• Category Archives permaculture

  • Photo Time: Late Summer

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa                                            Waning Artemis Moon

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    Late summer taste treats.  We have red and golden.

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    These are the hives with their maximum honey supers.  We extract honey on Monday.

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    This is just one of several deep cave descents attempted by the Andover Speleological Society, Rigel and Vega founding members.

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    The newly mulched orchard from the perspective of one of our sand cherry bushes.

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    Our fruit trees have not really begun to bear yet, but there are six apples on this tree.  More as the years go on.

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    Kate spearheaded this project and it looks great.  Not only does it look great, but it is more functional, too, especially from a weed suppression point of view.

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    Kate plants coleus all round the yard; they add needed color to shady spots.

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  • Extra Work Raises Grade

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa                                 Waxing Artemis Moon

    Up early and out in the garden.  This is the way I like it, working in the garden before and during sunrise, a coolness, some damp lingering from the night, stillness carrying only the softest of sounds, the earth friable and eager, weeds willing to come up and the garden’s purpose easy to discern.

    Kate worked on in the orchard, going back over intensive weeding of a week ago and pulling up sprouts and rhizomes, making the place just that more inhospitable for the weedy plants.  With a second load of mulch we’ll have this place looking ship-shape heading into fall.

    A few grasses have begun to turn brown and there’s a slight hint of autumn in the morning air, a certain clarity and crispness.

    After inspecting the garden again yesterday, I’m moving my grade from a B- to a B+.  Why?  I did three plantings of beets, greens, carrots and beans.  Now the second planting has come to maturity after many other plants finished their summer and gave up their yield.  We have a good crop of young beets, a lot of juicy carrots, plenty of greens and enough beans for a couple more freezer bags at least.  This planting weekly or so for a while, creates a series of gardens, all in the same place.  We even have a number of Cherokee Purple tomato plants which I did not plant.  They are volunteers from last year’s tomatoes.

    Add to these the onions, garlic, greens, beans, beets and various fruits already harvested we have a good gardening year, not a great one, but a good one.

    Plus those potatoes are still in the ground, the raspberries have begun to fruit and the fennel and leeks look good.  All in all, not bad.  I said at the beginning of the growing season that I saw this as a consolidation year, a year when we make sure we can care for what we have.  A week ago I would have said we hadn’t even met that mark, but now I believe we have.  Caring for the orchard, the vegetable garden and the new plantings from last year in there, managing the bees and getting ready for the honey harvest, plus pruning out and restoration in the perennial flower beds.

    This advance is mostly thanks to Kate’s back surgery and her hip surgery.  She can now care for the garden, too, as she has in the past and it requires the both of us, what we have now.  Getting back to normal speed.


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  • Seeing What We Really Have Here

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                                             Waxing Grandchildren Moon

    We are well past midsummer here in the northern latitudes.  The garden’dicentra09s peak bearing season will commence although we have already had blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, currants, garlic, lettuce, greens, onions, parsnips, beets and sugar snap peas.  Ahead of us are tomatoes, green peppers, potatoes, more greens, onions, beets, lettuce, butternut squash, leeks, wild grapes and carrots plus the odd apple.   Our orchard has a ways to go before it matures.  And I have a ways to go before I can care for the fruit trees in the manner to which they need to become accustomed.

    All of which opens up the purpose of this little experiment in permaculture and the tending of perennial flowers and plants.  A long while back I bought three quarter-long horticulture classes from the University of Guelph in London, Ontario.  It took me a while to complete it, maybe a year all told.  The course helped me integrate and deepen what I’d learned by trial and error as I cared for the daffodils, tulips, day-lilies, hosta, croci, roses, trees and shrubs that then constituted our gardens.

    In its salad days (ha, ha) the notion involved a root-cellar and the possibility of at least making it part way off the food grid.  Fewer trips to the grocery store, healthier food, old fashioned preservation.  A mix of back-to-the-land and exurban living on our own little hectare.  Last year the notion began to include bee-keeping.  Now called Artemis Hives.

    As the reality of the size of our raised beds, the likely peak production of the fruits and vegetables possible has become clear to me, I have a more modest though not substantially different goal.  We will eat meals with fresh produce and fruits during the producing part of the growing season.  We will preserve in various ways honey,  grapes, apples, pears, raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, tomatoes, potatoes, onions, garlic, squash, beets, greens and parsnips.  These we will eat during the fallow days that begin as the garden goes into senescence in late August and early September and last through the first lettuce and peas of the next growing season.  We will supplement these with greens grown hydroponically and use the hydroponics to start seeds and create transplants for 2011.

    None of this will remove us in any major way from the store bought food chain.  We will not solve or resolve much of our carbon footprint.  But some.  More than most perhaps, but far too little to claim even a modest victory.  So, should we give up?

    Not at all.  Why?  Well, there is a richer, deeper lesson here than living wholly off our own land.  That lesson, taught again, day by day and week by week, and again, lies in the rhythm of the plants, the bees, the land and the weather.  An old joke from the 50’s asked, “What do you call people who practice the rhythm method?” (Catholics at the time)  Answer:  “Parents.”  The permaculture and perennial flowers here at Seven Oaks is a rhythm method.  What do you call folks who practice this rhythm method?  Pagans.

    Ours is a life that flows in time with the seasonal music of the 45th latitude, the soil on our land, the particularities of the plants we grow, the energy of the bee colonies that work alongside us, the various animal nations that call this place home.  This is the profound lesson of this place.  Seven Oaks is a temple to the movement of heaven and the bees of Artemis Hives are its priestesses.


    Faith and Spirituality Garden Great Wheel Great Work Hydroponics Our Land and Home permaculture 📎and tagged

  • We Call This Place Home

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    our-woodsSummer                                New (Grandchildren) Moon

    Outside this morning, finishing my tea on the patio, a hummingbird darted in and out of the lilies, gathering the last bits of nectar, passing on final touches of pollen.  Like the possum from yesterday’s adventure the hummingbird shares this patch of land with us, too.  Possum, groundhogs, gophers, chipmunks, squirrels, raccoons, rabbits, deer, hummingbirds, blue jays, goldfinches, red-headed and pileated woodpeckers, a great horned owl, crows, grosbeaks, dogs, mice, skinks, salamanders, garter snakes, garden spiders, wolf spiders, worms, bees, moths, wasps, caterpillars and butterflies and many others, most one-celled or many-celled, I imagine, live here.

    They live here as we do,  making a home, finding and preparing food, eating their meals, raising their young, growing to old age, dying.  Our home takes up more space, yes, and our decisions impact the land in dramatic, sometimes even drastic ways, but that we are only one species among hundreds that live here is beyond question.

    When we leave, either through death or otherwise, the generations yet unborn of these animals and insectshighrise and other life forms will, perhaps, know no difference.  If fact, if the house became abandoned, many of them would find a use for it as shelter, as a place to raise their families, perhaps as a source of food.

    All of us, all of us who live here, are only here for a while.  It is so important that we leave this place a better one for all its inhabitants.  If each of us only took this one objective, a prime objective?, to leave our places better for all those who live in them, wouldn’t the world be safe now and into the future?


    Garden Great Work Our Land and Home permaculture 📎and tagged

  • Natural Capital

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                                    Waning Strawberry Moon

    I’ve not written much about permaculture for a while.  Here’s a one-pager* from our landscapers, Ecological Gardens.   It defines a new term for me:  natural capital.  I’ve since discovered that this is a term with a larger history which I haven’t explored fully, but I like the Ecological Gardens version.

    Just imagine the kind of revolution we’d have if each person with land–in the whole world or in a whole city or in a whole county like Anoka County–committed themselves to increasing the natural capital of their land.  It’s a little bit like that old boy scout motto:  Leave your campsite better than you found it.

    We could, each one of us, take multiple unique tacks on the notion of natural capital.  Some of us might focus on small commercial crops, others might raise chickens for meat and eggs, still others might band together as neighborhoods and grow crops in tandem, some folks doing one thing, others another and producing a local horticultural economy.

    A federal or state program that made low cost loans or outright grants for the establishment of permaculture at the local level makes a lot of sense to me.  Like the 160 acres and a mule of yesteryear.  We need a horticulture and an agriculture that increases the carrying capacity of the earth, helps clean up the rivers, streams and lakes.

     

    *Would you like to:
    •   Maintain beautiful self-sustaining gardens organically?
    •   Pick fresh, nutrient-dense foods from your own backyard?
    •   Create habitat for the nature you love?
    •   Build resiliency into your landscape to help fight climate change?

    These are all products of natural capital. Our first priority at Ecological Gardens is to help you increase the natural capital of your land. This means assessing the unique combination of resources – sunlight, wind, water, and microclimates – and turning them into productive investments that will yield benefits today and for many years to come.
    Soil is the foundation for natural capital in our northern temperate climate. Healthy soil creates a condition for healthy plants, produces nutrient-dense foods for humans and wildlife, reduces water use, and minimizes leaching and runoff. Building healthy soil usually requires an investment since most soils are compacted and chemically treated.
    Plants are the primary producers of value on the land. They take up sunlight, water, and nutrients turning them into nutritious foods, medicines, fibers, fuels, oils, and wood. Increasing productivity on your land requires an initial investment since plants of low productivity tend to dominate the landscape.
    Your return on investment will vary depending on the size of your land and the configuration of resources but will increase exponentially as plant diversity and abundance grows.

    Short-term returns (1-5 years)
    •   Lower water bills (up to 30%) for yard and garden care
    •   Lower maintenance costs for fertilizers and lawn care products
    •   Lower food bills as you begin to harvest food, flowers and medicines
    •   Greater wildlife value (bees, birds, and beneficial insects)
    •   Greater beauty

    Intermediate returns (5-15 years)
    •   Lower energy costs for air conditioning and heating by strategically locating trees and vines
    •   Lower labor requirements as natural processes begin to work for you
    •   Increased property values due to abundance and beauty
    •   Increased food security as you provide more of your own food

    Long-term returns (15 + years)
    •   Lower fuel costs as you begin to harvest your own wood [for larger properties]
    •   Increased productivity as your land matures


    Great Work Our Land and Home permaculture 📎and tagged

  • You Say You Want A Revolution? Yep.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                                            Waning Strawberry Moon

    It’s been done, I know.  Still, I’d like to put in a call for a 2nd American revolution.  Oh, ok, I don’t care what number it is.  I’ll settle for another American revolution.

    My American revolution has a bit of  Norman Rockwell, a touch of Helen and Scott Nearing, more than a dab of Herbert Marcuse, Paul Goodman and C. Wright Mills, some Benjamin Franklin, the spirit of pioneers and native Americans alike when they relied upon on this seemingly limitless land for food and space.  There’s a Victory Garden or two in there as well, plus generations of smart women who canned, dried, jellied, smoked and pickled all sorts of produce and meat.  This New American Revolution demands no marches, no banners, no barricades, no guns and no repression.  And you can dance all you want.

    What is it?  It is a revolution of and for and with the land.  It is a revolution that takes the wisdom of a 7th generation Iroquois medicine man who said:  “We two-leggeds are so fragile that we must pray and care for all the four leggeds, the winged ones, those who swim in the waters and the plants that grow.  Only in their survival lies the possibility of ours.”

    What is it?  It is a revolution of and for and by the human spirit.  It is a revolution that insists, but gently, that we each put our hand and our back to something that feral nature can alter.   It could be a garden.  It could be a deer hunt.  It could be a potted plant outside where the changing seasons affect its growth and life.  It could be a regular hike in a park, through all the changes of the seasons, seeing how winter’s quiet fallow time gives ways to springs wild, wet exuberance, the color palette changing from grays, rusts and white to greens, yellows, blues, reds the whole riot.

    What is it?  In its fullest realization this revolution would see each person responsible for at least some of their own food, food they grow or catch or kill.  In its fullest realization each person would use whatever land they share with the future in such a way as to increase its natural capital, using the land in such a way that it improves with age and gains in its capacity to support human, animal and plant life.

    What is it?  In its fullest realization this revolution would find each person closer, much closer to the source of their electricity, their transportation and its fuel, their work and their family.  In its fullest realization this revolution would shut down the coal-fired generating plants, shutter the nuclear generating plants and have maximum and optimum use of wind, geothermal, hydro, solar and biomass generation. In its fullest realization each person would eat food that had traveled only short distances to their table, the shorter the better, the best being from backyard or front yard garden to the table.

    What is it?  Well, we have a ways to go yet.  Perhaps a long ways, but if we want our descendants to have a chance to enjoy the same wonders in this land that we have known, we will have to change.  We will have to change radically.  We need, as I suggested, another American revolution.


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  • Science Is A Poisonous Net

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                                            Waning Strawberry Moon

    The bee goddess piece in this video comes over half-way through, but the rest got my attention as well.  The quote in the title comes from the bee goddess shaman.

    In addition, I saw an animated movie last night called The Man Who Planted Trees.  It is a fictional account of a shepherd who begins to plant oak trees.  He goes on to plant beech and birch as well.  He plants 100 trees a day and the story follows the eventual growth of the forest and how it transforms a barren and desolate mountain into a watery, fertile realm.  It’s a beautiful fable, well worth seeing.

    In this video the old woman planting rice reminded me of the Man Who Planted Trees.  I think these folks are Hmong or close relations thereto.


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  • The Day Before

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                                              Waning Strawberry Moon

    A beautiful day.  64 degrees with a dew point of 41.  Got more weeding done.  Finished the second tier, went after some returnees on the first tier and got through much of  the third tier.

    While doing this it occurred to me that gardening is the process of removing plants willing to grow where you are and replacing them with plants that don’t want to grow where you are. An odd task. Permaculture is an attempt to turn this process on its head and utilize plants that want to be where you are, grouped in companion plantings of plants that compliment and co-operate.  Makes sense if you think of it.

    Kate’s out doing a bit of last minute gardening, too.  She straightened up her large table downstairs and I’ve printed a copy of her health care directive.  Throwing a bag together and taking two special showers to disinfect are the next big tasks.  Then, around 5:30 am or so tomorrow, we’ll take off for Fairview Hospital, the East Building.  We’ve discovered that Kate’s procedure is not until 8:00 a.m, so I’m going to get her settled, then go home.


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  • The Garden Today

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                            Waxing Strawberry Moon

    This year’s garlic harvest hangs in the honey house to dry before coming inside.  It was a good year for the garlic with enough large bulbs that I will again plant my own 06-20-10_garden_6705garlic in August.  Over time the plants become acclimated to this particular place, its moisture rhythms and temperature variations.  It is becoming what it is because of where it is.  Just like me.

    Another over wintered crop, parsnips, also came up today, at least part of them.  Nice big parsnips.  I also picked some volunteer mustard greens and a bok choy that looked good.

    The rest of the morning I joined Kate in weeding, clearing out first the raised beds (not too bad) and after that along the fence rows (not too good).  I still have a few areas to repair from the canine depredation last fall, but much fewer than when the year began.

    The leeks, onions, sugar snaps, potatoes, chard, kale, spinach, carrots, radicchio, beets, tomatoes, bell peppers and fennel also look good, but they all have a ways to go.   By the Woolly meeting we should have honey, too.


    Garden permaculture

  • The Sublime Gift

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                       Waning Planting Moon

    ” Life can’t bring you the sublime gift it has for you until you interrupt your pursuit of a mediocre gift.”

    Woolly brother Tom Crane sent this to me.  It took me back to my recent post about Siah Armajani and his personal commitment to staying within his skill set.  When I worked for the church in the now long ago past, I had a boss, Bob Lucas, a good man, who had several sayings he used a lot.  One of them was also similar in spirit, “Don’t major in the minors.”

    Stop focusing on the small things you might be able to do well to the exclusion of being challenged by the prajaparmita400serious, important matters.  Stop your pursuit of a mediocre gift.   The tendency to judge our worth by the accumulation of things–a he who dies with the best toys wins mentality–presses us to pursue money or status, power, with all of our gifts.  You may be lucky enough, as Kate is, to use your gifts in a pursuit that also makes decent money; on the other hand if  your work life and your heart life don’t match up, you risk spending your valuable work time and energy in pursuit of a mediocre gift, hiding the sublime one from view.

    This is not an affair without risk.  Twenty years ago I shifted from the ministry which had grown cramped and hypocritical for me to what I thought was my sublime gift, writing.  At least from the perspective of public recognition I have to say it has not manifested itself as my sublime gift.  Instead, it allowed me to push away from the confinement of Christian thought and faith.  A gift in itself for me.  The move away from the ministry also opened a space for what I hunch may be my sublime gift, an intense engagement with the world of plants and animals.

    This is the world of the yellow and black garden spider my mother and I watched out our kitchen window over 50+ years ago.  It is the world of flowers and vegetables, soil and trees, dogs and bees, the great wheel and the great work.  It is a world bounded not by political borders but connected through the movement of weather, the migration of the birds and the Monarch butterflies.  It is a world that appears here, on our property, as a particular instance of a global network, the interwoven, interlaced, interdependent web of life and its everyday contact with the its necessary partner, the inanimate.

    So, you see, the real message is stop pursuit of the mediocre gift.  After that, the sublime gift life has to offer may then begin to pursue you.


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