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If anything can offer us hope for the future it will be an assembly of humanity that is representative but not centralized, because no single ideology can ever heal the wounds of this world. History demonstrates all too eloquently that no ideology has ever amounted to more than a palliative for any dire condition. The immune system is the most complex system in the body, just as the body is the most complex organism on earth, and the most complicated assembly of organisms is human civilization.
August 25, 2010, 7:32 AM
Filed under: Book Club
Filed under: Book Club
Somewhat depressing and somewhat inspiring, you decide.
If anything can offer us hope for the future it will be an assembly of humanity that is representative but not centralized, because no single ideology can ever heal the wounds of this world. History demonstrates all too eloquently that no ideology has ever amounted to more than a palliative for any dire condition. The immune system is the most complex system in the body, just as the body is the most complex organism on earth, and the most complicated assembly of organisms is human civilization.
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First independent permaculture job
In June Jon and I started our first independent permaculture design. We are designing a large circular key hole garden for some neighbors and additionally have plans to create permanent beds where we will plant berries and other edible shrubs and just north of these we have plans to plant several fruit and nit tree species. The “garden” will incorporate edible food forest systems as well as permanent beds that will support diverse concentrations of perennials and annuals. Our goal was to design something that was permanent and accessible, while being something that two people, who aren’t farming for a living, can manage on their own. Below are some pictures of the project in motion.
Reading
Guided by the Moon: Living in harmony with Lunar Cycles by Johanna Paungger and Thomas Poppe and thinking a lot about biodynamic farming… which is ” is a method of organic farming that treats farms as unified and individual organisms, emphasizing balancing the holistic development and interrelationship of the soil, plants, animals as a self-nourishing system without external inputs insofar as this is possible given the loss of nutrients due to the export of food.” As told by Wikipedia, or visit Rudolf Steiner’s Biodynamic website.
Adjustment
June 6, 2010, 2:37 PM
Filed under: Community
Filed under: Community
When people learn that I have recently moved out of NYC after a nine year residency to take up camp in rural Massachusetts they usually say, “That must be quite the adjustment.” And I say, “I haven’t really noticed.” Well, sometimes I feel this way. You see unlike some city dwellers I always had and never lost my lust for nature and all things green and simple. Being in one environment over another is not the issue, the challenge I see and feel at this present moment is accepting the two environments and working in between them. If environment shapes the mind how can I feel connected to both healthy nature and consumer driven pollution in a way where I can make a balance of the two?
My challenge has been to break free of the bubble syndrome; feeling as if my time spent in a beautiful, spiritually charged and community-minded place is not so disconnected to the boudaries that seperate it from the other world, or that parallel universe where there are people who don’t think about growing their own food and choose to shop at Walmart. When I am Earthlands I know I feel good about myself and the actions I take there, when I am away I feel differently about myself. I have to state this fact because it has been bothering me for the past month and I am in a place where I need to do something about it. This will probably happen through educating my friends as a start. My new life is no more of a bubble than my old life and the real bubble is this planet, a tiny speck in the universe. I’m going to start flushing out these ideas right here.
To start off I’d like to share what it is I am doing in this small rural town, as I get the feeling that even many people close to me don’t quite understand:
I am and have moved in the direction that has improved my quality of living by living on less. I am more dependant on those individuals that surround my immeadiate landscape and less so on those unknown entities that live outside my realm of understanding or power to connect with.
New Farmers
It’s been one month since Jon and I started working at Earthlands and in this month we’ve planted over an acre of vegetables and herbs to feed the Earthlands community. We had been training to be farmers for months and now we are putting what we learned into practice and feel pretty good about it. It’s not brain surgey, it’s growing food, plants want to grow. Someone said that to me once and while it does seem like a daunting task, growing enough produce to feed yourself and ten others, jumping right into the thick of it as we have done was probably the best solution to our fears.
We started everything there is to do with our small farm operation, and I mean everything just four weeks ago. In that time we have worked out the general planning; how much to plant of what, where and when, starting seeds, prepared beds using the no-till method and built up the soil with compost and sheet mulch as well as organized a small community csa-like structure. I am super excited to see what comes of our many hours spent in the gardens at Earthlands, but even more excited for next year becuase by then we will have learned what was done right and what needs to be done different and we will actually get to start our plants early and give away spare seedlings to friends as friends did for us.
Me weeding
A Friend wears his weeds
Jon praises the sun in the Porcupine Garden
View of Sun Ray Garden and Y2Y Garden
Jon brews Earthlands first batch of Rhubard Wheat beer on a rocket stove
New Blog
May 26, 2010, 1:36 PM
Filed under: Projects
Filed under: Projects
Check out my new blog site:
BLAME GAME CONTINUUM
Gulf Oil Spill, not another one.
The other night I had a conversation with some fellow community members about the BP oil spill that has devastated the Gulf and is likely to have long lasting detrimental effects on the coast’s ecosystems and people who make use of these. One member of the group stated that he hoped this would be the wake up call the US needed to understand our dependence on fossil fuels, over consumption and the unsustainable, that’s not sustainable as Timothy S. Bennett confirms in What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire, way we go about living. I agree maybe this will be a “wake up call”, but then again if all the other oil spills and mine collapses and paralyzing e. coli attacks haven’t “woken people up” yet, will this disaster make any difference?
Another voice spoke up amidst the group and suggested that if we only hope to ourselves that others will understand and acknowledge the struggles we face when conveniences that we rely on are the same means of our own destruction, then others will not get the message. So, we need to spread the message that yes, this spill and those even less noted in the news like the underground Mobile spill in Greenpoint, Brooklyn (my former abode) must be a wake up call. These atrocities are not going away and have a lot more to do with the way our culture refuses to admit its drug addiction to individualism and convenience than it does to a bad part on an oil rig. I am doing my first part and sharing the news that we need to wake up.
Local
Moving temporarily to a place where I would need a car turned out to be very stressful. I have not owned a car in over ten years (well I’ve never really owned a car until now, but lets just say I haven’t consistenly needed to drive a car since I was in high school). It was a good run that has now come to a close. This past week was an eye opener to how the other half lives. Cars are expensive, unreliable, dangerous and make a lot of pollution. I used to think they sucked, maybe I still do… but today I bought a car and I love my car… so far.
Moving temporarily to a place where I would need a car turned out to be very stressful. I have not owned a car in over ten years (well I’ve never really owned a car until now, but lets just say I haven’t consistenly needed to drive a car since I was in high school). It was a good run that has now come to a close. This past week was an eye opener to how the other half lives. Cars are expensive, unreliable, dangerous and make a lot of pollution. I used to think they sucked, maybe I still do… but today I bought a car and I love my car… so far.
What made the day my partner and I purchased our first car really cool aside from owning a piece of fancy expensive metal was a circumstance that made me realize something about my hometown where we made the purchase and this idea that local is good. Up until now we had been relying on my mothers car as my mode of transportation except the day we needed to officially get my insurance coverage and register the car that we then needed to pick up. That morning my mother’s car broke down and this only mode of transportation was out the window. But alas! We have bikes. Because we chose to buy a car at at a local used car dealer and also insure the car with a local insurance agency we were able to bike to both locations and turn in all the paperwork needed in order to have the car on the road for Monday, our first week of work.
I loved riding my bike to pick up my car. It’s a good reminder that even though I have the conveniences of a car now my bike will also serve me well for many local trips. My new hatchback also fits two bikes in it so I expect a lot of getting places via the wheel as well as the cycle.
