THE FILM STARTED OUT AS a personal project when I first apprenticed with earth architecture pioneers Ianto Evans and Linda Smiley in the rainforests of Oregon in the summer of 2004. At that time, I realized that natural building was going to be one of the most potent forces that could help shelter us from the converging catastrophes of the early twenty-first century. But it was being done out in the backwoods by hardcore deep ecologists, unaccessible to anyone else who hadn’t heard of it already. This was a grassroots movement that was never going to get good mainstream media attention; it deserved to tell its own story.

SO I BEGAN TO FILM what I saw and what I did, so that I could explain to all of my friends and relatives why building houses out of mud could be strong and beautiful, practical and affordable. It’s not easy to overcome most people’s prejudices towards dirt! In our hyper-regimented society, there is a serious stigma towards materials that are not industrially-produced and standardized. Anything out of the ordinary will usually be viewed with some suspicion, and anything that even remotely invokes the image of a ‘hippie’ house is going to get a lot of people’s guards up.

TO TELL THE STORY convincingly, I would have to prove that as a fundamental building material, unadulterated earth wasn’t only an appropriate choice for the third world, but that it had deep roots in Northern Europe and the Southwestern States, as well. To show that it could be built many stories high, I had to journey to the Middle East, and to show that it could withstand awesome earthquakes, I had to travel to the West Coast. To understand the origins of earthen architecture, I had to immerse myself in continental Africa, and to deal with legitimate questions about gentrification in the future, I had to really get to know inner city ghettoes.

IN MANY WAYS, I WOULD have much preferred to have just built my own house out of cob and be done with it, to just be the change that I want to see in the world. By now I would have long since finished building my dream home, wherever that might be in the world, sitting around the fire, baking bread, maybe taking care of a couple of goats. But there was a vacuum that desperately needed to be filled, and no one was stepping up to the plate, so I filled that niche as best as I could. And I have to say, I had a hell of a lot of fun traveling all around the world, meeting some amazing people, and learning a lot more than I would have from just staying in the same spot for four years.

THERE IS NO WAY THAT this film could possibly have been made all by myself. Computers got old and needed to be replaced, cameras broke down and new ones needed to be bought. When you’re in a foreign country and you don’t speak the local language, it’s helpful to have a traveling buddy who can take still shots while you shoot video, and vice-versa. Even if you’re using simple equipment, it also doesn’t hurt none to have another body to help lug it around across the continent and beyond. And when you’re only working intermittently on ecological activist jobs that exactly don’t pay hand over fist, there is no shame in availing yourself of ideological supporters who are willing to you get from place to place.

MANY PEOPLE CAME TOGETHER and contributed their skill sets to the project, because they believed that people need to know that the way that we house ourselves in North American is patently wrong-headed. They know that we need to look to all of our ancestors that used their ingenuity, and the common materials that were the closest — and to our best and brightest mad scientist environmentalists — who are using their ingenuity, and common materials that are the closest! Among these people, Peter held the vision, and contributed of his own time, energy, and resources to ensure that this important film would be seen by as many people as possible.

SO INVITE YOU TO WATCH the film FIRST EARTH – Uncompromising Ecological Architecture. Right now, while the DVD is still in post-production, you can see the film in its entirety in a YouTube-embedded frame on the official website for the film. Just click on the link “Videos”, and you can watch all twelve parts in succession. The website is also filled with additional material, hundreds of still photos and extended interview footage with some of the most important pioneers of the natural building movement. And if you enjoy the film, feel free to share it with anyone you wish. Happy viewing! – Compliments of Green Apple Landscaping.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVDXmUzuZUI

www.youtube.com/watch?v=stmQPaXGQzk

www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUOfaHt2rq4

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_VkHsTWS5U

I HAVEN’T HEAR OF A SINGLE incident of city slickers building barns in their backyards and raising cows. But cows are not the only mammals that produce milk for human consumption, only the most common. Of the all animals I could have in my backyard, personally, I would prefer to split the rent with a couple of goats. Nigerian dwarf goats can get by on a small lot, and you can handle them without needing someone else’s help. Few things make me happier than starting off the morning with some pita and labane, with a little bit of olive oil and za’atar… mmm… I could easily get used to a couple slices of goat cheese on a foccacia with roasted red peppers and eggplant later in the day… Think I’m kidding? Here is a short film shot by Time Magazine about a woman who raises several goats — and chickens, and rabbits, and pigs! — in her own backyard, not four short blocks away from my former home in inner-city Oakland, California! I am seriously jealous!

NOW WE TAKE IT TO the next level: aquatic animals. Who would have imagined that you could turn your aquarium into an actual fishing pond? Indoor fishbowls are too small to produce anything substantial, and most freshwater fish will die off very quickly in stagnant still waters. But as a number of innovative urban fish farmers have found out, some species like perch and tilapia will still thrive even when confined to tiny tanks, as long as aquaculture plants are grown in conjunction with the fish. The plants feed off of the nutrient-rich poop that the fish produce, and the fish benefit from the water filtration services that the plants provide. True, for them to survive in cold Canadian winters, you would have to build a small greenhouse on top of the pond to maintain a temperate climate under the bubble. But our neighbours to the west in Milwaukee, Wisconsin experience winters that are harsher than ours, and they harvest 10,000 pounds of fish food in the middle of the city! Watch this clip to find out how they do it:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qZPwBPAqks

AND NOW WHAT MAY BE the most radical form of urban farming: beekeeping! Yes, apery is still practiced in downtown Toronto, as it has been for at least a century; the Toronto District Beekeepers’ Association was founded in 1911, and it’s still going strong. Bees are so important to the entire food chain, because they pollinate all of the other plants that you grow in your outdoor garden. And the honey that you could produce by maintaining a healthy hive that feeds off the flowers in your own backyard would be better for you than any other honey, because it would naturally inoculate you from any allergic reaction to local hay fevers. The biggest challenge that beekeepers face in the urban areas is reassuring their neighbours that homegrown hives don’t pose a threat to them or their children. It’s no easy task to overcome those phobias. But as the video clip below makes plain, even an area as urban as New York City can boast of its busy beekeepers. And as the song goes: If they can make it there, they can make it anywhere!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KSTYtS6c3E

IN THE FIRST GREEN APPLE PIE trilogy on urban agriculture, we laid out the problem in detail: the population of the planet is growing exponentially, and even factory farms can’t keep up with the rising demand for more food. The solutions being touted by agrobusiness corporations are either catastrophic for our planetary support systems or else they are scientifically impossible. The population of the planet will eventually decrease to a fraction of its current figure — it has to, at some point, we are only experiencing a temporary unsustainable overshoot that will rectify itself in a matter of decades. The only question that remains is whether that descent into a world of far fewer humans will be a slow, measured one, or a rapid, frantic one? Will the transition to the food distribution systems of the future be marked by consensual belt-tightening and right-sizing, or will it be fraught with nightmarish sectarianism and ruthless class war?

I REALIZE THAT THESE WORDS may evoke hostility and even anger in some readers of the blog. Yes, it is absolutely frightening to come face-to-face with the realization that our exceedingly comfortable way of life, based on the hyper-exploitation of finite natural resources and socio-economic pyramid schemes, is drawing to a close. But please, please, do not shoot the messenger. We cannot avert our eyes and stick our heads in the sand until the very moment that the tsunami washes away everything that we care for. But there is good news. The good news is that humans have lived on Planet Earth for literally millions of years, quite comfortably, giving as good as they got. The corkscrew roller-coaster ride of population-boom-and-bust is merely an anomalous spike in course of human history, and it certainly does not prove that humans are incorrigibly cannibalistic — only that the prevailing culture of reactionary capitalism categorically is.

SO WHERE DO WE GO from here? Well, the good thing about local food solutions is that they are all win-win solutions. Yes, they use less precious resources. Yes, they are healthier for you, your family, and for the watershed that quenches our collective thirst. Yes, they ensure our political and physical security in a world in which there are no more guarantees. Yes, they tear us away from the A.D.D.-infecting Sega systems that alienate us from our own friends and families, and bring us back to real life, back into our beautiful bodies. Yes, they make everyday activities like eating much more romantic. And heck, yeah: local food just tastes better. Period. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and it sure isn’t going to fall in one day, either. But we’ve got to start sometime, and the sooner the better. For every step that we take towards the Earth, the Earth will take two steps towards us. And she’s going to feel so good to come home to.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGbnG0nH3n4

www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzXDWz4BZ0U

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScKnopsrT0s

www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHItYgKOxco

www.youtube.com/watch?v=UT1-a656wXw

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCnwTflo7QI

YOU GO THROUGH THE extensive schedule, and realize that there are way too many movies that you want to see, but can’t possibly. So you pare it down to whichever ones are most interesting to you, and almost inevitably, your two top picks are running on the same day at the same time, at different locations in different theatres. Oh well, you can’t have it all. The films I chose to see this year were At the Center of the Earth: Of Wells and Men, about West African well-diggers who go down over 100 metres with only the most basic tools; and North-South.com, about the internet’s impact upon inter-racial romance between European men and African women. Both films were very absorbing and moving. I appreciate that the festival chooses movies that do not only speak to the physical ecology, but to the social ecology, as well, and how the two are intimately connected.  If you missed your chance in 2009, you can still get your eco-film fix at one of the Planet In Focus Pay-What-You-Can movie screenings on the last Friday of every month.  Hope to see you there!

At the Center of the Earth: Of Wells and Men

North-South.com

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcNHt8ID9EM