Peak Moment 51: Tour Scott McGuire's "White Sage Gardens" in the back yard of his rental home -- a demonstration site for suburban sustainability. He ponders, "How might a household produce and preserve a significant portion of its own food supply?" Composting, a water-conserving greenhouse, and seed-saving are all facets of this beautiful work in progress. [www.whitesagegarden s.com]
Peak Moment 6: Small acreages can produce a lot! Janet Brisson shows the home-canned and dried vegetables, fruit, and beans she cultivates along with chickens and bees. Renee Wade talks about practices that suit the land: her drier property is better suited to raising goats.
Peak Moment 37: Jan Spencer shows his quarter-acre permaculture project transforming a typical suburban lot. Lawn and driveway were replaced with fruit and nut trees, vegetables, brambles, and native habitat, plus a 3500 gallon rainwater catchment system, a sunroom heating the house, and a small detached bungalow to increase residential density.
Peak Moment 38: Tour an urban ecovillage on less than two acres only five minutes by bicycle from the center of Eugene, Oregon. Builder Robert Bolman uses natural materials like sensitively-harveste d wood, earth and straw in the several beautiful, well-insulated, non-toxic structures surrounding the central shared gardens.
Peak Moment 67: At Smith and Speed Mercantile on Orcas Island, hand tools line the walls and tables along with organic wool comforters and non-toxic paints. It's an extension of Kathleen Smith and Errol Speed's off-grid homestead where they work at "the speed of living," using hand tools that reconnect them to the earth.
Peak Moment 63: Hot topics from Richard Heinberg: record-high U.S. fuel prices; the ethanol big-business boondoggle; coal projected to peak about a hundred years early (around 2020); what the climate change discussion is missing; and the benefits of "going local." [www.richardheinberg .com]
Peak Moment 58: Watch a worm birth from a cocoon. See compost produced from food scraps, horse manure, and lots of worms. See the machine that separates castings (worm poop)from compost. The Worm Guy, Mark Yelken, says that worms are "the intestines of the Earth", fertilizing and activating microbial activity. Stick around to learn about the "Worm Wigwam" and "Worm Tea". [www.thewormguy.org]
