PermaKent Permaculture Ideas of J. Kent Hastings

In An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore said he grew tobacco among other crops on the family farm in Carthage, Tennessee during summer vacations in his youth. Gore also likened what he views as today’s suppression of global warming evidence by Big Oil to the cover up long ago by Big Tobacco of the health risks […]

Louise Meyer and Patricia McArdle of Solar Household Energy, Inc. and the resource site SolarCooking.org, demonstrate several solar ovens, ranging from shaped trash cardboard covered with foil (cheap, effective, but not durable), one used in Afghanistan that sells for about $25, to an elegant origami folded aluminum product that will last forever. Solar ovens might […]

The folks at Project Off The Grid have a new video at their greatly improved website describing their off-grid community project in South Dakota. They also seem to share my enthusiasm for Ryan Is Hungry YouTube videos, like this one about Keith Thompson a.k.a. “Skeeter” and his off-grid homestead.

Patrick Stanton asked me about root cellar requirements in an email message.
“I had a technical self-reliance question that you could address on the blog, MLL list, or directly: What are the requirements of a root cellar? We have a dirt floor, brick walled basement, but what alterations would be needed to store food through the […]

Last Thursday, Al Gore challenged the U.S. to stop using fossil fuels in ten years. He discussed his plan and the reactions to it Sunday on Meet The Press.
Wind power may be viewed as an indirect form of solar energy moving the atmosphere, but megawatt production (like the Pickens Plan) is restricted to select wind […]

A Boing Boing post links to a National Geographic article about honeybees used in Tokyo to protect seabirds (terns) from attack by crows. A related NatGeo story tells of a gun club hunting crows at a city’s request.
Wizard Saruman isn’t going to like this.
A commenter on another site said “crows are the new dogs” after […]

Readers have asked (via email) for an off-grid-friendly fuel making how-to article.
A process that looks simple is found at kitchen-biodiesel.com. The “Automatic Alternative” shown below the animation is one of their sponsor’s systems.
Don’t take the abbreviated animated GIF thumbnail I made from images there as the whole process. Make sure to actually visit their site […]

Cassava is “Africa’s Food Security Crop” according to the World Bank.
A CNN report about Nigerian civil engineer, Dr Joseph Adelegan, and his projects to convert waste into useful commodities, describes his latest idea to recover energy from cassava processing waste, which in the past would be dumped untreated to pollute local water supplies.
Through innovative biogas […]

Greywater Guerrillas help stop pollution of the water supply by using greywater to irrigate trees and other plants in the garden.
Greywater is water that flows down sink, shower, and washing machine drains–but not the toilet. Greywater may contain traces of dirt, food, grease, hair, and household cleaning products. While greywater may look “dirty,” it is […]

Ilex over at Homesteading In A Condo thinks the non-locavore 18 course meal served to the ruling class at the G8 Summit meeting July 7, while discussing the global food crisis, was a bit, uh. I think it’s a lot uh!
A handful of uncooked rice might have been more appropriate.
You’ve got to see the […]

kabri over at the Forest and Farm adventures blog, writes about homesteading on forest land, with plenty o’ pictures.
The July 8th post includes the image of their cabin in the trees (cropped here in reduced thumbnail):
When we first bought our forest land, we tried camping in our trailer. The trouble with that was - we […]

A recent post at the T’a’grarial blog shows a TED talk video of Adam Grosser describing a new, improved version of a product from 1928 providing 24 hours of safe non-electric refrigeration from a device the size of a thermos using just one hour of cooking heat available anywhere in the world.

A new project that seems at first blush to be Hobbiton Meets Starship Troopers (because its founding leaders are veterans) is the formation of an off-grid community designed to provide mutual aid and support with a “family values” emphasis.
The founders already have 100s of acres to start, from the 419 area code on the site […]

Gene GeRue’s Ruralize.com website promotes the homesteading author’s book, How to Find Your Ideal Country Home: A Comprehensive Guide.
Until urban centers in the U.S. become something other than crime-riddled, polluted cesspools of disease and poverty, I’m taking the rural side of the debate. Although I’m on five acres in Pahrump at the moment, I have […]

This remains my favorite of the TED talks (except maybe Ray Kurzweil).
William McDonough, co-author of Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, discusses sustainable design in architecture and ends with his astounding plans for twelve new cities in China. Quite a contrast from the toxic hell that is Beijing. From Wikipedia:
Air pollution […]

Rob Johnson is holding a contest in which you can win his balls, seedballs that is.
I bought a product at the NW Flower and Garden show this year called seedballz I have some balls left over and thought… what will I do with my balls? I know- I will give them away! They are cool- […]

Just because PETA drives me crazy, don’t think I hate vegetarians. The Path To Freedom family in the video is a model for everyone.
I’m all for Food Not Lawns, Edible Estates, and Urban Homesteading if you’ve already got a house in the ‘burbs. My only quibble is that for renters looking to buy a […]