Food

31 Books – The Resilient Gardener

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It is rare for me to read a book that does all three things – that fills that middle gap by offering me genuinely new and engaging ideas, is local to its place but thoughtful about how information gleaned in one environment might connect to another, is written by someone who does have limits on time and energy and occasionally desire to do it perfectly, and finally, is conscious of the need to garden in response to difficult times. That’s why Carol Deppe’s _The Resilient Gardener_ is such a gift.

Innovation of the week: Cultivating health, community and solidarity

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GardenAfrica, a non-profit organization in southern Africa that helps families and communities establish organic gardens in small private plots, schools, hospitals and other public areas, prefers that its work be described as solidarity rather than charity. “Charity is all too often about externally imposed solutions, solidarity is a partnership of equals,” says its website.

2011 predictions: a savage place

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2011 lays the ground for potential conflicts and battles that will be played out unless we get much wiser much faster. The emerging attention to our collective crisis will give some of the movement a jolt of new energy, time and investment in 2011. This will be the positive consequence of all the tough stuff we’re facing.

Acquiring knowledge by accident

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We learn our lessons more by chance than by deliberation. Or maybe it is more to the point to say that we learn by living. For sure, what we learn from experience sticks with us longer than what we think we learn in classrooms. I can’t remember how to do algebra problems involving two unknowns but I will never forget what happened when I was dumb enough to touch a frosty piece of iron with my tongue.

The haybox factor

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Many of the implications of peak oil can be summed up in one simple if highly unwelcome way: most of us in the industrial world are going to be much poorer for the rest of our lives. That bleak prospect, however, opens up unexpected possibilities; poverty is a familiar condition, and ways to cope with it are within reach. The Archdruid sketches out one option.

Building up the ‘grain chain’

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Produce has been the low-hanging fruit for many people wishing to eat local. But local dry goods including wheat, the staff of life, is much more difficult to source in British Columbia. As demand grows, however, more farmers are experimenting with wheat production. What’s lacking, they say, is ready infrastructure to process that wheat — which is why clunkers like the Clipper are forced out of retirement.

Twilight of the chicken tenders

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The current American food system can be expected to unravel as the limits to growth begin closing in. Somewhere between the gourmet notions that dominate too much of today’s “slow food” and the mass-produced product that passes for fast food, a new incarnation of traditional working class cuisine is waiting to be born.

Ingredients of Transition: Community supported farms, bakeries and breweries

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The Community Supported Agriculture model is providing very successful around the world in various manifestations. It can involve communities owning a share in a local farm, setting up their own farm, paying an annual subscription to a farmer they support, and many other variations on the theme. The model is also being applied to other enterprises, such as pig clubs or community supported bakeries. Where possible, use the community buy-in generated by your Transition initiative to support community supported initiatives.

It does my heart good

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Brock McLeod and Heather Walker operate Makaria Farm in Duncan, British Columbia (www.makariafarm.com) and what they have been doing the past two years is just eye-poppingly, unbelievably, overwhelmingly, audaciously amazing. They decided to take small scale grain raising to the very high level of accomplishment— beyond the wildest dreams I had when I wrote my book by that name.