Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Some of the things we try, in an effort to re-localize our lives, will yield a bumper crop. Some will put on lots of leaves but no fruit. Others will refuse to germinate at all, no matter what we do. Thatās why diversity is so bloody important, mono-culturists be damned.
-Prospects for a viable food future
-Introducing the Permaculture Designersā Manual, Chapter 1: Introduction to Permaculture
-Why We Need a New Green Revolution to Stop Hunger
-Food Sovereignty: Reconnecting Food, Nature and Community
-UN warned of major new food crisis at emergency meeting in Rome
It’s only in imaginary worlds — like those inhabited by today’s mainstream economists, for example — that every animal you will deal with as a gardener is a source of value to you. The key to dealing with those that aren’t, once again, starts with a grasp of the principles of ecology. The Archdruid explains.
Our ancestors experienced the myriad relationships involved in food production on a small, local scale. Until recently, we had lost that sense of relationship-an awareness, however fleeting, that the most heartfelt food chain is not the biological one, but the one that connects us with the community of life on earth.
These cooking devices rely only on power from the sun and are built entirely with materials indigenous to Bolivia. It is the kind of solution that embodies many of the elements necessary to really get to work solving climate changeālocal, small-scale, incorporating indigenous knowledge and materials, and with simple, easy-to-use technology.
Chip Haynes, longtime online peak oil writer, has taken the unusual step of creating a beginnerās guide, broken down into 101 chapters of between 400 and 500 words. With at least one cheesy gag in each chapter.
“There are enough people talking about growing food, but not enough growers.” Suddenly, my mostly sedentary Brooklyn life was filled with kale planting, chicken feeding, delivering produce to restaurants via bicycle, and picking up buckets of coffee grounds from local cafes for composting.
Here, there and everywhere, I plant little edible gardens. You might find one in a pot at the front door, trailing into a walk way, acting as ground cover, or exploding out of a patch of former lawn. I seem to have a driving, primal voice pushing me on to replace ornamentals with beautiful and yet nourishing stand ins.
We have even made excrement disappear in real life. Flush it and forget it.
Darrin Nordahl, the author of Public Produce: The New Urban Agriculture, has chronicled the growing movement to put edible plants in public spaces–like Vermont’s vegetable garden on its State House lawn. Also, Ray Shadis, a consultant to the New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution, will respond to the question: “Can the state of Vermont regulate Vermont Yankee without falling foul of federal preemption law?”
I live because we liveāin reciprocity. Me, you, the farmers, the politicians, the merchants, the animals, the vegetables, the minerals, the trees and oceans, the Earth. These are my pals. These are my suppliers.
John and I take a trip out to visit Woody and Zoe at nearby Cuckoo Farm to see their gorgeous straw bale house, which has been plastered to meet health and safety regulations, and which now looks like an ancient thatched cottage. Over cups of tea I hear about anaerobic digesters and how simple a system they are.
