PermaDesign

“Compost This”

Here’s the first in a series of seven or eight articles I’ve published since “Harvest the Rain” came out in August. This one about compost appeared in the Fall issue of Edible Santa Fe.

11/11/2010 | Books | Compost | Edibles | (0) Comments

Earth Care International’s Sustainability Guide Publishes My Piece on Water Harvesting

by Nate Downey

I tried to find my recent article in the 2011 Sustainable Santa Fe Guide (about the blessings of bike commuting), but it’s not online yet. Here’s last year’s article in the same annual magazine published by the wonderful youth and staff at Earth Care International.

Greenhouse Bust Backfires on Cops, Us

by Nate Downey

Here is my recent “Permaculture in Practice” column, which is published in the Santa Fe New Mexican’s monthly real estate magazine.

It was a typically permacultural day at Camino de Paz School and Farm. The students had tended the chickens, goats, sheep, and horses. They’d weeded and watered vegetable beds, picked fruit, made cheese, canned tomatoes. They’d taken math, English, Spanish, and history. Two students, Sasha and Sarah, prepared campus-grown potatoes, cheese, applesauce, and a medley of fresh greens. Under the shade of an old apricot, Ben and Reyes set 25 places for lunch.

11/03/2010 | Children | Edibles | Energy Savings | (0) Comments

Permaculture in Practice: Straw-Book Swales Make Meadows Easily

by Nate Downey

Here’s my August column in the Santa Fe New Mexican. It’s a how-to primer/preview to a video that I will be releasing tomorrow.

Since erosion control and land restoration are a couple of Santa Fe Permaculture’s specialties, we typically get anxious phone calls from property owners after major rainstorms. Sometimes, due to a vicious monsoon or two, they’ve lost a chunk of a backyard patio. Other times, they report a flooded garage or a vestibule that came “this close” to full-blown inundation. Most of the time, however, there is less drama in their stories, and people are simply trying to do their best to prevent the continued slip-sliding-away of their real estate.

11/01/2010 | Erosion Control | Grading and Drainage | (0) Comments

Bioneers Day 3: Not as a God, but as a God Might Be*

by Nate Downey

On the third day (a wonderfully wet Sunday Morning), the Lafayette Bookstore (the bookstore at the conference) graciously let me sign books. One might think a 100-person line at a signing would be impossible for a new author like me, but in fact it actually happened! The catch was that the line was made up of early birds waiting for Jane Goodall.

Oddly, it wasn’t at all surreal to have one of the environmental movement’s founding mothers scheduled to sign books right after me. All of us in the movement seem to be doing the best we can do given our lots and talents. Sure, she’s borderline godhead, but so are YOU! (And she’d probably be the first to admit this.) Plus, when all was said and done, I noticed stacks of Goodall books that were NOT purchased, whereas we came a mere two books shy of selling out of Harvest the Rain.

*from “Sunday Morning” by Wallace Stevens

Bioneers Day 2.1: Green Jobs? Toxicologists Wanted.

by Nate Downey

(The Sad Tales & Real Promise of a Green Scientist)

A longtime Polaroid employee addressing thousands of cutting-edge environmentalists? Sounds like a concoction for conflict, but it turned out to be a fabulously successful experiment yesterday. John Warner told his story about becoming the founding father of Green Chemistry with one part optimism, two parts tale of innocent death, three parts useful information, and four parts humor (ranging from deadpan to verbalized slapstick).

10/13/2010 | Ecology | Events | (0) Comments

Bioneers Day 2: Walkin’ the Walk to a Lipkis Talk

by Nate Downey

Woke up this morning and found two flat tires on the bike I’m borrowing for the conference. The tires had been losing air slowly, but after last night’s goat head attack, the situation was grim. I pumped up the tires got dressed, shaved, called the family, responded to some emails, loaded my computer, bike pump, and books into my back pack, and strapped on my helmet. When I grabbed the bike, I immediately discovered that both tires were miserably soft.

Bioneers Day 1.1: YERT Provides Hope and Humor

by Nate Downey

After chowing a few-too-many organic sandwich-cookies found on a plate on a table in the media room, I strolled over to the “Leading-Edge Climate Initiative” panel featuring David Orr and four other power-grid whizzes. The biggest threats we face are not technical. It seems they center around our lack of cultural and political will. Meanwhile, the Clinton-era media consolidation, the costs associated with Bush’s Wars, and the Robert’s pro-corporate court all make a difficult situation worse.

Bioneers Day 1: An Ultratransformative Conference!

by Nate Downey

I must have been about seven years old when my Gramma Adams got together with some friends and they stopped the construction of an interstate highway that would have run across the west side of Connecticut, through Massachusetts, and all the way up to Burlington, Vermont and beyond. The death of the Super 7 project was a great political victory, and I think I’ve been an avid and positively focused environmentalist ever since.

Little Earth School Planning Next Year’s Garden Now

by Nate Downey

My younger son goes to a cool school called Little Earth. Tonight they had me as the first speaker in their series of practical talks for parents and educators. I called my presentation “Garden Design with Children in Mind,” and I focused on five garden components that students of all ages love.

1) The Bean Tipi, an edible playhouse made out of scarlet runner beans and five-to-ten long sticks, posts, or poles.
2) The Sunflower House, a playhouse (or tunnel) made out of mostly giant sunflowers, that teaches kids of all ages about microclimates and makes for a nice afternoon snack in the fall.
3) Edible Plants, these are very important in a children’s garden for a wide variety of reasons.
4) Sheet Mulch, an easy way to build soil, suppress weeds, and harvest rain in the soil, it uses cardboard, manure, and straw as its main ingredients,
5) Worm making, no kids garden is complete without a compost pile, and no compost pile is complete without worms.

I plan to elaborate on each of these in the coming weeks, so please stay tuned.