Building with bales can produce ecological, empowering and affordable housing, and NetWorks' award-winning video provides an entertaining overview of how and why. Narrated by Athena and Bill Steen, co-authors of The Straw Bale House book, The Straw Bale Solution features interviews with architects, engineers, owner-builders and leading straw-bale advocates. See how-to-build, learn about weather and code implications, and experience the barn-raising, community-building aspects of straw-bale homes. Then follow the Steens south of the border as they work with Save The Children in Sonora, Mexico, empowering local townspeople to create comfortable homes from straw bales - an abundant agricultural "waste product" of the region. Educators and innovators, Bill and Athena Steen push the boundaries of vernacular architecture and reveal how the world-wide housing shortage could have a Straw Bale Solution. Made possible by the Katherine and Lee Chilcote Foundation and The Lifebridge Foundation. 30 minutes, $29.00 plus shipping and handling.

The Last Straw, the quarterly journal of straw-bale and natural building, began in 1992 with Judy Knox and Matts Myhrman of Out On Bale (un)Ltd at the publishing helm. Five years later, with The Last Straw well-established and recognized as the resource for up-to-date and pertinent straw-bale construction information, Judy and Matts felt the need to begin focusing on other important projects which had to be put on hold when interest in straw-bale construction skyrocketed. They began the search for a responsible, committed team who would continue the tradition of high quality outreach and reporting they had established, and in 1998 they chose NetWorks Productions to be their production and publishing successors.
In 2003, TLS was transfered to, and is now published by the Green Prairie Foundation for Sustainability in Lincoln, Nebraska.  For a current subscription visit www.thelaststraw.org

Networks still sells back issues (#1-39) of TLS

The Bill Mollison Permaculture Lecture Series Videotapes are $24 per tape (or $19 per tape if you order 9 or more), plus shipping and handling. Shipping (in the USA) is $4 for one tape, and $1 for each additional tape. If you order six or more videos from the Permaculture Lecture series, shipping is free. All prices may be subject to change.

This is an opening lecture. The principles of functional design for sustainability are unique to Permaculture design.

Understanding patterns in nature has been essential to human survival since antiquity. This knowledge has been encoded and passed on through time in many forms of art and craft.

From a singular event all other events are set in motion in recognizable and predictable patterns This pattern recognition is the core of design in Permaculture.

Efficiency of energy, resources, and time, and the creation of highly productive systems are the results of good Permaculture design. The methods are obvious once we have become co-creative with the forces of nature.

Find out why it is so important to grow your own food and how to install the easiest, and highly productive, home food propagation systems; mulch garden, potato box, herb's spiral, and more. You don't need much space. These are basic Permacultural techniques.

The tree is life - profound, magnificent, and mysterious. To learn what little we can know of trees is sufficient to leave one awestruck and reverent.

Why is a tree green? Where does a tree end or begin? Why have all human societies destroyed the tree? A Mollison rave.

These are very specific trees which are used around the world for their ability to improve soils. They are invaluable in range for livestock, as well as in fields under cultivation.

Methods to plant, sustain, and best utilize woodland and wood for fuel, forage, windbreak and construction.

What is cultura promiscua? To maintain functional bio-diversity is a basic tenet of Permaculture. Severely degraded land can be easily restored to highly productive land by using good observation techniques, plants and animals in succession, and common sense.

... a continuation of #10. Two main techniques: the chisel-plow, and the wonders of worms and how to cultivate them. The patterns described in these two videos can be replicated in any type of Permaculture system, and scaled to any size.

...a continuation of the Trees video. Potable water - where does it come from? How did it get there? What has become of it? What we can do to ensure that we will have safe water to drink, and to conserve as much of this precious material as possible.

Once one has learned to harvest water, then the real fun begins with production of the myriad of foods and marketable commodities hosted by ponds and other water-rich environments.

There are a multitude of ways to harvest, conserve, and utilize water. These strategies apply to coastal regions or islands with with zero precipitation, arid lands, as well as to areas with plentiful seasonal rainfall.

As desert is rapidly claiming vast areas of our planet, millions are on the verge of starvation. Yet, crops which occur naturally in arid land can provide all necessary nutrition for people and animals. The strategies discussed arise from years of observation in the deserts of Australia and from the peoples of Kalahari.

... continuation of Drylands 1. Never, never irrigate the desert. The devastation caused by irrigation of arid land is irreparable. But there are alternatives: methods to set up a drought proof system. This is serious Permaculture!

Made for the Australian Broadcast System, this 4-part series follows Bill Mollison to the cold, the tropics, the desert, and the cities with inspiring examples of Permaculture. It is very dense with information, and an excellent video primer for a comprehensive Permaculture philosophy. 2 hours; $48 plus shipping and handling.

Many people today are feeling the need to form and live in communities which support the ideals of creating a better world. Christiania is a community which was born from these same ideals right in the heart of the City of Copenhagen, Denmark. 27 years ago the Free City of Christiania was declared a test of Anarchy by the Danish Government. Right in the center of a metropolis which is rife with all the social difficulties, more than 1000 people live on 80 acres and struggle with the realities of living in a free society and creating community. Directed by Nils Vest, with support form the National Film Board of Denmark. "The prize awarded film about the free city in the heart of Copenhagen... A warm film about a hot topic: is a free society possible today? See for yourself. The press: 'A very beautiful film.' - Berlinske Tidende... 'I love it very much.' - Ekstra Bladet... 'A sympathetic document. Christiana's lust for life jumps out from the images.' - Politiken... 'Warm and wonderful.' - Zoom, Danish Radio... 'A poetic film.' - AmagerBladet..." 62 minutes, $29 plus shipping and handling.

This little Christiania picture postcard book tells the inside story about the visions and ideals which created the workshops, factories, clubs, institutions, restaurants etc. - translated into six languages. $15 plus shipping and handling.