Kankakee Community College Sustainability Week
- Stelle Tour -
Saturday - April 26, 2008
Tour Hours: 9:30 A.M. - 2:30 P.M.
Bus Leaves KCC Campus 9:00 A.M. - Returns at 3:00 P.M.
CSC is partnering with Kankakee Communty College (KCC) as part of KCC's Sustainability Week '08 to offer this first-hand opportunity to experience sustainability applications in action. This tour highlights some of Stelle's most popular renewable energy, green building, and sustainable agriculture features in a five hour guided tour/presentation - lunch included.
Price: Students - $20, General Public - $30.
Featured Events:
Haeme Strawbale Home
(click on photos to enlarge)
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9:30 - 10:15 A.M. Strawbale Home Tour
Tour the home of Jon and June Haeme to learn how and why they built the first straw bale home in Illinois. Jon will describe the solar and wind applications which help reduce their electric bills to around $20 per month in summer and $60 to $80 per month in the winter using electric baseboard heaters. That cost includes both the house and Jon's workshop
Click here for an article on construction of their strawbale home - the first in Illinois.
A guild of oregano and eggplant underneath a persimmon tree. This guild maximizes harvest of sunlight to simultaneously produce three crops.
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10:30 to 11:30 A.M. Permaculture Introduction Seminar
This presentation will give an overview of the principles of permaculture design and show examples of permaculture systems you can use on your own property. As the highlight of the talk, Mark will give a tour of the yard at the Greenhouse B&B where he and his wife Guia have built permaculture principles into their organic-gardening system. While the examples exhibited in the tour are focused on garden and orchard applications, the talk will cover permaculture principles as applied to many other aspects of an ecosystem, especially the role of humans in that ecosystem. Click here to see some examples of permaculture application in the yard at their Bed and Breakfast. Handout provided.
Greenhouse Bed and Breakfast
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11:30 A.M. Lunch will be prepared by Chef Guia Hoffman of the Greenhouse Bed and Breakfast.
Menu: mixed green salad with two home-made dressings, seafood-vegetable soup, chicken-almond-orange sandwich on home-made bread, with fruit pizza for dessert. Mint tea and watermelon drink.
Stelle Telephone Company building.
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12:30 - 1:10 P.M. Stelle Telephone Company – Join Tim Wilhelm, manager of Stelle Telephone Company, to tour the nation’s first off-the-grid telephone company. Learn how the sun powers all the phone switches and the high-speed internet equipment from an array of photo-voltaic panels mounted on the phone building roof.
Harry Carr's sheep with the Stelle community in the background.
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1:15 - 2:30 P.M. Raising Grass-Based Food - Talk and Meadow Tour
Join Harry Carr for an insightful presentation on how grass-based food production can improve our diets, reduce our environmental impact, and restore depleted soils. Harry will describe how animals, primarily ruminants such as sheep and cattle, convert the sun's energy into healthy foods by grazing and digesting nature's storehouse of grasses and legumes. He will describe the health benefits of milk and meat from grass fed animals - for example, how high levels of heart healthy Omega-3 fatty acids are produced - and much more. Included will be a meadow tour of Mint Creek Farm with descriptions of some common grassland plants and the chance to experience firsthand a real sheep farm.
2:30 P.M. - Board the bus back to KCC
Register Online
Click here to register by mail or to find out more information.
Those driving to Stelle can either arrive at the Haeme's straw bale house by 9:30am, or can meet at the CSC office in Stelle no later than 9:20am and join a caravan to the Haeme house.
Click Here for Directions and Maps to Stelle
Directions to the Haeme house from Stelle
Turn left (west) out of Stelle
Go .9 miles to first stop sign
Turn left (south) and go 2 miles to 3600N
Turn right (west) and go 3/4 mile to first house on left.
