5 Ways to Go Granola Secretly

Treehuggers InternationalIf you’ve thought about hugging a tree, but were too worried about getting pitch on your Dickies (or explaining the stains to your family) then maybe you can start with hugging something other than a pine tree. (Sheez, slow down Rambo. You can’t just hug a pine without working up to it!) Seriously, until you feel comfortable coming out of the composting closet, there are ways to go granola on the sly. Here are the Green Porch’s top five:

Non-housing Alternatives

Movie poster for Swiss Family Robinson

Movie poster for Swiss Family RobinsonWhat could be better than to live in a sustainable dwelling that, as far as the government is concerned, isn’t even a dwelling? You’d have no taxes and very little zoning codes to deal with, while at the same time treading lightly on this whimsical little sphere we call Earth. “Wow, RedneckGranola, how can such a thing be possible? Since you are so often full of organic manure, I just can’t believe you.”

Yes, yes. I know. I too was once skeptical, as yourselves, until I realized all you have to do is be considered a nutjob and such a storybook living can be within your grasp. I’m not talking about living out of a Vanagon or VW bus (I said nutjob, not hippy freak!). For starters, I’m talking about tree houses.

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One True Loincloth

the glorious loincloth
the glorious loincloth
what I will look like in my OTL

For over nine months I have been wearing the same pair of hemp pants, known to history as One True Pants. I mention this now only because my folly, or the limitation of my vision, has become known to me. To wear the same pair of hemp pants for years is indeed sustainable. Hemp fiber requires less water, chemicals and vital nutrients from the soil to grow and process than cotton (otherwise known around the Brown household as “the poison weed that embraces my loins”).

But, how could I have been so small-minded? So short-sighted? During the time that I have worn (and will continue to wear) the one true pants my nether regions have indeed been shielded by cotton. The blessed hemp fabric of the OTP has been insulted by the mocking ridicule of my Jockeys.

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