Cycles

Here is the last post here and the first over at GreenerMinds.com.

Feral Daydreams

If you haven't yet, bookmark that page to occasionally read our guest posts about our new project.

(no subject)

For a variety of reasons, I find the whole notion of a new years resolution kind of silly. But I have an informal little goal for myself that happens to coincide with the turning of the seasons. And that is to be on this computer less. In this day and age, it would be foolish to swear off such a resource completely. But the fact remains that our culture has largely replaced real experience with screens. Tools that have their place, but get stared at for hours a day. On average, people are on the computer three hours a day. That amounts to the average person literally losing an entire day of their week farting around on the Internet. As a guilty party myself, I judge no one. But I have personally become uncomfortable, if not a bit ashamed, with this figure.

Back in July, I reported why we started this blog. As a refresher, we were in the process of buying a house. We wanted to document our efforts to turn this new place into a little urban homestead, striving to live more sustainably in an unsustainable living situation such as that of a city. It has taken nine months for this deal to come to a close. And over that time I have babbled on about this or that, waiting to return to the original intention of this blog.

In the next couple weeks we will finally be moving in.

There's much to do this spring... moving, settling in, hiking, camping, exploring the woods around our new house, identifying the trees, birds, and wildflowers in the woodlot next door, garden planning... to spend so much time on this damn computer. Becoming familiar with the yard... our pallet. Learning the properties of the soil, checking things like drainage and pH, exploring things like micro-climates and such. I honestly had a dream about the day we moved in that I ditched the moving crew to dig in the backyard with a shovel.

Not to mention, “green” living is so trendy these days, you don't need me to tell you to switch to compact florescent light bulbs. Hybrid cars, organic bananas, buy more stuff to save the environment.... yawn.

So, on that note... this is the end of this blog in its current form. Do not fret, I do plan on periodically documenting the progressive attempts to apply ecological principals to our new homestead. But there will be no heroes or villians, less rhetoric and opinions in favor of dirty hands and examples.

And you can follow our journey occasionally over at www.greenerminds.com. A blog started by a local permaculturist with the eventual intention of becoming a cooperative blog for folks in the Genesee Valley region who are taking tangible steps to live more sustainably, to share ideas and tools.

I am also planning to do some sort of Flickr or Picassa page to document our efforts in the new homestead without the same pressures as a blog.

So keep in touch, but better yet, get outside. The wild places left in this world have more to teach that all the blogs in cyberspace combined.

Why Bother?

If you have 10 minutes to spare, please read this:

Why Bother?

Do you see what I see?

I am so excited, our asparagus is emerging from the bark chips! Asparagus is one of those plants you need to plant and then not harvest for a long time. We ate some last year, and I'm so happy we get to enjoy this years harvest before we leave the rest behind.
There are four stalks the boys and I picked tonight waiting for a snack tomorrow!

Its Official...

...Spring is here.

And so are vernal pools. Also known as ephemeral pools, the erotic spa vacation destination of the ecological world.

They are temporary pools of water, that in our bioregion form in the spring as a result of snow melt and spring rains. And a critical point is that there is no presence of hungry fish. When these pools form in or near woods especially, they are critical for the survival of certain amphibians.

And amphibians are critical to humans. For one, they are bio-indicators, meaning that they are amongst the most sensitive to environmental change or degradation. Unusual decreases in populations of amphibian species can be a sign of ecological damage not yet otherwise visible. Also, you might not immediately think it, but they are vicious hunters. Predators are an important piece of any ecosystem. And for those of us who place such importance on growing a portion of our own food, amphibians can be among our best friends when it comes to insect pests. Yet, another reason to mulch with organic matter.

It's not unusual at all to find me this time a year poking through the leaf litter in one of these pools. I've snuck out after sunset when the conditions are right, like a peeping tom or stalker in the dark, in hopes of catching a rarely glimpsed yellow spotted salamander orgy. (I've seen them, but not to the degree that one can if you get out at the right time in the right place on the right night.)

Today, on a morning hike, we came across several of these vernal pools. I wasn't really examining any of them until JoBeth saw something splishing in one. We went closer and there were toads, perhaps a hundred or more, mostly paired up if you no what I'm saying. ("amplexus" is the scientific term if you're shy) Something you don't see every day. And if we go back in a week, which we may just do, we'd see eggs. Thousands of thousands of eggs in long gelatinous sacs floating about.

After we approached them, many started calling this eerily beautiful toad mating call and it just filled the warm spring air. Don't call me a pervert, this is neat stuff.

The kinda stuff we're going to miss if we don't get our act together.

Just Go Outside 101

"Healing the broken bond between our young and nature is in our self-interest, not only because aesthetics or justice demand it, but also because our mental, physical, and spiritual health depend upon it."
—from "Last Child in the Woods," Algonquin Books

I was inspired to write this post after a hike today in Washington Grove, where the boys spent a large portion of their time stalking a gray squirrel through the woods like junior Apaches on the prowl. I can't help but wonder if the squirrel was having as much fun as them, because he let it go on for far longer than he needed to.

There is one crisis I can think of right now that is perhaps as urgent as that of the potential collapse of this ecologically unsustainable civilization. In fact, the two are intimately intertwined. And that is the way in which 21st century children are raised.

I am a huge fan of Mike Judge, the (do I dare say?) genius who brought us Beavis and Butthead and Office Space. What the heck does this have to do with anything? He also directed a movie called "Idiocracy", which at first I was disappointed in. But in retrospect, I see how frighteningly prophetic this movie may turn out to be.

But anyways, can there be any doubt of the isolation of todays kids from the outdoors? Is there any doubt of the psychological, as well as physical, damage this causes them? Are children that can recognize a plethora of corporate logos before the animal species in their own backyard really our future?

It is the same fear of the wild that has driven the attempted domination of the natural world for centuries upon centuries. Studies have shown that virtually all outdoor activity is rapidly on the decline. Camping to hunting, backpacking to fishing, simply enjoying the solitude of a wild place; these are all activities that are on the way to becoming endangered. And with it is a correlated decline in the health of children, from obesity to depression to "hyperactivity".

Our children are much more apt to sit on a couch instead of in a tree, play with an Xbox instead of frogs, listen to their ipod instead of sing songs around a campfire, or talk to a friend on a cell phone instead of building a tree fort with her.

Our undomesticated ancestors treated our kids entirely differently. The outdoors WAS their "classroom", actually an inseparable part of every day reality for children and adults alike. And they participated fully in this reality rather than being spectators. Education was a holistic endeavor in which the purpose was to prepare a child to be a functioning, productive, and whole member of the tribe. Now, we raise our young to be cogs in a machine despite how empty and unfulfilled it leaves them. Is this how highly we think of our children?

As if there wasn't enough technological diversions keeping our kids indoors, and as if there wasn't enough parental fears about strangers and animals and poison ivy, and as if kids didn't spend enough of their waking hours in a failing school bombarded with information they care little about, give 'em some homework to take up ANY free time they might have for outdoor recreation and exploration. And make pre-school mandatory and eliminate recess.

The bottom line is that children are hardwired to want to learn and play, if such a separation could or should even be made. And there is no better educational institution or playground than nature itself.

I don't have the proof or studies to back it up now, but I'm willing to guess that when kids have the chance to explore and connect with the natural environment, the more inclined they will be to treat it as the lifeblood that it is. And somehow that seems more relevant, useful and fun to me than trigonometry or atomic chemistry.

"If you change only one thing..."

Things are slow while we wait for deals to close. So in between packing, here's another tirade for your edification...

If you haven't guessed, I have a passion for food “activism”. “Guerrilla” food production in all of its forms that serve to subvert industrial agriculture. If ever there was a crime against humanity, indeed nature itself, it is the mechanization of farming and the reduction of food crops, animals, soil and water to non-living, unconnected, commodities with no purpose acknowledged but profit. This current model of food production defies everything science has discovered about the laws of ecology. Animals are tortured, the land is violated in favor of cheap, chemical laden, "food-like substances" that only lead to the demise of our own health and that of the environment.

This type of totalitarian agriculture was invented some 10,000 years ago and has only become more violent with technological so-called innovation. Coincidentally, it is at that point in human history where the notion that humans are somehow separate from the community of life became popular and widespread. Coincidentally (or not so), it also correlates with the dawn of war as we know it, pollution, famine, poverty, chronic disease, depression and the list of abuses go on and on. We can thank all of this to industrial agriculture.

This entire unsustainable civilization evolved from the attempt to domesticate the land through the process of agriculture. It follows that it within the context of food production where the coarse must be reversed. We are controlled and abused because so is our food.

Freedom, health, and sustainability will come in all other areas with the rejection of this system and the embrace of an ecologically sound way of feeding ourselves.

http://www.fatalharvest.org