Three Rivers Environmental Weekend

The 4th Annual Three Rivers Environmental Weekend will be held on October 2-3, 2010. It includes the Green Faire on Saturday, from 9-5 pm at the Three Rivers Arts Center, on North Fork Drive. The Green Faire is a free event, open to the public.  The Green Home Tour will be held on Sunday. Reservations and tickets are required for tour.

painting by Paul Buxman

The Three Rivers Environmental Weekend was started four years ago, and is organized by the local group which calls itself the TREW Crew, led by Three Rivers artist, Mona Fox Selph.

The Green Faire, on October 2,  has designated “Food and Farming” as its main theme. Several presentations on this theme will be made during the Saturday event.  At 9:30 am,  Dr. Donald Mosley will speak on grass fed beef and other food animals, with additional information on organic gardening. He will share his personal story of transitioning from a dental practice in San Diego to a farmer in Three Rives, now practicing biodynamic farming and gardening with his wife Terez.

At 11 am, Paul Buxman, internationally known organic farmer and plein air artist from Dinuba, will speak on his 40 years’ experience as a farmer on his “Sweet Home Ranch.” His dedication to discovering clean, sustainable farming methods has influenced people world wide.  His farm has been the subject of many documentaries, including National Geographic, PBS, Sixty Minutes, Bill Moyers, CBS Nightly News, California Heartland, Canadian Public Broadcasting, Australian Public Broadcasting, and many local news broadcasts. Paul’s art has also had a strong impact on many people in America, not just collectors but painters as well. He teaches and “preaches” simplicity and honesty as key to great art. He encourages others to paint what they know. He says, “Paintings should be a visual autobiography. Paint those subjects with which you are most intimately acquainted.” Paul’s paintings have been displayed in the Senate Chambers, both in California and in Washington, D. C. The Green Faire is proud to also be displaying some of his paintings. Paul will bring his viola for a little music at the end of his program, accompanied on piano by his wife, Ruth, who will also be selling her homemade, organic jams.

At 1:15 pm, there will a preview showing of “Artists of the Great Western Divide”, a masterful short documentary created by the students of Reedley College. This thirty minute film features the founders of the Kaweah Land and Arts Festival, which will have it’s 2nd annual Festival on November 5-7, 2010. The film’s producer, Diran Lyons, will be on hand to introduce it, as well as artist Matthew Rangel who appears in the film.

At 2 pm, the Alta Peak Chapter of the California Native Plant Society will present its Fall Program called “What’s Cooking in the Foothills 600 Years Ago? Native Americans and Our Local Native Plants”, presented by Mary Gorden.  Have you ever wondered if you could survive without all the comforts you now enjoy? It is hard to imagine what life was like many years ago. Six hundred years ago the people in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and foothills lived a comfortable life. Historic evidence indicates that hunter-gatherers did about everything that farmers do, but they probably didn’t work as hard. Speaker, Mary Gorden, is a retired teacher who taught elementary and high school, in addition to college classes for teachers in history and archaeology. The class on “Native Plants and Their Uses” was the product of her research of early ethnographers in the San Joaquin Valley who recorded the culture of the Native Americans. Mary also worked as an archaeological assistant for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

Following the CNPS Fall Program, Christina Roper Graber, lecturer on anthropology at California State Fresno, will continue the discussion of the fascinating subject of the local native people’s use of our local landscape’s plants and animals before the arrival of European settlers, including examples of some artifacts and their applications.

The Green Faire will be full of other things to see, and interesting information to know as well.  In addition to the morning native plant sale outside, a solar cooking demonstration will be featured, along with what’s new in home solar panels, art from natural and recycled materials, and green home products and practices.

Inside the Arts Center, many books will be available for perusal and purchase.  Local author Dr. Louise Jackson will be present to autograph her latest book, The Sierra Nevada Before History, Ancient Landscapes, Early Peoples.  Also present will be local author, painter, and poet, Sylvia Ross, with her two children’s books, Lion Singer and Blue Jay Girl. Local poet and cowboy, John Dofflemyer, will be on hand with his wonderful collection of poetry books. John Spivey’s book, The Great Western Divide, will also be for sale at the local author’s table.

The Tulare County Master Gardeners will be there with lots of helpful gardening information. The Three Rivers Arts Alliance will be selling California poppy seeds to support their art scholarship fund for area youth.  Spotted Owl researcher, Lori Werner, will share an owl display of interest to both children and adults. Local green builders will have a table with information on how to build and remodel using green resources. Family Farm Fresh will present some of their home delivery local produce, and information on Three Rivers’ Flora Bella Farm’s organic items will be on hand.  Both the California Native Plant Society and the Sequoia Natural History Association will have large displays. Tulare County Citizens for Responsible Growth, and a number of other information booths, will fill the Arts Center for the day.  A drawing for free door prizes will take place at 4:30 pm.

On Sunday, October 3, The Green Home Tour will visit five homes in Three Rivers as part of the American Solar Energy Society’s annual national solar tour.  All of the homes are either active or passive solar powered or assisted. Many homes incorporate recycled materials, earth forms and other natural materials, as well as green practices during construction and in use.  Besides being innovative, they are quite beautiful.  One of the homes this year, known locally as “the glass house” was Sunset Magazine’s small space winner for 2009-2010.

Reservations are required for the afternoon home tour. Tickets are $15 per person, or $25 per couple, with the proceeds going to the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund for specific legal support for the recent process of revising the Tulare County General Plan, supporting responsible growth instead of sprawl.  Call 561-4676 to reserve a place, with one of two tour groups. One starts at 12 noon, the other at 1 pm.

Three Rivers Environmental Weeked coming on Oct 3-4

• OCT 3  Sat  9-5 pm  Three Rivers Arts Center

Presentations on the Environment including:

Bee colony collapse and honey-making,  All about owls, Solar cooking
Book-signing History of Yokohl Valley by Scott Barker, Home and garden art
Information on green home options, Wastewater treatment innovations
Native plant gardening, Community Supported Agriculture, Free door prizes

Saturday activities collaborate with the California Native Plant Society with a native plant sale, from 9-1 pm, in the back courtyard of the Arts Center, and the Alta Peak Chapter Fall Program presented at 2 pm by John Muir Laws, teacher, artist and author of the Laws Guide to the Sierra Nevada.

All of Saturday’s events are free and open to all.
Arts Center–turn north off HWY 198 on North Fork Drive in Three Rivers.

• OCT 4  Sunday starting at 12 noon and 1 pm

Three Rivers Green Home Tour featuring five homes with:

Passive and active solar water and home heating
Radiant slab floors
Insulated concrete forms
Sod roof
Rice straw bale construction
Two historic adobe homes, including a windmill, and cistern
Lavender gardens

Tickets $15 per person, $25 per couple. Call 561-4676 to reserve space.

Read Mona Selph’s beautiful essay for the Green Home Tour.

Proceeds go to Tulare County Citizens for Responsible Growth www.tccrg.org

The Environmental Weekend is organized and sponsored by the TREW CREW, a group of concerned citizens living in Three Rivers.

Print an 8.5×11 inch flier.

___________________________________
Storm over Yokohl Valley, 30×40” oil © 2009 Mona Fox Selph all rights reserved

Three Rivers Environmental Weekend

Three Rivers Environmental Weekend
(with Native Plant Sale)
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Three Rivers Arts Center

Saturday’s event will start at 9 am with the California Native Plant Society’s Alta Peak Chapter annual fall native plant sale outside the Arts Center, and inside exhibits and information,  featuring a Chapter Fall program by artist/scientist John Muir Laws at 2 pm.  He spent 7 years in the field sketching and doing research for his spectacular Laws Field Guide to the Sierra Nevada, and gives an inspiring presentation.  We hope to have at least one other author there, Scott Barker, who recently published a history of Yokohl Valley.  The Sequoia Kings Natural History Association will be selling books as well, and Sequoia National Park, in the person of Annie Esperanza, will have rolling videos about the environment.   We will have a variety of information tables and booths, including Tulare County Citizens for Responsible Growth, Family Farm Fresh, builders and designers to retrofit your home, or build new.  Lori Werner will have an exhibit table “All About Owls”, which the kids and adults should find interesting.   We also are working on a home and garden art and decoration booth or two outside under the trees or canopies.  We hope to feature some of our fine local artists.  There’s lots more in progress, and of course Bill Becker and his famous solar cooking demonstration will again be right up front

__________________________

The Three Rivers Green Home Tour
Sunday October 4

“Mud Bricks, Straw Bales, and Whatever Works”
by Mona Fox Selph

It is estimated that about half of the world’s population still lives in some sort of earth home.  The material is accessible and cheap, such homes provide good insulation from the elements, and they don’t burn.  There are many ways to build with earth, but the most ancient dwellings were probably wattle and daub, or branches and sticks plastered with mud.  Adobe is another very old method.  It requires from 15 to 30 percent clay, sand or soil, and often straw is incorporated.

In the southwestern USA, building with adobe has long been practiced since it is the perfect climate.  To have permanence, adobe requires a long hot and dry season to evaporate out the moisture it accumulates in the damper, wetter months.  It traditionally also requires overhangs to protect it from rain, and/or yearly re-plastering with adobe.

The oldest continually occupied building in our country is the Taos Pueblo in New Mexico.  It is a multi cellular adobe structure with many individual rooms built side by side up to five stories high.  Large timbers called vigas support floors and roofs.  In the old days, entry was from the roof using ladders.  People have lived there for over a thousand years.

Three Rivers has some beautiful old adobes, although they are new in comparison to Taos Pueblo.  There are also many other varieties of buildings friendly to the environment here, and interested residents will soon have the opportunity to visit five of them.  The Green Home Tour began over three years ago with a small study group on global warming, and as they say, the rest is history.  It was so worthwhile and so much fun that we are still doing it!   I am writing about the Green Home Tour put on by the TREW Crew as we now call ourselves, that is the Three Rivers Environmental Weekend Crew.

The first year we toured six wonderful homes in Three Rivers, donating proceeds to Habitat for Humanity’s green building fund.   Last year we car-pooled down to the valley where we toured five structures in Visalia and one in Elderwood, donating proceeds to Tulare County Citizens for Responsible Growth.  That group will also be the recipient this year, when we will come home again to Three Rivers with five homes on the list.

For the 2009 Tour, the first home is a new construction, nearly completed as I write this.  The dwelling is small and efficient, with well insulated walls, ceilings and windows. The heated floor is plumbed for future conversion to solar heated water.   Solar panels are also planned to heat household water.  Built on acreage with an incredible view of the mountains and sky, the owner, Bill Becker, has set aside a prime spot for his telescope, as well as a spot for his famous highly efficient solar cooker.

The second home is the straw bale house we toured two years ago when it was under construction.  At that stage, it was roofed but unfinished, so that we could see the details of construction, even things such as the lovely faded blue color of the recycled jeans used for attic insulation.  Besides the extremely thick insulating walls, a large number of green ideas were being incorporated wherever possible,  from passive solar components to light tubes.  This year, tour guests will get to see how the house works as a finished dwelling for owners Hillary Dustin and Kay Woods.

In the Cherokee Oaks community, Tom and Lisa McGinnes will show their owner built Insulated Concrete Form home.  It uses exterior solar panels to heat the floor, and for other purposes.  They incorporated as many energy saving ideas into the home as possible from the ground up.

The last two homes are adobe.  Rick Badgley and Martha Widmann’s beautiful home is nestled in a cool and shady draw below the Catholic retreat complex.  The house is actually two buildings, the older original one and a second structure Rick added as a master bedroom and bath.  This one uses a different method of adobe construction, and Rick will show forms and explain how it is done.  A short distance away, Rick built a studio for Martha, who is a wonderful painter and graphic designer.  Rick is a skilled craftsman in the construction of fine furniture and cabinets.  He built his shop into the hillside above, where the earth insulates it from weather.  The domed roof is sod, and here again, Rick will explain construction methods.

The fifth house is the family home of Barbara Lahman, known for her lavender gardens.  Her grandfather, Jim Livingston, finished the original adobe structure in 1938 using a guide put out by the Department of Agriculture.  The walls are eighteen inches thick.  An eight foot deep porch fronts the sixty foot south face of the house.  The front door is hand hewn redwood, as are 4×4 beams and window frames.  Windows and doors allow for cross breezes, and movable wood shutters cover the windows.  The house was supplied with gravity flow water until 1999, and a well pump now pumps water into a rock walled covered reservoir.  The old windmill still stands.  She and her husband built a second home on the property where their daughter resides.

As it was last year, the tour is registered as part of the ASES National Solar tour, the largest grass roots solar energy event in America.  You can compare it to other such tours in California (we are one of only sixteen) by going to www.nationalsolartour.org.  Click on “find tours”, and then on California.

The donation is $15 per person, or $25 per couple. To register for the tour that starts at 12 noon, phone 559-561-4676.  For the one o’clock tour, phone 559-561-4149.   Participants should bring snacks and water.  We will meet for car pooling at Valley Oak Credit Union.