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By Brian Skeele, on May 25th, 2011
Imagine. An elementary school and the surrounding neighborhoods joining together to become a sustainable community with the school at its heart.
 Biologies on the roots, detoxify water! Science Rules! Tapping into the Power of Biologies; Community Composting and Recycling Water – Part 5
Throughout the neighborhood, attached greenhouses provide essential composting, soil studies and crop production opportunities. The solar recharged neighborhood electric cart collection service gives teens an opportunity to make money by driving household food scraps to the community composting bins.
“Living Machines,” water recycling tanks, demonstrate how bacteria and microorganisms purify water.
Living Machines, invented by Dr. John Todd, use plants and microbes to clean water instead of chemicals. They can handle household waste, and easily tackle industrial wastes, turning 600 to 750,000 gallons of waste per day into hyacinths and snails… Dr. Todd (a student of Bucky Fuller BTW), has been working with Living Machines for decades has found that there are certain plants or small animals that love certain kinds of waste. What he does is let the water run through a series of cisterns with different plants in each. What one plant likes to eat, it turns into other forms of waste, so in the next cistern he has the plant that considers that waste food. By the time the water comes out, it’s 5 times cleaner than traditional waste water treatment….
Part 1  Part 2  Part 3 Part 4  Part 5
READ MORE >>
By Brian Skeele, on May 4th, 2011
Imagine. An elementary school and the surrounding neighborhoods joining together to become a sustainable community with the school at its heart. Part 2
Food; Community, Connection, Curriculum, and Cooking
Health, nutrition and cooking are all coordinated around the local agriculture program, “Yards to Farms”. The school’s kitchen has an expanded program that uses food to teach and create a more sustainable lifestyle. “Farms to Schools” and “Yards to Farms” bring regionally grown food to the plate, increasing local food security while lowering the shipping distances. Children now have a personal connection with their food as they regularly take working field trips to farms in the region and integrate classroom learning with hands-on growing. Several homes and commercial facilities in the neighborhood have constructed attached greenhouses, so food production is a year-round occurrence in the community.
Salsa Café and Bakery has transformed the former school kitchen into a great place for a meal. The facility is used “around the clock”, with the “Git ‘n Go Assembled Meals,” two different meal share plans, and the evening music scene where kids and adults get together and have a lot of fun playing music. Culinary and baking skills are taught to all ages, and the meals feature local and regional organic produce, dairy, fruit and meats.
The “Git ‘n Go Assembled Meals” program, especially appreciated by working parents, … READ MORE >>
By Brian Skeele, on April 26th, 2011
Imagine a room full of people, all gathered in a circle and sharing their ideas on what makes a sustainable neighborhood. “I would like a swimming hole, like at my grandpa’s farm”, a 12 year boy shares. “It has a rope swing and turtles and the fishing is pretty good”. 
“I love prisoner of war escape movies and sci-fi movies. I’d like to curate a series of Saturday afternoon showings. I just got a huge big screen TV, and my living room holds about 30 people!” Herb, a retiree, offers.
A young mother speaks next, “I’d like to contribute part of our front yard to community gardening. With the new baby, I would like to be growing more food, but we need help getting the soil ready. My husband agrees; he’d rather pull weeds. He’s tired of mowing the lawn.”
Around the circle the sharing continues. ”Well”, Jack, a waste water engineer offers, ” I’d like to set up a water recycling facility… my idea is to go to the low point of the sewer system, and set up a series of living machines. Living Machines are greenhouses filled with translucent tanks full of water plants. The biologies on the roots of the water plants will purify the water, and we can then do a final UV treatment so the water is better than drinking quality. And that will fit into your ideas: One, the water would fill up the swimming hole and be a place of beauty and fun, and two, the water from the pond could be fed to orchards and community gardens. Another benefit would be in case of a fire, the fire department could use the stored water for fighting the fire.”
My hand goes up.”Hey, I make the best popcorn in the world. No brag, just fact! I’ll give lessons and man the popcorn machine on one Saturday matinee out of the month!” (See recipe below!)… READ MORE >>
By Brian Skeele, on April 9th, 2011
Roundup + plants = super resistant pathogens in our grains, meat, and bodies. Yeah for Monsanto!!
The list of Impending Bummers is long. At some point the Impending part converts, and the Bummer is now happening. Genetically Modified Crops have made it to the Now Happening list!
 What's the Problem?? I like Cauliflower with my Lamb! Monsanto Is Poisoning Us All: 117 Peer-Reviewed Scientific Studies Expose Hazards of Monsanto’s Roundup Herbicide & “Roundup Ready” GMOs
In a previous issue of Organic Bytes, we reported that Don M. Huber, Ph.D., emeritus soil scientist of Purdue University, wrote a letter to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack about a newly discovered virulent pathogen that proliferates in soil treated with Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide.
The Monsanto pathogen is taken up by plants, transmitted to animals via their feed, and is passed on to human beings by the plants and meat they consume. The pathogen has yet to be described or named, though that work is almost complete. … READ MORE >>
By Brian Skeele, on April 4th, 2011
The #1 way to Support Local Food is by… creating a deeply affordable lifestyle. Lowering the cost of living frees up customers’ pocket books so they can buy more local food and dine at restaurants serving locally produced food.
 Local Farmers, Local Food...Santa Fe Saturday AM A deeply affordable lifestyle is essential in other key ways as well. Farmers and their employees need affordable housing, water, land, processing facilities, season extending structures, fertilizers, etc. Higher costs in any one of these networks of networks undermines our food security.
Here in Santa Fe we have one of the best Farmer’s Markets in the nation, apparently. I think much of its popularity is because Santa Feans have more disposable income. And yet, in spite of all the success, Beneficial Farms CSA‘s Steve Warshawer estimates all the capacity of the Northern New Mexico regional farmers would feed only 2000 folks. Santa Fe current population is around 70,000, with a surrounding regional total of approx 100,000.
For our regional capacity, our Food Shed, to grow significantly, I believe we will have to work together to create deep affordability and free up more disposable income. I call it “Mixed-use, mixed-income neighborhoods, with lifelong learning and open space”. The open space is for agriculture, natural habitat, and recreation.
This strategy is good for everyone; builds our regional resiliency and food security, lowers our eco-footprint, and raises our quality of life!
Share your ideas and experiences in the comments area! Back yard chickens, collecting urine for fertilizer, compost piles, converting front yards to food forests, deep mulching strategies, farm to school programs, aquaculture, etc… the list is long….Together we can make sustainable real!… READ MORE >>
By Brian Skeele, on March 16th, 2011
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — New construction of U.S. housing units plunged in February, erasing a sharp gain in January and coming close to an all-time-low level. March 16,2011
 Bed ZED is different. We're not in Suburbia anymore, Todo! If we want to revitalize the US Economy, we have to do things differently.…
If we work with the 1/3 of the Boomers, and 88% of the Millennials that want to move into vibrant, alive, pedestrian friendly walkable neighborhoods, we can resurrect the construction industry and send us on a path to a prosperous, positive future! What is required is using a whole systems approach and designing for an exponentially more efficient way of life… READ MORE >>
By Brian Skeele, on March 8th, 2011
1/3 of the Boomers want to move in. 88% of the Millennials want to move in. The problem is, Sustainable Urban Villages don’t exist!
 Building Your Neighborhood Sustainable Well they do, between my ears and in my heart, but we need a great modeling tool so all the future residents, landowners, finance people, city planners, designers, the school district, and neighbors can see what there are signing up for/signing off on. Then the resuscitation of the construction industry can begin in earnest, the emerging sustainable economy can…emerge!
As this is the ultimate sales tool, we are building the neighborhood on paper, so the future residents can say, “Yes, if you build that, I’ll move in!”. And of course, the numbers have to work for everyone involved. Let me give you a walk thru of “the Killer Modeling Tool” as I conceive it…. READ MORE >>
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