The house at 21 Garnsey Road in Clifton Park belongs to Nancy and Don White but it’s a neighborhood housean informal community center of sortssince they open their doors to whomever chooses to walk through them. The couple takes pride in their natural and sustainable life and want to teach others how they do it, so they offer free classes in gardening, canning, medicinal herbs, green construction and how to live an environmentally friendly lifestyle.
`This house was needed, not just for us to live in, but as a place where people could come to learn how to produce their own food and medicine and a place where people could come for any help they needed,` said White.
The house sits on 10 acres of land and is the site of a former wasteland and swampy pond that the Whites transformed. It’s designed with big open spaces, a small meeting area, a lending library and gardens galore. There are outdoor sun and shade gardens and a 60-foot long, 3-foot deep indoor garden that resembles a solarium or greenhouse. White grows tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, onions, corn, artichokes, dwarf fruit-bearing trees, cherries, blueberries, raspberries, gooseberries and currents; basically, said White, whatever they want to eat they grow.
This connection to the earth and desire to be as natural as possible stems from their childhood, said White.
`We grew up in a much simpler time. Everyone had a garden because that’s how you got food. I grew up in wartime and [my husband] grew up during the Depression, so there was a need to develop a self-sufficiency,` said White. `My father loved nature and there was never a time we were together when he wasn’t teaching me how to identify different trees, plants, insects; I was always attentive to nature and since I moved here in 1973, I’ve watched Clifton Park grow from all farmland to a very busy town. I feel tied to the Earth and want to preserve it.`
White said a change isn’t going to come from the government so ith as to come from the individual people who want to make changes to their own land, environment and life. That’s where the free classes come in. There’s a sign out front that advertises various classes offered throughout the winter and summer. There’s hands on gardening, how to preserve food and presentations that focus on emotional freedom. White said she wants to reinstitute the skills that have been lost over the years.
`It’s so empowering to walk out the front door and have a culinary herb garden right there where I can pick my herbs and bring them inside to make tea. It’s so simple and isn’t new, this is the way I’ve lived all my life and I’m finding people want to know how to live that way again,` said White. `The skills and knowledge have been lost and it’s not a criticism, but people just haven’t been taught to think about these things.`
Living through the Earth means more than just growing food and avoiding pesticides and fertilizer. There is no lawn because that disturbs the natural ecosystem, said White, and the pond is completely natural. Because of this, enough animals to fill a small zoo share their living space`deer, ducks, woodchucks, birds, squirrels, woodpeckers, chipmunks, Canadian geese and occasional appearances by some special friends.
`We watched a beautiful weasel walk by our toes when we were sitting on the porch one day and a falcon comes to watch the birds at our feeders. Sometimes a coyote will wander through and a beaver just moved in this fall we see footprints and streaks their tails make in the snow around the pond,` said White. `We’ve never been bothered by bugs because of all the frogs, snakes, bats and birds that eat them. People don’t understand the balance and how we throw it off all the time without even thinking.`
The house is sustainable too. White was the general contractor, something she said was fun and let her learn more than she ever expected to, and which she now passes on to others.
Concrete is pored into forms within the walls of the structure, so when the streams in the tile floors and walls heat up. When the sun goes down and the air temperature cools, the energy collected throughout the day remains intact and continues to warm. Solar tubes and mall skylights produce about 150 to 200 watts of light in the interior rooms, said White, and there’s a solar water heater on the roof. A cistern on the metal roof captures water that’s used to irrigate inside and out.
White said she has stayed away from paid advertising and gets most of her traffic from neighbors, friends and those on her email list. She said she encourages anyone that drives by the home to stop by.
`I would never discourage anyone from coming or exclude anyone,` said White. `It was my desire to let this grow and be as it will be; let it evolve on its own.`
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