If you feel like traveling a bit farther, all National Parks in the U.S. are offering free admittance during Earth Week.]]> My memoir of mountains and molecules called Breaking Trail: A Climbing Life describes how my life changed after Bruce Carson, a brilliant young climber and environmentalist, tragically fell to his death through a summit cornice on our expedition to Mount Trisul in India in 1975. Devastated by the loss, I decided to continue Bruce’s work of helping protect the world’s environment.]]> A long with Boulder landmarks like McGuckin Hardware and the Boulder Book Store, Alfalfa’s grocery remained a local standby for 13 years. Locals were crushed when the store, which pioneered the model for natural foods supermarkets, was bought by Wild Oats in 1996.]]> Rows of squash, beans, corn, broccoli, lettuce, potatoes and tomatoes are tended by apprentice farmers, coming out even on the recent blazing hot afternoons to plant seeds, pull weeds and cover potato plants in hay and dirt on a small farm off the Diagonal Highway near Niwot. The one-acre Everybody Eats! farm is planted on 3.5 acres of land leased from the Shepherd Valley Waldorf School.]]> Capsaicin positively affects internal conditions as well as external ones. It reduces triglycerides in the blood, speeds up cholesterol breakdown, and reduces the risk of internal blood clots that trigger heart attacks.]]> It`s high noon at Frog Belly Farm near Longmont, and the interns are busy tending newly born goats, chasing escaped piglets, checking beehives, picking and washing herbs and vegetables in addition to all the other daily chores, such as milking cows and goats, mucking out pens, feeding animals and preparing farm products.]]> “Everybody wants to be a beekeeper these days. Well, you don’t keep bees; you’re married to ‘em,” he says. “And not everyone wants to be married to bees. People think they’ll take care of themselves, but it’s not like hanging a birdhouse. It’s more like having a dog or a garden.]]> “I was a business major hired right out of college to work for the Federal Reserve,” says Nancy Anderson. “But when I had my daughter 25 years ago, I was looking for something I could do at home and be challenged. I was raised by a family that appreciated the nostalgic in antiques and crafts, and I had a big collection of bits and pieces.]]> The story that unfolds in the documentary Bitter Seeds, featured at the Boulder International Film Festival, is about farmers who wager it all on what are promised to be miracle seeds, but land dust and failed crops rather than a magic bean pole.]]> Sometimes we need the most literal of images to open our eyes. So it is with Kim Abeles’ art — she creates art with smog so viewers can see the dirty tracks of the way we live in clear outlines. She has enlarged often-overlooked lichen and given them eyes.]]> Heather Bailey is Boulder’s new czar of municipalization, and she knows a thing or two about regulatory agencies and cities running their own electric utilities.]]> Gov. John Hickenlooper has signed the “Local Foods, Local Jobs Act” into law, exempting small food producers who sell directly to their customers from having to use commercial kitchens and paying for health department inspections.]]> According to a recent article on the Marketplace website, “American consumers expect companies to address the full environmental impact of a product’s lifecycle, from the impacts associated with manufacturing the product (90 percent), to using it (88 percent), to disposing of it (89 percent).]]> In a sense, photographer Pete McBride has been preparing to make Chasing Water all his life. Raised on a cattle ranch in the Roaring Fork River Valley, he grew up working hay fields irrigated by the snowmelt that carved the Grand Canyon and slaked the thirst of the Southwest.]]>