Putting the Eco back in Economics

While speaking to a dear friend on the phone yesterday, I was told I was not of this time. That I must have lived before in an earlier time period and it trickles out into this lifetime.

My Homemade Body Butter

She was referring to all the earth loving, natural health/healing, food growing and gathering I do. It’s not as simple as all that, but you get the picture and I get what she’s saying.

Container Gardening

Some of what I do comes from how, when and where I was raised. By crazy, un-self aware parents, during the first oil crisis in the Northeast. During the peak of that oil crunch my mom was a single parent and the thermostat usage went from being turned up just enough to stop pipes from freezing to turn it to whatever you want– can’t get blood from a stone. Or in our case, heat from an empty tank.

We learned from an early age that if you’re chilly, you go put on a sweater, slippers, leg warmers and mittens if you have to but you don’t touch thermostat.

My bedroom as a teen was an addition up over our back entry and was not heated. The year I moved into that room I was given a small pot belly wood stove for Christmas. I loved that thing! I grew to look forward to the teen angst expelling chore of splitting wood and I had a small brown betty tea pot I kept on top. I would sip tea, while shut up in my room watching my tiny TV with four channels and reading piles of books.

I no longer had to sneak cigarettes out of the bathroom window while standing in the tub – I could now open the damper and puff away into the open door of the stove. Ah, misspent youth.

I rather think that this bit of my background is why I have designed the living quarters over the barn at Cill Dara  to be so energy efficient. It’s not trendy as much as it happens to be falling in with the times.

*I am however not complaining about the timing or the Leed’s certification/rebate to come. At. All*

So then, does that make me not actually more hip than hippy? Perhaps I am just more dip than dippy!

2009 Dawn Marie Kelly all rights reserved