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Living Soil Dynamics
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EMF Hazards
Earth Energies
   
 

Welcome to the GeoPathfinder homepage - Earth-Centered Resources for Sustainable Living (and beyond).

Simply put, we do things to make both our lives and yours more sustainable, durable, stable, and more survivable.
Just click one of the icons below that matches your area of interest:



Solar electricitySolar food drying, etc.Year-round gardeningElectric/hybrid vehiclesStrawbale building

Rainwater harvestMasonry stovesElectrical fieldsDownload
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Buy this book
Indoor gardeningGeopathic energiesHybrid trike detailsVibrant organic soilsHomesteading w/a twist

What is beyond sustainable? Look up the word "sustainable" and its synonyms are:

  • bearable
  • sufferable
  • tolerable
  • passable
  • endurable
  • livable

Hardly a glowing endorsement of a lifestyle! Instead of a sustainable system that's just barely hanging on, why not aim for a thriving, flourishing, and robust local ecosystem, even though it might not create higher-paying jobs, keep current politicians in office, or make huge corporate profits for investors?

Instead of worrying about Peak Oil, Climate Change, The Next Big Extinction, Global Warming, 2012, The Giant Government Conspiracy, or Whatever Is Next, why not start learning something of what it takes to survive the end of what one writer (Dianne Dumanoski) calls "The End of the Long Summer" and try doing something sensible?

Or as Bill Mckibben writes in "Eaarth - Making a Life on a Tough New Planet", our concerns need to be less about growth than maintenance, less about total security and more about feeling your vulnerabilities and coping with them one step at a time. Smaller and less centralized resources, and those that are really neccessary, not just frivolous "self-expression", will work better on a changed Earth. How to do this?

  • Start with what you now have (despite what some sites and boards will tell you, you don't have to buy sustainability),
  • Start with where you now are (whether in the "wilderness" or the urban extreme)
  • Start with who you now are (anywhere on a continuum from full-blown corporate planet-rapist to ascetic eco-warrior),
  • Ask this question: What's just one thing I can do right now to make my impact on this planet positive?
  • Or put negatively, What's the one thing I can change right now that will lessen my negative impact on the planet?
  • Begin doing it! Don't wait until you've gotten more money, more tools, more education, or more confidence. Nothing will happen! Gather the courage to adapt by making mistakes and learning from them. That's how Homo Sapiens ended up being the one homonim out of about 28 related species that survived. And, of course, you could possibly gather some ideas from our site!

Even if you are in total denial about the end of the GROWTH OF THE ECONOMY at any cost, MANIFEST DESTINY, the AMERICAN WAY, the bold new GREEN ECONOMY and all the other failed theories of limitless, endless, something-for-nothingness it just doesn't matter anymore. The Earth is trying to buck us off and it's time to learn how to manage a more appropriate, smaller, more local lifestyle that matches the situation at hand. We all need to find how to limit the nearly irreparable damage our parents did (and which we perpetuate) and learn about better choices for responding to the challenges, both from our more distant ancestors and from each other.

What begins with a small step, if you take it seriously, will become a thought process. Done frequently, the process will become a habit. And the habit will lead to a lifestyle of learning and self-improvement that eventually helps everybody and everything! Whether you are a pessimist or an optimist about the fate of humankind and our shared little planet (and we don't hold any great hopes!), you can't change the world until you change your head. Positive, durable change happens one individual at a time, then sharing the outcome with others.


GeoPathfinder, the website:

From the subtle nuances of Geobiology, (Geomancy, Dowsing, Feng Shui, and Geopathic Stress Research and Remediation), to the nuts and bolts of Low-Energy Food PreservationMasonry Woodstove Construction, Strawbale Building Techniques, Renewable Electrical Systems, Rainwater Harvesting, Electromagnetic pollution (electrosmog), and Year-Round Garden Eating, our site offers books, lots of free downloads, workshop literature, photos, and site links related to all aspects of 21st-Century Vegetarian Homesteading in the upper midwest of the U.S. We also promote, and experiment with, lower-impact Transportation Alternatives and Ecological/Organic/Biological Farming and Gardening. IT'S ALL RELATED!

NOTE: The underlined words you see throughout our website are links to external sites and internal documents. If you need a copy of Adobe Reader to open the many PDF (.pdf, Portable Document Format) files that we link to, just Click Here for a free download.

Choose your area of interest from the list at the upper left, or from the links and icons above.

Scroll downward to find the lists of our Products and Services.

And scroll to the bottom of this page for the latest MREF (Midwest Renewable Energy Fair) workshop handouts/supplements that we have generated.

And remember, YOU CAN DO THIS STUFF! Just sit back, relax, and read onward. Learn from our successes and failures. "Greening" does not happen overnight but by putting one step ahead of the previous. We have been working at this for a bunch of years and are still experimenting, so take what we say with a "grain of salt" as it may not fit either your location or your needs at this time. What is important is that you make an effort in a planet-friendlier direction, no matter how green you think you are at the moment. Failure to do so just brings us all a more dangerous future, more quickly, without preparing you for its challenges.


ABOUT OUR SITE:

We seek to educate and inspire without judgment or nonsense. For over 30 years we've worked to treat the Earth as a friend; someone to listen to, trust, and learn from. We are both students and full-time practitioners of the homesteading arts and the appropriate use of human-scale technology. We try new things to lighten our load on the Earth.  Instead of trying to rationalize what we do, we work to make what we're doing more rational. But if you want to make the World a better place, you've got to do something about it!

If you would like to see a website that mirrors at least part of our work in the world, written by a retired G.E. engineer (John Howe) who has all the facts and figures, but is a bit more pessimistic about the future of humanity and the sacrifices necessary for sustainability, check out this link.

And we are not urban homesteaders but we have high regard for those who practice self reliance in the urban jungle. Check out the Dervaes family in California.
Homesteading doesn't require loads of land or tons of money,as you can see by their example. But if you can't live with the noise and the air pollution of a freeway in your backyard (among other things), read onward.


Truth or Dare time, maybe both:

You don't believe that human culture lacks sustainability? Click Here to see some timely graphics showing how global climate change is affecting the continental U.S. right now, an area predicted to have the LEAST amount of change!

Click Here if you dare to read a very recent U.N. report on why our planet would prefer that you eat less meat, or Click Here if you would prefer an article from the Washington Post on the same subject.

Click Here if you'd like to read a WorldWatch article by Sarah DeWeerdt about the greenhouse gas impacts of transportation, growing methods, and the foods we choose to eat.

And Click Here if you prefer entire tables of statistics, updated in real-time, on world population trends, deaths, illness & injury statistics, trends in the environment & natural resources, energy, U.S. crime & punishment, food production & animal slaughter, and the U.S. national debt. It's a Shockwave Flash file, so if you need a free player download, just Click Here.


Latest site news: 

Starting in June, 2010, we finally relented and started stocking stainless steel dryer screens for sale. We have pre-cut, 2-by-2-foot screens available for immediate shipment. See below in our Products and Services section for more details, or go to our Food Preservation page.

A new page called Eat Local Year-Round has been added. It's a "how-to" page showing the ways we "garden" in a very wide sense, and ways that we prepare our meals using low-energy techniques. And the Transportation Options page has details about our latest big project. We have "greened" an old Porsche 924 into an electric vehicle. Also, finally, I'm done retyping the original Soil Management Information Packet that was available from our company, Underfoot Soil Consulting Service, back in the 1980's.

The introductory, 18-page synopsis, called "Soil Dynamics in a Nutshell" is a free PDF download. You can order the entire 10-topic, 50-page document (not including the free PDF synopsis) for $7.50 by Clicking Here or by reading more about it first on our Living Soil Dynamics page. And if you need help interpreting the results of a complicated soil test we now offer this as a service. Again, you can see more details on our Living Soil Dynamics page or below in our "Products and Services" section.

And for those of you who requested information on how we compost our human wastes, we have completed a free PDF file on this, available on the Veggie Homesteading Page or by Clicking Here. And for those of you who missed our Rainwater Harvesting workshop at the 2010 Midwest Renewable Energy Fair, we have a free PDF file of it available on the Harvesting Rainwater Page or by Clicking Here.


Attention Bloggers!

After reading some of the odd and often out-of-context comments about various pages of our site, it's clear that too many people are just reading about things online and not actually doing anything. We frankly don't care what's said about our site, positive or negative. Just like us, it is what it is, and we're proud of what we do without necessarily being proud of ourselves. That's pretty much what we ask of others. We're here to inspire, not lead you by the hand. Our friends do the same and are inspirational to us. The text and photos included in our site may not reveal every detail, but if you need more information you can contact us. Honestly, we don't bite! But this site is mainly about actually living more lightly, knowledgeably, and sanely, not social networking, blogging, or sitting endlessly at a computer on some narrowly-focused web forum. Even so, the more that we hear from people who are trying and succeeding/failing at this stuff, the more we are encouraged to try new things ourselves. Let us know what you're up to!


WHAT WE DO AND WHY WE DO IT:

Since our primary focus is on living healthy, sane, balanced, happy, and productive lives, we prioritize our concerns based on what we think the overall impact of each area might be. If your life already suits you perfectly, feel free to skip ahead!

Health Priorities: what we think folks should work on in order of importance

1. Fix your attitude! Do less harm to yourself and others. Polarization of issues is easy but other options always exist. Find them. Lower your expectations. If you are not proud of what you do, do something you are proud of. Learn to do more with less. Be thankful for what the universe provides for free. Empathy is an important social and spiritual goal, and taking care of yourself by taking better care of the Earth and your fellow inhabitants certainly doesn't hurt either.

2. Breathe pure fresh air, either from country living or from carbon air filtration (avoid adding anything, including scents, ions, etc.). You can do without food for weeks, water for days, but air for only a couple of minutes. Urban air is usually loaded with ultrafine particulate matter, full of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (mainly from cars), that contribute to greatly increased rates of asthma, stroke, atherosclerosis, diabetes, high blood pressure, and accelerated aging. This stuff is so small and so nasty that closing doors and windows won't help you!

3. Drink pure fresh water, preferably straight from the sky, but also (since now even rainwater is somewhat polluted) filtered through a carbon block filter. We've been relying almost exclusively on this free gift of Nature for over 25 years (check out this page). I won't even bother to tell you how polluted groundwater and surface aquifers can be, especially around here in our fractured limestone "Karst" topography.

4. Eat fresh, live-stored, or low-energy preserved, highly nutritious, fully mineralized, organically-grown foods,
preferably "without a face" if you're really serious about reducing your carbon footprint. Produce them yourself so you really know what you are eating and get the full flavor and nutritional value. Or buy them from a local grower you know and trust (so you don't burn more calories shipping the food than it actually contains). In other words, eat your health insurance!

5. Do at least 20 minutes of aerobic physical activity/day, preferably outside, getting some sunshine on you!
No, ultra-violet light won't kill you. Just a few minutes of mid-day UV-B/day supplies you with your daily vitamin D, a cancer preventer! The darker your skin, and the more polar your latitude, the more time you'll need. Just avoid lots of exposure in the morning and afternoon (UV-A) that doesn't supply vitamin D but ages your skin and eyes. 

6. Avoid sources of chronic, cumulative stress. These include:

  • Emotional stressors (you know who or what they are in your life!)
  • Drugs and other alterants, including caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, and other unnecessary chemical crutches
  • Pesticides & altered genes found in "food" and "drink" (conventional industrial and genetically-modified "commodities")
  • Pesticides & other chemicals used at home/work (from construction materials to carpeting to cleaning products)
  • Excessive biological/physical allergens (mold, pollen, dust, radon, etc., but don't get compulsive about this; a lttle bit of these, other than radon, stimulates your immune response)
  • Electromagnetic pollution (powerline or inverter-generated AC, its harmonics & transients, and radio/microwave)
  • Geopathic Earth Energies (ubiquitous on most of our planet, but easy to avoid or redirect if you learn how)

7. Don't take yourself so seriously. If, like us, you live a voluntarily low-income lifestyle in a region of plenty, grow most of your food instead of buying it, use mainly sunshine instead of petroleum, store a good supply of food, water, and firewood, stay home instead of driving everywhere (home-insteading?), and wander around finding health-changing energies that most people can no longer consciously sense, you get really good at self-deprecation!


GeoPathfinder - The Fruits of our Research ( and mistakes!) Available Online

Our primary business focus is a combination of geopathic energy research and remediation, and electropollution investigation, the final two on this list. If you read the book,"Survival of the Sickest" by Dr. Sharon Moelem, you'll get a good idea of how chronic stress can turn off your body's DNA proofreading mechanisms, cause DNA mutations to skyrocket, and alter both your body's expression of many genes, and their expression in your progeny. It's scary stuff, and we focus on geopathic and electromagnetic energy for a number of reasons:

  • First, because of the results we've seen from working with them, even if the client doesn't believe in this stuff.
  • Second, because the other stressors are well known and can be dealt with by the average label-reading human.
  • Third, because their effects are cumulative, sneaking up on you like the frog in the slowly heating pot of water.
  • And fourth, because their causes require some expertise, instrumentation, or special abilities to track down.

I (Bob) find pathways and formations of geopathic energy. Hence the website named GeoPathfinder. After over 20 years of experience in finding water, lost/buried objects, people, etc. I started to use my dowsing experience to help folks who suspected that their house, or more specifically, their house's location, was trying to harm them. This led to 8 years of on-going field research, and Earth Energy deflection and dissipation provided to over 150 homes and businesses. It also led to the writing of the book "Planetary Patterns" (see below), now in its second edition.

And both working and living with off-grid, solar/wind electricity installations since the mid-1980's has provided many useful insights into the options available for reducing exposure to electromagnetic fields. So when we work at geopathic stress abatement, we also locate any stressful areas related to EMF pollution, or "electrosmog", ranging from excessive electric/magnetic field exposures, to "dirty electricity" (harmonics and transients on the AC lines), to RFR (radio frequency radiation) exposure from any wireless sources, either inside or outside your residence.



OUR PRODUCTS & SERVICES - What we sell and do:

The following three books are self-published and are available individually or, if you contact us, we offer quantity discounts and include only the actual shipping costs on both quantity and book set orders (if you want one of each, for example).


  • Planetary Patterns - A Dowser's Survey of Earth Energies

Partly as a service to my energy remediation clients, and partly as a reminder to myself (my memory has never been the greatest, except for numbers), after a few years of field research using dowsing and divination, I found it necessary to publish a book specifically on Earth Energies. The reference to patterns in the title comes from the inspiration I got in reading Guy Underwood's book, "Pattern of the Past". Guy dealt mainly with the unique patterns he was finding while dowsing archaeological sites in England. I've found that almost every Earth Energy has a unique pattern that I call its "signature". Now in its second edition, Planetary Patterns covers the usual stuff found online or in other books on the subject, plus corrections on that data and loads of additional information. It also includes extensive and exclusive descriptions of many other Earth Energy patterns that are either new or, perhaps, lost and rediscovered. There is a chapter dealing with what I call the Spherical Field surrounding all physical objects. This field is used as a theoretical foundation for finding what sort of effect a particular energy pattern has on humans. All of the formations and pathways are shown in full-page, 2-D or 3-D illustrations to help you visualize this hard-to-imagine stuff. And if you need updates for anything I've found since publications, just check the Earth Energies page at the left. Whatever's not in the book is there, and vice versa.

To see an Adobe PDF file (requires Adobe Reader, available free above) of the table of contents, Click Here.

From the back cover of Planetary Patterns: It's about energy, Earth Energy. It's not man-made, and there are dozens of types, covering the entire planet. They flow upward, downward, or across the Earth's surface, but you can't see them. Some are entirely favorable to living things, or geobeneficent. Others are quite stressful, or geopathic, adding to all the other environmental and emotional strains we're subjected to. Spend a lot of time in geopathic zones and you'll probably get sick. But if you can avoid these spots, or find someone who knows how to dissipate or deflect the harmful energies, you'll soon feel better and get better. Wild animals and a few peculiar people, such as myself, can do something you've probably lost the knack for: geomancy, or using specialized senses to discern between helpful and harmful Earth Energies. Proper training and persistence can help you regain your dormant abilities. But in the meantime, isn't it nice to know that somebody else went through the trouble to catalog the unique patterns, or signatures, of all these formations? That's what you're now holding. And if you don't believe in any of this, that's quite O.K. I didn't either, until I learned how to find, figure out, and fix these things. Either way, the Earth will continue to exhibit these patterned energy fields. So if you're willing to learn more, please read onward and prepare to have your beliefs challenged!             128 pages, with extensive illustrations.


  • Purchasing Information on "Planetary Patterns":

Physical Copies of the Second Edition of Planetary Patterns (above) cost $17.75 each, postpaid in the U.S. (please add $1.22 for sales tax if you're in Minnesota), or $15.00 plus shipping elsewhere in the world. Please send personal check, traveler's check or postal money order to: 

Geopathfinder/Bob Dahse/Larisa Walk                                                                                                                                              30319 Wiscoy Ridge Road, Winona, Minnesota, USA  55987.

OR: To order a physical copy of the above book using PayPal, Click Here. You'll see a new page with a "Buy Now" button. Clicking this takes you (very slowly!) to PayPal's order form.

OR: To order a downloadable Adobe .pdf file of the above book for about half price ($8.75), Click Here (requires Adobe Reader). You'll see a new page with a "Buy Now" button. Clicking this takes you (very slowly!) to PayPal's order form. This download is an 8.33 MB file, so on some slower connections it may take a while.

To verify that we're PayPal verified, just click here. We are PayPal "Verified" sellers, but using this web software, I can't import the "Verified" seal directly.


  • More Books!

Copies of the following two books are $12.50 each, postpaid in the U.S. (please add $.86 for sales tax if you're in Minnesota), or $10.00 plus postage elsewhere in the world. Just use the address listed above.


A Pantry Full of Sunshine was written by Larisa in response to all of the interest she got in her "Energy-Saving Food Preservation Methods" workshops at the Midwest Renewable Energy Fair. She found that an hour or so just wasn't enough time to cover everything she wanted to explain plus cover all of the questions from the often large audiences. A number of recent publications have run articles on solar food dehydration. They have mostly involved "new" designs that aren't really new, and which either don't work very well or actually degrade the food through sun-bleaching or screen contamination. Our design can be configured to work almost anywhere on Earth, using a variety of local materials, and it's physics-friendly design will always yield dry food, no electrical "crutches" required!

From the back cover of A Pantry Full of Sunshine: A practical and political approach to energy efficient food preservation methods - included are design guidelines for the Walk Solar Food Dryer (a dehydrator that ACTUALLY WORKS in the humid upper Midwest of the U.S.). Features down-home advice on using the solar-powered dryer, steam canners, and steam juicers. An alphabetical food listing provides a ready reference when dealing with your garden's bounty. Some of the author's favorite (or most unusual) recipes highlight the text.  62 pages, with photos & illustrations.

   

  • Purchasing Information on "A Pantry Full of Sunshine":

To order a physical copy of the above book using PayPal, Click Here. You'll see a new page with a "Buy Now" button. Clicking this takes you (very slowly!) to PayPal's order form.

To order a downloadable Adobe .pdf file of the above book for about half price ($6.00), Click Here (requires Adobe Reader).  You'll see a new page with a "Buy Now" button. Clicking this takes you (very slowly!) to PayPal's order form.



  • We Finally Have Stainless Steel Screen Material!

If you need some stainless steel dryer screen, we've been ordering it for dryer workshops in our area, where a group of 10 folks get together to build their own solar dryer. We now keep stainless sceening in stock. Check our Food Preservation page for the latest tips on good sources, many provided by readers of the page. Or you can order pre-cut screens directly from us.

We have type 304 stainless steel, plain weave, 12-mesh, .023" wire size, dryer screening available for shipment. It comes to us on a 4-foot wide roll but we pre-cut it into 2-foot by 2-foot pieces and ship it rolled into a 4-by-4-inch box. We sell it for $3.00/ square foot, or $12.00 per 2-foot-square dryer screen, plus actual shipping costs to your locale. You can order it by E-Mailing Us Here. There is a minimum order of 2 screens, and because it comes off a 4-foot roll we only sell it in multiples of 2 screens (either 2.4, 6, etc.). To build a 4-by-4-foot dryer you will need 4 screens at $48.00 plus shipping.

If you would like a shipping quote just send us your zip code or address and we will get back to you ASAP. If you wish to pay for it using PayPal, we can either send you a PayPal invoice or you can pay the total with shipping to our e-mail address.

When you receive your screens we recommend washing them in warm, soapy water. Factories ship them covered with a light coating of petroleum based lubricating oil that is used in the weaving process. It's best to get that off before mounting them in a frame and using them with food.

If you need the screens trimmed slightly to recess the screen edges back from the edges of a 2-by-2-foot frame, we recommend using a metal shears. We use a Stanley model with slightly serrated blades and alloy steel that works quite well. The screen is sharp so wear gloves!

  • Yet Another Book:

People's Power Primer was Bob's attempt to demystify the process of understanding, intelligently buying, sizing, and maintaining an off-grid electrical power system, whether it's solar, wind or hydro. Its initial purpose was to help folks who were trying to buy off-grid electrical components but had a hard time conversing with the people selling the stuff. It blossomed into a wider-ranging handbook that helps with purchase, calculation of electrical loads, electrical terminology, conservation techniques, wiring details, site analysis, and system maintenance from generation to storage. And even though it was published in 1999, it contains nothing about preparing for Y2K! When Bob does workshops on basic electricity, this book is used as a follow-up for those wanting to take more personal responsibility for the effects of their power generation. Feedback from educators indicates that it's a great book for introducing the subject to kids. But personal feedback from workshops indicates that even older folks who were too proud to admit it enjoy the ignition of that light bulb of understanding!

From the back cover of People's Power Primer: This is the dawn of a new age in electrical power production. Increasingly, homeowners are producing their own power using devices that capture free, clean, safe, and inexhaustible energy. While the utility companies are just catching on and gearing up, you could be getting wise and "growing you own." But shopping for this stuff, using it wisely, and keeping it running smoothly are a challenge if you can't converse in "tech-speak." Don't let those geeky buzz-words get you down! We'll have you discoursing with dealers directly, happily harvesting heaps of energy, and managing maintenance matters momentarily. With ample visual and verbal cues, and while sidestepping the superfluous, this info-packed booklet will put you in the driver's seat on the Twenty-first Century road to renewables!


  • Purchasing Information on "People's Power Primer":

To order a hard copy of the above book using PayPal, Click Here. You'll see a new page with a "Buy Now" button. Clicking this takes you (very slowly!) to PayPal's order form. Sorry, but this book isn't available as a download. The original files were such a mucked-up mess of different formats that a conversion to PDF isn't feasible.


  • Eco-friendly Soil Dynamics

And if you are at all interested in soil dynamics, or in how the biological and chemical processes going on in soils pertain to what's going on in your digestive tract, you may be interested in two downloadeable PDF files we offer.

The first one is free. It's an 18-page document called "Soil Dynamics In A Nutshell" and it was first presented as a 2-hour workshop at the Winter Driftless Bioregional Gathering in Beach Corners, Wisconsin on the -20F day of January 24th, 1987. The document is a synopsis of the presentation, including all the charts and graphs.

The second PDF will cost you $7.50. It's a 50-page collection of 10 documents, originally offered only to our clients, available via Payloadz and payable via PayPal. The collection includes the following topics and can be downloaded by Clicking Here:

Energy Production in Plants, 4 pages
Micronutrients, 7 pages
Selecting Soil Amendments, 8 pages
Tillage and Residue Management, 4 pages
Phosphorus and Sulfur, 5 pages
Nitrogen and Carbon, 6 pages
Manure Management, 3 pages
Liming by Cation Exchange, 6 pages
Weeds, Insects, and Disease, 5 pages, and
The Ten Most Often Asked Questions About Soil Tests, 2 pages

  • Getting help with your Soil Test Results:

We can also help you do the math it takes to turn raw soil test data into recommendations for both Organic and Transitional growers. Simply send us the e-mailed results from the lab by Clicking Here and attaching the file, hopefully including at least the pH, % organic matter, and the levels of P (phosphorus), Ca (calcium), Mg (magnesium), K (potassium), and C.E.C. (capacity for exchangeable cations).

We can give you better recommendations if you also include the sampling depth, soil type, slope and direction of slope, previous crop, intended crop, yield goal, typical seasonal rainfall, and whether or not you will be using irrigation. It also helps if your lab tested for S (sulfur), Na (sodium), Fe (iron), Mn (manganese), Cu (copper), and B (boron).

In terms of laboratories to use, we have always relied on A&L labs in Memphis, TN. We have used both test S1M ($8.00) and test S3M ($16.50), but they offer a wide array of testing services. After we receive your results, we do the calculations to give you recommendations for the application of mineral fertilizers that will balance your soil within the normal range of parameters specified by the late Dr. William Albrecht. And we recommend tillage practices that complement the soil type and materials applied.

The cost for this is $20.00, payable using PayPal. We contact you when the results are ready and send you a PayPal invoice. When we receive notification of payment the results are e-mailed to you.



GeoPathfinder, the business of helping people overcome problems related to their location and electrical climate:

This is a photo of Bob's business card. The phone and e-mail data has been blurred slightly to foil auto-spammers, but if you contact us with a question you'll connect to our e-mail. Our primary focus is research, but helping people with this stuff has also led to many new discoveries. Thanks!


  • GEOBIOLOGICAL & ELECTROPATHIC SERVICES:

We offer a number of services for far-flung sufferers of geopathic stress, since our hands-on involvement in an intentional lifestyle precludes much travel. And while we were once able to deal with e-mail and telephone questions about geopathic stress for no charge, the volume of requests has become too great. We simply can no longer maintain our homestead, pay the bills, do our continuing research, and answer all of your queries for free. So, starting October 1, 2008, we have posted PayPal button links that make the payment process for our services as quick and painless as possible. The services we offer include:

     1) FREE REMOTE DOWSING to check for the existence of geopathic energies: This will tell you whether or not geopathic energy is a problem at your site but it will not show the details of exactly where the problem areas might be.

  • Contact us via e-mail  or by "snail-mail" at 30319 Wiscoy Ridge Road, Winona, Minnesota 55987, and
  • include your name and the exact address or location of your site (home, workplace, whatever).

At our earliest convenience (I get to an internet terminal nearly every day) we will return a list of the quantities and characters of the geopathic Earth Energies passing through your structure. Details about these energy formations can be found on our Earth Energies Page.

I do all of this through a process called remote dowsing, or divination, where I grab a dowsing rod and simply ask questions. If you'd like all the details about how I dowse, just Click Here for a free PDF file download.

Who or what it is that answers these questions is, and may remain, a mystery. Some have told me that I'm using the dowsing rod as a link between my conscious mind and my "higher self". Others have said that they see fairies communicating with me! I call it "talking to the planet". Whatever. All I know is that when I check out a place later "onsite", the results are almost always perfectly identical.
 
Using this information, I can tell if simply moving your bed is an option or if you'll need some other sort of intervention.


2) E-MAIL and PHONE CONSULTS are now available for any questions you have about geopathic or EMF-related stress. We once did these for free, but due to the volume of traffic we get, we now charge $10 per follow-up e-mail (the first one is free!) and $12.50 for a 15-minute block of phone time. So if we tell you that, "sorry but you will have to pay for more information via e-mail", simply:

  • Click Here to bring up a PayPal button link for a $10 payment.
  • To reserve a 15-minute block of phone time, just e-mail us to set up a time and,
  • simply Click Here to make a $12.50 payment via PayPal button.

Sorry about all the fuss, but there's only so much time in the day!

     3) If you'd like a lot more detail, we offer "MAP DOWSING".

Send a simple sketch, a scale drawing, or a blueprint (or whatever you can muster) of the perimeter of your building (plus the room-dividing walls if you can), including an arrow indicating geographic North, to our mailing address: Bob Dahse/Larisa Walk, 30319 Wiscoy Ridge Road, Winona, Minnesota USA 55987.

Please include $50 in U.S. funds (money order, check, or travelers cheque) along with your name and the exact location or address of the site.

We will color-code all of the Earth Energy pathways or formations within the confines of the drawing. Keep in mind that a larger scale drawing yields more accurate results. This option really helps if you're trying to visualize the energy formations and pathways in your area. It makes anything from bed relocation to full-scale energy diversion/dissipation a lot easier.

If you would prefer to send a digital photo of a drawing by e-mail, just send it to our e-mail address and you can Click Here to make a $50 online payment via PayPal button.

In the computer-generated drawing you see here, which was e-mailed to me, I drew the energy pathways and indicated where to place energy diversion rods around the building in the lawn. The circle indicates the placement point and the arrow shows which way the horizontal tip of the rod needs to point.


     4) We do REMOTE ENERGY REMEDIATION if remote dowsing reveals energy pathways that aren't conducive to furniture moving alone. The purchase of "Planetary Patterns" gives you some general instructions on preparation and placement of energy-warping metal rods.

If you need even more detail about how I do remedial energy work, just Click Here for a $2.50 PDF file download (this formerly was free, but due to the detailed description of the process, and the danger to your neighbors of doing it incorrectly, I now charge something, mainly to keep track of who is using the information).

We can set up a time
via e-mail to do a cordless-phone-based remedial session. There's an hourly charge of $50/hour, but if you are well prepared, can follow verbal instruction, don't get too chatty, and the phone connection is good, the work itself usually takes anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour.

To schedule a live energy remediation session by phone, just contact us via e-mail, leave your e-mail address or phone number, and we will contact you to set up a mutually convenient time for the process.

We now offer a PayPal button link which allows you to pay for phone remediation in 15-minute increments. By Clicking Here once, you can make a $12.50 partial payment for the process. When the session is over you can click the link again to make any remaining 15-minute payments.


     5) And if nothing less than our PERSONAL ON-SITE ATTENTION will docontact our e-mail address and we'll see what we can work out.

If we need to travel to your site, we charge $20/hour for time spent coming there and returning home.

For actual time spent doing dowsing, divination, and remedial work we charge $100/hour. While this may seem costly, I'm very efficient, knowledgeable, experienced, and quite fast at what I do.

In addition to working with geopathic energies, when we work on-site we include a multi-instrument scan of any excessive electrical, magnetic, or RF fields in sensitive areas of your home, including a check for transient/harmonic powerline frequencies. The EMF work is done at a rate of $25/hour. We can offer suggestions for placement (or replacement) of electrical appliances, shielding options, electrical filters, etc. For more information, try the EMF Hazards page on our site.

Note: Because of the number of last-minute cancellations we have experienced in the past and the amount of schedule-bending preparation required on our end, we now require a $50 non-refundable deposit on this option. After contacting us to arrange the visit, you can make this $50 payment via a PayPal button; simply Click Here.


    6) Or if you don't think that you need our services, but you would like to make a financial contribution which either furthers our research efforts, or which reimburses us for free remedial work we did for those less fortunate than yourselves, just Click Here and you will get a PayPal link that allows you to donate any amount you wish. Or recommend our webpage to others: If you Click This Link you'll get a new page with a button named "Thumbs Up!". Click it and you will end up on StumbleUpon.com's comment page where you can tell other folks what we are up to.


If you'd like more information about our books, the courses we teach at the Midwest Renewable Energy Association's annual Renewable Energy and Sustainable Living Fair, or any of the other topics mentioned above, check the categories on the upper left (and please stay tuned for more extensive website development), or contact our e-mail address. And if you'd like to see many websites that cover similar topics to those you see here, Click Here to link to BuildItSolar.com.


ABOUT US:
In brief, you should know the following: We are Larisa Walk and Robert A. (Bob) Dahse . We have been together since 1982. We live in the rolling hills and temperate, humid climate of southeastern Minnesota in the U.S.'s "upper midwest". We work for wages as little as possible, maintaining a "poverty-level" income. We prefer to work for our subsistence instead of paying for a bloated federal deficit. Needless to say, we are both the "black sheep" of our families! We have been living with off-grid, solar electricity (and sometimes with wind electricity) for over 25 years, using rainwater collection for all of our water needs. We compost all of our kitchen and bodily "wastes", along with those of our two pet sheep. We grow most of our food and use organic methods learned from childhood (along with plenty of reading along the way) and honed through over 5 years of soil consultation and testing that we provided nationally through our former business, "Underfoot Soil Consulting Service". Our home is owner-built using strawbale construction and it's heated by both direct passive solar techniques and by using a masonry woodstove of our own design (burning about a "cord", 128 cu.ft., of fallen "soft maple" per year). Although we live in frigid Minnesota, we grow lettuces and other greens in our solar-heated greenhouse year-round. We steam-can, steam-juice, root cellar, "live-store", or solar-dry all of our garden's bounty. Much of our spring/summer/fall cooking is done using a parabolic solar oven. And since we don't like senseless suffering or death, we've been successful and healthy Vegans for over 30 years (each). Our diet is whole-food, chemical-free, gluten-free, lactose-free, casein-free, and primarily home-grown, wild, or shipped-in Certified Organic as a last resort. And our transportation, when we need it, is primarily by recycled 2001 Toyota Prius, obtained from a scrapyard in 2002, our recumbent Catrike, "tadpole-style" tricycles, now converted to solar-charged, human/electric hybrid vehicles, and (as of the summer of 2009), a solar-charged electric car, converted from a gasoline-powered, 1979 Porsche 924.
You'll note, as you read the various subjects we cover, that many of our efforts involve "hybrid synergy" (except our seed supply; we save open-pollinated varieties for planting) and robust back-up systems. Our Prius and bikes are gasoline/electric and human/electric hybrids. Our woodstove is a masonry/steel hybrid that heats our hot water and includes an active solar, air-to-air heat exchanger. Our house is a hybrid of strawbale infill, "stick-frame", and mechanically-connected post-and-beam building techniques. Our sauna is also used as a "summer kitchen" and as a foul-weather food dehydrator. Our photovoltaic solar electric system doubles as a supplier of hot water for 3/4 of the year, and also uses excess sunny-day input to charge our newly-built electric car, hybrid electric trikes, electric tractor, electric mower, etc. The electric vehicles can be directly charged from our solar panels or we can use AC chargers and our inverters (or the Grid, if need be). You get the idea. We like things that do multiple tasks or use various inputs.Having read all of the above I'll assume that you think we are purists, tree-huggers, and neo-Luddites. That's far from accurate. We use technology where we feel that it is appropriate, from an environmental, economic, and sociological perspective. We aren't creating or raising children, and we consider this choice to be the basis of an of an ecological life. Human life means more than being a DNA copy-machine. There are too many humans on the planet as-is, with plenty more on the way! The few things we buy we view as tools, to be used for accomplishing specific tasks, and we don't skimp on tools. We typically don't follow directions or dogmas, but stay within the confines of the Law. We've read, and continue to read a lot, and make decisions based on sorting out as much information as we can handle, balancing the rational, logical results with well-honed intuition. We encourage others to do the same. Our choice of lifestyle is political, in that we don't wish to support the Earth-killing decisions made either by those in power in Washington D.C. or more locally. If the only legal way to do that is by living pretty close to the land in a low-impact, low-income, atypically self-sufficient mode, then so be it.


And in case you think we're too serious, we both play the accordion! The only thing serious about it is the volume. For two former childhood organists, playing the right hand sideways, hugging it to produce sound, and using 120 buttons for chords, all without being able to see what you're doing, is a real re-learning experience! If you'd like to hear a REAL homestead musician, check out our friend Bryce Black's website for numerous humorous recordings about "bailer twine", mad cow disease, water-pumping windmills, and prehistoric chickens, among other insights.


Latest updates: Fall 2007

The 2007 Energy Fair is now over and "Catch the Wave - Forces, Fields, and Frequencies" seemed to catch people's attention, especially on Saturday, with a packed house. Friday's session was extremely hot and humid, and being the first run at this workshop, I felt terribly disjointed. There was seemingly so much to cover in just 50 minutes and I didn't feel like I was focused or linear enough to reallly get to the point. Saturday was the complete reverse. It's amazing what 20 degrees less heat and a day's reflection can do. So for those who were there on Saturday but didn't get a handout, just Click Here for a 278 kB download (requires Adobe Reader). And if you were disappointed on Friday, the last three pages of this downloaded version are new, added to really summarize and put the topic in perspective.

Latest updates: June 2008

At this year's Midwest Renewable Energy Fair Larisa did 3 sustainable food workshops (Eating Year-Round from the Garden, Solar Dehydration/Steam Canning/Steam Juicing, and Root Cellaring).  I was displaying and demonstrating the "Lithium Lounger", solar self-fueling, electric/human hybrid trike at the Clean Energy "Car" Show. Larisa's workshops were packed, as usual. And my position right near the entrance gate ensured a continuous stream of interested onlookers and a barrage of questions. Of course the high-speed, hard-turning, gravel-ripping, 3-wheeled power slides I did to demonstrate the torque and acceleration of the trike's hub motor didn't hurt either! The only downside was that I never had a free moment to go to one of the many workshops or visit any exhibits. More details on the Transportation Options Page.

Latest updates: July 2009

This year's Energy Fair was inspiring as usual, with the two of us doing workshops and a display again. The 20th anniversary of the Fair was planned to be extremely well attended, but with more exhibitors and more space, it didn't seem as crowded. The Porsche 924 electric vehicle conversion is complete, but we didn't bring it to the Fair. Besides the 140-mile trip, making a one-day drive impossible at anything over 10 mph, it just seemed counter-productive to burn the petroleum needed to haul a non-petrol car that far on a trailer! On a recent trip we discovered, by running low on power, that two of our brakes (one disc, and to a lesser extent, one drum) were sticking and hot to the touch. It's still just a car after all. And you don't get far in an electric car with the brakes on! It's OK now, driving to Winona (26 miles round-trip, climbing some monster hills) at least once each week, and charging happily from our solar panels, reducing our carbon footprint one trip at a time. 

Latest Updates: Spring 2010

The soil management documents that I promised to get online are now available (see above under Products or check the Living Soil Dynamics page for details. It was hard to put all of this into PDF files, since Larisa originally typed it on a 1922 Underwood typewriter and the drawings were done via paper and pen. Time and formats march onward, but the facts of biological soil dynamics remain as a stubborn thorn in the side of the latest greed-driven trends in bio-agriculture, synthetic everything, and the corporate takeover of the entire universe.

Meanwhile, here on the homestead, seeds are planted in trays, apple scions are collected for grafting, plans are laid for enclosing our open porch while adding another root cellar pit, and we wait patiently for the snow to melt in the increasingly intense sun.

Latest Updates, Late Spring 2010:

The porch enclosure and new root cellar are complete and the gardens are now entirely planted and weeded. We did some rebuilding of our old solar food dehydrator, giving it new glazing, a fresh coat of black paint on the collectors, and a new base. We still need to mulch a few things and then it's back to weeding again. Meanwhile we plan ahead for teaching workshops at the upcoming Midwest Renewable Energy Fair in Custer, Wisconsin on June 18th and 19th.

Latest Updates, Summer 2010:

The Midwest Renewable Energy Fair was well attended as usual. The weather was mild and the workshops Larisa and I did were again packed. Now it's back to work weeding and taking a break from the early morning and late evening "slug patrol" I had to do during the cool, very wet weather preceding the MREF. This involved loading a "Dustin' Mizer" (a hand-cranked powder blower) with finely sifted wood ashes and blowing it onto several bean varieties, the broccoli, and all of the corn. The fine layer of ash is a severe irritant to slugs, killing them in short order, but doesn't seem to bother plant leaves at all. And, applied as a thin film, it does little to change the calcium or potassium levels in those beds. Still, I'm glad the warm weather has arrived and things are outgrowing the slug damage.