“When Myrna and Earl Fincher married 53 years ago they started farming their yard “out of necessity”. Today, the Finchers make a living selling their organic produce to restaurants and at the local farmers’ market twice a week for much of the year. They had no experience as farmers, but learned by trial and error.”
sustainable
Casa Verde
This site is in Romanian and so I’ll keep this entry brief. The home is so beautiful that few words are needed.
Low Cost Twig Stoves
Don’t want to buy and carry fuel for your camping stove? No problem. These affordable twig stoves burn whatever is available – twigs, branches, pine cones, pine needles, wood chips, wood shavings, plant stalks, grass, dung, leaves, paper, cardboard or any other type of biomass. They only need a handful or so of fuel to boil a pot of water. That amount is easy to find even in most deserts. Twig stoves cook faster, produce less smoke and typically pose less of a fire risk than camp fires on the ground.
Two Amazing Trees
In the process of researching trees and plants for our tropical food forests, we came across two trees with extremely practical characteristics. Moringa, the third tree we’re focusing on, was covered in previous blog posts. Moringa is considered one of the most nutritious plants in the world and will play a pivotal role in our food forests.
More Details about Terra Preta
I’m really fascinated with the terra preta/biochar concept. We briefly touched on the subject in our blog post Big Ideas that are Changing the World. Watch the excellent video there for a good overview of the subject.
Terra preta is nothing short of amazing. It’s considered the most fertile soil in the world, and has retained its fertility over thousands of years. Studies have reported positive effects from biochar on crop production in degraded and nutrient–poor soils. Biochar–enhanced soils can indefinitely sustain agricultural production [that means forever!], whereas non-amended soils quickly become depleted of nutrients. Compare terra preta to modern industrial agriculture that gradually depletes soil and pollutes groundwater and food sources with toxic chemicals.
A Sustainable Life
“Hello friends. My name is Morgan Caraway. My better half Mary Jane and I built an earthbag house near Asheville, NC (some info about this technique at EarthbagBuilding.com), a cordwood bath house and recently completed an earthbag sunroom addition. We also built our own yurt, set up a rainwater system, built our own micro solar electric system and have learned a lot about sustainable living in general.