Urban Food Growing in Havana, Cuba

Be Aware of Falling Food.....

The following is an excerpt from David Jacke's and Eric Toensmeier's two-volume book Edible Forest Gardens (available from Permaculture Activist magazine).

Picture yourself in a forest where almost everything around you is food. Mature and maturing fruit and nut trees form an open canopy. If you look carefully, you can see fruits swelling on many branches—pears, apples, persimmons, pecans, and chestnuts. Shrubs fill the gaps in the canopy. They bear raspberries, blueberries, currants, hazelnuts, and other lesser-known fruits, flowers, and nuts at different times of the year. Assorted native wildflowers, wild edibles, herbs, and perennial vegetables thickly cover the ground. You use many of these plants for food or medicine. Some attract beneficial insects, birds, and butterflies. Others act as soil builders, or simply help keep out weeds. Here and there vines climb on trees, shrubs, or arbors with fruit hanging through the foliage—hardy kiwis, grapes, and passionflower fruits. In sunnier glades large stands of Jerusalem artichokes grow together with groundnut vines. These plants support one another as they store energy in their roots for later harvest and winter storage. Their bright yellow and deep violet flowers enjoy the radiant warmth from the sky. This is an edible forest garden.

What is Edible Forest Gardening?

Edible forest gardening is the art and science of putting plants together in woodlandlike patterns that forge mutually beneficial relationships, creating a garden ecosystem that is more than the sum of its parts. You can grow fruits, nuts, vegetables, herbs, mushrooms, other useful plants, and animals in a way that mimics natural ecosystems. You can create a beautiful, diverse, high-yield garden. If designed with care and deep understanding of ecosystem function, you can also design a garden that is largely self-maintaining. In many of the world's temperate-climate regions, your garden would soon start reverting to forest if you were to stop managing it. We humans work hard to hold back succession—mowing, weeding, plowing, and spraying. If the successional process were the wind, we would be constantly motoring against it. Why not put up a sail and glide along with the land's natural tendency to grow trees? By mimicking the structure and function of forest ecosystems we can gain a number of benefits.

Why Grow an Edible Forest Garden? While each forest gardener will have unique design goals, forest gardening in general has three primary practical intentions:

• High yields of diverse products such as food, fuel, fiber, fodder, fertilizer, 'farmaceuticals' and fun;
• A largely self-maintaining garden and;
• A healthy ecosystem.

These three goals are mutually reinforcing. For example, diverse crops make it easier to design a healthy, self-maintaining ecosystem, and a healthy garden ecosystem should have reduced maintenance requirements. However, forest gardening also has higher aims. As Masanobu Fukuoka once said, "The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings." How we garden reflects our worldview.

The ultimate goal of forest gardening is not only the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of new ways of seeing, of thinking, and of acting in the world. Forest gardening gives us a visceral experience of ecology in action, teaching us how the planet works and changing our self-perceptions. Forest gardening helps us take our rightful place as part of nature doing nature's work, rather than as separate entities intervening in and dominating the natural world.

Read the rest of the article....
Buy the book here...

Rob Hopkins at TED

Rob Hopkins reminds us that the oil our world depends on is steadily running out. He proposes a unique solution to this problem -- the Transition response, where we prepare ourselves for life without oil and sacrifice our luxuries to build systems and communities that are completely independent of fossil fuels.

Rob Hopkins is the founder of the Transition movement, a radically hopeful and community-driven approach to creating societies independent of fossil fuel.

Bloomington Preps for Peak Oil

Peter Bane and I have been proud to contribute to the creation of the document Redefining Prosperity: Energy Descent and Community Resilience. Our mayor and city council really like it and it could also be adopted by the county. It will likely serve as a peak oil transition template for many other communities in Indiana and elsewhere. Please note that it is a 257 page document and may take a while to download if your server is slow. Please share.
http://bloomington.in.gov/media/media/application/pdf/6046.pdf

The specific charge of the Peak Oil Task Force is to acquire and study current and credible data; seek community feedback; coordinate efforts with other governmental agencies; work to educate the community; and, to develop a Bloomington Peak Oil Task Force Report for approval by the Mayor and Common Council outlining strategies the City and community might pursue to mitigate the effect of declining fuel supplies in areas including, but not limited to: transportation, municipal services, energy production and consumption, food security, water and wastewater.

Uban Ag in Bloomington

Bloomington passes urban agriculture ordinance

Indiana Living Green

Friday, 07 August 2009 08:29

Bloomington, Ind. — The Bloomington City Council recently passed an urban agriculture ordinance, which will become part of the city's new Unified Development Ordinance. In short, the ordinance, which was passed unanimously, defines "urban agriculture" and "community garden" and lists them as permitted activities in all residential zones within the city. "Getting (the ordinance) into the zoning code was a major victory and will no doubt help promote local food production and food security," said John D. Galuska, one of the supporters. He also expects efforts to get Mayor Mark Kruzan to sign an official proclamation in support of urban agriculture.

First Annual PDC in Bloomington, IN!

Bloomington, Indiana Weekend Series Permaculture Design Course

The time has come! Permaculture is a great foundation for the transitional and regenerative work our generation needs to be doing. This course is designed to give us all a solid starting place.

Peter Bane, publisher of the Permaculture Activist; Keith Johnson, who has been practicing permaculture for over 25 years; and Rhonda Baird, originator of the Bloomington Permaculture Guild team up with Kevin Glenn of Owl Creek Programs and other guests to offer a fun, fast-paced, and transformative course.

The cost of the course is $750 (or $700 if registered by Sept. 15). This is a deal for anyone and meant for those who work and can't take time away for a two-week course.

This course is designed for busy, working adults and meant to be affordable. We are so pleased to offer a weekend permaculture design course this fall/winter for people in the Bloomington, IN region.

We will gather at the Friend's Meeting House Friday (3820 E. Moores Pike) evenings, Saturday all day, and Sunday afternoons on October 16-18, Oct. 31-Nov. 1, Nov. 13-15, Feb. 19-21 and March 5-7. We would be happy to help those traveling from out of town find accommodations. The cost of the course is $750 (or $700 if paid by 9/15). This includes Saturday lunches and materials for the course. You may pay for the course using Paypal (though you will need to contact Rhonda for registration materials). Please contact Rhonda Baird at 812.323.1058 or rhonda.kb[at]yahoo[dot]com for more information.

A Farm for the Future

Wildlife film maker Rebecca Hosking investigates how to transform her family's farm in Devon into a low energy farm for the future, and discovers that nature holds the key. With her father close to retirement, Rebecca returns to her family's wildlife-friendly farm in Devon, to become the next generation to farm the land.

But last year's high fuel prices were a wake-up call for Rebecca. Realising that all food production in the UK is completely dependent on abundant cheap fossil fuel, particularly oil, she sets out to discover just how secure this oil supply is. Alarmed by the answers, she explores ways of farming without using fossil fuel. With the help of pioneering farmers and growers, Rebecca learns that it is actually nature that holds the key to farming in a low-energy future.

The following from Tree Hugger:

Film Maker Explores Post-Oil Farming
Last week I wrote about a BBC documentary which I hadn't seen, but the green scene in the UK was all a flutter over. A Farm for the Future explores nature film maker Rebecca Hosking's return to her small family farm and her search for a post-fossil fuel agriculture. I've since seen the film, and would recommend it to anyone with an interest in food and farming - come to think of it, I'd recommend it to anyone who eats. But for those without the time or means to watch it, Rebecca has also written an excellent article in the Daily Mail newspaper about her quest for truly sustainable agriculture.

Rebecca's work (who incidentally is also responsible for a plastic bag ban in her home town!) is not just remarkable for the content she is covering - but the venues in which it is being aired too. To have a half-hour documentary devoted to peak oil, agriculture and alternatives like forest gardening and permaculture appear on prime time BBC is a telling sign of the times. But to also have an article in the Daily Mail - hardly the bastion of environmental radicalism - is dynamite.

There is no doubt in my mind that Rebecca is opening a lot of eyes to the unsustainability of our present food system. Take this excerpt from Rebecca's conversation with permaculture guru Patrick Whitefield [Disclaimer: Patrick is a former teacher and friend of mine]:

But it will work only if we have a lot more growers. Some reports estimate it's going to take as many as 12 million, although currently we have 11million gardeners. A food-growing system based on natural ecology appeals to my naturalist side. But the farmer's daughter in me needed a bit more convincing. Could permaculture feed Britain? I asked Patrick Whitefield, Britain's leading expert in permaculture.

'Good question,' he said. 'A better question would be, "Can present methods go on feeding Britain?" In the long term, it is certain that present methods can't because they are so entirely dependent on fossil-fuel energy. So we haven't got any choice other than to find something different.'

The more permaculture people I met, the more hopeful I became that we can find a way out of this mess if we start preparing for peak oil now.

Along the way, Rebecca also meets Ben and Charlotte Hollins - the brother and sister team who now run the innovative Fordhall Farm in Shropshire - and talks about their nature-based no-till pasture system; she talks with peak oil experts Richard Heinberg and Colin Campbell; visits Martin Crawford of the Agroforestry Research Trust and explores the small holding of Chris and Lynn Dixon - who have pioneered their low input, biodiverse permaculture-based land management techniques in the hills of Wales for years.

For folks like me who have long followed permaculture and other sustainable, but often marginalized, food movements, it's really incredible to see voices like this getting a wide and receptive audience. Now we just have to see how many folks are willing to roll up their sleeves, get their hands dirty, and start planting.

Turn off the High Definition for better viewing

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

Find the Ecovillage where you are...

Good news from friend and colleague (once long-term editor of Communities Magazine and author of Creating A Life Together and Finding Community) Diana Christian (and previously fellow ecovillager at Earthaven) who writes (at her excellent new website, Ecovillage News):

I’m publishing Ecovillages as a free, bimonthly newsletter in order to encourage and inspire ecovillage projects with news about what ecovillages are doing worldwide. People seem to love photos and stories about how others are succeeding in good work. Ecovillages will bring you stories about successful projects in every issue, and practical, how-to information, too.

From six to eight articles will appear in each issue, in a variety of topics. Here are the kinds of articles and ongoing columns you'll find:

1. The ecovillage movement
   • Ecovillage conferences & gatherings
   • Ecovillages in the News
   • Profiles of ecovillage activists
2. News about individual ecovillages worldwide
3. Practical ecovillage tools:
   • Communication skills, decision-making, governance
   • Permaculture, natural building, appropriate technology
   • Legal, financial, & zoning practices
4. “Ecovillagers Write” (letters to the editor)
5. “Book & Video Reviews”

I’m especially keen on stimulating more interest in ecovillages in North America, ideally with news of what people are doing elsewhere. You’ll find stories about ecovillage projects in Africa, the Middle East, Europe, Russia, South America, Australia and New Zealand, southern Asia, China, and Japan. (We’re everywhere!)

Our GANG in Bloomington, IN

After weeks of thinking up stranger and stranger names for our communal garden, Kimberly Wagner, psychologist, wordsmith, and Kevin Polk’s wife, offered up the obvious, both simple and subversive: GANG, or Green Acres Neighborhood Garden. We loved it immediately. Besides its capacity to reverse the sinister association of urban gangs we can say, hey, “Come join the GANG!” or, “Let’s GANG-up!” and so on — one way to add levity to the heightened sense of community.

The executive committee that, throughout this long winter, has been charged with figuring out the mechanics of how to get this garden going, consists of Kevin Polk, Dave Parkhurst and Georgia Schaich, a long-term Green Acres resident, activist and networker. To these must be added teacher and project director Keith Johnson (again see February 3 post) and myself, as project manager. Keith decided that the way to start the process of educating neighbors and the public through this garden as to the benefits of permaculture would be to offer monthly workshops.

Yesterday, he and I decided that we will hold eight workshops, from the end of month of March through the end of the growing season. This means that if you attend all the workshops, you will know how to grow a permaculture garden in Bloomington, Indiana. And of course, for me, the benefits of this garden are equally that it builds community spirit in the neighborhood and empowers us to go further, hopefully creating other public gardens on private land, creating pathways throughout, turning some streets into pedestrian walkways with kiosks, tiny sidewalk lending libraries, tea houses; turning intersections into piazzas through painted mandalas or labyrinths — all as inspired by the template established in Portland’s City Repair project. As Kevin said, grinning, ultimately it will be known as GANGSTA or, Green Acres Neighborhood Gardens Training Association!

We think big.

Meanwhile, “back at the ranch,” ranch house, that is. . . I’ve already been the stranger in this little suburban enclave, saving my leaves, cutting my lawn just barely enough to get by . . . But this? Once a month swarms of people doing weird things in and around the muddy hole in the ground? What will people think?

Well, what will people think if we don’t built such community gardens? It’s time to return to what we used to know and is still written in our bones: how to feed ourselves, to share with one another, to trade skills and re-skill ourselves, and now, for the first time in human history, to remember who we are as one people on a suffering planet wired into a single neural matrix. Though we can link up instantly via the internet, real connections among living breathing humans and animals and plant life forms are slow building and become both vital and invigorating during this time of lurching collective civilizational descent that will prove more and more drastic as time goes on.

We can react in fear or we can respond in love. Coherence or chaos. In this stark time of elemental choice, there is no middle ground.