After years of having it in the back of my mind, I've finally managed to get around to roasting some green chiles in the sun oven. It co...

  I try to avoid all drinks (and foods, for that matter) that contain artificial &/or highly processed ingredients. When it come...

  We had the most incredible crop of rampicante zucchini this year. This one was picked WEEKS ago, and it refuses to stop growing – these...

This has been a crazy year for growing - we had a very late freeze (several weeks after the typical last frost date), so many of the...

what a crazy revelation THIS is - fresh, home-made mochi, baked in the sun oven (if you don't have a sun oven, a regular oven will do...

Last week I got to teach a class at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas on DIY sun oven building for kids. Since Julian and I have happi...

Jujube, or red date, also has a fabulous latin name: Ziziphus zizyphus. It is an Asian species, but is very hearty and tolerates the high ...

 I don’t remember exactly how my parents and I first became interested in the idea of a “home” burial.  It was probably the combination o...

for our first drying-zucchini-on-the-clothesline experiment, we strung zucchini rounds on cotton string, then clipped the string to the c...

"the 7 generations" by alyce santoro The next article in my series about ways to think about and act on climate change, "...

"newton" by blake my most recent article we have me the environment, and it is us   is a constructive critique of bill mckibb...

photo taken april 29, 2012 by jeff smith a year between posts? it seems absurd, but what a year it's been. duri...

spotted this recipe for rhubarb polenta cake in permaculture magazine this morning and immediately adapted it for gluten free sun oven cook...

here in the high desert, the deep magenta fruit of the prickly pear cactus - called a tuna in spanish - is especially abundant this year, s...

we've edited together some footage we shot last winter into a 1 minute video to give a quick overview of how a basic rainwater catchment...

john wells of the field lab came up from terlingua to demonstrate his pedal-powered washing machine as part of the miraculous clothesline r...

I was taking care of a friend’s house near Big Bend National Park a few summers ago and the usual daily temperature did not fall below 100...

BUBBLE UP is a song dedicated to the current state of the world, with music by julian mock and lyrics by nick santoro. you can stream the ...

we just got our electric bill for last month - we used an average of 1.3 kWh per day, for a total bill (including $9 worth of miscellaneous...

the cactii around here are blooming like crazy. maybe it's because we got a lot of rain and snow this winter?

we're not sure if all the buds on the pinons mean it's going to be a good year for nuts. julian recalls a steady rain of pine nuts o...

made of local clay and stone. after the coals burn down, we insert a shelf, on top of which we place the pizza stone. works GREAT, even with...

i've got another article published at truthout: makers: DIY agents of social change . it's inspired by joseph beuys' concept of ...

inspired by this article at truthout describing haitian farmers resolution to burn tainted seeds being donated to them by monsanto, i'v...

today my latest article, spaceship earth: navigators wanted , was published in truthout. in it i outline why the climate debate needs to shi...

A few years ago we became interested in trying to cook with the sun. Initially we'd planned to build something ourselves out of salvaged...

we harvested the first of our radishes yesterday (note to self: plant even earlier next year, and stagger planting so they're not all re...

urine is a valuable source of nitrogen for gardens that is often overlooked. used correctly, it is not only a safe and extremely effective f...

we just planted two rhubarbs that we got from a local nursery for a couple of bucks each. a neighbor recently gave us some strawberry plants...

we drink a LOT of tea, and it's one of the products we buy that often travels vast distances before it reaches our cup . we did a little...

the last of the beets that have been growing in the greenhouse all winter.

my art studio (housed in a converted 1970's school bus) runs off of a solar set-up that can be installed for around $500. i've got t...

papercrete is a mixture of paper pulp made from recycled newspapers, water, cement, and sand molded into blocks. we are about to begin const...

tonic used to be the name of one of my all-time favorite music venues in new york city (now defunct, like so many things with value not com...

About a year ago some good friends gave us a small chest freezer they had found next to a dumpster. The power cord was a little chewed ...

When it comes to finding ways to make your living situation more efficient, there are many options worth considering. Where the winters ar...

i'm very honored and delighted that an article i wrote has been published in truthout.org, a journal i highly respect: change is dead, l...

11 days late. maybe they were around, just hunkered in until the chilly weather passed? we're still getting below-freezing nights, but t...

Kombucha is a fermented drink brewed from a symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast (SCOBY). Homemade kombucha requires a bit of nurturing in...

we'll be posting much more soon about our experiments cooking with a solar oven. today we made pinto beans - one of the most healthy, in...