---

power to the people
For my job, I pilot the Orion Grassroots Network, which provides services and support to hundreds of grassroots groups around North America engaged in ecological, social, and cultural change (I'm also Outreach Coordinator for Orion magazine, see below).

music
Jenny Goodspeed. Jenny's debut CD, "Under the Ash Tree," is a delicious mix of folk, pop, and Americana. It's hard to describe how good this record is. You just have to listen to it. Available at CDBaby and iTunes.

Her new project is the Boxcar Lilies, a really great trio consisting of Jenny, Stephanie Marshall, and Katie Waddell. They play a mix of Americana, folk, and bluegrass, and they're just heading into the studio to record their first record!

blogging
I am a contributing writer for Grist, an online environmental news magazine. My latest blog posts are here.

alternative energy
Co-op Power. I'm on the Board of this effort to address the renewable energy needs of the Northeast. Coop Power is a member-owned coop building community-owned renewable energy assets, like Northeast Biodiesel, a biodiesel production facility that uses recycled vegetable oil to make a regionally produced, regionally owned renewable fuel for home heating and transportation.

alternative media
www.orionmagazine.org. Recipient of the 2004 & 2010 Utne Independent Press award for General Excellence - and my employer - Orion magazine works to reconnect human culture with the natural world, blending scientific thinking with the arts, engaging the heart and mind, and striving to make clear what we all have in common.

humanitarian
www.heifer.org. Heifer International combats hunger via sustainable agriculture, alleviating poverty and restoring the environment with free livestock, training, and related services for farm families worldwide.

mushrooms
Here is my 2002 article for The Natural Farmer on growing mushrooms, which covers the hows and whys of natural outdoor culture of mushrooms, mushroom biology, and medicinal properties of fungi.

A great tutorial on growing gourmet mushrooms on logs can be found here.

The two best mushroom spawn supply houses: Fungi Perfecti supplies the widest range of mushroom species for log culture, plus spawn for outdoor patches and indoor kits, while Mushroompeople's shiitake selection is by far the most extensive.

But not all the fun is outdoors: you can grow oyster mushrooms indoors on coffee grounds you get for free from a coffee shop: a great and tasty experiment, outlined here.

Here's my favorite way to enjoy medicinal mushrooms: Wild Branch Mushrooms offers a mushroom extract that's been boiled in Vermont sugar maple sap to produce Maple Medicinals, a delicious maple syrup immune system booster you can enjoy on pancakes.

And this interview with the world's leading expert on mushroom culture and biology, "Paul Stamets On The Vast, Intelligent Network Beneath Our Feet," in the February 2008 issue of The Sun Magazine is incredibly interesting and a little trippy. Stamets is the author of Mycelium Running and the classic Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms.

photography
www.jasonhouston.com. A great photographer and fly fisherman who in his spare time is photo editor of Orion magazine.

soccer
www.soccer365.com. The world loves soccer!

po box 362 • ashfield, ma • erik@erikhoffner.com • (413) 429-5296

Home | Gallery 1 | Gallery 2 | Poland | About the Artist | Now Showing | Links

"Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain."
--Henry David Thoreau