This afternoon I helped these young people:

build this herb spiral:

in less than an hour.

They totally made my day and made me feel like I’d done something worthwhile and fun for the day. I was able to forget about the idiocy of work for a bit. I was able to explain about the different micro-climates we were making, from dry at the top to moist at the bottom, hot and light on the southwest and top sides and darker and cooler on the north and east edges, how the bricks and soil form a more stable structure- they totally got it and hopefully now they can do their own spirals and teach others.

After some hemming and hawing, I’ve decided to attend the Northeast Permaculture Convergence in Holyoke, MA over the July 4th weekend. I’ll bring my laptop so I’ll try to blog from the motel in the evenings.

Coincidentally, I just checked out Eric Toensmeier’s Perennial Vegetables from the local library. It turns out the NEPC is being held at Tierra de Oportunidad farm in Holyoke, which is Eric’s home site. So I’m going to make a point of meeting him and hopefully buy the book and Edible Forest Gardening, vols. I and II, which appear to be “must haves” for the serious permaculturalist.

I also need to make sure I bring my camera. One thing I’ve noticed is that there is a dearth of good photographs of permaculture gardens. People close to me want to know what the finished product is going to look like, and I’ve had a hard time finding good pictures of existing sites.

R. claimed to have gone last year and said it was great. I didn’t truly believe him until I was looking at the pics from 2007 and found him lurking in the background:

If you see this man at NEPC 2008, ask him to show you his wallet!

I fall asleep to the serenade of the chorus of neighborhood toads. I awake to the pleasant song of the wood thrush and the red-bellied woodpecker call. There is deer scat in my yard. This little wooded oasis of ours is in the median between the city and a shopping plaza chain store wasteland, yet you’d never know.

Its inarguably beautiful. The problem with all this is that the area isn’t conducive to food production, at least in the conventional sense. We have trees, probably approaching 100 feet, surrounding our yard and that of our neighbors, not to even mention the half acre mature woodlot adjacent to us. This means lots of shade. It means birds and deer and other things that like to eat. Not to mention the clay soil. It means I have to get somewhat creative.

But such is the dilemma in our modern age. Hunting and gathering will not sustain nearly seven billion people and counting. And the majority of this population resides in urban settings. Learning to work with what you’ve got today is not only a cliche, it’s a survival strategy.

So, we have decided to have two main “gardens”, as well as some other strategic placement of random edible plants. One garden is a 2000 square foot fenced in area that most would recognize as a typical vegetable garden. But as we develop it, hopefully one can see where we attempt to apply ecological or otherwise organic methods of gardening to this seemingly conventional garden.

The second area will be an experiment in the permaculture principle of the edible forest. We are extending the woodlot next to us into our yard. Already we have planted three nut trees, a mulberry tree and several varieties of brambles that will compose part of the shrub layer. This is just the beginning however. In this area we will attempt to recreate a successional forest ecosystem, that which is natural to this area.

In the coming months, we have some sheet mulching and fencing to take care of, and more importantly, taking some time to get more intimate with our new yard.

But before that, the next project is the chicken coop and run. In fact, the basic prefab coop which we mail ordered and are planning to soup up a bit just arrived on our front porch earlier today.

Have you ever heard of a chicken moat? Stay tuned…

In the meantime, check out our Picassa Web Album . There’s not much yet, but it will soon be filled with more pictures of chickens than one could hope for.

I found a link to a couple of audio interviews out of Boulder, CO on Crops to Cuisine, that introduces a couple of Permaculture practitioners and their stories. I’ve included links down in the Permaculture category on the right-hand navigation bar. One of the things that jumps out from this, again, is how difficult it is to define Permaculture in a sound bite. I think it belies the question being asked. It’s like asking, “so what is economics exactly?” or “what’s the definition of literature?” As I’ve said before, even David Holmgren has a difficult time with this question.

Nevertheless, this question gets asked a lot. And I also think it is worth having a handy answer, not something comprehensive, but something that has a hook to it, something to keep the inquisitor interested so their eyes don’t glaze over. And then follow it up with something like “if you’d like to know more I have tons of information, give talks, do workshops and teach a design course.” So I’m going to work on this as a homework project over the next week or so.

In other news, I keep thinking about small things I can do each day. Today I was considering closing down my art studio and saving a chunk of change each month that I might put toward buying a house in town for a permaculture center. But then I went over there and it occurs to me that it would make a fine teaching facility, at least in the short term. The food might be a bit of a challenge but I’m now confident I could figure that out.

This weekend was the last installment of the Permaculture Design Course in Hancock. Five of the original ten graduated and I’ve become very fond of these people. We gave presentations of our design projects on Saturday, held the “talent show” after dinner and ended up Sunday talking about invisible structures like legal, money systems, cultural and social processes. Saturday we’d had a visit from a local organic farmer who, after 20 years of struggle, is now facing the Hobson’s choice of selling out to natural gas drilling interests (like Haliburton ferinstance) or continuing to work endlessly treading water in a system where the full weight of the economy falls on the family farmer. This tied in, in a very real, visceral way, with the discussion of these invisible structures.

What I come away with is the concept of Withdrawal. First, I’m feeling the end of this transition, and it was in many ways life-changing for me. After other such initiations there is the need always for an integration period. It leaves me feeling like I’m coming back to a culture that is in no way plugged into the things we were talking about all winter and spring. I feel depressed. Like I’m withdrawing.

There’s the obvious addiction connotation here, as is often tossed about with terms like “addiction to foreign oil.” Like, as if, it’s no big thing to overcome an addiction! Anyway, that’s a little how I feel- on a very small scale- and I anticipate there is more pain ahead as I start to really look at how I’m living. One of my next steps is to “take inventory” but then maybe there’s a real 12-Step progression to this recovery and I should start with powerlessness. The organic farmer is right there: despair.

Looking at the Haliburtons and Blackwaters and World Banks running around screwing everyone, it’s hard not to despair. But there’s another kernel of hope in the word Withdrawal. As in withdrawing from participation in, cooperation with, cooptation by, apologizing for, rationalizing for, and investing in this s***storm we’ve created. Backing away slowly. And with each tiny, seemingly inconsequential action taken (like pulling the paper coffee cup out of the garbage and taking it home to use as a transplant pot for a cauliflower) I will say, “I’m making a withdrawal.” Each withdrawal goes into another account that accumulates over time. One day, one action, one withdrawal at a time. They add up.

Good bread makes me happy, especially good rosemary bread, especially if I baked it myself. This is super-tasty with brie, BTW. This is loaf number 10, about, and I feel like I’m finally getting it (hat tip to Russ!). The [corrected] recipe for basic bread is here. The whole house smelled good after baking this, not burnt like after the first few hockey puck loaves.

I’m digging the ability to start stuff from seed. One of the things I’ve learned from Andrew is to transplant seedlings to a richer mix before going directly into the garden. So I broke down and bought some -gulp- MiracleGro potting mix! I’m mixing this one third to one third of this really chunky cheap potting mix, and one third ProMix. I feel like these are my babies. There are roma tomato, lemon and middle east cukes, fennel, broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, rhubarb and golden chard, sunflowers and purple bell peppers.

This morning I finished sheet mulching the central hex garden. The path, as you can see, forms a spiral with keyholes radiating out from it. This is very efficient in terms of garden to path ratio, and I also like the design aspect. I can reach any spot (basically) from a path so I never have to walk on the beds themselves. Eventually the paths will be laid in gray stone like that you can see in the foreground.

The apples I planted last summer are producing. This one is called Liberty. I didn’t expect fruit for a couple of years, so this is a very nice surprise. Apples, pears and tomatoes are some of the things that most improve, in my estimation, when I don’t get them at a store.

I haven’t had much luck with iris over the years, but this year seems to have been a good year all over for them. I can’t claim to have done anything to improve these, other than to leave them alone. Next spring I think it will be time to separate them into several clumps. These could go around the base of the pears or apples, or around the drip line, to help keep the grass down.

Finally, we bought a trellis arbor to anchor the back of the garden and provide a gateway to the more open side-back yard. The swale on either side is now planted to forsythia and perennial sunflowers, which I come to find out are nearly invasive in that they re-seed like crazy. I was back behind the Pittsford Village maintenance buildings last Friday and they’re all over back there. Ultimately I want to grow the hardy kiwi on this trellis, and maybe hibiscus. That’s variegated dogwood in the foreground.