Andrew Martin Schreiber's Page

If you haven't explored the Sustainability Wiki, I encourage you to check it out. It has examples from around the world of countless projects and diagrams of sustainable systems and appropriated technology. They have recently posted the full text of The Transition Handbook, with a boat load of relevant info. For anyone who is looking to go through Transition training this July, here is an excellent place to build a foundation for what they are going to talk about. So that you can asked pertinent… Continue

Hello all,

I have been spending my morning trying to get an idea about how much it costs it will cost to put a perimeter fence around our 130 acre property.

Do any of you out their have personal experience with large fencing operations? price comparisons for different fencing options? any useful advice for how to approach this seemingly overwhelming monetary task?

Of course, we are looking for the cheapest, sturdiest, longest lasting fence possible. But this may be just a pipe-dream. Our goal… Continue

Ethics- first, a unfounded expounding of the high and mighty moral motivation for good design.

The only ethical decision is to take responsibility for our own existence and that of our children.

Cooperation, not competition, is the very basis of future survival and of existing life systems.

Principles of Permaculture

Components placed in a system should be viewed relatively, not in isolation. Stress the functional Relationship between all components.

Everything is connected to… Continue

The sub-title of this online community says "join us in creating a more sustainable phoenix!" I am taken back by this. sustainability is an incredible complicated and hard thing to imagine. Let alone actually create. And I ask myself, Can you make something 'more sustainable' ? Either it is sustainable or dependent upon something external for its survival. Ultimately any system will fail if it isn't fully sustainable.

It has been my experience working with sustainable systems that a closed syst… Continue

here is a blog I posted on another AZ home grown solutions. I want to reprint it here, for all you to benefit from.

Water is of primary importance in any situation. questions should be asked as to whether the land you occupy has enough annual precipitation to support the desired population of people and plant density. How is the precipitation spread through out the year? This varies for different parts of Arizona, but for most of phoenix/Tuscon the rains fall from late summer through winter. If… Continue