Green Living: Life of a BoBo running an organic wine company
Colleen Stewart is one of growing number of BoBos or "bourgeois bohemians" with a job and home many would envy -- she runs hospitality and wine tastings at an organic wine company in California and lives in a wood cabin.
After hosting a dinner for 70 wine distributors from New York at the Bonterra vineyard in Mendocino, Stewart heads home to her 700 square foot cabin on a heavily wooded, old ranch in the hills west of Ukiah, the capital of Mendocino County.
The 5,000 acre ranch was subdivided into 250 acre plots in the 1970s and quickly filled with "a migration of San Francisco hippies who wanted to go back to the land, live off the land."
"I was influenced by that culture, wanting to grow my own vegetables and become as self reliant as possible," said Stewart.
One of the bye-laws, actually called covenant code restrictions, is that you live organically. Other restrictions are: No use of toxic chemicals, No commercial logging, No mining, No hunting.
"Most people up here follow them because that's how they want to live," said Stewart. "There is a noise limit also, but sometimes that is difficult to control. If someone is noticed abusing the "codes" a group of neighbors will talk with them and that's usually the end of it."
Living this way, it's easy to be eco.
"When you don't have a garbage company and take your own trash in you become more conscious about what you are putting in your garbage," she said.The house is small which makes it easier to heat -- a large room downstairs with a wood burning stove and a bedroom upstairs. Electricity is from solar panels, and water from a well.
LIFESTYLE SPENDING
"It's the old mentality of frugality," says Ted Ning, CEO of Lohas, a Boulder, Colorado marketing company specializing in sustainable living and organic health.
"My grandparents, for example, are green -- buying just the minimal amount, only what you need, was instilled into them based on their experience with the depression, and you see that now with the oil prices, or moving from Hummers to Hybrids."
Stewart drives a Prius, the new hybrid saloon vehicle from Toyota which runs on electricity when the batteries are charged and switches to gasoline when the battery power runs out.
Ning said Stewart was a typical BoBo or "bourgeois bohemian," a new marketing category of consumers willing to pay a higher price for products in line with their values.
"Studies have shown they are willing to pay up to 20 percent more," said Ning.
The Natural Marketing Institute, another eco-marketing organization says BoBos are now at least 13 percent of the overall adult market in the United States.
The segment spans age groups. At the Greenfield Ranch there are people of 30 plus now wanting to settle there but Stewart said it was hard to get in unless their parents are land owners.
"I love the solitude. I cannot see anybody's home from mine; I'm surrounded by forest and there's really no hunting so there's an abundance of wildlife: raccoons, skunks, bobcats, Mountain Lions, white deer that almost look like goats," said Stewart.
Stewart lives there alone but feels safe.
"My biggest concern is rattlesnakes ... I wear cowboy boots when I'm out working in grassy areas."