Flotsam and Jetsam

An article in the Christian Science Monitor, This Old Sustainable House, sent me chasing down The Tofte Project, a fabulous find that will seduce me away from reading student essays much too often. The Project is the redesign and reconstruction of a fifty-year old summer cabin on the shore of Lake Superior into a year-round home, using the principles of sustainable architecture. The web site chronicaling this transformation is amazing in itself, using flash animations to illuminate the work being done. The site also takes the history of the land and its ecosystems into consideration, with beautiful graphics and colors. Jenn comments on a previous post of mine that she would be happy to use equine transportation and cook over a wood fire, when oil supplies become ultimately scarce. All well and good, except that deforestation is a serious problem in places where people still use wood as their primary fuel source for heating and cooking. Deforestation leads to desertification, causing a cycle of endless poverty and hunger. I've been investigating the fascinating subject of solar cooking lately, a better choice for our future than wood fires. The commercial models I've found, places like Real Goods, seem unreasonably expensive - so I poked around the Internet and found several homemade models that even I could build. This guy's been experimenting with solar cooking for thirty years, and the site has a lot to offer: Cook with the Sun, Solar Cooking/Solar Oven Information, both plans for homemade cookers and places to find commercial models. Also recipes. Path to Freedom of course also has information on solar cookers, as well as so much else for a sustainable life.
One last bit of flotsam - the folks at the wonderful City Hippy invited me to become part of their collaborative and send in pieces on the environment and sustainability. They have published my first article on their site, Up On a Roof, a wander through the subject of Green Roofs. In a happy coincidence, Treehugger also published a post on the subject around the same time: Green Roofs, A Primer. This is a topic that interests me personally, both for the insulating and cooling properties of the roofs and their aesthetic benefits. We're looking for a flat-roofed Pueblo-style house for our New Mexico move, which roof I hope to cover with green.

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