Brian Cali believes in ripple effects. When he and his wife Sophie acquired a piece of land in Reading, Vermont, it was with the dream of creating a new net-zero home for their family. The piece of land includes a farmhouse built in 1782, a meadow across the road from the original house, and nearby forests. While working with an architect to conceptualize the new build, Brian and his wife Sophie inhabited the 1782 farmhouse. He began blogging about his “green dream” in 2021 to tell the story of the project, and kindly agreed to be interviewed for our own blog - though we encourage you to hear about it in his own words, and in much more detail, over at Green Dream Stories. 

“We definitely had net-zero in mind from the beginning…and then along that exploration I was also realizing that I was more and more drawn towards questions of sustainability and the built environment, and so I signed up for the Yestermorrow course. I actually heard about Yestermorrow from someone who inspired us with their own net zero renovation.” Brian enrolled in the 2021 Certificate in Building Science and Net-Zero Design to flesh out his design ideas for a new home which would be constructed in the meadow across the street from the farmhouse. In the feedback sessions, Brian’s idea for his “green dream” was turned on its head by one instructor, Michael Goetinck, who would go on to be involved with the project. Michael brought up a crucial point: “It is almost always true that retrofitting an existing building has less environmental impact than building a new one.”

After ruminating for a few days on this pivot, Brian and Sophie went all in on renovating the existing 1782 house in order to make the greenest home possible and to retain the features of the land he loves, such as the the meadow. At every turn, patience, flexibility, and learning from the current and former inhabitants of the land was paramount. In the spirit of learning from those who have gone before, our 2024 Certificate in Building Science and Net-Zero Design students visited Brian’s project in Reading. Part-education, part-inspiration, this visit allowed the current students to visualize the next steps and potential realities of their nascent designs. 

Brian explained, “As we lived into the space, we started to realize - I emphasized this definitely to the students - how important it is to take your time with a place and get to know it, because if you see it through the seasons then you see things you wouldn’t otherwise see. You can do a theoretical site map but there’s nothing like experiencing the wind and the light and the weather, and the animals that happen to go by and where their traffic patterns are….and do you really want to put a house in a meadow that you, and the other animals, love to walk to? So it was this whole process of going from that initial idea of building in the meadow to realizing it was possible to modify a 1782 farmhouse to be comparatively airtight, reasonably well thermally controlled, and moved toward net-zero.” 

Aside from retrofitting the farmhouse, Brian and Sophie worked with Bensonwood to construct a panelized addition to the home, complete with double-stud walls, dense-packed cellulose insulation, and fully electrified systems.  The students of the current class took many lessons away from the visit. One student recalled, “It’s a beautiful piece of land, and he’s been really intentional about how he’s interacting with the landscape and the history of habitation on that landscape. That meant that it was interesting to see and useful for the class to see because it wasn’t just a big house with a bunch of money being poured into it to make something state of the art - it's a pretty big house - but applicable concepts for the class.”

Brian hopes that his “green dream” becomes a respite for the community and a home where he and Sophie can age in place. They have already begun hosting retreats that focus on climate change and anxiety, and how we can move forward to address the challenges of today and tomorrow. Brian recognizes the privilege he’s had in creating this space, and ultimately hopes that by investing in a resilient, carbon-sequestering home others can take kernels of inspiration and make incremental change in whatever way they feel called to do so. “There’s a hemlock grove that’s just down the way here, and on Sunday morning of the retreat we ‘go to church,’;  we go sit in a circle in the hemlock grove, and the enviroment does the rest: the dappled light through the trees, the hawk that flies overhead, the sound dampening of all those needles on the ground, it’s just perfect. That’s nature’s gift to us. We’re trying to figure out different ways to use the land in ways to  get people in the reflective space that helps them find the path to thework they want to do.”

Ripples expand outwards in all directions, carrying momentum and energy. As our current students leave the Yestermorrow studio with their brains full of net-zero inspiration from Brian, our teaching team, their fellow students, and many others, we know that they are carrying that momentum forward. Each step creates change in accumulation. Each choice that we make that centers the land, its history, and its inhabitants leads us to creating a better, more sustainable world. Brian’s focus on telling his story and welcoming the community into his project will have untold effects on the future we build together.

Thank you to Brian and Sophie for sharing their Green Dream. 

Photos by Brian Cali.