Cohousing pioneers coming to Northfield!

Buffalo Commons Cohousing is thrilled to be bringing nationally renowned cohousing pioneers Kathryn McCamant and Charles Durrett (of CoHousing Partners and McCamant & Durrett Architects) to Northfield for two cohousing educational events.

The Cohousing Association of the United States describes cohousing as

“a type of collaborative housing in which residents actively participate in the design and operation of their own neighborhoods.

Cohousing residents are consciously committed to living as a community. The physical design encourages both social contact and individual space. Private homes contain all the features of conventional homes, but residents also have access to extensive common facilities such as open space, courtyards, a playground and a common house.”

The first event with Chuck and Katie, the evening of November 7th (at the Grand Event Center, 316 Washington Street, Northfield; 6:30 p.m. start; $12 at the door includes free food and music), is an introductory slideshow drawing on their 20 years of experience designing and developing some of the most sustainable neighborhoods in the United States. The evening will begin with a reception featuring local foods (chicken from Finca Mirasol; veggies from local CSAs, bread from Brick Oven Bakery, and cheeses from Shepherds’ Way Farms) catered by Just Food Co-op and music by The Zillionaires at 6:30. The slideshow, with Q and A time, will run from 7:00 to 8:30. The Zillionaires return to the stage from 8:30 until 10:00. A cash bar will be open throughout. Whether you’re a cohousing newbie or veteran, this promises to be a fun and informative evening!

The second event is an intensive two-day Getting It Built Cohousing Workshop (Saturday November 8th, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday November 9th, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.). This workshop (a variation of which I attended in California in September) is an invaluable resource for early-stage groups seeking to understand the fundamentals of the cohousing development process. While portions of the workshop will focus specifically on development of Buffalo Commons Cohousing in Northfield, the curriculum is directly applicable to development of other cohousing communities, and individuals from other areas/communities nationwide are encouraged to attend.

Katie and Chuck will focus on the nuts and bolts of cohousing development, providing a comprehensive overview and a roadmap for forming communities. As background, we encourage participants to have read the book Cohousing: A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves and to have visited or toured completed cohousing. We encourage early registration, as class size will be limited.

Curriculum will cover the following:

The Development Process

  • The role of the developer and ways to partner
  • Typical development stages and timelines

Land Search & Acquisition

  • Evaluating sites for feasibility
  • Making a purchase offer
  • Partnering with brokers, master developers and others

Financing

  • Typical development costs
  • Roles of community members and outside investors
  • What can you afford?

Design

  • Best practices from Denmark to America
  • The “Common House Game,” a learning exercise

Working Together

  • Making decisions and working with consensus
  • Building a strong group to get the work done

Participants will receive a binder with supporting materials; coffee, tea and snacks will be available in the mornings and lunch will be provided on Saturday. To register, fill out and submit the form on the second page of the informational flier found here.

Written by By Bruce Anderson on October 10, 2008 at 7:19 am | Posted in Cohousing, Community Education and Planning | Comments (0)

13th Annual MN Solar Tour has three local stops

I’ll be hosting visitors at my home (501 St. Olaf Avenue) this Saturday, October 4th from 10 am to 5 pm for the 13th Annual Minnesota Solar Tour. The Tour is sponsored by the Minnesota Renewable Energy Society, and features about 55 residential, commercial and institutional renewable energy installations statewide.

My home, with a 3.04-kilowatt photovoltaic (PV) system and a solar water heating system, is one of three tour sites in the immediate Northfield area. The other two locations are the new 2.08-kW PV installation at the Northfield School of Art and Technology (ARTech) (a very cool student-led project I consulted on; completed this summer) and the Sebby-Haase residence at 2264 320th St. E. (where you’ll find a couple of fine recycled oak rain barrels in addition to a 4.92-kW PV system and a ground source heat pump heating/cooling system).

If you’re ready to take the solar plunge, I can help you design a solar water heating or PV system. I’ve also become a dealer for Sunwize grid-tied PV systems, one of which I ordered for ARTech. I’ve designed and ordered equipment for another large (9.80 kW) residential PV system which will be installed just south of Northfield later this month.

Stop by and see me Saturday! I’ll have coffee, tea and baked goodies on hand.

Written by By Bruce Anderson on October 2, 2008 at 2:13 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Recharging in the Boundary Waters

One of my favorite places in the world is the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness of northeastern Minnesota. Since my first trip to the BWCA with my family as a 13-year-old in 1971, I’ve returned time and again: three times with my Northfield United Methodist Church high school youth group the summers of 1974, 1975 and 1976, and about 15 times since with friends and family. Every trip is an adventure, filled with beautiful boreal forest backcountry travel via canoe and foot (on portages), abundant wildlife sightings, solitude, bonding through physical and mental challenges met as a group, and recharging through a complete change from the hurly-burly of everyday life.

I made my most recent pilgrimage to the church of the wilderness this past Friday (September 26th) through Tuesday. As I’ve done on several recent trips, I loaded my gear into my trusty Jetta and lashed my canoe on the roof rack the evening before departing, and headed out of town at about 4:00 am Friday to enable a late-morning departure from Baker Lake off the Sawbill Trail. I stopped in St. Paul en route to pick up my friend Andy Gockel who is a fellow lover of the wilderness and my partner in crime on one previous memorable fall BWCA trip.

Andy and I had a marvelous time. We saw some incredibly beautiful country (in a part of the Boundary Waters I haven’t visited before), had a close-up view of a cow moose stripping a birch sapling of its foliage in a leisurely fashion, encountered two groups of otters, heard beavers slapping their tails in the night, saw a number of bald eagles soar overhead, enjoyed numerous flocks of geese honking and winging their way south, opined about the fire/ecological reasons for the paucity of mature white and red pines in some areas and abundance in others (see Bud Heinselman’s amazing opus summarizing his lifelong ecological research in the area, “The Boundary Waters Wilderness Ecosystem,” for the definitive word on the subject), enjoyed conversation and bourbon by the campfire at some wonderful, isolated campsites, were treated to one beautiful moonless, cloudless, fill-the-sky-with-stars-and-the-Milky-Way night, were poured on another night, and saw not one other human the last three days of the five-day trip.

I got a bit carried away with my camera, too, shooting about 240 photos (don’t you just love digital cameras?!), 54 of which you can see here if you care to. I’m already thinking about my next canoe trip…

Written by By Bruce Anderson on October 1, 2008 at 8:19 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Bringing cohousing to Northfield

I took a trip to California recently in pursuit of my goal of developing a carbon-neutral cohousing project on the outskirts of Northfield. A sizable group of potential cohousers has been meeting here since I first introduced the concept at an April 30th meeting.

I’ve learned the past few months that most people are unfamiliar with cohousing. It’s nothing particularly mysterious or exotic. In the words of the Cohousing Association of the US, “Cohousing communities are old-fashioned neighborhoods created with a little ingenuity. They bring together the value of private homes with the benefits of more sustainable living. That means common facilities and good connections with neighbors. All in all, they stand as innovative answers to today’s environmental and social problems.” There are over 100 existing cohousing communities in the US (mostly in northern California, Washington state, Colorado, and New England).

In California, I attended a highly informative two-day “Getting it Built” workshop focusing on the nuts and bolts of what it takes to plan, finance and build a cohousing community. The workshop was presented by CoHousing Partners, a firm started by cohousing pioneers Kathryn McCamant (McCamant & Durrett Architects) and Jim Leach (Wonderland Hill Development Company).

After the workshop, I spent a full morning meeting with Katie McCamant and her husband/architectural partner Chuck Durrett to discuss a possible collaboration in developing Buffalo Commons Village here in Northfield. I met with Chuck and Katie in Nevada City, California, a small town in the Sierra foothills where they live in a cohousing community they developed several years ago. I was also given a tour of Nevada City Cohousing by Chuck, and was thoroughly impressed by what I saw, and the enthusiasm of community members I had a chance to talk with. Click here for a Nevada City Cohousing slide show.

The result of the meeting was a formal proposal from Katie and Chuck to provide development consulting and architectural design services. I’ll be bringing this full proposal to the Buffalo Commons forming group, currently comprised of about 15 households. The first major decision for the group, to bring Katie and Chuck to Northfield for a two-day (all-day Saturday, half-day Sunday) “Getting it Built” workshop the weekend of November 8th and 9th, was already made at a recent Buffalo Commons business meeting. Chuck and Katie will also provide an introductory cohousing presentation the evening of Friday, November 7th. Details will be forthcoming shortly. The wheels are turning on bringing cohousing to Northfield!

Written by By Bruce Anderson on September 19, 2008 at 8:33 am | Posted in Cohousing | Comments (3)

Enjoy locally grown…buffalo, that is

I’ve always tried to support local farmers. I grow my own veggies in season, so am not a member of any of the Northfield area’s fine CSA operations, but I’ve purchased free-range chickens from several area chicken wranglers over the years. Starting this year, my family has been enjoying tasty chickens from the Latino Farmers Cooperative.

We’ve also been enjoying delicious pastured buffalo from Johnson’s Buffalo Ranch just west of Lonsdale. Dennis and Nancy Johnson are friendly folks who switched from pigs to pastured bison a number of years ago. Their bison are on pasture their entire lives, with no supplemental feed other than hay as needed seasonally. They live under humane conditions until they are field-slaughtered, so don’t have to endure that final ride to the slaughterhouse.

Dennis and Nancy sell all of their meat directly (I pick up mine at their farm on Highway 19; they also sell at the Lonsdale and New Prague farmers markets) for very reasonable prices. With farmers such as the Johnsons, the Latino Farmers Cooperative, and CSAs such as Big Woods Farm, Open Hands Farm, Valley Creek Farm and Gardens of Eagan, the Northfield area is well positioned to develop a full-blown relocalized food economy. Support your local farmer!

I

Written by By Bruce Anderson on September 2, 2008 at 7:17 am | Posted in Agriculture | Comments (0)