Sustainability

Anthroponics

  This post documents our work using urine as a primary nutrient in hydroponic systems. It is a  part of a series of blog posts exploring the historical and modern applications for human urine.  Part 1 is available here.  Part 2 is available here.     Three years ago, in the early spring, I bought two […]

Waste Not Urine

In his posthumously published 1911 work Farmers of Forty Centuries, USDA agronomist F. H. King documents his travels studying the intensive agriculture of China, Korea and Japan.  Multiple references are made to the efforts of farmers and city-dwellers alike to collect and distribute human waste to nearby farms as a valuable source of ongoing fertility: […]

DIY Activated Carbon

Like everyone else, Living Web Farms is adapting to the changing circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic.  Expanded farm operations and food donations are now top priority.  We’ve started a new short-form, rough-edit video series for sharing immediately relevant information and a few weeks ago we offered our first of should be many free webcast workshops.  […]

Home-Scale Biogas Production

My enlightenment on the subject of biogas began when I stumbled upon an article in a dog-eared copy of The Mother Earth News entitled “Chicken Manure Can Power Your Car.”  Buried among debatable bootstrap business stories and homespun garden-prep tutorials, the write-up recounted how a one-legged British maintenance man named Harold Bate converted a 1953 […]

WNC Repair Cafe and the fight against Planned Obsolescence

It’s been over a year since our last blog post, but the Biochar Facility at Living Web Farms is still a busy place.  In addition to keeping our batch biochar retort system in production we’re constantly exploring the nexus of all things sustainable technology and regenerative agriculture.   Our 2020 workshops are covering a boggling […]

Return to Atomizing Oil Burners

Part One available here The nexus of appropriate technology, circular economy and agriculture is a buffet of challenging, interesting projects.  In 2017 and 2018, our continued work in biochar and gasification, and among other esoteric projects, our work with small-scale plastic recycling, – not to mention organizing the WNC Repair Cafe project – have kept […]

Steven Druker, Author, visits Asheville to discuss GMOs

by Patryk Battle Steven M Drucker has authored an incredibly important book. Jane Goodall says it’s “one of the most important books of the last 50 years” and is deserving of a Nobel Prize. Another reviewer compares its capacity to drive change in public policy to the impact of Ralph Nader’s book Unsafe at Any […]

Experimental Farm Network’s Nate Kleinman Visits Living Web

Climate change– its causes and effects, its crusaders and its naysayers– is one of the top issues of our time. For Nate Kleinman, who used to work in disaster relief, it’s the work of his life. On February 24th, Living Web Farms will host Kleinman for a full day workshop on addressing climate change on […]

Biomass for the Masses

by Richard Freudenberger, Living Web Farms Resource and Alternative Energy Coordinator Call it firewood, biomass or solid fuel, it’s still one of the most reliable ways to heat your home—but only if you do it right. Even long-time wood-burners can disagree on what is “right,” so we’re going to do our best to clear the […]

Conducting a Do-it-Yourself Home Energy Audit

by Richard Freudenberger, Living Web Farms Resource & Alternative Energy Coordinator There are two benefits to saving energy in the home. One is the financial gain of allocating less of your household budget to keeping the household humming, and the other is the less noticeable advantage of managing consumption for the sake of our planet’s […]