Eve's Garden Organic Bed & Breakfast and Ecology Resource Center

Holistic B&B in remote Marathon deserves a return visit

By Camille Flores
Assistant Features Editor
San Antonio Express-News
October 10, 2004

MARATHON — The first time I visited Eve’s Garden Organic Bed & Breakfast in Marathon, I was looking for a healthful meal. The drive between El Paso and San Antonio on U.S. 90 is surreally beautiful, lonesome for the most part, and devoid of vegetarian restaurants. I had spotted an ad for Eve’s in a regional magazine and determined to find it on the off chance it served lunch as well as breakfast.

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The Not-So-Secret Garden

By Marlys Hersey
The Big Bend Gazette, May 2004

MARATHON — I feel like Alice in Wonderland. Or Charlie in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. I’m clearly in a magical place, however there is no sinister rabbit coaxing me on, no enigmatic, snappish Willy Wonka leading me further into his factory and testing to see if I’m worthy of learning his secrets of the trade.

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About Eve’s Garden

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Eve’s Garden is an organic Bed and Breakfast and Ecology Resource Center, located in the beautiful high mountain desert of West Texas, at the gateway to Big Bend National Park, in Marathon, Texas. Eve’s Garden is a research level organic gardening demonstration site and an urban hacienda, combining to provide a comfortable Bed and Breakfast environment and a conversational forum to address issues regarding the ecology we live in.

Every effort has been made to combine elements of “art”, “architecture”, and “ecology” in the layout and construction of this unusually progressive piece of work. A large amount of recycled content, strawbale buildings, paper adobe/fiber cement buildings, high Mexican contemporary color treatments, and a focus on locally produced food, conspire to create an aura of thoughtfulness.

“Thoughtfulness” — this is our goal — to motivate our guests to pursue the projects they have in their minds, and recognize that they can make a difference.

We, Clyde T. Curry and Kate Thayer, invite you to come and share your vision for the future and to see our work. Enjoy a stay at our Bed and Breakfast, join the FORUM on our website, and survey our environmental links.

We invite you to get involved, because “we” are the “they” in “they need to do something”.

A Vision for a New Civilization

If we are to create a Paradise on Earth we will have to change the way we live with ourselves.

In developed countries, the high cost of living requires that we earn lots of money. If we work hard and earn a lot, then something must be produced with that effort. If goods are produced, they must be consumed or else we will have no work. If they are consumed, natural resources must be used. If natural resources are used excessively and not recycled, as they presently are, then the earth is wasted. Therefore a high standard of living, based upon mass consumption and minimal recycling (our present design) inevitably leads to the destruction of the ecosystems that we rely upon for our survival. If undeveloped countries follow our path, the destruction of the ecosystems we depend upon is assured.

If we can eliminate the high cost of living, then we can live more sensibly on the Earth. In the past, a simpler lifestyle meant a low quality of life, but does it really have to be?

read more at planetaryrenewal.org

A City Built on Oil Discovers How Precious Its Water Can Be

By Kate Galbraith
The Texas Tribune
April 21, 2011

MIDLAND — The oil business is booming, but there is something more precious in Midland right now: water.

Since the beginning of October, barely one-tenth of an inch of rain has fallen on the city, the oil and gas capital of West Texas. Two of the three reservoirs that Midland and other Permian Basin cities rely on for most of their water are getting close to empty. The third is below 30 percent of capacity.

This month, for the first time, Midland imposed water restrictions, forcing homeowners to water their lawns less, and schools to let their football fields grow scrubby.

If the rain does not start soon, “it’s going to get bad,” said Stuart Purvis, the utilities manager for Midland.

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For Lean Budgets, A Plug-And-Play Solar System

By Jim Witkin
The New York Times
August 16, 2010

For eco-conscious homeowners who have considered a solar system for their rooftops but have found the cost and complexity daunting, Clarian Power thinks it has an idea.

The Seattle-based clean tech start-up is developing a “plug-and-play” solar appliance called the Sunfish that will generate clean solar electricity for the home. “You bring it home and plug it in, just like a refrigerator, and it will cost about the same,” said the company’s president, Chad Maglaque.

Today’s typical roof-mounted solar power systems start at $10,000 and go up from there depending on the amount of electricity generated and the home’s location. The bigger and more expensive systems can meet most of a house’s energy needs and even put electricity back on the utility grid, essentially turning the meter backwards.

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Texas breaks US wind energy record

Lone Star State generates nearly a fifth of electricity from wind power

Cath Everett
BusinessGreen.com
March 8, 2010

Texas set a new record for US wind energy generation late last week when at 6:37am on Friday wind turbines provided 19 per cent of the electricity mix – the equivalent of 6,272MW - to its main grid.

The figure, which did not include power generated in its windy Panhandle region, is expected to increase significantly in the coming years as the state plans to invest nearly $5bn on increasing the number of transmission lines in the state supporting new wind farms.

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Vegetarian Diet Could Cut Climate Change Mitigation Costs by 70%, If Enough Of Us Make the Switch

Matthew McDermott
New York, NY
treehugger.com
March 13, 2009

It’s no secret by now that I’m always recommending that giving up meat eating entirely (or at the minimum, becoming a weekday vegetarian) is one of the strongest personal steps that can be taken towards reducing you personal carbon footprint, as well as your ecological footprint more broadly. At the Copenhagen Climate Congress, Elke Stehfest of the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency presented additional evidence that a vegetarian diet, or one at least that radically reduces meat consumption, can have massive climate change mitigation benefits:

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To Cut Global Warming, Swedes Study Their Plates

By Elisabeth Rosenthal
The New York Times
October 23, 2009

STOCKHOLM — Shopping for oatmeal, Helena Bergstrom, 37, admitted that she was flummoxed by the label on the blue box reading, “Climate declared: .87 kg CO2 per kg of product.”

“Right now, I don’t know what this means,” said Ms. Bergstrom, a pharmaceutical company employee.

But if a new experiment here succeeds, she and millions of other Swedes will soon find out. New labels listing the carbon dioxide emissions associated with the production of foods, from whole wheat pasta to fast food burgers, are appearing on some grocery items and restaurant menus around the country.

People who live to eat might dismiss this as silly. But changing one’s diet can be as effective in reducing emissions of climate-changing gases as changing the car one drives or doing away with the clothes dryer, scientific experts say.

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