First of all we want to thank HandsOnPortland for their energetic support of our work practice day Tuesday, July 30. They helped move wood chips on the Oak Savanna portion of the property to control invasive grasses, and with restoration in the ravine on the NE and eastern edge of the property. Speaking of that, we now making use of the $40K grant from the East Multnomah Soil and Water Conservation District for restoration of the ravine, which will help with water runoff from Siskiyou Street and from our property. Thanks also to Jordan’s Mushrooms for help establishing mushroom spawn for rehabilitating the land.

We’re in the thick of it now with the permitting process. Boy, is this fun and games! We have about 15 responses from various agencies, with more to come, some questions to answer and adjustments to make. One great bit of information is that we now have an address for our new location. We will be at 8500 NE Siskiyou Street! Don’t change your address book yet, however. We’re still here on Madison for the time being.

Preliminary planning is underway for the Dharma School building, and we are very excited by the assistance we are receiving to take the “Living Building Challenge” with this building. This is sustainability well beyond the LEEDs standard which only measures design elements. The challenge involves measuring the performance of building over a year’s time to see if it truly functions at Net Zero for energy and water, and meets other standards for health, materials, equity and beauty.