stewardship

Why Natives… when hanging flower pots of petunias are on sale… ugh…

by The Refuge Permaculture Center at Tara Farm and Nursery

Why Natives? The Wyoming Sunflower
Helianthus maximilani or the Perennial Sunflower will soon be gracing every
open space, every road barrow pit, and my garden. Why my garden?

  1. Nothing is like the warm, golden color of these natives.
  2. Fast Food for the Road: The flowers feed late pollinators, preparing them
    for migration, hibernation or egg-laying. Seeded flower heads feed migrating
    song birds as they head south for winter.
  3. Disguised: The “flower head” is actually hundreds of tiny flowers. Look
    closely.
  4. The Good Bugs: Our native sunflower attracts one very special pollinator:
    the bee fly (I love this name ~ Bombyliidae). You’ve seen them. Fuzzy little
    flies with a long proboscis that looks like a stinger, but is used to take nectar.
    These little insects will fill the centers of the sunflowers, their legs and fuzzy
    bodies packed with golden pollen. And here is the ecological role of these
    peaceful creatures: The Bomby is able to detect small holes in the soil where
    grasshoppers have laid their eggs. The Bomby bee fly hovers over the hole
    and drops its own eggs into that hole. The Bomby larva hatch first and
    consume the grasshopper eggs. I love native team members. The first and
    most important practice in permaculture is observation. Observation is done
    to understand and apply what nature has developed over tens of thousands
    of years. This reduces waste of resources and introduction of toxins or other
    human long-term damage. As practitioners we support, even encourage natural processes. And so every year I collect the native sunflower seeds and
    strategically plant them in the gardens near the fruit shrubs, and I offer them
    water so that they will grow strong.
  5. Yummy: Collect the little sunflower heads when they have gone to seed.
    Remove the sepals, or leaves, from around the flower head. Brush oil – like
    olive flavored with garlic or sesame oil. Bake or grill the entire flower head.
    The flower head will soften and then it can be eaten whole.

My cows are less appreciative of the gifts of the sunflower. They simply put the entire flowerhead in their mouth and pull the crunchiness in, crushing the sweet oily goodness.

Response to the Question: Does planting by the moon really work?

by The Refuge Permaculture Center at Tara Farm and Nursery

“Each plant in each specific location under each specific moment of conditions responds specifically. You can work to create the best set of circumstances to support and encourage the best ecology for that plant even to its best death. Study in-depth or take a seed and stick it in the ground and water it. Then observe, learn, try again. When you figure it out the 8 year cycle of grasshoppers will pop. You will do everything you can and still be overwhelmed. You will wait a year and start over. Thus is nature. Live IN it. Don’t get too cerebral. Stay light on your feet and ready to learn. Or else you will miss the important stuff. Then pick that sweet ripe berry or grape, eat it and smile. The End… and The Beginning.”

The life of plants is not a mystery, but it is completely enmeshing. I believe that all approaches to horticulture should be held up to a very wise bit of advice:”Do not believe in what you have heard; do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations; do not believe anything because it is rumored and spoken of by many; do not believe merely because the written statement of some old sage is produced; do not believe in conjectures; do not believe merely in the authority of your teachers and elders. After observation and analysis, when it agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it”. Who knew Gautama Buddha was a gardener… in other words, take that seed, stick it in the soil, tend to it and see what happens. Oh and don’t wash your hands right away. Moon or no moon.

WeekOneCornell: Reflective Writing ~ Finding my voice

by The Refuge Permaculture Center at Tara Farm and Nursery

Laurel Graham / Permaculture Fundamentals

WeekOne: Reflective Writing

16 October 2014

EastPalyBaySF Bay at East Palo Alto, my first patrol assignment and the beginning of other meditations…

When I registered for this course I made two commitments to myself:  1) that I would use this series of courses to fine tune my knowledge and skills in this field toward obtaining the certificate (and would commit the funds for the course fees), and 2) that I would put aside my self-definition as “student/academic” – one which feels safe – and find my real voice.  My “cow guru” calls it my “ministry”.  Some of what I write will be purely academic; some will carry a bit of dark, or earthy, humor.  I was in law enforcement for twelve years (1975-1988) in the San Francisco Bay Area as one of the first females to be hired. Nothing will bring a person down to earth so quickly as finding your uniform covered in someone else’s blood.

But one of my faults is to rest in the academic world. I hide there and look for teachers and mentors to validate my efforts, some elder states(man) to help me feel that I am on the right track.  Through my work (not my “job”) I think I may be coming to the realization that some people are now coming to me with that same hope. I’ve worked very hard, taken on challenges, had successes and losses, but that was my choice, not Fate testing me.  I am not entirely certain what kind of example I am for them.

The definition of permaculture is and should be dynamic. Change cannot be a principle and then be denied in the very processes those principles serve. Permaculture is a systems approach. It pounds into the psyche the reality that all things are interdependent, that the only constant in life is change. Resilience is how the elements and the whole survive. This work teaches us to climb inside the flow of things, to work in it and with it as much as we reasonably can and that this surrender will make our lives rich, if also a bit uncomfortable. I find the rivalries and constant comparisons between the founding Fathers – and let’s be honest, it’s all Fathers  – Mollison, Holmgren, Lawton, Hemenway, Yeomans, Holzer – entertaining, but I find myself still looking for that Teacher.  The observation that I cannot name one supremely significant female founder is a reflection of that 1970s radical thing that was painfully prevalent.  A woman’s role in the revolution was that of supporting her man. Angela Davis and I looked at each other one day in the 1980s, sitting in the atrium of the new Student Union at San Francisco State, as a band of protesters loudly marched by, and we smiled at each other. Our only communication ever.  Been there done that, sister. She is an exception.

On the other side of ‘warm and fuzzy’, I love the science. I have always had a love affair with the science, primarily the physical and earth sciences. The replication on scale and over time are proofs to me that there are principles at work in the Universe that operate with or without us. The day I actually knew the difference between alluvial, colluvial and fluvial approaches to stream evaluation was a holiday. So please do not think that I am all ‘soft science’ (social/behavioral).  The establishment of conventional scientific involvement in permaculture will only serve to make it valid to the conventional scientist – oh, and the institutions that fund projects and programs. As a Social Scientist, I have fought that battle for 40 years.

The question becomes this: of all of the elements, all the knowledge, all of the experience, all the actions of all the Founding Fathers, what is useful?  The rest is entertainment.

I also want to expose myself as a daily, applied Buddhist. I find so many of the principles offered in the world-view of Buddhism also acknowledged in permaculture ethics, principles and practices. My head is at the top of my body, feet well into the mud and heart mediating the daily struggle to sort it out.  I’m sort of a retired warrior monk digging my toes into the darkness of a different scale of life.

That relatively brief experience in law enforcement taught me that there are issues in the world for which one should risk their life. My time as an activist and protestor in my teens taught me that radical is best and questioning authority in a way that engenders respect is huge. And my time in working to save the environment, and the people who are afraid out of ignorance, brought me to an understanding of living as I believe and hoping that the example will be a beginning for others.

So my reflective writings are more about this search for my position, for appropriate, useful practice. If this process is inappropriate in meeting your expectations for the course, please let me know now. Obtaining the certificate is presently important to me and I do not want to miss the mark along the way. Thank you so very much for this opportunity.  (I also hope that midnight Mountain Time will work. If not, please advise. The starling migration has knocked out my power and I am using the last of the battery here to get this uploaded. Ahhhh, the countryside…) Namaste

Clean Water

by The Refuge Permaculture Center at Tara Farm and Nursery

Clean and adequate water will more surely promote peaceful revolution than any guerilla warrior or political extremist ever could dream. The simple act of finding a spigot that slowly trickles water will change the life of a community such that it is no longer vulnerable to the promises of someone seeking power through numbers. The simple act of replacing a thatch roof with metal or impervious plastic sheeting and some method of containment is the first peaceful step to revolution, for more human minds and souls are pending in limbo over this than over the industrial-military complex, or some government or any religion. The key methodology of terroristic change is to completely disrupt the reality of the target population and, when in crisis, when they have lost all faith in their institutions, offer new institutions which reform that population into Believers. This disruption is best done through substantial, unexpected, immediate pain – destruction, desolation, death. It is amazingly effective with most populations, especially with populations which are already suffering, struggling for daily life. The revolution is supposed to lift them up, empower them, move them to a more utopian, community or religious life – at least in the eyes of the terroristic revolutionary. But it is fact that those populations immediately become oppressed by the revolutionary. Power equates with control, equates with adopting the philosophy, theology, economics, government of the terroristic revolutionary. All revolution, all change begins with the individual. Moving beyond the oppression of ignorance requires the luxury of questioning, of experiencing moments of no struggle, of clear thought, of normal levels of intellectual and physical stress that comes with hope and visions for the future. Providing clean and adequate water is the moment in which the individual can take a deep, free breath, an opening for new belief, new thought. Your act: Never turn on that faucet again without understanding the impact and the blessing you possess by being able to do so….The monsoonal flow across the Rocky Mountains makes the air dense, heavy, wet…so rare in the Great High and Dry. I will not have to water the nursery today. The air alone will do. Now, off to the alternate reality of The Day Job…Namaste

Elegance of Water

by The Refuge Permaculture Center at Tara Farm and Nursery

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERANature is so elegant, so well-fit. Light rain, light snow, falls from above and drips from the edges of the plant – the drip line. Water from above is immensely important. Root growth matches the drip line and mirrors the reach of the limbs, stems, leaves. The water collects nutrients from the leaves – dust of soil, bird and bug droppings, tiny dead bodies, full of nitrogen and nutrients – down into the soil below. The moisture underground keeps the roots warm and moist – think soaker hoses and drip systems – but it does not provide that which water from above provides. So bend down (gentle deep knee bends moves the blood and lymph systems in good ways) and check the moisture under the plants. Take a pinch of soil. If it sticks together, you can wait. If it falls apart or will not stay in a pinch, take the time, the quiet, the refuge of standing with the hose and the water wand on “shower” and sprinkle the plants from above. As rainwater is best so use rainwater…and condensation and melting snow, all that, by gravity are provided in such precious, limited amounts in this steppe, sagebrush environment. A very basic, very simplistic formula: 1″ of rain on 1000 square feet of roof = 600 gallons of life. Metal roof is cleaner and better transport than composite roof. Composite is made of petroleum products. Tiles are porous and can release chemicals or minerals. Seamless gutters are best. Downspouts into potable water tanks. Simple hoses or drains leading to gardens, windbreaks, hedges, food-forests. In one rainstorm 200 gallons were collected…200 gallons easily watered the nursery when things began to dry out three days later.Two hundred gallons less from the treatment plant at the river.
Stand in the quiet, the green peaking out of last years branches and stems. Listen to the water; enjoy the light blow-back of the spray; watch the life return. Not mastery; but stewardship. Try not to struggle.
Work with; learn from; let go.