Bloomington Permaculture Guild

CAFO's Can Kill You - No Joke.

2011-02-25T14:24:00.000-08:00

Flies and cockroaches carry antibiotic-resistant bacteria from factory farms, study finds

25 FEB 2011 3:24 PM

A fly's paradise: Near a giant hog factory in North Carolina, downed pigs fester while sprayers spread untreated manure onto fields.Photo: Steve WingWhat sort of antibiotic-resistant pathogens are growing on factory farms, along with all the cheap pork chops and chicken wings? And what level of threat do they pose to our health?

Well, we know that in total, factory-farm animals consume a jaw-dropping four times as many antibiotics as do people in the United States, thanks to diligent reporting by Maryn McKenna andRalph Loglisci and work by Rep. Louise Slaughter(D-N.Y.).

And we know that a kind of antibiotic-resistant staph infection called MRSA now kills more people than AIDS -- and infects people who never set foot in a hospital, which is the site where MRSA is thought to have originated. We also know, due to the stellar work of Iowa State University researcher Tara Smith, that pigs in confined animal feedlot operations, and the workers who tend them, routinely carry MRSA strains (her paper can be found here).

We also know that, by the FDA's own reckoning, meat on grocery store shelves is routinely infected by pathogens resistant to multiple antibiotics (again, McKenna's work brought the FDA's perhaps intentionally obscure report to light).

And now we know of yet another means by which antibiotic-resistant nasties can make their way from meat factories into the broader community: through the cockroaches and flies drawn to the titanic amounts of manure produced on factory farms. For a paper published last month in the journal Microbiology, researchers from North Carolina State and Kansas State universities took one for the team -- i.e., the public. They did something few of us would want to do: rounded up common flies and roaches hanging around factory hog farms, and tested them to see what kinds of bacteria they were harboring.

Their finding? More than 90 percent of the insects sampled carried forms of the bacteria Enterococci that are resistant to at least one common antibiotic, and often more than one.

Read the rest here.

Boycott Land O'Lakes - GMO Pushers

2011-02-25T13:30:00.000-08:00

Hay Now — It’s Boycott Time: Land O’Lakes, This Means You!

By Citizens for Safe Food and Feed

Farm Wars

By now you’ve heard how President Obama and his Monsanto Administration have plowed through approvals of three more genetically engineered products, including GE alfalfa. Well, here’s something else you should know:

To produce its Round-Up Ready Alfalfa seeds, Monsanto partnered with a company called Forage Genetics International, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Land O’Lakes dairy co-op. That’s right, Land O’Lakes stands to make a fortune from polluting our food supply with untested and unlabeled GMOs.

To protest, you could sign one of the many petitions going around that will likely just be ignored. But there’s another way to show your disapproval of genetically engineered Round-Up Ready Alfalfa: Boycott all Land O’Lakes products — its butter, cheese, eggs, speads, margarine, seasonings, creams, cocoa and cappuccino mixes, sour cream and milk. All of them.

You have the power to economically punish Land O’Lakes — the owner of Forage Genetics, Monsanto’s partner in crime — for its role in polluting the food chain with untested and unlabeled GMOs, increasing the use of toxic glyphosate herbicide, and potentially destroying the organic beef and dairy feed market by loudly refusing to support Land O’Lakes with your dollars.

Tell all your friends to go to all the supermarkets in their area and let the check-out clerks know that they’re boycotting Land O’Lakes products until they are out of the GMO business, loud enough for other shoppers to hear. And next, stop by the store manager’s desk and tell him about the boycott.

Send Land O’Lakes and other companies a clear message: HAY you — We’re FED UP with GMOs in our food supply!

And to make sure Land O’Lakes knows why its sales are down, contact its president and CEO Chris Policinski and let him know you won’t be buying Land O’Lakes products anymore because you don’t want genetically engineered food or animal feed:

Chris Policinski
President and CEO
Land O’Lakes
4001 Lexington Avenue
Arden Hills, MN 55126-2998
651/481-2222

Spread the word…

Taking Back Our Lives from the Wall Street Mafia

2010-11-25T09:02:00.000-08:00

“Get rid of Wall Street!” says David C. Korten, author of Agenda for a New Economy and The Great Turning. Wall Street is about phantom wealth — real wealth is about happy, healthy families, local living economies in balance with Earth’s resources, and caring, resilient communities that provide life’s basics, like food, shelter, and education. To do that, we must change the rules to reduce the power of corporations, the politicians in their pocket, and a destructive money system. (www.davidkorten.org). (From Peak Moment TV)

Simply Living Fair and Midwest Permaculture Gathering

2010-06-30T05:00:00.000-07:00

The Center for Sustainable Living and the Bloomington Permaculture Guild are excited to offer the 2010 Simply Living Fair and Midwest Permaculture Gathering, Sept 23-26!
Come to the fair on Saturday to participate in workshops on a variety of sustainable living topics including:

Renovating an old home for energy efficiency
Conserving water with rain barrels, cisterns, and low-flow faucets
Cooking with solar ovens
How to live without a car
Growing food in your backyard (or front yard)

There will also be activities for children all day long and a series of demonstrations including natural building, a visit from the Solar Bike Team of Bloomington High School South, and live music. Keynote speaker Aaron Newton, coauthor (with Sharon Astyk) of A Nation of Farmers, will talk about rebuilding our local food systems and his work creating a farm incubator in North Carolina.

On Sunday, tour sustainable sites around Bloomington with your choice of morning and afternoon tours. Options include Urban and Community Food Production, Nationally Acclaimed Permaculture Design, Solar Homes and Businesses, Green Retrofitting, Community Sustainability, and Backyard Wildlife Habitats.

Bottled Water Bullsh*t

2010-05-14T06:27:00.000-07:00

found at Dr. Joseph Mercola's site.

The next time someone offers you a bottle of water, take a stand and say something clever like, “No thank you, I don’t believe in it.” This simple move will open up a conversation about the massive swindle that is bottled water … and possibly persuade one more person to give it up entirely.
Please also make a point to see this fantastic new movie, "Tapped", which is playing in select theaters in the United States and is available on DVD.
Even beyond the issues of your health and the environment, bottled water represents a novel form of privatization, in which private corporations have succeeded, and quite successfully I might add, at making water a commodity.
I would say, and I suspect you would agree, that water is more a “right” than it is a commodity. And private corporations should have no more control over the selling of water than they do the selling of our air supplies. Well, this is already occurring to some extent as corporations make a profit selling water -- which at times even makes water less available to the people living in the area.
Even public water supplies are being increasingly taken over by private corporations, and in some areas of the world are up for grabs by the highest bidder.
This has been publicized in countries such as Bolivia, where residents battled police and the military to protect their water rights from the US-based Bechtel Corporation, but you should know water privatization initiatives are being pushed all over the world … including in the United States.
If you’re interested in learning more, an excellent, eye-opening film on this topic that I highly recommend is Thirst.
Getting back to bottled water, however, many, many Americans still drink it, believing it is somehow healthier than tap water.
In 2008, U.S. bottled water consumption reached nearly 9 billion gallons, raking in revenues of more than $11 billion.
Folks, this is for a “product” you can get virtually for free by turning on your kitchen tap!

Are You Paying 1,900 Times More for Unhealthy, Earth-Damaging Water?

If you drink bottled water, yes, you are!
Bottled water typically costs more than $1.50 per bottle, which is 1,900 times the price of tap water.
Yet, that very same bottled water that you’re paying a premium for is, in about 40 percent of cases, simply bottled tap water, which may or may not have received any additional treatment.
On top of that, most municipal tap water must actually adhere to more strict purity standards than the bottled water industry. Further, while the EPA requires large public water supplies to test for contaminants as often as several times a day, the FDA requires private bottlers to test for contaminants only once a week, once a year, or once every four years, depending on the contaminant.
An independent test performed by the Environmental Working Group revealed 38 low-level contaminants in bottled water, with each of the 10 tested brands containing an average of eight chemicals including disinfection byproducts (DBPs), caffeine, Tylenol, nitrate, industrial chemicals, arsenic, and bacteria were all detected.
So what you are paying for is often no different, or even worse, than the water that comes out of your faucet.
When you factor in other elements, like the chemicals that can leach from the plastic bottle and its impact on the environment, bottled water becomes a losing proposition no matter how you look at it.

Drinking From Plastic Bottles is Not a Wise Health Move

When drinking bottled water you need to think not only about the water but also about the bottle itself. Plastic is not an inert substance as its manufacturers would like you to believe. It contains chemicals like BPA and phthalates, which mimic hormones in your body.
Even tiny concentrations can cause problems such as:
Structural damage to your brain
Hyperactivity, increased aggressiveness, and impaired learning
Increased fat formation and risk of obesity
Altered immune function
Early puberty, stimulation of mammary gland development, disrupted reproductive cycles, and ovarian dysfunction
Changes in gender-specific behavior, and abnormal sexual behavior
Stimulation of prostate cancer cells
Increased prostate size, and decreased sperm production
Anytime you drink from a plastic bottle you risk exposure, but if you leave your bottle of water in a hot car or reuse it, your exposure is magnified because heat and stress increase the amount of chemicals that leach out of the plastic.

Plastic is Hurting the Earth in a Major Way

About 1.5 million tons of plastic are used to manufacture water bottles each year around the world, and the processing itself releases toxic compounds like nickel, ethylbenzene, ethylene oxide and benzene. Further, according to the Sierra Club, the U.S. alone uses 1.5 million barrels of oil to make plastic water bottles, the majority of which then end up in landfills.
In fact, 1,500 water bottles are thrown away every second!
This massive waste is one reason why there is now a plastic “stew” twice the size of Texas swirling through the Pacific Ocean.
Also extremely harmful to the environment is the way corporations are pumping water from underground aquifers. These natural springs serve as water sources for nearby streams, wells and farms, but the aggressive pumping can easily dry them out prematurely.

A Simple Solution is at Your Disposal

One you realize that many sources of bottled water is:
No safer than tap water
Extremely expensive
Often contaminated by plastics chemicals
Contributing to massive environmental harm
… the choice to stop using it becomes simple. Fortunately, the alternative to having pure water is also simple: filter your own at home.

Unfiltered Tap Water is NOT Better than Bottled Water!!

My favorite filter is a reverse/osmosis filter as it will remove virtually all of the pollutants, such as disinfection by products, fluoride, arsenic, lead, drugs in the water supply, rocket fuel, bacteria, viruses, you name, it removes it. Unfortunately the down side is that it also removes minerals that should be in there. Fortunately the solution is quite simply. Add some high quality salt, like Himalayan salt, about 1/4 teaspoon for gallon.
I currently use a R/O system that is not yet commercially available. It is a tankless system in which I fill a glass container directly that is easy to clean. This eliminates the stagnant water in the holding tank and inevitable mold/slime contamination with using a R/O system with a holding tank. We hope to bring this to system to market in the next year.
Additionally the filtering process damages the structure of the water. A simple way to restructure the water would be to create a vortex. You can do this by putting a large spoon in the container and swirling it around very fast for awhile. This will clearly start to restructure the water. Getting the water cold, down to about 4 degrees Centigrade or 39 degrees Fahrenheit will also work. The best way to do that would be to store your bottle outdoors in the winter (when it doesn't go below 39 F) or put the bottle on your cement garage floor at night and the earth will remove much of the heat from the bottle. Store the water in a cool area.
You could cool the water in a refrigerator but that would impart negative EMF into the water so it is less than ideal. Similarly there are vortex machines you can purchase for about $500 but they will also impart these EMFs into the water.
This enables you to rely on your own well or municipal source for safe, clean water. If you need to take some with you on the road, store it in a glass jar or bottle.

Sharecropping Reimagined

2010-04-26T20:04:00.000-07:00

Shared Earth Re-imagines Share Cropping for the Modern World

GOOD Blog > Alicia Capetillo on April 25, 2010 at 7:00 pm PDT

So you want to be a gardener but lack any hint of a green thumb? Have excess available land in need of a nurturing gardener to till the area? Aspiring horticulturists and land owners now have an online space to connect, garden, and share homegrown fruits and vegetables. Founder Adam Dell’s Shared Earth aims to bring sharecropping back by connecting open land with gardeners hoping to cultivate their own food. Motherboard reports:

It's kind of like a dating site, but instead of romantic dinners, people come together around backyards and empty lots. In the process, they get to reduce wasted land, fight greenhouse gases, grow their own food, harvest extra crops for food pantries, and maybe make some extra cash. It's ground-breaking. Literally.

The environmental benefits of unused land being transformed into farmland aside, Shared Earth seems like a great way to meet other local food enthusiasts and finally take advantage of the small patch of land between apartment buildings. The venture is already a success, with nearly 26 million square feet of land already being shared across the country—particularly impressive considering the fact that the site only launched this Earth Day. Head over to Motherboard for an interview with Dell; it just might convince you to abandon your thriving Farmville area and try your hand at the real thing for a change.

Photo via Motherboard

Overcoming Corporate "Personhood"

2010-02-08T19:54:00.000-08:00

How'd you like to attend a class that teaches community persons how to overcome corporate "persons"? The following outline itself offers some outstanding history and educational empowerment for regular persons like us. Be the Change.

Democracy School Curriculum Outline

Section “A” – Our Work Within the Regulatory System:
What is Law and How is it Used?

The regulatory system guarantees that the environment will be damaged, that the system actually permits it to occur, and that the system is built to recognize certain constitutional constraints.

Our “engaging in the regulatory system”, while limiting some of the harms done by corporations, cannot achieve the types of change we need, and that our minds are colonized to believe that the untruth that we can create change by these means.

Our thinking is colonized not only by the law – which establishes certain constraints that deny us the goals of our activism – but that our thinking is colonized by a culture that is created by those who benefit from the way that the system operates.

On the issue of land application of sewage sludge, we’ve been colonized that a bad is a good, through language used to frame the issue.

On the issue of the corporatization of agriculture, we’ve been colonized that a bad is a good, through language used to frame the issue.

Both the regulatory system of law and the culture produce a system of activism that cannot stop a corporate minority from governing community majorities, and that the regulatory system of law and culture effectively drives us like cattle down to a point of activism where we cannot win the issue that we’re working on.

A regulatory system of law governs employer-employee relationships, and that regulatory system of law codifies the rights of the employer over the employee law codifies the rights of the employer over the employee.

Regulatory systems of law were created not to protect health, safety, and welfare, but as a governmental barrier to prevent majority governance by the people.

The traditional use of the regulatory system of law, and the operation of today’s regulatory agencies, are not mistakes or errors, but a logical use of the law to assert minority control over majorities.

Law itself has a long history of being used by a minority to govern, that it was used by William the Conqueror to create an English structure of law; and that the mere existence of Constitutions does not guarantee democratic government.

Throughout history, there have always been people who have seen the illegitimate structure of governance, and demanded something else, like the English Levelers and Diggers in the 1600’s.

DAY TWO

Section “B”- Colonialism: Replicating the English Structure of Law and Culture Across the Globe and in the American Colonies

Western Europeans colonized other countries through various means of legally sanctioned violence and terror.

The English colonized the Caribbean through various means of violence and terror.

The Church intervened repeatedly to legalize and authorize state colonialism.

The English colonized America through the use of corporate charters which transferred full governing authority to one or several men, and that charters are, in reality, instruments of exclusion.

The English Structure of Law was positioned to recognize the legality of colonizing “discovered” lands, and that the American Indians were dispossessed of lands through that legal sanction.

The English Structure of Law viewed nature as a resource to be used, and thus, that it was man’s rightful role to subjugate, dominate and manage nature; and that through colonialism, the English imposed that view and forcibly eliminated those cultures that sustainably used natural systems.

The English Structure of Law treated African-Americans as property, leading to a system of slavery as the dominant economic institution both north and south, and that imposition of that understanding led to thousands of slave revolts prior to the Civil War in the United States.

The English Structure of law treated women as property.

Section “C” – The American Revolutionaries Rebel Against the English Structure of Law and Culture

Early colonists understood that English colonialism, carried out by multinational trading corporations chartered by England, resulted in the actions taken by Parliament against the American colonies.

Some revolutionaries understood that solving their problem meant replacing the English structure of law and culture, and transforming the chartered corporate colonies from property to constitutionalized states, and that the corporate form must be subordinated to the governance of the people.

That understanding led to the declaration of a new theory of governance, expounded as part of the Declaration of Independence, that people have inherent rights and create governments to secure and protect those rights, and that when government fails to secure and protect those rights, is the duty of people to abolish that government.

The authorship and release of the Declaration of Independence was illegal.

The colonists drafted a First Constitution, the Articles of Confederation, and those Articles envisioned a decentralized confederation of the States that retained local governing authority.

Lack of a centralized, preemptive federal government created delays for those engaged in multi-state commerce, and that Washington’s incorporation of the Potomac Company spotlighted those problems.

Section “D”- Betraying the Revolution: A Minority Replicates the English Structure of Law Through the Adoption of the U.S. Constitution

The Mount Vernon Conference was convened to solve the problems encountered by the Potomac Company, and the Conference led to the Annapolis Convention, which sent a report to Congress urging for a broader meeting to be held in Philadelphia.

Delegates to the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention were a select group representing property-owning white males, that the proceedings were secret and sentries were positioned at the doors, that Madison and Randolph presented the Virginia Plan on the first day, and that minutes of the Convention were not released for over 53 years.

Most of the delegates viewed democracy as rule by the rabble, and called for the crafting of a Constitution that enabled a minority to govern, and which protected the property of the minority from majority governance.

There were a group of people called the anti-federalists who understood what the delegates were attempting, and attempted to stop the ratification of the Constitution.

The Constitution is an anti-majoritarian, slave document that established a minority-rule, slave state.

Section “E” – The Second American Revolution: Abolitionists and Women’s Rights Agitators Lead a Revolt Against the Constitution

The Abolitionists launched a frontal attack on the Constitution as a slave document, and that the Abolitionists used the Declaration of Independence as the foundation for that attack.

The Abolitionists were forced to dismantle the popular American Colonization Society, which called for the expatriation of slaves to slave colonies, because their goals were not the goals of the Abolitionists.

The Abolitionists and Radical Republicans drove the 13^th, 14^th, and 15^th Amendments into the Constitution following the Civil War.

The Abolitionists saw those Amendments as the beginning of a constitutional revolution, to replace a slave Constitution with a rights Constitution.

Southern and northern business interests reunited after the Civil War, and with the election of Hayes, pulled the federal troops out of the south and brought them north to put down labor uprisings.

The United States Supreme Court concocted legal theories that withdrew the protections of the Amendments from African-Americans in the South.

That women attempted to enforce the guarantees of those Amendments and were denied, and that suffragists broke the law as part of their efforts to drive universal suffrage into the Constitution.

Section F: Building a Corporate State: A Minority Uses the Constitution to Override Community Self-Government

Accumulations of property and capital, in the form of the corporation, have been given constitutional "rights" and protections over the past one hundred and thirty years.

As early as 1819, corporations were recognized as being protected by the Contracts Clause of the Constitution, making their corporate charters exempt from unilateral authority exercised by the State seeking to change the charter.

Even though private corporations and municipal corporations are both corporations, separate sets of law have evolved which empower private corporations but keep municipal corporations under very strict State control.

The system of law guarantees that the rights of private corporations and their decisionmakers will almost always trump the rights of communities, even though municipal corporations ostensibly represent “we the people.”

The system of law does not recognize a right of local self-government, but that municipalities are wholly controlled by State governments, as a parent/child relationship.

The Commerce Clause has been used by corporations and the courts to strip state and municipal governments of lawmaking in the area of commerce, and that major environmental, labor, and civil rights laws were passed under the authority of that Clause.

The accumulation of rights for corporate minorities combined with the corporate grip on culture, has resulted in the creation of a Corporate State.

Section “G” – Shaping a Movement: Communities Assert Local Self-Governance in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Virginia and Beyond

DAY THREE

Optional - offered to Communities that are ready to organize a Rights-Based campaign to assert Self-Governing Rights through their Municipal government

Getting a Local Campaign Started

The Curriculum, Themes, and Structure for this Optional portion of the Course will be Tailored Specially for Each Community

Dmitry Orlov - Deﬁnancialization, Deglobalization, Relocalization

2010-01-24T18:14:00.000-08:00

Dmitry Orlov - Deﬁnancialisation, Deglobalisation, Relocalisation from Feasta on Vimeo.

Meet the Farmer - Joel Salatin

2010-01-24T10:21:00.000-08:00

Future Farming: The Call for a 50-Year Perspective on Agriculture

2010-01-04T19:35:00.000-08:00

An Interview with Wes Jackson by Robert Jensen

[Excerpt] As everyone scrambles for a solution to the crises in the nation’s economy, Wes Jackson suggests we look to nature’s economy for some of the answers. With everyone focused on a stimulus package in the short term, he counsels that we pay more attention to the soil over the long haul.

“We live off of what comes out of the soil, not what’s in the bank,” said Jackson, president of The Land Institute. “If we squander the ecological capital of the soil, the capital on paper won’t much matter.”

Jackson doesn’t minimize the threat of the current financial problems but argues that the new administration should consider a “50-year farm bill,” which he and the writer/farmer Wendell Berry proposed in a New York Times op/ed earlier this month.

Central to such a bill would be soil. A plan for sustainable agriculture capable of producing healthful food has to come to solve the twin problems of soil erosion and contamination, said Jackson, who co-founded the research center in 1976 after leaving his job as an environmental studies professor at California State University-Sacramento.

Jackson believes that a key part of the solution is in approaches to growing food that mimic nature instead of trying to subdue it. While Jackson and his fellow researchers at The Land Institute continue their work on Natural Systems Agriculture, he also ponders how to turn the possibilities into policy. He spoke with me from his office in Salina, Kansas.

Robert Jensen: This is a short-term culture, and federal policies typically are aimed at short-term results. Why call for a farm bill that looks so far ahead, especially in tough economic times?
Wes Jackson: For the past 50 or 60 years, we have followed industrialized agricultural policies that have increased the rate of destruction of productive farmland. For those 50 or 60 years, we have let ourselves believe the absurd notion that as long as we have money we will have food. If we continue our offenses against the land and the labor by which we are fed, the food supply will decline, and we will have a problem far more complex than the failure of our paper economy.
Read full article

BLOOMINGTON EATS GREEN Conference

2010-01-04T19:04:00.000-08:00

Bloomington’s small size, open‐minded community, world‐class university, and location make it the perfect place to develop a pro‐active, community organized, sustainable food system. The upcoming BLOOMINGTON EATS GREEN conference will lay the groundwork for a new decade of local food system development. Please join your fellow community representatives for a day of discussion and planning aimed at developing and researching sustainable food practices. How can we make our local food system healthier, more secure and equitable, and more sustainable?

Thank you if you have already RSVP’d. In order to get an accurate headcount and arrange for a set of breakout sessions, we would like everyone who is coming to please send a brief message to mailto:sminard@indiana.edu indicating your interest in the following panels so that we may schedule you in an appropriate discussion (choose your favorite 2 from each session, and we will aim to assign you to one of those two):

Morning Breakout Sessions: What are we doing now? Where are we today?

• Urban Gardening and Animal Husbandry
• Farm to Schools and Institutions – Creating Connections
• CSAs and Alternative Distribution Networks
• Food Waste and Recycling/Composting
• Food Security
• Local Entrepreneurship – Local Food Business Development

Afternoon Breakout Sessions: Future Work – Where Do We Go From Here?

• Shaping the Food System: Public Policy
• Indiana UniversityCommunity
Partnerships in Learning and Research
• Community Education and Outreach
• Bridging Food Access Disparities
• Reducing Food Waste and Offering Alternatives
• Building an Awareness of Local, Regional and National Environmental Impacts of Farming

We would like to create a database in order to build connections between groups and individuals participating in the local food system. Therefore, along with your choice of breakout sessions, please send a brief description of your business, organization, or individual project, along with your current contact information, so that we may accomplish this goal.

Further questions may be directed to Sara Minard at (773) 547‐1721. Thank you— we look forward to seeing you in the New Year, and working with you to make Bloomington’s food system better for everyone in the community!!
Sincerely,
Richard Wilk
Peter Todd
Sara Minard

Bloomington Eats Green: A Campus/Community Conference on Building a Sustainable Local Food System

MEETING AGENDA JANUARY 23, 2010
Sponsered By: Indiana University, Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty and Academic Affairs, the Departments of Anthropology, Geography & Political Science, Kelley School of Business, and Bloomingfoods

Organized by:
Richard Wilk, Professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies
Peter Todd, Professor of Cognitive Science and Informatics
Sara Minard, Graduate Student in Anthropology of Food Studies

WHERE: Indiana Memorial Union
For Driving and Parking directions: http://www.imu.indiana.edu/about/index.shtml
Parking in the Union lot will be validated with attendance.
Contact the Indiana Memorial Union at: 812-856-6381

9:00-9:30 AM Registration and Coffee
9:30-10:30 AM Welcome and Morning Plenary – Dogwood Room
10:30-12:00 PM Morning Breakout Sessions: Where We Are Today
• Urban Gardening and Animal Husbandry
• Farm to Schools and Institutions -- Creating Connections
• CSAs and Alternative Distribution Networks
• Food Waste and Recycling/Composting
• Food Security
• Local Entrepreneurship – Local Food Business Development

12:00-1:30 PM Lunch in the Union’s Georgian Room (free of charge)

Morning groups prepare report for next plenary

1:30-2:30 PM Plenary – Overview of AM Breakout Sessions
2:30-4:00 PM Afternoon Breakout Sessions: Future Work – Where Do We Go From Here?
• Shaping the Food System: Public Policy
• Indiana University-Community Partnerships in Learning and Research
• Community Education and Outreach
• Bridging Food Access Disparities
• Reducing Food Waste and Offering Alternatives
• Building an Awareness of the Local, Regional and National Environmental Impacts of Farming
4:00-4:15 PM Short Break, with coffee/snacks
4:20-5:30 PM Afternoon Plenary and Concluding Remarks
6:00-7:30 PM Joel Salatin’s “Holy Cows and Hog Heaven” talk -- Woodburn Hall 100

Alcohol Fuel for Sustainable Living

2010-01-03T13:18:00.000-08:00

This is a 2.5 hr, not to be missed, video. Stay tuned. We will be bringing Dave Blume to Bloomington in 2010 for a two-day Alcohol Can Be a Gas training. Download the outline for the workshop. Date to be announced here.

In Transition - the Movie

2009-12-08T10:36:00.000-08:00

'In Transition' shows a practical vision for creating a post-consumer society, where ordinary people make a difference. Coming to a theater near you. Stay tuned...

Urban Food Growing in Havana, Cuba

2009-11-26T18:35:00.000-08:00

Be Aware of Falling Food.....

2009-11-25T12:49:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-25T08:33:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-19T10:35:00.000-08:00

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

2009-08-19T12:15:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-08-11T11:49:00.000-07:00

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

2009-03-17T20:34:00.000-07:00

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

2009-02-25T11:35:00.000-08:00

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

Find the Ecovillage where you are...

2009-02-25T11:19:00.001-08:00

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:

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

2009-02-23T09:56:00.000-08:00

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.

Guild Meeting Minutes Feb 21

2009-02-23T08:34:00.000-08:00

This month’s meeting, held at the home of Christine Carver and David Gay from 2pm to 9pm, focused on “Re-Skilling”. We provided opportunities for 15-20 people to learn about hand and machine sewing and sharpening tools. Both were very popular though there was not enough time to do as much of either as we would have liked. We look forward to have more meetings like these during the winter months.

Announcements

Cuttings and Seeds Giveaway

Ann Kreilkamp sent some Reliance grapevine cuttings and persimmon seeds to share.

Indiana Forest Alliance Wild and Scenic Environmental Film Fest

When: Saturday, February 28, 7 pm

Where: Buskirk-Chumley Theater

What: fundraiser and enjoyable evening being dazzled by the earth’s natural beauty. Only $10.

Community Currency Group

When: March 1, 2 to 3:30 pm

Where: Monroe County Public Library, Room 207

What: There were about 10 people who attended the first meeting recently on the subject of a local exchange system. This started with a review of past attempts here in Bloomington. Aaron and several of his friends from IU are also discussing development of “Oasis Hours” equal to an hour’s work in the Oasis Community Garden. There are several existing long-term systems in the US and abroad.

Bloomington Permaculture Growers Cooperative Meeting

When: March 1, 3:30 to 5:00 pm

Where: Monroe County Public Library, Room 207

Introduction to Beekeeping

When: March 3, 6:30 to 8 pm

Where: at Ingrid Skoog’s home at 5779 E. Kings Road

Who: by local beekeeper George Hageman

Partnering with Native Bees Talk

When: Thursday, March 12 at 4:30 pm.

Where: Monroe County Public Library Meeting Room 1B.

What: A presentation entitled, "Partnering with Native Bees: Ways to cultivate & conserve native crop pollinators"

Who: Alex Smith, a masters student in ecology at Indiana University. He is working with Dr. Heather Reynolds, studying the effects of landscape factors on pollination of cucumbers by native bees.

More Details:

Concern is growing about declines among honeybees, and some researchers are warning that our bee-pollinated crops may be in peril. Fortunately, honeybees are not the only pollinators of vegetable and fruit crops! This presentation will focus on how native bees (species other than honeybees) can be managed as crop pollinators. We will cover ways to provide forage and nesting habitat for native bees on the farm, and introduce some common native bee species. We will also discuss research on how factors such as land use and plant diversity affect crop pollination by native bees, and point out areas where work still needs to be done. Questions and answer time at the end.

B-TOP’s Livable Cities Speakers Series

When: Monday, March 23, 7 to 8:30 pm

Where: 211 South Indiana Ave. IU School of Law, Room 125

Who: Bloomington Transportation Options for People is sponsoring a talk by Dr. Vukan Vuchic , a Professor of both Transportation Engineering and of City and Regional Planning at University of Pennsylvania. His expertise is on planning balance, intermodal urban transit systems for livable cities. (http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~vuchic/)

Community Gardens Fundraiser

When: Monday, March 23

Where: Max’s Place

What: Out-of-Time

“Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash” Viewing

When: Tuesday, March 24, 7 pm

Where: Monroe County Public Library Auditorium

Bloomington Community Wellness Challenge

When: June 1 through August 22

What: Sponsored by Bloomington Parks and Recreation and Bloomington Hospital Community Health, this is an opportunity to make the whole area aware of ways to live more healthfully. Individuals and teams of people will register in April and compete to earn the most wellness points by participating in planned activities. BPG could participate by creating/designating activities that would award points. It would be free marketing for us.

GANA (Green Acres Neighborhood Association) Workshops

When: This spring and summer, various dates.

March 28 10 am to 4 pm Getting Grounded in the Earth: Planting and Transplanting Useful Trees and Shrubs

April 25-26 10 am to 5 pm “Carpet sandwich, please. Hold the water!” Small Pond Construction

May 23 10 am to 5 pm Mulch Ado About Something Delicious: No Dig Garden Beds

June 27 to 29 9:30 am to 5 pm Ferrocement Fences

July 25- Planning, Prepping and Planting for the Fall Garden

August 22, Drought- and Stress-proofing Your Garden

September 26, Preserving the Harvest: Canning, Drying, and

Fermentation for Food Security

October 17, Extending the Growing Season

Date TBA Planning and Preparing for a Fall Garden

Date TBA Drought- and Stress-Proofing Your Garden

Date TBA Preserving the Harvest: Canning, Drying, and Fermenting

Date TBA Season Extension

Where: Ann Kreilkamp’s home on Overhill and at 2601 Dekist St, Bloomington IN, site of the new Green Acres Permaculture Demonstration Garden.

What: These workshops will feature slideshows and lecture in the morning with hands-on activity in the afternoon. Registration details have not been worked out yet. They are initially meant for GANA members with additional openings for others as space allows.

Peak Moments TV Series

This is free viewing on CATS and on local cable. Most are also available online for free. Refer to the BPG blog posting of January 25 for more information.

Discussion

“Training for Transition” Update

Zach Mermel and Keith Johnson are organizing a leadership training workshop for Bloomington, which they expect to draw local as well as out-of-town, out-of-state, and even international attenders. It will be held April 18 and 19 in the Bloomington City Council Chambers (capacity 220). Registration is $225.

“Transitions” refers to a relocalization process of adapting to peak oil, climate change, and economic collapse. It was started in Great Britain by Rob Hopkins, author of The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience. Only a couple of trainings have been held in the US. The first was last September in Boulder CO. Michael Brownlee and Lynette Marie Hanthorn, who will be the trainers here in April, are co-founders of Transition Boulder County the first official Transition Initiative in North America.

The goal is for communities around the world (including Bloomington and Monroe County) to pass resolutions committing us to becoming Transition Towns, which may involve:

· The percentage of local trade carried out in local currency

· The percentage of food consumed locally that was produced within a given radius

· The ratio of car parking space to productive land use

· Degree of engagement in practical transition work by the local community

· Amount of traffic on local roads

· Number of businesses owned by local people

· Proportion of the community employed locally

· Percentage of essential goods manufactured within a given radius

· Percentage of local building materials used in new housing development

· Percentage of energy consumed in the town

· Amount of sixteen year-olds able to grow 10 different varieties of vegetables to a given degree of competency

· Percentage of medicines prescribed locally that have been produced within a given radius.

Dave Rollo was instrumental in securing the Showers facility for us. Several other names were brought forward as potential allies in county positions: Warren Henegar, Mark Stoops, Geoff McKim and Vic Kelson.

Volunteers are needed in every capacity. Lucille Bertucchio has volunteered to organize a fundraising event. People who can offer hospitality on April 17 and 18 to out-of-town attenders are also needed.

Publicity efforts will call for us to update the BPG brochure that Rhonda has done. Jami volunteered to do this. We discussed tabling at the Winter and Spring Farmer’s Markets.

Action: We voted unanimously to sponsor the transition training workshop.

Community Gardens

Aaron reported on the Oasis and IU Campus community gardens, expressing appreciation for past support. They are setting up a bank account in the coming week and could use donations of time, garden tools, soil amendments, plants, seeds as well as money. See information above on their fundraiser. They are also planning a workday at the Oasis on S. Washington. They had one scheduled today, but were snowed out. They have removed 2 couches which were dumped there, but have other jobs as well.

Templeton School Gardens

Jami Reed reported on the status of gardening projects at Templeton. The school is in turmoil over the resignation of the principal. Many decisions will be on hold until the new Superintendent takes over in July. She has made progress with the Playground Committee and Lee Huff, the City Forester ahs advised them on planting trees, such as white oaks and serviceberries, and evergreens to screen the playground from traffic pollution. They are also planning to plant fruit trees on the grounds. There are 3-4 teachers who want to get their classes out in the gardens regularly. Volunteers are needed.

Next Meetings

March 14: John Galuska's
April 25: Green Acres Neighborhood Workshop (Small Ponds)
May 30: Rhonda Baird's
June 27: Green Acres Neighborhood Workshop (Ferrocement Fences)

In addition to the BPG listserv, blogspot and Website, Rhonda has created a social networking site at:

bloomingtonpermacultureguild.ning.com

You must be invited to join.

March 21: Sewing Day at Christine Carver’s. More information later!!!

Rebates for Energy Efficient Hoosiers

2009-02-18T13:52:00.000-08:00

INDIANAPOLIS — A new state program offers Hoosier homeowners incentives to install energy-efficient heating.

Lt. Gov. Becky Skillman announced the availability of rebates that will help Hoosiers offset the cost of heating their homes, washing clothes or even taking a shower.

The Indiana Residential Energy Efficiency Rebate program will provide cash rebates for the purchase and installation of energy efficient furnaces, boilers and water heaters in existing Indiana homes.

"This rebate program is all about Hoosiers making a difference at home," Skillman said. "Installing a more energy efficient furnace or water heater means homeowners can reduce the amount of energy they use to stay warm or have hot water, and save money on their utility bill
at the same time."

A total of $250,000 is available for the rebate program, administered by the Indiana Office of Energy Development.

The rebates, which range from $75 to $400, are available for existing single family homes that are the primary residence of the applicants. Applicants must have a household income of $75,000 or less to be eligible. The rebate application must be approved before any work is done. Applications must be received by April 30. Guidelines for the rebate program are available at www.energy.IN.gov.

The OED is an extension of the Indiana energy office. Under the leadership of Skillman, OED is responsible for the state's energy policy.

Transition Handbook Review

2009-02-14T13:49:00.001-08:00

The Transition Town Movement: Embracing Reality and Resilience, By Carolyn Baker

By Carolyn Baker
CarolynBaker.net
Straight to the Source

For several months I have been meaning to write a review of Rob Hopkins' The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience, but other things got in the way-like a planetary economic meltdown and out of control climate change that exceeds some of the most dire predictions by climate scientists. I should have spoken out earlier in support of this movement, but I didn't. Now, as we commence this new year, I am.

I will begin this book "review" by telling you that I find nothing-absolutely nothing wrong with The Transition Handbook. If that then makes this article into a commercial for the book instead of a review, so be it.

For nearly a year I have been emphasizing in my writing that a positive vision must be held in consciousness alongside all of the abysmal events unfolding around us. Even as I have been insistent on staring down the collapse of civilization, I have embraced at the same time, what could be and have held in my mind and heart the threads of the new paradigm that so many of us are working to create.

Thus it has been with great pleasure and relief that I have looked deeply into the Transition Town movement and found it to exemplify everything that I believe comprises effective relocalization and the shaping of alternative economies and vibrant communities. Not only am I in awe of what the people of Totnes, the first Transition Town in the U.K., have accomplished, but more so, that the Transition Town model has become contagious and is spreading to a variety of places throughout the world, in the United States, and closer to my own local community here in Vermont. I'm additionally pleased that the Transition Handbook is now being distributed here in the U.S. by a Vermont publisher, Chelsea Green.

The Transition Town movement is all about preparing for energy descent and climate change and addressing the relationship between the two by essentially viewing them as two different aspects of the same problem. James Howard of Powerswitch in the U.K. states:

Peak Oil and Climate Change are a bigger threat together than either are alone. Our biggest hope is to similarly converge our understanding of them, and how to deal with the problems they present. Peak Oil and Climate Change must be fused as issues - an approach is needed to deal with them as a package. If we are looking for answers, the environmental movement has pushed suitable ones for a long time. Peak Oil presents a tremendous chance to push those solutions ahead; failure to incorporate a full understanding of Peak Oil into the solutions argument for Climate Change would be an abject failure.

Fundamental to the Transition Town movement is the notion of resilience. It is defined in the Transition Handbook as "the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change, so as to still retain essentially the same function, structure, identity, and feedbacks." In other words, resilience does not mean putting a fence around one's community, refusing to allow anything in or out. It means "being more prepared for a leaner future, more self-reliant, and prioritizing the local over the imported."

Three requirements for a resilient system are: Diversity, Modularity, and Tightness of Feedbacks. Diversity simply refers to the number of elements in the system-people, species, businesses, institutions, and sources of food. What matters is not so much the number of any of these entities but the connections between them and the diversity of responses to challenges, the diversity of land use, and the diversity between systems. Not only does an analysis of the diversity of the place make top-down approaches redundant, but it reinforces the wisdom of "working on small changes to lots of niches in the place, making lots of small interventions rather than a few large ones."

Modularity of a structure refers to the parts of the system that can re-organize in the event of a shock. It is a key facet of designing an energy-descent plan because the more modularity, the less vulnerability to disruptions in wider networks. As the Transition Handbook states: Local food systems, local investment models, and so on, all add to this modularity, meaning that we engage with the wider world but from an ethic of networking and information sharing rather than of mutual dependence."

Tightness of feedbacks analyzes how quickly and strongly one part of the system can respond to changes in another part. Globalization and national systems can weaken feedbacks, whereas in localized systems, the results of our actions are more obvious and allow the community to bring the consequences of its actions closer to home.

In summary, it is possible that a future with less oil could be more positive than the current addiction to fossil fuels, but only, says the Transition Handbook, "if we engage in designing this transition with sufficient creativity and imagination" which is indeed what the handbook is all about.

The format of this mini-workbook sized manual is extremely appealing. It is printed on heavy recycled paper, designed with simple, natural color tones, and is chock-full of exceedingly practical group exercises for clarifying and practicing its principles.

To its credit, this book does not sugar-coat the daunting reality of Peak Oil and Climate Change, but rather, offers a positive vision of preparation and myriad practical steps for manifesting it. An entire chapter is devoted to the somewhat paralyzing terror of everyone's "End of Suburbia" moment and the resulting "post-petroleum stress disorder", but also emphasizes that alongside that epiphany, we must cherish not only a positive vision, but one that we can realistically and pragmatically implement.

A fabulous chapter in the middle of the book on the "Psychology of Change" underscores how change happens and how we tend to proceed through it emotionally, emphasizing that "change doesn't happen all at once. Rather it occurs in increments or stages." The various stages of change are explored, with emphasis on their characteristics and what may be helpful to move people on to the next stage of the process. Some aspects of addiction diagnosis and treatment are utilized in order to address the depths to which most people in the developed world are addicted to the fossil fuel/consumption-based lifestyle. Fundamental to this addiction, as with all others, is the belief that change isn't really possible. With remarkable skill, the Transition Town movement utilizes a number of effective strategies for assisting people who are stuck in abject pessimism by helping them envision the possibility of change and the certainty that it can be made.

At the core of the Transition Town movement is the Transition Initiative which is an "emerging and evolving approach to community-level sustainability", and many of these initiatives are appearing not only in the U.K. but in the U.S. They are based on four key assumptions:

•1. That life with dramatically lower energy consumption is inevitable, and that it's better to plan for it than to be taken by surprise.

•2. That our settlements and communities presently lack the resilience to enable them to weather the severe energy shocks that will accompany Peak Oil

•3. That we have to act collectively, and we have to act now

•4. That by unleashing the collective genius of those around us to creatively and proactively design our energy descent, we can build ways of living that are more connected, more enriching and that recognize the biological limits of our planet.

At the core of the Transition concept is permaculture, which while difficult to explain in one sentence, is essentially a design template for assembling the various components of any community-social, economic, cultural, and technical in the most efficient way possible. The 12 Principles of Permaculture, established by its founder David Holmgren, are explained, and examples are given regarding how they have become the foundation of Transition Towns throughout the world. How the principles will be implemented-in fact how any aspect of the Transition concept will be implemented anywhere, depends on the unique people and conditions of that place, which is one of the jewels of this movement. It does not offer cookie-cutter prescriptions but rather, possible strategies that can be uniquely applied to one's community and region.

An entire chapter is devoted to how to start a Transition initiative, and although not directly related to the addiction to a fossil fuel lifestyle, Twelve Steps of Transition are offered. The most impressive of these for me is the first one: "Set up a steering group and design its demise from the outset." What a relief! No chance of this group becoming an entrenched, hierarchical, power-driven monster; no chance of success unless the entire community is engaged and becomes more effective in bringing about transition than is the steering group; no need for one or two individuals alone to try to save the world.

The last half of the book is primarily devoted to an analysis of the first year of transition in Totnes and some of the practical manifestations of transition there. And finally, the book concludes with the "viral spread" of the Transition Town concept throughout the world. An extensive appendix includes a generous offering of further exercises, forms, questionnaires, and an energy descent action plan.

How does a Transition Town know if it has become resilient? What is the measure of viable transition? Here are a few resilience indicators:

The percentage of local trade carried out in local currency
The percentage of food consumed locally that was produced within a given radius
The ratio of car parking space to productive land use
Degree of engagement in practical transition work by the local community
Amount of traffic on local roads
Number of businesses owned by local people
Proportion of the community employed locally
Percentage of essential goods manufactured within a given radius
Percentage of local building materials used in new housing development
Percentage of energy consumed in the town
Amount of sixteen year-olds able to grow 10 different varieties of vegetables to a given degree of competency
Percentage of medicines prescribed locally that have been produced within a given radius.

Are these not the most axiomatic of preparations for Peak Oil and Climate Change? The Transition Handbook offers both stunning inspiration and an assortment of ingenious, yet commonsensical tools, for actualizing the concept of relocalization.

The Handbook concludes with these remarkably uplifting words:

While Peak Oil and Climate Change are understandably profoundly challenging, also inherent within them is the potential for an economic, cultural, and social renaissance the likes of which we have never seen. We will see a flourishing of local businesses, local skills and solutions, and a flowering of ingenuity and creativity. It is a Transition in which we will inevitably grow, and in which our evolution is a precondition for progress. Emerging at the other end, we will not be the same as we were: we will have become more humble, more connected to the natural world, fitter, leaner, more skilled, and ultimately, wiser.

With all my heart, I want to support Transition Towns in my community and around the world with the hope that their implementations are not too little, too late. Yet, even if they are, I cannot think of a better place to direct one's energy, time, and passion--regardless of outcome, as we navigate with realism and resilience, the collapse of civilization.

February 21st Guild Meeting

2009-02-07T17:24:00.000-08:00

Christine Carver will be hosting the February 21st meeting of the Bloomington Permaculture Guild. This will be another indoor activity, but still very helpful to most everyone.
Between 2:00 and about 5:00 we will have two "workshops" that will go more or less simultaneously as I am envisioning them right now. People can take as much time or as little with each one and float back and forth.

#1 Sewing. This will include hand sewing with a variety of basic stitches, machine sewing (I have one machine but it would be great if we had a couple others), and mending skills like patching and darning. So bring stuff to mend.
I have a lot of thread, needles, pins, fabric and buttons. If you have sharp scissors they might be useful to bring. Bring dull scissors, too, and we will try to sharpen them.
#2 Tool care. This will include how to maintain/preserve your outdoor tools and how to sharpen stuff. So bring your equipment.

If you feel like you already know how to do these things, then please plan to come and help others learn these important survival skills. In good Permie tradition both learners and teachers at all levels are welcome.

Directions: To get to my home: I live at 3606 E. Park Lane on Bloomington's east side in the Park Ridge neighborhood.
From the west: get on Third Street and go east past College Mall. Turn left at the first street (Morningside Drive) past Bloomingfoods East. Then turn right at the next street, which is Park Lane. We are on the south (right) side of the street about half way down the block.
From the east: get on Third Street and go west past the light at Smith Road. Take the second right (Meadowbrook) after Smith, then turn left onto Park Lane. We are on the south (left) side about halfway down the block.

The house number (3606) is on the mailbox. We have a cobalt blue front door and a pile of rubble and a stack of straw bales in the front yard.

Let me know if you plan to attend. You can call at 339-4996. We will have a potluck at the usual time starting around 5:00-5:30 pm. The business meeting will be around 7:00 pm.

10th Continental Bioregional Congress

2009-01-25T17:33:00.000-08:00

JOIN US!

Oct 4-11, 2009 for the 10th Continental Congress at The Farm

Bioregionalism embraces the struggle to preserve, restore and enhance the life of the places that constitute the planet. Since 1984 bioregionalists have been gathering in congresses to envision and develop a realistic, restorative way of life in the bioregions of the Americas. We set our own agendas, operate by consensus and build a common commitment. Grand times and good friendships are only the first fruits. At bioregional congresses, we live in community, concern ourselves with the things that matter, and return home informed and inspired. We earnestly invite the participation of all, especially those actively employing ecological precepts in the many movements and endeavors necessary for the human species to reinhabit the bioregions of the Americas and of the whole Earth.

Click here for more info

Summary

The
Congress Site

Proposed Program

Workday

Pre- and Post- Congress Offerings

Children

Planning for the Congress

Registration, Costs, and Contact Info

Donations

More Information?

Going Local with Peak Moment TV

2009-01-25T17:20:00.000-08:00

A Renaissance of Local

The 2007 “A Renaissance of Local” was the first annual Boulder county-wide community festival, conference and expo. This uplifting celebration of local food, local energy, local economy, local culture, and local community was an energizing focus for Boulder County Going Local! in their campaign to build community self-sufficiency and strengthen the local economy through partnership, collaboration, and engagement. Presented by Boulder County Going Local, co-sponsored by Post Carbon Institute.

The 6-DVD set includes the following presentations. Each DVD can be ordered separately. [Add the online link for each presentation on Google video]. Reduced price: individual DVDs $15, or six-DVD set or $70

Disc 1: Local Business and Economy

1 Local Living Economies: Green, Fair and Fun, Judy Wicks, White Dog Café (Philadelphia, PA)
2 Independent Business Alliances: A Movement Born in Boulder, Jeff Milchen, American Independent Business Alliance (Boseman, MT)
3 Earth, Economy, Equity: Integrating Green Principles in Small Business, Michael Johnson, ReDirect Guide (Portland, OR)
4 Local Sustainability: Economics from the Inside Out, Mark Wilding, Marpa Center for Business and Economics, Naropa University (Boulder, CO)
5 Going Green: Good for Business, Dan King, Ambassador of Cool, Boulder Outlook Hotel & Suites (Boulder, CO)
6 Challenges of a Locally-Owned Independent Business, David Hight, McGuckin Hardware (Boulder, CO)

Disc 2: Peak Energy

7 Peak Oil: When and Then What? Steve Andrews, Association for the Study of Peak Oil-USA (Denver)
8 Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines, Richard Heinberg, Post Carbon Institute (Santa Rosa, CA)
9 The Truth About Everything, Richard Brenne (Boulder, CO)

Disc 3: Communities Preparing for Peak Oil

10 Preparing Our Communities for Climate and Energy Change, Julian Darley, Post Carbon Institute (Sebastopol, CA)
11 Post Carbon Cities: Planning for Energy and Climate Uncertainty -- Guidelines for Local Governments, Daniel Lerch, Post Carbon Institute (Portland, OR)
12 Envisioning the Post Fossil Fuel World, Leslie Glustrom, Clean Energy Action (Boulder, CO)

Disc 4: Energy and Resources

13 Colorado’s New Energy Economy, Tom Plant, Governor’s Energy Office, State of Colorado
14 Sustainable Energy: Going Local and Regional to Power the New Energy Economy, Aaron Perry, Rocky Mountain Sustainable Enterprises (Boulder, CO)
15 The Technical and Human Dimensions of Going Local, Mark Sardella, Local Energy (Santa Fe, NM)
16 The Nexus of Food, Energy and Water, Michael Bowman, (Wray, CO)

Disc 5: Living Locally

17 Relocalization: Making Friends with an Unthinkable Future, Michael Brownlee, Boulder Valley Relocalization, Boulder County Going Local!
18 Resources, Religion and War—Ethical Living in a World in Decline, Marshall Vian Summers, The Society for the Greater Community Way of Knowledge (Boulder, CO)
19 Waking Up to Humanity’s Greatest Challenge, John Feeney, Growth is Madness! (Boulder, CO)
20 A Permaculture Perspective: Living in Authenticity During Energy Descent, Bill Wilson, Midwest Permaculture (Stelle, IL)

Disc 6: Local Media

21 Whole Systems Sensing: Defibrillating Possibility, Brook Le Van, Sustainable Settings (Carbondale, CO)
22 Blending Local Art with Local Agriculture in Placer County, Joanne Neft, Placer County Agricultural Marketing Program (Auburn, CA)
23 A Video Buffet of Local, Janaia Donaldson, Peak Moment Television (Nevada City, CA)
24 The LOCAL as Transformative Tool, Bob Banner, HopeDance Magazine (San Luis Obispo, CA)

24 presentations: 25 to 70 minutes each.

Communities Preparing for Energy and Climate Change

These five presentations from "A Renaissance of Local" provide a conceptual framework for responding to climate change and declining energy resources, with examples of communities working toward self-reliance and strengthening their local economies.

Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines, Richard Heinberg, Post Carbon Institute
Preparing Our Communities for Climate and Energy Change, Julian Darley, Post Carbon Institute
Post Carbon Cities: Planning for Energy and Climate Uncertainty -- Guidelines for Local Governments, Daniel Lerch, Post Carbon Institute
Relocalization: Making Friends with an Unthinkable Future, Michael Brownlee, Boulder Valley Relocalization, Boulder County Going Local!
A Video Buffet of Local, Janaia Donaldson, Peak Moment Television

5 presentations: 30 to 70 minutes each.

GANA Permaculture Gardens Spring Workshop Series

2009-01-21T21:21:00.000-08:00

GANA Permaculture Gardens Spring Workshop Series (2009) Contact Keith Johnson 812-335-0383 to register.

GANA (Green Acres Neighborhood Assoc.) and co-sponsors, the Bloomington Permaculture Guild, Transition Bloomington, APPLE (Alliance for a Post-Petroleum Local Economy, Renaissance Permaculture Farm, and Permaculture Activist magazine (so far), present a series of workshops for residents of Bloomington and vicinity. This project will serve as a model public/private collaboration, where private land is used as a commons, and help ease the way toward the time when we begin to put pathways through back yards, make pocket parks, and turn the centers of square blocks into commons for gardens and meeting places.

Location: 2601 Dekist St, Bloomington IN 47408, site of the new Green Acres permaculture demonstration garden.

Sat. March 28, Getting Grounded in the Earth: Planting and Transplanting Useful Trees and Shrubs, 10AM-4PM

The conditions of a planting site are as important as the plant. Soil type and drainage, available water and sunlight, exposure to drying winds, winter stresses, predation, and other factors must be considered. Matching the needs of the plant to the site increases the survivability, performance, and longevity.

At this event we will be transplanting several existing shrubs to new locations and planting new fruiting shrubs and trees. A short lecture / slideshow (with handouts) opens the day then we will move directly into the landscape for hands-on planting and transplanting. 12:30PM BYO bag lunch (refreshments provided). Keith Johnson: Instructor / Project Director

Sat. / Sun., April 25-26, 10AM-5PM - A Carpet Sandwich, Please - Hold the Water: Small Pond Construction for Rainwater Catchment and Irrigation

With the hole already dug, most of the hard work for this project is already done (hooray!). The remaining tasks include shaping the sides and bottom, lining with a carpet / plastic / carpet sandwich, installing stone edging, creating a silt trap / wetland bog, installing edible and flowering water and bog plants and finishing touches.

Lecture and slideshow plus handouts at the start of the first day and hands-on tasks for remainder with breaks at 12:30 for BYO bag lunch (snacks and refreshments provided). Keith Johnson: Instructor / Project Director

Sat. May 23, 10AM-5PM Mulch Ado About Something Delicious: The Lasagna Style Instant No-Dig Garden

People complain about having black thumbs in the garden. In fact, that's the right color. When we focus on feeding and growing soil the earth gets blacker. Healthier soil means healthier plants (and healthier people, too). You can have a green AND black thumb without an aching back and learn to make, in a few short hours, an instant organic food garden that needs almost no weeding.

Additional garden work will develop, expand, mulch and plant existing beds that were made using the soil excavated last fall from the pond and drainage earthworks.

Lecture and slideshow plus handouts at the start of the day and hands-on tasks for the remainder with break at 12:30 for BYO bag lunch (snacks and refreshments provided). Keith Johnson: Instructor / Project Director

Sat./Sun., June 27-28 9:30AM - 5PM, The Fascinating, Fully-Featured, Fabulous, Functional, Ferrocement Fence

Learn to build a beautiful, strong, long-lasting fence that will exclude deer, provide a trellis for grapes and espaliered fruit, include built-in seating, and create microclimates for sensitive plants. This technique, utilizing a skeleton of rebar and steel with a skin of mortar, has been used to build 300 ft long boats, water tanks and houses. Over the course of two days we will be attaching 6 inch rebar mesh to preinstalled rebar uprights and then applying mortar coats to both sides and finishing with a final earth tone-tinted coat of waterproofing cement. The fence will be laid out in an attractive wave pattern for extra strength and will feature alcoves for lighting and the potential for three dimensional sculptural elements.

Lecture and slideshow plus handouts at the start of day one and hands-on tasks for the remainder with breaks at 12:30 for BYO bag lunch (snacks and refreshments provided). Keith Johnson: Instructor / Project Director

January Guild Minutes / Announcements

2009-01-21T21:03:00.000-08:00

Monthly Guild Meeting, January 17, 2009

About 20 people attended our monthly guild gathering, hosted at the Green Acres neighborhood home of Kevin Polk and Kimberly Wagner, from 2 p.m until around 8 p.m. Given winter conditions, we did no outside work, but instead traded seeds, watched Kevin's solar cooker presentation, and walked three blocks to check out the new DeKist Permaculture Garden sponsored by Ann Kreilkamp with Keith Johnson as the project director and teacher.

Our potluck featured hors d'ouvres, two kinds of venison chili (one a roadkill, saved, butchered, cooked and served by former New York City urbanite Rob. "A real initiation," he commented happily), and other soups, plus great numbers of desserts and two giant bottles of Alex Damman's
fabulous mead, one made from blackberries and the other peach.

Our post-dinner meeting agenda was long and informative. (Having not attended these meetings for some time now, I'm struck by how far we've come. So many sustainability projects in the works, both by individuals and groups. The permaculture seeds thrown into and around Bloomington have thrived in its community-nurtured soil.)

Here they are:

Update on school gardens and urban agriculture (Jami Reed).
Jami has plans to create "Bloomington Edible School Yards" for all local elementary schools. (She's starting with elementary schools, she says, because that's where she works, as a substitute teacher.) Currently working with Templeton School, Childs and Fairfield, she plans to equip each school with two habitat stewards, two Grow Organic people and one permaculturist. Mike Scherer of MCCSC is on board with at least some of her ideas, and she's working with each school, each class, and each teacher, on a case-by-case basis, since they all see the situation differently and have different needs.

Urban agriculture: the city council has commented that it's getting lots of letters in support of this. So keep them coming! And show up at CC meetings and Peak Oil Task Force meetings and comment! How will they know what we want unless we tell them?

Group Purchases (technology) (Peter Bane).
Several ideas have come up for possible group purchases: Small Honda generators (sold for $800-900 in Shipsewana, IN); PV panels which, because of the global slowdown, are coming way down in price, possibly to 50% of former cost; LED lanterns and small propane stoves.

Group Purchases (soil amendments for spring) (Keith Johnson).
www.ohioearthfoods.com for catalog of options. Need orders by 3rd week of March. Pre-pay. Pick up first Saturday, April 4th. He recommends rock phosphate, seaweed and green sand, and says if he could pick only one it would be powdered seaweed.

Rabbit orders (John Galuska).
John and his partner are now proud possessors of a breeding pair of Chinchilla rabbits, and hope and expect to have baby bunnies for sale in eight weeks, March. This large breed weighs ten pounds and bred specificially for meat.

Home-based bakery (Joe McGibbon).
Joe is starting a home bakery for whole wheat sour dough bread and will take orders or deliver. He is making an effort to use all local sources for his ingredients. He also recommends the book Deep Economy by Bill McKibben.

Quakers initiative (Christine Carver).
At the Ohio Valley Yearly Meeting Christine discovered an initiative called "Earth Care" which is offering a food and sustainability proposal to support local agriculture and urban gardens and efforts to change public policy to support them. Quakers are a small group but tend to be very active.

Transition Indiana and Transition Bloomington (Zach Mermel).
Zach (a newcomer to Bloomington, and an intern with Keith and Peter) took the Transition training in Boulder (at which 60 people showed up when they thought they would be training 20 to 30). Rob Hopkins began this movement in Britain; it then spread first to Australia and now to the U.S. The first local Transition Training will be April 18-19, by which time they will have both a trainer and a venue. Part of the focus is on "reskilling" — what skills are missing and how to get them. There are lots of Transition Towns in this movement, plus a handbook. They focus on Head, Heart and Hands, for understanding, caring, and doing.

Announcements (Rhonda Baird).

Indiana Forest Alliance: to host a Wild and Scenic Environmental Film Festival for one night at the Buskirk Chumley, February 26, 7 p.m. They are choosing nine films, only one of them full-length, from a roster of 92 very diverse films. $10 admission. Volunteers needed.

Alternative Currency start-up meeting February 1, 2:30 p.m. Rachel's Café.

Garden Task Force: charged with how to encourage gardening in the community. This is tied to a USDA grant and connected to Middle Way's new kitchen incubator.

Active Living Coalition (Christine): wants to get people more active, and might tie in to gardening.

Next Meeting Dates
February 21: Christine Carver's
March 14: John Galuska's
April 25: Green Acres Neighborhood Workshop
May 30: Rhonda Baird's
June 27: Green Acres Neighborhood Workshop

Equinox Event (Ryan Zaricki)
Ryan will be holding an all-day event at his home in Evansville, March 21. Work party in morning, dance in evening, stay and camp if you wish. Ryan would also like to start a SW Indiana Permaculture Guild.

Solar Workshops (Leif Hagglund)
The state of Indiana is setting up solar workshops for photovoltaics, hot water and wind. Two of these workshops will be in Bloomington.

Giveaway (Peter Bane)
Finally, a box of free books and videos and magazines was suddenly and unceremoniously placed in the middle of the floor. I grabbed the book on mushrooms.

Ann Kreilkamp and Kevin Polk
Permaculture Guild Scribes-of-the-moment.

Transition Indiana / Bloomington Launch on Cable Access

2009-01-07T21:09:00.000-08:00

At the 7:00 PM Thursday Peak Oil Task Force meeting on Jan 8, Zach Mermel and Keith Johnson will introduce the Transition Movement to the task force members and on the following evening the meeting will be broadcast on the local Community Access Television Services on Channel 12 (dedicated to Bloomington City Government meetings and events). This will be a more or less formal and public launch of both Transition Indiana and Transition Bloomington.

We anticipate that this could generate new members and co-participants in the redesign process for a transition to a sustainable regional culture.

A general plan is emerging to create alliances with other local groups to create events and merge memberships for a broader outreach. For more information and opportunities to get involved go to these websites:

Transition Indiana http://transitionindiana.ning.com/
Transition Indiana on Blogspot http://transitionindiana.blogspot.com/
Transition US http://www.transitionus.org/
Alliance for a Post-Petroleum Local Economy http://relocalize.net/groups/applebloomington
Permaculture and Regenerative Design News http://kjpermaculture.blogspot.com/
Bloomington Permaculture Guild http://bloomingtonpermacultureguild.blogspot.com/

Crude Awakening Trailer

2008-12-13T21:31:00.000-08:00

GREEN JOB LIST (ONGOING)

2008-12-13T09:31:00.000-08:00

At the potluck / discussion meeting at my house last Saturday, December 6, we were slated to discuss Holmgren's 6th permaculture principle: Produce No Waste.

Given that our suddenly post-consumer culture is awash in waste, and given the energy descent that has already begun, and given that the financial meltdown erased over 675,000 jobs in November alone, we ended up sitting around the fire thinking up green jobs that could recycle or redirect waste. At one point we got sidetracked unto other types of green jobs, and pulled ourselves back to focus on waste. But when I sent the report of this meeting to the guild list, asking for others to send in more ideas, again the range broadened to all kinds of green jobs. So let’s go! Keep sending them and I’ll keep adding them to this blog.

Here’s our list from our talk around the fire, with some of our discussion under each item:

* NEIGHBORHOOD REPAIR SHOP.

Did you know that what broken vacuums usually need is just a new belt? (But the cheaper ones are encased in plastic and can't be fixed.) When was the last time you thought about resoling your shoes? (No wonder Bloomington has only one shoe repair shop left.) How do you fix a lamp? Lets repair small appliances rather than replacing them.

< style="font-family:arial;"> * RECYCLING STORES.

For just about anything — building materials, office and home furniture, books, clothes, electronics, etc. IU has a recycling center for office furniture and electronics (and, I just noticed in the want ads, they've added residential furniture as well).

Evidence that the huge shift is already upon us: even in relatively stable Bloomington the big east side Goodwill store is mobbed these days by all sorts of people (and gives 10% senior discounts every Wednesday).

* USED GOODS REPAIR AND RECLAMATION.

The man who owns Mac Mediterranean restaurant also has a carpet store and can repair any carpet by putting it back on a loom.

* RECYCLING STORAGE

Freecycle and Craig's List are great for recycling stuff, and wouldn't it be nice if we could just take anything that needs a new home to a place that stores lots of that particular item? Like leaves for mulch, for example. Like lumber from cut down trees for fuel or for building material. How about all the perfectly usable furniture left curbside every June? The recycling stores will no longer come to take them away.

* HANDYMAN

* HANDYMAN TEACHER

Lots of us would like to know how to rewire a lamp, but don't know how. All sorts of home-repair projects we could do ourselves with a little training.

* MAKING AND MENDING CLOTHES

The only woman I know of who mends clothes works out of a toxic dry cleaning operation. Sewing machines are going to be valuable.

* BABY DIAPER SERVICE

Like there used to be, before paper diapers came along. (Or going backeven further: how about launder your own? Or further: how about puting moss next to their little behinds?)

* THERMAL WINDOW COVER MANUFACTURING

Hard work, but needed, and a great opportunity.

* FIELD DRESSING WILD ANIMALS

* LOCAL DEMOLITION AND RECLAIMING BULDING WASTE

* RECORDER FOR DISPERSAL SYSTEMS

This will be important in the growing recycling economy to keep track of various types of items and transactions.

* RECYCLING UTILITY INTO ART

For example, someone in the area is recycling old refrigerators into beautiful wine cellars.

* COMPOST

* GLEANING

Aaron Pollit has a map of food trees and wants input.

The one item that had us stumped was plastic bags. How recycled are they, really? And how to not have them come into your life on a daily basis? Very difficult. For many of us, though we have cloth bags, we forget to take them. Peter and Keith and Rob even bring jars and other containers to the store so as not to take even the small plastic bags.

WE WOULD LOVE IT IF YOU WOULD ADD TO THIS LIST!

Thanks and blessings,
Ann K.

Hey this list is great, and thanks for mentioning the Bloomington fruit tree map, you can access that here for whoever wants to use it. if you would like to be part of and add to this map please contact myself or one of the other collaborators.

As far as more jobs for this list go, Gardeners! I want to see community garden workers getting paid for the upkeep of gardens on public property,

I have another Idea that goes along with that. I want a community orchard in Bryant Park, with trees and bushes of all different sorts of production, benches and hammocks and kiosks with fruit tree information to inform the people about eating from the trees. Wow that sounds Great, Who's With Me?!

Also I have created another online map that contains the locations of all the Food Pantries, Community Gardens, Sustainability centers, and Reuse and Recycle centers I could think of in town, I would Love some help with this map if anyone is willing.

Looking forward to a spring permaculture explosion.
Aaron,

I'm with you on the Bryant Park orchard. Have heard that the public vigorously objects to fruit trees because of the "mess," so it's a battle. I'd like to help. Have a fantasy called "The Berry Project" in which we plant edible berries in every piece of available waste land and unused space. Kids love to pick berries and it will train them. I think I know a few more fruit trees and will send them to you separately.
Shodo

The handyman category inspired a flurry of possible trades :

I was reading about the Holmgren's 6th permaculture principle: Produce No Waste. I thought to myself what could I teach? Maybe myself and any else who might contribute would take it upon ourselves to share our knowledge on basic "Handyman", say at one of our monthly meets?
Steve
P. S. I might trade some handyman training for some to teach me how to set up a web site.

I would love handyman basic fix-it skills. I could trade making dandelion wine or edible wild plants for the help.
Lucille

I can offer lots of guidance on setting up a web site. I've created nearly a dozen.
Keith

And I'd like to sit in on that "how to set up a web site." I can trade mending, bodywork, energy healing, writing/editing, attendance at a workshop, gardening, or labor.
Shodo

And more more more green jobs, usually inspired, I sense, by the things people love to do anyway. Are we surprised? Isn’t that what work should be? The same as play?

* TEACHERS OF CHILDREN When we're no longer schlepping them all over the county.

* THE NEW GOODS FOR COOKS -Solar cooker design and construction, dryers, food
preservation facilities and classes.

* SEED BANKS
Rhonda

* Community Organizers: for services and items

* Nursery: selling edible fruit trees, shrubs and vines (especially grafted fruit varities) for small lots/urban areas .
Jami

* SEEING TREES CUT DOWN IN OUR URBAN FOREST FOR HIGHER USE THAN MULCH OR FIREWOOD.
Lucille

I would add a business of retrofitting houses for insulation and energy efficiency. People on the Guild do those things, just like some people do urban farming / landscape creation for others. Is there some way to get together and present this stuff (share ad costs etc)? while still leaving people independent?

Ahh, there is a need for just that information, from Earth Care Bloomington — the interfaith group that's trying to get churches and their members to get greener. So if people would send me their info, I will pass it on. (It's okay to remind me where to find that list - but it's got to be out of date.)

By the way: more people might be interested in solar, wind, etc, if they didn't have to be a techie to have them. Service contracts would be a really good idea.

* Along with foraging, urban forestry. In San Francisco there's a company that will cut down a tree and use the lumber rather than turning it into firewood or brush pile. I find it really painful to see good walnut and other hardwoods sitting on the ground or going to firewood. Such a business ought to be very competitive because instead of paying for disposal they'd be creating (slowly) a marketable product.

* Mending: I used to do it, would do it again but just talked with a woman who is still doing it and figured her time at $7/hour. That's okay if at the same time you're watching the kids, visiting friends, baking bread - if it's part of a whole life — but not okay if it's like a job, and running a sewing machine requires full attention. In short, if you want your stuff mended I'll do it, but not going into business for the public. What I really enjoyed was making pillows out of rags and stuffed with socks. If any of you are not using your old socks (highly unlikely) send them my way. (Darning socks is a waste of time. Been there.) Somebody at the Farmer's Market disassembles old sweaters and knits caps and gloves and stuff.

Making thermal window coverings (sewing them) is REALLY hard work.

Plastic bags: apart from taking them to Mother Hubbard for reuse, and putting them into the Bloomington recycling (it's true!), what's so hard about always having a couple of cloth bags in your car or bike basket, with some small plastic bags and one or two jars? If I can do it, you can too.

There was somebody on Freecycle who was crocheting them into better plastic bags, and in India somebody makes them into bowls or something - just like making rag rugs, I guess - this would be a good project for your Greyhound or Megabus or car pool long distance ride.
Shodo

I spent one August and September in Germany and found small parks occurring often in the cities and there were grape arbors with endless ripe grapes. I wondered if there was a single park in this country with edible grapes as you past through it on the way to work. Thirty five years later and a similar idea is occuring to us s l o w amerikans!!!

My adult children enjoyed paw paws off a tree in Bryant park this fall. Once there was a mulberry tree there where I ate my first mulberries ever. I steal persimmons off a yard nearby. Fruit, berries, grapes they all need to be there!!

If you have not already seen the idea of the WHO garden, White House Organic garden, returning a part of the lawn to a veggie garden as it was in days of yore.
sura

I talked with a dietitian who is an expert on lamp repair. She would be willing to teach us some skills. She lives over in Centerpoint in Clay County. Perhaps we could set up this workshop in Owen County so it wouldn't be such a long haul for any of us. She would probably be intrigued to swap.
Christine

Hey Shodo and anyone else. I get my firewood from a large mill out here, I only get the sides with bark on them, mostly oak the people at the mill told me they get some of their wood from Bloomington and other towns, contractors do contact them when building and they have trees that need to be cut so that is happening here, as it has been for many, many years.
Sura

Permaculture solves problems - got any problems?

2008-12-11T21:19:00.000-08:00

These are some of the services offered by well-trained, skilled and practiced permaculture designers. The following example introduces a variety of projects / services offered by friend and fellow designer Larry Santoyo and the consortium of designers that work with him via Earth Flow Design Works.

The Home Ecosystem
New construction and renovation projects. Designs that integrate the function & beauty of interior environments with the function & beauty of the exterior environments. Consulting & Design includes green interiors, edible landscaping, natural cooling & heating, alternative energy, roofwater collection, greywater sytems and more...

[Most landscapes, buildings, and life circumstances are (often literally) dripping with possibilities and yields that most people completely overlook. You may be wealthier than you think....Talk to someone trained to notice these things....Even better, get yourself trained! K]

Green/Real Estate Development...
Our green building consulting services use unique and rigorous Permaculture Design Guidelines, along with the US Green Building Council's LEED certification (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design). Ecological and economical investment opportunities in sustainable homesteads and acreage, green homes and commercial properties are available.

[Most homes can be enormously improved by reevaluation and redesign. A good Permaculture Design team could save you buckets of federal "reserve" notes. K]

Permaculture Design Certificate Courses
& Advanced Permaculture Design Training...
Our teaching team includes the most experienced Permaculture Instructors and recognized leaders in the World-Wide Sustainability Movement. Our Courses are conducted all over the world, in cooperation with citizen groups, government and non-government groups, universities and environmental organizations.

[More permaculture teachers these days are working with colleges and universities, municipalities and, in a few instances, national governments. After almost 30 years Permaculture is making a difference on a fairly large scale. Stay tuned.....K]

Land Search
Place to Practice & Practice to Place...
Consulting & Design services assist homeowners, ecoVillagers, land managers, farmers and ranchers with Sustainable Development Guidelines. Finding and developing the "best use" practices for any given site -and- for matching "ideally suited" properties with proposed practices, saves time, money and natural resources.

[Get yourself connected to land and earth, even if it's pots on a balcony or rooftop gardens. Remember, a concrete wall can be a huge trellis for grapes.....or kiwis........K]

Localize Enterprise!
Green Business Development...
Consulting and planning services assist developers and business owners to create facilities, practices and products that strive for excellence with a "Triple Bottom Line" approach: the Economic, Social and Ecological factors that enhance prosperity, empower local communities and re-generate natural resources.

[See APPLE (Alliance for a Post-Petroleum Local Economy - Bloomington, IN) K]

Deep Green & Natural Building...
Ancient Methods for Modern Elegance. Mud and straw, sand and stone are the time-tested building traditions of people on nearly every continent. Updated techniques are examined and explored through hands-on workshops, and demonstrated through design and construction services.

[Many people don't know that they could build their own houses relatively cheaply from local materials. The Permaculture Design Course opens up many of these options. K]

Village Permaculture...
In association with The Permaculture Institute (USA) and Pattern Literacy, EarthFlow works together with Peace Corp Volunteers, NGO's, local farmers and government officials. The focus of Permaculture projects in Jamaica and in the Maya Mountains of Southern Belize is education, community development and sustainable agriculture.

[Often, when it comes to living sustainably, we can point to many culture's FAR MORE stable and adaptable than American culture. Maybe we should learn more about this before we wreck any more foreign lands and cultures with Our Empire. I think we should start seeing other people....K]

Back to the City Permaculture...
Los Angeles, California has become our training ground for implementing City Permaculture strategies. Making cities more sustainable is the best way to ensure the protection of all wilderness and conserve natural habitats world-wide. EarthFlow Design Works promotes urban and rural enterprise links to help create food & resource security.

[Cities have abundant resources when they are not squandered and degraded...principal among them is people. Empowered people can revision, redesign, and revitalize their cities making them cheaper to run and maintain and more fun to live in. You can learn these things.....uh, better hurry. K]

Restorative and Regenerative Agriculture...
Sustainable and organic agriculture efforts are dramatically enhanced by Permaculture & Keyline Design Guidelines. Management and land use practices conserve water and build soil. Helping growers transition from a chemical-based monoculture production to integrated polycultural systems is key in recreating global health and moderating climate change.

[Cuba, for example, HAD to adapt to peak oil by learning to farm organically when the Soviet Union collapsed and the US embargo persisted. Now Havana grows more than half of its food within the city limits and the country is largely food self-sufficient. K]

Swan Song for the Lawn...
Edible and Incredible Environments. Workshops assist Homeowners and train School Teachers how to convert resource-consuming lawns into ever-evolving food and resource systems. Culinary and nutritional information is also provided.

[The nation needs about 10,000,000 new farmers in the next decade to supply the shortfall when food becomes too expensive to ship all over the world. Many millions of people will lose their jobs in the next few years. We NEED to turn at least some of them into managers of small-scale highly intensive diversified urban and suburban polycultures. Are you up for it? TAKE A PERMACULTURE DESIGN COURSE for starters. Rise up against the forces of Lawn Order...K]

Peak-Oil/Energy Descent...
Working for a Fear Free Future!
Networking seminars offer practical information and strategies for organizing and empowering local community groups to help transition from a consumer lifestyle to a more localized and sustainable conserver lifestyle.

[Get a LIFE...style.....try out a 'conservatism' your kids might admire...Remember the FIRST permaculture principle.....,"Get help!" K]

The MicroVillage Network...
Connecting People to People and People to Place. A Product, Service and Skills Bank for local community groups to find green businesses, create local currency networks and provide links to contacts and information for Land Access and Land Partnerships.

[I think we're grown up enough to tell the truth about money....WE'RE the currency. We need a few systems to manage the enormous variety of exchanges possible between people. We actually need far fewer federal "reserve" notes than we think! (IF we think.) K]

EcoVillage & Community Design...
Green and natural building techniques for EcoVillage infrastructure layout, design and construction, as well as strategies for community economic security. EarthFlow also conducts workshops for effectively dealing with human dynamics, and the all-important "social architecture", to help ensure community responsibility, security and longevity.

[Hint...Many of the ecovillages of tomorrow are already built...they're called neighborhoods. What's missing is a bit of organizing, cooperating, planting and sharing...oh, and take down some of the fences...and collect water....and...and...and... K]

Food Forestry: a BioDiversity Imperative...
School Yards, Backyards, City Streets, Farms and Orchards can all become "Forests of Food." Integrated multi-level production, even on the smallest scale, can provide food, fuel and fiber, create wildlife habitat -and help cool the Earth.

[Think about it...schools, churches, corporate "parks", land everywhere becoming fruitful to provide for those that use the facilities...Duhhhh!....What's stopping us? K]

Biodiversity Nursery
Specializing in Rare and Exotic Fruits and cool summer climate edibles and herbs from the highland Cloud Forests and beyond. Yacon, Achira, Pepinos, Celeriac, spineless fruiting Opuntia and more...

[translate / transpose for your particular region / climate zone. K]

Write and Petition the City Council to Change Ordinance

2008-12-10T14:52:00.000-08:00

Print out this letter and send it to the City Council to change the Unified Development Ordinance definition of “crops and pasturage” to allow urban agriculture to flourish.

your name

address

date

Bloomington City Council

401 North Morton Street, Suite 110

P.O. Box 100

Bloomington, Indiana 47402

Community self-preservation through local food self-sufficiency restores our sense of place and interdependence. A sense of place is imperative to creating sustainable systems for my survival and that of my family, friends, neighborhood and community. The cultural heritage, skills and perspectives of the past are as necessary as modern innovation and discoveries to help us adapt to future difficulties and uncertain times. Urban Agriculture is needed in Bloomington for many reasons:

1. Environment: improved air quality, reduced water run-off, beautification, less energy inputs and reduced fossil fuel use.

2. Economic Opportunities: entrepreneurship, sustainable businesses, stronger local economy, closed loop systems to eliminate waste, innovation and job creation.

3. Health: the improvement of individual health in both the physical and emotional realms will positively affect community health. A bacteria found in soil, called Mycobacterium vaccae was shown to boost serotonin production in the part of the brain that regulates mood:

The bacteria stimulated the immune system and activated a group of neurons in the brain which produce the mood-enhancing chemical seratonin. Dr Chris Lowry, the lead author on the paper from Bristol University, said: "These studies help us understand how the body communicates with the brain and why a healthy immune system is important for maintaining mental health.” - Telegraph.co.uk, April 2^nd, 2007

4. Other benefits: local and individual food security, development of local sustainable practices, enhanced self-reliance, self-determination, decreased poverty, a stronger healthier community that honors historic ties to the past and understands how our actions today affect the immediate and long term future of Bloomington.

Please consider changing the statements in the Definitions section of the Unified Development Ordinance “crops and pasturage” to allow urban agriculture to flourish.

Thank you,

your signature

Ripe for Revolution - Rodale Rules!

2008-12-10T12:54:00.000-08:00

Organic systems are changing lives, building hope and restoring communities.

Rodale Institute is putting its 60 years of sustainable farming experience and extensive research to work to provide farmers with the know-how, tools and techniques they need to succeed; policy-makers the information they need to best support our farmers; and consumers with the resources they need to make informed decisions about the food they buy and eat.

Watch the slideshow...

Warning: Radical Design Skills and Humor Required.

2008-10-27T21:09:00.000-07:00

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/BreakingNews.html

Principles of Permaculture

2008-10-27T18:19:00.000-07:00

Permaculture is a design system based on ethics and principles which can be used to establish, design, manage and improve all efforts made by individuals, households and communities towards a sustainable future.

This site explores the 'essence of permaculture' in a simple and clear way, expanding on the work of co-originator of the permaculture concept, David Holmgren.

Calendar & Diary Review - Kirsten Bradley

How good are these? You probably don't know, so I'll tell you - they're great! Oh and though this looks like a shameless plug saying, basically, *buy stuff*, I'm afraid I have to mention it because they really are splendid. And really, how many other 2009 diaries will you find that contain the gruff but pertinent quote:

"there are two sorts of people in this world - those who poo in drinking water, and those who don't..."

See the full review here.

The 12 permaculture design principles are thinking tools, that when used together, allow us to creatively re-design our environment and our behaviour in a world of less energy and resources.

These principles are seen as universal, although the methods used to express them will vary greatly according to the place and situation. They are applicable to our personal, economic, social and political reorganisation as illustrated in the permaculture flower.

The ethical foundation of permaculture guides the use of these design tools, ensuring that they are used in appropriate ways.

Each principle can be thought of as a door that opens into whole systems thinking, providing a different perspective that can be understood at varying levels of depth and application.

2008-10-08T12:05:00.000-07:00

Plan C: cooperate, conserve, curtail....

Plan C: Individual and Community Survival Strategies for the Energy Crisis
The Fifth Annual US Conference on Peak Oil and Community Solutions October 31 - November 2, 2008 Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan www.plancconference.org

At this groundbreaking conference participants will explore strategies for reducing energy use in the areas of housing, food and transportation, including both theory and practice. We will examine the long energy decline of the 21st century, the psychological barriers to rapid change, and the challenge of persuading our communities to embrace local, low-energy living. Attendance at this conference may be of critical importance at this time when the ongoing energy crisis is being compounded by the very real threat of credit and financial collapse.

Our survival is now, more than ever, in question. And it is more urgent than ever that we gather in Michigan to evaluate survival strategies and disseminate skills for growing food, creating local food security in their communities, retrofitting homes to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, and educating their communities to prepare for the difficult times we are facing.

Skyrocketing oil prices, mounting geopolitical tensions, grave economic realities, and dangerous climate changes are threatening our lives and communities like never before. The age of cheap, abundant fossil fuels is coming to an end, and urgent action is required to transform our overly consumptive society into one that uses far less energy.

By acting now, you can significantly cut your personal household energy use and overall consumption, support more localized economic production, and reduce your dependence on high energy transportation in your daily life. By doing this, you will be helping to create a more resilient and sustainable community adapted to the coming economic and ecological storms.

The conference will also feature in-depth workshops and panels, Connection Café discussion tables with area experts, an eco tour slide show, screenings of award winning films, entertainment, tours of local green buildings, a Green Living Expo, and healthy shared meals.

Schedule of Presentations and Workshops:
* Keynoter John Michael Greer, author of the forthcoming The Long Descent: A User’s Guide to the End of the Industrial Age
* Keynoter Dmitry Orlov, author of Reinventing Collapse: Soviet Example and American Prospects
* Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow, Post Carbon Institute, author of The Party’s Over and Powerdown (via webcast)
* Katrin Klingenberg, director of the Passive House Institute US
* Peter Bane, editor of Permaculture Activist
* Christopher Bedford, President of the Center for Economic Security and the Sweetwater Local Foods Market
* John Richter, co-founder of the Institute for Sustainable Energy Education
* Pat Murphy, author of Plan C: Community Survival Strategies for Peak Oil and Climate Change
* Megan Quinn Bachman, Outreach Director of Community Solutions; co-producer of The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil

For more information and to register, go to www.plancconference.org, contact Jill Hollowell at Upland Hills Ecological Awareness Center at 248-693-1021, or email info@plancconference.org. Note: Members of an organization or activist network are encouraged to attend as a group and receive substantial discounts for 3+ and 5+ member groups.

Pre-Equinox Work Party in Green Acres

2008-09-20T14:00:00.000-07:00

2:00 pm: Work Party (see the third drawing below). Bring gloves, pruners, shovels, a wheel barrel if you have room.
5:00 pm: Pitch-in dinner and meeting.

Kimberly and I moved into this 1/4-acre property 14 months ago. We spent the first year mostly noting the movements of sun, wind, water, flora and fauna over and through the land. Here are a few of our observations and activities (click the drawings for a larger view):

The land as we found it
(1) The brightest area in back yard is right up near the North side of the house: 8 hours full sun, 5 months a year. Of course the front yard gets 8-10; most other areas get 0-4. (2) Evergreens next door provide late afternoon shade and needle mulch---good for berries and tomatoes. (3) Not much grows in the shady NW corner under the Chestnut duff. (4) Vinca covers a 5-foot drop along the North and East fence. The area near the number label gets about 5 hours of sun a day; the rest is shaded. (5) A large evergreen bush provides an important privacy barrier. (6) We love our redbud! Just a few feet SW of it, a concrete lid covers what we think is a dry well. (7) This side gets good afternoon sun but little morning sun: good for a mini-orchard.(8) A fenced kennel on concrete slab. We tried hanging laundry here, but nearby evergreens made clothes smell like sludgy tar - not pleasant! (9) Mature tulip poplar. (10) Gravel parking slab (way too big). (11) Young tulip poplar. Should probably come out before it interferes with the house's solar gain. (12) Vinca out front is pretty, but inedible, spready and harbors poison ivy. (13) Mulch is too close to cedar siding: we need to re-grade the front. (14) English Ivy. Spready. (15) Blue spruce may eventually interfere with water pipes and solar gain. (16) Roof has great solar aspect!

First year plantings/activities
Fall '07: (1) Black cherry. (2) Tulip poplar. (3) Compost pile. (4) Pawpaw. (5) Shasta daisies, daililies, ferns. (6) Blueberry (early variety). (7) Blueberry (late variety - chewed to a twig by rabbits but fully recovered). (8) Hostas and edible daylilies. (9) Back Garden: fenced against dog and rabbits, loosened with a fork, and sheet-mulched. We slipped table scraps under the mulch throughout the Fall. In spring, we dug small holes in the mulch, added small scoops of potting soil, and planted our starts. (10) Front Bed: cleared small section of vinca and seasoned with mushroom compost. We started corn salad here in February, with small harvests starting early April. We widened it in the Summer to make room for tomatoes and herbs. Spring '08: (11) A pair of hazelnut trees. (12) Bush Cherries. (13) Apricot. (14) Thornless blackberry bushes. (15) Double-dug Circular Bed for tomatoes, basil and onions. Unearthed about 50 small boulders. (16) Rhubarb. (17) Removed vinca along North and West fence.

Summer '08: All beds productive. Good drainage all around, even during 7-inch overnight downpour! Slight flood damage at SW corner of Back Garden. Rows along contour stayed moist through August drought.

What we plan to do Saturday
(1) Remove and cut up the tulip poplar downed by the remnants of Hurricane Ike last weekend. (2) De-pave and widen the East Bed using leaves from the downed poplar for mulch. We will probably put native florals near the street, edibles closer to the poplar. (3) Make a path for the Shade Garden using gravel from the East Bed. Raise evergreen branches there to make room for the path. Mulch and prep beds along sides of path. Draw up a list of good native shade florals to plant there. (4) Expand and mulch the Back Garden. (5) Clear vinca from the front (except for a narrow strip to cascade over the rock wall) and install beds and an herb spiral, using boulders from Back Garden. Cut small terraces if there is sufficient time and material. Mulch. (6) If time allows, use an A-Frame to establish contours on the front. (7) establish contours for retaining wall near North fence and dig an experimental trench (we expect to find more boulders).

Our long-term plan
I'm still working on the map for this, but we plan to sell the Spruce, build several Thai Jars for rainwater storage, push back the evergreen bushes in the front and plant more blueberry bushes in front of them (evergreen trimmings make sweet mulch). We'll also farm the front lawn (maybe adding hedges as a visual barrier), expand the back orchard and garden, plant more cane fruit and hazelnut along the North fence, de-pave and expand the East Bed with keyholes for access, and maybe put in a water feature in the front (increases solar gain). I also hope to post plant lists and energy upgrade plans soon.

Permaculture in Bloomington

2008-09-12T05:08:00.000-07:00

Anyone of our guild could be writing this -- making this observation.

Permaculture has successfully "gone viral" in the rich soil that is the Bloomington, Indiana community. The layers courses in the area, the long history of environmental concern, the deeply interconnected ecology of people working together have created a deep and fruitful place from which the permaculture ideas (and their kin) take root and thrive.

Having been a part of the work for a few years, I can see how my students and my fellow guild members have taken on the ethical work laid out in permaculture. Urban farmers, rural farmers, neighborhood leaders, city leaders, craftswomen and men, market managers, land trust employees, non-profit directors, community garden coordinators, writers, teachers, and on the list grows every month of the kinds of work people are doing through the lens of permaculture. In my role with the guild and in my work, I meet with people from the community regularly and hear of the most exciting and promising projects -- and I smile to myself when I hear that the ideas and activities come from someone trained in permaculture (often a former student).

Beyond this, I know that the people that have been transformed in the process of the Permaculture Courses, that have taken these principles into themselves and found a way to live them, are people with rich connections to others in the community. They are not only "do" in the community, but their "be-ing" in the community adds qualities to relationships and personal dynamics that benefit everyone. Anticipation, determination, confidence, respectful consideration, and celebration come to mind. Their understanding of their place in the world -- their ecology -- contributes to this. I know it is true for me. I see it reflected in the guild.

When I feel discouraged or overwhelmed, remembering what I see in others doing permaculture work in my own community has been a balm to my heart.

The Ecology of Leadership

2008-04-10T10:01:00.000-07:00

Here's a course that could bear repeating in every neighborhood of the nation.

Start: Oct 11 2008 - 9:30am

End: Oct 11 2008 - 5:00pm
Spring 2008: Santa Barbara, CA
Fall 2008: Bolinas, CA

INSTRUCTORS: James Stark and Christopher Kuntzsch

"Never doubt that a small group of concerned citizens can change the world. Indeed it's the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead

Introduction

As we face the challenges of our changing world, many people are searching for avenues to make a difference - to play a part in transforming our families, communities, and the greater world in which we live. Each one of us has the potential to bring forth our gifts, develop the tools we need to make a difference, and live up to our own leadership potential so we can be of service.

Whether you have prior experience and training, or if have recently felt called to step onto a path of leadership for the first time, this program provides a unique opportunity to deeply explore who you are, who you wish to be, and how you will contribute to others. You will articulate your vision, get in deeper touch with your gifts and develop new tools, routines, mindsets and skills to be more effective in manifesting what you see for yourself and the world.

Curriculum

The program is rooted in the following three elements:

We are nature. We are not separate. The program engages leadership that arises from an intimate relationship with the natural world. The more our leadership sources from our connection with the earth, the more effective we will be as leaders.

Specific Leadership Technology. This element includes valuable skills, habits, and mindsets to improve your effectiveness in areas such as:

Communication
Making and Honoring Commitments
Project management
Gaining support for your vision from others
Presentation skills
Using your time effectively
Coaching – helping others develop new skills
Bringing all aspects of your life into harmony
Our ‘Inner Ecology’ Influences How We Show Up as Leaders. In the program, we will explore how our thoughts, mental models, beliefs, and the stories we tell – both about ourselves and those around us - affect our life and our ability to make a difference in our family, community, and chosen work in the world. As we understand and evolve our inner ecology, we become more effective at manifesting our dreams.

Our ‘Inner Ecology’ Influences How We Show Up as Leaders. In the program, we will explore how our thoughts, mental models, beliefs, and the stories we tell – both about ourselves and those around us - affect our life and our ability to make a difference in our family, community, and chosen work in the world. As we understand and evolve our inner ecology, we become more effective at manifesting our dreams.

Integrating these three elements, you will begin to experience leadership as a dynamic process that translates your awareness and insights - about yourself and the world around you - into effective action towards your intended goals.

On your development journey, you will:

Design and implement a self inspired project which will give you the opportunity to practice new leadership skills while making a difference in your community.
Explore patterns of behavior, as well as the thoughts and beliefs you operate from, and determine which of these do and do not serve you in your life and work in the world.
Receive structured coaching and support from your peers between workshops, as well as from program instructors and alumni.
Adopt routines to deepen your relationship with the natural world and who you are as a leader.
Take on practice assignments that will help you develop your personal leadership ecology and integrate the skills, mindset, and routines of the course into your daily life and chosen projects.
Develop and grow a regional leadership circle during the course of the program. After graduation, this circle will continue to serve and support you on your leadership journey.

As the Ecology of Leadership program unfolds, you will experience leadership as a new way of thinking and being. By engaging the practices and routines offered in the program, you will deepen your relationship to the natural world and, thereby, transform your life and your leadership effectiveness as you navigate through this changing world.

Regional Leadership Circles

A leadership circle is formed at the beginning of each program and is guided by the facilitators until graduation. At this point, the circle becomes independent, remaining dedicated to supporting alumni in continuing to integrate the tools of the program as each leader manifests their vision in their community.

Imagine local and regional leadership circles forming throughout the world – connected to one another and united as one. If you would like to explore the possibility of creating a leadership circle in your community, please contact us to set up a free introductory workshop.

Bolinas Meeting Schedule
The course meets once a month for 1-2 days on select Saturdays and Sundays. We will meet from 9:30am until 5:00pm. The first and last sessions will include a Saturday evening meeting, as well. Participants are welcome to bring camping gear and stay overnight at Commonweal Garden during consecutive meeting dates.

The time commitment for your participation – outside of workshops and the project you will develop - will vary by individual. However, you can expect to spend approximately 6-10 hours per month in peer coaching and engaging in program assignments on your own time. The assignments are designed to integrate into and empower the life that you choose to lead. Please consider your capacity to participate fully before applying to the program.

Course Testimonials

“It is not everyday that one is given the opportunity for deep self-reflection in a supportive, nurturing circle of other emerging leaders as well as two phenomenal instructors. It was an honor and privilege to work with two instructors who are sincerely devoted to each individual’s growth for the overall well being of the planet and its citizens.”

- Kiea Wright, Biologist/Community Activist

“I highly recommend Ecology of Leadership. The curriculum is indispensable for folks interested in working for world healing and transformation. The course taught me a powerful technology for leading from within. It stretched me past longstanding limitations. The practices I learned in the course will stick with me for life. EOL helped me to take more responsibility, to do it effectively and make positive change in nearly every area of my life. The course facilitators are especially insightful, and supportive. In addition, I made new, close friends who now serve as trusted allies in my growth. I regained a sense of connection with Nature in the course as a source of inspiration and guidance. Best of all, my clarity of purpose and creativity for projects I hope to do in my community has expanded. I am more effective as a friend, teacher and counselor, and a lot happier in myself. I would do the course all over again! ” - Michelle Nemer, Health Counselor

“EOL provides tools which can help us uncover and transcend the subtle ways that we stop ourselves from knowing and becoming who we really want to be. These tools require some time, some commitment, some willingness to be uncomfortable or afraid; but they do work, if you use them.” -Lydia Neilsen, Permaculture Instructor

“Ecology of Leadership integrates our inner realm with how we show up in the world. I gained insight into how I operate and how I can turn intentions into action in powerful ways.”

-Colin Spake, Biologist/Community Activist

Insurmountable Opportunities

2008-03-30T10:55:00.000-07:00

We're surrounded by insurmountable opportunities. Here's a few that we have time and will to embrace. (Please share...thanks...KJ)

The Bloomington Permaculture Guild has started a Growers Co-op to help us market our goods and services (follow the links below). The market is not limited to vegetables and fruit but can include crafts, plants, baked goods, meat and dairy products, eggs, honey, mushrooms, processed foods, flowers, services, CSA memberships, gift certificates, personal care products, books, pet treats, gift items, candles, art, and more.

In addition to providing luscious food (and training in how-to-grow-luscious-food) we aim to offer classes in a number of subjects related to Permaculture and the Relocalization of our regional economy. Watch for updates about hands-on classes in Cob and Clay-straw architecture to build a chicken coop / rabbit hutch / sauna addition to a greenhouse. There will be another class in Ferrocement Architecture for a Root Cellar / Spring House addition to a 10,000 gallon water tank.

Anticipate classes in Fermented Foods, Home Brewing, Canning, Edible and Medicinal Wild Plants, Plant Propagation, Pruning, Grafting, and much more. Have a skill you'd like to share? Get in touch and we'll create an event to teach others.

Renaissance Farm and Permaculture Center is now producing seedlings and salad greens. We'll be having a BPG fund-raising plant sale on Mother's Day weekend and at least a couple more during the growing season. Annual and perennial flowers, fruiting and flowering trees and shrubs, and vegetable starts will be offered.

Stay tuned....
Keith Johnson

(812) 335-0383

This is the welcome page for the Locallygrown.net site of the Bloomington Permaculture Growers Co-op
http://bloomingtongrowers.locallygrown.net/

To become a member-shopper you may register here:
http://bloomingtongrowers.locallygrown.net/user/new

Members who want to order produce go to this page to see what's available and to place their orders (I've got two products listed so far):
http://bloomingtongrowers.locallygrown.net/market

Our weblog appears on this page:
http://bloomingtongrowers.locallygrown.net/weblog

Q&A page here:
http://bloomingtongrowers.locallygrown.net/faq

This is the page for new growers to sign up. BPG members who intend to join the co-op, PLEASE sign up SOON!:
http://bloomingtongrowers.locallygrown.net/growers/new

If you want to see what our local market page will look like to shopper-members you can view another market's offerings here:
http://athens.locallygrown.net/market

To see how Locally Grown is helping farmers find happy local customers (and vice versa) go to:
http://www.locallygrown.net/welcome

2008-03-15T13:51:00.000-07:00

"PERMACULTURE - FARMING AND LIVING WITH NATURE"

LISTEN TO ARCHIVED VERSION - download/open | stream

"Permaculture" or "permanent agriculture" was originally conceived almost 30 years ago by Australian ecologist Bill Mollison. Observing aboriginal culture and forest ecosystems, he conlcuded that we could deliberately design agriculturally productive ecosystems, echoing diversity, stability, and resillience of natural ecosystems.

Permaculture designs provide food, energy, and shelter for people and animal inhabitants while linking the needs and outputs of each element.

Permaculture is a holistic approach to land use, which works with nature's rhythm and patterns, weaving together the elements of microclimate, annual and perennial plants, animal, water and soil management, and human needs into intricately connected and productive communities.

Guests

Gregoire Lamoureux - Kootenay Permaculture Institute/Spiral Farm - The Kootenay Permaculture Institute is located just outside of Winlaw in the Slocan Valley of British Columbia. Gregoire is a permaculture designer, consultant, and teacher. He has worked with permaculture systems for over 15 years and taught courses in many parts of Canada. He taught the permaculture design course as a Summer Session at the University of Manitoba in 2005. Gregoire is on the Board of Directors of the Slocan River Streamkeepers and has served on the Board of Seeds of Diversity Canada for seven years. He is a founding member of the Kootenay Organic Growers Society. He has written for Natural Life Magazine. He has been a guest lecturer at the BC Organic Agriculture Conference, and the Guelph Organic Agriculture Conference.

Peter Bane - Publisher, The Permaculture Activist - North America's leading (and the world's oldest) permaculture periodical. Based in Bloomington, Indiana, since 1985 the publication has informed on permaculture design, edible landscaping, bioregionalism, cooperative action, aquaculture, natural building, earthworks, renewable energy and more.

"Mineral Deficiencies—and Their Fall Out"

2008-03-15T13:48:00.000-07:00

Wondering why our nation's peoples are so obese, in poor health, popping vitamins and drugs like candy? They're f**king STARVING...on FULL STOMACHS...because the soil ain't what it used to be...AND we're still losing topsoil at a rate exceeding the Dust Bowl era!

And, when you consider that one year's production of urine from a moderately healthy person is enough to provide all the Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium (and more) for ONE ACRE of garden or orchard, it begins to seem not merely stupid but suicidal. Especially when that same nutrient flowing to the sea is causing huge oceanic dead zones and toxic algae blooms. DUHHH!
See Liquid Gold: The Lore and Logic of Using Urine to Grow Plants at the Permaculture Activist website. It's a golden opportunity, go with the flow, urine charge. Pee Here Now!

This table was recently published in Acres, USA.
Read Neal Kinsey's essay (PDF) on soil minerals here.
THIS is why I buy rock dust soil amendments for my garden. Search for local mineral sources here.

"Mineral Deficiencies—and Their Fall Out," by David Thomas, D.C
Full details at: www.mineralresourcesint.co.uk/research.html
Average Mineral Content of Food—1940-1991
Fruit	Loss
Sodium	29%
Potassium	19%
Phosphorous	(2%) (gain)
Magnesium	16%
Calcium	16%
Copper	20%
Iron	24%
Vegetables	Loss
Sodium	49%
Potassium	16%
Phosphorous	(9%) (gain)
Magnesium	24%
Calcium	46%
Copper	76%
Iron	27%
Meat	Loss
Sodium	30%
Potassium	16%
Phosphorus	28%
Magnesium	10%
Calcium	41%
Copper	24%
Iron	54%
Vegetables	Loss
Runner beans	Nearly 100% of sodium
Watercress	93% of copper
Carrots	75% of magnesium
Broccoli	75% of calcium
Spring onion	74% of calcium
Swede	71% of iron
Spinach	60% of iron
Potatoes	47% of phosphorous
Fruit	Loss
Orange	67% of iron
Avocado	62% of sodium
Strawberry	55% of calcium
Melon	45% of magnesium
Passion Fruit	43% of potassium
Raspberry	39% of calcium
Blackberry	35% of calcium
Rhubarb	32% of phosphorous

After viewing this table it should be incontestably obvious why we must remineralize our soils. We are literally starving on full stomachs from food grown on depleted soils. Obesity, degenerative and immune-deficient diseases are DIRECTLY related to mineral shortfalls in our diets.

See http://www.ohioearthfoods.com

Also http://attra.ncat.org/new_pubs/attra-pub/orgfert.php?id=Minnesota for regions pertinent to folks on this forum,
and http://attra.ncat.org/new_pubs/attra-pub/orgfert.php?id=Wisconsin

When I first learned about remineralization in the late 70's, it was from these folks in Massachusetts http://www.remineralize.org/
http://remineralize.org/joomla/index.php/Mineral-Products/
http://remineralize.org/joomla/index.php/A-Rock-Dust-Primer

Also see http://www.uoguelph.ca/%7Egeology/rocks_for_crops/

Pathways to Local Food Systems

2008-01-19T14:59:00.000-08:00

Pathways to Local Food Systems

A presentation by Robert Waldrop to the 2nd US Conference on Peak Oil and Community Solutions,

This list it is not a cookie-cutter recipe but rather a map of pathways and routes towards creating a local food system.

FORM AND FUNCTION FOLLOW THE FOOD

What's important about this is the food - where does it come from? How is it produced? How does it get from producer to consumer? Everything depends on that. In the agribizness system, food follows form and function. Tomato varieties are selected not because they taste good, but rather because they can be harvested while still green by machines, shipped long distances, and then gassed to turn red. Taste and nutrition are secondary issues. That's why supermarket tomatoes taste like watery moosh.

LOCAL FOOD SYSTEMS GROW OUT OF PERSONAL CHOICES

The place to start is with your own kitchen, your own food choices, your own diet. Personal and household choices about where and how we spend our grocery money and kitchen time are fundamental to the design of the local food system.

WE START SMALL OR WE DON'T START AT ALL.

Nobody can revolutionize their household diet and local food economy overnight. But everybody can find someplace to start. Where that starting point is is less important than the fact that a person get started.

KNOWLEDGE IS POWER.

Supermarkets gather knowledge for customers. You don't have to research what is available, you just look on the shelf. Thus, one of the most important local food structures is an information directory. The Oklahoma Food Cooperative began initially as a simple directory on the internet. That directory grew out of my own personal research into local sources for basic foods.

BE WILLING TO EMBRACE CHANGE.

A local food system is about distributing basic foods; it does not look like Wal Mart. Don't expect the "convenience" offered by manufactured foods. While the process is not always easy, the change that the "permacultured kitchen" brings to your household is uniformly positive. The food will be more nutritious, it will taste better, and you will feel better about your work in the kitchen.

EAT WITH THE SEASON.

Real life has rhythms and seasons, and so does food. We have learned by sad experience that by extravagant expenditures of energy and oppression we could have summer salads in winter, but what does this willingness to oppress third world farmers say about our personal and social moralities? As the seasons change, winter food from the local food economy will be different from summer food.

BE TEMPERATE IN YOUR SELECTION OF FOODS.

The virtue of temperance is the practice of balance - not too much, not too little, just the right amount. A local food system offers a wealth of regional tastes and food delights, but without lusting for the gluttony of the on-demand agribizness food system. Be wary of eating foods that are unsustainably harvested, such as ocean fish, and products with a high degree of environmental degradation and social injustice in their production, such as non-fair trade certified coffee and chocolate.

PREPARE YOUR MEALS FROM BASIC INGREDIENTS.

The permacultured kitchen in a local food system offers meals prepared from basic ingredients. Not everybody has these skills in the beginning, but people can develop better food preparation practices so that using basic ingredients fits into the urban lifestyle. I once complained to my grandmother that I couldn't make a decent pie crust. She said, "Bobby Max, the problem is you haven't made enough pies. When you have made 100 pie crusts, then you will be able to make a great pie crust as quick as a whistle."

DEVELOP THE ORGANIZATION AND SYSTEMS OF YOUR KITCHEN.

Look at the whole system, and see it as an organic whole rather than just a jumble of disparate elements. The question isn't "what do I have for dinner tonight", but rather, "what am I eating this season? Where does the food come from?" People with a lot of experience in permacultured kitchens might be able to get by without planning their meals, but that doesn't describe most of us, especially in the beginning. Planning menus and the acquisition and preparation of the ingredients are necessary design opportunities.

USE ENERGY AND RESOURCES FRUGALLY. WASTE NOT, WANT NOT!

Never use a garbage disposal, compost all kitchen waste. Get some worms, they will eat your garbage! Install an on-demand water heater and/or solar water heating system. Ditch the dishwasher machine, electric can opener, and garbage compactor. Buy wind power electricity if it is available from your utility. Get a manual defrost refrigerator and a separate chest freezer. Never buy paper towels, paper napkins, or disposable plates and utensils, use cloth towels and rags and natural sponges like luffas. . Make your own non-toxic kitchen cleaners or buy all-natural products made in your local area. Install grey water recycling and rainwater harvesting systems.

LEARN HOW TO PRESERVE AND PROCESS FOODS AT HOME OR IN COMMUNITY KITCHENS.

Our household likes "cheese whiz", but we don't buy it, we make it from real cheese we buy from a farmer. We like roasted peanuts, so we buy peanuts in season from farmers and then roast them all year long. We don't buy cut-up chicken, we buy whole chickens from farmers and cut them up ourselves. We grow our own fruit, and make jams, jellies, salsas, pickles, condiments.. During produce season, you can often find good buys on large quantities of produce. Buy extra and preserve it for winter eating. Tools and equipment can be owned by individual households, but community and religious organizations can also purchase such equipment and make it available in community kitchens. Many food preservation and processing tasks are easier when done by a group.

BUY LOCALLY PRODUCED FOODS.

Stay out of supermarkets as much as possible. Buying foods from local farmers is the urban permaculture equivalent of Zones 3 and 4. To facilitate this in our area, we helped organize the Oklahoma Food Cooperative, whose producer members sell Oklahoma foods. Our household gets 80% of its food either from local farmers or from the gardens on our former yards. Locally produced foods may sometimes cost more than the manufactured foods of the supermarkets, but overall we aren't spending any more for food now than we were back when we bought everything at the grocery store. Then we bought prepared & packaged foods, now we buy basic ingredients. For items simply not available from a local market, seek out organic sources, and if imported, look for fair trade certification. If this increases your costs, then use less of these imported foods (coffee, tea, bananas, chocolate, citrus fruit, etc.) .

NEVER BUY MEATS FROM CONFINED ANIMAL FEEDING OPERATIONS.

With a very few exceptions in certain regions, all meats in supermarkets originate in Confined Animal Feeding Operations, and every dollar spent for them subsidizes a terrible food production system that creates much social and environmental evil. Access to local and natural meats and poultry is a major challenge for urban residents. One solution to the higher cost of locally produced meats is to "eat less meat" - set limits to your personal consumption. Eat less expensive cuts - more ground meat than roast or steaks. With farmer-direct meats, the more you buy, the better the price. This is an incentive to build community. Four households could go together and buy a whole beef from a farmer, or a whole pig. Where would you find someone willing to sell a whole beef? Start by asking at the farmers market, look for phone listings for "custom butchers" in rural towns (they usually keep a list of farmers willing to sell meat directly to the public). Look for red meats that are 100% forage fed and free ranging. People who can't access natural meats raised in the local area should consider vegetarianism. People who buy eggs, meats and poultry from grocery stores should not kid themselves about the animal cruelty and environmental degradation made profitable by those food choices.

PRACTICE FOOD STORAGE AND DESIGN FOR ECONOMY.

Every household should design for catastrophe. There are a hundred things that could happen in a heartbeat that would disrupt the steady flow of trucks to and from warehouses and grocery stores that feed our urban areas. A well-stocked home pantry is an essential aspect of family and community food security in the event of disruptions to the food distribution system. A well-stocked home pantry is also an enormous convenience in today's busy world. It can easily take an hour to drive to the store, park, hike across a 40 acre parking lot, navigate a crowded and poorly organized store, stand in line at the checkout, hike back across the acreage to the automobile, and then drive home - just to get "a few things for dinner". Store what you eat - and eat what you store.

GROW AT LEAST SOME OF YOUR OWN FOOD.

We live in an urban central city, we have about 1/7th of an acre with a duplex, small house, sidewalks and driveway. Even so we manage to cultivate more than 100 different varieties of useful or edible plants on our former lawns, 2/3rds of which are perennials. We do not aim for self-sufficiency on our property, instead, we grow foods that (in our opinion) produce a lot of value for the space they need - 23 different organic fruits, 28 varieties of herbs, hot peppers (6 varieties), cooking greens (mustard, kale, chard, spinach, collards), and lots of alliums (garlic, onion and garlic chives, walking onions, multiplying onions, Welsh onions). This year we designed and planted tomato guilds of basil, chives, petunias, marigolds, pansies, horehound, asparagus, bee balm, hot peppers, and borage with our tomatoes. We don't raise wheat or corn because of space constraints and our easy access to these products through the Oklahoma Food Cooperative. People without land can join community gardens, and it is entirely possible to raise food on concrete using containers. This year we are growing potatoes in buckets!

LOOK FOR A VARIETY OF STRUCTURES

A local food system produces a variety of foods, and thus we expect that there will be a variety of structures that produce and distribute that food. A short-list includes: on-farm or in-town vegetable stands operated by individual farmers, farmers' markets, fairs, Community Supported Agriculture/subscription programs, cooperatives, and other forms of direct sales from farmers to customers. Minimize extra costs by embracing direct relationships between farmers and urban residents.

DON'T LET THE PERFECT BECOME THE ENEMY OF THE GOOD.

Nobody goes from 100% bad food choices to 100% good, better, or best choices overnight. But procrastination is equally problematic. Wholes are made from parts, and if you can't see the total solution in the beginning, step back and pick one thing that you can understand and do that. Then look at your situation again and do something else. Everyone can find something to start with and that's where each person should begin. One thing leads to another, and before a person realizes that time is passing, permaculture has been transformed from an esoteric science to a lived reality in their kitchen.

Peak Oil Prep

2008-01-19T12:47:00.000-08:00

Peak Oil Prep: Prepare for Peak Oil, Climate Change and Economic Collapse
By Mick Winter
How you can help your family, neighborhood and community prepare for Peak Oil, climate change, and economic collapse. A practical handbook of ideas, suggestions, and book and Internet resources.

Carolyn Baker - Speaking Truth to Power
"From my perspective, anything we can do to build lifeboats for ourselves and our loved ones as we move closer to collapse is essential. Mick Winter's Peak Oil Prep is a powerful and practical guidebook for doing just that...Winter has provided us with a superb manual containing the basics of preparation for a world which seems both inevitable and not that far in the future."

Robert Rapier - The Oil Drum
"A user's manual for sustainable living with lots of practical tips and links to additional resources. Will help you save money and adopt a more sustainable lifestyle while lowering your ecological footprint. A good book for anyone trying to live sustainably."

EnergyBulletin.net
"A summary of the many ideas floating around, with the theme of individuals preparing themselves for peak oil and similar events. Author Mick Winter takes a reasonable, moderate tone in presenting the information and references. The book would be most useful for newcomers to the field and might make a good textbook for a short course."

New Internationalist Permaculture Issue

2008-01-02T11:49:00.000-08:00

The whole NI issue is now online free of charge at http://www.newint.org/issues/2007/07/01/

2007-12-22T09:53:00.000-08:00

101 things you can do about peak oil & climate change

1. Recycle (everything)
2. Refuse (plastic bags, excessive packaging, poor quality food)
3. Re-use (everything many times until its worn out, get creative)
4. Rethink (what you know, learn new skills for the future)
5. Repair (as much as you can, don’t just throw things away)
6. Reconnect (with nature and where your food comes from)
7. Reduce (your consumption)
8. Reclaim & rehabilitate (damaged areas)
9. Regulate (yourself, your consumption)
10. Request (use your consumer power to make changes)
11. Review (your energy use, your attitude and your progress)
12. Re-skill (learn ‘lost’ survival skills)
13. Make a conscious effort to use less natural resources - THEY ARE FINITE and will run out
14. Understand that fossil fuels are used to produce almost everything we use – and how it will change with energy descent. *Read David Holmgren's Permaculture; Principles & Pathways Beyond Sustainability
15. Buy local – food, products, services – everything you use has transportation costs attached to it
16. Only eat locally grown organic food
17. Eat in-season food (it tastes so much better)
18. Eat less meat (refuse Contained Animal Feedlot Operation-raised, hormone-fattened, antibiotic-laced meat)
19. Turn electrical appliances and lights off when not needed - be aware of "phantom" electrical use from devices that are always on, like TV's
20. Water your garden late in the afternoon or early morning when the sun is off your plants and water only when needed - water less often but deeper
21. Establish composting and worm farming systems to sequester carbon and reduce the amounts of valuable materials going to landfill and producing methane gas
22. Organic matter holds 90 percent of its own weight in water – add organic matter to your soil to turn it into a water-holding ‘tank’ that needs less watering
23. Buy fair trade products
24. When making a decision, apply permaculture principles of - care for the earth, care for all species and fair share
25. ’Check in at the check out’ - ask yourself what is a real need and what is a 'want'.
26. Question where things come from and what goes into making them before you make your purchase – use your consumer power
27. Use grey water in the garden on fruit trees
28. Mulch your garden – never, ever leave soil exposed to the sun, wind, rain and evaporation
29. Use compost, worm castings and green manure crops as fertilizers for your soil – don’t buy commercially manufactured, petro-chemical based fertilizers
30. Become informed, aware and educated
31. Collect the renewable resources we currently have more effectively (water, sun, wind)
32. Plan for a future where weather events are more intense (eg heavier rain events but fewer of them), turn down the heat in your garden with food trees and more useful trees.
33. Relearn the skills of the past for the future (food preservation, manual skills - repairing things)
34. Plan for when oil and all the things in the world that are produced using oil are more expensive and harder to get
35. Switch to the green power option on your electricity bill
36. Switch to solar, hydro or wind energy
37. Install a composting toilet (don't use between 3 gallons of quality drinking water to flush away 1/2 cup of urine - use urine in the garden)
38. Install a system that uses grey water in the toilet tank
39. Re-use every resource you have multiple times
40. Use public transport, pedal power, walk or car pool
41. Buy a smaller, more fuel efficient car
42. Turn the thermostat on your heater (or air conditioner if you have one) up (or down) one degree (this will give you a 10 per cent improvement in energy consumption)
43. Take fewer air flights
44. Offset your carbon emissions
45. Install energy efficient light bulbs, taps and shower heads
46. Take shorter showers, get a showerhead with a shut-off so you can turn off the water while soaping and shampooing, put a bucket in the shower to catch water for flushing toilet.
47. Don't wash your car - just keep the windows clean so you don't crash!
48. Use water frugally and respect each and every drop
49. Buy energy efficient appliances – check their star rating
50. Buy clothes that don’t need ironing
51. Grow your own food using organic methods – build season extenders: greenhouses, cold frames, hot boxes
52. Resist any attempt to restrict the use of household water to grow food, Let the lawn die but keep the garden growing.
53. Understand that agriculture uses 70 per cent of all water
54. Growing food at home uses one fifth of the water used in commercial growing and the amount of fuel used to get food from the farm to your table is greatly reduced
55. If you can't grow your own, buy into Community Supported Agriculture programs
56. Support local industries
57. Develop local networks and buy organic food in bulk
58. Create shade in your garden to reduce watering and around your home to reduce summer cooling costs
59. Establish major earthworks (swales, ponds, terraces, etc) now while we have the fossil fuels to run the machinery
60. Sign petitions that call for real solutions and local action to work toward a better future
61. Attend rallies and show your support for immediate and urgent action
62. Meet with local politicians and ask what they are doing - put pressure on them to act – one hand written letter equals 100 votes to them
63. Join local groups - relocalization, permaculture, community gardens, organic growing, etc network, network, network – learn, learn, learn
64. Support community groups who are working toward a sustainable future - the answer to global problems will not come from the people who caused them in the first place.
65. Support your local community gardens – volunteer or become a financial member, attend meetings, contribute your knowledge, time and skills
66. Attend film nights and learn what is happening around the world
67. Take a Permaculture Design Course!
68. Support businesses that are behaving ethically
69. Invest your money ethically
70. Visit the David Suzuki Foundation websites and see what is being done
71. Get involved in tree planting - native species in the right location
72. Read Tim Flannery's book The Weather Makers
73. Read Affluenza by Clive Hamilton or watch the video
74. Audit resources coming into your home and resources (a.k.a. waste) going out
75. Donate money to worthy causes that support community based solutions to these problems
76. If you have time - volunteer your energy and skills to causes that support community based solutions to these problems
77. Use fewer disposable products and more reusable ones
78. Buy the best quality hand tools you can afford
79. Join your local environmental group and attend talks, seminars, workshops
80. Use whatever skills you have from your working life or hobbies to spread the word (writing, photography, computer skills)
81. Knock on your neighbor's door and take them some produce from your garden
82. Teach - if you have skills others need, teach them.
83. Spend less - every dollar has greenhouse gases attached to it
84. Stop using chemical cleaners - make your own at home from sodium bicarbonate, vinegar, washing soda, etc
85. Install a water tank or two to catch rainwater.
86. Save as much gasoline as you can by walking, biking or planning your trips more efficiently
87. Teach your children to appreciate the natural world - get out into it
88. Teach your children life skills for a more sustainable future
89. Support permaculture gardens and permaculture curriculum in local schools
90. Offset your fuel emissions
91. Add lots and lots of organic matter to your soil – it draws carbon from the atmosphere and returns it to the soil
92. Garden and kitchen waste sent to landfill produces methane – a potent greenhouse gas – don’t put plant waste in your rubbish bin – compost or mulch it
93. Learn more about the ‘food miles’ your food has attached to it – demand supermarkets show food miles on their fresh produce
94. Design you home so you don’t need air conditioning and use solar passively to reduce or eliminate heating
95. Buy furniture made from sustainably-grown timber or recycle old furniture
96. Buy from butchers or farmers who supply organic, grass-fed or bio-dynamic meat
97. Buy clothes made from sustainable fibers – such as hemp or bamboo
98. Take advantage of community banks that offer discounted loans for ‘green building’
99. Use garden safe laundry detergent and re-use your laundry grey water on the garden
100. Read and subscribe to magazines such as Permaculture Activist, Mother Earth News and Organic Gardening (don't buy them at the store - it takes gas to get there and they cost more)
101. Celebrate, support and propagate diversity.

2007-12-22T06:13:00.000-08:00

I will be contacting the Cable TV folks at the library to see about sponsoring (or cosponsoring) further broadcasts of Peak Moment TV
for which I provided 4 episodes last year.

I will also be looking into getting trained to use their equipment to produce other shows of local interest for which I would like to have BPGuild and APPLE (and other local org) sponsorship.

If you would like to get involved in producing our own television show, contact me. To that end I am interested in finding out who on the BPG list has video cams or equipment since anything we produce on CAT's equipment belongs to them whereas if we use our own we can keep the copyright.

Thanks,
Keith

Keith

Blog launch , Dec 22, 08

2007-12-22T06:03:00.000-08:00

This blog will be authored by Keith Johnson, Peter Bane, Rhonda Baird and other members of the Guild who express interest in doing so. Please contact Keith to have your email address added to the list of permitted authors.