April 2007 Events

Our next Sustainable Living Talk is tonight! (Yes, it is still happening despite the weather.) Tonight at 7:00 pm at F.W. Horch Sustainable Goods & Supplies in Brunswick the topic will be "Design and Build Your Own Super-Efficient Home", a talk by Al Heath of Arrowsic.

Al will explain how he and his wife researched, designed, and built a super energy efficient home themselves. Their 2000 square foot house is heated by one cord of wood and 75 gallons of kerosene per year. A solar hot water system provides the majority of their hot water needs. At the talk, Al will share lessons learned during the process, including a list of helpful sources and contractors.

Join us on Saturday, April 21st from 11 am to 4:30 pm at Frontier Cafe, Cinema and Gallery in Brunswick for "Solutions Saturday", an environmental film festival. We'll be showing "The Quest for Dan the Can", a film made by Bowdoin College exploring what happens to garbage and recyclables in Brunswick. In addition, we will be showing "The True Cost of Food," "Our Children at Risk", "Sam Suds", and "Kilowatt Ours". Many thanks to the Sierra Club for providing these films to show, and to the many environmental groups who will be on hand to share information and lead discussions.

And on Sunday, April 29 from 2 pm to 4:30 pm we hope to see you at the Third Annual Clean Energy Fair at St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church in Yarmouth, Maine. For more information about that event, please call the church at 846-9244 or John or Christina Ferland at 781-7307.

F.W. Horch Sustainable Goods & Supplies is located at 56 Maine Street in downtown Brunswick, Maine.

F.W. Horch Composting Goods & Supplies

Ignore the snow, it is spring (even in Maine)! In time for gardening season, here are some products to get your compost cooking.

• Home Composting Made Easy
  Easy-to-follow, step-by-step instructions for composting in your backyard. Instead of overburdening your local landfill, learn how to turn kitchen scraps, yard trimmings and paper scraps into "black gold" for your lawn and garden. 32 pages, paperback. $2.95

• Kitchen Compost Carrier
  Make your home composting program easier to manage. Perfect for short-term storage of kitchen scraps, this kitchen compost carrier features an optional carbon filter to eliminate odors. Made from 25% recycled plastic. Small (5.8 quart) size, $17.95; Large (9.6 quart) size, $24.95

• Compost Maker Microbes
  Put billions of beneficial organisms to work for you! Dormant until you expose them to air, water and a food source, this blend of microbes will energize soils, composts, and decomposing organic matter. One pound. $10.95

• Envirocycle Composter
  Make batches of rich compost simply by taking this unit for a spin. This conveniently-sized tumbler is perfect for those who want an easy way to turn batches of kitchen scraps into nutrients for vegetables, flowers and houseplants. Featuring a base that collects liquid for "compost tea", the Envirocycle is a great addition to a deck or back yard for anyone who wants a no-hassle, proven system for composting. Available in black or green. $159

• Sun-Mar 200 Composter
  This innovative outdoor composter is based on a brilliant concept: put yard and kitchen waste in one opening, and remove finished compost from another. Inside the unit are two drums: new material enters the outer drum, fills it up, tumbles into the inner drum, then comes out the middle as finished compost. So well-designed it makes you wonder why all composters aren't built his way! $299

• Sun-Mar 400 Composter
  Suitable for handling large volumes of yard waste, the 400 is the larger cousin of the Sun-Mar 200 Garden Composter. Same great features as the Sun-Mar 200, plus a crank to help turn it. $399

• Sunleaves Wormtopia
  Turn your kitchen scraps and yard waste into high quality worm castings with the help of up to 15,000 redworms (sold separately). Worms convert scraps and wastes to castings as they migrate upward to the next tray, while producing nutrient-rich "worm tea" that can be drawn from a spigot mounted on the bottom. $109.50; one pint of Maine-raised red worms, $6.00

• Sun-Mar Composting Toilets
  Choose a Sun-Mar composting toilet when you need to conserve water, minimize your environmental impact, upgrade your outhouse, extend the life of your septic system, or provide sanitary facilities where there is no plumbing. Perfect for seasonal camps; these toilets can freeze solid with no risk of pipes bursting. Composting toilets harness aerobic microbes to oxidize waste, resulting in carbon dioxide, water, and essential plant nutrients and minerals. 95% of the starting material evaporates, and the remainder is an NSF-certified safe soil amendment. Self-contained units start at $1345; we also stock the full line of Sun-Mar supplies.