DIG IN
The latest articles from Chelsea Green and our authors: offering tips and techniques about how you can bring our books to life in your kitchen, backyard, or community.
Waste, An Excerpt from The Carbon-Free Home.
Ever wonder why we humans insist on wasting our human waste? Well, no. Probably not. But I have. And so have Stephen and Rebekah Hren, authors of our new release The Carbon-Free Home: 36 Remodeling Projects to Help Kick the Fossil-Fuel Habit. The following excerpted chapter makes clear that—given the right technologies—we can put our…
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Fermented Foods: Health Benefits & Cultural Rehabilitation
When we talk about “culture,” we’re talking about everything humans have ever created to make their lives a little nicer, from painting, to music and literature, and including food traditions. We also use the word “culture” to describe foods that are alive with beneficial bacteria. It’s no coincidence. Humans have been working together with health-giving…
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A New Kind of Pickles! Hurray, Hurrah!
Your pregnant girlfriend loves them. Your mother loves them. Your friends and your house guests and your children love them. They store well, they last long, and they’re perfect in potato salad. Pickles–the magical fermented sour (or sweet) treat. But have you ever made a pickle a la Sandor Katz? Because, ehem, he’s sort of…
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Old Nalgene Bottles: 5 Ways to Reuse Them
The water bottle that (kind of) defined a generation…is really a killer. Last year, toxic plastic struck close to home. In April 2008, the FDA deemed Nalgene water bottles—those awesome, never-break, never-leak containers you had come to depend on—as unsafe for use, due to dangerous levels of toxicity in the plastic. Durability, in other words,…
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Watering Your Plants: How Important Is It?
There’s an old saying: water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink. But now with climate change, make that: water, water rapidly disappearing, and more and more gardens popping up that need watering. A terrible rhyme, but a paradox for sure; with the increase of local and small family food production, comes a bigger…
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Sustainable Food: The Movement Toward This System
Respect for the land, for the worker, and for the value of agriculture are some of the underlying principles of Community Supported Agriculture—an increasingly popular movement that helps connect consumers to the growers of sustainable food and fresh, local, and organic produce. The following is an excerpt from Sharing the Harvest: A Citizen’s Guide to…
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The Permaculture Way—Tending Your Personal Garden
An integral aspect of Permaculture—”an approach to designing human settlements and perennial agricultural systems that mimic the relationships found in the natural ecologies”—is the realization that all things are connected. Finding peace in the harmonious systems of your garden is a good entry point for plugging into the interconnectedness of all systems on Earth. The…
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Heat Your Home and Water with the Wind
Paul Gipe, wind energy expert and author of Wind Energy Basics: A Guide to Home- and Community-Scale Wind Energy Systems, introduced me to the idea of using the power of the wind to heat your home or hot water. Solar domestic hot water systems have been gaining in popularity in recent months due to the…
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The Importance of Community Values and Natural Work
The following is the foreword to Dave Pollard’s Finding the Sweet Spot: The Natural Entrepreneur’s Guide to Responsible, Sustainable, Joyful Work by Dave Smith—and entrepreneur and co-founder of Smith & Hawken. It has been adapted for the web. During the seventies—when high unemployment and energy shortages were a daily fact of life—some friends and I started…
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A1 Cow’s Milk May Account for a Range of Serious Illnesses
The following is an excerpt from Devil in the Milk: Illness, Health, and the Politics of A1 and A2 Milk by Keith Woodford. It has been adapted for the Web. What North Americans should be concerned about is that North American milk is very high in A1 beta-casein, and no one is doing anything about…
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Green-Tech and Distributed Powerdown: A Future Scenario
In Future Scenarios, permaculture co-originator and leading sustainability innovator David Holmgren outlines four scenarios that bring to life the likely cultural, political, agricultural, and economic implications of peak oil and climate change, and the generations-long era of “energy descent” that faces us. The following is an excerpt from Future Scenarios: How Communities Can Adapt to…
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5 Things You’ll Need to Get Back on Your Bike: Spring Is (Almost) Here!
It’s mud season in Vermont—also known as late winter/early spring in other parts of these here United States—but spring is just around the corner. That’s the thought that keeps getting me out of bed every morning. It’s time to get the ol’ bike out of mothballs, grease up your chain, fill up your tires, and…
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Build Your Own Cold Frame, Part 3: Get a Jump on the Planting Season
For a cold frame to really work, the light has to be just right. It creates the perfect climate to grow your food when the temperatures make it seem impossible. It can be adjusted to allow for ventilation or more closed to prevent snow or large amounts of water from entering and damaging the plants.…
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Building for the Future: Fire-Resistant Green Building
The following is an excerpt from When Technology Fails: A Manual for Self-Reliance, Sustainability, and Surviving the Long Emergency by Matthew Stein. It has been adapted for the Web. In October 1993, when a vicious wildfire broke out in Laguna Beach, a southern California beach town, firefighter John Henderson was called down from his home…
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Grow Berries in Your Low-Light Urban Space
The following is an excerpt from Fresh Food from Small Spaces by R. J. Ruppenthal. It has been adapted for the Web. A central problem for many of us who garden in the city is a lack of light. This is covered extensively in the vegetable chapters. I mention it again here only to note…
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US Leads World in Wind Production (Sort of): A Green Milestone
The US has just passed a significant milestone: according to the Global Wind energy Council (h/t EcoGeek), last year the US overtook Germany to become, for the first time, the leader in wind power capacity. Of course, the US isn’t the only country increasing its wind power. Worldwide, according to Steve Sawyer, Secretary General of…
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Build Your Green Roof with Sod, Turf, or Straw
The following is an excerpt from Serious Straw Bale: A Home Construction Guide for All Climates by Michel Bergeron and Paul Lacinski. It has been adapted for the Web. As an alternative to conventional roofing, the idea of a green cover over a house can be very attractive. You might choose a living roof for…
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Raise Bees in Your Apartment: Urban Apiculture
Not everyone is a fan of bees, but when you get down to their level, you start to appreciate all that they do for us; pollinating the flowers and giving us delicious honey. Beekeeping is a noble profession or hobby to take on as you are providing a habitat for your colony to thrive. But…
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Prepping for an Earthquake: How to Improve Your Home’s Earthquake Resistance
The following is an excerpt from When Technology Fails: A Manual for Self-Reliance, Sustainability, and Surviving the Long Emergency by Matthew Stein. It has been adapted for the Web. Ask anyone who has been through a major earthquake, such as the Loma Prieta or Northridge quakes, and they will tell you that a serious quake…
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Evaporative Cooling Box: A DIY Project
Learn how to make an evaporative cooling box from home this weekend with these helpful & simple tips! The following is an excerpt from The Carbon Free Home: 36 Remodeling Projects to Help Kick the Fossil-Fuel Habit by Stephen & Rebekah Hren. It has been adapted for the Web. How to Make An Evaporative Cooling…
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Using a Hybrid Solar & Wind System: Tips for Living Off-the-Grid
The following article is excerpted from Wind Power by Paul Gipe. Prior to the development of interconnected wind turbines, wind generators had historically been used for powering remote sites where utility power was nonexistent (see figure 1 1-1, Off-the-grid wind systems). These home light plants used wind machines and banks of batteries sized to carry…
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Creating Community While Reducing your Food Bill
Sick of expensive groceries? Grow your own food with your community to cut costs and build lasting relationships! The following is an excerpt from Chapter 2: Urban Ecology in Heather C. Flores’s Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard Into a Garden and Your Neighborhood Into a Community. Many people see ecological living as…
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Food Shopping: CSA in the Global Supermarket
The following is adapted from Sharing the Harvest: A Citizen’s Guide to Community Supported Agriculture (revised and expanded) by Elizabeth Henderson. I grew up in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, a bedroom suburb of New York City, raised by parents who were deeply committed to the struggle for world peace and economic justice. They were city people…
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Replace Your Soap with Soapy Plants
Sick of chemical-filled soaps that leave your hands feeling dirtier than before you washed them? Then we’ve got the project for you! Do it yourself soap with soapy plants! It’s as simple as adding water. The following project is from When Technology Fails by Matthew Stein. It has been adapted for the web. There is…
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Ten Surprising Facts About the Energy We Use
The days of cheap oil energy have come to an end. What once was simple and cheap (i.e. driving to vacation) has become difficult and expensive. The skyrocketing cost (and limited supply) of energy has forced us to re-examine the energy we use in our daily lives. Below is a quick list of 10 facts…
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