Timeline – 50+ years Experience in Energy and Alternatives.
In 1971, Craig turns 18 and, with wife Martha, starts to pursue an alternative lifestyle called “Back to the Land.” This involved living simply and sustainably. Their first steps included becoming vegetarians and moving to a rural area they found after hitchhiking west. They followed advice from the popular publication Mother Earth News, including heating their home with wood.

1974 – Living the simple life with many others included having our first child in a Tent (our home!) in the woods – heated, of course, with wood. We learned a lot about Energy and wood heating along with dabbling in passive Solar. We lived so frugally that $100 a month easily covered all of our expenses (equal to about $700 today for two adults). Most all of our work involved alternative and sustainable living, organic agriculture and reuse and recycling. Craig and Martha both worked in vegetarian food production and large scale recycling such as dismantling and using/selling large former mill buildings. Here is a short story Craig wrote about the large scale recycling/reuse effort.

1975-1978 – Craig and Martha moved to Rural/Suburban Southern NJ (Pinelands area) to be closer to family after birth of our 2nd Child. Craig continued work in light construction which included building reuse, some of which involved “barn wood” product which was a popular decor at the time.
Noting that no one appeared to be heating with wood, Craig and Martha found a woodstove and installed it in their ranch home. Wood heating was so rare that we had passers-by knock on the door and tell us the house was on fire! 

But the lack of popularity soon reversed as world events and oil shocks sent Americans looking for Alternatives – two of which were wood heating and solar. The Whole Earth Catalog and other “Guides to Tools” became available. Craig started on a quest to learn – and practice – as many skills as possible in the Energy field. 

1978-1998 – Starting with sales from their Living and Dining room, Craig and Martha built a family business in alternate energy which was both diversified and fast growing. The operations included Retail, Manufacturing, Importing, Distribution and even inventions/patents on new product in the Industries served. Both passive and active solar were installed along with central heat and/or space heat. Note that most Solar at the time was water heating as the price of PV was prohibitive for most people and businesses. Many advances in efficiency were made over these decades for purposes of both pollution controls and more “MPG” or heat per log!