Cycles

How many bored high schoolers are sitting at home lacking entertainment limited by video games and television? I wondered that today while walking down the streets of Wilsonville, OR. How many of these local young folks in the absence of all the consumer options that the neighboring metropolis of Portland offers would like to share with one another skills that would benefit one another?

Take gardening for example. The relationship with garden soil that produces fruits via nutrient transfer that gardeners consume and share with friends is a relatively stable organism in the eyes of most people. There are cycles created in the topsoil and humic layers that most gardeners do not see. Cycles are dependent upon microorganisms that interact with each other.

Relating this to the human experience is worthwhile in the sense that humans to must rely on communities, their own, but usually another far away community, to sustain life. The way it looks now communities interact through commerce. That is buying and selling goods made possible largely through military occupation of oil rich nations. The more practical approach would be to complete these cycles ourselves. Grow foods in the backyard or community garden and share with neighbors. Simple enough. Though maybe one gardener grow vegetables well yet has no idea how to prepare and cool them. Here another gardener steps in and teaches the green thumb grower how to cook delicious meals. A cycle manifests itself! Now that gardener emboldened with know how enough to prepare meals can teach other people. The same gardener, now nearing the mid way point of summer, is faced with seeding srping crops and bountiful pepper and tomato harvests. Another community member, taught by elders the tradition of preserving, can take the fruits (in this case vegetables?) home and prepare them for storage and winter use. Of course in keeping with the free market schematic she takes a predetemined amount of canned goods for her service. Or could she teach the gardener how to can rather than simply taking the canned goods for her service? Here another caveat comes into play. Seeds!! Without these we fail to exist as a species. It has been the job of the ancients, our ancestors, agrarians everywhere to save seeds for the next season; seed companies being a relatively recent innovation. Alas gardeners need seeds, but few of us faced with the sectional couch and cold beer after a long days work offer lackluster enthusiasm to saving seeds from the garden that can be bought new again next year. It is the cycles that communities must complete!

Alan Kapuler, a seed grower and scholar of science has untangled the knot through years of work with soil, seeds and species. Some of his most interesting work can be found here: http://www.seedambassadors.org/Mainpages/still/kapulerfieldtrip/kapulerpapers.htm

Although we rarely account for the information of those we interact with daily, it is important. Very important in closing loops realted to our survival. Save those seeds!

Funny things overheard in the past week...

Senior center gardener "We use Miracle Grow, but garden organically."

Biosolids advocate- "Puritan values and misinformation are the reasons people are not using biosolids to grow food."

Me- "Just like you can't depend on someone else to pay your bills, neither should you depend one someone else to feed you."

High school kids walking through garden- "Why can't we take our shirts off and get a tan?."

Gardener-"Well these peas came from over there, I thought they were stragglers from last year."

Gardener- "Well nobody here to bother me, just come down and work at my own pace and enjoy the day."

Anonymous- "Maybe my digestive problems stem from eating half rotten food from all the free boxes behind New Seasons."

My father- "The raised bed has water standing in it. Knew I should have listened to my gut and put it on the other side of the driveway instead of listening the your mother. Live and learn I guess."

Camping neighbors- "How do you close the bottle (of wine) after knocking the cork down into the bottle."

Kids swimming in Metolious River- " The water's warmer about 15 feet closer the bridge. Let's move up there"

My girlfriend- "That's so hardcore"
Man hiking up Black Butte with a backpack full of toddler replies- "Thank you"

Grandmother- "Beans are up, okras up, squash are up, tomatos are up, radishes are up, beets are up, lettuce is up. Now what's the name of that stuff you planted in here last fall because it's coming up too."

...if modern agriculture continues to follow the path it's on now, it's finished. The food-growing situation may seem to be in good shape today, but that's just an illusion based on the current availability of petroleum fuels. All the wheat, corn, and other crops that are produced on big American farms may be alive and growing, but they're not products of real nature or real agriculture. They're manufactured rather than grown. The earth isn't producing those things... petroleum is!

—Masanobu Fukuoka, Mother Earth News interview, 1982

It has long been held that technology exists to make life easier, less complicateed and possibly more productive for humans. These ideas may be somewhat true. One exerts far less energy in driving a car to work rather than walking or driving. A sedan with one driver and no passengers equates a poor EROEI (energy returned on energy invested). A diesel bus filled to capacity with riders standing in the isle is likely a good use of fossil fuels. One needs only to visit Central America and travel rural roads. Eventually a truck with it's bed loaded with riders enough that the frame sits on the suspension and prohibits the truck from going more than 25 MPH comes along is probably is an appropriate use of petroleum (non renewable resources). It is culturally appropriate to pick up riders in most of Latin America, especially in rural areas where no bus lines exist. Drivers benefit as unsaid, but largely well known is the fact that drivers are given gas money for rides of certain distance. A truck bed with 14 Guatamelans in the bed and 4 in the cab is a good EROEI for a small displacement internal combustion gas engine.

The case for PDX South Metro Area (Wilsonville, West Linn, Lake Oswego) looks markedly different than that mentioned above. Cars zooms down two lane roads seemingly oblivous to pedestrains and bicyclists. Watching cars go past for 15 minutes one may the impression of affluence over practicality. What good is a large Cadillac SUV if only the driver is transported in such a large vehicle? Makes you wonder where all those empty cars are going in such a frenzy. Probably to the tanning salon, 24 hour fitness or take out Chinese restaurant. The culture of covienance has spawned the increase of consumerism and increased the wantsof those with means to access (money) to such things. Convienance culture is everywhere and it can be hard to get away from. You drive down the street and what do you see?

Advertisements. Buy new things, spend more money and create a better life through consumer culture.

Wait a minute. What happens to all these items when they break. fix it? Surely not, there's already a new, improved widget for a little more than the cost of the original and the parts for the old widget are no longer available anyhow.

Its a concept developed called percieved obsolesence and planned obsolescence. More on it here.


http://storyofstuff.com



Oil being cheap through government subsidies keeps people filling the tank the states. That and lack of public transit in rural areas. Petroleum can be used as fast as we like as opposed to solar energy which is abdundant every day yet only so much can be harnessed to be used daily in plants that humans eat for energy and health allowing them to use biomass and solar energy to power forms of appropriate transport (by bike and foot). Petroleum will prove to be a blip on the radar of homo sapiens existance on Earth. Solar energy has been avialable far longer than the petroleum has been extracted and refined. Humanity must realize that technology with all it's simplification of complex problems only serves to solve problems which technology created in first place. If a person is eating an unhealthy diet and living a sedetary lifestyle and always ill, the Western concept says give medicine to cure the problems of the illness, not negate the cause of the illness through healthy diet and exercise. Technology is a viscous cycle of finding a problem and solving it with science, then when problems arise from the previous technology more technology is developed to conteract the short coming of previous fixes. Technology serves only to plug the dyke of nature who knows nothing of connecting two wires to make an electrical circut. Nature is complex system of communities which operate together and yet not. There is no science that can make concrete all of the concepts of nature and form mathematical equations to make forests and plants grow.

Economics has fallen into a theory of abstract concreteness wherein it is believed that since a certain scenario occured before then a similar scenario will occur based on events observed in the previous set of events. All of this is based on prior experince which is correlated into "since this x happened a certain way then the outcome will be z, if y happens under this set of circumstances. This is science's attempt make all concepts concrete and manageable in a form of graphs, linear equations and numbers. In nature none of this exists, humanity's attempts to strongarm the ecosystem into a manageable scientific realm is one it very failings. Failure though is not of detriment, failure ultimately leads of new thought and practices through which individuals, communities and civilizations gain knowledge of their shortcomings and improve upon mistakes for future generations. Why then has civilization largely disregarded the historical accounts of mistakes made by previous civilizations and used that knowledge to create a more functional? Technology exists for this very reason. If humans are given opportunity to upcycle things (anything sold or marketed) as an improvement of their lives; and largely these technologies can be bought with adequate money, then humans have no initiative to find for themselves the outlets through which improvements can be made or the affects of these changes on social and enviromental spheres. What most of humanity hears is, "this is good for, you take it, give me your money and good riddance." If that is what most us experience then how can the capacity to be questioning ever come to be. Here is technology telling us our lives can be faster, better, more efficient, but only if you invest in the widget. If not your largely considered to be unpallatable to the rest of consumer society.

So can humanity technology its way out of overpopulation caused by overzealous technological innovations?

Garden work(s)

Lots of planting, mulching, designing and general human labor tasks have taken place recently.

Please feel free to join in this celebration of human labor on Tuesday afternoons after 2PM to help beautify your community space.

7524 Kolbe Lane
Wilsonville, Oregon 97070

Purple majesty potatoes were planted two weeks ago and are now above ground. Today they were hilled and strawed. About half of the garlic row was strawed as well with some dried grass clippings. Also planted some buckwheat covers over the trench where irrigation piping was laid and over some bare spots. Here's a primer on the alleopathic properties of buckwheat.

http://www.regional.org.au/au/allelopathy/2005/2/addenda/2751_iqbalzi.htm

Lots of the winter covers are resilient enough to take heavy machinery, constant foot traffic and mowing. The crimson clover is now in flower as are the strawberries and winter greens. Most of the spring greens are under row covers, lettuce and swiss chard will be harvested in a few weeks. Snap peas are stuggling due to period of sproadic rain and hot sun, the lack of hardening off may be affecting them negatively as well.

Fruit trees seem to be doing exceptionally well even after a tough winter freeze and blizzard to ring in the new year. Perphaps they'll bear some fruit the fall and surely some more trees will be planted this fall to ensure biodiversity and open pollination.

On that note...biodiversity is a practice that should be practiced in gardening. Tilling only expedites the rate of soil erosion, nutrient loss and desertification. In tilling land for annual crop production, the ecosystem becomes home to many plants that only seek to complete one task, reproduction. Go look anywhere the soil has been disturbed and not seeded. What you'll find is a handful of problematic weeds that do not compete with other plants in the ecosystem. No, they reproduce very quickly after tillage because there is no competition from other plants.

In Grave Danger of Falling Food:

In this piece Mollison deconstructs the modern agircultural system as a detriment to our health and food security. He speaks truth to ignorance on the subject of lawns.

http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=3162503821561656641&hl=en&fs=true"

Growth+Development+Industrialization=Prosperity?

The idea of unchecked growth or the ability to obtain resources for uncontrolled growth come out of the idea that A.) there exists an unlimited resource base and B.) that those resources easily obtained can support unlimited wants for an infinite amount of time. The reality is the that world growth much like domestic US growth over nearly the last decade was fueled by exports and free trade from which only large transnational corporations i.e. agribusiness, petroleum and automotive companies profited. (*US growth was largely fueled by credit and the ease of which one could obtain a loan, but also upon the huge amount of untaxed imports made possible a la NAFTA*)

It is culturally engrained in most Americans who were born after the 1960's to believe that growth means accumulating more goodies, more money (not wealth, just paper currency) and more industry. Without industry there is a lack of curreny, hence global trading and exchange, especially seen in the economic downturn the world is now experiencing. What really happened is that fewer exports are coming and going due to lack of consumer spending, hence wants, without the availabity of easily obtained debt based money (loans). So everyone thinks the economy is tanking, unemployment is going to top 10% by this fall and the apocalypse is surely not far off either. Neither of those are the true reality of the circumstances the world now faces.

Everyone must start looking towards natural capital as a means of economic autonomy. Most suburban dwellers have small lawns that are resources hogs; grass to fertilize and mow, both using petroleum inputs, in the conventional gas mower/chemically derived ammonia nitrate fertilizer. However those lawns can easily be made into resource producing areas of food production through gardening, myco-cultivation or pasturing chickens and goats.

We are realizing our carrying capacity and the implications of unchecked world growth. The implications are tragic. The realization is that a debt based economy will fail to function within a true free market system without regualtion. What happens when China is ready to uncouple from buying Us junk bonds and debt? Who keeps the economy afloat then. How are the corporate bottomless pits running the global economy going to be fed without transnational markets and trading?



Herman Daly, in my opinion, one of the wisest men to live in this century has been telling the World Bank (where he was Senior Economist in the Enviornmental Department) for decades that economic growth is a mal-policy. Economic growth can only exist in an environment of unexhaustable resources and even then the carrying capacity and equilibrium will be off base in regards to how many humans can be supported in one place. With that in mind and the general knowledge that the Northern hemisphere extracts vast amounts of wealth and natural capital from the Southern hemipshere; how and why are industrialized nations still following the pattern of disproportinal growth? Such a policy of free trade has surely damaged our national economy while opening up avenues of uncontrolled migration as free trade policies enacted in the 1990's shut the doors for small producers in many Latin American countries in essence giving subsidies to domestic agribusiness interestsfor over producing grains, hoarding them and then flooding the market of Latin American countries with cheap food while deconstructing the agrarian livelihood of many rural campesinos.

The North versus South paradigm equates to the industrialized North hoarding, stealing and occupying; any means nessecary really) the global South's resources in order to expand economic growth exponentially. This growth does not eqaute to national economic expansion as some would like to believe. The growth is seen for the large corporations who coupled with governments enact legislation and policies that support corporate interests. When the US should really be spending money at home, securing food production domestically through subsidizing small diverse farms they instead are unable to untangle from corporate interests focused on exanding large monocultures into poor countries; instilling along the way the notion of similar development for the global South that resource extraction and environmental degradation is the way to become a developed nation; environment and societies be damned, so long as the economic ends are met quickly and efficiently. One may ask, " What are the benefits of free trade for large corporations." On the surface it looks rosy; non-taxed trade (this is detrimental to our domestic economy, corporations ought to be taxed on trade to pay unemployed domestic workers ousted by cheaper labor made possible through free trade agreements.) Local economies in free trade areas ahve suffered as well. 5 o'clock news says how porous the borders are, but the truth is most of the those folks come here as a means of survival in the wake of NAFTA ruining the agricultural markets of Mexico with cheap, US grown and subsidized grain.

"To globalize the economy by erasure of national economic boundaries through free trade, free capital mobility, and free, or at least uncontrolled migration, is to wound fatally the major unit of community capable of carrying out any policies for the common good." --Herman Daly's Farewell Speech to The World Bank

"Cosmopolitan globalism weakens national boundaries and the power of national and subnational communities, while strengthening the relative power of transnational corporations. Since there is no world government capable of regulating global capital in the global interest, and since the desirability and possibility of a world government are both highly doubtful, it will be necessary to make capital less global and more national." --Herman Daly

Ponderings, wonderings

Where have communities gone? They still function so far as giving inhabitants a place name to associate with and providing most of the essential basics in order to live, but how many of these nessecities can be provided within the community? Food is good place to start. How much of Wilsonville, OR foods come from within 20 miles? What I gather is that no one has surveyed local consumers, merchants and producers for the answer. The area is within one of the richest agricultural lands in the state, with adequate rainfall and favorable climate, yet grocers shelves are lined with carrots, lettuce and spinach from Southern California and oranges, grapes and kiwis from South America. The city largely forgot about food production in the design phase, but design is eternal, always changing and shifting with necessity. Who knows, in 6 years suburban homes may be bulldozed and reclaimed as small farms. Rosy picture surely, here's to hoping that suburbia comes to their sense before that. And what of this habit of tossing your trsh for someone to pickup. Curbside pickup still exists even as municipal budgets nationwide shrink, this service is still offered here. Across the river Canby has faired exceptionally better in their development, contructing residences around farmlands hence allowing ample space for communities to produce food within sight of tthe kitchen.

Have we really devolved into hoards of nuclear families that simply exist to work, consume, watch tv and repeat the process? One would gather that from the mindset most us are in, as we stand idly by and watch our country be bankrupted into a third world nation. Ignorance is blissful and we'd rather sit aside and watch CSI than help nieghbors start a garden plot or confront what is really happening.

Is letting wealth trickle down striking fear in the heart's of wealthy folks?

I have been pondering these questions lately and trying to decipher why I have become a proverbial invasive, maybe transplant or non-native may be more appropriate as I have yet to reproduce uncontested as an invasive specie can. Call it wanderlust or itchy feet, but there is something unsettling about knowing that indigenous communities have never strayed too far from thier homes. Maybe it is because they know that all they'll ever have is right at their feet. Soil to bring food forth from and ancestors who stewarded the land for centuries insuring future generations will have the opportunity to use that same earth.

Spring cleaning

Wow I really let this page go to shambles or maybe it was just winter dormancy? Now as the dead shoots push out new growth the blog must do so as well towards alerting gardeners as to what needs to be done. That said their is much work to be done and there are plenty of us to do that work to feed ourselves, our friends, neighbors and those who need the food the most; the homeless, working poor and unemployed. It is going to take all of us to do the tasks that must be done to ensure resilient communities and it is not going to be as easy as sitting in front of the television and being lulled to sleep, nor will it be as easy as spending all afternoon on gmail, but it will be abundantly more fun and rewarding when there is food to eat and friends to share the bounty with.

What did computers ever provide for us anyhow? A cheap thrill, instant gratification or instant shopping? Computers have failed to provide us with clothing or food and have ultimately made us passive beings so far removed from our agricultural heritage that most of us now cringe at the thought of self-sufficiency.

Our ancestors would probably be appalled to see the rat race we pursue and its effects on our health. Some of us will never see the light as they are caught in the darkness too much to ever reveal their own light. That is unfortunate, just pray for those to bring their light into fruition and give to others. If you believe it, you can manifest it. If all you believe is negativity and darkness that is what you'll reap. So let us reap something very good and come together as a transitional community focused on food production as our first goal. Soon enough we will need to take a step backwards and think: "What do we really need to survive and what is menial to our human existence for the next generations."

The garden has not fallen into disarray fortunately. Plots are cover cropped and ready for spring planting. A fence is going up around the garden soon to keep the deer at bay. Something will be planted for them to snack upon outside the fence. Many entities are arising to help out in the process and all of them are needed to put a brush stroke in and create a masterpiece.

Wish List:

Shed for storage
Interpreter
PR person
Farm hands
Educators
Hoop house materials
Compost crew

Things to be done:

Move compost bin and barrels
Plow the plots
Double dig beds
Plant beneficial plants
Plant native plants
Build a grape arbor
Build drip irrigation system