Interested in greywater systems, but looking for a general overview? Check out Greywater with Gusto, a tour being given this Sunday by Daily Acts:

Tour: Greywater with Gusto

Sunday, August 29th, 10am-2pm, Free for Cotati Residents $25 non-residents

Please register by visiting www.dailyacts.org or calling 707.789.9664

In this tour, we’ll visit the new, single-fixture Greywater System of Neil Hancock and Jenny Blaker. This system was recently installed under the new CA greywater code. We’ll talk about site selection and system design, pollution prevention, and the new regulations––and how to keep greywater safe for humans and our watersheds.

Two greywater experts will speak about the benefits of greywater: Trathen Heckman, Director of Daily Acts, member of Sonoma County Greywater Working Group and owner of the first permitted single-residence greywater system in Sonoma County, and Heather Shepherd, who planned, designed and installed the first fully permitted and compliant greywater system in Sonoma County. We’ll talk about how to best identify a prospective greywater site, gather preliminary data including soil percolation tests, and navigate greywater codes and ordinances. We will discuss environmental and financial benefits of greywater, and touch on watershed protection and restoration. At the end of the day, you’ll be equipped with the resources and information to realize your greywater goals!

Looks like an inspiring introduction to real-world greywater systems!

Link: Greywater with Gusto

Harvest season is upon us! Could you use some mentoring in the art of food preservation? Then look no further than this workshop from Daily Acts…sign up today, the workshop is on Saturday!

Workshop: Food Preservation: Canning and Drying the Bounty

Saturday, August 28th, 10am-1pm, $35

Please register by visiting www.dailyacts.org or calling 707.789.9664

As our gardens overflow and friends and family run at the sight of another garden zucchini, we’ll explore how to preserve this abundance. In this workshop we will cover water bath canning and flip kettle canning and we’ll make our own applesauce. We’ll also cover other forms of food preservation including solar drying with a homemade, low-cost solar dryer. Learn how to make one yourself.

Led by Rachel Kaplan, a facilitator of Daily Acts’ Homegrown Guild who is currently writing a book about urban Permaculture called Urban Earth: Homesteading the City.

Link: Food Preservation: Canning and Drying the Bounty

Greywater systems are going mainstream, and you can now install permitted systems in California. Want to get started? This Saturday you can spend the day with Daily Acts and learn all about a local Greywater Oasis:

Saturday, August 21st, 10am-3pm, $45

Please register by visiting www.dailyacts.org or calling 707.789.9664

Come visit the home and garden of Trathen Heckman, director of Daily Acts. We’ll explore Trathen’s backyard oasis, featuring the first single-residence permitted greywater system in Sonoma County, a constructed wetland, and rainwater catchment. Learn how it is possible to grow over 1,000 lbs of food annually using low-water growing techniques. We’ll tour this abundant city garden hosting bees, chickens, an apple-tree fence and over 200 varieties of edible and medicinal plants.

Then, we’ll see how water-savvy solutions have been implemented at sites around the neighborhood. Across the street is a water saving-and-harvesting food forest installed as a workshop in 2009 at the Cavanagh Center. Around the corner we’ll check out another abundant water-wise garden and home. Down the street we’ll explore Roger Gadow’s impressive site with over fifty varieties of fruit grafted onto a mere handful of trees, a rain barrel and much more.

Link: Rain & Greywater Fed Urban Oases

The folks at Occidental Arts and Ecology Center and the Water Institute have published a useful booklet, Heating Water With the Sun: A Thermal Drainback Solar Hot Water Heater Demonstration:

This solar hot water heating system is designed to heat water with the sun using a non-pressurized open loop of plumbing that is not tied into the plumbing of the bath house. In this indirect system, roughly 200 gallons of water gets pumped from a special solar thermal storage tank (see next photo) to the panels and back to the tank several times a day getting hotter with each cycle. These panels do not store water to be used directly by users in the bath house as they do in a passive batch system. Instead, they are designed to heat the finite amount of water that gets repeatedly pumped through a storage tank and uses a heat exchanger to heat the actual water to be used in the building. These panels are designed to run the water through as much piping as possible to maximize the amount of time the water is exposed to the heat of the sun. They are placed on a south-facing roof at an angle that ensures the fullest exposure to the sun.

The booklet includes an extensive list of resources and can be downloaded as a free PDF. Great stuff!

Link: Heating Water With the Sun: A Thermal Drainback Solar Hot Water Heater Demonstration

Thanks to everyone who came to the Gardening Without Enemies workshop! Here are some resources related to the workshop:

• Barton Stone on gardening without enemies – and article in the LA Examiner about Barton’s work and the workshop.
• Buddhist Anarchism by Gary Snyder (distributed by Barton in class, but also available here)
• Prayer for the Great Family – a poem of gratitude based on a Mohawk Prayer, from Turtle Island (1974)
• Brewing Compost Tea by Elaine Ingham of Soil Foodweb – a complete how-to on the method we used in the workshop.
• Intro to Permaculture handout from class (PDF)

Thank you to all who came!

Here’s a little announcement of my own: I’m excited to be helping with this workshop coming up next month. It’s a rich and challenging topic. Hope you can make it!

Gardening Without Enemies: A Buddhist Approach to Permaculture

Saturday, July 31, 10-3.

Let’s learn to make peace with “pests” like gophers, scotch broom and blackberries, to move toward cooperation and abundance for all.

The workshop will take place at Mamalanda, a 4 acre permaculture place near Occidental.

Facilitators: Barton Stone, Zen priest and food forester, and Terrie Schweitzer, permaculture enthusiast.

Fee $40 for members of Stone Creek Zen Center, $55 for non-members. Includes lunch.

Register with barton@sonic.net.

How do you make make peace with would-be pests?

The BP oil spill is a brutal reminder of the price for our dependence on fossil fuels. But it’s easy to forget that our dependence goes further than gasoline to power our cars, and that there are better choices to be made in many areas of our life.

That’s why I love Using Less Plastic Every Day from HOMEGROWN.org, created by the folks at Farm Aid. It’s full of clever ideas to get your brain working to reduce your dependence on plastic, another petroleum product:

Abby keeps plastic out of the home by making her own Mason jar kids cups. The straws are plastic, but, as Carol suggests, paper straws are available!

The Homemade Cosmetics group is brimming with ideas for avoiding plastic bottle and jars: DIY Lotion, No Poo and home made deodorant among them.

Check out the full post more more ideas and links to resources.

Link: Using Less Plastic Every Day

Interested in keeping bees but don’t know where to start? Check out this upcoming tour from Daily Acts:

If you’ve ever been curious about honeybees, join Daily Acts as we spend a day discussing what you can do to help the honeybees, which pollinate over a third of the food we eat. We’ll visit two outstanding sites, Beekind, a center for all things bee-related in Sebastopol, and The Melissa gardens, a bee sanctuary in Healdsburg. Beekind, owned by experienced beekeepers Doug and Katia Vincent, is a full retail store and education center committed to protecting the health of honeybees.

In the afternoon, we’ll share a potluck lunch in Healdsburg at The Melissa Gardens, a honeybee sanctuary founded in 2007. Designed by Kate Frey, two acres of this 40-acre ranch are planted explicitly for the bees, with botanicals that offer year-round nectar and pollen sources for honeybees. Here honeybees are offered a sanctuary and insulated from stressors in a beautiful setting!

You’ll come away from this tour better educated, and with your own Bee Plant from North Coast Native Nursery. You’ll also be prepared with a variety of actions you can take today to help the honeybees.

Saturday, June 19th, 10am-3pm, $35

For more information and to register for this tour, please call Daily Acts at 707-789-9664 or visit our website at www.dailyacts.org.

Also, see this recent SF Chronicle article about The Sunflower Project, an effort to track the bee populations in urban areas by creating a network of backyard bee observers.