Dispatches from the Field & Project Summaries
UMASS Amherst embraces Permaculture and Eco-design
November 20, 2011
The Green Living Project mobile tour was excited to visit Umass Amerherst during their recent sustainability fair. Umass Amherst is a very large progressive university in the quaint little city of Amherst, MA, which is incidentally overwhelmingly populated by young college students. The youthful energy of the area and the fact that Umass Amherst is a nationwide leader in sustainability education has lead to some new transformations on the campus especially in regards to permaculture education. Permaculture is a ecological design system based on natural principals used to build sustainable human habitats. It has applications that range from agriculture, to building integrated systems in cities, to community organization, and it’s been catching on accross the country like wildfire. Umass had previously been blessed with an organic student run farm but thanks to the efforts of students and the facilitation by permaculture designer and sustainbility coordinator Ryan Harb they now have this amazing permaculture garden for the entire Amherst community to enjoy. The Franklin DC Permaculture Garden is located right next to the university dining commons and new efforts have been made to include a larger share of local and student farmed produce in meals served at the hall. The model that Umass has helped promote is now being replicated in other campuses. You can watch the video of their garden transformation below.
If your looking for a place to learn more about permaculture, natural building, and ecological design we recommend checking out the Lost Valley Education Center outside Eugene, OR
Portland, Home to great sustainability initiatives and awesome beer!
July 6, 2011
Summer in Portland!
Portland, OR is a paramount US city in terms of innovative sustainability thinking and so it’s fitting that its the launch city for the Green Living Project Mobile Tour. Davi and I on the mobile tour team have been keeping ourselves busy this week working on a best of Portland reel that will dive into some the most exciting green projects, people, and stories happening in the Portland region. So far in last couple of weeks we’ve explored the Lost Valley eco village and education center and got schooled in some neat permaculture and forest garden techniques by head instructor Rick Valley. If you’re looking into learning eco building or permaculture in the near future be sure to check out their excellent upcoming summer and fall courses. We recently celebrated amazing organic beers at the annual North American Organic Brewers Festival, there we watched some folks make delicious solar powered beer, pedal a mobile beer bike, as well as, pedal a mobile organic beer bike bar (now that’s a tasty mouthful). It’s great to see that the organic beer market is alive and thriving right now on both coasts. This last thursday we filmed at the Ecotrust Sundown Concert Series in downtown Portland which will be happening consecutive thursdays through July (you catch us filming tomorrow July 7th from 5:30-830pm). If you like good music, good causes, and good food then the Sundown is the place to be, the best part is that it’s free! You can check out our footage from the beer festival at and all our mobile exploits via our facebook and twitter pages.
~Evan