Rockets That Don’t Fly
Building, Energy Systems — by Rob Avis April 6, 2010
by Rob Avis
Living in Canada makes staying warm in winter an interesting challenge. In such a cold climate I have long wondered how to continue to keep humans warm (care of people) without bringing down forests or using fossil fuels (care of earth). Even the most energy efficient home with passive solar design will require some sort of external heat input during our winter.
Biomass is simply “ordered” carbon through the process of photosynthesis – ie. stored solar energy. Biomass comes in the form of straw, wood, stover, or generally any matter from living organisms. Wood is a premier choice for heating as it has a high carbon content and will burn hot. However, if there was a massive shift to heating with wood we would quickly deplete our forests and significanlty affect the climate. How do we heat ourselves without bringing down the lungs and life support system of the planet?
Comments (0)Zaytuna Farm Yields
Demonstration Sites, Education Centers — by Rob Avis March 31, 2010
Photos and text by Rob Avis
History has shown time and time again that civilizations have risen and fallen based on the quantity and health of their topsoil. Since food is the basis of civilization and topsoil is the basis of food this is not a difficult concept to understand.
What is difficult to understand is why we continue to follow the same patterns as past civilizations: de-forest, plow, crop, irrigate, and graze until the soil can no longer support life. While this pattern has historically lead to collapse we have managed to perpetuate it by introducing a petroleum-based agricultural system which grows food in lifeless soil.
I saw Greening the Desert on YouTube in the fall of 2006. I was instantly captivated by the idea of a design system that could break this hardwired pattern of land degradation in even the harshest of climates. After several years of research and travel, a permaculture design certificate and a few projects under my belt I found myself three years later, November 2009, on a Boeing 777 from Canada headed to Australia to volunteer as a WWOOFer at the Permaculture Research Institute (PRI) and fully immerse myself at a permaculture education centre for several months.
Comments (0)The Calgary Permaculture Community Group Presents, An Evening of Permaculture with Geoff Lawton
Community Projects, Conferences, Courses/Workshops, DVDs/Books, Social Gatherings — by Rob Avis
The newly formed Calgary Permaculture Community group is proud to be screening Geoff Lawton’s Introduction to Permaculture DVD followed by a Q&A session with Geoff Lawton of the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia. The event will be held on April 17th at 6:00pm at the John Dutton Theatre. After the screening of Introduction to Permaculture, Geoff Lawton will be skyping in from Australia to answer all of your permaculture related questions.
Click here to open a 390kb PDF of details.
For more information please contact calgarypermaculture (at) gmail.com
Permaculture Calgary website: www.permaculturecalgary.org
Comments (0)
