Homestead in the Suburbs - Brutvan Family

Marty and I went to high school together in Binghamton, NY and we remain in touch via the new modern technologies of facebook and twitter! Yeah for the internet reconnecting me with great friends from the past!

Written for NEW YORK HOUSE The Home and Real Estate Magazine for Smarter Living

Homestead in the Suburbs
by ANNE PYBURN CRAIG; PHOTOGRAPH BY FRANCE MENK

When Janine and Marty Brutvan’s twins were babies, the couple realized that moving out of their 500-square foot apartment in Westchester had become something of an emergency. What had been workable for a childless couple was verging on ridiculous for a new family of four.

“Lydia and Riley shared a crib for the first six months,” remembers Janine. “We knew we had to move—and move fast.”

Logistically, infant twins and active house hunting didn’t mesh well. A friend stepped up and did some of the legwork. “We didn’t even see this house before we put money down,” Janine says. “I was nursing the babies, on the phone with my friend while she toured the house and described everything she saw. And it turned out so wonderfully.”

Originally, the Brutvans thought they’d add onto the 1,700-square foot, two-story in Gardiner. But a book, Small Houses for a Better World, convinced them to avoid enlarging the footprint, focusing instead on renovations that would transform the logistics of the interior.

Almost six years later, the house and garage are topped by solar panels that supply the electricity and hot water. “We’ve made over 8,000 kilowatt hours of electricity,” says Janine happily, displaying sheets of paper covered in numbers. “At first, I was checking the meters every day and taking notes, just seeing how it worked.”

The couple worked with the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) to finance the solar installation (powernaturally.org), and found that a combination of low-interest loans and tax breaks melted a $52,000 project cost down to manageable size. A $20,000 loan at 2.75 percent, a $23,450 rebate from NYSERDA, and a $7,000 tax credit meant only $2,000 needed to be laid out.

Then Janine took it to the next level. “They estimated it would cover 70 percent of our electricity—so I got rid of the dryer and the microwave, and not only did it cover 100 percent, we got a $287 check. People should know there are great programs out there to help them with these things.”

“Some people want it to cost less than their current electric bill, which isn’t realistic right away,” Marty observes. “But in the longer term, it works out very well. This is our home and we’re going to raise our kids here, so for us it made perfect sense.”

The full basement, which provides a lovely playroom and stays naturally cool all summer with no help at all, harbors several of the family’s sustainability tools: a solar hot water system from Hudson Valley Clean Energy (hvce.com), a clotheslines for winter drying, a freezer neatly stacked with veggies and fruits, and a root cellar— a stairwell to the back yard in which totes packed with straw hold potatoes and squash. “I make all of our bread with grains from Wild Hive (wildhivefarm.com), and we belong to Phillies Bridge (philliesbridge.org) and Taliaferro’s (taliaferrofarms.com). And we leased our own apple tree at Liberty View Farms (libertyviewfarm.biz), and dried a whole bunch of apples—apple candy, the kids call it.”

Janine feels blessed by the community resources she keeps discovering, from those local CSAs (community supported agriculture) to low-VOC (volatile organic compound) furniture refinishing products at Green Courage in New Paltz (greencourage.com). Each New Year, she assesses the family’s progress and resolves to take one new step in the direction of sustainable living (it’s clear, however, that new ideas crop up between times—at one idea a year, Janine would be an extremely well preserved multi-centenarian).

Eating healthy has become, well, natural. “I had a mother who canned food herself, so it wasn’t a totally foreign concept—but I was a little nervous about it at first. It’s a learning curve. At this point, the vast majority of what we eat is local.”

In 2009, the twins will be joined by an adopted little sister, who will share in the fun—walks to the farm on a summer evening instead of drives to the supermarket, home schooling (Janine is a certified teacher), fair trade chocolate instead of Hershey’s, and birthday parties featuring organic cotton gift bags and themes like space, the ocean, and insects—no Disney here. Marty’s work in web design can be done from home, decreasing fossil fuel consumption and increasing togetherness, and the entire family—including the two rangy Weimeraners—finds that togetherness delightful.

Green as they are, some might expect the Brutvans to be a tad self-satisfied, but nothing could be further from the truth. “I’m constantly learning from everyone around me, and all I can say is, ‘here’s what works for me,’” says Janine. “It might not work for everyone, and that’s fine, too. But we really are finding that the ‘Green Triangle’ is a reality. If it’s good for the earth, it’s probably also good for your health, and good for your wallet. We don’t have all kinds of money to throw at this, but the idea that you need to be wealthy to live organic is a misperception.

“Bottom line: a lot of it is practical, and fun, too. Some tell me it doesn’t make a difference—it’s just a drop in the bucket. Well, they’re entitled to their point of view,” says Janine.

Bidding farewell to the polite, bright-eyed Brutvan kids, one might be just as entitled to reflect that a mighty river is simply a collection of drops.