Last week I had the privilege of sharing our family’s journey of conserving energy in our old home and our new one with a lot of Presbyterians via Zoom through the Presbyterian Hunger Program. You can see the hour-long presentation itself here. Today someone sent me a truly nice write-up about the presentation that was […]
Podcasts keep my mind learning while my hands work in the greenhouse and gardens. Three have meant a lot to me lately, as well as a book that is beautifully assembled and blazingly hopeful. First the podcasts. Living on Earth has been around for awhile. It’s a weekly go-to source for coverage of climate change, […]
Since 2013, the year Inhabiting Eden was published, I’ve had a presence on Blogspot, but it seemed like time to freshen up. The old blog posts are here, though imperfectly transferred, and new content will be added. As you may know, my spouse Don Summerfield and I are living into our second spring at Lost […]
Given everything else that 2020 brought, Don and I are grateful to have moved into our zero-energy home before Covid grounded everyone. When everything shut down last March, my son and daughter-in-law, school principals in Miami, packed their four-year-old daughter Soraya in the car and drove to Indiana to stay with us and work […]
OK, apologies again for not keeping this blog up to date, and again, I’ll try to do better. You’d think that Covid life would help, but I’ve actually been pretty busy. By way of remorse, I’ll mention three events I’m involved in: First, tomorrow evening, January 25, at 7:30 Eastern/6:30 Central, I’m giving a Zoom […]
This year it was my privilege to coordinate and recruit a wonderful group of talented writers to assemble the Presbyterians for Earth Care Lenten devotion for 2020. The theme is based on Genesis 1:29-31, “God Provides Enough For All.” The devotions run from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday. Many thanks to David Shinn, Jeffrey Geary, […]
Much as we love the house with its energy superpowers, it’s still just base camp for what we’re really doing: enjoying, learning from, and prospering the little corner of earth we live in. Every day brings new insight—about wildlife, about tools, about how things grow. And just for the record, for people who keep asking […]
Our new home in Henryville, Indiana was completed at the end of July, and we moved in right away. So far, we’ve experienced drought and extreme heat; torrential rain; multiple visitors including our four grandchildren; sunny fall days; nights of stargazing; planting asparagus crowns, garlic, and shallots in our newly made Hugelkultur mounds and finding volunteer acorn […]
This coming week I am traveling to Washington D.C. to preach and lead workshops in three churches and at the National Capital Presbytery meeting on Tuesday. One of the workshops is a practical guide to energy conservation in homes and congregational buildings. I want to make workshop materials available for attendees, but rather than xerox […]
Last Wednesday I was in the little town of Monmouth in western Illinois speaking to a group of faculty and students about food and faith. Monmouth College has a community garden which supplies produce to their food service as well as to the local farmer’s market. They also have a small farm to experiment with […]