Sustainability and Local Agriculture in the News

A beautiful garden in Arundel, Maine

It is refreshing to see the growing interest and focus on sustainability in both print and broadcast media. In a society where so much of our news can be sensationalistic tripe, it's nice to get some good news on occasion. Local public radio stations and college stations across the country and around the world now have regular sustainability features. Sustainability podcasts are growing in both popularity and availability, and print media are regularly featuring articles on local and sustainable aquaculture, agro-forestry and agriculture.

A recent article in The Weekly Sentinel showcases the work of the students and teachers at the School Around Us in Arundel, Maine as they engaged in a three day hands on workshop on sustainability that created a temporary eco-village in a wooded area near the school. I recently graduated my permaculture design course with a mom of one of the school's students, and during the course had the opportunity to tour the school and surrounding community with some of the permaculture pioneers in our area. I was deeply impressed and motivated by the work that is being done there at the school and at nearby Frinklepod Farm, which is run by one of the school's early students and son of the founders of School Around US. 

Interdependence. Abundance. Resilience. Sustainability. These are all phrases that we think about when we engage in practicing the permaculture ethics of earth care, people, care, and fare shares. In backyards all around us, gardens are becoming popular again and chicken coops are popping up. It should perhaps be little surprising then when we see more an more articles dedicated to the glories of sustainable local agriculture. Of note, in this line, an article by Craig Idlebrook in the July/August 2014 issue of Northern New England Journey titled "The Egg and I"  extols the virtues of backyard egg operations in Maine and how a serendipitous stop at one such operation lead him to discover the wonders of farm fresh eggs and made him a life long fan. It is a charming article and ends with a reminder about the rewards of supporting local agriculture. Hats off to you Craig for this nostalgic and heartwarming piece. In recognition of your support of local agriculture, I would be happy to present you with a dozen eggs free of charge should you stop by my farm stand some day. 

Until next time - "Deep peace of the sleeping stones to you"

What I Did for Mother's Day - Hugel Happiness

My son could not believe his ears. He had to ask me again just to be sure. "You really don't want me to buy you anything for Mother's Day? You're sure?" I assured him that agreeing to help me build a hugelkultur bed was going to be more than enough for a Mother's Day gift. I'm not sure he really believed me until he spent 4 hours in the 70 Degree sun this passed Sunday building my beautiful hugelkultur bed. 

First the base of the bed. In the fall we had laid down cardboard and topped that with our corn and sunflower stalks. Then we added our yard clippings and dried leaves. Over the winter we added our kitchen scraps. On top of all this we laid a lot of wood from standing dead trees that we had to take down for safety. Then we began to cover it with a load of loam that we had brought in. 

We haven't been  working our land long enough yet to have developed a large pile of well composted material for making top soil. My guys were handy carting all that soil. And this is when my son realized just what he'd got himself into. We were about 3 hours into the project at this point. I was in there wielding the shovel and hauling logs too, but I did have to pause occasionally to take the photos.

My Guys! They worked so hard!

In this last photo we are about half done with burying the woody debris. It's not quite finished yet, but we made a lot of progress. It still needs some top dressing with additional soil, compost and a good layer of straw mulch. We are going to plant medium bush blueberries on top of this mound. On the south facing side we will have sun loving strawberries, and on the north facing side we will grow shade loving greens. I can't wait to see what kind of yields we get. This and the fledgling orchard that you may notice to the right of the hugelkultur bed in some of these photos are some of our first steps toward our permaculture perennial food forest and garden. 

I will continue to post photos as the food forest progresses. Until next time - Live Light!

Today I'm Thankful For...

I am very thankful that I have a partner who is as excited and interested in permaculture as I am. Not everyone is lucky enough to have someone as supportive as him in their lives. He is always supportive of my efforts to save the planet, stray animals or a dollar. He recently spent a great many hours building bird houses and a bee house to attract the birds and the bees to our garden so that we could grown our own food without having it devoured by insects. He also bought me several geraniums and other herbs and plant seeds 

which I can inter-plant in our garden and under our fruit trees to discourage harmful insects and invite beneficial insects to the garden. 

I am also thankful for the members of my permaculture class who are organizing a plant swap for our final PDC weekend. I now that I will be able to get some lovely perennial plants which will be of great use in the garden.

I am particularly greatful for all the valuable knowledge I am gaining from my permaculture class, which is helping me to turn my once run down, bedraggled lawn into something worth bragging about. I now have a budding orchard of semi-dwarf fruit trees, a ten foot diameter herb garden right outside the door that produces nearly all the herbs we can eat, eight industrious little hens that provide us with more organic eggs than we can consume and a pair of charming ducks that we hope will help to control the slug population in our yard while providing hours of amusement to the other two and four legged inhabitants of the homestead. All in all I think I'm a pretty fortunate human being today. I just wanted to take this opportunity to express my gratitude for all the blessings that I have. I am also grateful for each of you who take the time to read my ramblings. I hope that I am able to provide you with something that is of value to you. Today, I am hopeful that you are able to take a few moments to reflect on what you are grateful for. As spring turns to summer and we begin to spend more time out in nature, I hope you will take some time to reflect on how fortunate ware are to have so many beautiful places that we can enjoy and experience the beauty of. Let's all work to keep them beautiful by remembering to live lightly.

When Will We Learn?

If the spike in fiery train derailments doesn't get us to start seriously rethinking our dependence on fossil fuels, I don' t know what will. Yet another today in Lynchburg, Virginia. So what do we do?

Some steps that we can take (this is only the tip of the iceberg, there are so many more)

• Decreasing our use of fossil fuel generated electricity by: changing to LED lighting, turning down the heat, eating more raw foods, putting lights on timers, using energy efficient appliances, reducing our reliance on electricity by hanging clothes to dry, washing clothes in cold water, and on and on. There are many great websites on reducing electricity consumption. A quick internet search will turn up dozens.
• Converting our electricity production to a non-centralized distributed grid powered by alternative energy sources.
• Converting our home heating systems to non fossil fuel systems. 
• Becoming a one car family
• Car pooling and or using public transportation
• Negotiating work from home arrangements with employers for at least part of the work week or changing employment to something closer to home.
• Reducing our use of products which are derived from petroleum. This takes some effort, research and label reading. As you know most plastics are derived from petroleum, but what some people don't realize is that many chemicals including those in our pharmaceuticals are also derived from petroleum. Other materials that contain petroleum derivatives include clothing, fertilizers, building materials, cosmetics, the list goes on, but one that might surprise you-petroleum by products can even be found in your FOOD! That's right there are petroleum by products in some food preservatives. See a PARTIAL list of products here.

Some of these steps are not easily achieved, but they are worth aiming for and they are worth working toward. Every step we take in the direction of reducing our dependence on fossil fuels is a step in the right direction and buys mankind another minute of breathing freely and living well on planet earth. 

Live light my friends!

PS. I don't care what they tell you Fracked Natural Gas is NOT the solution to oil. It is just a different path down the road to destruction. 

Follow Me - Contest - Big Announcement

Pictured above is the cover of "Cool Cuisine; Taking the Bite Out of Global Warming" by Laura Stec. It is both cookbook and handbook in one. This book teaches about the science behind Global Warming and how our food choices impact our planet's health and well being. There are also a number of fun, fabulous, healthy and planet friendly recipes. A good read and great resource. The companion website http://www.globalwarmingdiet.org/ is also a great resource for information on climate change.

This post is a blatant attempt to increase readership, and why not, it's all for a good cause. I have a big announcement coming up and I want to be sure that the news gets out to as many people as possible. It's going to be brilliant, amazing, fabulous and fun!

So,  here is what I propose. I have 5 copies of this fabulous book to give away. If you would like to have your name in the drawing, please subscribe to this blog and please send me an email at awensdaughter@gmail.com to let me know that you are subcribing and would like to have your name in the drawing. Also, if you share this post with friends and they subscribe and email me letting me know that you shared the post with them I will put them in the drawing and also add your name in again for each time  someone says you recommended them. And if they invite friends who do the same I will do the same for them, and so on. So everyone who subscribes gets their name in and they get their name in again for every person who drops their name as the one who invited them. Winners will be selected by random drawing on the day of the big announcement. Email addresses will be used only for selecting and notifying winners. If you would like to be added to my mailing list for other notifications and announcements please put that into your message. Your information will never by sold or shared with anyone else. 

Please share this with as many people as possible. And, due to the nature of the announcement, please share with your friends oversees as well. Let's aim high. Stay tuned here for contest updates and for the big announcement. 

And remember:

 "Travel light, live light, share the light, be the light."

                                                                                       Yogi Bhajan

UPDATES!! Be sure to check the comments for updates on this post. Thanks!

Years of Living Dangerously

A new ShowTime series examines the causes and impacts of climate change. While I may not agree with every opinion expressed in this show, I have to say that it definitely gets you to thinking about the impacts of human habitation and activity on the planet's ecosystems. It also examines the social impacts of climate change from poverty to, corruption to war.  And it looks into the future and the further impacts of these changes on our environment and climate as we progress through the current century. Please take the time to watch the premier which is available free online at this link http://yearsoflivingdangerously.com/

I find that I can still be shocked by the unbelievable willful destruction of our beautiful wild places for no better reason than greed! Perhaps worse than the greed is the apathy and ignorance of our own individual daily choices.  We need to examine our own choices and start holding the corporations that supply our daily needs to task for the actions that they take. We need to exercise our votes in the voting booth but also in the market place. We need to be informed so that we can understand what impact our lifestyles and daily choices are having on our potential future and the potential future of humanity as a whole.

Return of Surplus - First Fruits

Today I was going to do a post on movements moving together, and I'll come back to that, because I think it is important but this morning, while feeding the compost, I was inspired to share with you an experience I had a few years ago while picking blackberries.

One of the permaculture ethics is "fair share", also referred to as "return of surplus" both terms imply several things. They imply, take only what you need and, when you have more than you need, share it with others in your community. They also imply that we should give or leave a fair share for mother earth and that we should  share the knowledge of this practice with others. If we only take and take from mother earth and never give back or replenish the soil, eventually it will be unable to produce more food to sustain us. Think of industrial agriculture as strip mining of top soil...but again I digress, we are talking about return of surplus and first fruits (and we'll come to those blackberries by and by.)

For a time we had a small bowl on our dining room table. Before a meal each of us would place a small offering from our plates into the bowl. We would also pour a small amount of our water or juice into the bowl and we would mention one thing that we were feeling thankful for that day. After the meal we would be take it out and poured it on the earth as an offering and a thanks. I miss that bowl. I want to bring it back. It is a connection to our earth that we too easily forget and it is a good reminder of thankfulness practice, which is so important in our hectic day-to-day lives. It is also a reminder that we need to think about serving the earth BEFORE we think about serving ourselves. And this brings me back to those blackberries. 

Several years ago I was out picking blackberries. There were some amazing, large, delicious, juicy fruits. I wanted to eat them all. But then I got to thinking, if I eat all of the very best berries then it will be the small, bitter and pour producing plants that reproduce and after some years all that I would have on my land would be nasty little berries that no one would really want to eat unless they had to. Now blackberries being so prolific and birds being what they are, there isn't really a very great danger of that happening too quickly, but the principle still applies and more so with other more tender, less prolific plants. And this is when I had the Aha! moment. I realized that many scriptures and folk wisdom advocate giving back the first fruits. The first fruits would be early ripening, they would also likely be some of the best. It makes complete sense. If we are going to save seed, we choose the best fruits so that we propagate the best of the specimen that we want to preserve. So seed saving is also a way of giving fair share back to the earth. But the idea here is that we need to think of giving FIRST and that we may need to make some sacrifice, but that whatever small sacrifice we make will be more than paid back by the continued fertility and fecundity of the earth.