The White House Kitchen Garden, Ready for Winter...

http://obamafoodorama.blogspot.com/2009/12/white-house-kitchen-garden-ready-for.html

"First Lady Michelle Obama made international headlines when she hula hooped on the South Lawn of the White House in October, but now there's a different kind of South Lawn hooping going on. White House gardeners, led by chief horticulturalist Jim Adams, installed what are known as hoop houses in Mrs. Obama's White House Kitchen Garden at the end of last week, in order to ensure that crops can be grown through the winter. Fabric-covered aluminum hoops have been placed over the crop rows and these capture passive solar energy and boost the interior temperature dramatically, so the garden soil and air is warmed, and crops can flourish--even in winter. Hoop Houses are often tall enough to walk through, but the White House is using mini versions, about two feet tall, which some farmers and gardeners refer to as "low tunnels" or just simply "row covers." (Photo at top: The Kitchen Garden with the newly installed hoop houses, right before a weekend snowfall. Small photo is the First Lady, doing her own hooping)

Food Initiative Coordinator Sam Kass oversees the Kitchen Garden as the policy architect of the First Lady's health and nutrition agenda, and he intends the Kitchen Garden to be a "succession" garden, meaning that it will grow crops successively through the seasons, barring any prolonged freezes or deep enduring snows. The hoop houses ensure this, and were put in place just in time. It's been really cold in DC lately--over the weekend there was a storm that dumped enough snow to actually accumulate (!), and today there are black ice warnings for drivers, and in general the temperature has been between the low 30s and mid 40s f, with blowing winds. More snow is possible later in the week. But no matter: It's warm and cozy inside the covered beds in the 1,100 square foot Kitchen Garden, and the winter crops, which include lettuces, cabbage, winter radishes, onions, broccoli, turnips, and carrots, are easily accessible, because the covering fabric is held down with sandbags, and can easily be flipped back to weed, harvest, or water, if for some odd reason it doesn't rain (but it'd been raining a lot before it started to snow). (Photo above: The hoops in the garden, before the fabric coverings were put in place)

The latest estimate of total crop production for the garden since its first planting in April is about 1,000 pounds, which Executive Pastry Chef Bill Yosses announced during last week's Holiday Decoration preview, when he was showing off the adorable mini-marzipan replica of the Kitchen Garden that's a new addition to the White House Gingerbread House. Total costs for the Kitchen Garden--minus the incalculable sum for labor, which included weeding by kitchen staff and volunteers, as well as planting and harvesting by local elementary school groups--are estimated at $175.00. (Photo: The mini-marzipan Kitchen Garden)

Washington, DC is in what USDA identifies as "hardiness zone 7," a fairly temperate zone...although temperatures have varied wildly in the past three years (the -5 degree temperature at President Obama's inauguration last January was unprecedented, yet DC does seem to be getting colder. Thus one more reason for addressing climate change in Copenhagen...). Because the Kitchen Garden is situated on a part of the South Lawn that gets a lot of sun for much of the day, even in winter, with the hoop houses in place, the garden is expected to continue to provide healthy fresh and ultra local veggies for the White House with no problem--minus permafrost conditions. Home gardeners often use plastic as their hoop covering, but the White House is attempting to be a citadel of green modeling, thus the choice of eco-conscious fabric.

For the State Dinner menu on Nov. 24, Arugula harvested from the garden was used in the salads, and guest chef Marcus Samuelsson personally harvested fresh herbs for his dishes, including pineapple sage, dill, oregano and thyme. Yosses used lemon verbena and mint as garnish for his desserts, and he poached pears for one of the desserts in honey from the White House Beehive. The Beehive is now dormant for the winter. Just one month ago, on Oct. 30, at the Fall Kitchen Garden Harvest, Mrs. Obama, a team of elementary school helpers, and the White House chefs harvested 224 pounds of crops from the Kitchen Garden, to begin the process of preparing for the winter planting and the installation of the hoop houses. At that point, crops were knee- and shoulder high, depending on variety, and had to be cleared to make way for the latest planting. The Fall Harvest crops were donated to Miriam's Kitchen, the local social services agency that also received crops from the garden during its first harvest last spring. (Above: During the Fall Garden Harvest, the crops were lush and large. Mrs. Obama holds a huge sweet potato that weighed around 4 pounds; below, the Kitchen Garden moments before it was harvested for Fall)"

Ethical Omnivores: Think Twice Before Buying The Christmas Ham

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121198102

First permaculture course at UMass

Snowy morning outside. But to add a little brightness to the day, UMass has approved its first permaculture course!: "BMATWT 397P - 01 ST-Permaculture"

I'll be sharing some of my knowledge with 25 students (as well as getting help from local permaculture designers) starting in January.

HOME

Take a watch

short description:

"In 200,000 years on Earth, humanity has upset the balance of the planet, established by nearly four billion years of evolution. The price to pay is high, but it's too late to be a pessimist: humanty has barely ten years to reverse the trend, become aware of the full extent of ts spollation of the Earth's riches and changes its patterns of consumption"

Will Allen: The "Go-to expert on urban farming"..

I am feeling very excited today. I found out yesterday that I will be traveling to Milwaukee on January 4th and spending three full weeks with an organization called Growing Power. The founder, Will Allen, is doing very big things. He is an urban farmer that is (taken from his website) "Inspiring communities to build sustainable food systems that are equitable and ecologically sound, creating a just world, one food-secure community at a time."

"Growing Power is a national nonprofit organization and land trust supporting people from diverse backgrounds, and the environments in which they live, by helping to provide equal access to healthy, high-quality, safe and affordable food for people in all communities."

"Will isn't out to change the ways of multinational food producers or foreign governments. But he is spurring people to turn the weedy lot on the corner into a field of cucumbers and kale, and he's probably inspiring a few others to turn off the TV and make dinner for the family. Think globally; act locally."

- Debra Landwehr Engle

"Growing food, growing minds, growing communities: that’s the agenda of former basketball player Will Allen, whose organization, Growing Power, teaches inner-city children about the rewards, the challenges, and the science of farming."

- Michael Penn

Below is an article that I found about Will Allen written in the NY Times. The full article can be read, here

Street Farmer
By ELIZABETH ROYTE
Published: July 1, 2009


“Sitting in my office isn’t a very comfortable thing for me,” he told me later, seated in his office. “I want to be out there doing physical stuff.”

Like others in the so-called good-food movement, Allen, who is 60, asserts that our industrial food system is depleting soil, poisoning water, gobbling fossil fuels and stuffing us with bad calories. Like others, he advocates eating locally grown food. But to Allen, local doesn’t mean a rolling pasture or even a suburban garden: it means 14 greenhouses crammed onto two acres in a working-class neighborhood on Milwaukee’s northwest side, less than half a mile from the city’s largest public-housing project.

When you’re producing a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of food in such a small space, soil fertility is everything. Without microbe- and nutrient-rich worm castings (poop, that is), Allen’s Growing Power farm couldn’t provide healthful food to 10,000 urbanites — through his on-farm retail store, in schools and restaurants, at farmers’ markets and in low-cost market baskets delivered to neighborhood pickup points.

Allen studied the worms for five years, learning their food and shelter preferences (warned by experts that his red wrigglers would freeze during Milwaukee’s long winter), “I’d run my experiments over and over and over — just like an athlete operates” (he is a former professional basketball player in the ABA and in Belgium after graduating from the University of Miami). Then he worked out systems for procuring wood chips from the city and food scraps from markets and wholesalers. Last year, he took in six million pounds of spoiled food, which would otherwise rot in landfills and generate methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Every four months, he creates another 100,000 pounds of compost, of which he uses a quarter and sells the rest.

With seeds planted at quadruple density and nearly every inch of space maximized to generate exceptional bounty, Growing Power is an agricultural Mumbai, a supercity of upward-thrusting tendrils and duct-taped infrastructure. Allen pointed to five tiers of planters brimming with salad greens. “We’re growing in 25,000 pots,” he said. Ducking his 6-foot-7 frame under one of them, he pussyfooted down a leaf-crammed aisle. “We grow a thousand trays of sprouts a week; every square foot brings in $30.” He headed toward the in-ground fish tanks stocked with tens of thousands of tilapia and perch. Pumps send the dirty fish water up into beds of watercress, which filter pollutants and trickle the cleaner water back down to the fish — a symbiotic system called aquaponics.

Uncannily, Allen makes such efforts sound simple — fun even. When he mentions that animal waste attracts soldier flies, whose larvae make terrific fish and chicken feed, a dozen people start imagining that growing grubs in buckets of manure might be a good project for them too. “Will has a way of persuading people to do things,” Robert Pierce, a farmer in Madison, Wis., told me. “There’s a spirit in how he says things; you want to be part of his community.”

Suddenly, I got it: Allen was a genius at selling. He could push his greens into corporate cafeterias, persuade the governor to help finance the construction of an anaerobic digester, wheedle new composting sites from urban landlords, persuade Milwaukee’s school board to buy his produce for its public schools and charm the blind into growing sprouts. (“I was cutting sprouts in the dark one night,” Allen said, “and I realized you don’t need sight to do this.”)

His essential view is that people do the best they can: if they don’t have any better food choices than KFC, well, O.K. But let’s work on changing that. If they don’t know what to do with okra, Growing Power stands ready to help. And if their great-grandparents were sharecroppers and they have some bad feelings about the farming life, then Allen has something to offer there too: his personal example and workshops geared toward empowering minorities. “African-Americans need more help, and they’re often harder to work with because they’ve been abused and so forth,” Allen said. “But I can break through a lot of that very quickly because a lot of people of color are so proud, so happy to see me leading this kind of movement.”

Employing locals to grow food for the hungry on neglected land has an irresistible appeal, but it’s not clear yet whether Growing Power’s model can work elsewhere. “I know how to make money growing food,” Allen asserts. But he’s also got between 30 and 50 employees to pay, which makes those foundation grants — and a grant-writer — essential. Growing Power also relies on large numbers of volunteers. All of which perhaps explains why other urban farmers have not yet replicated Growing Power’s scale or its unique social achievements.

Growing Power isn’t self-sufficient. But neither is industrial agriculture, which relies on price supports and government subsidies. Moreover, industrial farming incurs costs that are paid by society as a whole: the health costs of eating highly processed foods, for example, or water pollution. Nor can Growing Power be compared to other small farms, because it provides so many intangible social benefits to those it reaches. “It’s not operated as a farm,” said Ian Marvy, executive director of Brooklyn’s Added Value farm, which shares many of Growing Power’s core values but produces less food. “It has a social, ecological and economic bottom line.” That said, Marvy says that anyone can replicate Allen’s technical systems — the worm composting and aquaponics — for relatively little money.

---

In the last several years, he has become a darling of the foundation world. In 2005, he received a $100,000 Ford Foundation leadership grant. In 2008, the MacArthur Foundation honored Allen with a $500,000 “genius” award. And in May, the Kellogg Foundation gave Allen $400,000 to create jobs in urban agriculture.

Today Allen is the go-to expert on urban farming, and there is a hunger for his knowledge. When I visited Growing Power, Allen was conducting a two-day workshop for 40 people: each paid $325 to learn worm composting, aquaponics construction and other farm skills. “We need 50 million more people growing food,” Allen told them, “on porches, in pots, in side yards.” The reasons are simple: as oil prices rise, cities expand and housing developments replace farmland, the ability to grow more food in less space becomes ever more important. As Allen can’t help reminding us, with a mischievous smile, “Chicago has 77,000 vacant lots.”

What if we literally "grew food everywhere?"

Warning, this is a rant inspired by a meeting I attended last week. The following statement was said (name purposefully omitted) and I wrote it down for a future reflection:

Cultivating all land takes away from local farmers… and doesn't this go against sustainability?"

Picture this: what would it look like if we literally, "grew food everywhere?" For one, there wouldn't be as much grass. There also would be much less (or no) world hunger... and the world would be on path toward true sustainability. After imagining that world, shouldn't we all be asking ourselves, "why wouldn't we want to grow food everywhere?"

Economically, it makes sense [more so locally]. We would have to outsource far less food and our money could stay in the local economy. However, our current measure for economic growth [GDP] would be adversely affected. I will explain later why it's not necessarily a bad thing to have very low or near 0% growth (negative is bad, but so is the super growth like we've been having since the industrial revolution.)

Environmentally, local sustainable food production is sound (less transportation = less fossil fuels used, and less heavy machinery needed for large-scale production / distribution. More oxygen produced by plants and more carbon sequestration from trees. Also, more shade on asphault / concrete means less heat reflection and lower ground temperatures… plants will also absorb rainwater and decrease the amount of [polluted] runoff into nearby water sheds.

Socially, it gets people outside and working together toward a common goal: growing food (on the micro scale), and creating a sustainable world (on the macro level). Being outside has been found (in numerous studies) to help people's mental, emotional and physical health. For some, spiritual health as well. Therefore, the quality of life would improve as a whole.

Any community, town, university, city, etc. who implements this would have a sustainable model for the entire world to see... why would anyone not want this?

Richard Heinberg sums it up best when he describes our measurement of economic success (GDP) on a planet that has finite resources. Think about those two ideas and ask yourself can they realistically go hand-in-hand forever? No they can't – the two ideas are mutually exclusive. We cannot continually increase our GDP when our population keeps increasing and our resource levels do not. This system we are all living by is so completely flawed but it's the norm. And Everyone is following it.

It's going to take someone very ballsy and with very deep pockets to stand up against the current measurement of economic success (GDP)… to prove that the world can still function effectively with very little or even 0% economic growth. Or rather (and more realistically) it will take a collective movement among the people (it is happening now, but more support is needed) to really make this change happen.

I hypothesize that by decreasing our GDP (not have a negative GDP, but have a very low or near 0% growth figure) we will create other successes that are much more important to us as a species. These successes I speak of are human happiness, true sustainable living and an overall improved quality of life for all.

I'm not suggesting that everyone begins to grow all of their own food and strive for total self-sufficiency (this is nearly impossible to do, even on a large-scale.) That is completely the wrong goal to have - we are a social species that works much more efficiently together rather than separate. Instead, I'm suggesting that people grow all the food they can and buy/barter for the things they do not produce themselves. There will still be plenty of jobs if everyone grows their own food… however, the farmers who are currently growing food for the masses might have to restructure their approach of making money and begin to focus on other forms of income such as educating the general public on how to grow food responsibly.

No matter what positive actions you take in this world, there will be some unexpected or adverse affects. Farmers will lose part of their income stream if people have access to free food in their own yards and on local public spaces. That is the down side to an otherwise brilliant model. What we must do is help the farmers (not let them "starve", speaking in financial terms), for they have provided us with food that we needed to live for thousands of years. But the system we have in place is not working... and some unsustainable jobs will need to be eliminated in order to continue progressing as a species.

This transition will not be easy, and some people will be unhappy with the changes we must make. A community effort must take place (financial, emotional and loving support) to help the current large-scale farmers become integrated into this new world. We need to help our fellow brothers and sisters make a complete life restructuring if that's what it comes down to. I doubt that with the surplus amount of food being produced that farmers will be able to afford the huge chunks of land they currently have… it may need to be sold to local conservation groups or town/city governments…and then it can be reforested or used in some other responsible way.

What it all comes down to is if people are willing to make this change: meaning (1) live a community-based (2) less consumptive and (3) more [not completely] self-sufficient lifestyle - then this system could actually work. If you only take what you need, grow all you can and share in community with others… the world will transform into a better place for us all. And it wouldn't just be the future generations benefiting from our actions... we could actually see the results happening right before our eyes.

So get inspired people... and start small by planting your own garden. If enough of us do this - imagine the impacts... and if you want help, give me a call - I have a feeling this will be my life's work.

Grow food everywhere!

Contact:

Ryan Harb

Amherst, MA

rharb@nrc.umass.edu

"All the world's problems can be solved in a garden"

I'm reading a fellow student's research proposal regarding the impacts humans are having on the Albertine Rift Watersheds in East Africa. It's extremely disturbing and has gotten me very upset. I feel the need to share a video that I watched last night entitled, "Greening the Desert II, Greening the Middle East."

Here is a link to the famous "Greening the Desert" Part 1 video on Youtube (this is what inspired me to become a permaculturalist.) Watch this first: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sohI6vnWZmk

Here is the link to the movie I watched last night (Part II) : http://vimeo.com/7658282

Here is my rant: We think we are so smart, so much more advanced than the generations before us who lived so "primitively." Yes, it is amazing what we have accomplished as a species over the last few centuries. We have made strides in technology that at one time seemed like science fiction. But where has it led us?

The world is dying. I'm an extremely positive person but there is no question that so much destruction is happening every second of every day on all parts of the planet. We are consuming resources much faster than can be replenished by the earth. We are the most unsustainable species to have ever walked the planet.

It takes in-depth scientific studies for people to even consider that what they are doing is wrong. Destroying nature is wrong. The indigenous people's knew this and most of them lived in accordance with the world. They understood "The web."

It blows my mind how stupid humans can be nowadays. If you deforest the land near a river basin, then yes... the fish in that water body will be affected. But the impacts go further than just that river basin... The indigenous people's knew that that hurting one part of our planet will hurt all other parts of the planet and all forms of life (it may not be noticable, but I believe wholeheartedly that everything is connected.) And they did this without scientific studies and advanced technology. Those who lived with the land believed in the "oneness" of all things.

The solution to many of the world's most severe problems is simple: take care of nature and you'll be taking care of yourself and all other living beings. And one way to do this is for everyone to grow food in their local communities (on land that is already cleared like grass lawns and greenspaces... not deforesting more land for agricultural purposes.)

It seems appropriate to post the first real poem I wrote this past summer.
It is called The Web:

The Web you see
is the key to it all.
For it is strong,
so strong
that even snakes are unable to escape.

But like all things, webs break.
They regenerate, and they vibrate.

The Web,
no matter how large, vast, tall or wide,
what happens on one end
is felt on the other side.
That's how Earth Mother designed.

Building With Whole Trees

This article was sent to the W.MASS permaculture listserv by Dave Jacke. Pretty interesting stuff... this is the kind of thing that really interests me - much less embodied energy when materials don't need to be processed. Roald Gundersen is miles ahead of other architects, in my opinion:

ROALD GUNDERSEN, an architect who may revolutionize the building industry, shinnied up a slender white ash near his house here on a recent afternoon, hoisting himself higher and higher until the limber trunk began to bend slowly toward the forest floor.

“Look at Papa!” his life and business partner, Amelia Baxter, 31, called to their 3-year-old daughter, Estella, who was crouching in the leaves, reaching for a mushroom. Their son, Cameron, 9 months, was nestled in a sling across Ms. Baxter’s chest.

Wild mushrooms and watercress are among the treasures of this 134-acre forest, but its greatest resource is its small-diameter trees — thousands like the one Mr. Gundersen, 49, was hugging like a monkey.

“Whooh!” he said, jumping to the ground and gingerly rubbing his back. “This isn’t as easy as it used to be. But see how the tree holds the memory of the weight?”

The ash, no more than five inches thick, was still bent toward the ground. Mr. Gundersen will continue to work on it, bending and pruning it over the next few years in this forest which lies about 10 miles east of the Mississippi River and 150 miles northwest of Madison.

Loggers pass over such trees because they are too small to mill, but this forester-architect, who founded Gundersen Design in 1991 and built his first house here two years later, has made a career of working with them.

“Curves are stronger than straight lines,” he explained. “A single arch supporting a roof can laterally brace the building in all directions.”

The firm, recently renamed Whole Tree Architecture and Construction, is also owned by Ms. Baxter, a onetime urban farmer and community organizer with a knack for administration and fundraising. She also manages a community forest project modeled after a community-supported agriculture project, in which paying members harvest sustainable riches like mushrooms, firewood and watercress from these woods, and those who want to build a house can select from about 1,000 trees, inventoried according to species, size and shape, and located with global positioning system coordinates, a living inventory that was paid for with a $150,000 grant from the United States Department of Agriculture.

According to research by the Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, run by the USDA, a whole, unmilled tree can support 50 percent more weight than the largest piece of lumber milled from the same tree. So Mr. Gundersen uses small-diameter trees as rafters and framing in his airy structures, and big trees felled by wind, disease or insects as powerful columns and curving beams.

Taking small trees from a crowded stand in the forest is much like thinning carrots in a row: the remaining plants get more light, air and nutrients. Carrots grow longer and straighter; trees get bigger and healthier.

And when the trees are left whole, they sequester carbon. “For every ton of wood, a ton and a half of carbon dioxide is locked up,” he said, whereas producing a ton of steel releases two to five tons of carbon. So the more whole wood is used in place of steel, the less carbon is pumped into the air.

These passive solar structures also need very little or no supplemental heat.

Tom Spaulding, the executive director of Angelic Organics Learning Center, near Rockford, Ill., northwest of Chicago, knows about this because he commissioned Mr. Gundersen to build a 1,600-square-foot training center in 2003. He said: “In the middle of winter, on a 20-below day, we’re in shorts, with the windows and doors open. And we don’t burn a bit of petroleum.”

“It’s eminently more frugal and sustainable than milling trees,” he added. “These are weed trees, so when you take them out, you improve the forest stand and get a building out of it. You haven’t stripped an entire hillside out west to build it, or used a lot of oil to transport the lumber.”

Mr. Gundersen had a rough feeling for all of this 16 years ago, when he started building a simple A-frame house here for his first wife and their son, Ian, now 15. He wanted to encourage local farmers to use materials like wood and straw from their own farms to build low-cost, energy-efficient structures. So he used small aspens that were crowding out young oaks nearby.

“I would just carry them home and peel them,” said Mr. Gundersen, who later realized he could peel them while they were standing, making them “a lot lighter to haul and not so dangerous to fell.”

Mr. Gundersen, who built most of the house singlehandedly, also recognized the beauty of large trees downed by disease or wind, and used the peeled trunks, shorn of their central branches a few feet from the crook, as supporting columns in the house. “I thought they were beautiful, but I didn’t think how strong they were,” he said.

“In architecture, how materials come together and how they are connected is really the god in the details,” he continued. “The connection is where things will fall apart,” he said, adding that the crook of a tree “has been time-tested by environmental conditions for 200 million years.”

He refers to that first house — which cost $15,000 (for plumbing, electrical, septic and other basic amenities, as well as $4,000 in paid labor) and a year of his own labor — as his master’s degree in architecture. Divorced in 1997, he now lives there with Ms. Baxter and their two children.

After finishing the A-frame, Mr. Gundersen built a 100-by-20-foot solar greenhouse next door with thick straw-bale walls on three sides, banked into the north slope. He used small-diameter, rot-resistant black locust trees for the timber framing.

A wall of double-paned glass, positioned to optimize the low-angle winter light, faces south. Growing beds angled slightly toward the sun are planted with rows of mustard greens, kale, chard, arugula, lettuces and herbs. Hanging trays of micro-greens and a fig and bay tree promise fresh food for the fall and winter.

But it is the Book End — the little house attached to the greenhouse, which is home to the firm’s project manager and his wife — that quietly vibrates with the spirit of the forest.

“We used a lot of standing dead elm here,” Mr. Gundersen said, pointing out the delicate trails, or galleries, left by the beetles that killed the tree. Peeled of their bark and satiny smooth, these trees have a presence that seems to draw one’s arm around their trunks and invite a viewer to lean into them, to soak up strength from these powerful old souls.

In this quiet farming community, where people may not have a lot of money to spend, but do have plenty of wood and straw, word of the beauty and practicality of Mr. Gundersen’s structures has spread. Solar greenhouses made of local materials can extend the growing season through winter, even in a place where temperatures can drop to 30 or 40 below. In the last 18 years, Whole Trees has built 25 of them here.

It’s part of a vision Mr. Gundersen developed after spending three years as a project architect on Biosphere 2, the three-acre glass-enclosed miniature world constructed near Tucson in the 1980s, which tried to replicate the earth’s systems, but foundered on carbon dioxide, acidic seas, failed crops and internal intrigues. After that experience, he wanted to build something more basic to human needs.

Mr. Gundersen grew up in nearby LaCrosse, where his Norwegian great-grandfather, a doctor, founded a local institution, the Gundersen Clinic; he comes from a clan of doctors and tree lovers. “There are 23 doctors in the family,” he said, including his father and uncle and four great-uncles, but he seems to be wired more like his great-grandmother Helga, whose family still owns a tree farm in Norway. He and his grandmother would often picnic on this piece of wild land, where he remembers picking watercress and wildflowers and building tree forts.

Now, to be in his buildings is to be among the trees.

“It almost feels like we’re in a forest, the trees have such a presence,” said Marcia Halligan, a client who is a farmer and Reiki instructor, standing among the birch posts of her airy bedroom.

She and her partner, Steven Adams, who grows seed for organic seed companies, worked with Mr. Gundersen on a design that uses 22 different kinds of wood, most of it from their own land outside Viroqua, southeast of Stoddard.

The economic downturn has put commissions for several large buildings for nonprofits and a 4,600-square-foot residence on hold, Mr. Gundersen and Ms. Baxter say, but the demand for small houses like theirs is up.

“It’s remarkable how many people have called this last year asking for 1,000-square-foot houses,” Ms. Baxter said. “People are downsizing for their retirement homes, and even younger folks are thinking about energy costs, environmental awareness and simplicity.”

Whole Trees can keep construction costs as low as $100 a square foot, not including site preparation, if the client is willing to shop for secondhand fixtures and the like.

As people begin to see forests as a resource, they may begin to take care of them rather than cutting them down to make room for cornfields or pastures. And the forests keep giving back.

“I’ve taken 20 trees per year off one acre, for 12 buildings,” Mr. Gundersen said. “You can never tell that we’ve taken out that much wood.”

You can view the article here: You may need to register but it's free.

Finished sheet mulching!

The very last bed of the season was completed this afternoon. I can make this post longer, but instead I'm just going to post some pictures that my roommate Sean took with his professional camera. Thanks, Sean, for helping document today...and James for helping finish before dark.
















I felt like being slightly egotistical tonight

Biochar... a very interesting concept

This article has me thinking of the incredible potential for biochar. This is a must read for gardeners and do-it-yourselfers.

A world movement in your own backyard

By Philippa Stasiuk, The Altamont Enterprise, October 8, 2009

www.carbon-negative.us/articles/BackyardBiochar.htm

VOORHEESVILLE, NY—How do you bridge the gap between thinking and acting locally?

Sept. 15, David Yarrow, a longtime grassroots activist from Syracuse, spoke to a crowd at Cornell Cooperative Extension about something that may make local gardeners part of an accelerating international movement: biochar

Biochar is a fine-grained porous charcoal made from biological material through pyrolysis—or low-oxygen burning—that is high in organic carbon. Making biochar is basically making charcoal. But the kicker comes when it’s used in the garden.

“When you add charcoal to the soil, it changes the soil dramatically,” said Yarrow. “The soil becomes nutrient dense. The charcoal absorbs water and nutrients, and with this kind of fully fertile soil, you can grow food that has complete nutrition.”

That may sound like another overblown advertisement I the back of a horticulture magazine, but the Internet is rife with websites of not-for-profits, science symposiums, and early published scientific results on biochar’s potential.

The Biochar Fund, in Belgium, published results Sept. 10 of a field test in Cameroon where 1,500 subsistence farmers participated in a study of yearly corn crop. Farmers with biochar soil yielded 40 to 50 percent greater biomass than farmers without it. Other studies around the world have shown that while adding biochar alone doesn’t increase crop yields significantly, adding biochar plus fertilizer increases yields up to 50 percent.

Scientists measure soil improvement with biochar in four ways. First, it increases cation exchange capacity (CEC) in soils, which measures soil fertility and its ability to protect groundwater. Char is also porous, so that microbes in soil attach to it like water to a sponge, and are less easily washed away by rainfall. This ultimately makes the soil nutrient dense.

Char also retains water, which means less water evaporates and less irrigation is needed. Finally, biochar increases the pH of acidic soils, similar to addition of lime to soil.

Local and global activism

Science, politics and not-for-profits see biochar’s potential to address issues like world hunger, erosion, water quality.

But, in addition to improving soil and subsequently food, biochar has another property that is tantalizing scientists: It is carbon-negative. In contrast to fossil fuels, which add carbon to the air, biochar retains a substantial portion of the carbon in the soil, where it stays potentially for thousands of years. The result is less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. With such prospects, science and business racing to find out if biochar can reduce carbon levels on a large scale, and how to go about it.

Again, global applications are many. At the August North American Biochar Conference in Colorado, which Yarrow attended, ideas such as specially plowing biochar into soil to reduce significant earth-warming carbon were discussed. Carbon-producing companies can buy pyrolytic stoves for farmers, who can produce biochar in a carbon exchange,

But sequestering carbon, says Yarrow, is not the way to think about biochar’s potential. “At the national conference, everyone talked about sequestering carbon,” he said. “No one pays attention to the sterilization of soil, which is a fundamental living component of the planet. Done properly, biochar will restore this living tissue that is soil. It needs to be rejuventated and revived to stabilize the atmosphere, to make a future.”

Yarrow explained that it is gratifying to see peoples’ reaction to his talks on biochar. “I get excited because it won’t be governments and corporations that get us out of this mess,” he said. “It will be the power of the people to make choices at the cash register and the voting booth.”

Making biochar

Part of Yarrow’s biochar talk includes a demonstration burn. While there are already pyrolytic stoves being developed and sold around the world, it is also possible to make a burner with refitted barrels of two different sizes, such as 30- and 50-gallon barrels.

Yarrow’s website shows the exact method, which entails filling a smaller barrel with biomass, such as wood or corn stover, cover it with a bigger barrel, and turn them upside down. Space between the two barrels is filled with wood, so the biomass burns with minimal oxygen. In less than two hours, biochar is made.

A photo account of the process can be found on Yarrow’s website: http://www.carbon-negative.us under “burners.”

Joseph Slezak, the Albany County field manager for soil and water conservation, attended Yarrow’s lecture in Voorheesville and spoke about its local applications.

“It’s something anybody that lives outside a suburban area—the Hilltowns, mostly—as long as people can burn outdoors, they can create biochar to put in their gardens,” he said. “They can cooperate with neighbors to do it on large scale, for agricultural fields. There’s potential. Enough people don’t know about it yet.”

Slezak also said composting facilities in the Capital District can benefit if they divert some biomass used for composting to biochar, which is used by local gardeners to improve soil quality.

Yarrow said new ideas generally take 50 years to be adopted by large populations, but the urgency of global warming and biochar’s potential to curb carbon-dioxide is speeding things up.

“It’s a new idea that is skyrocketing,” said Yarrow. “Now science is on our side, maybe things can happen quicker.”

Censorship by the food industry

What's So Scary About Michael Pollan? Why Corporate Agriculture Tried to Censor His University Speech

Agribusiness is trying to combat Pollan's message of sustainable, healthy eating.

By Martha Rosenberg, AlterNet. Posted October 28, 2009.

Even if agribusiness could shut Michael Pollan up, the outspoken author of Omnivore's Dilemma and a journalism professor at University of California, Berkeley, it still has the Los Angeles Times to contend with.

Last week, the Times blasted California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo for downgrading a scheduled Pollan lecture because it received pressure from David E. Wood, a university donor who happens to be chairman of the Harris Ranch Beef Co.

"Agribusiness gets plenty of opportunities to preach its point of view at agriculture schools such as Cal Poly, where the likes of Monsanto and Cargill fund research," the Times wrote, calling the 800-acre Harris Ranch, near Coalinga, whose "smell assaults passersby long before the panorama of thousands of cattle packed atop layers of their own manure,"--"Cowschwitz." Ouch.

And agribusiness has the University of Wisconsin-Madison to deal with.

The land grant, ag-based university, in the middle of dairyland, clearly doesn't remember its roots. It gave Pollan's In Defense of Food, another anti-agbiz screed according to industry, free to all incoming freshmen as part of its common book read program where everyone reads the same book, Go Big Read, in August.

"I have not seen the students this excited about something in years," Irwin Goodman, horticulture professor and vice dean of the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences told the Associated Press as the James Beard Award-winning book was discussed in French and political science classes and included in an exhibit on the history of food.

Protesting farmers who came to hear Pollan speak at the university's 17,000-seat Kohl Center in September wearing matching green T-shirts which said "In Defense of Farming: Eat Food. Be Healthy. Thank Farmers" were clearly outnumbered. So were bumper stickers reading No Food; No Farms and Don't Criticize Farmers With Your Mouth Full in the parking lot.

Students get all their facts from writers like Pollan, the farmers, who were bussed in by Madison-based feed company Vita Plus, told the Capital Times. They have never visited a farm for first-hand knowledge of food production and don't know what they're talking about.

But efforts to open farms to the public are not always successful.

This month United Egg Producers' "Opening the Barn Doors" media tour at Morning Fresh Farms in northern Colorado, for example, only confirmed the size of today's egg farm that make humane conditions impossible (36 barns; 23,000 birds each, 23 million dozen eggs a year) and raised further questions about environmental blight by showing the press wearing white HazMat suits to enter the barns. (See: You want us to eat WHAT?)

Last month the American Egg Board rolled out a kid-focused "The Good Egg" campaign which includes sponsorship of Sesame Street, a Cookie Monster product placement and a feel good virtual tour to soften public opinion about egg farms. But nowhere does the campaign address the daily grinding up of newborn males even as they hatch at the hatcheries which supply egg farms to provide the industry with only females--a practice that United Egg Producers confirms is routine. Does the Cookie Monster know about that?

Nor can all that crowding and all those chemicals be good for you, Pollan has written and many studies suggest.

But agribusiness is also combating last year's American Institute for Cancer Research and World Cancer Research Fund study that found the link between processed meats and colon cancer so strong, the organizations advised consumers to change their eating habits.

Trent Loos, an outspoken columnist with the agbiz weekly, Feedstuffs, says nitrosamines, found in processed or cured meat and widely believed carcinogenic, may actually be good for you, preventing and treating "cardiovascular and other diseases associated with nitric oxide insufficiency in the diet."

"Nitric oxide is an important signaling molecule in the human body to regulate numerous physiological functions including blood flow to tissues and organs," write Loos of research conducted by Dr. Nathan Bryan at the Brown Foundation Institute of Molecular Medicine at the University of Texas, Houston. "The regular intake of nitrite-containing food appears to ensure that blood and tissue levels of nitrite and nitric oxide pools in the body are maintained at adequate levels."

Some of the ag press has even picked up the theory--but don't expect a Pollan book called In Defense of Nitrites anytime soon.

Link here

Why Grow Food?

The past week I've been reflecting on why I undertook this project in the first place. What's so important about growing your own food when we can just drive to the supermarket and get all the goodies and fresh produce that our hearts (and bellies) desire...and at all times of the year? If I grew my own food and in combination ate only locally, I would not be able to buy really anything from a big-chain supermarket. Why go through all this trouble when the easy thing to do is continue with the business as usual approach?

Meet Michael Pollan. He is a journalism professor at agricultural school Cal Poly (California Polytechnic State University) and author of many recently famous books, including 'The Omnivores Dilemma', 'Botany of Desire', and 'In Defense of Food'. The one I'm reading now is Omnivores Dilemma... and just 80 pages deep I've already been shocked by the images described.

What a disgusting and unnatural food system we have. Corn being fed (the main diet) to animals that never ate corn in their entire evolutionary existence... only being given this because it's cheaper, faster and gets them fatter than grass alone would (for cows). Chickens, hogs and now even fish are being forced to eat this diet of grains. But who cares, corn is good for you, right?

Let's toss in some antibiotics while we're at it. That will help the numerous sick animals that are sick because of the diet we're feeding them and the conditions they are living in. The mass production of meat is a horrible sight to see...

And then we eat these animals which ate the antibiotics we fed them. What's bad about that? Well, the diseases that we (humans) get are sometimes so powerful that we need antibiotics to help heal ourselves. Michael Pollan forecasts a frightening future where today's diseases are actually developing immunities to these antibiotics. And since we're ingesting the animals that eat these antibiotics regularly, there will come a time when the antibiotics will no longer work effectively. The common cold could end up killing us somewhere down the road...

Now, I'm not telling everyone to become vegetarians, but if you want to eat meat, I urge you to buy locally and buy organic. The other shit that's out there is so horrible for your body and for the planet... and don't get me started about the greedy corporate interests.

I've only given you a glimpse of the current system. I haven't even talked about Monsanto patenting seeds and sue-ing farmers for saving any to plant the following year (which is exactly what farmers did for the previous ten thousand years.)

I've gotten really fired up about this and I don't even remember the last time I really got angry. Greedy, greedy people have a frightening control over the food distribution system and the world as we know it. I urge everyone to go out there and plant their own garden, support your local economy, eat healthy, and to read one of Michael Pollan's books.

If you don't have time to read or are a movie person, go to the following link and watch the movie "FOOD INC." for free!

http://milledrive.com/videos/29660/Food_Inc._2009_Documentary.html

I hope that some of you will begin to do a little research on where your food comes from, or at least think twice about it. Honestly, I don't see how anyone could eat the same way after watching this video and reading Michael Pollan's words. Be prepared to be shocked...

Almost done with sheet mulching

I haven't gotten a chance to post pictures of last weekend. Here they are. We are almost completely finished with the beds... just 2 to go (hopefully finishing before I leave Sunday). Right now I'm just waiting on some wood chips to arrive, and also taking out a few shrubs.

That was the rhododendrin last spring. Looks nice, but it was not very beneficial (shades most of that bed, is overgrown with prickers, and takes up lots of space)

We removed it (Scotty!) and put a "V" path in the middle, for easier harvesting.

With mulch, along with the rest of our yard...

The 9 large beds, which were just grass only a month ago.

A picture of the house from the start of the main path. It will look more aesthetically pleasing come spring, but for now it's just trying to get everything done before the ground becomes solid (frozen!)

That's probably all the pictures I'll post for awhile. But stay tuned! The best part has yet to come...

Master Healer & Shapeshifter Apprenticeship: Sacred Ground Part I

I'm going away... again. Another week-long course has come up that will fill my head with an assortment of knowledge. This one may seem strange to some of you, but to others it won't seem strange at all. I honestly cannot give you a very lengthy description, because I don't know much about this course. A good friend of mine got me into the course last minute. Again, I cannot say thank you enough to everyone who is helping guide me on this path.

Website description:

This intensive, experiential shapeshifter training combines modern methods with ancient wisdom from cultures around the world—the Amazon basin, Asian steppe, the Himalayas, sacred Mayalands, deserts of Iran and Egypt, islands of Indonesia, and the high Andes—offering a comprehensive training unavailable anywhere else.

During the apprenticeship, those of all skill levels in shamanic work are initiated into powerful shapeshifting and transformational approaches, practice centuries-old healing forms and rituals from original cultures, and join a world-encompassing family of healers committed to individual and global balance.

In this unprecedented period of personal and global change, we are being urged to recognize that we and our planet are one living organism. This training cultivates the spiritual support, consciousness, and skills we need to help us navigate these times with clarity and compassion. Join with like-minded others as we heal, evolve, and manifest a new world dream.

Sacred Ground - Part 1

Shamans are the spiritual mediators for their communities, those who maintain the balance between spirit, humans, and the natural world. All of life is founded on these primary relationships, as well as the notions that everything is sacred and that our natural world is alive, sentient, and can be communicated with.

In Part 1 of the apprenticeship, we establish our shamanic connection to sacred ground, and are introduced to the foundations of the intensive healing forms and rituals that we learn in Part 2 of this training. As we open to sacred forces, we:

• Practice energetic exercises that heighten awareness and evoke sacred space
• Draw upon “clan wisdom” in a powerful community setting
• Walk the shamanic “path of light,” initiated by ancient ceremonies and rites
• Retrieve and receive huacas (sacred items) and spirit guides
• Work intimately with the elements, helper spirits, and local guardians
• Read “karmic winds” and the energy history of the lands, waters, locations, and events
• Read the human energy profile utilizing candles, stone, and tobacco divination
• Extract heavy, or disharmonious, energies from the body using eggs and plants
• Cleanse shamanically with plants, tobacco, and water camaying (breath of spirit)
• Get initiated and trained to channel fire into the Shapeshifter’s “breath of fire"

I feel extremely fortunate to be attending this course. Instructor, John Perkins wrote the book "Confessions of an Economic Hitman" and has an extensive knowledge about Shamanism. Llyn Roberts has also been studying Shamanism for many years. I have a good feeling that in this particular course, I will experience things unlike anything I've ever experienced before. Who knows what people I'm going to meet and how this next week will change me. I leave Sunday, Oct. 18 and return on Oct. 25. The course is at Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York.

If you're interested in what was just explained, feel free to contact me and I'm sure we can have some very interesting conversations. Love and healing,

Ryan
iamharb@gmail.com

Sharing knowledge

I spoke with a few people about how to make this project more known... in hopes of increasing awareness and inspiring people to undertake similar projects themselves. Because that is the most important thing with all of this permaculturing - getting more people interested and involved.

I always think about my ego when undertaking projects of this magnitude. I want to share this knowledge with others but I don't want to come off looking superior in any way - there's no point in that. But it's selfish not to bring forth this information to the public. As long as my heart is in the right place and I know deep down inside that I'm not doing promoting the project to boost my own ego, it's fine to make signs, fliers, and contact media outlets.

So that's what we did. Here's the sign that Kenzie and I made yesterday night.

Lot's of posing this morning in the yard - thanks Sean for taking pictures when you were in a rush for class!

Lots of love for the tree that's holding our sign.

And me being goofy, of course. I put up stand that has an information sheet about the project. Neighbors have been walking by and staring curiously at what we are doing. Now they can read a one-page handout about what's happening and why our yard looks the way it does. Below is a copy of the information sheet that neighbors have been reading (some of it is repeated what has already been said in past blog entries, so skim those parts if you want.) Happy reading!

Project description:

To all those who are concerned for our planet's future, who want to help heal the Earth in some way or another, here is an opportunity. My name is Ryan Harb I am 23 years old and I am a graduate student at UMass Amherst. The degree that I will be obtaining is in "green building," but more specifically, I am now focusing all of my energy toward the land.

To graduate with a M.S. in green building from UMass, one must complete a 6-credit practicum (internship) related to the field. I have always been a self-motivated person and decided from the start that I would create a project to serve as my practicum.

It had to be something big. It had to be something that would get people talking. Most of all it had to be educational; something that people would actually want to learn about which would benefit both the individual personal and the planet as a whole. The goals were clear and the project developed after months of consultation and exploration. 3 Willow Lane, will soon become model permaculture edible forest garden.

You might be wondering, "what is permaculture?" Originally the term was coined by an Australian named Bill Mollison (he merged the words permanent and agriculture). It involves "fixing" the soil, planting edible perennials (fruit trees, nut trees, berry bushes, and vegetables), utilizing the symbiotic relationships between certain plants, increasing the biodiversity and being low maintenance.

The process:

Currently we are in the process of sheet mulching, otherwise known as "lasagna gardening." Although it may look like we tilled (turned) the soil, we instead aerated the soil with digging forks (similar to pitch forks). On top of this is a 2-3 inch layer of compost which adds organic matter to the soil. The compost is then covered with a layer of cardboard. The cardboard prevents light from getting through and this prevents weed growth. Soon it decomposes which adds to the soil and attracts beneficial insects (worms especially love cardboard.) Wood chips are placed on the very top to hold in moisture and to weight down the cardboard.

Timeline:

Over the next few weeks, the remaining portion of the yard will be completed using the method described above. This yard will look like a bunch of wood chips for the next few months (or snow…) but when spring comes, the soil will be ready for planting. By late spring, the yard will be in full swing, with harvests coming as soon as next summer.

Want to help / learn?

Throughout October, myself and other students will be working diligently in the yard, making this transportation happen. If you would like to help, please join us! We have plenty of tools and work to be done. Call ahead if you would like, or if you have questions.

Questions?

Please contact Ryan Harb for any questions you might have.

E-mail: rharb@nrc.umass.edu

Cell: (978) 314-1176