Newsletter:20070428/Welcome
From EcoReality
The Chips Are Down!
It's been an interesting month at EcoReality.
As always, we're eternally grateful for our volunteer help! Dave Atkins has grown into being our unofficial "Hearthkeeper," always looking for things that need to be done. Dave is the simplest person I know, and I mean that with the greatest admiration. Besides doing an outstanding job with the lavender and other tasks around here, Dave is always coming up with wonderful ideas for increasing simplicity and sustainability, and I'm always learning things from him.
For example, Dave has implemented a highly effective gray water re-use program. I've been thinking about this for months: separate the gray water and black water systems, provide separate storage facilities, provide for some treatment, and apply the gray water to the land. Dave trumped this in his first week here: he keeps a plastic tub in the wash sink, and washes into it. When it is full, he pours it on plants. Simplicity!
Is there still a reason to go with all the plumbing changes that I was planning? Sure, but it sure is good to be reminded from time to time that you don't need a high-tech solution to every problem. Sometimes, the most appropriate technology is sitting in the bottom of your sink.
Please help us welcome Sara Defoor, who comes to us from Ladysmith BC via New Zealand, where she WWOOFed last summer. Sara is planning to stay between two and six weeks, and has been sleeping in Veggie Van Gogh, even after offering her the community room. (Dave tried Veggie Van Gogh for a while, but got claustrophobic when he realized he couldn't sit up in bed.) Besides the extra privacy, I think the 1200 hours of music on the twelve-disk MP3 changer might have something to with Sara's choice, since she really enjoys music, and prepped for her day off by going to a dance at Beaver Point Hall last night.
But we were talking about chips, weren't we? In our last trip to the US, Carol and I brought a three-point wood chipper back with us. This attaches to our biodiesel-powered tractor so we can make soil amendments from slash piles without adding carbon to the atmosphere. Dave and I have started a business initiative, and have two clients lined up for chipping already! See The Green Chipper for more information.
We've totally (well, about one pick-up load left) chipped one neighbor's slash pile, and have two "pay jobs" to do before focusing on neighbor Dave Thomas's slash piles. Neighbor Dave (as opposed to veterinarian Dave who gave us the first slash pile and Hearthkeeper Dave, mentioned above) has given us two downed trees, a Doug Fir and a Grand Fir, each over a meter in diameter, that probably contain four or five cords of wood -- all we have to do is process it. Another "toy" we brought back from our last trip south was a hydraulic wood splitter that is driven by the biodiesel tractor, so except for some chain-saw gas, we can process most of that firewood in a carbon-neutral manner.
We're getting pretty close to being a carbon sink these days. If there were a viable carbon-trading market in North America, we could be buying our toilet paper (and other things we can't produce) with the money we'd get from our carbon credits. Write your MLA or Representative or Senator and demand a carbon-credit system for reducing greenhouse gas!
In the fun stuff category, we're having an open house on Sunday, May 6, from 1-4 PM. Stop in and find out more about what we're doing!
This month, Carol talks a bit about water management, James says more about our open house, and Shannon explores the way that waterways work.
I hope you enjoy this edition of our newsletter, and we hope you'll be joining us for a meeting, work party, or other scheduled (or unscheduled!) activity this month!
