South Mountain Company

Things can Change in a Heartbeat

November 29, 2010 by John Abrams 8 Comments

WARNING: This post is really long. It’s a friggin’ tome. Enter at your own risk. It’s in two parts. The first is about trouble and recovery. The second is about the internal workings of an extraordinary place.

TROUBLE & RECOVERY

It was Saturday afternoon. Chris was cleaning the basement. I was lying on the bed, reading a book called Amish Grace, about the incredible ability of a group of Amish people to forgive and embrace the family of the guy who had mowed down their daughters in a one room schoolhouse.

Suddenly Chris burst into the room with a look of terror in her eyes.

“Something’s weird and wrong – really wrong – with my right foot.“ Her foot started to shake uncontrollably, then her hand and arm, and then everything went haywire.

Exits & Opportunities

November 23, 2010 by John Abrams 2 Comments

BO BURLINGHAM IS AN INC. MAGAZINE editor-at-large who has been writing about entrepreneurship for three decades. I know him; we have crossed paths several times. But I know him much better from his writing, which includes a fine book called SMALL GIANTS: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big (I have to admit here, sheepishly, and maybe arrogantly at the same time, that when I read that book I wished we had been included).

The November issue of INC., has a long piece by Bo called “What Am I, If Not My Business?” which is about the challenges entrepreneurs face in leaving their companies when they retire or sell. He is in the midst of writing a book about the subject.

Three Generations

October 26, 2010 by John Abrams 7 Comments

WHEN SOUTH MOUNTAIN BEGAN, in 1975, I was 26 years old. Most of our clients were twice my age. Now, 35 years later, our long-time client base is aging. They (and their cohorts) have been our primary source of work and referrals, and now we must appeal to the next generation. Can we? Do we? Will we be able to serve their needs and desires?

At least we have set the stage.

During the past decade we have hired and cultivated a superb cadre of younger people – in their twenties, thirties and early forties. Some of them have become owners. This helps us in many ways as we begin to transition to Generation Two, but will it help us appeal to the next generation?

The Long Hot Summer

October 5, 2010 by John Abrams 1 Comment

It’s been almost two months since I last posted here. It’s not that I didn’t have time, or that it flew by, or that I didn’t want to.It’s just that I wanted to say something that I wasn’t ready to say, and until I said what I wanted to say I didn’t want to say something else.

I wanted to look back at events of the early summer, but I was still “in them” and had no distance. Now we’re deep into autumn. The long hot summer is long gone. I’m far enough way. Enough distance.

Harvesting Potatoes and Wind Energy on PEI

August 11, 2010 by John Abrams Leave a Comment

My wife and I spent the last week of July relaxing at the southwestern tip of Prince Edward Island. There's not much there except a small harbor filled with lobster boats, a lighthouse, an inn, a restaurant (we stayed in a sweet little apartment above the restaurant - from our balcony we looked at the beach, the harbor, and the Northumberland Strait), endless cropland stretching to the horizon in every direction, and 55 giant wind turbines towering over the fields.

Madeline’s Solar House

June 30, 2010 by John Abrams 8 Comments

In 1980 a woman named Madeline Blakeley called me to ask me to look at a piece of land with her. She was a librarian in her early sixties whose husband had recently died. They had no children and had always lived in rented apartments. Her dream was to own a piece of property.

She had $7,000 in cash. A realtor showed her a lot priced at exactly that, but all her friends advised her against buying it. The property sloped steeply south to a beautiful little valley, a perfectly matched solar exposure and view. But it was right beside the main road from Vineyard Haven to Edgartown, which was very loud and loomed over the property. Except for that proximity and the fact that the whole lot was a hillside, it was a lovely site. There was nothing else on Martha’s Vineyard within her price range.

Read More about Madeline’s Solar House

For Better Or Worse

June 21, 2010 by John Abrams Leave a Comment

Several weeks ago my old friend Marc Rosenbaum arrived on Martha’s Vineyard. He often arrives on Martha’s Vineyard. For 20 years this distinguished, nationally recognized building performance engineer has been arriving here to consult with us – to help us make better buildings. For 30 years he has been responsible for some of the most advanced buildings in New England.

When he arrived here last Tuesday, it was different than most times.

Cheers & Tears . . .and Eliakim’s Way

May 25, 2010 by John Abrams 3 Comments

Cheers and tears. That’s the way of a Vineyard housing lottery.

On Tuesday, March 30^th, a standing room only crowd packed the meeting room at the Howes House. At stake: seven new LEED platinum houses at Eliakim’s Way off State Road in West Tisbury. There was a mix of nervous applicants, expectant children, public officials, and housing advocates.

In the front of the room David Vigneault and Terri Keech of the Dukes County Regional Housing Authority, lottery administrators, explained the process. A complex matrix of preferences and qualifications was so arcane nobody could actually understand it. The crowd chuckled when David finished his explanation and said, “Is that all clear?”

SMCo in the News

May 13, 2010 by John Abrams Leave a Comment

I’d like to share some nice press SMCo has received recently.

The first two are recent articles in local magazines about projects of ours.

The Gift that Goes on Giving

March 18, 2010 by John Abrams Leave a Comment

In the last post I talked about the upcoming Lake/Hodgson Deep Energy Retrofit open house. It was a big success, a perfect event. On a gorgeous blue-sky winter day we were joined by an enthusiastic crowd of 35-40.

The crew had done a stellar job readying up, and the placed looked about as pretty as a just-insulated house with no walls or ceilings can look!! The questions were intelligent, and it was instructive to see how a house at this stage – where everything is invisible – is a wonderful educational laboratory.

Afterward I received the following e-mail:

John,

Thanks again for the open house — very informative; inspiring, even. I don’t know how many clients would go for this profound rebuild instead of a new design/build, but, whether in a new or retrofit, the energy efficiency is impressive.

At Habitat, we’ve been building pretty good houses for an amazingly low price, thanks, in part to you. One of our homeowners came to us a few months after moving in and asked, “Our electric bill is $15 a month. Is that right?” Efficiency is the gift that keeps on giving.

Best regards,

Jon Snyder

Thanks for coming Jon. And everyone else too. Today it looks completely different – everything covered up with smooth plaster. You only get one chance to see the bones and the muscle.

Tough Work, Worthy Goals

February 26, 2010 by John Abrams 4 Comments

I rode the boat from the Vineyard to Woods Hole a few days back to see the energy efficiency work we’re doing to Katharine and George Woodwell’s house. George is the founder of the Woods Hole Research Center, where we are currently in the middle of construction of a major Deep Energy Retrofit of a large 1905 carriage house recently acquired by the center (the completed building will become office and meeting space for their expanding staff; they’re in the climate change business, so theirs is booming!).

Shop Class & Deep Energy

February 4, 2010 by John Abrams 4 Comments

In 1980, when Hurricane Bob ripped through Martha’s Vineyard, it tore down a big hickory tree alongside Humphrey’s Bakery in West Tisbury. We took the butt log, hauled it to our yard, and milled it into planks. Until a few months ago they sat on stickers somewhere deep in our wood storage building waiting for my son Pinto to make a rocking chair for me and my wife Chris.