Eugene Weekly

The iconic space-age cartoon The Jetsons features a technologically advanced home, complete with a robot housekeeper and a home full of futuristic gadgets. The show first aired in 1962, and while houses still don’t brush your teeth for you or make breakfast with the press of a button, technology now enables us to do some advanced home control, like dimming your living room lights from miles away.  Home automation systems have arrived. Along with compost, urban gardens and solar panels, they’re the future of sustainability.  Continue reading →

These days, you can grow apples without the hard work, responsibilities or space required by full-size apple trees. Cute and amazingly compact, columnar apple trees can grow up to 10 feet tall or higher while remaining barely 2 feet wide, and they can be spaced as close as 2 feet apart. The trees need minimal to no pruning, because the few side branches they produce grow vertically and can be removed, shortened or left to increase the crop.  Continue reading →

Warm summer days picking apples for homemade applesauce and canning with Grandma in a hot kitchen are memories Annika Parrott cherishes — ones she hopes to pass on to her daughters. Parrott is one of the many people living in Eugene who has turned back the clocks 100 years and started urban homesteading.  An urban homestead is a household that produces a significant part of the foods, including produce and livestock, that are consumed by its family, with a focus on the family’s desire to live in a more environmentally conscientious manner. Continue reading →

Although people consider the downed trees from the recent ice storm to be an unfortunate and unsightly look around Eugene, Anna and Noah Wemple of Cougar Mountain Farm know of a sustainable use for the remnants. With the help of Jude Hobbs, permaculture expert, teacher and co-founder of Cascadia Permaculture Institute, the Wemples will host a Shiitake Mushroom Log Inoculation Workshop 10 am to 4 pm Saturday, March 15, at Cougar Mountain Farm, 33737 Witcher Gateway in Cottage Grove. Participants will leave with their own inoculated oak log. Continue reading →

Anyone can grow fresh food year-round, even apartment dwellers. It just takes a bit of know-how and planning. Amy Doherty, a master gardener and graduate of the UO Landscape Architecture program, specializes in adaptive urban gardens. “There’s a lot you can do with container gardening on a sunny balcony or in a window,” Doherty says. “The only limit is how much space you have and how much light you can get.” Continue reading →

Do you eat almonds? I do — lots of them. But for how long? California almonds are just part of the 70 percent of our food supply that depends on honeybees for pollination. But colony collapse disorder (CCD) has made life tough for bees and for beekeepers, who have struggled in recent years to supply the hives needed to pollinate crops. Continue reading →

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Everyone crowded around the new “playscape” at the Co-op Family Center on Patterson Street, not far from the UO campus, on a crisp February morning; hugs were exchanged, parents, teachers and college students chatted, kids were zooming around the new sustainable gravel bike path and bellies filled with pancakes and orange juice kept everyone warm. It was the Family Center’s 18th Annual Pancake Breakfast, but it was also the playground dedication — a playground designed and constructed by the UO student organization designBridge. Continue reading →