New Digs

At first, we see what we know, with repeated exposure and/or more intimate exploration, we find a more true nature of that which we see. When I walked in the room, I saw these lampshades as gourds. When I came close I was not sure, because all the gourds I know of have fairly thin skin. These are, in fact Earthenware, thown as a pear shape and then cut into this amazing lattice. ECO-Tours of Wisconsin, Inc. is moving to a new location. We will be near the shore of Lake Michigan, just a half-dozen miles from the premier tourist area known as Door County. Our first concern is to make the home on site liveable and to add two bedrooms for travelers and guests who come for classes and tours. After that, we will begin documenting the natural ecotones on site and putting effort into a large classroom space so in the event of inclement weather, we can still teach our biochar classes. By the coming Spring, we will be actively reforesting and adding to permaculture management strategies, getting the fruit trees and vines back to their prolific state and infusing the land with many, many more perennial food and medicinal crops.
For our supporters and friends, it may seem odd that we have drastically pared back the size of our new center, but in light of rapidly escalating prices for everything, not just energy, we want to place our home base in a more central area, so that we can serve a greater number of people at drastically lower cost. Instead of asking our guests to treck many hours into the Northwoods of Wisconsin, we are locating just a day's bicycle ride from over a million potential guests. The air quality is much better than where we were located and the night skies are much more full of stars. Although it may not be the remote backwoods experience that "Up North" has to offer, we are within about an hour drive of one of the state's dark skies parks and can arrange transport and camping expeditions to that location for stargazers and those who have not yet seen the Milky Way or Northern Lights. Kayaking opportunities abound and as we are located about a day's walk from the Eastern Terminus of the Ice Age Trail, those who want to hike have ample chance to find peace and quiet there as well.
UPDATE: We have been at our new location for about a month. We remain focused on the inside, it took months of Nancy and I working every spare minute to get it back to move in ready, but we are a little flexible in what that means. When we go to town, we still bring a load or two of laundry, our chest freezer is still at the old pod. We have planted about a half dozen things, like rhubarb and elderberries which had been in pots, some given to us, some purchased with gracious donations from supporters. As we do begin making holes in the ground, it seems that this will be an excellent property on which to showcase biochar and the effects of re-generation. Carbon sequestration will be meticulously documented and the results will be obvious. Each time we get a read on soil quality in different areas, we gain understanding of where we are, our place is based on the soil and in this spot, there are places with precious little of that. We will practice our own version of ecological triage, deciding what will remain impacted and what can be easily recovered, focusing resources on places that our intervention makes the greatest difference. I work hard to bring salient messages to this blog and for many reasons I have sought to keep it free and available. If you appreciate that, my paypal account number is the same as my e-mail. t (as in Tony) n (as in Nancy) saladino42 at (because We're old school) hotmail dot com.