How to be a Permaculture Prepper: Self-reliance for the End of the World

How to be a Permaculture Prepper: Self-reliance for the End of the World

Have you been haunted by dreams of the impending apocalypse? Is a sense of doom (and a complementary sense of gloom) beginning to pervade your every waking moment? Do you sometimes wake up in the middle of the night, thinking you left the stove on, only to realize it’s not your kitchen on fire, but the whole stinkin’ world?

Timber Framing: 10 Things You Didn't Know You Needed to Know

Timber Framing: 10 Things You Didn't Know You Needed to Know

Either way it’s important to know that timber framing takes patience and practice if you’re a beginner. The tips in this article are intended to introduce some important concepts in timber framing and to solve some common problems before they even arise, in order to set you up for success in your sustainable home build.

Natural Building & Clay Carving - Add Artistic Expression to Your Home

Natural Building & Clay Carving - Add Artistic Expression to Your Home

Now you have an expanse of clay before you, a blank canvas to express yourself upon. Have fun! Feel the warmth and beauty of the clay, and tap into your inner artist. Get dirty, and share the experience with someone else! With some practice, you might be surprised what kind of beautiful things you can make with just a bit of Earth!

Life of Spice: Pepper

Life of Spice: Pepper

Farm to table is an inspiring movement whose time has come. As anxiety about our environment and health increases, awareness is spreading about the impact our diet has on not just own well-being, but the well-being and future of the entire planet. Alarms are going off worldwide. Our eyes are opening. People everywhere are waking up. We’re waking up… and eating breakfast.

Applied Permaculture Principles

Applied Permaculture Principles

There are a lot of misconceptions about what Permaculture is, most people think of it as an agricultural system, typically some sort of food forest and whilst maybe it does make sense for you to have a food forest, maybe it doesn’t! The specifics of applying the principles will vary based on your environment, project , goals etc… but the principles will always remain the same. In permaculture there are 12 underlying principles that help guide us through the design and thinking process. We have highlighted below how we apply each of these principles at our site to help inform you how these principles can be applied in practice.

6 reasons to use a biodigester as a low tech, off the grid, renewable energy source for cooking

6 reasons to use a biodigester as a low tech, off the grid, renewable energy source for cooking

For almost two decades now, Rancho Mastatal has been working on creating a more sustainable lifestyle by researching, developing, and teaching about more efficient ways to build, grow food, cook, and live as a community while reducing the impact these activities have on our environment.

As cooking is one of the most energy-consuming activities within a house, we find it relevant to implement an alternative renewable energy source to satisfy one of our guests’ favorite moments of the day: meals. With that perspective, we built a biodigestor 8 years ago.

Timber Framing: A Real Application of Sustainable Forestry Management

Timber Framing: A Real Application of Sustainable Forestry Management

The deforestation problem that constantly threatens our global forest resources is one that we can overcome. To accomplish this, though, we must again learn to give our forests real value. The main idea here is that our forests must be more economically valuable in their current state than they would be under competing land uses. If not, they will be deforested.

Transforming Human-waste into Fertilizer: Compost Toilets

Transforming Human-waste into Fertilizer: Compost Toilets

You likely grew up with flushing toilets, seeing your poop as something to dispose of, but you might also be one of those who agree that humans can only thrive once we live in harmony with nature. The zero-waste movement is in a sense, a yearning to imitate nature where there is no such thing as waste; one organism's excrement is another's food. Compost toilets turn human "waste" (discarded feces and urine) into soil fertility as humanure (food for micro-organisms and fruit trees) - the actual human waste is everything that cannot decompose: cigarette butts, plastic-sixpack rings, deodorant cans, batteries, the five billion gallons of polluted drinking water we flush down our toilets everyday, and the millions of tons of organic material dumped into the natural environment year after year.

Awakening the student and teacher in us all

Awakening the student and teacher in us all

I like to think I’m open-minded and my ideas flow freely, but as a professor I can become stuck in the rigid model of preparing lectures, grading and academic writing. The opportunity to have my sense of wonder reawakened and be reminded that there are so many springs of knowledge available in the world in invaluable. Rancho Mastatal reminds me of this truth and has inspired every student I have brought to think bigger, make connections and consider what their role in addressing the climatic challenges we face.

Tropical Brewing

Tropical Brewing

The craft brewing movement has migrated to Central America and the Caribbean. A growing number of small scale artisanal producers are building on the American Craft Brewing tradition by incorporating local spices and fruits into traditionally brewed ales. To distinguish themselves, from their temperate counterparts, they are adding a tropical flare and creating innovative flavor combinations

La Importancia de la Permacultura

La Importancia de la Permacultura

La creciente crisis social y medioambiental nos ha obligado a buscar métodos y procesos alternativos que reduzcan el impacto humano en la naturaleza y nuestro entorno. Como una de las principales alternativas de cambio, la Permacultura constituye un sistema donde se combinan la vida de los seres humanos de una manera respetuosa y beneficiosa con los animales y plantas, y donde se logran implementar soluciones de menor impacto medioambiental para satisfacer las principales necesidades humanas

Dairy Dairies: How to Make Cream Cheese with Dairy Kefir

Dairy Dairies:   How to Make Cream Cheese with Dairy Kefir

Dairy Kefir is so interesting to me because it embodies stacking functions - like alchemy, it's possible for 1+1 to equal 4. Milk, grains (scoby) and a days time and voila, you have a delicious base product better than the milk you started with. It's now lightly carbonated, stable in the fridge, resistant to microbial incursion, lower in lactose, tangy, creamy, probiotic and great for your gut.