Tag: permaculture

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.

Earth Eats: Interview w/manager of the Local Growers Guild

contributor Gabrielle Price

This is an excerpt from a broadcast featuring the manager of the Local Growers’ Guild [and my housemate at Sunny Branch Farm], Megan Hutchison. The Refreshment Center Radio Show will have Megan on as our guest, along with many other locals involved in the food movement here in Bloomington in future.  I’m excited about this new direction and hope you’ll enjoy the sounds [and sights] TRC plans to deliver throughout the year.
With the internet so prevalent as a teaching tool, my wish is to connect other local food movements to share data, especially as the climate continues to change and perhaps help other growers in areas where some crops used to do well but growing seasons may have altered.  I’ll also have folks on from other countries, some who are doing incredible things with keyline and permaculture techniques – to see how that works in places here in the U.S.
Not to mention recipe swaps!
I thought this Earth Eats broadcast would be a good segue into what our local focus is, the direction we intend to go, not to mention it’s a fine introduction to Megan; a friend and fellow foodie you’ll be hearing more about!  There is a very active food movement here and I’m excited to share it with you.
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Earth Eats is a weekly podcast, public radio program and blog bringing the freshest news and recipes inspired by local food and sustainable agriculture, featured on Indiana Public Media on the web.
The Local Growers’ Guild is a cooperative of farmers, retailers, and community members dedicated to strengthening the local food economy in Southern Indiana through education, direct support, and market connections.  The LGG’s mission is to create a local food system that provides quality food to communities through direct markets and retailers; preserves the viability of family farms; improves the quality of life for growers; makes food issues visible; and promotes practices that preserve and protect the Earth.

http://www.facebook.com/video/embed?video_id=10151331062459877

Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity

submitted by Gabrielle Price

The following slideshow presentation is available for download as a Powerpoint and PDF here, thanks to The Permaculture Research Institute of Australia.  From the site: Some permies may wish to download the slideshow files to use, or modify to use, for “It’s time to wake up” type presentations in your local schools and community halls, etc.
Food is the new oil.  Land is the new gold.
Full Planet, Empty Plates Slideshow Presentation from Earth Policy Institute

 
The world food situation is deteriorating.  Grain stocks have dropped to a dangerously low level.  The World Food Price Index has doubled in a decade.  The ranks of the hungry are expanding.  Political unrest is spreading.
On the demand side of the food equation, there will be 219,000 people at the dinner table tonight who were not there last night.  And some 3 billion increasingly affluent people are moving up the food chain, consuming grain-intensive livestock and poultry products.
At the same time, water shortages and heat waves are making it more difficult for farmers to keep pace with demand.  As grain-exporting countries ban exports to keep their food prices down, importing countries are panicking.  In response, they are buying large tracts of land in other countries to grow food for themselves.  The land rush is on.
Could food become the weak link for us as it was for so many earlier civilizations?  This slideshow presentation, based on Lester Brown’s latest book, Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity, explains why world food supplies are tightening and tells what we need to do about it.
The slides are designed to be shared, so feel free to pass along the link to others who might be interested.  Use the slideshow to anchor a lesson in the classroom or to spread the word within your community on why and how we need to mobilize to fix our food system.  You are welcome to modify it to suit your needs.  We ask only that you appropriately credit Earth Policy Institute and the photographers, notably Yann Arthus-Bertrand, eminent French photographer and friend of EPI, whose works appear within.

New sights and sounds

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The senses are overwhelmed here at the homestead in New Mexico. So much to study that it has been difficult for me to know where to begin.  I had to introduce you to someone I met while weeding the raspberry patch. I stopped everything to take some photos of him.

natgeoa012
Calligrapha vicina / Calligraphy beetle

I was quite literally stopped in my tracks when I saw him — I had never seen markings this intricate on a beetle or bug in the Midwest and was taken by how much they looked like the hollows in a guitar or musical notes.  Lucky for me, there are experts on site and all I needed to do was ask.  The calligraphy beetle.  But, of course!

There are many more creatures here that I have never seen in the wild; roadrunners and lizards to name a few.  The lizards are quite funny to watch but hard to capture on film.  I have set a challenge to do just that.

I am learning after my first week in New Mexico and hope you are enjoying following my adventure in WOOFing.

Who Am I To Farm? Excerpt from The Permaculture Handbook

“The emergence of garden farms is at hand. Under the pressure of necessity as unemployment rippled through the economy, millions of North Americans turned to gardening or expanded their gardens in 2009 as evidenced by a 40% increase in vegetable seed sales.  Urban homesteading is spawning its own literature as energy descent forces more and more households to adapt in place.  With income constrained and energy and materials shortages looming, the only resources capable of filling the gap in livelihood are imagination, information, and knowledge, in particular a deeper understanding of the material cycles and energy flows of nature.  For that understanding, we look to permaculture, a language derived from the patterns of the world around us.”

Read more about Peter’s new book just uploaded at Permaculture Activist. 

 

Who Am I to Farm?
by Peter Bane
from issue #82, GROWING STAPLE CROPS • NOVEMBER 2011, excerpted from Peter’s new book: The Permaculture Handbook: Garden Farming for Town and Country.