Robin Blankenship, co-founder of Earth Knack, began looking at the Crestone area in 1991. At that time the slopes of the Sangres were host to many folks with homesteading hearts and pioneer spirits. The population was smaller, the winters were tougher, and the air was buzzing with excitement at the idea of creating sustainable, natural, affordable housing with family hands. It seemed like a great compliment to a primitive living skills curriculum, which is what the Earth Knack school offers.

Earth Knack courses teach ancestral daily living skills like basket making, hide tanning, herbal medicines, stone tool making, wild edible food gathering and hearth cooking, pit fired pottery, bow and arrow making, and much more. Earth Knack teaches pandemic skills, skills that all people on the planet knew and used, and avoids focusing on culturally specific methods or forms. For example you would learn to make a whole shoot willow basket during an Earth Knack course. This is a skill most cultures on most continents developed. In this way, participants can realize their shared global heritage in the Stone Age skills.

Earth Knack has also focused learning on natural alternative building techniques and sustainable energy projects. This is evidenced in the efficient, esthetic and inexpensive buildings on the property. Wood fired ground kilns, solar heated showers and solar cooking ovens are some of the many projects taken on at Earth Knack. In recent years Robin has added more pioneering skills to the Stone Age curriculum. Soap and candle making, blacksmithing and home canning are being taught. Keeping the primitive skills knowledge alive and wedding it to earth friendly modern technologies creates a great combination for making sustainable future choices.

Most Earth Knack programming is geared toward adults and families, however children from the Moffat School, the Charter School and the local home schooling community have enjoyed participating in Earth Knack programs. The younger students enjoy feeding the bunnies, looking for eggs in the chicken coop, watching the bee hives, running through the gardens, or, favorite of all, swinging out over the creek on the rope swing. For many years the Baca Grande Property Owners Association has allowed local children to build natural "survival" shelters and learn about wild edible plants and medicines on community green space areas during Earth Knack courses. This has provided an amazing educational opportunity for our children.

Earth Knack and Crestone have been a wonderful combination since the mid nineties. Things are changing here. Many speculation homes with no alternative aspects or sustainable options are being built. Less home owner builders with the homesteading spirit are moving in. More hurried traffic is moving down our once quiet roads and new neighbors and developers are vocal about wanting more reliable and modern services. But look around the corner. Peek behind the yucca. You can still find the hearty souls who wave the banner: Inconvenience Is A Virtue! They are choosing the ends of the bumpy dirt roads for their unique and sustainable homes, and hoping those roads will never be paved. They are tending their gardens, saving their seeds to share with neighbors, locally fighting for water and air issues or affordable housing through less restrictive building codes, creatively educating their children or themselves, melding the old ways with workable new methods, keeping hope that there is still sanctuary in our corner of the world.

Earth Knack salutes these inspiring neighbors. And we invite you to come see our corner any time. But remember, drive up slowly, because, after all, this is Crestone and you don't have to hurry!