Mendocino Ecological Learning Center

from Leslie:

I've been waiting for this moment for a few weeks. Prolonged use of a computer. Life has been very different lately. No more cubicle, no more Ramen noodles for lunch, no more city buses, no more city nightlife, I have been and still am doing a work exchange program at a place called the Mendocino Ecological Learning Center (MELC). I get to work and learn there in exchange for room and board.

MELC is located in rural northern California on the side of a forested mountain. We have 32 acres and as of now we use about 1.5 of them. Max is the director and Maria is his girlfriend. They are the only two who actually live there permanently right now. In two years they have been using the ethics of permaculture to create their home. Permaculture is short for Permanent Culture and is a practice that uses architecture, forestry, design, agriculture and energy systems, community, plus more all together to create a completely sustainable way of life. So far, I think sustainable partly means that you create all your own materials, food and energy on your own land so that you do not have to rely on commercial products. This takes many years to actually accomplish when you're a struggling non-profit, but Max and Maria are well on their way. Another thing that makes this place amazing is that Max is in a wheel chair and has developed his land and home so that it is handicapped accessible (if you don't mind off roading in your wheelchair or scooter). It is only the 2nd accessible permacultural farm in the country.

As for me, I live in their house with them and I share a room with other volunteers who come and go at different times. I have sort of become a semi-permanent volunteer. We all get along so well and I'm having such a great time that I decided just to stay here until about Christmas time with a few short breaks in between. Right now it is harvest time, so we are using and selling lots of wonderful fresh vegetables from the garden. We are also working on building an outdoor bathroom and shower for volunteers to use in the warmer months. The building is made out of all natural materials including wooden poles harvested from our own forest and a wall plaster that is called Fiber-Adobe which is made of paper pulp and clay (I think). This week we started to build the roof. We cut down 10 trees that were not healthy from the forest and we skinned them and put linseed oil on them. Now we're shaping them into beams for the round ceiling so that a piece of sheet metal can sit on top of them. I love this project because it is so physically demanding and satisfying when any one part of it is done. I've been reading a lot about other natural building techniques and so far this is the part of permaculture that I am most interested in. Another building technique is using Cob. This is clay and water and straw. I helped finish building an outdoor cob oven here. When it was finished we built a fire inside it and cooked pizzas, bread, cookies and beans. Cob is just like working with clay so it is like you are making a sculpture out of whatever functional thing it is you're building. Maybe someday I can build myself a Cob home.

I'm also interested in the gray water and black water systems that they are working on here. A gray water system takes all your water from your sinks and showers through a natural underground filtration system and all that water that we usually waste ends up irrigating the entire farm. You can even do it with toilet water, and that's called a black water system. An, just as a side note; I love the chickens.

In my free time I hang out with my housemates, we watch movies a few times a week and I have been reading, writing letters, taking walks and trying to practice more yoga. The land here is beautiful, and if I ever figure out how to use my dad's digital camera I will send a few pictures along. So far this has been a great experience and I hope someday to be able to tie skills and values I have learned here with the social services aspect of myself. I do miss being in the city a lot. After this adventure I'm planning on finding a job and moving to a small city in Northern California. But, anything could happen at this point to make those plans change. I have met so many great people here, and many of them lead this gypsy life where they just travel and work in amazing places like this. I can see now how that would be easy to fall into, but at this point I would like to be a little more stable than that.

So, that's it in a nutshell.