Here the soils of daily washing stay on the land, conveyed by gravity through pipes to the leach fields to join the earth of the tree duff, filtering fresh rainfall to replenish the dwelling well. Meanwhile the ferrous field well spews rustily over the garden, adding a mineral edge to the lusty bite of a […]
Category Archives: waste streams
ASR Dispatch: Sustainability the New Cool?
Young skateboarders showing off their tricks on the floor of the ASR trade show The buzz in the ASR seminar rooms hints that skateboarding is suffering from no longer being as cool as it was a few years ago. Its hipness seems to have peaked when skater shoes crossed-over and saturated the mainstream market. Also, […]
Bicycle Composter Comes Home
Ene spins the composter above our vegetable garden MIX, our bike-powered compost tumbler, has found a final home on the Wowhaus compound, perched atop what remains of a pool deck, above our vegetable garden. The tumbler quickly breaks down our kitchen scraps, mixed with ashes and sawdust, and dumps the mixture into a garden bed […]
Rooftop Lizard Habitat
Artist Mark Brest van Kempen explains his water catchment/recycling system We spent an inspiring evening yesterday at the home of our friend Mark Brest van Kempen, an Oakland-based artist whose work “draws our attention to nature’s role as source, setting and savior“. Mark’s house and studio are a kind of living laboratory nestled in the […]
Running Fence Revisited #1
A section of the fabric from Christo’s ‘Running Fence’ (1976) is used as a backdrop for the Salami Toss at the Occidental Fire Department’s annual summer barbecue. When Christo and Jeanne-Claude realized their seminal Running Fence project in West Sonoma County in the mid-1970’s, they traded materials used to construct the 24 mile long fence […]
Green Walnut Harvest
Ene and Aili harvested hundreds of green walnuts from our tree to make our annual batch of nocino, the homemade digestif we like to share with friends and family on special occasions throughout the year. The nuts peaked about a week later than last year, and we managed to clear the tree of the plump, […]
Mildred’s Lane Dispatch
David Brooks tests the completed pole lathe at Mildred’s Lane (photo by Walker Tufts) The Mildred’s Lane Fellows have completed the pole lathe using entirely materials from the land, and are ready to test its performance cutting green wood, split and foraged from recently fallen trees of beech, hickory and white oak. As I have […]