How to Attend Hands-On Classes in Gardens, Kitchens, Forests, and Even a Late 1800’s Cabin

It’s here. The garden classes are in gardens, the cooking classes are in kitchens, the nature study is in forests, the raspberries taste like raspberries, and the snozzberries taste like snozzberries! I worked for weeks on the lesson plans for these hands-on classes, workshops, and tours and am so excited to finally roll them out. Click here for my entire…

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Update: Public Permaculture Demo Garden Progress

When I founded the SC Upstate Permaculture Society I had no idea we’d be this popular, but we’re up to 644 members with multiple people joining each week. If you live in upstate South Carolina (or nearby) we welcome you to join us. Last October we broke ground on a huge new garden that is already stacking functions by being…

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How to Make a Pair of Permaculturalists Laugh So Hard They Have to Wait to Drive Home

Today Nathaniel and I did presentations at Gardening for Good‘s Community Gardening Symposium. Nathaniel sat in on a “Going Green in the Garden” discussion panel and I did a talk on “Perennial Vegetables.” We weren’t at last year’s Community Gardening Conference so we didn’t know what to expect. It turned out to be a high-quality, affordable conference with thoughtful care…

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How to Value “Free” in Sustainable Lifestyle

This past weekend the weather in our little corner of South Carolina got quite pleasant, reaching up into the mid 70s and all around feeling very spring-ish. It was great. The whole greater Greenville area seemed to decide that with such delightful weather at hand, it was only appropriate to spend some time out of doors. By the end of…

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How to “Chickenfy” Your Life (Real Things Thursdays)

I briefly considered writing a “How to Get Started with Chickens” post, but I don’t like writing about something until I’ve actually done it. Once my chickens arrive this May I’ll talk about my personal experiences with it — until then I thought I’d write about some chicken products I’ve encountered while begging for advice from people who have personal…

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How to Combat Cabin Fever with Carrots and tell Climate Change from Weather

Aka “How to Write a Blog Post Title that You Can’t Say 10 Times Fast”. Am I ever lonely for some real homegrown produce… the glossy-photo winter catalogs just aren’t helping! Veggies aren’t all that relevant to the rest of this post. However, garden photos help me avert a rampant snow-induced garden fever with symptoms like an emptied bank account…

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How to Find Real Things #2

It’s another Real Things Thursday! As my goal with these installments is to think about the way we consume rather than to encourage consumerism, I decided that today I’d focus on getting things for free. We all love freebies, but it is also a great way to minimize our impact on the environment! Recycling has a long way to go…

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How to Find Real Things #1

I’m not a big fan of shopping or owning huge quantities of stuff. When I do put on my modern hunter/gatherer hat, I think of my purchase as a vote. Do I spend my voting dollar on artisan-made or an overseas sweatshop? Am I going to vote for something that will last generations or for built-in-obsolesce? Will I purchase biodegradable…

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How to Sift Through the New S.510 Food Safety Bill (How Does it Affect You?)

Conundrum: I don’t want a giant agri-business to be able to sell my family the spinach they grew downstream from factory-farmed cattle (mmm, E. coli!) but I also don’t want much (or any) regulations placed on small-scale farms, CSAs, farmer’s markets, online farmer’s markets, small dairies, or backyard growers. Citizens are capable of inspecting their own local food — because…

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How to Support Better Food in Schools

In contrast to the morels post this one is a quickie. Signing takes less than 30 seconds. Our schools should be setting an example of how to eat fresh, healthy, and delicious food. They are — after all — feeding the minds of our children… both figuratively and literally. Additionally, schools should not be a place where advertisers market their…

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How to Save Paper, Ink, and Money with Printfriendly

Did you know you can power your home for 10 months with the same amount of energy it takes to produce 1 ton of office paper? Or that every year 350 million ink cartridges are sent to the landfill? I’ve been seeing Printfriendly.com show up repeatedly in the referrer section of my blog stats. Presumably because people are going there…

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How to Use Mushrooms to Get Rid of Atrazine (and Spare Male frogs from “Castration”)

I thought I would post about morels next but good things come to those who wait. In the meantime we have a bad thing with (at least one) good solution. Ever heard of Atrazine? It’s in the news right now for altering the reproductive systems of frogs: CNN, Reuters, Fox, BBC It’s now infamous and controversial. Atrazine has a reputation…

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How to Become Part of a Crop Mob

Crop Mobs are a new movement that I suspect will spread like wildfire. If you’re a small-scale, sustainable farmer they can be a lifesaver. And if you’re without ample land they’ll rescue you from growers lust and put you in touch with the source of your food. :)Anyone can participate. It’s not charity. The premise is that people who want…

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How to Kill Fire Ants, Carpenter Ants, and Termites with Mushrooms (a Mycoremediation Crash Course)

If that title sounds too good to be true, it’s not. Over the weekend my friends Tradd & Olga invited me over for dinner (and after eating the wild mushroom dish that Olga served you can expect a post on morel hunting soon). Tradd is a Mycologist and together they run Mushroom Mountain out of Liberty, SC. You can buy…

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How to Find Sustainable Undergarments (Seriously!)

For Valentine’s Day I decided to write about my recent quest for latex-free undergarments and socks. I won’t go into details, but suffice to say I had a “duh” moment about the latex sensitivity that I’ve known about for years. Guess what elastic is?! My (urgent) search made me a bit of an expert on sustainable undergarments. Here is what…

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How to Vote for Your Water Commissioner

Most of us don’t know what a Water Commissioner does. I didn’t. But what I did know is that water is becoming a more crucial issue across the United States (and the rest of the world). We have only to look to our parched yards or rising bills to recognize this problem. Some states and cities are more progressive than…

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How to Find Local Food

Whether you’ve never even grown a houseplant or your family sucks down all the fresh cukes from your garden so fast that you need an extra basket with which to make pickles, you can probably find what you need from a local source.

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How Not to Move to the West Coast

Why would you want to? Okay, maybe for the olives… I have nothing against the West Coast, nor am I promoting a competition. I just think we should give the United States some balance. If you want to make a big change, make it in a place where there needs to be a big change! Not that it is much…

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