Farmer Greg showed up at Blogger Dave’s house to deliver a solar oven. While there he showed Dave how to prune a new peach tree:

The CW Network is looking for environmentally conscious video enthusiasts interested in potentially winning $10,000 in a new “Green Your World” contest as part of its on-going Free 2 Be Green campaign. As part of this new contest, viewers are encouraged to produce their own video (maximum 2 minutes in length) explaining how they are actively working to “green their world” and upload that video to www.cwtv.com/greenyourworld. All submissions must be received by Feb. 16, 2009 to qualify.

From all of the submissions, 5 lucky finalists will be selected to each produce a series of 4 (one per week) video blogs (or vlogs) about their contributions to the environment and making their communities a better place for everyone. One of the 5 finalists will ultimately be selected as the overall winner of the contest, earning the $10,000 prize and the chance to be featured online at cwtv.com and possibly be featured on-air on The CW Network during Earth Week.

For complete details, guidelines, rules and restrictions regarding the “Green Your World” sweepstakes, please go to www.cwtv.com/greenyourworld.

What makes a travel business sustainable? That’s the question challenging many businesses trying to figure out what they need to be considered sustainable.

Sustainable Travel International and Darcy Hitchcock, author of “The Business Guide to Sustainability”, have created a new sustainability assessment tool for the travel industry.

Click Here to read more.

Well, not 100% DIY.

Eco-Renovator.org has this great article about converting a chest freezer into a refrigerator that uses one tenth of the power of a normal fridge.

The perfect gift for your favorite Mac fanatic.

Read More at The Alternative Consumer

Bill and Monica Ball earn about $6000 – $7000 per year from their solar panels.

Click Here to find out how.

Erik Knutzen and Kelly Coyne started keeping chickens in their Echo Park backyard a little more than a year ago. The two are co-authors of “The Urban Homestead,” a handbook for city dwellers who want to live off the land as much as possible, and the couple were interested in taking their urban farming experiments a step beyond harvesting artichokes, blueberries and zucchinis. So last summer they purchased four chicks, and now they are obsessed.

Read The Article courtesy of the Los Angeles Times

Must Have Romaine Lettuce! THough it is a little late for a fall garden, the landscapers are done, the T-Tape irrigation system is in, and the soil is ready. IN the Days of Yore, one got out the seed catalog. These days you can just go online.

We went to Burpee.com.

Garden Rant brings us news that Johnny’s Seeds has put their seed catalog online in the form of a high-end PDF (though it looked the same to me).

It occurs to me that this is another area where it does not take much effort to be a little greener: forgo the paper seed catalog in favor of the online version.

Lighter Footstep has this great list of ten sure-fire handmade gift ideas, most costing under $20.

When the city of Battle Ground, WA proposed a municipal ordinance banning livestock, the area’s urban farmers fought back.

Click Here to read the story.

The Urban Hennery has issued The Dark Days Challenge.

The challenge will run from November 15 to March 15. The Rules:

1. Cook one meal a week featuring at least 90% local ingredients.
2. You define local – the standard definitions range from 100, to 150 to 200 miles.
3. Ingredients can be things you grew and preserved yourself, sourced from local farms and markets, or purchased at the store
4. Write about the meals you cook, your challenges finding ingredients, why you’re eating local or whatever else strikes your fancy for each recap. Photos are optional.
5. Include friends and family in your sourcing and eating as possible.

The Urban Ecoist brought my attention to a site containing a summary of the city codes across the country affecting the raising of chickens:

The City Chicken

Energy Boomer has a great article about what to look for when buying windows.

Here in Arizona, you should pay the most attention to the window’s Solar Heat Gain Coefficient (SHGC) rating. The SHGC is the fraction of incident solar radiation admitted through a window. SHGC is expressed as a number between 0 and 1. The lower a window’s solar heat gain coefficient, the less solar heat it transmits.

Click Here to read the article.

Do you have a great idea about helping the environment by making your home more energy-efficient? Make a video about it and submit it to Home Depot’s Save Money. Save Energy. Win Big contest.

Click Here for more information

Have your Permaculture Design Certificate? Ready to take your Permaculture practice to the next level? This course is for you. You will learn new skills and a new way of looking at Permaculture design, practice, and presentation:

• Practice pattern understanding with new tools- learn to see projects in a new way, and how they nest within diverse community scales and contexts.
• Explore how to use simple, clear presentation methods, as well as efficient ways to partner with design teams on larger projects.
• Study dynamic real world case histories of Permaculture projects, including projects in other cultures.
• Enhance your understanding of the often neglected “Zone 0″ of Permaculture Design
• Learn how to create working teams which enhance and empower communities to find their own sustainable solutions.
• Practice effective communication skills with clients and the public
• Learn more about working with government and non government organizations and non-profits

Dates: One long weekend – November 7th, 8th, and 9th.
Cost: $325 Fee includes all course materials and delicious natural snacks each day made from local foods. Although the course is non-residential, accommodations to stay the weekend may be made with the course host (contact Barbara Rose for lodging and/or camping info) -
brosearth@aol.com
(520) 572-7221
Location: Dancing Rocks Permaculture Community, fifteen miles north of downtown Tucson.
Contact Barbara for more info on the site and directions.
Teaching Team: Joel Glanzberg, Regenesis, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

See the Regenesis website at.http://www.regenesisgroup.com

To register contact Dan Dorsey, 624-8030, dorsey@dakotacom.net
http://www.sonoranpermaculture.org/members/dan-dorsey

You can view our full listing of courses for Fall 2008 and Spring 2009 at
http://www.sonoranpermaculture.org/courses-and-workshops

A short video from the Growing Power Urban Farm in Milwaukee:

HOMEGROWN follows the Dervaes family who run a small organic farm in the heart of urban Pasadena, California. While “living off the grid”, they harvest over 6,000 pounds of produce on less than a quarter of an acre, make their own bio diesel, power their computers with the help of solar panels, and maintain a website that gets 4,000 hits a day. The film is an intimate human portrait of what it’s like to live like “Little House on the Prairie” in the 21st Century.

Click Here to view the trailer.

Click Here to watch for the screening in your city.

The Internet is great, but sometimes there is nothing better than having a fellow urban farmer to commiserate with. Are there other urban farmers in your neighborhood? World Food Garden has published a tool that will help you find out.

Be one of the first to add your garden to the map.

http://www.worldfoodgarden.org/

From Earth Renewable Technologies comes the EarthBottle.

The EarthBottle is made from polylactic acid, which is basically a starch and sugar blend made from, in this instance, corn. It’s then blended with other plant-based materials such as flax or cotton that make the bottle sturdier and less permeable. Add a few anti-microbial properties and you have a container that that’s molded in a variety of sizes and colors, just like plastic.

Learn More…

Blair Stevens has begun writing a column on the Celcias blog that chronicles her effort to make her New England home more energy efficient.Read the first installment here