|
|
The Hodges Family
For 14 years we've lived in a house heated by the sun with a little help from a small woodstove and a pickup truck load of firewood a year, currently cut from one oak that fell in our woods. We're off the grid -- photovoltaic panels provide 12 volt fluorescent lights and a few appliances, including a car radio. Gravity feeds water from a spring whose watershed is completely on our land. We empty our composting toilet every 2 months, and use the dry, odorless powder, after a year, to fertilize our apple, pear, and persimmon trees. A beehive makes sure our organic fruit trees and small garden are well pollinated; they also love our chemical-free front "lawn" of clover and plantain, which Diantha makes into teas and herbal salves.
 Read more...
The McDermott Family
 The Sierra Club National Sustainable Consumption Committee asked us to write a description of us, the McDermott family, a sustainable family. So I thought about it, tried to come up with the ways that we help keep this Mother Earth -- so honorably and respectfully bestowed upon us, her disciples -- green. And I came up with a myriad of ways we help give back, conserve, and appreciate what has so been put in our hands to learn about, hold on to, and share with our future generations; a member of which we share our household.
Read more...
Alexandra Paul, Hollywood Actress
 My desire to live more simply and to acquire fewer "things" began because of my strong environmental ethic, but it has gradually also become a quality of life issue for me. Yes, my life is better because I own fewer things, because I get things fixed instead of purchasing a replacement, and I cull the pages of Ebay and Craig's List for used items instead of buying new from the store. It is sometimes a pain to get things fixed or to find what you need used - like my husband and I still haven't found a secondhand kitchen table that fits our home and we have been there a year - but there is something respectful, and respectable, about not just throwing things away and buying new stuff.
Read more...
Jeff & Judy Webster
 Originally from Rochester, Minnesota, my wife Judy and I chose to move to the country in 1978. We live in a renovated old country store on a "farm" but are not farmers. We love it out here. Our business is advertising Marketing for many companies here in the Midwest. We even have a client in Dijon France. Virtually all of our neighbors are family farmers. We do, however, have confined animal feeding operation (CAFO) production of pigs, dairy and poultry in the neighborhood.
Read more...
Jeri Metz
 It was an early spring morning in 1986 and I was out walking the baby around our block when the yellow VW drove by with a goat casually looking out the window of the passenger seat. As we live just outside Washington, D.C. - twenty minutes from the White House when there is no traffic - this was not a normal occurrence. The VW was traveling slowly enough for me to notice that the man driving had his arm around the goat, as if they were dating, acting like this was the most natural thing he might be doing. The goat was so placid, so poised, just sitting there, that, for a few seconds, I accepted this Alice In Wonderland image as completely logical.
Read more...
Up to Top
|
