I am Rosana Hart, Zana for short, and since I go by Zana mostly now, that’s how I’m signing my articles on this site. This is my site but it’s appropriate to say “about us,” because my husband Kelly Hart is an important behind-these-scenes factor.

This is a personal site — my life will work itself into the pages, inevitably. Here’s a bit of background.

Simple & Green Living, More or Less

Kelly and I met in the 70s when he was living in a remodeled school bus blocked up on a friend’s land by the ocean in California, and I was a librarian in Santa Rosa. Not only did I fall in love with him, but also with his alternative lifestyle. I soon moved in — the same day that a stripped-down upright piano went into the bus — and became a part-time reference librarian, allowing time for gardening in a parachute that cut out the persistent coastal winds, learning to make homemade bread, and other simple living joys. I was hooked, and it’s a good thing because Kelly has always been outside of the box in how he thinks about things.

Fast forward past the intentional community at Sunshine Camp in Forestville, where we lived with two of his sisters and their husbands, kids, and dogs, for about seven years. Fast forward past Kelly’s and my years of llama ranching in the mountains outside Ashland, Oregon, where I began self-publishing books and Kelly began self-publishing videos on llamas and on citizen diplomacy with Russia. Fast forward past our experiment in city life, in Olympia, WA, where I gave talks on voluntary simplicity and wrote a walking guide to the area. Fast forward past our years of living and traveling in a former Gray Line Hawaii bus that Kelly turned into a fabulous home.

Green Home Building and Mexico

The bus took us to Crestone, Colorado, where we — okay, mostly Kelly — built us an earthbag-papercrete house. Part of it is in the logo on top of these pages. He also turned a commercially purchased four-person bicycle into a solar vehicle. During this time, he became passionately involved in natural building which led to his creating several websites on different aspects of this topic.

I had a bee in my bonnet to spend time in Mexico, where I had first gone when I was a child. After several trips early in this century, we sold our earthbag house in Colorado. That got us out of having a mortgage, which has been lovely, I must say! Later we came across a sweet little two-room cabin near Lake Chapala, Mexico, with a tropical garden of banana, lemon, guayaba, lychee, pistachio, and other trees. We bought it and added several year-round organic vegetable garden beds. That’s where I am writing this from, though we do still own property in Crestone and consider ourselves residents there. Simple living sometimes involves complex choices. Hey, any living does!

On the logo above, that’s me with the squash wrapped around my neck, and the lake is Lake Chapala. I can see it from my desk, though it’s more of a peekaboo view. The little girl is a close friend. To her and her sister, and others who will inherit this world from us, I dedicate this website.

Our Websites

Kelly’s sites:
Greenhomebuilding.com covers all aspects of natural building. It’s a huge site, with lots to explore.

Earthbagbuilding.com is a site Kelly and our friend Dr. Owen Geiger run together, on all aspects of building with earthbags worldwide.

Dreamgreenhomes.com sells ecological house plans designed by Kelly and others.

Sunvee.com shows the solar car he invented.

Which-hobbit.com describes and sells an ebook Kelly wrote, Which Hobbit Lives Here? Reflections on Society and Sustainability.

My sites are on a wider range of topics. Here are my main ones:

Training-dogs.com is about positive, pain-free methods of dog training. The current action is all on the blog at training-dogs.com/blog/

Mexico-with-heart.com is a far-ranging site about living and traveling in Mexico. The blog is where I mostly write nowadays: mexico-with-heart.com/blog/