Civilian Conservation Corps on PBS

Saw PBS's Civilian Conservation Corps last night... WATCH IT. 
No matter what your politics, it is interesting and timely to revisit this period of United States history today.

"I remember as a child growing up in North Carolina looking up and watching Kansas fly by - the dustbowl reaching North Carolina, of course. I also remember fires... floods... drought... erosion, soil gone...What do you have to live on?

We were in a sad condition, environmentally.

The word environmental wasn't there at the time basically, but the situation was, and it was a critical situation.

We didn't have food, we didn't have jobs.

I don't think people realize how close this nation came to having a revolution."

It made me recall tales of my dad's parents in their youth: how his father rode the trains just like the men in this program, up and down the east coast looking for work.  At one time he was so thin he had a job in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania pulling out the bodies of dead miners from the mines.

He met my grandmother while riding those trains, stopping in Edenton and falling in love.

When they had my father, they left him behind to live with his grandparents on the family farm, while his parents sought their fortune in Hollywood.

What options did they have? There were none.
My grandparents somehow pulled optimism out of thin air and became entrepreneurs when there were no jobs.  Uneducated, they were able earn and save money, enough to buy a house, provide for their children, and own their own business.

Somehow, my crazy grandparents ended up meeting the Beatles, started a music studio, and had their own local tv show with my dad and aunt on it.  But farming, and food production, remained with them, reflected in my grandmother's bountiful garden.

Was it really just three generations ago topsoil flew through the air across the states?

Was it just three generations ago that pretty much everyone had food production on some level, chickens were common and practical, and your city neighborhood yard might have a pair of goats and even a pony?


[Copeland's note: No prefab pics until next week- I am volunteering for Raise The Roof, the annual fundraiser for The Children's Home Society this weekend. Because every child deserves a home.]

 

Food, Inc. And Local, Affordable Food

Last night I went to see Food, Inc.
In my opinion the movie did not have anything new to say about Big Agribusiness but it was well worth seeing, to see how many key people in government that have determination over our national food policy have previous relationships with companies like Monsanto, as well as reaffirm the fragility consumers have over their food choices.



The panel discussion that followed the movie included friends Lisa Taranto of Tricycle Gardens and Lisa Dearden of The Center For Rural Culture and The Goochland's Farmer's Market. The audience participation was lively- I particularly liked a cardiologist who said, "Everyone complains about the high cost of eating better, but don't understand that the medicine to treat the ailments caused by poor health and not eating well are more expensive. We all need to understand that we, individuals, need to be responsible for our own health."

One question asked repeatedly was "How can we make good food affordable for those that need it most and can't afford it?"

We rely on the grocers, the farmers. We can vote with our purchase dollars, telling these businesses that we, as consumers, want humanely raised, pastured meat, and fresh, local vegetables. But what was not discussed was that not only should you take responsibility for your own personal health (eat well, work out, to prevent sickness and disease), but that each person should have the RIGHT to responsibly grow their own backyard (and frontyard) veggies, that each person should have the RIGHT to responsibly have a few laying hens and mini-goats for (here's where I reel it back to economics) AFFORDABLE fresh eggs and milk for their family.

Have you seen the statistics on childhood diabetes and obesity lately?!?

Address affordability, health, passing on a sense of connection to animals and land to our children while providing them exercise:
If you have a back yard: Get some frickin' chickunz.
I promise you, your children will chase and play with those chickens allllllllllllll day long, while teaching them about animals and where their food comes from.

For those (including zoning) that feel chickens are messy and smelly, I offer up an urban coop for your inspection.

Chickens naturally want to be in the brush, scratching for grubs while being protected from predators. So in your average residential back yard, they will be eating the japanese beetles from underneath your rose bushes, hiding in the acuba, pecking through your ivy. Therefore, their "mess" remains in areas that are not trafficked by the rest of the family.

...If only the dogs behaved so!

Unfortunately, many counties and cities have forbidden responsible urban farming.
Did you know that a pair of mini-goats, each about 50 pounds, can provide your family with a gallon of fresh milk a day? Both of my dogs are larger than that. My local zoning says I have have three dogs - so I could have three 200 pound mastiffs - yet won't allow a few laying hens in the same back yard?

This is where we, as consumers, need to not only buy locally, eat well, but tell our local government that it should be everyone's right to be sustainable, to have, if they choose, those affordable, healthy options for their family.

P.s. If you like, join our FaceBook urban chicken group, CHICKUNZ, and if you're local, sign the petition for urban chicken in Henrico!

 

Zero Energy Prefab House Kit Update: We Look To The Land.

The zero energy prefab house kit exterior is complete.

In about 2 weeks we move on to the next steps: interior walls of the modern house, off grid systems (solar energy, solar heat, and rainwater collection and filtration), and with it all, stepping back for a larger view: the land, and how we will encourage its health while bearing sustenance for our family.

Heather Barber, ASLA, of Topos met with us last week to discuss the land, and landscape architecture.

From the beginning, here are my thoughts about the land:

• I love the fact we did not have to cut down ONE TREE for the home site.
• However, we are big believers in crop tree release to help the woods become healthy. What that means, in short, is removing weed/competing trees to let the native, desirable trees grow strong and healthy. Along the field we have a mixture of poplar, hickory, oaks, walnut... mixed in with cedar, red bud, pine, a few dogwoods and... non-native evil ghetto palms! Ghetto palms, I'm out to get you!
  
• The 8 acre field can be rotated with
  
• cover crops of warm season grasses that encourage the quail habitat (as well as leaving strips here & there in the fields, and other quail / wildlife management practices)
• potatoes, garlic, onions: With friends we can plant the field, then harvest it together, keeping enough for our families and donating the rest to the Society of St. Andrews. I mean, why glean (although I do look forward to doing that with my friend Peggy, what fun combined with hard work on a gorgeous weekend!) when you could actually plant a field for hunger? (Also note: store bought potatoes have one of the biggest carbon footprints as they often travel quite far to reach the consumer. They're so easy to grow, try growing your own in your back yard!)
  
• eventually move to the Rodale Institute's cover crop roller. Currently we have a tractor with a bush hog and blade.
  
• There is a smaller field downhill from the home site we could irrigate with rainwater... we've tossed around ideas of growing some kind of crop there, like asparagus... but the reality is that as it is much deeper in the woods it will be much more accessible to wildlife... but it's something to think about...
  
• I would love a root cellar in which to store food.
• ...and, I admit, we have a hankering for mid-century coolio functional cooking grills- purposeful practicality with kickin' design. YES I realize this is a murky area, in which I struggle. Half o' me is survivalist (heck my family has survived here for hundreds of years), half of me is forward thinkin' design, and half (fine I never said I was good at math!) o' me wants a third option from the solar cooker and propane marine stove. I mean, if the weed tree is felled, why not use it? (Or not? Considering.)
  
• Handsome Husband and the casa ti green building architect, David Day thought it would be plenty fun to have our friends hang on the slope next to the east side of the house in the evening and project old movies onto that north-east side of the house. They were even tossing around words like, "amphitheater." We'll see.
  They're such romantics. Which is why I love 'em. Which is why they're both more talented than I. : )
• We've already planted apple trees around the shed, and I was pleased to see they are all in bloom and healthy! In a few years we can invite friends over to pick apples!

Now I also must remind myself that we are on a STRICT BUDGET. So maybe most of these ideas will not happen for years. But in the meantime, here are a BUNCH of land pictures, so that the Virginia landscape architect Heather Barber can get a better feel of the entry, field, and area surrounding the modern house kit. I commented on many of the photos, so if there is something that interests you, click on it to see it larger, and with commentary.



We also met with Ron Bernaldo, also known as The Most Fabulous Contractor In The History of the World about our next steps. I can not re-iterate enough how critical having a knowledgeable, experienced contractor has been to the success of our house kit completion. The house kit itself erected easily; but the decisions we had to make as consumers, making the modern off grid house kit "our own"- could not have been affordably or successfully achieved without a contractor like Ron.

Regarding our green building progress, as I mentioned we start again framing the interior, then move on to solar and rainwater collection integration. And THEN we move to interior design of the house kit. Married to a fellow design enthusiast, living our role as house building consumers, I suspect there *might* be design fights ahead.

The first hint came when Handsome Husband nailed up some old sconces. Yes, they do help light the interior of the unfinished SIPs - exposed house kit, but... um...
Fortunately they dribbled wax onto his pristine-just-polished concrete floor so I suspect that will be that. But we shall see... never underestimate Handsome Husband.

So maybe I should start a new blog category, called, "design fight" just in case...

In the meantime, here are a few more pictures of the zero energy modern house, it was a *lovely* weekend on the land!