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Home > Green Lifestyles > Green Lifetyles Tours
 Faculty member Carla Brown loves everything green - and at the 2009 Summit, introduced a new concept to Family Nature Summits - green lifestyles evenings and tours. Below are some of the people we visited on our green tours, along with other green contacts from those areas.
Lake Tahoe - 2010 Summit
Ron Parson - Granlibakken Resort - The place where we held this year's Summit was very green. Ron Parson is the president and he told us all about the efforts that his resort has made at our Green Lifestyles Evening. Granlibakken won the Keep the Sierra Green award.
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Susan Smith - Green home owner
Susan kindly showed us the many green innovations of her home, including:
- a "green roof" - also called a vegetative roof or one planted with a garden - on top of her garage
- a 3.4 Kilowatt solar system that can run her home for four days if the power goes out
- blown-in insulation that nearly valued the existing insulation's R-value
- energy efficient appliances
- a moss driveway that reduces run-off into Lake Tahoe
Susan incorporated beautiful elements in her home such as leaf prints in concrete floors and polished stone baseboards.
We were connected to Susan through the Sierra Green Building Association which has a fall green building tour.
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Mark Estée, owner and chef, Moody's Bistro and Lounge, Truckee, California
Mark is a super star in the Slow Food Movement. He talked with us about howit is a goal of his restaurant to buy local and fresh. They make it a goal to produce good food that has been produced sustainably.
While most restaurants may have less that 10 vendors who provide ingredients, Moody's will have more than 50. That's because they make relationships with small and large producers, particularly Gary and Kim Romano from Sierra Valley Farms. When Mark approaches a producer, he asks "what do you have?" and then designs the menus around what is available. This helps reduce waste and allows menus to include in-season ingredients. It requires more creativity on the chef's part, but it also ensures they work with fresher ingredients.
Mark and Gary collaborate on events called "Dinner in the Barn" which showcase this type of cooking right at the farm. What an awesome experience that would be!
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Nancy Lopez, Trails and Vistas
Nancy had an amazing dream. She loved being in nature and she loved art. So she combined the two into Trails and Vistas.
This annual event sounds so cool. Along a trail, artists perform. They might be dancers, poets, musicians, storytellers. One year there was Taiko drummers, another year performing horses. This year they have aerialists. If only we could all go back to Tahoe in September to take part!
Nancy kindly attended our green lifestyles evening to share the success of her program. Hopefully other Summiteers are as inspired as me and will replicate the concept in their communities.
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Cristine Harris, Montessori Teacher
Getting people outside is essential for children to become stewards of the earth. At Cristine's Montessori school, located in her backyard, her students spend a LOT of time outdoors as part of their lessons, even in a region that can get 20 feet of snow. Cristine has cross-country skis for every student.
Cristine teaches children as young as two-years-old about topics such as renewable energy. Her students made chocolate-chip cookies using a solar oven, and they made smoothies using a blender hooked up to a bicycle. Amazing!
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Cristine's husband, Bob Wright, makes bear boxes from recycled metal. Bear boxes keep bears out of garbage and thus, keeps bears away from humans. And that keeps bears safe, because a bear who likes garbage will soon be a dead bear.
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Christin Wilcox, Chef, Boys and Girls Club of North Lake Tahoe
Schools struggle to design kid-friendly menus but from ingredients that are good for the earth. Christin is at the forefront of this movement at the Boys and Girls Club.
She leads a "Chop Shop" for kids to learn how to cook yummy items with local ingredients. She finds the kids are receptive to making spinach salad, pasta sauces and lots of other recipes filled with vegetables. She had a class for parents and asked them to scoop up a typical plate that they serve their children. Most parents were serving too much of the wrong things.
Christin Tips:
- When serving kids, the first slice of pizza can be plain cheese, but if they want seconds, they get the veggie pizza.
- Blend veggies of all shapes and colors to put in sauces and soups.
Christin buys locally at farmer's markets and they started a garden. Clafouti, anyone?
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Other green places we visited in the Lake Tahoe area were:
Other green resources in the Lake Tahoe area:
Silver Bay - 2009 Summit
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Stephen LeBlanc & Kate Abbott, Green home owners
Stephen and Kate had a vision to build an amazing strawbale home with solar power. The home was especially designed to include the heavy equipment which Stephen uses as a metal designer. See his work at www.stephenleblanc.net.
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The Green Lifestyles tour visited their home on Stephen's birthday, so we brought him a little cake and sang him Happy Birthday. When we visited, the home was built but the clay was still curing. It was a moving experience to spend time in a home that was not quite finished. It made us feel closer to Stephen and Kate's creative process.
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Hilary Cooper-Kenny, Crazy as a Loom, Weaver
The colors. The textures. The creativity. And her incredible spirit. A visit to Hilary's studio brings you up. Just to see how she takes recycled fibers and makes exquisite items. It makes you think you could solve any problem.
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Drew Monthie, Ecologic Consulting, Landscape designer
The green tour met Drew at Hovey Pond Park in Queensbury, New York, where he volunteers to make an exquisite community garden. Native plants are bountiful.
We then went to his house and learned how to apply these same sustainable gardening concepts in a home garden. His garden was filled with whimsical sculptures, vegetables and beautiful pollinator-friendly native plants.
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Matt Funiciello, Rock Hill Bakehouse, Owner and Baker
It's an amazing bakery. You can try a whole bunch of types of bread, including spelt bread which is one of the few grains actually grown in New York state. The butter that melts on the bread tastes so good because it was just made this week by a local farmer.
And as if the food was not awesome enough, Matt regaled us with his vision of the world - including the challenges of being a baker in a world where wheat is commoditized, and people's expectations of bread are narrow.
Good food, good thoughts - made for a great lunch.
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Joseph "Zarr" Zarzynski, Underwater archeologist, Bateaux Below
Zarr gave us a tour along the banks of Lake George and spoke about the amazing sunken fleet of 1758 at the bottom of the lake. These boats were deliberately sunk by the British to protect them from the French over the winter. Their goal was to pull the boats to the surface again in the spring, but some boats sank too deep.
You can see a video about this fleet called Wooden Bones.
In an effort to protect this national treasure and the lake, Zarr works with others to inspect boats for invasive species that would flourish in Lake George. These invasive species such as zebra mussels would destroy the ecosystem and archeological sites.
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We visited other green sites and people at the 2009 Summit and will add them as we have time.
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