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Perhaps our toolkits can offer new ethical and pedagogical frames, reshaping the contexts for tool use – and informing the worlds we build with them.
July 9, 2021
What does it mean to take kinship seriously? From the microbiome to social community, everything, and everyone, is made up of everything else.
June 23, 2020
Shelter is supposed to protect from environment, but also affects our thinking about it. How can we find shelter together within complex ecologies?

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Food nourishes and sustains. It also holds culture, ritual, and memory. In a land of inequity and instability, what will we choose to grow from the ruins?
What is magic? The tools of magic are what we use to transform, with wonder about matters of the spirit, and how spirit matters.
What is it? A book and set of workshops by artist and educator Ellie Irons about making pigments from plants found in the post-industrial riverfront […]
December 5, 2023
What is it? StreamBank is an ecological restoration project focused on removing knotweed and planting willow on a site along the Schoharie Creek in the […]
What is it? Hearth Day is a festival to celebrate home that is held on or around traditional Earth Day. (April 22). The first one […]
October 23, 2023
A mobile power station is any unit the can provide portable solar power. With current battery technology, this is relatively easy to build.
September 5, 2023
Author Timothy Furstnau recounts his experience making accommodations for frogs during the mowing of his land in Upstate New York and what he learned from that about slowing down, caring for other species and being in tune to the land.
January 14, 2023
We explore tools used by Rolling Grocer to accomplish its goal of providing food access in conversation with Selha Graham, Rolling Grocer’s Head Buyer.
December 13, 2022
Tiny houses are dwellings under 400 feet that reduce ecological impact and are dramatically more affordable than traditional houses.
November 9, 2022
What is it? The Toolshed Skatepark at Basilica Hudson was a free skatepark open to all for two winter months in 2022 when activities for […]
October 20, 2022
Fair (or sliding scale) pricing is a system whereby goods or services are priced at different levels to create access. Food markets are a particularly good use of this tool.
September 20, 2022
An indispensible tool for sharing resources, building solidarity and communicating.
September 6, 2022
Repair Cafes are places to bring broken or damaged material things of all kinds – furniture, electronics, stuffed animals – to have them fixed by experts. All repairs are free.
August 3, 2022
Intergenerational fairness is a concept adapted from the more technical idea of intergenerational equity. It refers to the idea of “fairness or justice between different generations.” (WHO) While the term originates in the field of environmental law and economics, it can serve as a much more basic guiding principle on an individual or community level.
July 16, 2022
The seventh generation principle is a Haudenosaunee concept and way of life. It states that actions and decisions must be made with concern for the well-being of those seven generations into the future.
A seed library “loans” seeds to members for planting in their gardens. Typically the way the seeds are “returned” is for members to save seeds from the plants they grow and give back a portion to the library at the end of the growing season.
October 19, 2021
What is it? Toolshed Exchange is a tool lending library that provides Hudson-area residents access to tools and training, promoting a culture of collective stewardship […]
June 9, 2021
Opacity and in particular recognizing "the right to opacity" is conceptual tool for respect and humility and re-enchanting the world.
April 19, 2021
A Community Land Trust, or CLT, is a tool for land conservation and shared equity
April 6, 2021
A conversation on the tools of animals, the tools of masters, and humans as tools.
April 4, 2021
A haunting image of the past prompts reflections on treaties, acknowledgements, and the notion of history as a tool.
October 28, 2020
a sketch of a redesigned courtroom layout
A theory and practice of justice for repairing the harm caused by criminal behaviour through cooperative processes that include wider communities, with potential for deeper transformation
October 5, 2020
Can genealogy, traditionally a tool of racial division and subjugation, become a tool of radical kinship?
September 24, 2020
On the different ways tools can be categorized by the untrained, by the home improvement industry, and by Toolshed
August 29, 2020
A poem by Ross Gay on an underappreciated ecological detail in Eric Garner's background
August 16, 2020
A concept for making together with others, to better express complex multi-species relations, elaborated by Donna Haraway and others
A set of techniques and a philosophy for sustainable agriculture and site planning, in practice in the Toolshed Garden project at Basilica Hudson
Garden volunteers, M.S. Merwin's palms, and using poetry to cultivate kinship
August 15, 2020
A constellation of teachings on ecological living common the indigenous peoples of North America, as proposed by Potowatomi scientist Robin Wall Kimmerer in her book Braiding Sweetgrass
July 24, 2020
Alongside healthcare and other essential workers, birds emerged as the widely-sung heroes of lockdown
arched walkway made of vining plants
How gardens can be shelters, physically and otherwise. What will Toolshed's garden shelter? Whose survival and well-being will it protect?
July 21, 2020
a brief guide to community composting resources in and around Hudson, NY
a long hall structure made of bundled reeds
A building technique using bundled reeds in wetlands environments like southern Iraq
What is it? The Toolshed Garden at Basilica Hudson was designed to transform an acre of landfill and industrial use into an educational and demonstration […]
June 20, 2020
What is it? The Ecotopian Library is a public toolkit for imagining and creating more regenerative futures within climate change. People have contributed stories, objects, […]
Some notes from a workshop on recycled existing materials into planters to save money and reduce carbon footprint
September 2, 2015
Notes from a workshop on building a bicycle-powered phone charger
August 2, 2015
Guide to building a simple metal frame and plastic panel dome-shaped greenhouse, with instructions from a Wilder workshop
September 6, 2014
Notes on identifying plants to grow in the geodesic dome greenhouse we built at Southwest Community Farm in Syracuse, NY, to test how early to start summer plants inside the greenhouse
August 6, 2014