Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
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.
To some people, planting a tree is the epitome of the environmental cliche. Planting a tree seems so simple, so easy, so… low-technology.
– Roving Herds of Grazing Climate Helpers
– The backlash begins against the world landgrab
– Ezra Klein on Industrial Ag: Asking the Wrong Questions
– Greenhorns: the network that’s breathing new life into US farming
– How Peru’s wells are being sucked dry by British love of asparagus
– Forget Oil, Worry About Phosphorus
Chickens are the happening thing in the city — as evidenced by the fact that the our chicken coop tour was highlighted by the Los Angeles Times (none of our Transition events have ever made it past the editors of this giant paper before). There aren’t too many people who have chickens here, but there is LOTS of interest.
We are in a food revolution. The next generation sees the world differently. The older people alive today wanted to control the world. The new generation wants to work with it.
Dmitry Orlov’s “Reinventing collapse” is as actually a real downer, but Orlov’s intelligence, black humor and very Russian naturally cynical attitude – “to a Russian, ‘hard worker’ sounded a lot like ‘fool'” – makes the book a very pleasant reading experience. The book is full of resigned shrugs regarding the possibility of preventing the absolutely-certainly-coming societal collapse. We’re not talking about saving the world here – the best we can hope for is saving our own skins!
To many people, the word “livestock” suggests large meaty animals too big to graze in the average backyard. The same logic that makes intensive gardening a vital tool for a deindustrializing world makes backyard raising of small livestock an important way to expand the food supply on a local and sustainable basis.
I deal with social ethics: issues of equity, justice, fairness, and democracy. Frankly, GE fails when measured against most of these values. GE, like all high-techs, is inherently anti-democratic. Computers, for example, can be democratic in their usage because anybody can buy into it in a consumer society. But they’re not democratic in terms of development, which is under the control of a very small number of people. Similarly, GE is under the control of small numbers of highly educated people and incredibly wealthy organizations.
Autumn typically is rain-free here. This year, we’ll take advantage of the dry weather to harvest abundant poop from the goat pen and apply it directly to the then-recently harvested potato patch. Potatoes are heavy feeders, so the patch could use the nutrients. By the time we plant next spring, the compost will be working its magic. Nonetheless, we won’t plant potatoes there, though we haven’t decided which nitrogen-fixing plant to work into the rotation.
In May 2010, Deconstructing Dinner travelled to Vancouver Island where two international conferences on ethnobiology were being hosted. Ethnobiology examines the relationships between humans and their surrounding plants, animals and ecosystems. Today, more and more people are expressing an interest to develop closer relationships with the earth. This leaves much to be learned from the research of ethnobiologists, and in particular, from the symbiotic human-earth relationships that so many peoples around the world have long maintained. On this part III of the series, we listen to two presentations that share research into the relationships between indigenous peoples and marine life in what is now called British Columbia and Alaska.
What could be a simpler, more secure food supply? Even if the electricity goes off, even if the house blows away, even if we are visited with “the rocket’s red glare and bombs bursting in air,” our buried treasure will be safe.
This morning, while making my now habitual (how quickly habits can change) breakfast of eggs from my neighbor Tricia, onions, tomatoes, and zukes from my backyard garden, I heard a story on Democracy Now about the food riots in Mozambique. Wheat prices soared due to crashing supplies, and people could no longer cope. Thirteen people died when police apparently ran out of rubber bullets and started using real ones.
