Kenai Resilience

We hope you had a productive Summer! We are gearing up for a new season of Kenai Resilience potlucks, starting in September.  The first dinner & discussion celebration will be on Thursday, October 11, 2012 from 6-9pm at Christ Lutheran Church in Soldotna.  The topic will be “Mapping Your Neighborhood”.  Bring a dish & some fun stories from summer to share! Let’s get the mental wheels of sustainability turning again!

We’ve just uploaded the 2012 update of the Local Foods Directory for the Central Kenai Peninsula!  The Directory includes 27 listings, up from 19 when it was first published in 2011.   Inspired by successful, season-extending Northern farmers from Tim Meyers in Bethel to Eliot Coleman in Maine, Peninsula vegetable growers started planting and harvesting earlier this year than ever before.   Some had lettuce, cucumbers, spinach, kale, lettuce and other greens for sale by late April or early May!  Local food producers are expanding their marketing channels from the traditional farmers’ markets to subscription services with weekly pick-ups (e.g., Ridgeway Farms, Winter Greens Organic Gardens, Peninsula Dairy), email or on-line ordering (e.g., Cloudberry Acres, Sarah’s Alaska Honey, Alaska Berries), U-pick operations (e.g. Jackson Gardens), and on-the-farm sales (e.g. O’Brien Orchards).   July and August are peak of the season for fresh fruit and vegetables on the Kenai Peninsula, so visit a farmers’ market or farm soon!   Buying locally supports a healthy local food economy and puts fresh, healthy food on the table for your family.   To view and print the 2012 Local Foods Directory, click on the “Local Foods Directory” or “Documents” tab.

Earth Day will be hosted by the KPC Sustainability Club @ the Kenai River Campus on April 19th from 2-9.  There will be many interesting informational tables & speakers.  Be sure to take advantage of this free event!

Kenai Resilience will resume meeting next September.  The theme next year will be “Resilient Household” and will be a more inter-active style.  It will be a great chance for you to share your sustainable knowledge & projects with like-minded folks!

Have a great Summer filled with lots of hearty laughs & sustainable adventures & endeavors!

Thank you to Lasse Holmes, a natural builder from Homer, who discussed his experience, methods, & materials for putting together homes out of local & natural materials! A lot of really good advice was given about forming your own earthen (mud) recipe and putting together your own self-designed natural house.  Lasse also shared a great deal of knowledge about rocket mass heaters and how the natural home building movement & philosophy compares to green home construction.

If you missed hearing about Lasse’s experience, there are many great books out there about natural home building.  A good place to start would be the Wikipedia sight for a general introduction of this trade.  The Natural Building School is also a great place to investigate.

Many thanks to Eric Treider, who presented an evening presentation of “Local Currencies”.  Eric pointed out that sustainable local economies:

*Ask how local needs might be supplied from local resources,

*Strive to increase earnings within the community, and decrease expenditures outside the community,

*Acknowledge that money paid into the local economy should circulate within the community as long as possible before it is paid out,

*Look into possible uses of local currency, community-funded loan program, systems of barter, and the like, and

*Recognize the value of neighborliness.

Eric also presented the video “Time Banking is Changing Lives“, which is worth a look, if you missed the last meeting.

Many thanks to Aby & Tinker Ala who talked about growing up in Fairbanks & Soldotna during the Homesteading Days. Their stories, pictures, & conversations brought up visions of the way things used to be and could be again in the future (if we just work toward building up a strong home-grown agricultural base here).

In addition, thank you for participating in the Christmas Book Exchange!

We hope you had a Merry Christmas & we wish you the best in 2012!!!!!

A lot happened with Climate Change in November, 2011!

Many thanks to John Morton of the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge for presenting “The Impacts of Climate Change on the Kenai Peninsula”. It was a very interesting presentation about not just our local peninsula, but also about how climate change will impact the state of Alaska. If you missed the speech, you can read an article about it at the Clarion’s website.

In addition, thanks to the many folks who encircled the White House on November 6th to encourage the president to reject Keystone XL (pipeline) and live up to his promise to address Climate Change in a meaningful & heart-felt way. To learn more about the result of that protest, go to the 350.org website.

Thanks to all who came to our presentation about the Bioneers. We had an informal presentation for folks who couldn’t make it to the actual event in Anchorage in October. The Bioneers theme this year was “Resilience: Adapting to a Changing Planet”. Click here for more information.

If you missed the Bioneers Conference this year, check out their website. They’ll host another conference next year.

Thank you to the approximately 35 people who participated in the “Kenai River Moving Planet” event on September 24th! “Moving Planet” was a worldwide human-powered trek on one day in September to communicate the need for solutions to climate change. The “Moving Planet” event was sponsored by 350.org, and a video of the global event can be seen here. Our Kenai photo of the day can be seen here on our Facebook page. Incidentally, 5 locations in Alaska participated (Kenai, Mat-Su, Anchorage, Sitka, & Juneau). Yahoo!!!!!