Maintaining Systems until They’re Needed

In Transition and Permaculture circles we’re constantly talking about putting systems in place for when, that is, before, they’re needed. When I headed up the Solarize program in Wayland in 2012, this was my main motivation: lots of individual solar arrays on roofs so we have at least a basis for clean and decentralized electricity …

Will You Pay More For Local?

Our group has been discussing the starting up of a co-op for local food, goods and services. One of the major bones of contention in our conversations is the problem that the food, etc. at small co-ops and local stores are usually more expensive. But why is the price at the co-op higher? And (just …

Cranberry Picking

Today I had planned to clean the house. It badly needs a vacuum and a scrub. But before I could get started, a friend called and said she wanted to go on a walk that my group, Transition Wayland, was organizing though Wayland Walks. Wayland Walks is a great spin-off,  run by two of our …

Precious Things in Transition

Watching Bill Moyers’  recent interview with Wendell Berry, it was hard not to tear up, because of the sheer beauty of this man, his poetry, his speaking, and his holding both grief and joy in equal measure and balance: It’s hard to think of any thing that’s precious that isn’t endangered. But maybe that’s an advantage. The …

Thoughts on Earth Day 2013

What a rush. Wayland’s 2013 Earth Day Weekend, organized by Transition Wayland and the Wayland Green Team (both of which I am an active member), is over. It was a two-day community extravaganza of open houses all over town: people showing their retrofitted or super insulated houses, gardens, solar PV and Hot Water systems, heat …

Other Goings On: Racking the Wine, Painting Earth Day Signs

I see it only now, at the end of the day, how much was accomplished: cleaned out the chicken coop,  collected four eggs (we’re back to four!), inspected the beehives, painted the last of the signage for our town’s Earth Day, and racked the wine.  Four. Amie paints her own sign in the new basement …

Medicine Garden

This, dear friends, is a massive apothecary! The beginnings of it. Some of these envelopes hold just 5 seeds. Many hold seeds that need scraping with sandpaper and intricate regimes of warm-moist and/or cold-dry conditions. Some will take years (years!) to germinate. Suffice it to say, these aren’t your average lettuce seeds. Each one is …

Disaster Preparedness, Resilience, Treading Water and Dangerous Assumptions

Amie reads Calvin and Hobbes during Hurricane Sandy (13h) power outage, 29 October 2012 So we weathered yet another storm. Or rather, we didn’t. Sandy went around us. We got some of her peripheral gusts of wind and some rain, but none of it very severe.  Half of my town was out of power.  School was …

On (Not) Saving the World, One Element at a Time

(I’m thinking of this third post today as a Transitiony kind of post…) When I show people around the place, I finally (after five years) feel like it’s all coming together, and that’s because I have started thinking in terms of elements. Breaking the enormous task of creating a “sustainable place”  up into elements allows me …