All Blog Posts (445)

Harvest, a non-fiction essay by Christie Cassel

I am riding in the backseat of the car with my mom and my aunt to go fruit picking–…

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Added by Christie Cassel on April 27, 2010 at 4:30pm — 1 Comment

Celt's Garden - Cheese and the Tax Man

It's all about the cheese. French cheese is a story of cookery and resource depletion. Cheese preserves milk, an otherwise fragile commodity. Cows, goats and sheep can make milk from pasture land that may be too steep, rocky or poor for grains or row crops. Cheese can be compactly transported. A gallon of milk makes 8-16 ounces of cheese, so the volume goes down and the shelf life goes up. Cheese has terroir, the flavors of origin. What the animals eat, the breed, the time of year and the… Continue

Added by Celt M. Schira on April 23, 2010 at 11:00am — No Comments

People's Climate Summit Coverage on oneclimate.net

You can view a live video feed from the Bolivian People's Climate Summit April 20-22nd.

http://www.oneclimate.net/bolivia

Added by Rob Olason on April 21, 2010 at 8:03pm — 3 Comments

Celt's Garden - Value from Small Spaces

It's time to plant onion sets and potatoes. If you haven't started some peas, lettuce and spinach already, now is the time. Leave some space for the summer garden, even if your summer garden is two patio tomatoes and a butterstick summer squash in pots. Bush beans, compact summer squashes, determinate tomatoes in cages, trellises to train pole beans, squash, cucumbers will help you grow a lot in small spaces.

Back when I had just built the first raised bed on my former front lawn, a… Continue

Added by Celt M. Schira on April 19, 2010 at 12:30pm — 2 Comments

Chickens available -free range only please

A friend of mine is needing to find new homes for her flock of 53 chickens, including a few roosters. They are used to having several acres of grass and yard to run about in all day, so a similar free range home is much preferred. There are several breeds of chicken available so if you like blue eggs, or brown, then you can have them.

The flock is housed north of Bellingham in the Noon road area. Phone Deborah on (360) 398 2017 for more information.

Christine

Added by Christine Roberts on April 16, 2010 at 1:56pm — No Comments

Masanobu Fukuoka – A Natural Farmer

Masanobu Fukuoka – A Natural Farmer

By David Pike, April 2010…

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Added by David Pike on April 15, 2010 at 10:17am — 4 Comments

Interview with Larry Korn

* Apologies for the lack of formatting in this interview. The Ning site unfortunately will not preserve spacing and formatting when publishing blog entries.

Larry Korn is a soil scientist, agricultural consultant…

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Added by David Pike on April 15, 2010 at 10:00am — 8 Comments

Celt's Garden - Ag Mech for Grownups

Dr. Steve Jones, when he was here talking to us about small scale grain growing, suggested looking around for old threshers, balers, tractors and other medium tech equipment. He also suggested that if we find something, try to buy more than one, because the parts are hard to find. The equipment is itself hard to find. The high price of scrap steel has led to collecting up the old machines from the early 20th Century and shipping them to China to be melted down. Once you beat the scrap dealer to… Continue

Added by Celt M. Schira on April 12, 2010 at 10:30am — 2 Comments

Psychology of Sustainable Behavior

http://www.pca.state.mn.us/oea/publications/p-ee1-01.pdf

I just found this article and will soon comment on it. For now, other people can start reading it, too.

Cheers,

Brian

Added by Brian Carpenter on April 6, 2010 at 3:53pm — 2 Comments

Our wounded soldiers - forgotten, but not gone

The greatest revelation for me while tabling at the Bham Farmers' Market was coming into contact with a group of

sympathizers who haven't gotten very involved with Transition Whatcom

yet: burnt out hippies. Obviously we all know they're around - this is

Bellingham after all, but as a group they are conspicuously absent from

our active membership. Just to be clear, I'm talking about the folks

from the 60s and 70s who poured all their heart and soul into that… Continue

Added by Brian Carpenter on April 4, 2010 at 12:12am — 2 Comments

Tabling at the Farmer's Market

It was market day today, and I got to spend some time with Rhys and Raven promoting The Great Unleashing! This was my first time tabling, and I really enjoyed getting so many

people to smile and greet me. A good time was had by all, despite the weather, and I think we did a pretty good job of connecting with our community.

Most common quotes overheard:

"What the [heck] is The Great Unleashing?!"
"Ooh, I've been reading about this!"
"We'll be there!…

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Added by Brian Carpenter on April 4, 2010 at 12:11am — 2 Comments

Beware of Govenments Bearing Gifts

Perhaps you've read news about the many rescue programs for distressed homeowners. Powering down may need to start with the home itself and go from there. Ultimately, a person in financial distress will always face difficult decisions. Some of which may be as simple as accepting they cannot sustain such a large or expensive home and the attached energy, transportation, tax and insurance burdens. A good chat with your family…

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Added by Susan Templeton on April 3, 2010 at 3:00pm — No Comments

Celt's Garden - Preserved Ginger and Pad Thai

Look for fresh ginger, tumeric and galangal roots in the markets now. They are in season someplace in world, and we get to share. The fresh juicy roots are the ones you want. Ginger is a familiar element of Asian cooking. Galangal is a hard root that ripens to rock-hard. It is the secret ingredient in Pad Thai. It was widely grown and used in Europe until it was lost during the calamitous 14th century. Tumeric, used in Indian and Asian cooking, is usually found as a dry powder. The fresh root… Continue

Added by Celt M. Schira on April 3, 2010 at 12:00pm — 1 Comment

Celt's Garden - Seasonal Herbs

Herbs from the garden are seasonal. The season for leaves is just beginning. The thyme and sage are already leafing out. The savory will be strong enough to start taking clippings next week. The chives are already starting to form flower buds. Just cut those off and chop them up and drop them into an omelet.

This is the time to delight in the return of fresh herbs to the kitchen. Soon, we can start harvesting handfuls and drying them. The thyme, savory, oregano family are harvested and… Continue

Added by Celt M. Schira on March 30, 2010 at 7:00pm — No Comments

"Is a Truly Sustainable Society Achievable As Long As Corporate 'Rights' Trump the Rights of People" . . . . . . . . . Paul Cienfuegos - Audio-Recorded Live Talk" 2/26/10

Quote- "This is Paul Cienfuegos' talk on the ascendancy of corporate rights over the rights of of people as citizens, and how this trend can be reversed. The assertion of corporate over citizen rights came into sharp focus this January with the Supreme Court's "Citizens United" decision which opens the floodgates of unrestricted corporate money into election campaigns, under the guise of free speech. Countering this trend are citizen revolts, many in small communities, which assert the right…

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Added by Heather K on March 29, 2010 at 11:30pm — 1 Comment

Eco Shock Podcast well worth listening to

I'm glad I listened to this podcast. The first segment is with Shaun Chamberlin, author of "The Transition Timeline." He discusses the Transition Movement in Britain and does a great job summarizing the positive aspects of transition.

The promo for the podcast:

DARK OPTIMISM How do we handle Peak Oil AND climate change? Shaun Chamberlin from UK Transition Towns, energy writer Kurt Cobb, plus

Richard Heinberg on renewable hope, with Lester Brown.

You know we are…

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Added by Rob Olason on March 29, 2010 at 2:36pm — 1 Comment

Celt's Garden - That French Feeling

In the back of "The Enchanted Broccoli Forest", Mollie Katzen helpfully included fake sheets for major world cuisines. Let's deconstruct one of them, home style French cooking, and see what we can grow in the garden. Classical French cooking has had a resurgence of interest with the popularity of the movie "Julie and Julia". Thankfully, home cooking in France has always been simpler than the elaborate dishes that Julia Child learned at the Cordon Bleu in Paris after World War II. When your… Continue

Added by Celt M. Schira on March 29, 2010 at 1:30pm — No Comments

Celt's Garden - Backyard Wheat

In 1986, I had a field of golden wheat in my backyard. The field was 20' and 20' and my backyard was in suburban Clarksville, Tennessee. The former mistress of the modest ranch house had a big garden in the back yard. The first summer, I rented a rototiller and tilled up the lot. Then, contemplating the expanse of bare black earth, it dawned on me that she was a stay at home mother with two school aged kids. I had demanding work, a long commute and a baby. So, instead of recreating the big row… Continue

Added by Celt M. Schira on March 27, 2010 at 12:30pm — No Comments

Celt's Garden - Oats in the Garden

It's time to plant spring oats in beds you won't be using until late summer. Oats have multiple uses. Spring planted oats get going strongly by mid-summer and are turned over in the green and fluffy stage to break down and nourish the winter garden that you will be planting in July and August. You are planning a winter garden, right? You want that good stuff to feed your family all fall, winter and next spring. When you see organic kale at $3 a bunch in December and lettuce at $2 a head, you… Continue

Added by Celt M. Schira on March 25, 2010 at 9:00am — 1 Comment