Peak Moment TV

Tour a permaculture back yard garden. Visit a tiny home. In each episode of Peak Moment TV, Janaia Donaldson hosts practical grass roots entrepreneurs who are exploring locally reliant lifestyles to meet these challenging times. Peak Moment TV is cross-pollinating the most challenging shift in human history - an energy transition away from fossil fuels to sustainable living.

Topics include local food production, permaculture, sharing, renewable energy, building community, natural building, and economic, psychological, and personal resilience.

Most of the programs were taped along the west coast of North America. This program may not be about your specific community, but it's about everybody's communities in our global community. Stations and viewers tell us they love this show: it's personal, engaging, very local, inspirational, and informative.

And with the economic downturn -- it's timely. The heart of this program are stories told by people about their ideas and actions to live with a smaller footprint, to be connected to the earth and each another, to be more self-sufficient while they protect themselves and their families in the downturn.

The series (326 episodes as of early 2017) has aired since 2006 on about two dozen community access stations nationwide including Manhattan NY, Portland OR, Maine coast stations, and many smaller communities.

It was the winner of the 2007 and 2009 Western Access Video Award for Excellence in local Cable Programming in the "Talk Show - Issues/Professional" category. (Alliance for Community Media Western States Region).

Peak Moment programs are sponsored on PegMedia thanks to the generous contribution of Leo and Marj Immonen, who bring the program to their Wrentham, MA station.

http://www.peakmoment.tv/

Details

Peak Moment - Permaculture for Humanity - Larry Santoyo

This episode is currently not viewable online.

The future is abundant, asserts permaculture designer Larry Santoyo. His vision of living in the present provides a wonderful antidote to fear about uncertain futures. People need to rediscover that we're part of the ecosystem, and apply permaculture design principles to the many problems we face. Larry teaches sustainable permaculture design as a discovery of the world around us. He notes that trying to be self-sufficient is really anti-permaculture. Instead, we need to develop self-reliance skills. Then as we find others in our communities to interact with, everybody gets to play!

Peak Moment - Permaculture Activists - Joe and Pam Leitch

This episode is currently not viewable online.

Asking "wouldn't it be wonderful if our city could feed itself?" Joe Leitch ponders everybody in Portland planting a chestnut tree. Pam Leitch relates how they both left the corporate world after reading the book "Your Money or Your Life". As educators on sustainability and resource depletion, permaculture and social justice, they soon learned of Peak Oil.

Peak Moment - Creating a Home Graywater System - Trathen Heckman

This episode is currently not viewable online.

Trathen Heckman takes us on a step-by-step tour of how to make a safe, ecological and legal suburban home graywater system. Follow the water as it drains from the bathroom tub (and sink and laundry) through a unique valve leading into the backyard garden. It flows into an optional wetland and underground pond for filtering. The water is then piped below ground to several destinations in the yard, where it will supply water for plants growing above it.

Peak Moment - Community Gardens Grow Community Patrick Marcus

This episode is currently not viewable online.

Patrick Marcus and other motivated citizens sprouted a community garden on city land slated to be a park in Ashland, Oregon. When the garden was threatened by plans to develop the park, they got active. Their research and advocacy led to official policy supporting community gardens in city parks.

Peak Moment - For the Love of Trees Jerry Becker

This episode is currently not viewable online.

Though born and raised elsewhere, Jerry Becker is now a de facto indigenous member of Oregon's Elk River watershed. The credo he lives by is Respect. He and his family have lived lightly "long before it was cool." An ecoforester, Jerry manages the woods sensitively with an eye to its wholeness.

Peak Moment - Building Ecologically Sensible Home and and Gord Baird

This episode is currently not viewable online.

Wanting to live a "reasonable, comfortable life" in tune with nature, Ann and Gord Baird are building a "net zero energy" home on rural Vancouver Island. Their plans: a thick-walled cob house with passive solar heating. Wind and solar panels to provide electricity. Solar thermal hot water for domestic use and radiant heating. Composting toilets to enrich the earth for orchard, gardens and chickens. Rainwater catchment and a well for domestic and irrigation water. Follow their progress at www.eco-sense.ca.

Peak Moment - Suburban Permaculture with Janet Barocco and Richard Heinberg

This episode is currently not viewable online.

Tour Janet and Richard's quarter acre for an example of what's possible in suburbia. Their front yard of edible plants also provides habitat for birds and insects. The backyard radiates out from an herb and kitchen garden to vegetable beds and containers; 25 fruit and nut trees; and a restful Zen garden. Near a future pond is a "three sisters" spiral of corn, beans and squashes.

Peak Moment - Energy Independence Americas Road Not Taken Glenn Rambach

This episode is currently not viewable online.

Energy researcher Glenn Rambach's charts show how America budgeted for energy independence following the OPEC embargo in 1973. Then the Reagan administration switched to having "the market" create research incentives, so federal funding declined severely. He says we've lost 30 years, are spending in the wrong places, and need to get back to serious research in energy development.

Peak Moment - Economic Localization - A Community Rediscovering Itself

This episode is currently not viewable online.

In this freewheeling conversation, Jason Bradford and Brian Weller, co-founders of Willits Economic LocaLization (WELL), discuss local food security, creating a farm at a nearby grade school, being rooted in community, urban / rural friction in wealth and land use, regional trading partners, reinventing local public transportation, and more. (www.willitseconomiclocalization.org).

Peak Moment - Practical Tools to Grow an Intentional Community

This episode is currently not viewable online.

Communities Magazine editor Diana Leafe Christian concisely spells out what the successful 10% of intentional communities do: common vision and purpose, fair participatory decision-making, clear agreements in writing, good balance of right and left-brain knowledge, methods of staying accountable to agreements, criteria for new members, good communication and processing skills. She also discusses peak oil effects on the wider community. (www.creating-a-life-together.org).