Here’s a behind the scenes of fashion photographer, Pete Ruppert, photographing the hessnatur Summer Collection.  We’ll launch the Collection in April.  Take a look at the sneak preview.

Much to my delight, I have befriended another self proclaimed “plant geek” with a “thing” for sustainability. Together with his extended family, Justin Ridle is taking on the whopping project of establishing a 10 acre organic orchard from scratch. But calling it just an orchard doesn’t do justice to what this project could become.

The “Big Barn Farm” (formerly an ostrich farm, of all things) is all about establishing an edible ark of biodiversity to be enjoyed by generations to come. The goal is maximum bounty from the smallest footprint, using the least amount of natural resources. Planting vertical layers will imitate natural forests, for instance. Harvesting rainwater from the barn’s vast rooftop together with well placed swales will conserve water. Natural windbreaks, like pine nut trees, will protect the rest of the orchard from the elements.

For the best yield with the lowest impact, the orchard will use permaculture principles, and be populated not only by local heirloom plant varieties, but also exotic fruits and nuts well suited to the region, all grafted to native root stock and naturally resistant to pests and drought.

I found Justin’s description of medicinal/nutritional plants particularly fascinating, like mulberries and paw paws, as well as the just plain yummy sounding shipova and Chilean hazel.

True to my own heart, the Big Barn Farm composts cardboard, but it is taken a step further into sheet mulching. And speaking of mulching, I forgot to mention the wood chips! They are everywhere! Justin has been collecting and chipping the neighborhood garden waste for months to guarantee a nice bouncy loam for the garden’s floor, which saves water, adds nutrients, and fends off both frost and weeds.

His passion started at Bullocks Permaculture Homestead, and I’m thinking of giving them a visit as well. In the mean time, Justin has offered to come by our place for a bit of a botanical brainstorm and a lesson in grafting. And I definitely want to return to the Big Barn regularly to follow the orchard’s progress.

Justin’s family has 25 trees in so far, and a thousand more could come. I found the idea of planting so many trees daunting, but after so much planning, Justin is delighted to finally grab a shovel and get his ark underway, planting and growing into the future.

The Holiday season is celebrated at hessnatur the way we celebrate the seasons all through the year, just a little more festively and with an even greater abundance of Thomas’ amazing food.  We gather on a mid-December Friday evening to toast the joy of our friendship and our community.  Thomas and his great crew prepare a feast.  Each of us has his or her favorite dish, but we all agree that without Thomas’ gingerbread sauce it simply wouldn’t be Christmas.

We acknowledge the special acts of kindness performed by many of our associates and reflect on what we have shared in the past year.  And, of course, we party!  (We Germans are known for our ability to party.)  But, at hessnatur, our party is more than a yearly event with colleagues.  It has the feeling of the warmth and pleasure all of us have at a gathering among true friends.

We wish you that same joy – that gemütlichkeit – in your house.  For us, who share with you the same passion for the protection of the planet, for the dignity of people everywhere, the coming New Year represents our hope and our dreams.

Your Friends at hessnatur

Join Wear Your Commitment

Enter the Whole Foods Market & hessnatur Wear Your Commitment Contest and Win a $100 Whole Foods Market gift card!

1. Upload a photo of you in your World in Your Hand tee.
2. Tell us what you are doing to protect the planet.
3. Let your friends know to vote for you.

Five winners will be selected based on viewer response by clicking on “like”. The Five winners will be the five photos with the most votes. Winners will each receive a $100 gift card to Whole Foods Market. More…

Won’t you join us?

Halloween. I’ve heard of it. Kid-sized goblins and trolls running around neighborhoods, ringing doorbells, and making off with buckets of ill-gotten loot that would make the most hardened dentist cringe. It’s even trying to make its way into Germany, or at least the stores would like it that way, but progress is slow. But now, as an official immigrant to the United States of America, I have witnessed this mayhem first hand, and lived to tell the tale.

True to the Big, American Way I have discovered here, the entire (small-town) downtown was open in the afternoon for trick-or-treating. My brave companions and I, disguised as innocent parenting-pedestrians, stumbled along behind our children, dodging an array of miniature Michael Jacksons, Frankensteins, Einsteins, bleeding skeletons, commando-zombies, various classifications of vampires, and Elvis. Basically, a lot of dead people. Merrily filling the sidewalks around us, they lurched from shop to shop to mercilessly squeeze the sweets out of the poor, helpless merchants at their doors.

Then, after pizza at a friend’s house, we ventured out into the twilight for the local neighborhood plunder. Joining my daughter (Damsel of the Castle) was Gandalf the Grey, a Wicked Witch, a Corpse Bride, an Olympic Fencer, two Bloodthirsty Pirates, and a 12 year-old Scarecrow with a real ten pound pumpkin on his head!

What I enjoyed most about the evening was the abandoned way in which we were all allowed to be impish little Peeping Toms for the night, wandering around in spookily decorated front yards and loitering on cobwebby porches waiting for candy. And the Mad Scientists and Count Draculas answering the doors were just as uninhibited. At some point I couldn’t figure out if the people coming to the door in their bathrobes and hair curlers were in costume or not!

Since I moved here, I have been pleasantly fascinated, sometimes even overwhelmed, by the comfortable trust and easy lack of inhibition that empowers many of the people that I have met in my new home. They are so often willing to just be themselves, and accept those they meet for who they are. I found Halloween to be sort of a stage for that quality in America. I’m glad I caught the show.