Fun TimesBecca reports on the latest happeningsThe past five days have been fun and have gone by fast. The duck palace is now up so that the ducks have a place to go swim around in a place where the coyotes can’t get them. When we first put up the structure the ducks were a bit apprehensive and kept trying to escape, but now they’re happily quacking in their new environment. Since the place where the ducks are swimming around in is the aquifer for the medium aquaponics system, I’ve been testing the chemistry so that when we get the medium system up and running the duck and fish waste will be the right proportions to be a sustainable system.
If sustainability is the perfection of perfection then we should strive for systems in which all parts of a project form a symbiotic relationship where there are no downsides. Like the authors mention in Cradle to Cradle, we should stop trying to make our systems less bad for the environment, we should instead redesign our systems so they’re beneficial from the start. We’ve also been digging to find a conduit that’s buried so that we can dam the water during the rainy season and put in some miniature hydroelectric wheels. Instead of the industrialized model of having one answer with negative externalities for ten situations, it’s much better to think of having multiple solutions for each individual problem with positive externalities. For example instead of using coal fired electric plants to get all our energy with enormous costs to the environment in mining, refining, and transporting, we can use a combination of wind, solar, geothermal, small scale hydroelectricity and biomass. We control our destinies so we don’t have to get caught up in the mentality that we have no alternative but to use fossil fuels.
The other morning we also went on a beautiful bike ride ways to this area owned by the logging companies with a gorgeous view of the gorge and the plateau around it. The whole area around Windward is storybook beautiful and this place was definitely no exception. Yesterday we worked on salvaging parts from an abandoned cab over camper for reuse. As Walt says "We're surfing the wave of consumption." If we can get materials for building without having to inpput additional energy into manufacturing raw materials and transporting them, why not do so? Especially when we find ourselves in a situation where so many things that can be reused just end up in landfills. Alison’s homebrew came out well which was exciting. We used the "brownie mix for beer" this time where all the materials came together prepared, but we’re researching ways we can use the wheat we have here and other materials on site that we can grow to make the brew ourselves. When you’re figuring out how to do a new thing, first you have to make sure you can repeat what other people have done- then you can move on to experimenting to how it can be done to better suit the environment you live in. However if you can’t replicate what’s already been done, it’s hard to move on to other things because you’re probably making some fundamental mistake. |
