Guest Post by Doug Hansmann With daytime high temperatures staying in the 70s this week, we’re getting a much-appreciated reprieve from what’s been a roasting summer here in Wisconsin. And as Denise and I finalize the orientation of the passive-solar house we intend to build next year, minimizing all possible […]
This exciting news release from University of Wisconsin Madison offers another reason to like lichens! Lichens and mosses are well-known barometers of the environment. With no real roots, they literally soak up their food from thin air – living on water and nutrients extracted mostly from the atmosphere. They come […]
When we are trying to live more responsibly, consuming less, burning less greenhouse gasses – bikes keep popping up as an integral piece of the puzzle. There was a great article in Monday’s NYTimes on biking in the Netherlands. The Netherlands is bike heaven. Doug and I loved the more […]
We had a peeling party on our land this week. Monday through Wednesday there were from six to nine people selecting and prepping the trees that will hold up the house we build next summer. On Monday most of the trees were selected from our 44 acres. (See The First […]
Today was an exciting day. Doug and I cleared overgrown trails and created new ones for the past few days so that today we could walk our woods with Roald Gundersen of Whole Trees Architecture and Construction and with his assistant Della Hansmann, who is designing our house. We were […]
GUEST POST BY DELLA HANSMANN Read more of her thoughts on green building and design at Dwelling Places. Denise and Doug have been planning to build a house for a long time. They were thinking about this natural dream home from the time they bought land in rural Wisconsin in […]
Have you ever found yourself singing the praises of your farmers’ market only to have your conversation mate say they can’t afford such expensive food? There are so many answers to that statement. In most cases, it’s merely a matter of priorities and grasping the real cost of agribusiness food-like […]
GUEST POST BY KJ HANSMANN. Read more healthy recipes and thoughts on how communities approach food at Cooking Between Classes. I have been thinking more about the roots of the obesity epidemic since I read The End of Overeating by David Kessler a few weeks ago. And one theme that Kessler touched […]
Because it was my birthday yestersday, and I was making rather merry, I am sharing this fascinating press release from UW-Madison News by David Tenenbaum. The mosquitoes are back, the Japanese beetlesare starting to devour the 300 species of plants they call “food,” and a flock of invasive insects are […]
We’ve been regulating air quality since 1970, and it’s a huge environmental success story. The air has been getting cleaner and cleaner, according to Tracy Holloway. She is director of the Environmental Studies Center for Sustainability and Global Environment (SAGE) at Univeristy of Wisconsin-Madison, and she spoke this week at […]
Digging in the Driftless 