Entries from April 2008
Spring isn’t the only reason South Dakota’s getting greener these days. The folks at Koch Hazard Architects in Sioux Falls have just inaugurated a new blog about sustainable building and renovation. Green Digs Blog promises to keep up the “discussions about going green, be it new or old buildings (mostly considering our point of view) developments, processes, happenings, what’s going on in our part of the world or how we can all make our environment a little better.”
Stay tuned to Green Digs for great information including details about the first Plain Green conference on sustainability in our region coming this September to Sioux Falls. The official website should have more details soon.
Categories: Green Praxis
Tagged: events, green building, plain green conference, South Dakota, sustainability blog
4/24/2008 2:57 PM
4/25/2008 3:15 PM
Categories: Rural Life
Tagged: weather
I just found the website of the newly forming food co-op in Brookings. If memory serves me, Brookings had a co-op way back when my family first moved to town in 1979. I have vague memories of my mom stopping there. But hey, I was only five, so things might be a little skewed in my memory. Can anyone else verify?
From the new Brookings Food Co-op’s site:
This cooperatively owned grocery will open in Brookings, South Dakota with your support. The co-op will have a significant focus on organic, natural and locally grown and produced items. We are committed to offering co-op members and our community the opportunity to purchase products which promote a healthy lifestyle, as well as support local growers and support practices which do not deplete our environment.
Looks like the co-op isn’t open quite yet; in the meantime, they have an online survey to help determine demand and level of support. If you’re in the Brookings area, be sure to head over to their site and take the survey! They’re also on Facebook here.
Categories: Green Praxis
Tagged: food co-op, local food, SD Green Directory
Sunday and next week promise better weather, but for now we have a few new inches of heavy, wet snow to contend with. I won’t be back in the garden until everything melts and dries up a bit (clear and 63 degrees by Tuesday!). If you’re in the same boat or just happen to use your weekend for Internet surfing, here are a few links to keep you busy.
A Rapid City Journal article on a local resident who has transformed her garden into a great plains oasis:
“Through observation, research and her network of gardening friends, she began her journey in removing typical plants found in flower beds across America and replacing them with the flora and plants native to the plains and Black Hills.”
(more…)
Categories: Green Praxis
Tagged: economic development, Monsanto, native plants, organic gardening, relocalization
South Dakota Magazine reported on April 9 that one of my favorite authors, Linda Hasselstrom, is returning to her ranch outside of Hermosa, SD, after living for a number of years in Wyoming. I’m one of the people who’s thrilled to hear it. I’m even happier to hear that she has a new book coming out called No Place Like Home.
I read through several of Hasselstrom’s books about a dozen years ago, and her writing, along with Kathleen Norris’s Dakota: A Spiritual Geography, played a fundamental role in forming my sense of place, as well as helping me come to terms with being a South Dakotan. Not just in the “yeah, I grew up here” sense but in the very deep down South-Dakota’s-in-my-DNA-and-I-just-can’t-get-it-out sense. Both Hasselstrom and Norris wrote primarily about the western part of the state, but what they said about rural places and people rang just as true for me here in East River. They encouraged me to be unapologetic about being from South Dakota, to honor my place while being honest about it. To appreciate its beauty and be content with its limitations, which sometimes turn out to be blessings.
(more…)
Categories: Rural Life
Tagged: Kathleen Norris, Linda Hasselstrom, poetry, South Dakota
Richard Moe, President of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, recently explained why restoring this historic building in downtown Madison, SD, is more sustainable than tearing it down and starting from scratch (and no, that’s not an April Fool’s joke!).
(more…)
Categories: Green Praxis
Tagged: climate change, green buildings, green construction, historic preservation
