Financial Permaculture Course in Hohenwald TN

October 29th, 2008

I have been reading a lot about ethanol production lately and was considering building a small still to produce the fuel to use in my car. There are easy options for people to make their own fuel from food scraps and wasted resources from produce stores, bakeries, etc.  The Financial Permaculture course was held near my home in Tennessee this past week so I decided to attend and learn a little bit about the business of ethanol and the financial benefits of producing the fuel. What I learned was that I’ve been missing out on a nice opportunity. I’ve decided to pursue it as a business and thought I’d ask people what they thought of it. I’m still in the learning stages but from what I understand, ethanol production alone is not profitable unless you produce on an enormous scale. However, many valuable co-products can be produced using the left overs such as mushrooms, earthworms, organic veggies and fish.

The Financial Permaculture course was great. The other areas that were focused on were green building, agriculture and financing. Ecoville ArchiTechs was among the speakers in the green building portion. Other speakers and instructors included Catherine Austin Fitts and Albert Bates. If your interested in green business and ecological investing, I would highly recommend you attend next year. Visit http://www.financialpermaculture.org/ for more information.

Sep. 08 Straw Bale Workshop

September 29th, 2008

We had a great workshop this weekend and we would like to thank everyone who participated and everyone who helped make everything run smoothly. Here are a few pictures (more to come) and we should get some nice video footage to post too. The construction site will be a straw bale home soon.
Click here for information on upcoming straw bale workshops.

Everyone working on building the straw bale walls.

Natural Building is so easy, even the kids can do it. Here’s Wesley working with earth plaster.