April 29, 2012
Urban Farm, Urban Adamah

Destiny is back in the west for six weeks.  This begins a series on urban farms. Look for a blog on creating a worm bin or palace.  A blog on sheet mulching. And a series of visits to urban farms in the East Bay.

My grandson Rowan, being mentored on his way toward manhood, exemplified by the bar mitzvah he will experience in a year, on his 13th birthday, has been working at Urban Adamah.

A real estate agency has allowed the young people who developed this amazing farm, covering most of a city block, until they have another use for the property.  All of this was accomplished in one year’s time!

Every structure is temporary so moving will not be difficult.  The chicken compound, greenhouses, and raised beds are all portable.

A master gardener worked for several months putting the key pieces in place and teaching the young people who work there.   In turn, the young people who run the farm teach kids from neighboring schools how to farm.  These kids are making a smoothie powered by their pedaling a bike! 

The hallmarks of permaculture are evident everywhere, particularly the in-ground beds which follow the berm and swale principles of slowing, spreading and storing water.

Worm bins and compost piles sit near the raised beds for another permie principle: stacked functions. 

These raised beds are low tech and mounted on pallets for good circulation.  The wood sides create an opportunity for more art and decoration.

The farm had just had an intensive workshop in integrated pest management (IPM) which includes whole beds of flowers which attract beneficial insects.  

They have a rolly polly problem (do you know this little bug that looks like a hedgehog, segmented and rolling up at the slightest provocation?)  The rolly pollys are eating their baby lettuce. 

They have little pools of beer in saucers for the slugs and snails but they have no slug problem apparently.

Chickens  love the snails that were originally imported for French immigrants.  Escargot?

Beautiful art announces and explains each feature of the farm. 

Chickens are an integral part of the permie concept of farming offering many features: they give eggs and feathers, eat bugs, they offer their poop for compost and fertilizer, they eat green compost, and scratch areas that need loosened soil. 

Children can gather in this lovely carpeted tent for their classes when the sun is too hot.

I bought our worms from Urban Adamah. (see blog on worms!)

Yes it is near my youngest daughter’s home and my grandson does work here as well.

Many of the young people are associated with our reconstruction temple Chochmat Halev, which is devoted to a god who is both male and female.

Men and women conduct the services.  

Drumming, singing, and dancing give pulse to our services.  

And the prayers sing of our agricultural heritage.

Signs welcoming me to Urban Adamah, along with the lovely faces

of young people deeply enjoying growing and harvesting foods, make this farm at Parker and San Pablo in Berkeley a place I like to return to, again and again.  

When I worry about how Project GROW will introduce young people to a cuisine that is local, home grown, and lightly prepared, when I consider how to slowly wean kids away from fast food and chicken mcnuggets, I rest on the assurances of my friends who have worked with kids and gardens.  

They tell us this: 

if they grow it, they will love it.  

If they cook it, they will love to eat it.

3:29am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/Z4si2wKXUfyb
(Notes: 2)
  
Filed under: urban farm bioregionalism permaculture gardening 
April 22, 2012
Occupy the Farm/Gill Tract, Albany CA

Occupy the Farm/Gill Tract, Albany CA

April 22, 2012

This is a historic moment and the day is not even over.

This morning, Occupy the Farm, an Occupy action, took over a plot of  land UC Berkeley had been using for plant experiments (there were whispers of GMO corn) until developer UCB Capital Projects is ready to turn it into a multi-use complex.

 

They had a plan sketched out in pen on a sheet of paper someone in a green bandana held a copy of. 

They had a piece of paper that informed visitors and volunteers of the structure: purple bandanas would talk to the press,  red bandanas were first aid—in case, white bandanas greeted people.  

Volunteers spread out and began pulling the thigh high mustard plants growing in the five acre field, alongside nitrogen-fixing fava beans. 

 Haystacks grew.  

 

People brought in trays of starts.  I thought, “Someone—the Occupy the Bandanas force—has been planning this.”

A heavy duty rototiller made its appearance along with sound equipment: A singer with a guitar under her arm was testing the mike. 

 Where there had been a field, rows of dark rich soil were appearing, corresponding to lines on the plan. Teams of people were set to work, putting red lettuce and beans into neat rows of dark earth while others mulched between with the weeds that had been pulled. 

literature told me, “These are the last five acres of Class 1 soil in East Bay.”

And it’s gorgeous.

I pointed to a major water pipe that had been fitted with irrigation hose leading out in an orderly fashion, to line  each bed.  ”Where did this come from?”  

“It was here.  UC needed water too.”

My daughter had called me and left a message: “I wish you were here.  This is so great.  We’re basically reclaiming a piece of land the university had been using.  Ten thousand starts going in.  A major major effort.  The Occupy group. The cops may make an appearance.  This is so beautiful and I know you would love it.  Super fun and sweet. Tearing up the weeds and putting in plants.”  

When I had arrived, a sign at the gate offers: “Resistance is Fertile.  Compost Capitalism.”

Across the street, several cop cars have pulled up and are observing.

On the roof of his van, another cop takes photographs…or videos.

 

A young Asian man with his wife and kids pulls up beside me and asks, “What are they taking pictures of?”  I told him I didn’t know but I thought, “They are taking names.  Recording faces.  In case this does wind up being a major action.”  

Occupy is a youthful movement.  

Who else could stay outside on a foggy day and into the night which will be windy and cold?  

Who else could man a rototiller or pull a field of weeds all day? 

Who else would have the courage to break the private property taboo?

 And in less than one day, turn it into a farm.  

And an encampment.

The food looks good.

 

THIS BEARS WATCHING.

WOULDN’T YOU AGREE?

12:08pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/Z4si2wKEXzpX
(Notes: 1)
  
Filed under: urban farm bioregionalism permaculture gardening 
April 7, 2012
The Fibershed Project and Reinhabitory Institute’s sitio tiempo press co-host a cooperative event and reading on the subject of bioregionalism, fibershed, and appropriate technology at two events in April. The readings will feature locavore drinks and snacks fermented and designed by Aldebaran. A Verb for Keeping Warm, Sunday, April 15, 3pm 6328 San Pablo Ave. North Oakland Green Arcade, Thursday April 26, 7pm 1680 Market Street, San Francisco

The Fibershed Project and Reinhabitory Institute’s sitio tiempo press co-host a cooperative event and reading on the subject of bioregionalism, fibershed, and appropriate technology at two events in April.

The readings will feature locavore drinks and snacks fermented and designed by Aldebaran.

A Verb for Keeping Warm, Sunday, April 15, 3pm

6328 San Pablo Ave. North Oakland

Green Arcade, Thursday April 26, 7pm

1680 Market Street, San Francisco

3:47pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/Z4si2wJFojdp
(Notes: 2)
  
Filed under: Readings bioregionalism watershed fibershed 
April 7, 2012
The start of gardens at six Penn-York Valley sites

In the first two weeks of April, according to advice from our cooperative extension, we began assembling materials to put gardens on the ground at six sites in the Penn-York Valley.

Tom of Tom’s Hardware and Feed donated 20 feed bags.

 

Tom loading straw 

Ralph Porter of Porter’s Sand and Gravel donated 30 tons of topsoil!

Ralph & bottle of Destiny’s Nocino, a green walnut digestif made last summer in the Valley

We’re going to be using the lasagne method of sheet mulching.

First cardboard or newspaper.  Then straw.  A layer of manure.  Then mulched leaves, grass clippings, or green prunings.  More straw.  Then wet the whole thing down, good, and wait 2-4 months.)

Maria laying out cardboard

Our municipalities collect the leaves in the fall and return them to us as mulch in the spring.

Doug Sterns and Doli Jones loading leaf mulch into truck

3:46pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/Z4si2wJFttWZ
(Notes: 1)
  
Filed under: gardening urban farm permaculture bioregionalism Penn-York Valley 
February 24, 2012
Fibershed/Watershed/Indigo

Floodtime:

writing/textiles/community organizing/bioregionalism 

Is it just us functioning bipolars who find ourselves overwhelmed and thrilled when discreet but significant parts of our lives threaten to break down their dams and flood into each other?  

Background

I celebrated floodtime—when nutrients cover the land, setting up fertility— on an earlier day in January, when Rebecca Burgess of The Fibershed Project invited me to come to their solidly-booked indigo workshop in Nicasio, CA, in Marin County, with world famous indigo dyer Rowland Ricketts. 

Rebecca and Rowland

In a spectacular piece of serendipity, I was in Washington DC in 2006, touring with my cousins, when the National Textile Museum was hosting their show on indigo called Blue.  I saw not only Ricketts’ work but that of his master and others from around the world.

This last fall, Judith Thomas, business partner in Reinhabitory institute, and I had lunch with Rebecca at Two Bird Café in San Geronimo to let the streams of our affinities flow together.  To flood, in other words.

 

Judith

Judith, a master weaver, heads Ariadne’s Thread, which encompasses her lifelong involvement with textiles. Weaving a Life.

offers a transformative process for those entering the yearlong process of translating elemental forms—mask, bowl, doll, belt, bundle—onto a travelling loom while inviting certain dynamics to enter or leave one’s life. 

Destiny

With design partners Mollie Favour and Susan Logan, I led Sunshine Down in a 1970’s Rocky Mountain pursuit of the electrical connection that silk and down excite, for a popular line of children’s outerwear and high fashion line of women’s vests. 

Textile Trilogy

In the mid-90’s, I began writing the Textile Trilogy, an exploration of the roots of modernity in the nineteenth century. 

First silk, then linen and finally synthetics submitted themselves to my research, each lending themselves as metaphor for the seminal crossroads moments my protagonists—and us as a culture—breached in each book. 

Two textile crones meet Rebecca Burgess, Fibershed Wunderkind: the story

Rebecca and a wide coterie of girlfriends, and several significant male friends and relations, pull together many (apparently) disparate ventures under the rubric of The Fibershed Project. 

Big enough, visionary enough, the Fibershed Project is devoted to restoring our ability to localize our clothing, to personalize what we wear, as the locavore food movement has personalized what we eat.

Synergies ID-ed at Two Bird Cafe

Over leg of lamb and soup, we unearthed our affinities, translated them into priorities.

-One of Rebecca’s ventures within The Fibershed Project, indigo production, will lead to this country’s first commercial indigo product since Eliza Pinckney’s in 18th century Carolinas.

-Finding engineering specs for a scutching mill, will allow The Fibershed Project to grow and process flax to produce linen locally, a return to cottage level capacity that hasn’t been seen in this country since the nineteenth century. Destiny’s research for Linen Shroud puts her in a position to locate these drawings and specs. 

-Hosting several events on Fibershed/Watershed, at which Rebecca and Destiny will both read from their books and discuss the crossfertilization between bioregionalism and fibershed, will expose our ideas to a wider audience.  Promote fibershed.  And sell books. 

-Judith’s beautiful linen weavings preserve historical patterns. 

Blue 

Carbon sequestration

Fibershed’s indigo event occurred at a carbon sequestration project  run by John and Peggy Wick, in Nicasio, a tiny village in West Marin, where one of Rebecca’s indigo plantations will be located. 

Our objective was to lay a floor in a newly built shed where a fermentation process will convert indigo plants to blue dyestuff.  I’m told it looks like mud when it’s finished and sieved out. 

John Wick gave a short presentation first, establishing a research base for the carbon sequestration project that is ongoing there. 

Turns out that plants take carbon from the atmosphere and store it in the soil!  The grasslands on our planet have the ability to capture all of the carbon our primitive industries have released, and then store them.  When the ground is plowed, however, all of that carbon is re-released into the atmosphere.  John and his wife Peggy, a children’s book illustrator, 

in cooperation with a group of universities, are testing a variety of grasses in Cannard beds  to see which capture and hold the most carbon.

A fermentation floor

A properly built fermentation floor will capture moisture from the stack of indigo plants, which develop heat as it ferments, to release its color, so that the indigo plants on the bottom of the stack do not rot. 

First we put down four inches of sand and made it level. 

We then put down four inches of rice hulls and leveled that.

The group did a dance on the hulls to compress them. 

Rowland brought a traditional Japanese tamping tool with him as well as a rake and leveller. Another layer of sand went on top of the hills, which had to be painstakingly leveled, with a slightly higher center than the edges. 

A fine layer of clay was sprinkled over the whole, then wetted down and left to set overnight. The purpose of the floor—to be absorbent—was realized in the floor we created over the course of the day.

Kristine of A Verb for Keeping Warm in Oakland is adroit at using a drop spindle to spin yearn. 

Off to the side, Rebecca, her brother Michael and I separated indigo seed from plants for planting this spring.

Later that night, in Pt. Reyes Station, Rowland gave a lecture and power point show about indigo, focusing on the decade plus he spent in Japan learning about and applying the process of raising and processing in order to dye with indigo.  As an artist, Rowland observes that traditions are deeply rooted in place. 

He realized that certain types of indigo grow in the tropics while others are adapted for temperate zones.  Based at Indiana University in Bloomington, often classified as subtropical because of their hot humid summers, Ricketts said that, as an artist, he’s interested in wasting time, observing the time and energy that goes into producing indigo before he begins to dye with it. 

Efficiency is not uppermost for him but rather the social aspects are. 

Rebecca and her partners in the indigo plantations are planting 2000 plants in Nicasio and another 2000 plants in the Capay Valley  to come up with the 300-400 pounds of indigo necessary for a functional fermentation pile. Rebecca and Michael et al and considering a collective effort where a local indigo grower would get a percent of finished dye in ratio to the percent indigo plant they contributed to the fermentation stack. 

[fin]

4:05pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/Z4si2wGz5qff
(Notes: 1)
  
Filed under: bioregionalism community organizing textiles fibershed 
February 20, 2012
Pruning in February

Frankly, I love late winter pruning in the east.

The nuns used to tell us that any flowering branch you cut after February 1 would bloom if brought inside and put in water.  They kept the ancient knowledge of the quarter holidays (whether they knew it or not) when St. Brigids Day or Imbolc has been celebrated by agricultural peoples for millennia and more.  These quarter holiday mark the halfway point between solstices and equinoxes.

My brothers and sister and our families used to do this in our woods in Chautauqua County, when our little kids scattered through the woods while we pruned and sawed to keep our cross country ski trails open.  This is why I love being outside with others climbing trees and evaluating cuts.

This winter, a couple kind people allowed us to practice our pruning skills on their fruit trees.  After church we would head out with our satchels of treasured tools, saws and nippers, to study the geometry of the trees, so obvious in the winter with no leaves or blossoms to obstruct the vision.

We always brought something to eat, a stew that was just as good at room temperature, a or a rich chocolaty thing that warmed the belly, a warm drink to cheer on the old bones.

One of the seven wonders of our world in the Valley is Mr. Spadaro’s fig tree which he maintains in one of his greenhouses.  Destiny’s husband Barry Skeist did the climbing and trimming to open up the branches so the figs ripen properly, while Mr. Spadaro supervised.

Back in the west, our apple tree which a neighbor says was grown from seed has been pruned during the same period of time.  In April, it swarms with bees and spreads its promise of sweet fruit across the yard and through the open windows.

11:31am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/Z4si2wKYOji_
(Notes: 1)
  
Filed under: Pruning bioregionalism gardening 
February 3, 2012
The Project GROW Story

You can’t begin to understand Project GROW without some information about the Penn-York Valley where Project GROW has its home. 

The Penn-York Valley is created as two branches of the Susquehanna River approach from east and west along the state lines of New York and Pennsylvania and then drop south to join and head toward Chesapeake Bay.

The Valley is a bioregionalist’s dream: although it sits in two different states and three different counties, the people who live there refer to it as The Valley.  It has a culture, a history and a skewed socioeconomic profile.

Half of the population live at or beneath the poverty line while the presence of several large corporations, a new natural gas boom, and the Guthrie Clinic with 250 physicians and professionals endow both wealth—and access to a larger world—to a minority. 

A flood in September of 2011 exacerbated those inequities.  At the same time, the community came together in an amazing show of support for neighbors who lost so much to the flood.  

In the midst of loss, the flood seemed to wake people up.  The potential for revitalization hangs in the air.

Because of its position, the pre-Contact Valley was a seat of power and spiritual strength.

In fact, transportation systems still follow, of necessity, those ancient trails along the rivers, creating opportunities in the Valley through trails and river tourism.

Project GROW offers a gameboard for addressing many of the Valley’s opportunities.

Agriculture and Conservation certification for local kids

Surrounded by farmland, forest, rivers and streams, the Valley offers an ideal campus for teaching kids how to grow, prepare and market food.  

In addition, opportunities exist at hand, to practice the principles of restoration and conservation.

A chance to celebrate diversity: across age, gender, income, education and race

The Valley population seems uniformly white and Christian. A largely hidden population of native Americans, whose ancestors stayed because they assimilated with whites, has not come out of the closet, because of intolerance.  

A few African American families as well as Hispanics find life in the Valley affordable as compared with an urban area.  Owning a home is still possible, for instance.

Project GROW will teach tolerance, nonviolent communication, and respect for our native American history.

Friends and Collaborators

Phoenix Cafe, one of Project GROW’s collaborators, has been providing latchkey kids in the Valley with an afterschool program and an evening meal.

Phoenix is supported by Tioga County Cooperative Extension and by donations from organizations  and individuals in the Valley.

Churches, like the Unitarian Universalist Congregation, another collaborator, participate in Project GROW through their Youth Program.  Students delivered bags of leaves to Waverly Highschool—another collaborator—for their composting system.

Waverly and Athens High School greenhouses grow seeds to put into Project GROW gardens.

The potential for farms and renewable energy to coexist find expression in the this photo taken an hour north.

The opportunity to restore an older way of life, is still very much alive in near-term memory, where grampa ran a large garden for the extended family and grandma and the aunts had a canning bee every fall.

Wildcrafting and gleaning will be part of the discipline taught at Project GROW.

basket of elderflowers for making cordial….

Although the pilot of Project GROW will not go on the ground until May of this year, a tour through other gardens, such as Green Gulch Farm in northern California, and Groundswell in Ithaca, provide us with a vision for our dream.

Agriculture goes hand in hand with taking care of our watershed: they are not separate.

As we move toward our growing season, we will post more blogs on the progress of Project GROW in the Penn-York Valley.

2:08am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/Z4si2wFpIB19
(Notes: 2)
  
Filed under: Penn-York Valley Project GROW bioregionalism gardening 
January 30, 2012

6:09pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/Z4si2wFeOKWs
(Notes: 1)
  
January 30, 2012
Agnes Hurricane Flood in Penn-York Valley Creates the Conditions for Revitalization

By Destiny Kinal

Months later it feels as if I am still in floodtime. It all began with a hurricane in early September that came up the Susquehanna River.

Thursday September 8

The night before my birthday, we had a fundraiser at the LOOM for Project GROW.  A celebration of centenarian Katherine Kerrigan’s life.

We heard there was flooding. Nothing too remarkable in a valley where two branches of the river come from east and west, meet and turn south, creating a valley the shape of a woman’s fork in her anatomy.

This story is an extended metaphor for a planet where people whose feet are comfortably dry live in blissful ignorance in direct proximity to people who are going underwater in acute suffering. 

New Orleans

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January 30, 2012

Friday September 9

I had an appointment next day to meet a guru in packaging public/private funding deals. We were to meet at 9 to look at the Ukrainian Church’s community center, closed for the past 15 years. When I had run Carantouan Greenway, East Sayre became my favorite neighborhood, abundant in large gardens for extended families’ canning, in orchards, an ethnic neighborhood dominated by a Ukrainian population. We used the community center, an ideal spot with a vacant lot beside a simple building with a ballroom floor above and a dining room floor below.

The next day, my guru friend called to cancel, saying he had better stick around the Enterprise Center he runs to see if anything developed with the flooding. If we had kept our appointment, we would have seen an unprecedented event as the river poured over the levee like Niaagra Falls, at the speed of a locomotive.

I decided to enjoy the day.

4:40pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/Z4si2wFeE29O
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