Seeds are the New Currency!

By AnnFebruary 3, 2017Urban Farm, Village

New post on exopermaculture.com:

Green Acres Village: “Seeds are the new currency!”

This morning I was sitting in my fabulous crone chair when housemate Dan walked in the kitchen from outside. He’d been turning the compost. Says that “for the first time this winter, it’s now steaming!” I asked him why. “I think it’s because I switched from adding manure to adding leaves. The manure just decomposes too quickly.”

Meanwhile, I walked over to the DeKist house this morning, to photograph a seed sharing party in progress.

That’s Rebecca, Brie, Ari, Bryn, and Duncan, left to right. Bryn’s holding what I thought at first was dollar bills, but then discovered they were seed packets. That’s when she laughed, said that seeds are the new currency!

Meanwhile, Rebecca and Brie, the co-founders of our CSA in 2016, are going to be working with Bryn and Duncan on a joint project to cooperatively farm a 5000 square plot on Duncan’s mother’s rural land, about 20 minutes away. Permaculture spreads slowly, like mycelium, knitting us to each other and to the earth. We live and work under the radar of the unraveling cultural chaos to regenerate land, hearts, the soul of this beautiful world.

BTW: here’s the book that Rebecca says was her Bible when she started as an organic farmer, back in the early ’90s.

Rebecca’s going to get me a list of experienced organic farmers in this area that might be available to help young permaculture graduates move from theoretical knowledge of how systems work to the actual hands’ on experience needed to do permaculture. First, we’ll need to bring these farmers up to speed with permaculture. But as Rebecca states, it’s much easier for an organic farmer to pick up the systems thinking of permaculture than it is for a new permaculture graduate to gather the detailed seasoning and experience that comes from farming organically over many years.

Community Dinner, February 1, 2017: Fun, Frolic, Joy!

By AnnFebruary 2, 20171 commentUncategorized, Village

Let’s face it. We’re all here for the kids. The kids infuse new lifeblood into our human family; they present the good news of ongoing beautiful innocence. Last night’s gathering, 18 neighbors and friends, included four dogs and four kids! Not just Juakim and Asiri (neighbor regulars, with their mom Mariella), but Arvid and Fatima (with their folks, Enabah and Adam, who live just up the street). Arvid is four, Juakim five, so he can play big brother.

The meal itself was the usual scrumptuous affair, ending with pears soaked in mead made by Dan, and served with ice cream.

I have a feeling that Juakim and Asiri headed straight for the ice cream . . .

Meanwhile, the big event of the evening was the song and dance fest ignited by Logan on his guitar and singing. Soon Arvid and Fatima joined in, with Juakim videotaping! He actually managed to capture the spirit of that hilarity. (See the very end of this post.)

Joyous songster Logan, by the way, is the very same person who also makes collages straight from the disturbed collective unconscious, two of which I featured in yesterday’s post on exopermaculture.com. Collages that I both love and hate. As does he. Logan tells me that it’s when he’s feeling most furious about the horrendous state of the larger world that he makes his collages, and by the time he’s done with one, the emotion that was driving him is spent. YES! Let us transmute our difficult feelings into creativity, rather than unconsciously project them out onto one another.

Speaking of creativity, here’s the latest repurposing by Rebecca: notice her pockets? they are the shoulder pads from a shirt that she got a Goodwill. YES!

My housemates Brie and Dan on duty. Dan affecting a suave, cunning look.

Okay, finally, here’s the promised homemade video, by Juakim, capturing Fatima’s interaction with Logan.

I’m still laughing.

Community Dinner, Wednesday, January 11, 2017

By AnnJanuary 14, 20171 commentVillage

In Green Acres Village, we are creating a space both welcoming and inclusive of anyone who seeks to both express themselves fully and cooperate consciously with others in a meaningful and unfolding manner. Here’s a wonderful Wendell Berry quote that distills the essence of what we call community.

A community is the mental and spiritual condition of knowing that the place is shared, and that the people who share the place define and limit the possibilities of each other’s lives. It is the knowledge that people have of each other, their concern for each other, their trust in each other, the freedom with which they come and go among themselves.

At last Wednesday’s weekly meal, we found ourselves spontaneously celebrating the arrival of each new/old person, with a yaaay Leah! yaaay Aaron!, yaaay Mariella! Asiri! Juakim! — and so on. Our boisterous greetings felt wonderful. Somebody said we reminded him of old “Friends” re-runs on TV.

Here are a few photos.

Eat dessert first!

Kat and Mariella

Ari

Juakim, hiding under the counter clutching orange juice.

At next week’s Wednesday dinner, podmate Rebecca has agreed to give us a demonstration of how to darn our holey socks. YES!

Daily life in the village, January: Ferments, and socks!

By AnnJanuary 7, 20173 commentsVillage

Yesterday afternoon, housemate Dan brought up the crock. It had been sitting in the basement in his fermentation room for four weeks! Here are the contents, prior to draining them off. Mmmm. Yuck!

I asked him to list the ingredients: habanero pepper, garlic, ginger, onion, lemon, cinnamon, horseradish root.

He’s squeezing the gunk, to end up with his famous “fire cider.” That much made only two quarts.

It’s what we sip in the wintertime, when cold, or feeling a bit under the weather. Or, for me, every morning, upon rising, about a tablespoon, diluted with warm water, vinegar, and wild honey. (And/or, I drink one of my infusions: of nettles, oatstraw or red clover; and/or warmed up bone broth simmered for three days with a splash of vinegar in a crock pot with marrow bones from the farmers’ market.)

Dan has been fermenting up a storm. Besides fire water, he now has kimchi, plus beet, cabbage, and daikon radish, each one made into its own fermented kraut. So much better than paying $11/pint jar for locally produced ferments! And soooooooo much more powerful! Indeed, last night’s fixings left so much of it in the air that anyone in the kitchen sneezed periodically for the next hour.

At this point, he’s making so much fermented food that he gifts jars to others. Not just to our podmates next door, but to Shy, our builder, and other friends.

One problem: What’s left over.

We compost, but right now, everything’s frozen outside. (Puppy Shadow and I walked this morning in 4° weather!). Plus, our two worm farms are already full of food.

Yesterday evening, I went over to see Rebecca, found her with a beer in her lap, darning my socks! Can you believe, someone “in this day and age” who knows how to darn socks? I am sooooooo lucky.