ramblins from zone 00

you know that feeling when you fully believe you've misplaced something essential.
Just a bit panicky.
Just a bit.

But you calm yourself down.

You remember your breath.  

You recall with faith the beauty of letting go.

then, once you've come to terms with your plot in this world, you realize that the reason you couldn't find that one essential something is because you put it back last time you used it.

it's been right here all along.
right where it belongs.
you just couldn't see it.

                it's that profoundly human, paradoxical feeling:

the one that pats us on the back 

while simultaneously smacking us in the forehead.

pues vamos ya.

it's hard to know where to begin.
it makes a body wonder how so much living gets crammed into a life...

when last i connected with you, o vast interwebs, i'd been in mexico for a moment, but the experience had truly just begun.

& now i'm back stateside, where its easier to get a hold of something called a bacon buffalo ranch chicken McSandwich than it is to get an actual chicken. merr.

i've got to admit i've been a bit spoiled: woken by roosters and the sun, privy to in-season citrus fruits i'd never seen, papaya con limon, walking through a fairyland of wild flowers, made pliant by the dual action of mezcal and manual labor, in the midst of a vibrant food culture, passing time with wonderful humans, graciously fed amazing meals by the wonderful Madame Flowers, cups full of amazing coffee, basking in the glow of a life free from cell phones and superfluous social media.

Mexico is magical.  & i hope to get back there to explore more, visit the beautiful souls i was privileged to meet & get closer to, and hopefully improve my fledgeling spanish skills.

among the many lessons learned on this adventure, though, is the fact that i want all my travels to have purpose: to work on a project, to learn, to teach.  i don't want to be a tourist, i want to actively contribute to collective endeavors.

And that's exactly what i got to do during my stay in Santa Rosa. 

Una Aventura Analógico en México

Sitting in a cafe in San Miguel de Allende, alternately sippin fresh-squeezed orange juice & an americano con leche... trying to crystallize a synopsis of the whirlwind of events that brought me to this place in this moment...

inhalamos...

robots abandoned in Gringolandia, save a cell phone with a camera but no service, glancing out a tiny window as rows upon rows of fluffy lil clouds seemingly marked the topographic contours of the heavens.  The old iron eagle (or in this case, maybe juvenile falcon would more aptly describe the contraption) skirted the Gulf and headed inland over the Sierra Madre Oriental range, bound for the geographic center of our neighbor to the south.

There's all manner of bits of me that contradict each other.  For example: my current walkabout vs. my intention to minimize my environmental impact. As a human, i've gotten pretty good at justifying the ridiculous things i do, & surely this is no different.  We've each of us inherited a world quaking from the impact of our forebears, & sure, we all have a duty to regenerate the systems that we, as a species, have helped to deplete.

It seems we're nearing the end of the Age of Cheap Oil (allah akbar, wahe guru, ojala, etc., etc., y blahblahblah), and, while i know we should mindfully utilize this diminishing resource, the sad fact is that the planes, trains & automobiles will most likely keep putting along until the last drop of petrol is wrung from the belly of mama earth.

& there's a lot to explore: a whole world full of places to go, to see, to feel, to touch, to taste, to smell, to learn.  So f-word the b.s., i'm gonna hop on a few of them planes that're raining contrails on my head before this life is done.  

exhalamos...

Permaculture & the Pen & Ink Discoball

Day 1 in Guanjuato: i met my friend/guide/host/strange wood nymph Nicole as i sat on a bench gawking at a giant statue of Don Quixote y Sancho Panza.  After dropping off my pack at the little organic grocery shop she runs, we went on a lightning tour of the callejones and plazas of the city.

That day i was fortunate to meet an artist, a true maestro of line, by the name of Rodrigo Rojas as he prepared for his exposition, Narco Pop, set to open on the night of Dia de los Muertes at the Museo Dieguino in the heart of Guanajuato.  The show is a mixture of pen&ink (&blood applied during the opening!) drawings, music & dance dealing with the societal implications of cartel violence.  With my background in fine art, my love of ink drawing & my enchantment with this intelligent, well-spoken, compassionate human being all compelling me, i volunteered to assist Rodrigo in his preparations.

Fast-Forward a couple days: in the museum that feels a bit like a crypt, staring at a JPEG of a discoball, attempting to capture the image in ink with less than a day until the opening, I began to feel frustrated and get lost in the details...

there must be some evolutionary advantage to the adoption of belief systems.  choosing a lens through which to view the world surely must aid in the navigation of reality, provided, of course, that one doesn't get caught in a loop of fanaticism.

As much as permaculture is a design science, it also holds within its vast umbrella the hallmarks of a belief system: a central core of ethics surrounded by principles capable of guiding us through our tasks and duties.  No wonder so many folks get a bit dogmatic. Be kind.

As my frustration nearly boiled over, i remembered that one of my primary goals on this adventure is to practice permaculture, & it is a practice, a sadhana: more a way of life than a profession.  Claro, the most difficult permaculture principle to assimilate for me has been this:

Design from Patterns to Details

it's annoyingly easy for me to zoom in on some tiny detail that turns me on and accidentally neglect the bigger picture, but by stepping back & observing, then designing, overall patterns, details fall into place. in this way all the tiny elements of a design or a drawing or a life fit into the context of the whole.  consider the spider constructing it's web: she doesn't start in the center because it's the most interesting bit when it reflects the morning sun off myriad droplets of dew, she begins with the overall structure and meticulously follows the pattern she's established until the whole web is a series of interconnected strands: an incredible display of functional beauty. A huevo, don't forget to remember.

 Temazcal y la Luna Nueva

so, off the soapbox & back to the narrative... discoball done, the museum began to fill with folks decorating for the Dia de los Muertos festivities the following day.  Pens packed and pesos pocketed, i made my way back to the store (hereafter referred to by its proper name, Natura) to meet up with Nicole.

As night fell on the city, she led me up the callejones to a nondescript door.

It's humbling to be a stranger in a strange land --not fully understanding what the people around me are saying & unsure of the customs & social norms.

After ascending the cave-like path through the old wooden doors --up into a garden filled with medicinal herbs, a raging fire filled with las abuelas (the grandmothers: volcanic rocks for the sweatlodge), & a cloth-covered low dome-- i was directed behind a curtain in the corner of the garden to disrobe.

Carolina, the medicine woman (?), purified us before we crawled through the door of the temazcal. As we smeared our bodies in a mixture of clay & chocolate, a young man began transferring las abuelas from the fire outside to the pit in the center of the dome.  Bienvenidas Abuelitas. Despite my lack of spanish comprehension & with some help from Nicole, i was able to understand that we had passed into a symbolic womb of mother Earth and we were to pass through three more elemental doors: water to air to fire, before passing back out of the Womb and back into Life.

The heat, the heat. water and fragrant herbs strewn on the red hot rocks. sweat pouring rivers.  in the warm wet dark, Carolina's voice rapid y melodic. tapping the beast within. fire consuming the detritus of my derelict heart.

 How is it that Life provides all the necessary experiences to become whole, to heal, to grow?

No se, no se.                                                

Must be one of those miracles i've heard so much about.

this is real life

“It may be when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey.”

-Wendell Berry

I have been privileged here at Taproot Farm to invest my days in a manner congruent with my mindset, cycling naturally with the rhythms of the sun & moon.  While oftentimes my mind and heart churn & boil, my head and hands engage in meaningful collective effort.

In crisp autumn moonlight, washed in a sea of stars, I stepped into the labyrinth.  The path to the center seems convoluted because it is.  It must be.  Each step, each moment in the maze, lends clarity to the whole...

maybe sometimes it's necessary to lay awake nights, staring into the darkness, allowing all the uncertainties of being to bubble up from the secret depths.  hearing & seeing - listening & believing to-- the raucous chorus of emotion, feeling each one deeply.... it must be... must be.

but, just as you could classify me as a visual/kinetic/impulse-driven/mistake-based learner, you might consider me a kinetic healer.  it's easy for me to get lost in the stories my mind tells my me. i tend to get caught in loops.  somehow, though, it's mostly when my hands get dirty interacting with life on earth (i guess you can call it 'working,' if'n ye must) that the torrent swirls into manageable eddies. 

Undoubtedly, there are bits of me that are broken. All I can do for now is embrace that & hope that the hugging helps to heal it.  Eso si que es.

When we were rooted in Querencia, swimming silently in the vast ocean of our bodies, Beth's voice purred through the void:

Remember that you are the Mountain.

yes.

please.

this place, this place! saddled between the Alleghany and Appalachian mountains, birthed of devonian rock, shedding its waters into the Cacapon river as it flows into the Potomac and out Chesapeake Bay to commingle with the deep birthplace of us all: the salty seas.

There's a kind of wild magic on this farm that Beth, Tim & Alexor have found a way to cultivate.  If life is located at the intersection of here & now, then Taproot is there too, at the nexus of plants, animals & spirit that you can see when you finally realize you've arrived.  

thank you.

thanks for the photos Lex!

These 3 weeks seem to have flown by, and the longer i stay the less i want to leave.  It's rare in this world to find places to feel completely accepted, where humans interact reciprocally with each other and their environment.  I feel blessed to have stumbled upon it and grateful to have been welcomed back time and again.  And i'm happy that i can say "see ya next time" and know that it's going to thrive in the care of these stewards, and that i've had some small hand in the process.   

bluegrass in the barn

apparently I blog to process previous experience, so i'd like to habituate the practice and hopefully stay up-to-date with what's happening, when it's all happening all the time, at the intersection of here & now. Sheesh.

Blowing in before the storm that hit a nor'easter and caused a misty sog-loop, I have arrived.

I am home. Arrived. Home.

the day the garden died

i woke up in a haze.
 recall: the bonfire raged and all that was bottled up -bottled in-- floated like ash in the updraft.

Wake up. Stoke the flame. Carry on.

or

the reason we call now the present

   I seem to learn lessons cyclicly & one of them is that i'm bad at moving.  If it wasn't for the help of some wonderful humans i'd no doubt be mired in a pit of my own kipple. Thanks folks, from the bottom of my heart.  Some days are spastic, others are mindful, and still others tend towards spectrumy statuses.es.es. On moving day, I was downright spastic.

loads of nodes on some cowpeas!
N-fixin bacteria root colonies!
Nature in Action.action.action

   There's something gut-wrenching about seeing a fluffy patch of fertile soil being raked smooth, spread throughout the grass'n'weeds.  But a solid crew came through to help dig up & save a load of useful plants. And every act is educational.

  It's important to me to treat every place as if i were gonna live there forever.  

  It's important to leave fertile footprints, even if those footprints are just an annoyingly fast-growing patch of grass in the middle of a suburban front yard.

And yes, i have a strong desire-impulse--drive to root, but as a human i might not root in like a tree. i might just root in through the base of my spine, wherever my barefeet are grounded with the earth.

Or it could be that i just need to migrate for awhile until i find the right spot, who knows? But so far a bunch of spots have sung the song of my heart and bones, so I feel it would be wise to keep exploring...drink in the magic of each place...share knowledge, tips, tricks and techniques, build, grow, eat & shit & breathe.  I think that is a natural urge of mine, and has more to do with an explorer imprint -with being a neophile, as Robert Anton Wilson puts it- than an escapists' need to gogogo.

chicken coop on wheels on wheels.

Thankfully, the portable coop ended up being remarkably portable.  Using a borrowed truck ramp from the neighbors we wheeled it and the ladies into the back of one pickup and slid the chicken run into a second truck.  The ladies seemed a lil ruffled after their 20-or-so minute excursion into the paved part of reality, but no worse for the wear.

Although i lament the loss of my garden out in the burbs, a good friend pointed out that the garden didn't so much die as sporulate. Plants found their way to new homes, to feed good friends and family, to thrive outside my narrow sphere of influence. And that is good.

I've shucked off a fair bit of stuff'n'things'n'baggage'n'sedentary debris. There's certainly more to sort and process, but for now i've made it to Taproot: the place where I first learned to build with the earth, where I was first exposed to the works of Helen & Scott Nearing, the place that's always been welcoming, where good friends and good food meld together into a helluva good time.  Everytime i've come here i've left feeling more than rejuvenated, i've felt a little more complete.  And here i'll be for 3 weeks helping get the new farm intern cabin live-in-able and working on a permaculture patch design... but more on that next time.
Meanwhile... back in time...  

As I walked the house and the yard one final time, shell-shocked by the sudden lack of biodiversity and the quick erasure of the signs of a life that wasn't meant to be, I happened to spot a perfect little chicken feather, one of kodo or podo's, resting lightly against the fence.  Carefully picking it up, I thought it to be a memento or a fond farewell.  And as I drove away from that house for the last time, that feather on my dashboard caught the wind,
        that feather soared out the window
                          and shot upwards

as if caught in the updraft.

for a moment i was struck by a profound sadness

then I laughed

 & laughed.

   

transitions...

fermented pepper sauce is the jam.
with enough friends & garden beds,
generating a glut of peppers is fun n easy
(thanks ms. Allison!).
 this year's sauce is a blend of cayenne,
red jalapeno, red serrano, habanero, and
one green pepper thats either a pasio or corno di toro rosso. 

All things cycle and pulse.

Each year of our lives breathes in & out, slumbers & wakes, dies & is reborn.

That's why my heart clings to the transition times... the spring & especially the autumn. The Fall.

I feel I owe you an explanation, o vast interwebs, as summer bleeds out and the winter winds warm up (ha!) for the onslaught of what looks to be a cold little death.

The equinox approaches and, with it's coming, heralds changes not only in the weather but in the path unfolding before me.

Life, relationships and change are all interconnected & weird. Those of you who know me personally probably already know about my sticky mess of a disintegrating marriage.  If you didn't then it's probably due to my tendency to wrap my problems in enigmatic words and avoid conflict. So sorry.

chop off the stems.
 i deseeded the habaneros but nothing else
cuz fermentation takes out a lot of spice apparently
& deseeding a bunch of peppers
takes too long.
we'll see how spicy this batch is next solstice-time.
weigh them suckas.

So I left this summer to study permaculture design, fulfilling a long-time dream, with the intention of returning home and helping spread the knowledge out here, in the dreary burbs.  But my homecoming has been marked primarily by emotional turmoil, inner struggles and learning how to adapt to a less-than-desirable situation.

The 3 foundational ethics of permaculture are “Earth Care, People Care & Fair Share,”  and an important aspect of the second ethic, People Care, is self-care, right? So my focus has been working on myself, figuring out how to move forward from here in a positive way...how to move on, process these often-harsh realities I helped create, deal with the defects of my personality that contributed to this shit-storm, and maintain the ability to interact from a place of compassion, forgiveness, healing & peace.  No small order, that.  And I stumble. And I falter. And I skin my metaphorical knees. But, shit man, I'm trying.

do some maths.
you're gonna want a pile of salt
somewhere between
12 & 17% of the pepper weight.
show your work.

All this has led me to an intense reevaluation of my goals and to an open acceptance of diverging paths.  I can't stay where I am. I love my yard & gardens. I love my neighbors. I love the friends i've made here.  But this is not my place.  Maybe it's weakness, but I can't stay in this area. Not now. And i'm okay with admitting that weakness while simultaneously understanding that the ultimate weakness would be to let the funk & depression lull me into complacency... to allow myself to sleepwalk through this life, going to work, going to the saloon, going home, going to bed boxed in by walls insulated with emotional baggage, dragging myself out of bed to do it all over again, day after day, month after month, year after year, until i'm just another husk of a human, disspirited and broken.

nah. that ain't the way.

 So...sitting here like Linus over the keyboard,

no idea where “my” place might be,

contemplating Right Livelihood,

looking through a lens that encourages us

to see that the problem is the solution...

I know that I must make the most of

an unfettered situation.

::(knowledge can creep through a variety of media)::

It's time to strap on them journeyman boots

& get down with OPP:

other people's permaculture.

process it up, chopping salt & peppers all together.
use a food processor while energy's still cheapish.
mix all the batches together
to ensure more uniform salt distribution

There's a path glowing in the starlight

and it leads to adventures...

where, with open eyes & hearts,

lessons of the good life abound

& creativity blossoms

to turn problem-solving

into solution-sharing...

if only we believe.

Yes.

&

Please.

&

Thank you.

pack that mash into yer fermentin vessel.
the goal is to remove all the airpockets
so's to facilitate the anaerobic lactic process,
but who's perfect?

backyard beddie's is going walkabout in a couple weeks, dropping off a garden or two on the way to Taproot Farm...more on that later. 

If you signed up for an indiegogo fall plant package, there's arugula & chard growing now, to be planted in the fall rains in the next few weeks, some comfrey cuttings, topsetting multiplier onions, some baby strawberries and some homegrown seeds in the mix, very well suited to the local climate, all comin atcha next week. 

kind of adapting an old technique to suit my needs,
i'm using a layer of olive oil to keep oxygen out.

until then i'll be shedding the detritus i tend to accumulate: art, plants, nursery pots, some furniture, non-essential kitchenwares, kipple & the like.

if you live close by, this sunday is the equinox and there'll be a good karma giveaway at the house. come by and pick up a piece of art and a treasure. stay till dark-thirty for a ceremonial burn, which in my world means lighting a fire and staring into it and dropping sentimental combustibles into it and letting go. bring stuff to burn.

it's always hard to say good-bye,

coffee filters are classy
and keep out dust & other uninvited guests.
put the mash someplace out of direct sun
with a relatively stable temperature.
wait a while.
i usually sneak a taste after a month or so
three months is better
haven't had the patience to try 6mos yet.
but who knows?
this could be my year. 

to friends & family,

to a kitty,

to a lil flock of hens that saved my sanity,

to remarkably fertile garden beds that will most likely turn back to lawn,

to a life that surely exists now in some parallel dimension,

to all, to all,


but Brother David taught me long ago that it ain't as hard to say, "See ya next time."


i think i'll be saying that a lot

learning to let go.

decompression & reintegration

waking up from a nap that lasted a solid 15 hours.

              a smoke & a coffee.

                       sounds of the city supplanting birdsong & the rustling breeze.

or

glimpses of reality

it's been a week of slippery days since we left Cayuta Sun, the Finger Lakes Permaculture Institute, the beauty of the swamp and the white pines, new family & friends, shooting stars, camp coffee & stretch breaks...

             and already i want to go back. so let me take you back with me.

                                  allow this semi-domesticated monkey to reminisce awhile

                                                   & ease my weary way back into a world

                                              that consistently forgets the simple joy of being.

or

bottled swamp magic

bear with me as i dive into the murky waters of memory in hopes of re-entering society with my heart full of hope, my mind full of heart, and my blood full of swamp muck;

& beware that the memory of this mind operates, as does much in this world, in discordant pulses.

so if it's a chronological narrative yer after, create the connections in your mind based on your own imagination & experience, as i have in my own.

i remember late nights starting at dark-thirty and ending around a hundred o'clock...

      where the time of day was only as significant as how many hands of light we had left...

                  and a horn would blow to warn that the time to collectively gather was at hand....

a community formed beneath the protruding lower extremities of the white pines which would, depending on the relative location of the water table and humidity, droop or engorge with water and stand erect at a jaunty eye-poking angle.  

i remember staring at the roof of the cocoon of a tent, feeling all the indicators of human habitation: the crunching of forest detritus, the murmur of conversation, rhythmic snoring strategically placed throughout the trees, the alien sounds of zippers thoroughly zipped.

the experience of outdoor living taps a primal aspect of the bipedal primate mind.  it's as if we recall the mores and customs ground deep within our bones by countless generations of our migratory ancestors.  masks tend to drop quickly, fomenting genuine experiences.  it seems almost ridiculous how fast a self-selected group in relative isolation could bond, but bond we did. with a quickness.

the purple-footed tarp people (love that tribe) call it 'exponential friend growth.'

"Turns out we're all connected......which is weird."       -senor sass

this rapid micro-community development was possible in no small part due to the existence of a mycelial network of talented, capable folks who are developing a community of their own up there in the Finger Lakes. we were all privileged to stumble into it. 

  

     The days were packed to bustling with intensive information transference and tactile activities.

Always moving from patterns to details the curriculum led us through a history of life to the present and begged the question: "What is life here to do? And what is our role in it?"; helped us further develop the foundational ethics required of conscious beings bent on the restoration, regeneration and sustenance of life on earth; outlined the core principles of permaculture, or the "thinking tools that when used together allow us to redesign our landscapes and communities in a world with fewer resources"; and brought us to interconnected specificity, tackling topics from whole systems design, (community) ecology, reading the landscape, natural patterns, site assessment, liberation ecology, economics, soil, compost, water & landform, climate & change, appropriate technology, waste, permie plants, polycultures & guilds, design strategies, (agro)forestry, mushrooms, animals, renewable energy, and eventually, intentionally or not, to social permaculture & small group dynamics.

                          sheesh. i'll upload some notes if i don't abandon my robots.

the mornings began with a member of the group sharing something: a stretch, a song, a chant, a breath,  a poem, a meditation, a moment.  and each morning was precious...each pulsed with connections...and i let go of many things...and i finally hugged my uncle jonny and let him slip back into the web of life...and i gathered energy...and i saw beauty in the world...and i laughed at the joke of reality...and it was like drinking life through a straw everyday.  and hell's bells that smoothie was pure.

how many new sets of eyes were collected there!

     the owl eyes that unfocus to catch motion and take in the whole scene
            the green eyes capable of discerning the forest from the trees...of differentiating the        

                       herbaceous layer of the land
          the blue eyes that can see the sheets of water sloughing over land and the vapor in the skies
                       the fung-eyes that notice networks of life below the duff

               the dark eyes that find paths glowing in the starlight.

everyone should feel gooey swamp mud squishing through their toes

          & the smoothness of a beaver's toothmarks

                   & the exhilaration of running barefoot through the trees,

                           & scratching a hog till it squeals in pleasure

                                    while, feeling guilty about not feeling guilty, you lick your chops.

with televisions abandoned, we found more entertainment in the pig channel, the sunset channel, the campfire channel, the same-bat-time-same-bat-channel channel, and the shooting star & satellite shows on the nightsky channel. Commercial-free, we could see that the only thing this media wanted us to buy was into life: to look & see & say, "yes" & "please" & "thank you."

this media taught that the planet will provide food & fuel & all things we need to build homes & communities & beneficial interactions between we humans and the web of life...

& reinforced that "we are nature, working." (-penny livingston)  

dreams were shared and tended to grow intricately patterned.  selves were exposed & accepted.

o ye gawrds! the walls of stone! glacially-gorged and worn smooth by water for millenia... steep paths held erect by the sheer will of the trees, leading to secret glens & pools below the falls... and standing in the roaring rush of water shooting down a narrow channel & feeling all the bullshit and baggage sloughing off yer spirit to be diluted and worn to infinitesimal grains downstream.

i remember the fire-red salamanders and i recall a certain undine bathing in a stone pool.

i'm getting lost now. i think i could spend a lifetime reliving the experiences i was fortunate enough to have gathered this summer. but now it's almost lunchtime, and, in the interest of making a long story slightly less long, i'll try to wrap this thing up and savor it later.

Time seemed to stretch out during the first week of the course.  Each minute contained an hour's worth of experience. Each sliver of the crashing moon going dark marked another week's worth of life seamlessly stuffed into a day.

Then as we entered the Practicum and the second week, cause & effect kicked in.  Time is a slingshot, apparently, so if you stretch it, it'll shoot. with a quickness.  

but you're still living the same amount whether time is moving fast or slow.  it just takes a little longer for everything to sink in when time flies fast&true.

We had 3 days to clear up the site we had spent 2 weeks preparing and we finished too fast. A day and a half was all it took before we were packing up our moldy pillows, soggy shoes, loose gear & memories.

howling a fond farewell, Kevin&Kyle&I piled into kyle's pickup while the breath of the trees commingled with the clouds & unleashed an o-so-appropriate torrent.  

we began our reintegration into the paved part of reality slowly, in fits & starts. sleeping under the stars, moseying on down the Susquehanna, connecting with friends & fellow stewards, staring into fires, sharing food, savoring the water from each place...

and as we've all drifted back homeward, we've passed into the embrace of families...who cushion our landing.  rest assured: we'll ripple...we'll take the understanding we've found with us back into the pool of society... we'll plant seeds and continue collecting and sharing knowledge, food, medicine, water & life.

because we must.

because life begets life.

because we are here, now,

                    surrounded by insurmountable opportunities,

                                (because we are human)

                                              we will begin climbing

                                                          by observing, interacting with

                                                                  & optimizing natural cycles.

functional interactions will multiply

and that shit will creep.  

yes.

please.

thank you.

Coarse Woody Debris

or

walking the unmowed path

::(begin transmission):::

composing this post, swinging in a gentle forest breeze, nestled in my hammock snug between the white pines, I struggle to condense and organize my thoughts.

This trip started a lil less than 2 weeks ago, yet it feels as though a warped bubble of spacetime has surrounded me.  Time moves slower here. Like when we were young.

The glens, hollows & swamps up here near the Finger Lakes resonate with something deep within my bones.  These are, after all, the stomping grounds of my Cree forebears, but there's more to it than that.  There's a sense of community budding all around... of neighbors helping neighbors... of progressive thought processes... of regenerative stewardship of the land we rely on to sustain us. And it is invigorating.

Our first week of the work-trade kept us busybusybusy.  As a group we've inoculated shitake mushroom logs, roofed a teacher-space, cleaned and patched the yurt, helped out with animal and garden chores, cleaned out the composting outhouse, dug a french drain around the Octagon (our outdoor classroom), rigged up the outdoor kitchen, built scrapwood trash/recycling receptacles, repainted signs, engineered ventilation for the top of the yurt, cooked, ate, drank & laughed together.

The camp is oddly quiet now,with half the group still off somewhere recuperating from the Grassroots Music Festival, but tomorrow morning we'll be bustling again.  The Permaculture Design Certification Course starts next saturday and we have a lot to do before the other 26 students start showing up friday afternoon...

Here's one of the best bits, though: the course hasn't even started but the learning process is already in full swing.  Each of us offers unique insights and information and we've collected in this shared space off the swamp road. 

We make. We sweat. We share. We live.

And the coyotes hoot and howl like drunken hooligans in the night.

And the ancient grandparents of the white pines in these woods keep silent vigil over the camp.

And the stinging nettles nourish us.

And raspberries have never tasted so sweet.

“All true wealth derives from biological processes.”

:::(end transmission)::

an ionised nocturne.

the homestead weathered the quick'n'dirty storm that just rolled across most of the country no worse for the wear.
came home to find the chicks snuggled safely in their coop and a smattering of natural debris scattered amidst the prolific detritus of multiple projects in various states of disrepair.  all is chaos in the wake of a shua-storm.

things happen so fast these days. a year is only 1 / 31st of the time i've been gravity-glued to this living rock; a week 1/1612th; a day one / eleven-thousand-three-hundred-twenty second...th....counting 7 leap years...no wonder times a-flyin.

big changes are blowin in with the silver iodide-laden superstorms.  it's less than a month now...barely 1/1612th of my perception-filter (read: TIME)...and i'll be on my way to the Finger Lakes Permaculture Institute for their 11th Permaculture Design Certificate Course...

my longshot application yielded a spot in their Work-Trade program...

my mind races ahead of itself these days,

existing in a magic fairyland of permaculture, building&creating, honest labor, good folk & good food ...

exactly as my days should be structured...

 but first, a trip north with my brother, through durham and it's reportedly vibrant urban ag movement; capon bridge, WV to visit folks i'm blessed to've met at Taproot; and on to Ithica to check out the Veteran's Sanctuary before checking in and making camp for the 9 day pre-course preparations, 2 wk course, & camp clean-up... 

so there's the pitch. you're welcome. to the right is a link to my indiegogo campaign. i'm trying out this crowdfunding doo-dad. i earn so little money you would probably pity me, but i assure you, i eat like a king...an old-timey third-world country kind of king (that cooks), but a king nonetheless....!

i did a little math though, and if 293 people on the planet, with the interwebs, could slip me a 5-spot, before June 28th, i could afford the round-trip, the tuition, and have some funds to help out with the rent when i return from an income-free month&a-halfish.

think about that: 293 people we know out of at least a couple billion possible humans, doesn't seem too difficult...

imagine if every person online with an interest in spreading permaculture, sustainable living, community-sufficiency or yard farming in its many incarnations contributed $5!

i'd be a millionaire!

i'd buy up your mineral rights & give em back to you in perpetuity just to snub the mother-frakkers!

seriously though, can you help me get the word out?

click the link & share it with your peoples.

all the little buttons are there.

they make it easy.

let's make life a little easier...

perturbance in paradise

when it looks like it's been blasted with a shotgun...

 feast & famine

my posts have become increasingly cerebral & cryptic, i fear.  that's generally how i cope with hard life-stuff...by flipping that weird mystic-switch that enables me to observe my participation in reality while remaining emotionally detached. sheesh.

recognizing that, i tend to actually deal with the big-picture problems best by dealing with small, practical tasks. 

& dealing with bugs:the good, the bad, the beautiful, is one of those recurring tasks this time of year.

look for flea beetles. they hop like fleas. and are small like fleas.

i steer clear of the term 'pest control' for the same basic reasons whatwhy the term "systems of control" bothers me: i'm a strange human with odd beliefs....but i suppose we could just call that a person.
the goal is for us to graduate from Pest Control to Integrated Pest Management and eventually to Stewards of Balanced Ecosystems Capable of Self-Regulation...
 That said, you'll never catch me sprinklin 7dust or even Bt in my garden. Homemade natural products are more my style: they take a lil time but they cost less & tend to smell much better.
     I need to slow the flea beetles down so they don't decimate my eggplants before the plants are big enough to handle them or predators find the feast.
         Creating Pest-Deterring Concoctions, like Potions, is a subtle science and an exact art, and all you need are a few basic ingredients:

• hot peppers: i save pepper seeds&scraps in a big freezer bag as i process them through the summer&fall so i have a solid stash for spring. you could probably use dried peppers in a pinch.
• garlic: is magic
• liquid castile soap: i like peppermint from the All-One-or-None! man's kids
• water: also magic

All you do is make a "tea" out of the peppers and garlic. You can steep it in a bucket of rainwater for a day or two or do it on the stove in a couple hours (about 30mins of work over the course of a couple hours).

I have a 1/2 gallon sprayer so I started by putting 2qts of water in a pot and turning on the heat. You can make your batch to fill your sprayer or make extra &store it in the fridge, you'll need enough for at least a coupla days.

Then chop, smash, slice, chew up & spit out or otherwise release the essential oils of the garlic (small bulb for a half gallon, big bulb for a full gallon; tops & roots if ya got em) & drop it in the water.

Eyeball or measure the spicy peppers. You're shooting for about 1-2 cups per gallon of water. Drop em in the water. Invoke something, say abracadabra, pray, meditate or medicate as the water begins to simmer.

i took off the lid for the photo, but seriously kids, put a lid on a pot when you're trying to get liquid hot, it's way faster and uses less fuel. thanks. stepping off the soapbox. boil it for about 10 minutes.

now shut off the heat, cover the pot, and let it steep for another couple hours. you can pretend you're soaking beans, lay in a hammock, go get your feet dirty or otherwise occupy yourself as the concoction gets spicier.

a point comes in the steeping/cooling off period when i inevitably want to taste it. so i do & i recommend it. i probably wouldn't take a shot of the stuff unless i was coming down with something, but i like to dip a finger in and touch the tip of my tongue a few times. when my tongue tingles in a fashion that i imagine would be torturous to a tiny creature, i know i'm ready for the next step.

strain the spicy liquid & go toss the solids in the compost, your worms won't like it and neither will your chickens...you might be able to train a dog to fear you if you're evil, i s'pose. i recommend compost.

now we're ready for our decoction to become a concoction. add your castile soap ::(sidenote: i like the bronner's cuz i keep it around for all kinds of stuff, other oil-based soaps would most likely work just as well, e.g., horticultural oil or even murphy's oil soap in case of desperation)::

The general rule is to add 1-2Tbsp per gallon of water.

Give it a stir & presto-chango! 

If you're particularly sensitive to the spicy substance Capsaicin you might want to put on some gloves now.

Fashion a funnel & fill up your sprayer. Head outside armed to the teeth with your pepper spray & start misting them lil buggers! 

At this point i pretend i'm in an unpublished prequel to Ender's Game as i rain burning oils onto the world of the buggers.  

 make sure you hit the underside of the leaves too.

watch them buggers drop. even slugs wilt from the stem. a thousand tiny voices scream every moment...all life is suffering.

necessary&beautiful.

quickly cultivate shallowly around the plants before &/or after you spray to expose the eggs and larva that the mature beetles drop into the soil below their favorite foods. keep spraying until they move on, their life cycle is disrupted for the season, or a predator population emerges... and let the most resilient survive to feast another day...

 to feed a mouth other than ours.

zero grow thirty.

last night at the behest of b. fleischmann's sendestrabe i was visited by a strange dream:

nighttime porching, just chilling in my chair with company, eyes forward,

and an infrequently recurring character whom i call the dream director, a slight long-haired egyptian fellow (i presume), appears with an egg on the porch.  wielding the egg as a wand, his eyes compel me to pay close attention & the egg glows&shudders.

it's hatching now. reds crackling into orange&yellow hues and a tiny ball of flesh emerges, glowing too. she darts flying to bounce around the space of the porch as if we were surrounded by a twilit force field only to land by the door transforming into a 3-4 year old blonde-haired little girl asking "how did i get here, da?"

to which i reply chuckling, "why, i've known you since you were just a little chick!"

then the dream director leans in close to murmur mysterious things about transitive states as i am waking up.

sometimes life throws curveballs, or the house stacks the deck, or our karma runs deeeeeep, or whatever.
     just one more way that gardening mimics life, or further evidence that nothing in the universe is  
                  connected. ha.

the garden and life teach patience many ways & one of those is the proclivity towards failure.  sometimes experiments don't work.  but there is no waste in nature so there is no failure in our future:

only opportunities for learning.

time is room to make mistakes. 

time is room to become better.

so what can the gardener do?

• plan for loss: attrition occurs even in balanced ecosystems
• recognize each unsuccessful experiment as an impetus to growth, adapation & evolution
• never stop trying... in fact, try harder: increasing the amount of attempts can only enhance the eventual amount of optimal outcomes

   the weather here has been behaving as if climate change was a theory, not a hypothesis, and local weather patterns were influenced by shifting patterns of global climate...or further evidence that nothing in the universe is connected. ha. 

   

   how about out where you are?

  

 as i sit in the midst of what i hope to be the last cold storm front of the season, i'm beginning to see the wisdom in falling far behind this year.  with temperatures still dropping into the 40s at night, i'm suddenly proud of myself for only planting out a dozen or so tomatoes in the gardens that i frequent. i'm sure as shit glad i haven't planted peppers or eggplants.

but the southerly winds of change are blowing in, and zero grow thirty is fast approaching... 

Confessions of a Pizza Cook

or

My Garden is Bolting

or

lady kaos & her disciples come home to roost.

ok interwebs, here it is:

                      what happens when you are over a transitive verb?

                                       a whelm (hwelm, welm), v.t. 1. to submerge; engulf. 2. to overcome utterly; overwhelm:                 

                                                            whelmed by misfortune., if you were.

are you like me? 

       do you shut down entirely?.

                    how do each of us deal with the confluence of our individual realities?

                                      how do we adapt&grow within confining stictures?

there's a story that i wish to tell & it has to do with lessons learned...

                 with mysteries of the present.....

                and the future of the Shua & all his Industries,ICC*

              Consciousness is a whiffletree, & we're all at bat.

BEGIN: if April Showers bring May Flowers, do March Showers bring February Flowers? OR The Presence of the Present. OR The "M" is for Motivation:

Experimental Propagation requires 3 Ingredients:

1. mushrooms with mycelial "stems"
2. cardboard
3. pasteurizing water (about 170degrees F for 1hr)

After Cardboard Pasteurizes:

1. separate layers
2. slice mycelial mass from the part yer gonna eat
3. place thin slices between cardboard layers

1. roll into a burrito
2. place in an airy ziploc bag, like this old green bean freezer bag.
3. wait. watch, aerate every once in awhile.

sometimes life appears as a cyclical, vacillating series of funks.... of ups & downs, strikes & gutters, Dude. & i'm sure it is.
it is.
but how can we wake up every moment?

maybe from the love of family....

       maybe from the love of plants.....

         maybe from the love animals......

         maybe from the love of fungi...

maybe from the love of All that wasisbeing. right now. all the time.

but sometimes it feels like everything i've done is the hardest thing i've ever done.

even though i know the truth is that life gets easier & easier

the more i know, the more i grow...

etc.,etc., et cetera.

& sometimes i feel that motivation is impossible without community.

CONTINUE: A Boy's Gotta Eat, OR Lessons in Sustainable Economics:

1. If you're like us you have some old carrots, celery & onion in the fridge. 
2. Maybe add some garlic when you call it mire poix (meer pwah)  & sautee it

     There's a general delusion that independence & self-sufficiency are hallmarks of our particular brand of freedom, but if you learn from the vast majority of human experience inevitably you see that the most just egalitarian societies considered community inter-dependence vital to each individuals relation to the natural world & each other.

     So  here we are  somewhere between Babylon & the Promised Land, struggling to wiggle our way to freedom in a sea of seemingly oblivious consumption & rampant ego-politik.  The prospects are daunting, but that's just because opportunity abounds. 

1. drop some OG ground beef, love, Joe Mama.
2. Pour some tomato paste in there, if you've got it.
3. Boom: Bolognese Sauce; Beef&Veggies

   A permaculturalist sees problems as solutions, yeah?

   And said permaculturalist is part & parcel of the economic system that's evolved in the wake of the cold cold war.

  

At this point on the thought train, an angel of some sort should whisper that Bucky Fuller quote in your ear:

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.

To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

We exist in a reality that requires money, real or imaginary, proper or improper.  I'd pee my pants in public for the opportunity, sometime in the future, to be an integral component in a communtiy so coordinated that no cash was ever required, but here and now thisguy has rent, utilities, student loans, vehicular woes... you know: the whole torrential burden of 'earning a living' on a planet capable of supporting life. . . for free.

My brother has engrained the concept of Congruence into my psyche (thanks, Esau :) ).  And I think my brain-soil conditions are finally conducive the germination of such a meta-seed. Which leads here:

When I grow up, I want to be good & do good things.
  Then I grew up & wondered what 'good' was.

After some significant mental fermentation I concluded that the most undeniable good stems from the dis-/re-appearing knack of optimizing ecosystems to sustain human life:  gardening for biodiversity.... Realizing that the Garden is spaceship Earth & we were never driven out, just blinded by self-deception & self-interest.....

But the Glory of the gossamer web of life's interactions still pulses
through microbes&mycelia
ladybugs' lil aphid lions
teeny little wasps&caterpillar carcasses
migrating birds
voles&snakes
pollinators & pollutants
a wobbly axis
starlight
&
water
all flowing into our food.
All life depends on varying states of decay & that is good.    

Sautee/carmelize/burn:

1. garlics
2. onions
3. sliced oyster mushrooms.

How can you monetize that? Seems almost blasphemous, right?  

 That mysterious angel's appeared again, just out of eyeshot, whispering stuff that Bucky pointed out 43 years ago:

We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.

Here's the crux: how does a body earn a living by simply living inside our current capitalist framework?  

put it all on a pizza & bake it. yum.

How can we align our requirement for capital with ideals of mutualism & free association?

“It's a sticky wicket,” so the lady says, and it's understandable to be overwhelmed. I forgive me.

But like Will Allen, that giant scion of urban agriculture said,

“When you start a project everything's not gonna be perfect,

but get something started.”

The time has come for a better brand of business; for local entrepreneurs working to humanize the economy; for micro-enterprises banding together to subvert big boxes; for growth, adaption & evolution.

     It's been a year since I started trying to earn income in the field of suburban micro-farming.  I installed a few gardens, talked to lots of folks at market, raised & sold heirloom plants & produce, dug swales, hauled tons of mulch & compost, sweat & bled, lashed together bamboo structures, battled cutworms & cabbage butterflies, prayed for rain, wallowed in the dirt & just barely scraped by. 

     I felt guilty charging money for doing what I want to do anyways, which resulted in me working much more: slinging pizzas at night to ensure all the bills got paid and picking up remodeling work where&when I could to cover operating expenses.  I must have a case of ridiculitis; I'm still doing that.          

Maybe there is in fact some buried imprint coded into my personality that causes me to cringe at the thought of capitalism founded on usury, and to fear what i'd become with wealth & power.

And that's probably healthy, what with Mammon masquerading as “free trade” and all, but it's certainly unhealthy to allow that fear to paralyze you.

I'm hypothesizing that it's possible to make money without guilt by focusing on:

Transparency, Education & Coordination.  

I have one more revolution around the daystar in this place, and as long as i have these feet i want to leave fertile footprints in my wake.  So I have one year to improve the land where i stand, to optimize growing conditions in my garden, to pass on this practical knowledge to neighbors, and to connect with others who share similar goals. 

I'd better get crackin.

* an Imaginary Company Corporation