• Tag Archives SSE

  • Becoming Native To This Place

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                        Waxing Green Corn Moon

    westorchard709

    The next meeting of the Woolly Mammoths will be here in Andover.  That means it’s theme and subject matter time.  The theme will be, Becoming Native to this Place, the title of a book by Wes Jackson of the Land Institute.  The subject matter will focus on the gardens, permaculture and the local food (slow food) movement.

    At the Seed Savers Exchange conference held two weekends ago in Decorah, Iowa a commercial grower told of his change to the local foods idea.  A grower of greenhouse foods for various distributors who took his foods far from northern Iowa, he recounted attending a meeting sponsored by folks whose agenda was local foods.  They showed that, due to commodity based agriculture, northern Iowa was a net importer of food.  That astounded him.  He switched his focus then to growing vegetables for local consumers, working on niche markets like institutions, restaurants and grocery stores in the northern Iowa area.

    He didn’t mention Michael Pollan by name but the subject matter was similar to Pollan’s recent work, In Defense of Food.  The Woollys have read the Omnivore’s Dilemma and the Botany of Desire.  We’ve also looked at the notion of Homecoming and the Great Work by Thomas Berry.  This August meeting, only 17 days after Lughnasa, the first fruits festival of the Celtic calendar, will celebrate the Woolly’s interests in home, food and continuity.    southgarden709400

    Continuity?  Yes.  The Woollys have a 20+ year record of perseverance with each other and, by implication, an interest in this place we have  chosen to call home for those same number of years.

    To the Woollys who read this:

    Please choose one of the books or websites indicated and take a look.  While looking pick out two things:  what surprised you?  what would you like to know more about?   If you want, also look for something that seems off or misguided to you.


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Bees Faith and Spirituality Garden Great Wheel Great Work permaculture Woolly Mammoths 📎and tagged

  • We’re Baaaack!

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                                Waxing Green Corn Moon

    Some new html code somehow turned all the type on some computers black.  Why this happened is not clear, since it never showed up on this computer or friend Bill Schmidt’s.  A long time back it became clear that the last thing done before a problem occurs probably screwed things up.  Yup.

    A.T. will go to sleep for now, but the blog will be, as much as possible, in the third person, with no I.  This is an exercise in discipline for a writer.

    The netaphim, shredded by Vega, now connects from one end to the other.  The reason for the fence, to allow it to stay that way, now comes into play.

    The irrigation clock received new instructions based on something heard at Seed Saver’s over last weekend.  Water once a week, a lot.  Stop.  This encourages plants to grow deeper roots, following the water down.  This is an experiment, we’ll see how it works.  This new setup will eliminate, too, a frustrating situation in which two zones ran at the same time, reducing the flow to both.  At least clearing the computer of all its programming and starting over should fix that.

    It’s surprising how many everyday items now rely on computer code.  The irrigation clock.  The weather station.  The blackberry.  Microwave.  TV.  Automobile.  Some experience with computers and with code, even if limited, can make navigating this electronic minefield easier.


    📂This entry was posted in Garden GeekWorld 📎and tagged

  • In the Garden

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                        New Moon

    A.T. used the chainsaw this morning.  He cut out a mulberry tree growing in an unwanted (eastern) location.  A.T. feels manly after he uses the chainsaw.

    Kate and A.T. harvested peas, greens, beets and turnips, too.  A.T. planted beans as a cover crop among the onions, where the garlic came out.  A.T. plans a much larger garlic crop for next year.  He has 9 or so large bulbs set aside for planting and set in an order for several new varieties.  At the SSE (Seed Saver’s Exchange) conference over the weekend a speaker suggested planting the garlic earlier, even in August.  A.T. asked SSE if he could get his garlic earlier than the September 7-9 ship date.  Nope.  Not to  worry, he’ll plant his own in mid-August and check the crops against each other next June.

    This whole gardening process now begins to blur the line between horticulture and agriculture.  With crops meant for immediate consumption, but others for storage:  potatoes, turnips, carrots, squash, beans, garlic, onions, greens and peas, plus the eventual fruit yields, our garden has become a substantial part of our lives.  Substantial in the transubstantiation notion loved by Catholics.  We eat of the body of our garden and our orchard and in our bodies it becomes use, transfigured from plant to human.  A sacred event.  Substantial in the way it requires the use of our bodies to realize its harvest.  Substantial in the political sense since it cuts down trips by car, makes our place better than we found it and keeps us close to our mother.

    The bees have added another dimension.  An interdependent, co-creative collaborative effort.


    📂This entry was posted in Bees Faith and Spirituality Garden permaculture Politics 📎and tagged

  • Laborers for the Great Work

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                            Waning Summer Moon

    There was a pagan feel to the gathering at Seed Savers Exchange.  Ironic, since Luther College in nearby Decorah represents a conservative brand of Lutheranism.  There was at least one obvious symbol, a man wore a t-shirt with a Wiccan theme, but the more pervasive and more subtle expression came through in conversations like the one I had with Virginia Nowicki, soon to be Gardener’s Supply Catalogue official national garden crusader.

    “In the garden we feel a connection to the divine, the sacred,” she said while we ate organically raised chicken and pork, kohlrabi salad, heirloom green beans and mashed potatoes.  “We feel authentic.”

    “Yes,”  her husband said, “We belong to that land.  It’s our home.  We feel like we’re just one of the animals that live there.”

    Virginia will begin promoting Liberty Gardens in a couple of weeks on a website she’s producing and through  the network of those connected to Gardener’s Supply.

    Virginia and Bob live in Downer’s Grove, Illinois.  Their home serves as a demonstration site during Permaculture Design classes.  They moved in thirty years ago.

    “When the city inspector came, he asked when the lawn would come.” Bob said.  “I told him we weren’t planning on a yard.  He seemed taken aback.”

    “Well,” he asked, “how will you deal with the mud?  I can’t give you an occupancy permit until you do something about that.”

    “Woodchips,”  Bob said.

    “What?”

    “Woodchips.  We’ll put down woodchips.”

    “Oh, all right.  When the woodchips are down, I’ll sign your permit.”

    “We put in eight inches of woodchips,” Virginia says, “eight inches.  We imagined where the paths would go, then put  trees and garden beds in the places that weren’t the path.”

    There home is in the midst of Downer’s Grove.

    There were many examples of this kind of extraordinary devotion to the land and to growing food in concert with the cycles of nature, rather than against them.

    Another man from Champaign, Illinois told me he fed himself and his wife and his son, his wife and their three kids.  Deborah Madison, the vegetarian cookbook maven, signed her books.  She’s on the board of SSE.  Eliot Coleman, a man who bought land from Helen and Scott Nearing–Living the Good Life, has a success story of intensive gardening.  He times his four-season gardening in concert with the Celtic cross-quarter holidays.  Mike McGrath, former editor of Organic Gardening and host of a garden show on NPR, is a garden crusader himself.


    📂This entry was posted in Garden Great Work permaculture 📎and tagged