''This was a session at the [[Shiny Green Acorn Festival]].''
== Participants ==
* [[Eric]] (convener)
* [[Ben]]
* [[Brandon]] (part 1 only)
== Discussion ==
=== Part 1, at Tryon ===
* The Unfarm: take the forest's excess cellulose, feed it to termites (previously porcupines), and use the termites to feed people
** Keep them in a shipping container
** Use damp-wood termites, which only eat rotting houses, so they'll be less dangerous if they escape
*** They'll be from a more southern climate, e.g. the area around D.C., so if they do get out into the ecosystem, winter should kill them
** Initial investment is just the shipping container, starter termites, and a dehydrator to make dried termites
*** Keeping it small because there's no market yet, although there are markets for mealworms and crickets
* Ben: Buckleberry should have really cool treehouses
** Eric: Sure, there are already AirBnB treehouses
* Brandon is most excited about the [[Gaia]] temple
* Eric is okay with a variety of models for getting work done: having employees, a tribal business, a community, offering a free stay at the B&B if you work on the Unfarm, etc
=== Part 2, at the Artist's Repertory Theater ===
The hobbit holes will be on stilts, with water running underneath to get to the tree roots and out without flooding the building. They will be in between the trees, and the green roof will have holes for the trees and slump down around them.
So if there’s a large gap around a tree, that’s a perfect place to run a spiral staircase around the trunk to treehouses above. Thus the treehouses would technically be part of the same building, so the property doesn’t have to be rezoned.
Eric wonders if he can make the treehouses look elven. Or maybe ewok, like with those cool suspension bridges with places to hook in carabiners, zip lines, etc. We could nickname it Bag-Endor.
Note: Michelle had the original idea for the hobbit holes.
Eric wants to build a parking lot and a green roof over it, the same kind as for the hobbit holes. This would all be in the main bowl between the two hills.
Eric also wants a pond in the bowl, with a decorative water-mill because there was one in Hobbiton in the movie. Ben suggests making that a feature of a miniature golf course, although that might be too much in the direction of an amusement park.
Eric also wants a water feature at the top of the big hill with the Gaia temple, a waterfall over some rocks. The pump to get the water up there could be solar-powered and would only have to run when people are there to see it.
Ben asked if we could make the termite-unfarm shipping container into a cool shiny-looking structure. Eric wants everything to have a green roof, but not everything has to have the illusion of being underground structures; the shipping container could have murals on the sides, e.g. of alien worlds.