.  Beef cattle.

 

Cattle grazing is much of what one sees within 100 miles of towns in places like eastern Montana.  Not the best place to grow tomatoes, but cattle can graze.  Problem is, cattle create methane which is a greenhouse gas.  One recommendation for reducing greenhouse gas emission is to eat less beef.  That might mean being…

BTC receives grant to create anaerobic digester technician certificate

Read more: http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2011/02/04/1851504/btc-receives-grant-to-create-anaerobic.html#ixzz1D450igT3

You may have noticed my absence over the last several months.  From early October until recently, my primary focus has been on receiving the gift of new vision.  Due to a hereditary, degenerative corneal disease diagnosed several years ago, my vision was undergoing changes that, left unchecked, would  lead to functional blindness.  Luckily the condition is completely reversible via replacement of my diseased tissue with healthy tissue from cadavers.  On a crisp, clear day (a day on which I…

Hey all- Warren here. We have been doing the blog for a while now and have had some great feedback! We want more!

This post is usually a personal view, not a collective TWOG view- it is a place where we can share our thoughts, hopes and ideas with the wider membership. Once in a while we will insert a shameless plug for something we think is a good idea to pass along. That's what this one is...

I went for a hike along Whatcom Creek with my wife JoAnn and dog…

Here are Links for Gardener/Farmers Needing Access To Land - or - by those Offering Land to grow edibles.

Click on the links below to take you to the UrbanGardenShare online program:

Bellingham & beyond UrbanGardenShare link-

http://www.urbangardenshare.org/bellingham/…

Gathering with others in a circle to share healing stories, plant identification, and plant/fungi medicine-making, is something more of us are being called to do.

 …

Reflections of visions & patterns within nature - to inspire us in creating a resiliant comunity landscape & culture.  

I had just returned from being immersed for 3 weeks in the Olympic Parks ancient forests & shorelines observing the movements & patterns within nature. Now while back in our consumer-culture, I sense the movement & patterns within our community's emergent awakenings, and I am inspired to share words from Paul Krafel's observations of leadership…

Seems like food is a bargain compared to the rent or mortgage costs that most people have to pay.  I'm lucky because my rent is fairly reasonable, but folks I know are nearly broke just writing out their rent checks.

As oil gets more expensive, it seems like food is what people think about first.  They say it's going to make food, which uses fossil fuel in its production, scarce.  Strategies for dealing with this situation revolve around growing more of our own food and even…

Hi, Travis Linds from the TOWG here. I wasn't sure what to write about so I thought I would reflect on my personal struggles to live in the Present.

This year I'm testing the waters on the 100-mile locavore diet.  I'm pretty excited about it.  So far my guidelines are to source 95% of my purchased food locally for the year 2011.  (I did not prepare for this experiment.  So, after a night of New Years' revelry, I woke up New Year's Day with a hankering to go out for breakfast and remembered, oh yeah, I'm not doing that anymore).  In order to make this workable, it makes sense to eat the foreign food that I've already got, which buys me…

I gave a talk on peak oil and energy issues for 10/10/10, and since then have expanded it to a discussion of about an hour and a half.  I have the computer and projector, but not a projection screen upon which to show it.  Would be delighted to give this talk to any group, large or small, in a school or anybody's home or in our home for that matter. [My wife and I run the Axton Road Bed & Breakfast].

This would probably be a good outreach activity even for people not…