Category: Adventures in Permaculture

Breaking the grass ceiling: On U.S. farms, women are taking the reins

Drawn by a desire to feed the world, build community, and find a meaningful life, more and more women are cultivating careers in farming.

Breaking the grass ceiling: On U.S. farms, women are taking the reins

No matter how enlightened we are or aren’t, we must have food, water, and shelter. Because civilization is so demanding of our time and so giving of its cheap rewards, the people of this culture will almost certainly need to be forced by changing circumstances, rather than any voluntary impulse, to adopt sustainable ways of living or even to realize the potential for bettering their lives. If industrial agriculture were gradually disabled, for example, local permaculture would suddenly become not only relevant – but critical for survival.

Swiftly confronted would be things like obesity, alcoholism, and drug addiction. Another reward will be life returning. More birds every spring; more fish in the rivers, lakes, and oceans; happier children; less stress, crime, and misery. More freedom – more joy.

Michael Carter, Kingfisher’s Song: Memories Against Civilization

lastrealindians:

“Historically (recently in last 1000 yrs) it was “white people” who spread the disease of the fiat currency, expropriation of gold & human resources, slavery, western academic & religious traditions, abstraction of mind from spirit & meaning from labor, which turned into the financial military industrial information complex, which is now just imparted as reality and “pop culture”; yes, it may have been white people who started this round of oppression, and we use divisive terms like “white people” only to illustrate that we’re talking not of white people oppressing us but of the fiat currency, military industrial financial information complex oppressing all humanity and other life. It matters no more what your phenotype is. Yes, white people need to recognize white privilege but while we are doing that those benefiting and profiting from our constant human infighting over religion, race, sex etc keep the world subdued & intoxicated with all things distracting the spiritual mind. Help your family see thru these human constructs that divide all humans; if we all see a spiritual reality we are all a part of maybe we can change the course of this death ship we are all on. The machine will always have to consume life, natural life and human life, to prop itself up. We’ve got to all speak for those that can’t speak for themselves: the mountains, the waters, four leggeds, winged ones and so on.” -Chase Iron Eyes, Lastrealindians

My new hero – Ruth Stout. I’m implementing her mulching ‘system’ in my back yard.

Garden expert and lovable eccentric once said: “At the age of 87 I grow vegetables for two people the year-round, doing all the work myself and freezing the surplus. I tend several flower beds, write a column every week, answer an awful lot of mail, do the housework and cooking-and never do any of these things after 11 o’clock in the morning!”

Her second book, Gardening Without Work: For the Aging, the Busy & the Indolent was first published in 1961. She died in 1980, at the age of 96.