Special Events

For details and pre-registration, please go to http://www.nmeac.org/.

Greenbuilding Workshops

Continuing progress on future Bioshelter, we will be adding walls to the section of the timber frame we raised last fall. This section will house the electronics and batteries for a wind generator also erected last fall. We will also be working on mudding our strawbale seed/herb drying building. We'll continue with these and other projects throughout the spring and summer. We'll see you there!

If you would like to attend future workshops send an email to info@ecolearningcenter.org and ask to be placed on our workshop mailing list.

Buildings in the works

Design will focus on using renewable resources and available building materials or recycled building products.

• A bioshelter. Winter growing has great potential to extend the growing season and increase production in Michigan. The main challenge that needs to be overcome is one of finding a way to warm soil temperatures.

  A bioshelter is a greenhouse that is modeled after the natural environment, that takes into account the body of heat of chickens housed within the building, the heat produced by composting and heat retension from sunlight in thermal mass, as well as the importance of gas exchange and growing medium. The skeleton of this structure will be timber-frame.

• The Food and Friends building: a food building/demonstration center in which CSA members can gather, where food can be prepared for pickup, classes in natural cooking can be offered and educational resources will be located for studies in sustainable design. This building will also provide housing for future volunteers and interns. Design-wise, it will be a combination of earthship and strawbale construction with a timber-frame. Our goal is to create community and an enhanced network of communication in the design process and implementation of the designs. The design process was begun in the 2005 Green Building Design Charrette where experts in sustainable building design facilitated a four day intensive planning session at the Eco-Learning Center.

• A caretaker's cabin.

Great Lakes Bioneers

Seventh annual Great Lakes Bioneers Conference hits Traverse City, October, 2008.

Since 1990, the annual Bioneers conference in California has been the pre-eminent gathering of leading social and scientific visionaries with practical solutions for restoring the Earth. These biological pioneers - or bioneers - represent a wide array of fields ranging from biology to botany to industrial ecology - organic farming and integrative medicine to activism to the arts. For the fifth time, Bioneers is hosting satellite conference sites to allow more people more access to the speakers, information, and networking. Traverse city, Michigan has the honor of being one of these 20 select sites!

The Great Lakes Bionneers Conference 2008, organized by the Neahtawanta Center, SEEDS and other local educators, will again be hosted on the campus of Northwestern Michigan College in October. A live staellite downlink of headlining speakers from the Bioneers Conference in San Rafael, CA will be part of this unique regional event. Workshops will focus on the people and issues integral to our own Great Lakes region, including music, food and farming, renewable energy, and water.

Meet us at the crossroads of ecology and social justice...and eat really well!

For more infortmation go to www.glbconference.org
Or contact Great Lakes Bioneers:
      PO BOX 2454
      Traverse City, MI 29685
      (800)220-1415
      info@glbconference.org

Formation of a Junior Board

The Eco Learning Center would like to assemble a team of interns, graduates and interested youth who will become the Center's first Junior Board. The board will receive training in negotiation skills and consensus building and will be given responsibility for some of the day to day operations, fundraising and administrative work. If you are interested, please contact Jayne Leatherman-Walker.

Agriforestry

In the spring of 2005 the first stage of the agriforest was planted. Much of the property at the Eco Learning Center is wooded and therefore is not available for traditional agricultural crops. A group of interns and herbalists are devising a plan to re-establish native herbal species in some of the forested areas. Studies are also being done on the healthy growth of tree species that produce marketable products, such as nuts and fruit.

A Self-guided Trail System: "Know Thy Square Foot"

1. that visitors can follow with stations along the path that describe various characteristics inherent to the natural function of the environment and essential in maintaining a healthy environment for the farm
2. the equivalent of an exhibit accessible to a broad audience of children to adults
3. integrating art as a form of function, using environmentally sustainabel materials and techniques
4. using design that will function without interpretive assistance

Fully augmented, this project will include annual data collection from all parts of the ecosystem, the establishment of a data bank for year to year comparisons anticipating changes and a means for articulating the "evolution" on the farm and for understand and preserving an ecological balance .The project includes a directory of experts and agencies which will provide us with the inventories, analysis and observations. The ECL will post this directory online as an additional public educational tool and resource that encourages all humans everywhere to take time to know the place where they live. The directory will enhance the local Green Mapping effort.

In conclusion, the afore mentioned projects will give our local public access TV channel 2, our multiple specialty tabloids, Traverse the Magazine, the Record Eagle, Interlochen public radio, the eTeach web site (connected to the local school systems) and all alternative news sources a few topics for creating public awareness through local programming. (They told me once that in the Fall during grape harvest season everyone wants to do an article in the vineyard. Well lets give them something to write about in every season, so we learn to hear the rhythm again,)