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Work For Change
Forget Mars. We’ve got work to do here on Earth.
Building efficient and affordable housing in Moab with Community Rebuilds.
Community, Rebuilt
Building efficient and affordable housing in Moab with Community Rebuilds.
By Julie Ellison
All photos by Julie Ellison
In a valley surrounded by jagged ridges of desert sandstone, a few miles south of Moab, Utah, is a cluster of half-built homes on the Moab Area Community Land Trust. AmeriCorps volunteers Ruby Johnson, 19, and Megan Cleeves, 26, duck under tarps hanging from the eaves on the south side of one house. Today they’re finishing plaster work on a few of the homes, scraping stray plaster out of the nooks and crannies of the exterior trim. Marit Olson, 30, stands on a stepstool, running a small wooden stick around windows and doorframes. Johnson mists the walls with a garden hose to keep the plaster damp. Olson explains that this will keep the plaster from drying too fast in the desert sun, which can lead to cracks.
It’s a typical build day in the Arroyo Crossing neighborhood, a homeowner-led project facilitated by Community Rebuilds (CR), a nonprofit dedicated to building affordable, sustainable homes for the local workforce. CR was created in the mid-2000s when founder Emily Niehaus, a loan officer at the time (she became mayor of Moab in 2017), noticed a shortage of affordable homes in Moab. Run-down manufactured structures built as temporary housing during the area’s 1950s mining boom comprised the only affordable options. CR started replacing these trailers with energy-efficient homes built with natural materials, completing the first strawbale home build in 2010. They also used this occasion to kick off a natural building internship program, which sources volunteer labor and attracts natural building professionals who are also good teachers.
Subcontractors hired by CR and the Housing Authority of Southern Utah handle drywall, plumbing and electrical tasks to move things along on the bustling construction site. Building apprentices teach natural building techniques while groups of volunteers come and go as human power is needed for the more laborious activities like spreading plaster. Tape, haul, mix, carry, lift, plaster, compress, clean, rinse, repeat.
The homeowners help with the building, too, many of them juggling full-time jobs but making time to work on their future abode or lending a hand to future neighbors. They are grateful to the volunteers who work five days a week, sometimes up to a year, living in a two-story strawbale communal bunkhouse at the CR headquarters in Moab.
Today, 75 modest bungalows line the handful of streets, bicycles and kayaks leaning against tin, wood and plaster exteriors. Eventually, the development will include community buildings and a bike path, and will provide housing for teachers, families, single working professionals, law enforcement, medical workers, hospitality staff and others. In short, a community rebuilt.
Photos: (Top) There’s a renaissance going down outside of Moab, Utah. (Middle Top) The idea is to make the Arroyo Crossing neighborhood blend in as much as possible with the majestic Moab landscape by building with clay, straw bales and other natural materials that are more energy efficient than conventional construction materials. (Middle Bottom) Building apprentices Chris Parrilli and Bonnie Smith couldn’t make their willingness to learn on the job any plainer. (Bottom) Eight hands make the plaster faster.
Community, Rebuilt
Community, Rebuilt
Building efficient and affordable housing in Moab with Community Rebuilds.
By Julie Ellison
All photos by Julie Ellison
In a valley surrounded by jagged ridges of desert sandstone, a few miles south of Moab, Utah, is a cluster of half-built homes on the Moab Area Community Land Trust. AmeriCorps volunteers Ruby Johnson, 19, and Megan Cleeves, 26, duck under tarps hanging from the eaves on the south side of one house. Today they’re finishing plaster work on a few of the homes, scraping stray plaster out of the nooks and crannies of the exterior trim. Marit Olson, 30, stands on a stepstool, running a small wooden stick around windows and doorframes. Johnson mists the walls with a garden hose to keep the plaster damp. Olson explains that this will keep the plaster from drying too fast in the desert sun, which can lead to cracks.
It’s a typical build day in the Arroyo Crossing neighborhood, a homeowner-led project facilitated by Community Rebuilds (CR), a nonprofit dedicated to building affordable, sustainable homes for the local workforce. CR was created in the mid-2000s when founder Emily Niehaus, a loan officer at the time (she became mayor of Moab in 2017), noticed a shortage of affordable homes in Moab. Run-down manufactured structures built as temporary housing during the area’s 1950s mining boom comprised the only affordable options. CR started replacing these trailers with energy-efficient homes built with natural materials, completing the first strawbale home build in 2010. They also used this occasion to kick off a natural building internship program, which sources volunteer labor and attracts natural building professionals who are also good teachers.
Subcontractors hired by CR and the Housing Authority of Southern Utah handle drywall, plumbing and electrical tasks to move things along on the bustling construction site. Building apprentices teach natural building techniques while groups of volunteers come and go as human power is needed for the more laborious activities like spreading plaster. Tape, haul, mix, carry, lift, plaster, compress, clean, rinse, repeat.
The homeowners help with the building, too, many of them juggling full-time jobs but making time to work on their future abode or lending a hand to future neighbors. They are grateful to the volunteers who work five days a week, sometimes up to a year, living in a two-story strawbale communal bunkhouse at the CR headquarters in Moab.
Today, 75 modest bungalows line the handful of streets, bicycles and kayaks leaning against tin, wood and plaster exteriors. Eventually, the development will include community buildings and a bike path, and will provide housing for teachers, families, single working professionals, law enforcement, medical workers, hospitality staff and others. In short, a community rebuilt.
Photos: (Top) There’s a renaissance going down outside of Moab, Utah. (Middle Top) The idea is to make the Arroyo Crossing neighborhood blend in as much as possible with the majestic Moab landscape by building with clay, straw bales and other natural materials that are more energy efficient than conventional construction materials. (Middle Bottom) Building apprentices Chris Parrilli and Bonnie Smith couldn’t make their willingness to learn on the job any plainer. (Bottom) Eight hands make the plaster faster.
Leave It to Beavers
Renewing rivers one rodent at a time.
By Amanda Monthei
All photos by Greg Mionske
Editor’s note: This is an excerpt from the Patagonia Fly Fishing story, “Leave It to Beavers.” Read the full story here.
It’s barely above 50 degrees in a mid-elevation mountain meadow at the headwaters of the John Day River, deep in the Blue Mountains of Eastern Oregon. Dew soaks the ground, but the consensus is that today’s work conditions are significantly better than yesterday’s. “It was the hardest day this year,” says Alex, a 19-year-old Northwest Youth Corps crew member sipping coffee from a mug covered in faded stickers. A random thunderstorm blew through and caught him without his rain jacket.
Weather and morale have improved significantly in the last 24 hours. Alex and the rest of the four-person Northwest Youth Corps crew, as well as three Trout Unlimited employees, pull on mud-caked boots and waders, finish coffees and collect their tools—chainsaws, an errant bundle of shovels, towers of 5-gallon buckets, branch loppers and wooden posts shaped like enormous pencils, shouldered two at a time.
Shifts start at 7 a.m., and although it’s early August, the cold air and wet dirt hint at autumn. After a short hike, work begins quickly. Buckets are filled with gravel and mud, while posts are driven into the soft mud of the creek bed.
The goal? To build artificial beaver dams, called beaver dam analogs (BDAs), which are piles of mud, sedge grass, gravel and sticks placed in strategic locations along creeks in mountain meadows like this one. In the absence of beavers—resulting from their widespread extermination at the hands of the Hudson Bay Trading Company in the 18th and 19th centuries—BDAs are a convincing imitation that makes for complex, healthy meadows. The BDAs have the added benefit of improving habitat for spawning steelhead, bull trout, Chinook salmon, Pacific lampreys and other species. If all goes according to plan, a passing beaver might see these human-made dams, complemented by the soft, pooling water they love, and think, “This is nice … but I could do better.”
Photos: (Top) Hard work makes food taste better. Eleanor “El” Will takes a dam break by the North Fork John Day River. Ukiah, Oregon. (Middle) Northwest Youth Corps member Eleanor “El” Will and Trout Unlimited project manager Noel March carry wooden posts to a beaver dam analog build site in the North Fork John Day River. Ukiah, Oregon. (Bottom) All that’s left to do after building these beaver dam analogs is leave it to beavers. Ukiah, Oregon.
Leave It to Beavers
Leave It to Beavers
Renewing rivers one rodent at a time.
By Amanda Monthei
All photos by Greg Mionske
Editor’s note: This is an excerpt from the Patagonia Fly Fishing story, “Leave It to Beavers.” Read the full story here.
It’s barely above 50 degrees in a mid-elevation mountain meadow at the headwaters of the John Day River, deep in the Blue Mountains of Eastern Oregon. Dew soaks the ground, but the consensus is that today’s work conditions are significantly better than yesterday’s. “It was the hardest day this year,” says Alex, a 19-year-old Northwest Youth Corps crew member sipping coffee from a mug covered in faded stickers. A random thunderstorm blew through and caught him without his rain jacket.
Weather and morale have improved significantly in the last 24 hours. Alex and the rest of the four-person Northwest Youth Corps crew, as well as three Trout Unlimited employees, pull on mud-caked boots and waders, finish coffees and collect their tools—chainsaws, an errant bundle of shovels, towers of 5-gallon buckets, branch loppers and wooden posts shaped like enormous pencils, shouldered two at a time.
Shifts start at 7 a.m., and although it’s early August, the cold air and wet dirt hint at autumn. After a short hike, work begins quickly. Buckets are filled with gravel and mud, while posts are driven into the soft mud of the creek bed.
The goal? To build artificial beaver dams, called beaver dam analogs (BDAs), which are piles of mud, sedge grass, gravel and sticks placed in strategic locations along creeks in mountain meadows like this one. In the absence of beavers—resulting from their widespread extermination at the hands of the Hudson Bay Trading Company in the 18th and 19th centuries—BDAs are a convincing imitation that makes for complex, healthy meadows. The BDAs have the added benefit of improving habitat for spawning steelhead, bull trout, Chinook salmon, Pacific lampreys and other species. If all goes according to plan, a passing beaver might see these human-made dams, complemented by the soft, pooling water they love, and think, “This is nice … but I could do better.”
Photos: (Top) Hard work makes food taste better. Eleanor “El” Will takes a dam break by the North Fork John Day River. Ukiah, Oregon. (Middle) Northwest Youth Corps member Eleanor “El” Will and Trout Unlimited project manager Noel March carry wooden posts to a beaver dam analog build site in the North Fork John Day River. Ukiah, Oregon. (Bottom) All that’s left to do after building these beaver dam analogs is leave it to beavers. Ukiah, Oregon.
Can building beaver dam analogs bring back the beavers?
“We need to change how we are growing our food.”
Reimagining Aquaculture
A family in Maine is changing the way oysters are grown.
By Kate Olson
All photos by Greta Rybus
Abby Barrows remembers being scared but excited the day she and her husband, Ben Jackson, bought their neighbor’s oyster farm. But as soon as she saw the equipment that came with the farm, Barrows knew something had to give. She had spent the last decade documenting microplastics in fresh and marine waters across the globe and was one of the first scientists to analyze coastal waters for microplastics. The pile of gear comprising her new aquaculture enterprise—all plastic. “We’re putting thousands of pounds of plastic gear, if not millions of pounds of plastic gear, into the Gulf of Maine,” Barrows remembers thinking. “We need to change how we are growing our food.”
Barrows began her career in marine science in Australia and the South Pacific, where she first observed the incongruity of marine plastic pollution. While working in Papua New Guinea, she watched as people hand-lined for fish out of dugout canoes, while plastic pollution floated nearby. Returning to her childhood home of Deer Isle, Maine, and learning more about microplastics, Barrows and her husband wanted to find a niche in the local economy that contributed to, rather than detracted from, the health of the ocean. “The fisheries here are dramatically changing and so are the generations of knowledge of the ways of the water,” she says. “Oyster farming hit a bunch of bases—working out on the water, growing food, cleaning and filtering water, and modeling what a sustainable fishery could look like for this community.”
Barrows and Jackson launched their oyster farm, Deer Isle Oyster Company, in 2015. Their 3-acre farm also grows 2,000 feet of sugar kelp, and in 2021, they began beta-testing plastic-free aquaculture gear. Whereas most oysters are grown in plastic mesh bags, on plastic floats, held in place with plastic buoys, their new gear is made of aluminum, cedar and rubber with biodegradable MycoBuoys made of mushroom mycelium and plant byproducts. It is already comparable to plastic gear in price. Eventually, they hope to make the designs for the plastic-free gear open-source and accessible to all.
In 2018, they had a daughter, Io. When Io was a baby, she slept in a pack-and-play on the bow of the boat while Barrows and Jackson worked sorting and harvesting oysters, Barrows pausing to breastfeed every two hours. As Io grew into a toddler, they put baby crabs, sea squirts and other marine creatures into buckets as entertainment. Still, farming oysters as a family was a challenge. “As a new mom, you are working more than two full-time jobs,” says Barrows. “Being a parent and trying to run a business and be a good partner, these things all take time, and most of that is not valued. I would love to see more women on the water. Having Io on the boat softens the hammer on the work ethic that comes with the territory, forcing you to pause and slow down sometimes.”
Working as a family on the water helps them reimagine possibilities for sustainable fisheries where profit is not the primary goal. “Doing better doesn’t always mean more, it might even mean less,” says Barrows. “For the business it’s the economy of scale, throwing that on its head, what works for us, what works for this island, for this community. I know this is a drop in the ocean, but it takes a lot of drops to change things.”
Photos: (Top) Here’s the catch: Mariculture can and should be a sustainable mode of food production, if only it didn’t use so much damn plastic. Abby Barrows is working on that. (Middle Top) By focusing on small things like oysters and microplastics, Abby Barrows and her crew are making changes that are as big as saving our home planet. (Middle Bottom) Can working waterfronts coexist with nature? Just ask Abby Barrows, Anna Capitano and Benjamin Jackson of Deer Isle Oyster Company. (Bottom) Working two full-time jobs at the same time is hard. Abby, Ben and Io make it work.
Reimagining Aquaculture
Reimagining Aquaculture
A family in Maine is changing the way oysters are grown.
By Kate Olson
All photos by Greta Rybus
Abby Barrows remembers being scared but excited the day she and her husband, Ben Jackson, bought their neighbor’s oyster farm. But as soon as she saw the equipment that came with the farm, Barrows knew something had to give. She had spent the last decade documenting microplastics in fresh and marine waters across the globe and was one of the first scientists to analyze coastal waters for microplastics. The pile of gear comprising her new aquaculture enterprise—all plastic. “We’re putting thousands of pounds of plastic gear, if not millions of pounds of plastic gear, into the Gulf of Maine,” Barrows remembers thinking. “We need to change how we are growing our food.”
Barrows began her career in marine science in Australia and the South Pacific, where she first observed the incongruity of marine plastic pollution. While working in Papua New Guinea, she watched as people hand-lined for fish out of dugout canoes, while plastic pollution floated nearby. Returning to her childhood home of Deer Isle, Maine, and learning more about microplastics, Barrows and her husband wanted to find a niche in the local economy that contributed to, rather than detracted from, the health of the ocean. “The fisheries here are dramatically changing and so are the generations of knowledge of the ways of the water,” she says. “Oyster farming hit a bunch of bases—working out on the water, growing food, cleaning and filtering water, and modeling what a sustainable fishery could look like for this community.”
Barrows and Jackson launched their oyster farm, Deer Isle Oyster Company, in 2015. Their 3-acre farm also grows 2,000 feet of sugar kelp, and in 2021, they began beta-testing plastic-free aquaculture gear. Whereas most oysters are grown in plastic mesh bags, on plastic floats, held in place with plastic buoys, their new gear is made of aluminum, cedar and rubber with biodegradable MycoBuoys made of mushroom mycelium and plant byproducts. It is already comparable to plastic gear in price. Eventually, they hope to make the designs for the plastic-free gear open-source and accessible to all.
In 2018, they had a daughter, Io. When Io was a baby, she slept in a pack-and-play on the bow of the boat while Barrows and Jackson worked sorting and harvesting oysters, Barrows pausing to breastfeed every two hours. As Io grew into a toddler, they put baby crabs, sea squirts and other marine creatures into buckets as entertainment. Still, farming oysters as a family was a challenge. “As a new mom, you are working more than two full-time jobs,” says Barrows. “Being a parent and trying to run a business and be a good partner, these things all take time, and most of that is not valued. I would love to see more women on the water. Having Io on the boat softens the hammer on the work ethic that comes with the territory, forcing you to pause and slow down sometimes.”
Working as a family on the water helps them reimagine possibilities for sustainable fisheries where profit is not the primary goal. “Doing better doesn’t always mean more, it might even mean less,” says Barrows. “For the business it’s the economy of scale, throwing that on its head, what works for us, what works for this island, for this community. I know this is a drop in the ocean, but it takes a lot of drops to change things.”
Photos: (Top) Here’s the catch: Mariculture can and should be a sustainable mode of food production, if only it didn’t use so much damn plastic. Abby Barrows is working on that. (Middle Top) By focusing on small things like oysters and microplastics, Abby Barrows and her crew are making changes that are as big as saving our home planet. (Middle Bottom) Can working waterfronts coexist with nature? Just ask Abby Barrows, Anna Capitano and Benjamin Jackson of Deer Isle Oyster Company. (Bottom) Working two full-time jobs at the same time is hard. Abby, Ben and Io make it work.
