Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
As the guest last week of Zurich University of the Arts I set the following task to a group of sixteen masters students: “Create the plan for a social harvest festival that will reconnect Zurich with its natural ecosystems and grassroots social innovators.”
The idea was to demonstrate, in practice, and at a city-wide scale, how to combine the low-energy design principles of permaculture, with the metabolic energy of social innovation.
These overview books on starting up a smallholding/homestead/small farm/urban sustainable oasis are often the first books any of us come to, precisely because we need that encyclopedic breadth so badly – eventually we may need to know more about growing melons or delivering a calf or butchering a rabbit or canning pickles – in fact, most of us end up with specialist books on all these things. But at first the best of these books give you a picture of the whole range of the work you are entering into – and that’s what a lot of us need.
Let’s not be shy about the matter; the dominant picture of agriculture in this country is pretty grim. Set upon the foundations of unequal land distribution, the expansion of neo-liberal policies into agriculture since the 1950′s have accounted for a halving of agricultural employment, the systematic industrialisation of farming techniques, the consolidation of larger farms and the tightening of corporate control on food markets. We have been left with an economy in which new entrants to farming can expect to pay up to £10,000 an acre for land but receive less than 10% of the money spent on food by consumers.
These days, looking to future resilience often means looking backward, to when families and communities did more things themselves. Prepping old school style is the key to peak oil not hitting quite so hard in your own life. That’s why vegetable gardening needs to become a four-season activity for resilience-minded preppers.
Parts 3 and 4 of Fleeing Vesuvius, “New Ways of Using the Land” and “Dealing with Climate Change,” focus mainly on local and national strategies for reducing fossil fuel use (both to conserve fossil energy and reduce carbon emissions).
How can fossil fuels and uranium be kept in the ground and agrofuels off the land in ways that do not inflict suffering upon millions? Mainstream policy responses to these issues are largely framed in terms of “energy security”.
Fresh, crusty, tasty, perfect artisan bread may seem like an exotic offering that’s beyond the scope of the average person. Let me emphasize that that is simply not true.
Fred Kirschenmann has been involved in sustainable agriculture and food issues for most of his life. He currently serves as both a Distinguished Fellow at the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University, and as President of the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in Pocantico Hills, New York. He is the author of a book of essays which track the development of his thought over the past 30 years; Cultivating an Ecological Conscience: Essays by a Farmer Philosopher, published by the University of Kentucky Press. In this TedX talk given at the Glynwood Institute for Sustainable Food and Farming, he tells us what good soil has to do with producing good food.
I knew I needed a secret crying place when my mother died. We were living the suburban life then, but had managed to turn our big backyard into a kind of secluded garden with a chicken coop at the center of it. I would sit on an overturned bucket in the coop, hidden from everything except the chickens, and weep with abandoned, remembering my mother, who was always singing. The chickens would cock their heads sideways, staring as only chickens can do, and maybe sing a little too, as if to comfort me.
Where once American plowmen had merely to contend with unpredictable weather, infertile soil, inaccessible water supplies, poverty, accidents and disease, today’s food producers face a further cornucopia of sophisticated and bewildering attacks from all sides. That fewer than one percent of Americans want to wrestle a crop from abused soil, while attempting to anticipate how global warming or ailing honeybees may thwart them, should surprise no one.
Windrush Farm in Chileno Valley, California stands as one of our communities most endearing fiber and farming hubs. Founded in 1995 by Mimi Luebbermann, the farm grew from an intention of living simply, farming fiber, and functioning as a quiet space for Luebbermann’s longstanding writing career. The farm has since become a destination for Bay Area spinning and knitting groups, seasonal craft fairs, and during the summer the place is transformed by Luebbermann and her son Arann Harris, into the “best home-grown, grass-fed, tree-climbing, organically-run, farm camp around”… for a host of children from the surrounding area.
Ooooby began in December 2008 on Waiheke Island, Auckland, as an online social network of food gardeners. An evolving project, it now also facilitates the distribution of locally grown food. Ooooby has (in May 2011) 3,600 members, 10,000 monthly visitors, 50 local suppliers and 150 weekly customers. Each month an Oooobyversity evening is hosted in Grey Lynn, Auckland, to share knowledge about food-growing and ways to enhance local production.
