A late green bloomer – Sheep Dog Hollow renovation
Environmental considerations come first in he renovation of Sheep Dog Hollow, although the owner admits she came late to the green revolution.
This abandoned 1902 farmhouse is being restored in an eco-friendly and budget-friendly way.
Joanne Ciccarello/The Christian Science Monitor
OK, so you’ve decided to take the plunge with me and “go green” – or at least as green as possible.
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Alexandra writes about the "green" and budget-friendly renovation of a 100-year-old farmhouse in south-central Connecticut.
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From my last post, you’re now fully advised that some research and up-front money will be needed. (The cliché that “to go green you’re going to need some green” is too worn for even me to use, alas.)
Now comes the next hurdle, which I confess, I have not read about anywhere else. I call it the “green intimidation factor.”
Suddenly, you realize that while you were simply trying to survive, going about your stressed- out life – paying bills and keeping up with the latest in your profession, politics, and all of the intricate demands of family life – there was thriving subculture of “green believers” busily forging a new path to the future.
These are the people who for the past generation or two have been selflessly putting their ideals first, bucking the nation’s conventional dependence on fossil fuels by honing alternative technologies from organic, high-performance spray-foam insulation to super-efficient solar panels that also operate as roof shingles. (OK, I know some profit motive was also involved.)
Even back in the 1970s we all knew (although most of us conveniently forgot) that we’d have to change our basic relationship to fossil fuels. But after all of the energy tax breaks and incentives from the Carter administration were rolled back, it did take some courage to go a genuine green way.
While I knew on some level that this quiet revolution was going on – I do read the papers – the decision to renovate Sheep Dog Hollow in a green manner brought home vividly how “un-green,” even antediluvian I am, at least in environmental terms.
To put this realization into context, let me assure you that I usually consider myself a well-educated, progressive thinker-type with at least a vague environmental awareness.
I studiously sort my paper, plastics, glass, and metals and recycle them. I’ve always done my best not to waste energy, turning off lights when I leave a room (usually), never turning the heat up too high (unless I was absolutely freezing), and walking instead of driving (which I confess was easy most of the time, since I live mostly in New York City).
But with the limited research I’ve done so far, I now see I wasn’t close to living a even a pale green life – to say nothing of a genuinely green life. And that mortifying realization that you’re really not what you thought you were – at least in environmental terms - is what I call “the green Intimidation factor.”
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