Solar Schoolhouse Summer Institute for Educators

I spent this past week in Petaluma at a teaching solar workshop. We made lots of cool gadgets, including a "solar lunchbox" which can charge an iPod or other electronics with just two little solar panels. It works great! There was lots of soldering and stripping of insulation off of wires, and I learned a lot.

The workshop was put on by Solar Schoolhouse. I've gotten a lot of materials from them before and they are really helpful and enthusiastic about solar education.

We even took a field trip to the Straus Dairy in Marshall, beside Tomales Bay. Now THOSE are happy California cows. The dairy is organic and environmentally friendly and has a methane digester which they use to capture the methane from the cow manure and generate electricity. Pretty cool.

This is where they trap the methane under a tarp-thing after separating the solids from the liquids in the manure.

We sometimes buy their milk and cream which are sold in the old fashioned reusable glass containers, and their yogurt is sooooo good!

The babies were the cutest. There was one that was only 2 days old (not this one).

I took the scenic route home down route 1 along the coast so I could stop at Cowgirl Creamery in Point Reyes Station to get lunch and some yummy cheese: organic and made with Straus milk. Yee ha!