SAVE THE DATE: Please mark your calendar for our upcoming screening of the new documentary film brought to you by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund. Continue reading

The Community Food Assessment is finished and available. Email [email protected]) for a PDF. Thanks a million to the author, RARE specialist Jules Reynolds, and to the Oregon Food Bank, which funded her year here in the CG-Creswell-Lorane-Dorena-north Douglas County area. South Lane Farmers Market: Thursday afternoons, 4-7 pm on 7th... Continue reading

Cottage Grove Screening: The Economics of Happiness Thursday January 30th, 7:00pm Healing Matrix, 632 E. Main Street, Cottage Grove $4 - $9 suggested donation at the door (no one will be turned away for lack of funds) <Watch the trailer for the film> Going local is a powerful strategy to... Continue reading

Cottage Grove Screening: The Economics of Happiness Thursday January 30th, 7:00pm Healing Matrix, 632 E. Main Street, Cottage Grove $4 - $9 suggested donation at the door (no one will be turned away for lack of funds) For more information about the film, see: www.theeconomicsofhappiness.org Continue reading

WHO DECIDES… Our community or corporations Over 150 communities across the country have demonstrated that there is a way to ensure local self-determination of our health, economies and community well-being. Join us for an eye-opening community discussion with PAUL CIENFUEGOS Educator and community organizer in the Community Rights movement WHEN:... Continue reading

Cottage Grove Transition Gardens hopes to encourage and facilitate local food production by converting un-used and under-used land at people's homes and within the community to productive food gardens. Transition Gardens is a volunteer-driven organization that will work with you to transform your yard to grow some of your own... Continue reading

If you are interested in what Sustainable Cottage Grove is up to, why not join our email list. By joining our email list, it will be much, much easier for us to keep you posted on our activities and events. We'll let you know when we are having meetings, announcing... Continue reading

Cottage Grove’s Food Hub aims to develop a robust and integrated food cycle that emphasizes sustainable local crop production, local food preparation, and convenient distribution and use by local consumers. The Food Hub seeks to encourage and support small-scale agriculture. Continue reading

Attention Cottage Grovers -- we're working hard to make Cottage Grove a better place and need your help. We've got an ambitious agenda to make our local economy, food network, and transportation infrastructure more sustainable, and we'll need as broad and deep a cross-section of the Cottage Grove community actively... Continue reading

We've just launched the Cottage Grove Time Exchange (CGTE) -- a marketplace and a meeting place for members of our community to help each other. The Cottage Grove TimeExchange is essentially an hour bank where we all get to help each other and benefit from each others skills and expertise.... Continue reading

Asparagus! I just love asparagus! If I were to put aside for a minute all of the grand plans to be self sufficient, learn how to grow our own food, and teach Michael valuable life skills, I would have to admit that the thought of growing a bounty of asparagus was pretty persuasive in its own right. There is no vegetable that I love half as much as asparagus, and I could probably eat it every day. Steamed asparagus. Grilled asparagus. Baked asparagus with parmessan cheese. Asparagus soup. Hot asparagus. Chilled asparagus. All good! So when we decided to start... Continue reading

There are many different aspects to having an energy efficient house, but some of the key components are: Figure 1 - Rafter extensions to existing 2x4 rafters add an additional 7.5" of space to install lots more cellulose insulation to the roof Very tight air sealing to prevent conditioned indoor air which you already used precious energy to heat or cool from escaping to the exterior. High insulation levels to prevent unwanted heat loss (or gain) from the walls, roof, and floors to the exterior High quality windows that incorporate items 1) and 2) above so that they are as... Continue reading

We're kicking off this years planting season with a bang, or at least a sharp blow to the head. At least that's how it feels after a few weeks of tree planting. We're busily laying the groundwork for our mini-orchard, and have planted about thirty trees and will eventuall plant around 75 or more shrubs to go with them. We will have fruit trees, nut trees, nitrogen-fixing shrubs as support species for the fruit and nut trees, as well as dozens of fruiting shrubs such as blueberries, gooseberries, aronia, goumi, red and black currants, seaberries, cranberries, and more. Here are... Continue reading

My Oregon weekend has been full of eye opening adventures for a city boy. First, despite a lifetime of driving in the Bay Area, I had never before encountered a hay bale in the middle of the freeway, let alone run one over at 50 mph. As someone who has heard a number of disturbing car meets deer stories -- which by the way don't always end well -- I was pleased to have survived my first hay bale collision largely intact. My rental car looked like it had been foraging in grassland all its life afterwards and complained of... Continue reading

Did I really just say "This week it all comes together"? Perhaps I got ahead of myself. It turns out that perhaps we were ready to close our sale this week, but not everyone else was... I was talking to my loan agent at 11:15am this morning about funding our loan today so that it closed tomorrow, and he needed to receive everything back by around noon for that to happen. And when I talked to our escrow person, she told me that a bunch of things were missing that essentially meant that there was no way it could close... Continue reading

This week it all comes together. After a year of trying, we are only hours away from owning a new home in Oregon, where we will begin a long-term effort to create a sustainable home. We realize that this is just the beginning and that we have a lot of work ahead of us to renovate the home, put in place renewable energy and heating systems, and to transform the land into something that will help sustain us with food, a place to play, and a place to learn. But that process can only begin in earnest once we have... Continue reading