Above: Garden tour at Neo-Terra in late spring.
About Neo-Terra |
Consultations |
We are located in central Pennsylvania, focusing on advancing alternatives for living in a more healthful and regenerative way, by:
• growing food in an ecologically sustainable fashion; • preparing healthy food and preservation of our surplus; • living in healthful ways, and approaching illnesses within a holistic mind-body-spirit framework; • creating healthy and sensible structures and settings which we all could and should have; • analyzing and undertaking green energy design and retrofits; and • integrating living technologies within our designs and structures. We have been developing our own, and furthering existing green technologies and methods that will help heal ourselves and our ecosystems. We undertake projects and experiments at our own site, and for our clients. We share our results through talks, workshops, tours, and this website. Should you have any questions, or wish additional information such as files for tables and charts which appear in any of our pages or links, just Contact Us. |
Through Neo-Terra, we provide expertise on sensible housing design options, ecological landscaping, backyard mini-farming, organic gardening, alternative energy options, and ecological wastewater treatment. Our experience derives from living in the northeastern U.S.
Neo-Terra works with Individuals, households, or other groups to develop and apply principles of living lightly on a variety of projects at the client’s own site, homestead, or setting. We have worked with clients on applications involving food production, housing retrofits including improving insulation, active and passive solar retrofits, waste water remediation, permaculture, and alternative healing approaches. Services and Fees. You may find an exploratory conversation with us about things on your mind valuable in orienting you and getting you moving in the right direction. We can help you identify the important questions so you can advance your thinking quickly. Our local rate for a two hour conversation is $100. Project rates are $400/day plus expenses. These local rates are for the Neo-Terra team, so clients get the benefit of our joint experience.. |
Our Site
We have been gradually retrofitting our 1938-built home to rely less on oil for heat and more on solar energy, aiming for affordability as well as sensibility. With the recent purchase of an adjacent quarter-acre lot, we hope to design a passive solar structure, one that integrates green with living technologies. All aspects of conventional building are up for scrutiny as we think through this building, including the sources and uses of energy in the structure. Candidate features include the German Passive House design, passive annual heat storage technology, a green roof, a graywater treatment system integrated within a bioshelter, rainwater collection, and food storage. Our local Nittany Valley abounds with other potential projects, and we know several individuals who seek ecological alternatives to their current practices.
Installing pea trellis with interns
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Raising retrofitted solar hot water collectors
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Design of floor plan for eco-house
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Our Location
The historic village of Lemont overlooks the Nittany Valley and Penn State University from the foothills of Mt. Nittany in Centre County, PA. We are two blocks from the local CATA bus stop (M Route); local grocery shopping is nearby and downtown State College is 2.5 miles away – an easy bike ride. Being near a university, we live in a progressive community, an established alternative health and healing community, and an expanding organic/local food movement. The Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture (PASA) holds its annual meeting at Penn State in early February.
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About Our Logo
The logo for Neo-Terra symbolizes the integration of humans with our natural and built environments. The octagon symbolizes our structured world* and built environment; it indicates that we should stop our present destructive ways to reconsider all that supports and sustains us. The octagon also symbolizes the understanding of Buckminster Fuller's "synergetics," the geometry of Nature, and of our options to look to Nature as a teacher. As we, the brown earthen human at the logo's center, discover new ways to live in harmony with our life-sustaining eco-systems, our solutions and methods will be deeply rooted and well-grounded -- hence the root structure pictured. We will also become enlightened** and draw from the immense life-sustaining power of our world and solar system, symbolized by the sun and its rays that extend outward, penetrating through all of our rigid structures (the octagon). This outward flow leads us to a broad spectrum of options for our future, symbolized by the rainbow of colors from sky to earth. "Neo-Terra" is printed in green to symbolize life, health and healing. Green is regarded as a healing color.
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*structured in many ways: socially, economically, etc.
**in the sense observed by Albert Einstein when he said, “The significant problems of the world cannot be solved at the same level of consciousness at which they were created.” Also, from Carl Jung: All the greatest and most important problems of life are fundamentally insoluble…. They can never be solved, but only outgrown. This ‘outgrowing’ proved on further investigation to require a new level of consciousness.
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*structured in many ways: socially, economically, etc.
**in the sense observed by Albert Einstein when he said, “The significant problems of the world cannot be solved at the same level of consciousness at which they were created.” Also, from Carl Jung: All the greatest and most important problems of life are fundamentally insoluble…. They can never be solved, but only outgrown. This ‘outgrowing’ proved on further investigation to require a new level of consciousness.