Scott Nearing

Selected passages from A Radical Who Laid the Groundwork for the Tenure System

Scott Nearing was brilliant, without doubt, influencing generations over his century-long life by advocating what he believed to be a back-to-nature lifestyle of economic and social purity. "If I am rich and you are poor," Nearing wrote, "both of us are corrupted by inequality."

Nearing…was influenced by Simon Nelson Patten, the great progressive economist and director of Wharton School from 1896 to 1912. Nearing earned a doctorate in economics in 1909, began teaching sociology at Wharton, and became immersed in progressive social causes in Philadelphia.

Nearing opposed America’s involvement in World War I. In March 1918 he was indicted, but later exonerated by the federal government via the Espionage Act for his antiwar writing. In the 1920s he joined the Communist party until he was expelled from that organization for being too radically independent.

Nearing later espoused a simple lifestyle of abstaining from products and economic practices that he believed hurt society. Among his 50 books was the classic Living the Good Life, co-authored with his wife Helen in 1954 and republished in 1970, inspiring the countercultural movement of the time. Nearing died in 1983 shortly after his 100th birthday. Read the full article here

In 1917 Scott Nearing wrote ‘The Great Madness’ that blamed US involvement in WWI on J.P. Morgan bank and other corporate interests. Sound familiar? Nearing's 1917 review of the ominous events from 1914 to 1917 that enabled the private interests of large corporations ("plutocracy") to propel the U.S. into World War I for their material profit, thereby permanently degrading and perverting U.S. democracy for the 20th century. Nearing’s analysis shows how the business class gained control of the inner workings of the United States government and were thus able to meld nationalist patriotism into a military preparedness which finally leads to an open declaration of war. Read more here

The Good Life Center, Scott & Helen Nearing's publications

The Great Madness, by the Information Clearing House

Scott Nearing biographical sketch by Ryan Eroh

Rand School of Social Science
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Rand School of Social Science was formed in New York City by adherents of the Socialist Party of America in 1906. The school aimed to provide a broad education to workers, imparting a politicizing class-consciousness, and additionally served as a research bureau, a publisher, and the operator of a summer camp for socialist and trade union activists. The school changed its name to the "Tamiment Institute and Library" in 1935 and it was closely linked to the Social Democratic Federation after the 1936 split of the Socialist Party. Its collection became a key component of today's Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Archives at New York University in 1963. Read more here

Cunningham Memorial Library
Indiana State Library
Debs Collection


The Great Madness: A Victory for the American Plutocracy. New York: Rand School of Social Science, 1917. 44 pp. Pamphlet N354 .G7 1917p.

Scott Nearing's Address to the Jury: The Speach <Sic> Before the Jury When Charged with a Violation of the Espionage Act. New York: Rand School of Social Science, <1918>. 30 pp. Pamphlet N354 .S3 1918p.

Nearing, Scott. Before the Court: Nearing-Debs New York: People's Print, <1919?> 22 pp. Pamphlet N354 .B4 1919p

The New Slavery: Or, the World Made Safe for Plutocracy. Chicago: Socialist Party of the United States, 1920. 45 pp. Pamphlet N354 .N4 1920p.

The Good Life: Helen and Scott Nearing's Sixty Years of Self-Sufficient Living. "Helen and Scott Nearing are the great-grandparents of the back-to-the-land movement, having abandoned the city in 1932 for a rural life based on self-reliance, good health, and a minimum of cash...Fascinating, timely, and wholly useful, a mix of the Nearings' challenging philosophy and expert counsel on practical skills."--Washington Post Book World. Read more here

Scott Nearing

Scott Nearing
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Scott Nearing (August 6, 1883 – August 24, 1983) was an American radical economist, educator, writer, political activist, and advocate of simple living.

Nearing was born in Morris Run, Tioga County, Pennsylvania, the heart of the state's coal country… Nearing graduated from high school in 1901 and enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania Law School, "where corporate bias so violated his idealism that after one year he quit." Instead he studied oratory at Temple University in Philadelphia and enrolled in the Wharton School of Business of the University of Pennsylvania, where he immersed himself in the emerging science of economics. Read more here

Living The Good Life
Directed by John Hoskyns-Abrahall
Produced by Bullfrog Films

A portrait of the daily life of America's most famous back-to-the-landers. Filmed in 1976.

Scott Nearing had nothing to do with the credit economy. Nearing did not borrow money, and he not pay interest. Instead Nearing preferred to "pay as we go". Nearing also "wished the bankers would find useful occupations for themselves and let the economy alone". YouTube

Scott Nearing

Vermont Public Radio (podcast)
VT Edition: Modern Homesteading

Homesteading conjures images of a life of complete self-sufficiency:  living off the grid and growing your own food.  But there is no easy definition of the practice and these days there are many different approaches.

VPR's Steve Zind talks with  Rebecca Kneale Gould, Associate Professor of Religion at Middlebury College and author of "At Home in Nature:  Modern Homesteading and Spiritual Practice in America" and Philip Ackerman-Leist, Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at Green Mountain College about how we define modern homesteading and what draws people to the lifestyle.

Read more here

The Good Life Center a non-profit education center based out of the last hand-built home of Helen and Scott Nearing, which is located at Forest Farm in Harborside (Brooksville), Maine on five acres of forested land overlooking Spirit Cove. The Good Life Center's purpose is perpetuate the goals, philosophies, life and ways of the Nearings.

The Nearing were two of America's most inspirational practitioners of simple, frugal and purposeful living. In 1932, at the height of the Great Depression, Helen and Scott Nearing moved from their small apartment in New York City to a dilapidated farmhouse on 65 acres in Vermont. For over 20 years, they created fertile, organic gardens, hand-crafted stone buildings, and a practice of living simply and sustainably on the land. In 1952, they moved to the Maine coast, where they later built their last stone home.

Through their 60 years of living on the land in rural New England, their commitment to social and economic justice, their numerous books and articles, and the time they shared with thousands of visitors to their homestead, the Nearings embodied a philosophy that has come to be recognized as a centerpiece of America's "Back to the Land" and "Simple Living" movements. Read more

The Art of the Wood-Burning Cookstove
Mother Earth News
By John Gulland
December/January 2004

Warm up your home, hearth and heart by cooking on and heating with a wood-burning cookstove.

This King Kineo cookstove belonged to Scott and Helen Nearing, the legendary homesteading couple known for their philosophy of simple living.

The wood cookstove is an icon of rural America as powerful as the split-rail fence and horse-drawn wagon. Whether it’s the solid, traditional look of cast iron, or the eye-catching gleam of nickel plate, just a glimpse of a cookstove can elicit feelings of nostalgia and, for many, a longing for ownership. So enduring is such a cookstove’s appeal that even today you can buy new models that are in almost every way replicas of the ones your grandparents and great-grandparents might have used. In fact, it would be hard to find a truly modern wood cookstove, even if you wanted to buy one.

These old-fashioned stoves still attract a loyal following, and it’s easy to understand why. Cookstoves combine stove-top cooking, baking, water heating and home heating, all in a single appliance that is steeped in tradition and powered by a readily available, renewable fuel. As with so many combination devices, cookstoves perform each function with varying degrees of competence, but if the following owners and users of antique and new wood cookstoves are any guide, the problems that do arise are easily overlooked. These folks are smitten. Read more here

Helen and Scott Nearing: Counterculture authors, speakers and farmers
Mother Earth News
September/October 1971

A Plowboy Interview with Helen and Scott Nearing, authors of Living the Good Life and The Maple Sugar Book.

Helen and Scott Nearing have been living today's counterculture for better than a generation. Almost four decades ago (in 1932), the couple "dropped out" to a rockscrabble mountain farm in Vermont's Green Mountains where they spent the next 20 years rebuilding the soil, constructing solid homestead buildings from native stone; growing their own food, heating with wood they cut by hand and co--authoring numerous books and magazine articles. Tick off any of the present's most "in" passions—women's lib, equal rights, organic gardening, vegetarianism, radicalism, homesteading, subsistence farming, ecology—and you'll find that the Nearings have been doing instead of talking for 40 years.

Read more here

Nearing Enough
Mother Earth News
by Lynn Karlin
October/November 2003

A reflection on the simple-living lessons offered by legendary homesteaders Helen and Scott Nearing, authors of Living the Good Life.

At ages 68 and 89, Helen and Scott began building these stone buildings and garden walls to make their last homestead, which is open to the public today.

By candlelight and snuggled away under quilts in a cozy, slant-ceiling guest room one winter's night long ago, I read Helen and Scott Nearing's Living the Good Life, which had been left on the bedside table for me by my host.

The Nearings wrote, "We maintain that a couple, of any age ... with a minimum of health, intelligence and capital, can adapt themselves to country living, learn its crafts, overcome its difficulties, and build up a life pattern rich in simple values and productive of personal and social good."

Helen and Scott Nearing lived a self-sufficient life in the 1930s and '40s in Vermont and, later into the 1990s, in Maine, their principles always directing their choices.

Still today, the Nearings' initial questions, dilemmas and fears are shared by many people who want to take their lives into their own hands and live in a simpler, less routinized, more socially sensible manner, with sun, wind and rain on their faces and organic food in their bellies, while leaving far, far behind them highrises and fluorescent lights, suburbs and office cubicles, processed air and food and water, the proverbial Joneses, and those ubiquitous racing rats equipped with cell phones and beepers.

Read more here

Intentional Community is an inclusive term for ecovillages, cohousing communities, residential land trusts, communes, student co-ops, urban housing cooperatives, intentional living, alternative communities, cooperative living, and other projects where people strive together with a common vision.

This web site serves the growing communities' movement, providing resources for starting a community, finding a community home, living in community, and creating more community in your life. Read more here

Intentional Community, Facebook

There's a Place
Sardonicky Guest Post
by Neil Gillespie
November 29, 2011

This post was inspired by Valerie, Anne, DreamsAmelia and others who commented on Karen’s post "The Nightmare Before Christmas".

Each of you expressed a fundamental theme of human existence, the need for shelter and community. Is it better to rent or buy a home? Is real neighborliness in person with your actual neighbors the bedrock of society, or can an online "community" suffice? And how does all this fit into the larger world or work and family?

There is another way: You can have it all, in an intentional community. The following is inspired by many people and ideas too numerous to mention here, so I’ll begin with one person, Scott Nearing. "If I am rich and you are poor," Nearing wrote, "both of us are corrupted by inequality." Read more here

There's No Place Like Here: Communal Living with Nikki Silva

While traveling to help promote Etsy as a sponsor of the Bay Area Maker Faire, I was fortunate enough to receive an invitation to visit the wondrous place that is La Selva. After a beautiful sunlight-through-the-mist drive down the winding seaside road of Highway 1, I reached Watsonville, CA, and eventually La Selva, where Nikki Silva, a public radio producer best known for her work as one half of the Kitchen Sisters, greeted me. Nikki led me through the communal home that she and eight others have built for themselves in over thirty years of hard toiling work. Naturally we waited all day for a break in the fog so I could get a shot of the majestic view overlooking Monterey Bay. Read more here

The Federation of Egalitarian Communities is a union of egalitarian communities which have joined together in our common struggle to create a lifestyle based on equality, cooperation, and harmony with the earth. Read more here

Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage
Sustainable Community Living

Dancing Rabbit is an ecovillage and intentional community of about 50 people set amid the hills and prairies of rural northeastern Missouri. Our goal is to live ecologically sustainable and socially rewarding lives, and to share the skills and ideas behind that lifestyle. Read more here

About Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage

At Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage (DR), we understand how difficult it can be to live sustainably and responsibly within modern US culture. We believe that we can work to build a healthy alternative-- a social structure that is both non-exploitative and vibrant. As our village grows, we see this ideal take shape more clearly every day: a diverse range of people living ecologically sound lives in a community that truly serves as an example of positive human action within the natural world.

In 1997 the DR Land Trust (DRLT) purchased 280 acres in the rolling hills of northeastern Missouri. We are now 12 years deep into pioneering, constructing buildings while planning and developing community structure. People's social and economic needs are met primarily on-site and locally, though a few support themselves doing web work or off-site consulting. There is an ever-increasing emphasis on internal economy, including a lot of barter and a well-used internal currency. Eventually, we see 500-1,000 people living in our village, with businesses and homes surrounding the village green. Read more here

Frequency555.com visits Twin Oaks Community in rural central Virginia. The community consists of around 85 adult members and 15 children and has been in existence since 1967. The core values reflected in their way of life are cooperation, sharing, nonviolence, equality, and ecology. The community is diverse in religious and spiritual beliefs and their governance style shares responsibility amongst the members, and includes management, planning and committee positions.

Twin Oaks members consider their life communistic; however, they own and operate several successful businesses on their property, including a tofu and soy food-making operation, organic seed company, a book indexing service, and hammock-making business. Community members work 42 hours a week, split between income labor and the domestic labor we all have do at home anyway, so really they work about 20 hours a week and share their income. Their unique system provides each member housing, food, healthcare, and some personal spending money. On YouTube

Twin Oaks Hammocks
www.TwinOaksStore.com

Twin Oaks Hammocks has been making hammocks in our rural Virginia facility since 1967. All of our hammocks are hand-crafted by members of Twin Oaks Community. We stand behind the quality and durability of our hammocks with one of the industry's best warranties—and we repair damaged hammocks as well.

For customer service or to order by phone, please call toll-free: 1-800-688-8946. Contact us 24/7/365 using our webform.

Twin Oaks Community Foods
www.TwinOaksTofu.com

We happily make every ounce of Twin Oaks Community Foods products personally by hand. That’s why we can guarantee the quality of our Tofu, and why we’re so proud of it. We don’t just keep watch as depressed hired workers process little white squares down a conveyor belt like in some industrial nightmare. Our personal care and attention makes a big difference in the quality of your food. Twin Oaks Tofu is a healthy, ethically-produced organic food, NOT a mass-produced industrial product.

Made with locally grown, organic NON-GMO soybeans, our Tofu meets the high standards for the Organic Certification established by the USDA Quality Certification Service. Yep, that’s the green ORGANIC seal. The only label you can trust to mean real, bonafide, authentic organic. No genetic modification, no chemicals, no preservatives… only natural, organic ingredients.

All Twin Oaks Community Food products are made with fresh, chlorine-free, non-floridated artisan well water. And since tofu is about 70% water, that makes a big taste difference.

Read more here

Twin Oaks is an intentional community in rural central Virginia, made up of around 85 adult members and 15 children. Since the community's beginning in 1967, our way of life has reflected our values of cooperation, sharing, nonviolence, equality, and ecology. Read more here

Earthaven is an aspiring ecovillage in a mountain forest setting near Asheville, North Carolina. We are dedicated to caring for people and the Earth by learning, living, and demonstrating a holistic, sustainable culture.

Read more here

Earthaven ecovillage, Facebook

Frequency555.com: Earthaven Ecovillage

John Shimkus and Dana Lagomarsino of Frequency555.com visit Earthaven Ecovillage. John actually spent the summer there one year as a work-exchange volunteer learning about permaculture, earthen building, and the communal way of life. John even used the experience as a reference point for his Master's thesis.

Earthaven is nestled in the Black Mountains about 40 minutes outside of Asheville, North Carolina. It rests on approximately 320 acres of resource abundant land, with flowing streams and natural spring water. The community is off the grid, creating its own energy through solar systems and a micro-hydroelectric generator.

Earthaven utilizes permaculture design principles to construct earthen houses and practice sustainable agriculture. There are edible and medicinal gardens all over the community, as well as humanely raised livestock which are integrated into the living system as fertilizers and garbage composters, making use of their existence beyond just meat and dairy production. Since 1995 the community has served as a model for truly sustainable living.

Through their consensus governance model, all members of Earthaven are welcome to participate in the governance process. This is radically different from traditional majority-vote, allowing for everyone in the community to have a say in the future of their ecovillage.

Earthaven is not a commune, and members possess their own private funds. There are several small businesses on-site, and many members offer consulting and educational services that help spread awareness about their lifestyle. However, the community does incorporate their own monetary unit, called the "leap," into their economic system. This allows community members to trade goods and services amongst one another within the community. Someone, for example, could exchange a massage for some home-grown berries, or an hour of labor.

Radical Red Mulberry
Looking for kindred spirits
Posted on November 22, 2011 by redmulberry

We are on the search for new people to join us in rural Pennsylvania for our social project, a.k.a. intentional community, a.k.a. commune. We don’t necessarily have a laundry list of requirements to join, but we do have a few very important questions that we feel you should ask yourself, starting with…

Can you shit in a bucket? Can you dump out said bucket when it’s full? Can you eat the produce grown from the compost created from your shit? Yes, this seems a little silly to ask, and believe me, I’m grinning to myself as I’m typing it. But, we believe it’s the perfect filter to screen potential communard comrades. After all, if you can’t deal with literal shit, how can you deal with all the metaphorical shit of living in a community? It’s not easily flushed away to disappear; it is all right there in your face. If this isn’t much of a hurdle for you, then we would also like to know…

Read more here

www.yacuyura.org

Hola a toda nuestra red de hermanos y amigos que nos han apoyado a través de estos 8 años.

Llego el momento en que estamos llevando nuestro trabajo y servicio a nuevos lugares, Yacu Yura (Aguas Claras) será custodiado por sus propios dueños, antiguos habitantes del lugar. www.yacuyura.org

Meadowdance was an intentional community in the state of Vermont from May 2000 until September 2008. We ranged from eight to 21 members over those eight years, and shared in the birth of three children. We lived together in a cooperative household, ran businesses together to support ourselves and shared in the raising of each other's children. Over the years we lived in three different houses and bought a beautiful piece of land in Marshfield, Vermont. Though building the village of our dreams never came to pass we shared in each other's lives and in working on a wonderful project. Read more here

What is an intentional community?

Mont Saint-Michel
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

While watching a Rick Steves travel-Europe program, I was reminded that all those old monasteries and castles are actually intentional communities. One that I visited many years ago, Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy, France, is described by Wikipedia as "a rocky tidal island and a commune". That linked to another Wikipedia page, Communes of France.

In "How the Irish saved Western Civilization" author Thomas Cahill described how Irish monks and scribes maintain the record of Western civilization by copying manuscripts of Greek and Latin writers, both pagan and Christian, while libraries and learning on the European continent was being overrun by barbarians.

In this time of economic uncertainty and intellectual dishonesty, there may be a place for intentional communities in America, to serve a role similar to the monasteries and castles of Europe, to save civilization from Corporatism, which is the new fascism promoted by much of the left and the right.

Mount Athos
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mount Athos is a mountain and peninsula in Macedonia, Greece. A World Heritage Site and self-governed state in the Hellenic Republic, Athos is home to 20 stavropegial Eastern Orthodox monasteries under the direct jurisdiction of the patriarch of Constantinople. Today Greeks commonly refer to Mount Athos as the "Holy Mountain". In Classical times, while the mountain was called Athos, the peninsula was called Akté. Read more here

Mt. Athos: A visit to the Holy Mountain
60 Minutes CBS News
April 21, 2011

(CBS News) On this Easter Sunday, we're going to take you to a place outside our world. It's not Mars or Venus but it might as well be. It's a remote peninsula in northern Greece that millions believe to be the most sacred spot on Earth.

It's called Mount Athos and prayers have been offered there every day, with no interruption, for more than a thousand years. It was set aside by ancient emperors to be the spiritual capital of Orthodox Christianity and has probably changed less over the centuries than any other inhabited place on the planet. The monks come to Mount Athos from all over and do everything they can to keep what they call "the world" far away. Read more here

The Economics of Happiness

Economic globalization has led to a massive expansion in the scale and power of big business and banking. It has also worsened nearly every problem we face: fundamentalism and ethnic conflict; climate chaos and species extinction; financial instability and unemployment. There are personal costs too. For the majority of people on the planet, life is becoming increasingly stressful. We have less time for friends and family and we face mounting pressures at work.

 The Economics of Happiness describes a world moving simultaneously in two opposing directions. On the one hand, an unholy alliance of governments and big business continues to promote globalization and the consolidation of corporate power. At the same time, people all over the world are resisting those policies, demanding a re-regulation of trade and finance—and, far from the old institutions of power, they’re starting to forge a very different future. Communities are coming together to re-build more human scale, ecological economies based on a new paradigm – an economics of localization. Read more here

Alan Watts Official Website

Alan Watts was profoundly influenced by the East Indian philosophies of Vedanta and Buddhism, and by Taoist thought, which is reflected in Zen poetry and the arts of China and Japan.  After leaving the Church he never became a member of  another organized religion, although he wrote and spoke extensively about Zen Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoisim. Some American Buddhists criticized him for not sitting regularly in zazen, even though he recorded several guided meditations teaching a variety of mediation techniques. Alan Watts responded simply by saying: "A cat sits until it is done sitting, and then gets up, stretches, and walks away." Read more here

Alan Watts
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Alan Wilson Watts (6 January 1915 – 16 November 1973) was a British philosopher, writer, and speaker, best known as an interpreter and popularizer of Eastern philosophy for a Western audience. Born in Chislehurst, he moved to the United States in 1938 and began Zen training in New York. Pursuing a career, he attended Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, where he received a master's degree in theology. Watts became an Episcopal priest but left the ministry in 1950 and moved to California, where he joined the faculty of the American Academy of Asian Studies.

Living on the West Coast, Watts gained a large following in the San Francisco Bay Area while working as a volunteer programmer at KPFA, a Pacifica Radio station in Berkeley. Watts wrote more than 25 books and articles on subjects important to Eastern and Western religion, introducing the then-burgeoning youth culture to The Way of Zen (1957), one of the first bestselling books on Buddhism. In Psychotherapy East and West (1961), Watts proposed that Buddhism could be thought of as a form of psychotherapy and not just a religion. Like Aldous Huxley before him, he explored human consciousness in the essay, "The New Alchemy" (1958), and in the book, The Joyous Cosmology (1962).

Towards the end of his life, he divided his time between a houseboat in Sausalito and a cabin on Mount Tamalpais. His legacy has been kept alive by his son, Mark Watts, and by many of his recorded talks and lectures that have found new life on the Internet. Critic Erik Davis notes the freshness, longevity, and continuing relevance of Watts's work today, observing that his "writings and recorded talks still shimmer with a profound and galvanizing lucidity. Read more here

The Henry Beston Society

Henry Beston's 1928 book, The Outermost House, is now considered a classic of American Literature and has a devoted following among its readers. Beston (1888-1968) wrote the book after spending a solitary "year" in a 20x16 house on the dunes of Eastham on Cape Cod, using the house as a base while studying and observing the wonders of the elements in this glorious maritime setting.

The Outermost House is considered to be one of the seminal works of today's environmental movements and "is one of the reasons that the Cape Cod National Seashore exists today," in the words of the governor of Massachusetts, Endicott Peabody, in 1964. The governor's words were echoed by representatives of the National Park Service. Rachel Carson said it was the only book that ever influenced her writing. Read more here

Outermost House, Wikipedia

Henry Beston.com

Outermost House, Amazon.com

A Cape Cod Connection In 'The Outermost House'
National Public Radio
by Lucinda Fleeson
November 26, 2009

New England author Henry Beston helped me see the glory of a Cape winter in all its desolation and rawness. I had rented an old farmhouse in Truro for a month's writing retreat and picked up a bunch of library books. I almost dismissed Beston's The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod. At first I thought it was just another chronicle of escape to the countryside. But Beston's writing stirs our primal need for nature at its most wild and pure. He reminds us that we still live on an untamed planet. Read more here

Chris Hedges "Death of the Liberal Class"
The Sanctuary for Independent Media
October 17, 2010

Chris Hedges, whose book "Death of the Liberal Class" (Perseus) came out the day of this presentation, is also the best-selling author of "War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning." Hedges, whose column is published Mondays on Truthdig, spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years. Produced by The Sanctuary for Independent Media in Troy NY, this event was co-sponsored by Bethlehem Neighbors for Peace. Watch video on YouTube

Chris Hedges Q&A "The Death of the Liberal Class" on YouTube

The age of Obama has fallen tragically short... we need to put on our cemetery clothes and be coffin-ready for the next great democratic battle. Read more in the New York Times

Cornel West Official Website

Cornel West on Facebook

I Remember Exactly Where I Was The Night The Lights Went Out…In Cities All Across America
Matt Weidner

Fighting With The American People
December 4th, 2011

I remember where I was the night the lights went out.

The night the lights went out in Tampa and Orlando….and in cities all across America.  The whole world remembers. While previous generations remembered where they were when Kennedy was shot or when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, but the defining event that eclipses both of those…and every other…in our nation’s collective history is the night cities went dark across America. Way out here in the country we all refer to the night as "The Switch" because the lights just turned off like someone flipped a big ole switch that controlled every single light and drop of power that lit up the cities and kept them alive.

When The Switch flipped, I was out deep in the Myakka swamp, a prehistoric wilderness that time forgot situated just off the center of the state of Florida and nearly inaccessible to all but the most determined human beings.  The water that runs through Myakka is inky black and the woods and water are inhabited with a population of creatures so diverse no Hollywood creator could ever dream up. Feral hogs and cougars; bullfrogs and insects; raccoons and rattlesnakes–The swamp is their pyramid and they sit firmly atop it.

I  was deep in this swamp the night The Switch flipped. At that precise moment I was gliding silently across the dark water, slowly scanning the shore with my light, waiting patiently to catch two red dots reflecting back me.  The red dots are the telltale eyes of one of Mother Nature’s more terrifyingly un-evolved beasts, Florida freshwater alligator staring back at me. When the red dots reflected back straight and symmetrical, I’d know just where to target my round.  And then, BAM, WHACK! Fifty eight grams of led moving at 300 feet per second colliding somewhere in the general vicinity of an alligator’s walnut-sized brain. After a solid hit, it took only a few strokes of the paddle to make it to the kill zone to wrestle the beast into the flats boat.  Ample protein for me and my family and maybe even a little left over to trade. Read more here

Center for Rural Affairs
Beginning Farmer and Rancher Opportunities

New farmers are quickly becoming a rarity, and these days, it can be hard to get started. Yet exciting opportunities exist in farming and ranching, especially for those who capture the growing consumer interest in healthy food and stewardship of our natural resources. Anyone with interest can become a new farmer - there is no age limit on pursuing an interest in farming or ranching. Read more here

Center for Rural Affairs, Facebook

New Farmers Find Their Footing
The New York Times
By MARK BITTMAN
August 16, 2011

North Haven, Me.

When Brenna Chase was farming in Connecticut a few years back, new farmers weren’t always welcome by oldsters. The pie, she says, just wasn’t big enough. "But now," she said to me here, where she now farms, "the feeling is that the pie is getting bigger and that the more people that get into this the better it will be for everyone."

By "this," she means sustainable farming (here I use the term interchangeably with "organic" because many ethical farmers can’t afford organic certification), and the poised 33-year-old, who began farming in high school, is representative of young people I’ve met all over the country. These are people whose concern for the environment led to a desire to grow — and eat — better food. And although chefs still get more attention, the new farmers deserve recognition for their bold and often creative directions. Read more here

From Wikipedia

Agriculture

Organic farming

Permaculture

No-till farming

Vertical farming

Victory garden

Cold Antler Farm Jenna’s blog

Enjoy the story of a young writer living in Washington County with her fancy dogs, sheep, lots of chickens, fiber & meat rabbits, geese, ducks, turkeys, a hive and a garden. Expect to hear a lot about mountain music, the civil war, local food, and my friends along the way. It's a big time folks. Read more here

Yummy Plants is a community to support people interested in exploring a plant-based diet. Whether you are a vegetarian, a new vegan, or just looking to add more vegetables to your diet, this is the place for you to share your thoughts and ideas. Read more here

Yummy Plants Facebook 

Permaculture!
http://www.permies.com/

A tour of temporary and permanent outdoor kitchens. Includes cobville, O.U.R. Ecovillage, the bullock brothers farm, lost valley and others. Outdoor kitchens don't have to me elaborate and/or expensive. Plus, these outdoor kitchens are keyed more to communities and groups. Outdoor kitchens are also a great place for canning and processing the fall harvest on the farm. Salatin uses an outdoor kitchen for processing all of his chickens.

Outdoor kitchens are an excellent way to feed those farm interns! This video includes a lovely cob oven and cob bench. http://www.permies.com/

Alexia Allen of Hawthorn Farm is a wilderness skills instructor who also has a small farm in Woodinville, Washington. I thought she did a really good job of demonstrating a respectful harvest of a chicken. Read more here

Respectful Chicken Harvest Part 2 of 2

Government money may be available for certain farm and business ventures. Republican Kristi Noem, the U.S. Rep. for South Dakota's At-large district, and new Tea Party Princess, benefited from government subsidies. Noem’s family farm received over $3 million dollars in subsidies from the United States.

From Wikipedia: "The property has also received $3,058,152 in USDA farm subsidies from 1995 through 2009. Over the years, Noem added a hunting lodge and restaurant to the property, and all of her siblings have moved back to assist in expanding the businesses." Read more here

Apeckalypse
Twin Oaks Community
Submitted by Ethan
November 30, 2011

By Janel Twin Oaks

In just a matter of weeks, Twin Oaks’ 150 laying hens have become frozen fodder for future community meals.

It all started late in the summer when new member Sapphyre and I decided to fill the much-needed poultry management position. We started doing research about proper chicken care--and the answers we found left us shocked. Suddenly, aspects of our fenced-in chicken yard that once seemed benign to my untrained eye began to pop out at me--the lack of top soil due to vegetation depletion, for instance, or the broken feathers on birds’ backs (indicating a possible feather mite infestation). Not to mention we realized that many of the hens were too old to efficiently produce eggs anymore.

Coincidentally, around that time I began devouring The Omnivore’s Dilemma at Valerie’s recommendation, and the picture that animal-pasturing expert Joel Salatin painted of a "happy chicken" began to haunt me. In the book, Salatin tells author Michael Pollan that fowls were meant to flit from area to area, scratching and pecking at the ground for bugs and tasty weeds. They were not meant to be confined, eating nothing but industrially-farmed corn and grains. Of course! Learning this was like unlocking a primordial instinct in me that had long been buried by civilization. After much deliberation and a few tears, Sapphyre and I decided the best thing to do would be to kill the birds and start over in the spring, hopefully purchasing eggs from local farmers until a Twin Oaks pastured poultry program is fully underway.

Luckily, we had former Oakers Jim and Shana to turn to. Jim and Shana dabbled in raising poultry for profit and built an impressive slaughtering station in their back yard--which happens to be two miles from the community. In exchange for LEX hours (labor IOU’s traded between communities) and a few chickens, Jim and Shana agreed to help us turn the entire flock into tomorrow’s main course, 50 birds at a time. Thus, every Monday in October became a meat processing field trip.

Halloween day marked our final slaughter with Jim and Shana. The air was warm and crisp as June, Valerie, Kele and I took off down the road, five pens of chickens in tow. Once at Jim and Shana’s, I stood next to the crowded cages of birds awaiting their fate and surveyed the scene: the upside down traffic cones in which the birds would "bleed out," the de-feathering machine, the stainless-steel evisceration table. Trying to calm myself in the face of the lurking question, "Is this the right thing to do?," I put my hand on a pen and whispered a thank you to the birds whose bodies would feed me throughout the winter. Then, I moved to my position at the evisceration table.

A couple hours later, 50 carcasses were cooling in vats of ice water, and Kele, Valerie, Shana and I were peeling the tough inner tissues from gizzards to prepare them for consumption. Our rambling conversation turned to the subject of birth and as I listened to the others swap stories of the human births they’d experienced, I was struck by the irony of discussing new life on a day of death. Yet the subject was comforting. It reminded me that spring will bring with it a rebirth of the Twin Oaks poultry program -- and that I’m a part of that rebirth. I took a deep, healing breath, and I allowed myself to smile. Read more here

Krewe De Food host John Cassidy takes us through the basic points of building an urban flock. Stop by Hollygrove Market and Farm on Saturdays from 10-2 to visit the chickens.

Read more here

Krewe De Food host John Cassidy showing 2 of the most humane ways of killing chickens and processing them. As John says, "It's not fun... but it's how life goes on without Walmarts."

David Aman of Krewe De Food made this point on the KDF Chicken Killing Demonstration blog post: 

"Everyone who eats meat should participate periodically in its killing. If you're not a vegetarian then do yourself a favor and eat something that you kill. There would be a lot less meat consumption if us omnivores were a little more attached to the killing portion of our meat consumption. The industrialization of our food is doing something to our subconscious; can't say exactly how it has and will effect us but it can't be good.." Read more here

For over 95 years, Murray McMurray Hatchery has been supplying the small farmer, rural egg producer and chicken enthusiast with a wide variety of day-old baby chicks, pullets, ducklings and much more. If you have been thinking that it might be fun to dabble in the world of backyard chickens this is the place. We have a full line of different breeds of poultry and chickens to satisfy chicken lovers of every age. It is gratifying to watch your baby chicks grow from newly hatched to adult, ready to entertain you in every way - not to mention harvesting eggs and meat that you have grown yourself. Read more here

This is what dinner looks like
Matt Weidner, Fighting With The American People
October 29th, 2011

I just love getting out into the sticks and the rural areas of the country. And what I hear from the farmers scares the hell out of me. But more of that later. This beautiful fella pictured there is my cow. He’s smiling because he’s happy and calm, living out in beautiful fields with all his family and friends. And the little fella right below here, well he’s about a day old, still wobbly on his little paws, his hide still damp from being inside his momma right there.

The pasture itself is apparently quite extraordinary….we traveled for miles and miles past hundreds of acres of similarly looking pasture, but the those fields don’t have that special mixture of grass found right here in this little bovine heaven where these guys and gals live. The mommas live quite a life…they’re prized possessions passed down through generations of Florida ranching royalty.  Only the finest male gentlemen callers with the finest pedigree are allowed near these ladies….no stressed out large herd stocks here…this is small scale, specialty farming at its very finest.  A kind of beautiful Florida cracker tradition that’s kind of slipping away.  We’ll keep visiting and getting to know the little fella and his family and then one day a few months from now we’ll see him again, only he’ll be wrapped up all neat and tidy….in a couple hundred small plastic packages. And yes, we named him….his name is Dinner. Read more here

Heart of the Garden Farm
Our Farm of Loving Intention

John 13:34-35 "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know you are My disciples, if you have love for one another." Read more here

Meet our new calf…Bull Winkle. Born Feb 2, 2010.

Seedbank
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A seedbank stores seeds as a source for planting in case seed reserves elsewhere are destroyed. It is a type of gene bank. The seeds stored may be food crops, or those of rare species to protect biodiversity. The reasons for storing seeds may be varied. In the case of food crops, many useful plants that were developed over centuries are now no longer used for commercial agricultural production and are becoming rare. Storing seeds also guards against catastrophic events like natural disasters, outbreaks of disease, or war. Read more here

New Survival Seed Bank
Lets You Plant A Full Acre Crisis Garden!

Now you can grow all the survival food you will ever need anywhere in the country with a kit that contains a special seed bank of hard to find, open pollinated... super seeds, grown by small, fiercely independent farmers. Let's face it. If the stories coming out on the world's food supply are even half right, we've got real problems and they aren't going to go away quickly. Read more here

Smart Family Living in Tiny House to Build Their Future
Tiny House Talk
April 9, 2012

A few days ago Anderson Cooper featured a family who is living in a tiny house. They’re still young with two small children who are getting to share a sleeping loft with each other. But don’t worry- the plan is to save up for a ‘small’ house in the very near future. They plan on paying for it in cash.

When you take the tour I think some of you will agree with me that the home is tiny yet still luxurious with its tongue and groove pine walls and elegant simplicity. The family moved into this tiny house from a 1,500 square foot 3 bedroom home. A drastic change, but with pleasing results. Mom is able to save her entire paychecks. They used Craigslist to find salvaged/reclaimed materials to keep construction costs low and did most of the work themselves. Their utility bill is just $40 a month. Most of their other costs have been drastically reduced too. This is allowing them to save up incredibly fast. Read more here

How to live mortgage-free in a garage converted studio
Tiny House Talk

With today’s building codes how can you get away with building a garage so that you can convert it into a studio to live in instead of having to construct an entire 1500 square foot plus house on your land? Is that even possible? Here’s the story of how one guy did it in Hawaii.

Johnny purchased a plot of land with $3000 cash about ten years ago. He had always wanted a tiny house, but couldn’t get that passed by the city. So Johnny came up with a great idea. He presented plans for a large house with a separated 400 square foot two car garage and got it approved. Then he went ahead and built the garage first and got it all inspected and approved legally.

Once he was done, Johnny sent a letter explaining that he’s done and will only be building the garage. He sort of tricked them, didn’t he? But so far, it’s worked. And I wonder… Can this method be used in more areas? Johnny collects all of his water from the roof and has his own garden because of the great year round weather. He’s been able to build his own house mortgage-free and has never made more than $20,000 a year.

It did take him around ten years to do it, but hey, that’s better than 20-40 years with a mortgage. Read the original article over at Faircompanies: Mortgage-free tiny home on a housekeeper’s salary.

*fair companies.com
community and access to tools on sustainable culture

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C++ Programming Pioneer Hacks Off-grid, DIY, Smart Home

When Loren Amelang bought land outside of Philo, California in 1973, it was a place to "live like hippies on the weekend". Years later, his Silicon Valley employer put in florescent lighting and wouldn’t let employees bring in their own lights so Amelang decided to move full-time to his off-grid property and to create a space where he would have total control over his environment.

At first he lived in a tiny cabin he had built in the old sheep barn, but deciding he needed more room for his solar panels, he began building a home that would help him generate "free hot water, free power and a decent chunk of free heat".

The entire south side of his home is covered in solar capture devices: 1600 watts of photovoltaic power, solar hot water panels, a sunroom/greenhouse and a solar hot air collector. Read more on faircompanies.com

Read more on YouTube

*fair companies.com
$1800 used shipping container as architects' backyard office

Shipping containers are built to carry huge loads and the refrigerated units are very efficient at climate control. So it's unsurprising that when they're retired from the sea, they're being used as the building blocks for homes and offices.

Given their strength they work well in earthquake country. In Berkeley, California architect Karl Wanaselja and his business partner and wife Cate Leger created their home-office using a shipping container. It cost just $1800.

Wanaselja and Leger cut their 40 foot long refrigerated unit in half and placed it in a T shape in their backyard (with the help of a crane). They didn't need to add any insulation: they're designed to not have any thermal bridging between the interior and exterior and the polyisocyanurate insulation has the highest R-value of any foam insulation.

Using a sawzall (reciprocating saw), the couple cut huge windows into the aluminum/stainless steel structure. Wanaselja says he was initially intimidated by the idea of crafting out of aluminum (the exterior material) and stainless steel (interior), but "once I got over my learning curve I actually like working with metal".

In this video, the couple talk about working in a cargo container, using materials like the soy-based plywood floor (Purebond) and the music made by rain and branches on a metal roof. Read more here. Watch Video on YouTube

*fair companies.com
Whole Earth Catalog Revisited: Steve Job’s Google of the 60’s

Steve Jobs called The Whole Earth Catalog "one of the bibles of my generation". He went on to explain in his Stanford commencement speech in 2005, "It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions".

The Whole Earth Catalog was a kind of "unofficial handbook of the counterculture". It was, pre-Internet, a way for anyone anywhere to tap into a global economy. Read more here

Whole Earth Catalog
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Whole Earth Catalog was an American counterculture catalog published by Stewart Brand between 1968 and 1972, and occasionally thereafter, until 1998. Although the WECs listed all sorts of products for sale (clothing, books, tools, machines, seeds – things useful for a creative or self-sustainable lifestyle) the Whole Earth Catalogs themselves did not sell any of the products. Instead the vendors and their prices were listed right alongside with the items. This led to a need for the Catalogs to be frequently updated. Read more here

And before search engines there was the Whole Earth Catalog

Off the Grid - LuLu Press
By LaMar Alexander

This book is for anyone that lives off-grid or would like to live an off-grid homesteader lifestyle. It is 355 pages and includes detailed step-by-step plans, full color pictures, and material list for building an off-grid cabin and over 30 useful homestead projects. Also included are directions for installing a small solar and wind power system, rain water harvest system, composting toilet, outdoor wood furnace and more... This ebook is printable and works on Linux, Windows, and Mac! Read more here

Simple Solar Homesteading

The Heartwood School

Heartwood was established in 1978 to teach the skills and knowledge it takes to build an energy-efficient house. Since that time, Heartwood expanded their programs to include all aspects of the homebuilding crafts, particularly timber framing. Heartwood has carpentry workshops for women too. Read more here

For the past thirty-five years, Heartwood students have built dozens of houses, additions, cabins and other projects in the Berkshires, as well as in other parts of the country with our traveling workshop program. Most of our homebuilding projects include timber framing and conventional light frame construction, super-insulation techniques and passive solar design, and the use of resource-efficient materials.

The Heartwood Schoolhouse is located in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts. Built by the staff and students in 1978-79, the building houses our office, spacious classroom, greenhouse, well-equipped woodworking shop, library with 500+ building books and videos, and dining area where we serve delicious and bounteous home-cooked lunches.

Those who attend Heartwood include teachers, truck drivers, architects, social workers, retirees, real estate agents, and high school students, and most have little or no previous construction experience. They range in ages from 12 to 75, men and women enroll in approximately equal numbers, and many come as couples or families. Our programs are designed to be useful as well for experienced builders who wish to expand their skills and deepen their understanding of energy-efficient house design and construction. Read more here

Small House Style

Small House Style is a web magazine dedicated to everything small house. Think bungalows, cottages, guest houses, cabins, sustainable architecture, green building, straw bale, prefab, modern, apartments, modular, simple, solar, wind and tiny – inside and outside. We love beautiful, modern and sustainable small buildings.

We hope Small House Style is an inspiration to consumers, builders, designers, entrepreneurs, innovators, developers, lawyers, engineers, lenders, contractors, sticks-in-the-mud and treehuggers alike.

Small House Style Facebook

Clearly there is an issue here on Earth. We are not going to be able to continue successfully at the current pace without disrupting the ability for life to exist as we know it. Big deal, right? Change is the only constant. But there is something to the fact that we are conscious about it and therefore able to change our behavior. So is it possible to maintain our current lifestyle in a more sustainable way? It is possible but the only way to find out is by making changes. But where? There are so many options. Small House Style strives to inspire those who can change our built environment. Read more here

Small Sustainable Cabin

Ragged Island, Maine
January 17, 2012

This small, off-grid, sustainable cabin on Ragged Island twenty miles from the coast of Maine was the brainchild of the owner’s architectural designer daughter, Alex Scott Porter, who designed the structure for her retired father, Bruce Porter, former professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. The exterior is clad in corrugated steel, with rolling storm shutters to cover the windows for when the blustery squalls. Read more here

Laneway Housing Arts & Crafts 750

Smallworks Studios
November 14, 2011

A laneway house, as I’m sure you’re all aware by now, is a house built on existing lots (typically in the backyard of an existing house) that face onto the back lane or alley. Their popularity rose on the west coast of Canada, particularly in metro Vancouver, but have since spread across North America as a chic development in crowded residential areas, which is where Smallworks Studios/Laneway Housing comes in.

Obviously space is at a premium on metro lots, so small house sensibilities are often applied in tandem with the obvious economic advantages of building with a small environmental and physical footprint. In Vancouver, the average laneway house measures only 550 square feet and consists of 1.5 stories Obviously space is at a premium on metro lots, so small house sensibilities are often applied in tandem with the obvious economic advantages of building with a small environmental and physical footprint. In Vancouver, the average laneway house measures only 550 square feet and consists of 1.5 stories. Read more here

Form & Forest’s Pioneer Prefab Cabin
September 13, 2011

Canada’s Form & Forest present this unique cabin built on a pristine five-acre lot in the Rockies. Rather than go the traditional route of log homes, Form & Forest wanted to try something a little different.

This 360 degree glass design incorporates a shed roof that opens up one side of the structure, allowing in a cascade of light, quite the reverse of the more conventional small cabin windows set in thickly-logged walls. With two bedrooms and two sleeping lofts, it provides the perfect wilderness retreat for a mid-sized family. Read more here

Karo Cabin

by Karoleena Homes: Modern, Smart, Green, Efficient
July 28, 2011

The eco-friendly, small home movement marches on with this offering from Karoleena Homes, the Calgary builder’s first move into prefab and modular housing.

Advertised as a holiday home, backyard studio or laneway house, the Karo Cabin will be factory-built and shipped to a site of the client’s choosing anywhere in North America accessible by road. Read more here

Airstream Sustainability

by Hofmann Architecture
April 19, 2011

Remodeling an Airstream is one of the most sustainable things one can do. I’m an architect. I know, it’s ironic, but I don’t prefer designing a brand new home. Like you (I hope!) it’s our job to take care of the earth by our own behavior.

The most unsustainable thing one can do to the earth is to design and build a new home where there wasn’t one before. Worse still, is tearing down an old home and building a new one in its place. A new home takes an enormous amount of energy and natural resources build.

Using the empty shell – the floor, walls and roof – in an existing building requires significantly less energy than new construction. By eliminating the need for building a foundation, erecting walls, installing windows, and placing on a new roof thousands of dollars of resources that would have been required to build these elements can be transferred, or saved all together.

Take a look around downtown. Many urban city centers have reused old manufacturing plants or storage facilities, that were made of brick or concrete, and have remodeled them into successful residential dwellings. Today, there isn’t a city in America without "urban loft-style" projects.

My 1978 Airstream project was, at its heart, an exercise in reusing an existing space. Read more here

David Sarti’s 800 square feet in Seattle
March 9, 2008

I was on the west coast recently so I decided to see what the Small House scene was like. I came across architect David Sarti’s house in Seattle on Future House Now. It was also featured in a Seattle Times article by Dean Stahl a few years ago. The photos are by Benjamin Benschneider. More Northwest small houses to come…

Just shy of 800 square feet, this house, sited in the backyard of a Central District home, was built for just under $200 a square foot including the price of the land. The Central District is a residential neighborhood in Seattle located east of Cherry Hill, west of Madrona and Leschi, south of Capitol Hill, and north of Rainier Valley. It is dominated by large lots with older single-family homes and much of it is zoned multi-family. Sarti bought someone’s backyard for $35,000 and built his house there for about $180,000. Read more here 

Tumbleweed Tiny House Company
Jay Shafer and the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company make small… BIG

It is impossible to do a search for small houses and not turn up Jay Shafer and the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company. He is in large part the inspiration for the small house movement and Small House Style. It seems that one person has not done more to put the small house on the map than Jay and this is our homage to him…

Jay built his first small house (for himself) in the early ’90s and has been living small ever since. He founded the company in the mid ’90?s because people were expressing real interest in his small house. It seems that other people wanted to live simpler, cheaper and smaller – the Tumbleweed way too. Read more here


Tumbleweed Tiny House Company, Facebook

The Small House Book
Who is Jay Shafer?

Jay Shafer is leading a movement that is changing the way America views housing. His revolutionary approach to house design has stirred international dialogue. In his, The Small House Book, Shafer explains why smaller dwellings make good sense and how superior design can be achieved with less space. He has continued to share his philosophy by creating Tumbleweed Tiny House Company through such venues as Fine Homebuilding, The Wall Street Journal, The Oprah Winfrey Show, and at the University of Iowa’s School of Art, where he served as Adjunct Assistant Professor of Drawing for more than a decade. Professor Shafer currently lives in an 89 square foot home of his own creation and his personally built over a dozen small homes to date. Read more here

The Small House Book
Imagine Paying as Little as $65 Per Year in Utilities!

Take any 100 people at the start of their working careers and follow them for 40 years until they reach retirement age, and here’s what you’ll find, according to the Social Security Administration: only 1 will be wealthy; 4 will be financially secure; 5 will continue working, not because they want to but because they have to; 36 will be dead; and 54 will be dead broke – dependent on their meager Social Security checks, relatives, friends, even charity for a minimum standard of living. That’s only 5% who retire with the American Dream. Read more here

The Harbinger
Tumbleweed Tiny House Company
May 12, 2011

The Harbinger features a bump-out on the front that can be used as a sitting area or a sleeping area. It is large enough to fit a Queen size bed. There are 2 versions of this home: one measuring 310 square feet, and a 2nd version with 1 bedroom totaling 407 square feet. The house is 16’ 7" tall.

The kitchen maximizes spaces and includes a dishwasher, full size range with oven, and built in microwave. The tankless on demand water heater ensures that you never run out of hot water, and tucks away completely out of view. A small fireplace is tucked nicely in the corner of the great room. A washer/dryer combo in the kitchen makes this home complete. Read more here

WORLDHAUS: Idealab Invents Super-Cheap House That Could Shelter 1.5 Billion Of The World's Poor
Business Insider
by Henry Blodget
January 26, 2012

One of the latest projects for Bill Gross and idealab, an incubator run by Gross and his wife Marcia Goodstein, is affordable housing.

As in $1,500 per house.

The new Idealab company is called WorldHaus.

WorldHaus has designed a 20-square meter house (220-square feet) built of interlocking compressed earth-bricks, steel and polystyrene roof panels, and concrete.

Most of the materials are assembled on site, and the house can be built for $1,500 in 10 days.

The houses come in 1, 2, and 3-room models, with optional toilets, LED-TV screens, solar cooling and heating, and cook-stoves.  They provide solid, weather-tight housing for about half the price of a normal brick-and-mortar house.

According to WorldHaus, 1.5 billion people in the developing world live in make-shift houses built of corrugated tin, mud, boards, or whatever else their inhabitants can lay hands on. That's where the Worldhaus house comes in.

The first WorldHaus house was just completed in Chennai, India. The company hopes to build 5,000 houses by the end of next year, and a million by 2020. Read more here

Bill Gross started Idealab in 1996 to create, build and operate companies that challenge the status quo. Idealab has prototyped and tested hundreds of ideas, and from those, has formed and operated more than 75 companies spanning a wide range of markets. Idealab accelerates technology innovation and provides the infrastructure to help early stage technology companies succeed. Read more here

Idealab Facebook

Idealab YouTube

WorldHaus Overview YouTube

Idealab Wikipedia

The $300 House: A Hands-On Lab for Reverse Innovation?
by Vijay Govindarajan
August 26, 2010

David A. Smith, the founder of the Affordable Housing Institute (AHI) tells us that "markets alone will never satisfactorily house a nation's poorest citizens...whether people buy or rent, housing is typically affordable to only half of the population."

The result? Smith points to a "spontaneous community of self-built or informally built homes — the shanty towns, settlements, and ever-expanding slums that sprout like mushrooms on the outskirts of cities in the developing world."

We started discussing the issue, examining the subject through the lens of reverse innovation. Read more here

The $300 House was first described in a Harvard Business Review blog post by Vijay Govindarajan and Christian Sarkar. Initially, we just wanted to put the idea out there, but now, due to the tremendous response, we've decided to see how far we can go toward making it a reality. Read more here

A $300 idea that is priceless
The Economist
April 28, 2011

Applying the world’s business brains to housing the poor

FRIEDRICH ENGELS said in "The Condition of the Working Class in England", in 1844, that the onward march of Manchester’s slums meant that the city’s Angel Meadow district might better be described as "Hell upon Earth". Today, similar earthly infernos can be found all over the emerging world: from Brazil’s favelas to Africa’s shanties. In 2010 the United Nations calculated that there were about 827m people living in slums—almost as many people as were living on the planet in Engels’s time—and predicted that the number might double by 2030.

Last year Vijay Govindarajan, of Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business, along with Christian Sarkar, a marketing expert, issued a challenge in a Harvard Business Review blog: why not apply the world’s best business thinking to housing the poor? Why not replace the shacks that blight the lives of so many poor people, thrown together out of cardboard and mud, and prone to collapsing or catching fire, with more durable structures? They laid down a few simple guidelines. The houses should be built of mass-produced materials tough enough to protect their inhabitants from a hostile world. They should be equipped with the basics of civilised life, including water filters and solar panels. They should be "improvable", so that families can adapt them to their needs. And they should cost no more than $300. Read more here

Chulha by Philips Design

de zeen magazine
August 29, 2009

Intent: limit the dangerous health conditions caused by traditions of indoor cooking in many rural areas of the developing world. The Chulha is a stove designed to limit the dangerous health conditions caused by traditions of indoor cooking in many rural areas of the developing world.

The stove is being made available by Philips Design to the universe of social entrepreneurs so that they can, free of charge, produce the stove, themselves, and generate local business while helping counter what the World Health Organization estimates is some 1.6 million deaths per year from conditions prompted by the toxic fumes of indoor cooking with "bio-mass" fuels (wood, dung, peat, etc.). Read more here

Andrew Geller was an architect who embodied postwar ingenuity and optimism in a series of inexpensive beach houses in whimsical shapes, many of them in the Hamptons, and who helped bring modernism to the masses with prefabricated cottages sold at Macy’s.

At the industrial design firm Raymond Loewy & Associates (later Raymond Loewy/William Snaith Inc.), where he worked for 35 years, Mr. Geller adapted a design by Stanley H. Klein for the "typical American house" shown at the American National Exhibition in Moscow in 1959. The house ignited the famous Kitchen Debate between Vice President Richard M. Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev over the buying power of American and Soviet consumers.

The model shown in Moscow led to a line of vacation houses, sold in the 1960s under the name Leisurama. One of the houses, complete with picture window and carport, was displayed on the ninth floor of Macy’s in Herald Square; people came in to buy housewares and walked out owning houses. (A basic model required a down payment of $490, followed by monthly payments of $73.) Some 200 Leisurama houses were built in Culloden Point, a section of Montauk, on Long Island, and hundreds more outside Fort Lauderdale. Read more here

Green Car Reports is the place car shoppers turn to for help deciphering the world of "green" cars, reporting on which ones benefit the Earth, and which don't do as well. Green Car Reports drives and reviews all green cars, offers advice and tips to consumers on going green, and keeps green-car enthusiasts in touch with the latest news and information they need to make an informed buying decision. Green Car Reports is edited by John Voelcker, a 20-year veteran of print and online media. Read more here

Smith Electric Vehicles
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Smith Electric Vehicles (also known as Smith's) is the world's leading manufacturers of electric commercial vehicles; battery-powered vans, and trucks Smith Electric Vehicles has always focused on the commercial vehicle market – it does not produce electric cars and has never done so.

In 2011 after its United States subsidiary bought its European parent for $15 million it is based in Kansas City, Missouri. Founded in 1920 in North East England, it now produces the largest range of commercial electric vehicles in the world, with Gross Vehicle Weights (GVWs) from 3,500 kg – 12,000 kg. Read more here

100% electric, ZERO emissions

Smith Electric Vehicles manufactures and markets zero-emission commercial electric vehicles that are designed to be a superior-performing alternative to traditional diesel trucks due to higher efficiency and lower total cost of ownership.

Our purpose is to provide the visionary leadership to completely and permanently alter the vehicle electrification supply chain.

Our vehicle designs leverage more than 80 years of experience in selling and servicing electric vehicles in the United Kingdom.

We partner with global leaders across multiple industries: food & beverage, utility, telecommunications, retail, grocery, parcel and postal delivery, school transportation, military and government. Our customers include many of the world’s largest fleet operators, including PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay division, TNT, Sainsbury’s, Coca-Cola, DHL, FedEx and the U.S. Military.

Smith Electric Vehicles is a privately held company headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri.  Smith currently designs, produces and sells two vehicles, the Smith Newton and the Smith Edison, both of which can be configured for multiple applications. Smith has manufacturing facilities in Kansas City, Missouri and outside of Newcastle, UK. In 2011, Smith US purchased the zero-emissions vehicle business of the UK-based parent company, which has been in operation in Europe since the 1920s. Read more here

Smith Electric Vehicles Facebook

SEV - Pure electric vehicles are zero emission at the point of use, helping to reduce carbon emissions and improve urban air quality. Electric commercial vehicles provide a low carbon, zero emission, alternative to conventional vans and trucks, without compromising on performance. We envisage these electric vehicles replacing substantial numbers of traditional diesel vehicles in major towns and cities.

Designed for urban operations, the Smith vehicles have a top speed of 50mph(80km/h) and a range on a single battery charge of up to 100 miles(160km). The Smith Edison van and minibus are based on the Ford Transit chassis and are produced in collaboration with Ford of Europe. The Smith Newton is the world's largest road-going electric truck, available in 10,000kg model. Both Edison and Newton have been on sale in the UK and Europe for over two years, with customers including DHL, TNT and the Royal Mail...etc. Read more here

Green Car Congress
US Marine Corps purchases two Smith Electric Trucks
December 14, 2010

Smith Electric Vehicles US Corporation has sold two all-electric Smith Newton trucks to the United States Marine Corps (USMC). The USMC becomes the first military organization to order Smith Newtons through the Government Services Administration (GSA) schedule; a list of approved suppliers to Federal government agencies. Smith Electric will deliver the trucks to Camp Pendleton, Calif., the Corps’ largest West Coast training facility, and home of the First Marine Expeditionary Force.

A September report by the Center for a New American Security recommended in the interest of financial and security concerns that America’s armed forces set a goal of operating all of its systems on non-petroleum fuels by 2040. The Marine Corps has already set out to reduce it energy use 30% by 2015 and increase its reliance on renewable electrical energy to 25% by 2025.

Smith Electric produces the Newton, which is the only medium duty (class 4-7) all-electric commercial truck on the GSA schedule. The trucks will be built in Smith Electric’s Kansas City, Mo., plant, and are scheduled for delivery to Camp Pendleton in February 2011.

The Newton delivers a top speed of 55 mph (88 km/h) and offers end users battery ranges from 50 to 120 miles (80km-192km) on a single charge, ideal for urban deliveries, utilities and personnel transport applications. Read more here

Aptera Motors Idealab

Aptera Motors designed and manufactured efficient commuter vehicles utilizing streamlined aerodynamic designs, lightweight composite structures and unique drive systems. Aptera's aim was to deliver vehicles that were attainable and efficient. The Aptera 2e was an all-electric, three-wheeled two-seater that got the equivalent of 200-plus miles per gallon. Read more here

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RIP Aptera: Lessons For Startup Electric-Car Companies
Green Car Reports
by Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield
December 5, 2011

On Friday, Aptera CEO Paul Wilbur sent out an email with the news that the Aptera 2e -- the all-electric, two-seat, ultra-efficient car we’ve awaited for nearly five years -- wouldn’t be making it into production.

As the long, drawn-out story that has been Aptera’s existence finally comes to a close, what can other small electric-car companies learn from Aptera’s collapse? And what does Aptera’s failure to materialize mean for electric-car buyers? Read more here

Employees of Failed Electric Car Manufacturer Caught Destroying Car Frames…With Forklifts
The Blaze
by Beckert Adams
December 8, 2011

Californian car manufacturer Aptera Motors had big plans to revamp the auto industry with its sleek, aerodynamic electric cars. With the help of Darrell Issa (R-CA), the company had hoped to secure a lucrative $150 million Department of Energy loan guarantee. Issa even sent Energy Secretary Steven Chu a letter back in January 2010 supporting the company’s request.

"They were looking for an answer," Issa told POLITICO in October. "We simply encouraged it. It’s an interesting project for the commuter vehicle . . . and we simply wanted an answer." Issa said the loan would "greatly assist a leading developer of electric vehicles in my district."

However, when Aptera Motors was unable to secure the loan, the company announced that it would permanently close its doors due to a "lack of resources." Read more here