To all those who ever doubted the healing power of chocolate: Behold Dagoba’s new collection of elixirs, chocolatey-sweet liquid extracts infused with herbs like elderberry and damiana and yerba mate. Packaged in little glass bottles straight from the apothecary, each tincture blends cacao with a special herbal formula created to achieve a certain health effect (e.g., higher energy or an antioxidant boost).

My favorite: the Clarity elixir, featuring gotu kola, ginkgo biloba, hawthorn berry, and ginger root. Taken a few drops at a time, the blend brings on a calming sensation similar to a shot of Rescue Remedy. And the cacao-rich flavor seems to cure chocolate cravings as well.

And when you’re in need of a more substantial hit of healing chocolate, break off a piece of the new bars from Dagoba’s Apothecary line. The Antioxidant bars get their super powers from organic goji berries and cherries and blueberries, while the Clarity bars are laced with fantastic chunks of organic crystallized ginger (plus more of the gotu kola, ginkgo, and hawthorn berry found in the liquid extract).

With the 4-bar and elixir set, you get two ounces of tincture and a bunch of bars all tied together in a lovely silk bag. Might make a yummy Mother’s Day gift, especially for eco-savvy moms: In addition to sustainably sourcing all its cacao, Dagoba buys renewable energy credits to offset 100 percent of the energy use at its facility.

Serving up a juicy ham at Easter brunch may not seem like the best way to protect an endangered breed of pig. But when you buy a Blackwater Farms Heritage Ham, you’re helping the Dalevale, Mississippi-based farmers to preserve the Tamworth, an “outdoorsy and athletic” pig driven to near-extinction by agribusiness’s method of cross-breeding livestock to generate cheaper meat.

Known to produce the best bacon in the nation, Tamworth pigs are direct descendants of wild boars. Blackwater Farms raises their Tamworths on pasture and feeds them locally grown and ground grains, vegetables, and fruits, declaring that “chemicals simply do not exist” on their farm. (And if you visit their website, please note the “Our Animals Don’t Do Drugs!” banner on every page.)

Like purchasing an heirloom tomato, buying heritage meats supports the farmers who are working to sustain breeds that might otherwise have no chance of surviving. And if you don’t dig on swine, check out Heritage Farms Fresh Turkey and Heritage Foods USA’s lamb, bison, and beef.

The Ramsay Home Project started out as a blog from a family building its own green home from scratch; it’s now become much more than that – a great resource for anyone even thinking about taking on that particular challenge.  Recently the Ramsay folks pointed towards another “great home building blog” Paso Straw Bale Construction Blog, “In the year 2000 I started straw bale dream house that would be ecologically sound, environmentally friendly, and a place to finally call home,” Lesliehm says.  “In choosing Dave Exline/Three Little Pigs Construction, I ventured into house building hell.  This is the story of the building of that house. The story of what happens when you trust someone you should not. The story of bad decisions, poor quality work, and lack of accountability. The story of what it takes to salvage what was once thought unsalvagable.”  Sadly typical, home-buildilng-types tell us…but this one has a happy ending.

Ladielizzie of Green Is The New Black, a green blogger in the UK’s West Midlands, has great things to say about an unusual new book, Leo Hickman’s A Life Stripped Bare.   Leo, a journalist for The Guardian, was challenged to live a “more ethical lifestyle,” and even had three “ethical auditors” to examine every aspect of his (and his family’s) life.  It was a world-changing experience, and one that he chronicles with wit and insight, all the way from cleaning his bathroom with lemon juice and bicarb to receiving ecoballs in the mail, getting worms, and following his garbage all the way down the Thames just to see where it ends up.  “It’s all highly entertaining and enlightening,” Ladielizzie tells us.  Well worth the read…

Easy Ways to Save the World is a fine collection of practical tips and products that make green living not only possible, but pleasant. Matthew’s info-packed site includes personal recommendations and advice on a wide range of products, like the Ban Beater, a home gray-water system that helps you recycle water quickly and easily.

Cathryn Symons is Camden Kiwi, a New Zealander living in the wilds of Camden in the UK who blogs about green living an life in general…and she’s found a new love.  “Okay,”  she admits, “I know I shouldn’t succumb to the joy of gadgets, but this one is very seductive. My new Vodafone 1605 (aka. HTC TyTN) phone / PDA / baby laptop / camera / dictaphone thingy arrived last Tuesday, and it is amazing. So far, I’ve used it to take photos, make a blog entry, scribble some notes, wake me up on time, send a few emails, keep my contacts and appointments and even to make phone calls. I haven’t yet figured out how to get it to feed the cat, but I’m sure that function is in there somewhere.”

Rob J. Hopkins’ Transition Culture is an “evolving exploration into the head, heart, and hands of energy descent,” and among his many fascinating topics is spreading the word about the cob house. As one of Rob’s rec, The Cob Cottage Company, explains, “Cob building uses hands and feet to form lumps of earth mixed with sand and straw – a sensory and aesthetic experience similar to sculpting with clay. Cob is easy to learn and inexpensive to build. Because there are no forms, ramming, cement or rectilinear bricks, cob lends itself to organic shapes: curved walls, arches and niches. Earth homes are cool in summer, warm in winter. Cob’s resistance to rain and cold makes it ideally suited to cold climates like the Pacific Northwest, and to desert conditions.” Rob also recommends The Handsculpted House by Ianto Evans, Linda Smiley and Michael G. Smith. It’s “the most compassionate, human and grounded book on building in print. It was the first book I read on building that completely resonated with my thinking on how construction should be about so much more that just shelter making. Buildings, the authors argued, should be so beautiful that they make grown men cry. Amen to that (and the colour photos in the middle are testament to cob’s ability to do just that).

Worthwhile is more than just a magazine – it’s a whole media company that believes “ it’s impossible to have a meaningful life without meaningful work.” The whole venture is built for people “seeking a more personally fulfilling and socially responsible route to business success.” And Worthwhile has a group blog, Out of Our Minds, that covers everything from sustainability to passionate work to making a difference and more. On line and on paper, it’s – wait for it! – worthwhile.

Curt Rosengren calls himself a “passion catalyst”, and that’s a term that ThisNext understands well: someone who allows each of us to find and live their passion. He also blogs two or three different places, including The Sustainable Future, where he gives insighs on living a green life that’s both fulfilling and practical. Much of the advice is the simple stuff that we all forget: using the library instead of buying magazines, finally getting the low-flow showerheads and – as shown here – insalling occupancy sensors that automatically turn off lights when there are no humans at home. It’s good, solid advice (and mostly stuff we all should have done already).

Reden Rodriguez does a good job of drawing together and commenting on many of the current issues, products, and political challenges in establishing renewable energy as the (only) way to the future. Recent entries in Renewable Energy covered the global effort to ban the (incandescent) bulb, hybrid theory, a reading list of books for a globally warming summer (like The Rising: Journeys in the Wake of Global Warming by Tom Pollock and Jack Seybold, shown here) and the icky but possible technology of deriving electrical power from…umm…human urine. Good info here, yes, but ewww…

Tim Willard of The Future is Green stands apart from many other ‘green news’ blogs in one very good way: he is relentlessly positive. In just the last few days, he’s summarized and referred to articles about new processes to make cheaper ethanol, how the demand for organic food is now so great it’s outstripping supply, that California is about to build the largest solar power plant in the world, about breakthroughs in using the tides to generate powers, and the remarkable concept, touted by the city’s mayor, that Chicago should become the world’s greenest city.

Whenever we feel weighed down by the bad news from every quarter, this blog reminds us of the inevitable: the future MUST be green (or there may not be a future at all).

Photo credit: Mike Gustafson 

Path to Freedom is subtitled “Pioneering a Journey Towards Self-Sufficiency…One Step at a Time”, and Jules Dervais is a good as his word.  For five years now, he has documented each step of his urban homesteading project, from gardening to roofoing to food choices.  Among the many insights here is a lengthy and always-growing list of product picks (a little hard to find, but worth the search), including individula products and whole on-line stors and shopcasters that have helped on the long and continuing journey … like Gardener’s Supply, which has helped with his gardening in a variety of ways…including offering classic products like this watering can (one of their biggest sellers).  You’ll learn plenty — practically and personally — from PTF.

Laura, Mattie, and baby Maxie put together a daily dose of great green products for urban living in this busy and straightforward blog.  Up right now: a hot beverage cup made from all-natural materails with a lining made from a bio-plastic made of renewable resources.  (And the used cups break down into water, carbon dioxide, and organic matter.)  Green Mountain Coffee Roasters and International Paper just announced it, and Urban Eco is one of the first to make it known.  Of course, they’re always one of the firstest with the mostest, greenly speaking.

The mindful life — living, consuming, behaving in an intentional way — requires a certain amount of conscious and careful thought.  One great place to go for inspiration and innovations is the group-blog The Inspired Protagonist.  The proragoniosts lead fascinating lives, traveling around the world (recent stops: Portugal, the Amazon, Camel’s Hump, Vermont) , “reaching out, to inspire the few who will inspire the many, bringing wealth and well-being to all who live and are about to live (seven generations) on the planet.”  Whether it’s about the environment, equity and justice, wellness or corporate responsibility, they have something important to say and show…like this recent examination of Peter M. Senge’s Presence: Presence: An Exploration of Profound Change in People, Organizations, and Society.  It’s heady, challenging stuff…and it can change your life (and the lives of those around you).

You’d think that a blog with as serious a name as Organic Researcher would be focused rounding up all the newest  facts, figures, advances and scientific data supporting an organic lifestyle.  And that’s exactly what this blog by Matt Reed of the UK is, covering everything from big food companies in small communities, the end of McDonalds in the UK (!), new info on organic milk, and insights on what to eat, what to read, and how to get involved. 

But Matt also has a sense of humor, and when he came across this on-line video The Meatrix, he said, “ts back, its brilliant, you’ve just got to love it,”  And you do…

Josh Dorfman is the founder and CEO of Vivavi, Inc., a megapopular green design shopping site…but he’s much more.  He also has a XM Satellite Radio show on green living and maintains a lively blog, The Lazy Environmentalist, that promos the radio show and provides a zillion links to eco-entrepreneurs, green companies, eco-thinkers and much, much more.  A great way to get and stay corrected in a multitude of media.

The Ramsay Home Project started as this nice little idea: build an energy-efficient green home from the ground up — and blog about it as you go.  It’s now become the nexus of great information on doing it yourself, from product recommendations to design issues and legislative roadblocks to words of warning about unscrupulous contractors…and that’s just the beginning.  Among the many bits of great advice, you can learn about Logix Insulated Concrete forms — energy-efficient ‘building blocks’ great for green architecture — and learn the whole story about how the Ramsays found ‘em, the company the makes ‘em, and why they’re so great.  They’ve even got a bookstore of their own, so they can spread the word about what they learn in pure ThisNext style.

Kevin Kennedy lives wayyyy up north in Yellowknife, NWT, Canada…but the challenges he faces to build a sustainable lif are just as great as anyone urb an dweller’s. Clay and Wattles, his cheerful and sometimes relentless blog, focuses on the day-to-day issues of green living – everything from building (or buying) a bike-rack that actually works through the logistical jungle of rainwater harvesting to the building of a pet waste digester (with inspiration and photos taken from City Farmer). Kevin says, his “sustainable living diary” is just his way of “systematically improving my family’s environmental footprint and having a conversation with others about how to live a ecologically and socially conscious life in the north.” Such is life on the tundra….

Tracy Stokes is one busy leader of the green. Not only did she have the highly popular TreehuggerMom blog, she also co-founded Little Green House (which we’ve mentioned before) and is co-founder of Eco Street, a packed-tight informational blog that gives you a hundred tips a day (it seems) on green living. Just a scan of the last few entries tells you about Treeflights.com, where you can have a tree planted in a Welsh forest for every plane flight you take, a great new book from Mark Batty publishing on Green Design, and EcoSystem, a next-generation energy-efficient PC from Jinglehorse. Not to mention a list of links to other green websites that’s awesome in its length and depth. Sometimes it can be hard to keep up with Tracy…but it’s always well worth trying.