On our way across the country to Virginia (our new home!), we stopped by Erik Nelson’s place in Vermont to help tear down a barn. He’s salvaging the wood to build a house on his land. Very exciting and a lot of hard work. Check out the video Jay made and the Wreck and Salvage post to see how they actually tore the structure down.

We’ll be more settled soon, so there will be more posts…I promise!

P.S. Check out our new post office!

As some of you might remember, we traversed through T or C last year and taped a bunch with Mikey and Wendy of Green Acre Hotsprings. On our way over to Virginia, we have stopped by again to catch up and meet some new folks hacking out here in the desert. The photo above is us taping an interview with Asher, who sells biodiesel and WVO (waste vegetable oil) for fuel in Mimbres, NM. He also has an off the grid household with solar power, a humanuare outhouse, a greywater system and a newly planted food garden.

We also got Mikey hooked on No Knead Bread and he’s successfully cooked two batches in his kick ass solar oven. I was incredibly skeptical of the solar oven at first, but when i saw it jump from 0-300 degrees in about 10 minutes, I was sold.

We are excited to post all our videos from our cross country trip as soon as we get settled in our new home. Stay tuned!

photos by Mikey Sklar

p.s. sorry no video this time! soon, soon

We got an email from another No Knead Bread Fan, Lucy from New Bedford, MA. She showed us her ultra geeky method of getting her dough to rise in a drafty, New England house- put it on top of the hard drive!

Me and the girls threw it together last night and then looked for someplace warm in this drafty old house of ours. Then I remembered I have an external hard drive that runs very hot. I’ve used it in the past to germinate little pots of seeds, and so I thought – why not?

Thanks Lucy, I’ll be sure to do this next time I makeathebread!

Can I get a ‘hell yeah!’? I was reading this article in the New York Times today about the resurgence of young farmers when I saw a link to The Greenhorns film. Talking to our friend Chris from Wanna Farm he asked

there sure is a lot going on in our country involving small farms. i just can’t tell if we’re just standing in the middle of the choir or if change is really happening.

I’m hoping that change is really happening. Connection to our most basic necessities- food, water, shelter, community- have been close to lost in a few short generations. For me, I just want those things back. I’m hearing about and meeting more and more people who feel the same and are taking action to find those things again.

Go nominate a young farmer to be part of The Greenhorns documentary here.

We had the privilege of attending a very hands on greywater workshop courtesy of The Greywater Guerillas, a local Bay Area crew of experts who are passionate about teaching folks to use their water (twice) wisely. Greywater is water that has been used once in your home and only contains a little soap, dirt (from laundry or skin) or kitchen particles like food or grease. Unlike blackwater, which is water that has touched excrement, like toilet water, greywater is safe to use in watering your garden. As Laura Allen, co-editor of the book Dam Nation: Dispatches from the Water Underground, and our amazing instructor points out in this video:

You don’t want to put the greywater onto the part of the plant that you’re going to eat…if you get the water going into the ground, there are no more health risks than would be [associated with the regular dirt in your garden]. So you want to get the greywater into the ground soaking down to irrigate the roots of your plants.

We were able to do just this in home owner Tara’s backyard. We replaced her kitchen sink pipe with a 3 way valve giving her the choice to send her sink water back to the sewer or out to the greywater system of pipes and mulch basins surrounding four fruit trees. The system was relatively simple and inexpensive. Total price was $200 for all new pipes which included a $60 top of the line 3 way valve, a bunch of 2 way splitters and under a hundred feet of piping. If you live close to a salvage yard or are savvy on Freecycle or Craigslist you can get these materials for way cheaper or even free.

Laura touches on some of the legality of systems like this:

California has a greywater code so greywater theoretically is legal…some states have no code so greywater is not legal. In California, you have the potential to do greywater…that said, the code that’s written down for greywater is very, very wasteful, it’s very bad, most people don’t follow it. In California most people have unpermitted systems which are…technically illegal, just as building anything unpermitted is technically illegal.

There are a few states, like Arizona, that encourage safe and resourceful greywater systems like the one we built here. So find out what your state allows before cutting into your pipes. But if you’re like these Californians and your state codes are no good, you’ll want to find some greywater experts to consult and keep in touch with to help change the codes for better.

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Technorati Tags: graywater, green, greywater guerillas, greywayter, ryanishungry, san francisco

Bruce F. left a comment on our Alemany Farm video last week and pointed us to a pretty amazing rooftop garden that he and his friends have built. After seeing the pictures, I think you’ll agree he’s being too modest. He says:

A few of us who live in the city of Chicago are trying to grow heirloom vegetables on our rooftops in cheap homemade earthboxes. It sounds more than a little preposterous to suggest that what we’re doing is a real solution to the huge environmental problems we’re facing, but it might be a tiny piece. We think they’re a great way to build connections in a fragmented social/political landscape. Not selling anything, I’m giving “it” away.

Here’s the Flickr link, along side the pics is a little how-to guide with plenty of relevant links.

We really love to see smart people start taking advantage of resources around them. Americans currently live in such abundance that making a rooftop garden, at first thought, might not make much sense. However, growing food is a great skill to learn and a valuable way to spend your time. Bruce has plenty of good info on his designs and links to online support.

Jamais Cascio is all about solutions. He considers himself an ethical futurist- one who designs and executes resilient and sustainable solutions that will not adversely effect present and future generations. On his blog, OpenTheFuture.com, Jamais writes about three cornerstone issues that will make or break this planet: Global Warming, Global Poverty and Nanotechnology. As he explains in this video

All of these are intrinsically connected. If you are to succeed in any one of them, you have to deal with the others…everything is connected. Fortunately, the solutions are connected as well…As these concepts become more commonplace, what happens is they disappear into the woodwork. They really become expectations.

By Co-Founding the site WorldChanging.com (also check out the beautiful World Changing Book), Jamais is helping to make these solutions part of the planetary problem solving vocabulary.

Big Thanks to Lisa Rein for connecting us and letting us take over her apartment for the interview!

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Technorati Tags: jamais cascio, worldchanging, open the future, futurist, ryanishungry, nanotechnology, san francisco

The Rainforest Action Network recently started a video segment called The Greenwash of the Week. This was their first post and we thought it was clever, funny and it informed us of Virgin Atlantic’s most recent greenwashing campaign. It seems that as ‘being green’ becomes the most obvious and urgent thing to do, corporations that have been known looters and polluters are jumping on the PR bandwagon. Thanks RAN for keeping us informed and making us laugh.

Our friend, Erik Nelson, is famous for the Carp Caviar and Wreck and Salvage video projects. He has also recently bought land in Vermont where he starts a new life with his wife and kids. In a smart move, he plans to build with as much reused material as he can which makes financial and environmental sense. We live in such a country of abundance that it’s so easy to use what is just lying around as long as you are willing to put the time into it.

In this video, Nelson shows the old barn that he plans to tear down for lumber. Ryanne and I are planning to drive out there to help this April. Best plan is to just hitch a tractor to the foundation beams and pull it down. As Nelson would say, “Get ‘er done.”

Our friend, Mikey Skylar, recently bought himself a diesel car which he converted to veggie oil. He found that he wanted a better way to know when to switch his diesel tank to a the vegetable oil tank. You do this because the veggie oil must be warmed up before it can efficiently run the engine.

Being the builder he is, Mikey made a device called The Greasy Mon that tells him when his veggie oil has warmed up enough. You can either download instructions on how to build your own, or he is now selling  these devices to other people who may want them for $100.

There are three thermistors which measure temperature changes based on resistance. Each of the thermistor sensors has four LEDs associated with it which the driver can see illuminate as the temperature increases. Each LED that turns on indicates that the grease has increased by 20 deg. fahrenheit in temperature. The temperature range is from 65F - 135F. Due to the sensors being placed on the outside of the fuel hoses the sensor range peaks rather low to allow for the insulation provided by the fuel hose.

Check out the video here:

Yep, it’s true. We’re moving back across the country to the mountains of Virginia. You might remember our video about recycled paper insulation that we were installing at Jay’s dad’s garage in Virginia…well, that’s the place! We’re excited to continue to learn more about living a sustainable life and we plan to keep documenting this process on Ryan Is Hungry. We also plan to take our mini-documentaries of other folks hacking the sustainable lifestyle to another level. Thanks for the year of total awesomeness. We’ve learned so much from all of you, thanks for following us and contributing back to the conversation!

I ran across this mention of this subterranean farm in an old bank vault under the busiest part of Tokyo . This blog explains how the farm works has has lots of great pictures showing the different grow rooms.

Though walled in from sunlight, weather and geology, it’s unbelievably verdant. Tomatoes, lettuces, strawberries, and other fruits and vegetables, as well as flowers and herbs, are grown in an area covering almost a square kilometer (!!!). There is even a terraced rice paddy.

This kind of farming can’t be an efficient use of energy, but interesting to see how urban farming experiments are taking shapes in other parts of the world.

As Jay and I prepare for a big move back to the East Coast (Rural Virginia/DC area to be exact-we’re officially bi-coastal now!), we’re dispersing most of our possessions back into the world via Craigslist, Freecycle and Etsy. Yep, we’re moving again. We still love the SF Bay area and the San Mateo Eco-Village very much, but we’re feeling the need to start building something of our own. Jay’s dad has land in Virginia that is the perfect spot to put to use what we’ve learned this past year about gardening and sustainable building (thanks to all of you and this here blog!). What a perfect time to re-visit the Swap-O-Rama-Rama video! More to come about the move…
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You might recognize Wendy Tremayne from our Green Acre Series here on RyanIsHungry. Wendy founded Swap-O-Rama-Rama as a way to break out the consumer cycle of shopping for clothes. Utilizing the abundance that just a few people’s closets can bare, adding a little creativity with fancy sewing machines and silkscreen artists for custom modifications, Swap-O-Rama-Rama makes recycling clothes fun and social. This particular swap was part of Maker Faire, an event to celebrate makers of all kinds from robot artists to crafters to computer hackers.

As Wendy says here:

There is no creativity in consumerism…makers don’t make good consumers. The less you know, the less you can make, the more you’re going to buy.

Want to produce a Swap-O-Rama-Rama where you live? You can! Because it’s Creative Commons licensed! Contact Wendy through the site and she’ll get you started!

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Technorati Tags: swaporamarama, wendy tremayne, clothing swap, recycle clothes, recycling, green, sustainable, gift economy, maker faire, san francisco, ryanishungry

Our friend Chris at WannaFarm is now making videos about the details of farming. With his wife and new kid, they are farming FOR REAL up in Portland. We can’t wait to see more web savvy folks grow food or farmers using the web to share their experience. Can you imagine the practical farming knowledge we can share and archive with video?

Update: Chris’ farm is actually here. “We’re about 4 hours south of Portland about 20 miles from the California border.”

The folks at Frogdesign have launched a challenge:

“For the next two weeks, I will be living without a garbage can. Where will my trash go? I am going to start needing to think about that before I buy something because, according to the rules I have set up for myself, I’m going to have to live with it. My own garbage must be within five feet of me at all times”

Read the entire challenge here. The idea is to see how much trash you actually create by not being able to throw it “away”. Every two weeks a new person blogs about their experience keeping their trash:

“At the end of my two weeks, another frog will continue the project, experiencing his/her own two-week stint of trash-free living. The transference of this blog will highlight the differences in environmental consciousness across cities, environments, governments, and economies. And, ideally, it’ll mean a few hundred less pounds of garbage in our landfills – a small step, but a measurable one. “

Ryanne and I try to be smart about the garbage we generate. Whatever your political persuasion might be, it just makes sense to be more self-sufficient. So food waste goes into a worm bin or compost pile. Paper and cardboard goes into recycling. But what about all the plastic wrapping and bags that come with all manufactured goods? There’s nothing reasonable we can do but throw it “away”. A two week experiment where you must keep your trash near you at all times is a good way to demonstrate this problem.

OMG! I love Etsy.com. How have I not heard of this site before now? Etsy is an online marketplace where only handmade, original goods are sold. Search by catagory, location or by color (that’s awesome!!). It’s not just for crafters either, there’s also a nice selection of edible goods. Next time you have a gift to give or you want something for yourself but are boycotting the box stores, check out Etsy. Rumor has it (ok its a fact) that our good friend and fellow videoblogger, Bre Pettis of Make Zine fame is now producing videos for Etsy! Wow, what a combination! More info about Esty here.

Technorati Tags: etsy, brepettis, handmade, crafts

Fellow videoblogger, Beth Tilston lives in an apartment in Brighton, England and she totally vermicomposts! She sent us this video recently asking if we thought it was ok because it was a little sludgy. If the worms are alive and thriving, then it’s good! Inspired by this conversation, she started a Vermicomposting E-mail list for fellow apartment composters to trade advice and success stories. So join up and let’s share our worm secrets! Side Note- we just recently got to hang out with Beth in Brighton during our Europe trip, check out the video on RyanEdit. Cheers!

Technorati Tags: compost, apartment compost, vermicompost, gardening

Right now, Jay and I are touring Europe- basically we’re couch hopping at videobloggers’ houses! We took a short detour and stayed in a hostel in Edinburgh, Scotland. One of the cool things about this hostel was its energy conserving light systems (besides these LEDs, they had motion sensor hallway lights that were only on when you walked through!). This LED halogen replacement was super cool. LEDs have very low wattage, so they use a ton less electricity than even fluorescents- compare .5-2w to the average 13-20w fluorescents or 40-100w incandescents. They also are said to have an almost infinite life span. I think we’re going to be seeing a lot more of these in the future. Philips, one of the major light bulb manufacturers, just recently bought some LED technologies for future(istic) integration. The only issues are that LEDs are super focused, meaning they don’t spread light like other bulbs; they keep light kind of funneled and focused like a spot light. The other issue is that they tend be a more cold, blue color, rather than the pleasant warm glow of incandescents and the newer fluorescents. Hopefully LEDs will start to evolve into warmer hues and eventually replace the energy sucking lights we have now. I was really excited to see this light in use as a little reading light!

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Technorati Tags: LED, halogen, scotland, energy, green, ryanishungry

Beth Kanter’s son, Harry, is learning what a lot of adults don’t even seem to notice- that the things we use every day are made out of something and end up somewhere, but what, where and why? What are the smarter choices that we can make that are less wasteful? This shopping bag video is one out of (hopefully) many of Harry exploring and questioning the way things are produced.

Alemany Farm is a 4 acre, fully functioning urban farm nestled between a major highway intersection, a newly gentrified neighborhood on a hill and a housing project- the perfect place to grow some food! We got a tour (and some amazing fruit) from Antonio Roman-Alcalá, Volunteer Coordinator and soon to be videoblogger/documentarian extraordinaire. The work being done at Alemany Farm proves the point that urban farming and local food production is totally possible and necessary for the health and well being of a city and its inhabitants. Local farming and gardening are great motivators for people to get acquainted, eat more healthily and become more connected with where their food comes from and what it actually is (olives grow on trees? broccoli is a flower?). If you live in the SF Bay area, you can visit or volunteer at Alemany Farm on the weekends- check out AlemanyFarm.org.

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Technorati Tags: alemany farm, urban farming, food security, urban gardening, gardening, san francisco, green, ryanishungry

Ever since we started living in a place were every square inch is growing something useful (to people and other creatures), our eyes are opened to the possibility of transforming lawns and other unused green space to grow food. Why water a lawn full of grass when you could water and grow salad greens, root veggies, herbs, squash, tomatoes, peppers, the list goes on and on. In this video we used some scrap wood to build a raised garden bed over a 7′x7′ patch of driveway gravel. Not only do we pluck the greens for dinner, it looks a lot nicer than the dumping ground of found materials that it once was. If every neighborhood had even a few lawns turned into gardens, we could start hyper-localizing our food supplies and getting to know our neighbors- because, after all, you’re going to want to trade gardening tips!

Correction: Thanks to Nicole who commented below that this garden bed is 49 sq feet (or 4.5 sq m), not 14 sq feet (which would be 7+7 not 7×7, duh). Thanks Nicole!

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Technorati Tags: urban permaculture, gardening, food security, urban farming, san mateo eco village, ryanishungry

The infamous, most blogged, most twittered bread recipe of the last year has to be Jim Lahey’s No Knead Bread, which was originally published in The New York Times and then spread like wild fire on the blog-o-sphere. This recipe has officially taken over my life. This is the best bread ever. It’s so damn easy and so damn good, you will never need to buy another loaf of bread from the store (and at about $6 a pop for the “Peasant Bread” at your local grocer, which is pretty much the same thing as this, why would you?). I first heard about it in Miss Bekah Havens’ video Make-A-The-Bread and really, my life has not been the same since. Go make it, you will not be sorry! I promise!

I like to double the recipe for a nice 3 lb. loaf that lasts, oh about 2 days. Just enough time to get another batch started!

No-Knead Bread

from Jim Lahey, Sullivan Street Bakery
Yields one 1 1/2 pound loaf

3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting
¼ teaspoon instant yeast
1¼ teaspoons salt
Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed.

1. In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add 1 5/8 cups water, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees.

2. Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.

3. Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to work surface or to your fingers, gently and quickly shape dough into a ball. Generously coat a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal; put dough seam side down on towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover with another cotton towel and let rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.

4. At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under towel and turn dough over into pot, seam side up; it may look like a mess, but that is O.K. Shake pan once or twice if dough is unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 30 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on a rack.

You might remember from our Stone Soup video that our little eco-village has started to cull our chicken flock to make room for new birds. For the last 2 months we’ve been learning what it takes to be mother hens and raise two dozen newly hatched chics. Jay and I grew up in urban areas where there were no chickens but in the grocery store, so this was a learning experience for us both. These babies need tons of food, water and warmth because they grow exponentially in their first months of life. The benefits of having chickens in your backyard are many- they eat veggie food scraps and weeds, they poop instant fertilizer, they lay eggs and, if you’re into it, they’ll eventually make a great organic, free range, home raised meal.

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Technorati Tags: chickens, chics, raising chickens, san mateo eco-village, food security, ryanishungry

Bryant Terry, co-author of the book GRUB: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen, and Jason Harvey, founder of Oakland Food Connection, teamed up recently to have a totally organic soul food brunch. Hanging out with food justice foodies as of late, we’ve been hearing a similar idea that to encourage folks to think about where their food comes from and who controls it, they have to have a taste of ‘real food’. Real food meaning local, sustainable, fresh, no pesticides, delicious, colorful, home grown and cheap. Yes, this food can be affordable, especially if we’re not paying extra for it to get shipped thousands of miles and for the medical bills we will incur because of the processes and chemicals that will eventually make us sick and over weight. Thanks Bryant and Jason for inviting us over!

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Technorati Tags: grub, bryant terry, jason harvey, food party, food justice, organic, oakland food connection, ryanishungry

I’m so sick of getting my utility bill and seeing that a huge majority of my money goes to pay for energy from Natural Gas and Nuclear (and in many places in the US, Coal). I want my money to go towards renewables and I’m not the only one. Many communities, including San Francisco and Oakland are petitioning and passing legislation for more choice in their energy purchasing. The movement is called Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) or Community Choice Energy. This type of legislation would not take down big corporations like PG&E, but would work with their existing infrastructure to deliver energy from sources chosen by the community. This would allow citizens to put their money towards more sustainable and renewable options and not have to wait around for the private companies to decide when to start investing in these technologies. As you’ll hear Rory Cox of PacificEnvironment.org say:

PG&E gets about half of its electricity from domestically sourced natural gas. The plan that PG&E is pushing right now is to import natural gas from abroad…most likely…from the former Soviet Union and The Middle East. It would require a whole brand, new fossil fuel energy infrastructure. We’d rather see those billions spent on clean energy.

When will it end? When will companies stop thinking that it is ok to continue to invest in finite resources? When communities stop relying on them to make energy choices for the people. For more info on Community Choice Aggregation, check out Local Clean Energy and Local Government Commission’s CCA page.

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Technorati Tags: Community Choice Aggregation, Community Choice Energy, Bay Localize, Pacific Environment, Oakland, ryanishungry