Hats for Claudia

A large group of women from the Village designed and created hats for Claudia that she can wear during her chemotherapy for breast cancer.  Claudia and her family lived in Manzanita Village for about a year and became good Villagers and good friends to many of us.  She is in our thoughts and prayers as she goes through her treatments.

Firewise Grant Received!

The Firewise Committee of Manzanita Village is proud to announce that the Village has been awarded a two-year Title III grant for community ravine fire fuels mitigation. Funds from this grant would be used to do fire fuels mitigation using private contractors during each year of the grant period. During the first year we would do fire fuels mitigation in the four acres closest to community homes. In the second year, we would do whatever would be required to maintain the area mitigated and mitigate fire fuels in the remaining portions of the ravine.

This project will decrease the fire potential of this ravine area in order to move the community toward a more FireWise model. We hope to not only mitigate the fire fields but also enhance groundwater penetration and provide a healthier environment for both the plants and animals living in this area. This project could also become part of the larger effort on the part of Manzanita Village to become known as an exemplary neighborhood that is a good steward of our natural resources. Because of the visibility of this community space (which appears to be rural but is only a mile from the Prescott downtown square), this project could also be used to provide members of the larger Prescott community with education into the management of fire-sensitive ecosystems through community-sponsored FireWise days or other educational activities.

In conjunction with this grant work, the Village is also applying for certification as a Firewise Community through the National Fire Protection Association. The Firewise Communities program is sponsored by the USDA Forest Service, the US Department of the Interior, and state forestry organizations. It is designed to reach beyond the fire service by involving homeowners, community leaders, planners, developers, and others in the effort to protect people, property, and natural resources from the risk of wildland fire — before a fire starts. The Firewise Communities approach emphasizes community responsibility for planning in the design of a safe community and individual responsibility for safer home design and construction, landscaping, and maintenance.

The Village has also joined the Prescott Area Wildland/Urban Interface Commission (PAWUIC), the local organization responsible for bringing together representatives of local, state and federal fire-fighting organizations with communities who have been or are applying to become Firewise communities.

The grant will be administrated by the Village Firewise Committee, a subcommittee of the Maintenance Committee.

Jeff Zucker's Article from Catalyst Architecture, Nov/Dec 2010

(See references to Manzanita Village and Colleen Sorensen near the bottom of article)

The Architecture of Gardening

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Ah, Thanksgiving.  My favorite holiday.  Just the very thought of pausing with our families from the normal hustle and bustle of life to consider all that we are grateful for is excuse enough for a holiday.  However, while I also appreciate the fact that Thanksgiving is one of our country’s least commercialized holidays, what I really like about it is the food.

I have been thinking a lot about food these days. I recently finished reading Barbara Kingsolver’s book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

 

, in which Kingsolver, her husband, and their daughters keep an account of their journey through a year’s commitment to eating locally grown food.  Raising food by their own labors as much as possible, they discover much about our nation’s food supply, exposing the true cost of transporting out-of-season food across the continent, the health benefits of eating organic produce, and the joy of being a “locavore

 

”, which is the practice of eating food produced within the radius of the immediate bioregion.  Their year long odyssey covers topics ranging from the average American’s consumption of 54.8 gallons of soft drinks per year, to the insidious invasion of genetically modified plants and seed, to the 1500 miles that the average American supermarket vegetable travels, and the national policy for support of large agribusiness over small organic farms (see our Green Activist

 

for more on that topic).

 

As Andrea Ward states in her article entitled “Asphalt Garden

 

” from Greensource magazine: “With nearly 80% of Americans now living in urban areas, and food transportation energy accounting for as much as two thirds of the energy required to grow it, there’s a powerful argument to be made for keeping the foods we grow, buy and eat even closer to home.” We can see this phenomenon springing up across the country in the most unlikely of places, such as the city of Detroit.  The recession, along with many decades preceding the recession, has not been particularly kind to Detroit. Vast areas of the city, by some accounts amounting to over 40 square miles, contain blighted areas with vacant lots where abandoned houses once stood. In a sort of double blessing, community gardens are beginning to fill the voids left by vacant lots, thus providing nourishing, fresh, seasonal food for people in the immediate neighborhood. The city is slowly transforming itself into a grid of gardens

 

which have the power to sustain the urban population, while fostering a sense of entrepreneurship and providing added green space to the communities that they are in.

Closer to home, our state of Arizona has been referred to as a “food desert”, a place where fast food chains are plentiful but wholesome food, particularly for lower income people, is hard to access. As Gary Nabham states in his book Coming Home to Eat

 

, “Arizona is the second most impoverished and food insecure state in the country”.  However, scarce precipitation and poor soil quality are issues that we as individuals can address. This is where architecture interfaces with agriculture.

In many of the projects that I am involved with, people are increasingly finding opportunities to grow their own food. One example is at Arcosanti

 

, where a new 3,344 square foot greenhouse is being designed.  It will be added to the three existing greenhouses, which already provide much of the fresh produce used in the café and throughout the community.  In a high desert environment, greenhouses are a way of providing an intensively productive agricultural environment, which uses much less water than open field agriculture. In addition, water from the community above the greenhouses, be it rainwater, gray water, or even sewage, can be treated to be used for irrigation. And the heat from the greenhouses can be used in the winter to help warm the residences above.

At the Manzanita Village Cohousing Community

 

, several large water harvesting tanks have been set in place and more are planned for the future, thus capturing the natural precipitation to be used for the irrigation of the organic gardens. Food scraps are also collected on a community wide basis, to create compost to enrich the soil, and there is even a community vermiculture bin, where worms are employed to further enhance the quality of the soil. Each year, the organic garden increases in size, and the bountiful harvest is shared with the entire community.

My personal hero, though, is my neighbor at Manzanita Village, a woman named Colleen Sorensen.  For years, Colleen has championed the cause of creating a community garden within the City of Prescott.  After persevering through rejection and reiteration, she finally succeeded in securing a piece of land near the center of town within which, people will be able to participate in the growing of their own food, while coming together to socialize and trade green thumb secrets. Hopefully, this is the first of many such gardens.

On a personal note, with regard to putting food on the table, I am grateful that I have had the privilege to practice architecture in Arizona for almost thirty years now. I have enjoyed raising my family in Prescott, and consider it an honor to be called upon time and again to be entrusted with the design of your built environment. So, in the spirit of the season, I thank you. 

Co-housing Article in "Backyard Gardener"

Manzanita Village was featured in last week’s “Backyard Gardener” article on co-housing by Jeff Schalau, Yavapai County’s University of Arizona cooperative extension agent.  The development of community gardens in co-housing neighborhoods was the theme of one of the key presentations at the recent, annual Arizona Highlands Garden Conference on sustainable gardens attended by master gardeners from all over the region.  Assisting in the development of Manzanita Village’s gardens and orchards are two master gardening extension participants in residence.

You can read the entire article by CLICKING HERE.

25 Best Places to Retire

CNNmoney.com has selected Prescott, AZ, as #4 on this year’s best-25 list.  Please check out the details at

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2010/real_estate/1009/gallery.best_places_retire.moneymag/4.html .