CRMPI's "Phoenix" Greenhouse

Construction of the new greenhouse at CRMPI, the Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute in Basalt, CO, is underway:
http://www.crmpi.org/

Over the past 25 years, Jerome Osentowski's permaculture institute has become world renowned as a great place to learn the arts of "permanent, sustainable agriculture", as permaculture is known. Here Jerome weaves together the plant, animal and insect communities into an orchestra, playing together to produce food for us. Using greenhouses and outdoor "forest gardens" CRMPI is a veritable Garden of Eden, located on an arid mountainside here.

In the Autumn of 2007, Jerome's tropical greenhouse, the largest of his four indoor growing spaces, burned to the ground in the middle of the night. Were it not for the Basalt Volunteer Firefighters and their speedy mobilization in the wee hours of a Sunday morning, Jerome's house and his Mediterranean greenhouse, home of his famous mature Fig Tree, would also have been lost.

Now, the old Nexus greenhouse Jerome helped plan and build for the Planted Earth Nursery in Carbondale 30 years ago, which they gave to him because they are no longer using it, is being re-assembled where his tropical greenhouse stood. Jerome gave half of the parts to the town of Carbondale, and we hauled the rest of them up the narrow, cliffside mountain road leading to his paradise, and we have begun to erect the frame for it's next incarnation as a renewed tropical house. It took us a long time to build a new foundation for the old trusses, but now the trusses are finally rising from the ashes. Before Winter sets in on us again, the banana, pomegranate and other tropical fruit trees and shrubs will be sheltered comfortably in their new home.

Big thanks to Eric, Jack, Kelly, Chris, Andreas, Zack, Brian, Danny, Deanna, and everyone else who are donating their time and energy to help bring "Pebble Beach" back to renewed life!

Noah

Noah Wilson is the eldest son of my friend Bice from Pratt Institute, where we attended Architecture school. Noah is an extremely energetic and intelligent guy, filled with enthusiasm for any passion that seems important to him. He spent two years after high school learning to be a professional chef, and landed a job in a restaurant in Vermont. It wasn't long before he saw that he had more interest in learning to grow the food, than in learning how to make the best creme brule' in the world.
He told his Dad that he wanted to redirect his education toward sustainable agriculture and building anything and everything he perceived to be in need of a "new paradigm" for the future of his generation.
Right about this same time, Bice had learned about what we're doing here in Colorado, with our Eco Systems Design, and our Fat City Farms non-profit, starting up a school to "grow farmers" for an expanding wave of local organic food growing in the Rocky Mountains. I happened to be visiting New York City in March this year, so Bice conspired to have Noah meet me. We settled the next step in Noah's education, a month in Colorado, in early Spring.
When I met Noah, it didn't occur to me to ask if his name was part of his inspiration for wanting to study sustainable agricultural systems. Most of the young people I've met in the last half-decade are concerned with the future - their future - and the challenge of high energy costs that are sure to accompany it. They are focused on rebuilding the world with a "sustainable" infrastructure for energy, agriculture, housing, transportation, everything. They are all, in a sense, "Noahs" - seeking to salvage their future from a possible collapse of unsustainable practices.
Noah arrived ready for anything. He came equipped for travel by bicycle, adventure on skis in the mountains, and he came with his own chef's knife and a bag full of exotic spices. This young man, a towering 6'-7" tall skinny guy with dark hair and a funny beard - would become our personal chef and cooking instructor. Before Noah arrived, we thought we knew how to cook.

When Noah made dinner, it was fantastic. Every vegetable was finely shredded with his razor-sharp chef's knife, and sauteed with all kinds of worldly spices I had never heard of: curry leaves, turkish pepper, mustard seed, too many to name. He always made too much food, which pleased me no end, because I am a leftovers freak. After several days of Noah's cooking, I looked in the refrigerator and said, "Hey, we have enough leftovers for a whole dinner! Let's have leftovers tonight!"
My mouth watered at the prospect of revisiting the cuisine of the past several evenings, but when Noah announced that dinner was served, I was surprised to find that he hadn't just re-heated the leftovers, he had completely re-invented them. Noah had re-cooked them with more and different spices, harvesting some early chives and mint from our garden, plucking dandelion leaves from our awakening lawn and sauteeing them with some baby arrugula, also just emerging in my raised beds, volunteers from last year's crop. It was a whole new delightful meal, not leftovers at all.
I thought about secretly hoarding some of these new leftovers in a neighbor's refrigerator while he is away, and sneaking into his house late at night, to revisit some of Noah's culinary delights.

Noah's arrival coincided with a landmark meeting of the "food groups" in our valley, a "summit meeting" of our Fat City Farms, several local farmers, our local chapter of Slow Food International, our Children's Health Foundation, Aspen's Canary Initiative, our local cheese-monger, and a rancher bent on raising a series of milk-producing animals for cheese making. Noah got to meet them all, to listen to our plans for re-creating a local food production network, and to tell everyone why he wants to help create this line of work. Just in the few months since Noah was here, gasoline prices have gone from $4.00 to $4.60 per gallon in our area, and they are predicted to reach $5.00 by the end of the year. It's no wonder we have people planning to grow food nearby.
April is also fruit-tree pruning season around here, so Noah got intensely involved in learning how different species - apple, pear, apricot, plum and cherry, grow and respond to pruning. It was great to have his help, and not just because the work went quicker and with fewer ladder relocations because of his height, but because Noah learns very quickly. After helping me to prune Mo, our apple tree, and Maude, our apricot, Noah became a pruning instructor when we helped two groups of Heritage Fruit Tree adopters at nearby orchards. It was like being in two places at once, listening to him teach someone in a tree on the other side of the orchard, how the tree wants to be pruned, and how it will respond to the cuts they were making. Noah had me include a set of hand pruning shears and folding saw in my next order, and they arrived before he left. He used them while visiting his uncle in California, where he pruned somebody's tree, making his tool investment back, and then some.
We will enjoy hearing from Noah as he travels the path he has chosen, leading next back to college, with a very strong compass setting in agriculture and design. We hope he'll come back occasionally though, to our small home in the mountains, to "guest chef" and help us burn the dinner candles down.