Cafe Gratitude's Be Love Farm

This past week, I organized a field trip down to the Be Love Farm in Pleasant Valley, owned and operated by Matthew and Terces Engelhart, Founders of the Café Gratitude restaurant chain in the San Francisco Bay Area. Matthew and Terces are trailblazers in the American sustainable food movement, so it was an amazing privilege to be welcomed into their home to learn more about their philosophy and business model. In exchange for a gorgeous lunch of home-made tortillas with various beans and greens from their garden, we spent the day helping to grow organic fruits and nuts that supply the bulk of their restaurants in the Bay Area.

Cafe Gratitude's mission statement reflects a business style that is rooted in a deep connection to the community and land that provides the energy to grow their food:

"Café Gratitude is our expression of a world of plenty. Our food and people are a celebration of our aliveness. We select the finest organic ingredients to honor the earth and ourselves, as we are one and the same. We support local farmers, sustainable agriculture and environmentally friendly products. Our food is prepared with love. We invite you to step inside and enjoy being someone that chooses: loving your life, adoring yourself, accepting the world, being generous and grateful every day, and experiencing being provided for. Have fun and enjoy being nourished. Welcome to Café Gratitude!"

To learn more about Café Gratitude, please click here.

Agriculture Day in Willits

One of the best parts of my job is getting to teach little kids about sustainable living, and (more often than not) learning from them about what it means to live sustainably. Over the past two months, I've met dozens of 8-10 year olds who've taught me all about what it means to live off the grid, to build natural structures, to raise animals and grow vegetables organically... and the list goes on. Needless to say, it is a constant source of inspiration in my life these days.

Yesterday, we had the privilege of participating in Agriculture Day in the town of Willits, where we taught 400 Grade 2-4 students how to make adobe bricks using natural materials from the earth and how to bake cookies using a solar oven. Between hands-on sessions, I met two 9-year old beekeepers named John and Clay, who were demonstrating how to make honey from their backyard hive. Watching little kids teaching other kids about the benefits of homesteading was pretty amazing.

I Passed the NABCEP Solar PV Exam!

Urban Homesteading: How to Raise Backyard Goats

Urban homesteading is super trendy right now in the Bay Area, where just about everyone seems to have a few backyard chickens or goats these days. Since we had the chicken part down pat since Day One, we decided to adopt two baby goats last week to go through the process of raising our own meat in a sustainable manner. Not surprisingly, it has generated a bit of controversy among the organization's vegetarian donor base, but we strongly believe that if we eat it, we should know what's involved in raising and processing it. So we built a large pen under one of our solar arrays, picked up some goat feed, and adopted two little bucklings of about six weeks old.

In addition to being a great source of meat, raising a small goat herd can also be a powerful method for landscape management, as goat grazing controls a lot of unwanted weed species like poison oak, which is pervasive in Northern California at this time of year. Another benefit of raising goats is all of the fantastic by-products that you can make with their milk and whey, such as cheese, yogourt, ice cream, and soap!

For more information on the benefits of raising backyard goats, please visit www.supergoat.org.

How to Design and Install Grid-Tied Solar Systems

To complement the off-grid course I took last month, I spent all of last week in an intensive 40-hour solar photovoltaic design and installation workshop, focused primarily on how to design and install residential and commercial grid-connected solar pv systems. The course was designed to prepare students to sit for the NABCEP (North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners) Entry Level Exam, which I took on the final day of the course. Through in-class demonstration and hands-on practice, I was able to learn the basics of pv system sizing and wiring; racking and mounting techniques; installing/connecting inverters, charge controllers, meters, and safety disconnects; ground fault protection; and battery sizing. It was great to finally learn some tech talk and get my hands dirty with an actual rooftop solar installation!

Like the off-grid course, the highlight of the week was getting to know the 28 individuals who traveled from across the country and world to do the workshop:

Manuel from Aruba, who plans to start a small solar business on his island community; Mario from Miami, who wants to add solar installation services to his clean tech company and expand its presence across the country; Oliver from Ecuador, who hopes to bring solar electricity to a local indigenous group; and finally Justin and Brian, two brothers from Oregon who are the first men in their family to defect from the logging industry to follow a new career path.

p.s. For my technically-inclined friends, the other highlight of the workshop was undoubtedly when I was the first in the class to calculate the AC power output of a polycrystalline solar module by multiplying STC wattage x irradiance factor x derate factors... all with a Grade 11 math education! If I could do it, anyone can.

Emily Checks the Voltage of a Solar Panel

Magruder Ranch

We've just entered into the little-known rainy season in Northern California, so we bundled up and went on a field trip to Magruder Ranch -- a 5th generation family ranch that raises 100% grass-fed beef and lamb and acorn-finished pastured pork. The ranch supplies a number of restaurants in the Bay Area that pioneered the sustainable food movement, including Alice Waters' famous Chez Panisse in Berkeley.

Located on a gorgeous 2400-acre property in Potter Valley, the Magruders are slowly converting their ranch into a retreat destination for rural weekend getaways and workshops on sustainable farming and cooking. We look forward to helping them transform their gorgeous property into a one-stop-shop for sustainable meats and retreats!

Please visit their facebook page to learn more about their vision and farming practices.