My most recent trip to the Catskills revealed even more frenetic activity than was evident in June. This includes massive infrastructure, especially in the form of pipelines and right-of-way cuts over forested ridges for feeder branches. The new Millenium pipeline, which will run from Corning east then south and eventually to New Jersey is a mammoth 36″ natural gas replacement for a current 12″ line. That’s a 10-fold increase in capacity. Not one well has been drilled in New York State, yet the writing is on the wall.

© 2008 Russell Honicker

What does this sort of approaching resource extraction orgy have to do with the Third World? After all, as a spokesperson for the NYSDEC said, “this isn’t Wyoming; this is New York!” We are the new Third World. Having raped the rest of the world, time to start in earnest at home. Of course there’s a long history of this here: coal, railroads, oil, highways, farming etc.

The so-called economic growth we’ve been experiencing here in the North-and-West has been subsidized by resource extraction over the last 35 years in places like Ecuador, Zambia, Angola, Sudan, East Timor and the like. Murder, authoritarianism, theft, lies, and squalid urban poverty accompany each new “discovery.” Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz calls this the “Resource Curse.” John Perkins, in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man calls it unofficial U.S. Policy. There was a recent news story about Indian farmers unceremoniously removed from their lands to make way for a new 900 acre Tata plant. This is our real economic engine.

While op-eds to the NYT place the blame for poverty on proponents of biofuels and opponents to Genetically Modified (GM) foods, and praises the efforts of our good friends at the World Bank, the reality is that our wealth has been, and is being stolen from distant parts of the world. We have been exporting poverty to the Third World for decades. While death squads are palatable or at least ignorable in some of these places, somehow the idea of mercenaries in Delaware and Broome Counties seems ridiculous. Nevertheless, residents report that Haliburton and Blackwater have arrived, along with military helicopters performing alarming seismic testing. Exporting poverty is no longer limited to other countries; we’re bringing it to the Catskills and Southern Tier.

Others have made this point before, but our agriculture is now more of a mining operation than anything else. We frack for natural gas to generate nitrogen fertilizer, applied in massive doses to sterile soil as anhydrous ammonia, most of which washes off into the Mississippi and then the Gulf of Mexico, spawning a “dead zone” (one of 150 worldwide) the size of Massachusetts. Phosphate fertilizer is mined in the Caribbean and in Canada.  Diesel and Gasoline comes from Canada, Venezuela, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia, by way of Port Arthur and Beaumont. The irrigation water is thousands of years old, mined from the once-huge Ogalalla reservoir, which is being rapidly depleted. All that produces starchy corn and soy beans that then act as inputs to other industrial food production processes like livestock, vegetable oils, soft drinks, and yeah, biofuels. It’s hard to find any actual food in our food systems- that is food that comes from rain, soil and sunshine. Rather, it’s all predominantly the end product of “drill, baby, drill.”

Finally, let’s tie this all back to the current global financial crisis, which is immediately a crisis of real estate and foreclosures, a crisis of land. Naturally, it is a crisis of much more. Ultimately, it’s a crisis of dissociation of money power from reality. All the working business models involve slavery, theft, monopoly or addiction.

Okay, that’s pretty negative. In order to end on a positive, a huge Greenerminds Congratulations and Thank You to Maura Harrington, who stared down Royal Dutch Shell last week.

[UPDATE 15:30 EDT] The Guardian Weekly has another success story- native Peruvians protect the Amazon basin.

Several times at NEPC, reference was made to the book A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander. When I got back to town I went straight to the library to get it. Sadly, it was out, but another book, The Timeless Way of Building was in, and I’m glad for this happy little accident [sic].

The Timeless Way of Building (Volume 1 in the series) lays out, methodically, the difference between a built environment that is alive and one that is dead, what makes it possible to create the living one, that is a shared pattern language, how it is possible that normal people like you and I can build these living environments, what a pattern is, how to recognize one, and how to build a shared language of patterns and combine them in specific methods of design. A Pattern Language (Volume 2 in the series) is then, one attempt to build such a language that has general applicability.

Since Permaculture is all about design and a lot about pattern, I am glad to have stumbled onto these books. Which is not to say that they weren’t explicitly recommended in my PDC, or even by Mollison in the DM- they probably were. But they are both critically important books, IMHO, for Permies everywhere.

Here’s Alexander’s definition of a pattern:

Each pattern is a three-part rule, which expresses a relation between a certain context, a problem, and a solution.
The Timeless Way of Building, p. 247

I believe this is what Dave Jacke was referring to when he said a pattern is a way in which conflicting forces get resolved. This is also another way of restating the Permaculture principle: “the problem is the solution.”

Further, Alexander shows how we can discover these patterns.

1. Pick a kind of a place- entrance, window, garden, tree grove, sidewalk, path, hedge, whatever
2. Look around for good and bad examples of this type of place
3. Try to isolate the property the good ones have in common. This will not be a simple property, like a color or size, but will be a relationship
4. Look at the bad examples and define what the problem is with them
5. Expand the problem with any additional information you may have about it, generalize it. What does the space need to accomplish or solve?
6. Identify specifically the ways that the good patterns resolve this problem
7. Give this pattern a specific name which will clearly identify it

This is a very specific and detailed form of “protracted and thoughtful observation,” and is quite similar to the ways both Mollison and Toby Hemenway suggest to identify guilds. Zone and Sector analysis is very good at quickly locating components in an overall site, in a general way. Alexander’s method seems to me much more definitive when you get down to the details of where to place the actual greenhouse, swales, paths, compost bin, chicken coop and so on in relation to each other and to existing components, within or across any zone/sector analysis segment.

I watched Escape from Suburbia the other night. Phil and Tom are featured in the film, and I wanted learn more about what they are doing in NYC. The movie covers a number of efforts across North America to deal with and find solutions to Peak Oil, and secondarily Climate Change and poverty, mainly through local food production. At least local food production was a theme.

What was most moving to me was the segment on LA’s South Central Community farm, a 14 acre community project at ground zero of urban gardening. This farm had private plots for 350 local families who grew food, medicinals and ornamentals. They started a market because people there were growing things not available anywhere else in LA. Horrifyingly, the city took back the land and sold it to a “logistics” company to build a warehouse there, because “people in South Central need jobs.” Despite community action and protest, the site was bulldozed on camera while the urban farmers could only look on in despair.

Carolyn Baker points out in her review what this means. Relocalization is not currently threatening to the powers that be, but will be soon, and we can expect a very nasty backlash. This example is just a taste of that. I’m relating this to the Archdruid’s post a couple of days ago about the misconception that collapse will somehow mystically be okay, and not too violent. I doubt that. The image I have of collapse is not a bunch of spontaneously emerging ecovillages, but something like New Orleans, post-Katrina, times every major metropolitan area in the world. I see pain in our future.

The conclusion I’m coming to, inescapably, is that food, relocalization and gardening are political. The good news is that gardening also seems to be a great way of organizing people in a way that doesn’t overtly seem political. In other words, like me, it’s only after gardening for some years that one comes to understand that gardening is political.

There seem to be two approaches to fighting the Beast. One is to go head to head, like Gandhi, Mandela or MLK. Another is to go underground like the mycelium network and stay off the radar until there is enough strength or pain to stand and fight. The danger is that being underground can become comfortable and the standing up never happens, or it gets co-opted before the groundswell.

This morning I made my first trip to Rochester’s world famous Public Market in over a year. As part of my family’s attempt to get our finances in better shape, we’re looking at our food spending and cutting back wherever possible. I knew the Public Market was open most days during the week and I could stop by before work, but then I’d have veggies baking in the hot car all day. Y. said, “why not just put a cooler with some ice packs in the car and keep them in there?” Within a day I’d found a free cooler sitting by the side of the road and I was set to go.

So here’s what $13.50 got me this morning:

• five heads of garlic
• three large cucumbers
• seven large carrots
• a pint of limes
• a pint of lemons
• a pint of blueberries
• five plums
• a pound of grapes
• four tomatoes

I believe this is about half the price I’d pay at the local supermarket. Plus, these things I bought today usually taste like fruits and vegetables as opposed to tap-water taste and tennis-ball texture of stuff shipped here from Chile or Bakersfield. This gap in cost highlights the huge chunk of food prices being taken by the supply chain, and the quality gap makes another argument for localization. I’d rather be supporting the farmers and getting good food rather than supporting the BigCos and getting garbage.

Even on a Tuesday morning when the place is really quiet, the Public Market offers a lot of variety- tons of peppers, locally grown beans (including favas), potatoes, apples, annuals and perennial plants, not to mention the garage-sale fare. An added benefit is getting to chat with the vendors, or at least say good morning. Usually the most charitable thing I feel like saying at the supermarket is “can you get that f*&#$@ing restocking cart out of my way!” The Public Market and various farmers’ markets are just so much more friendly and pleasant.

The local paper ran a story on all the markets popping up all over town, and some of the more established players were complaining that there wasn’t the demand to support all these, yet I believe the demand will catch up, especially as they start to become more present and convenient.

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.

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.

Here are some more details on swales. As I was working on them, I was struck by the sophistication of even the simplest of permaculture techniques.

Here’s a better diagram of how they work and how mine are constructed:

I had previously marked the paths out using a very simple contour-locating device I built ($5) from 2 x 2, a hinge, a cross piece of scrap wood, some fishing line and a weight. This forms a big “A” shape. Calibrate it by setting it up on a level surface and marking where the fishing wire and weight hangs crossing the cross piece. To use it, pick a starting point and then swing it around til the other leg hits the grass and the weight lines up, showing the legs to be level. Mark the new point with a stone and move on to the next point.
To actually dig the swales, first, I rented a rototiller ($39 for a half day) and loosened up the soil on the swale paths. Then I simply went along and dug with a shovel, flippiing the sod over onto the downslope side. After digging, I went along each swale and forked down and loosened a bit, just to put some depth for water to soak in.

Next I filled the swales with whatever drainage and organic matter I had handy. In this case, I had a bunch of gravel scraped onto my lawn from the next door neighbors winter plowing, so I put that in the base. Then I put in dead leaves which I had in profusion as I don’t rake them in the fall. Finally I put some ground bark mulch. This all went inside the swale.

I then scattered clover seed on both the ridge and the upslope side of the swale. The upslope side, being level, makes a nice path. Since the main path on the site runs downslope, across the swales, the swale paths are secondary cross paths. From these I run some keyhole garden paths upslope into the main garden beds defined by the swales and main path.

Finally, both the ridge and upslope side get a layer of straw mulch to keep them moist and deter weed and grass growth, while allowing the clover to sprout.

The fact that all of this works as an integrated whole where each part plays multiple roles was kind of impressive in a quiet sort of way. The clover helps seed the ridge, and will grow a good root system to keep it locked in place. It also adds nitrogen to the soil. The gravel and leaves were readily available and relatively easy to move. I would have had to scrape up the gravel anyway, so no big deal just putting it in the base of the swale. I mentioned that I use the upslope side for paths. I also noticed that laying the swales in broke up the garden space in a very interesting and useful way. The slope is now visible in the landscape, and it’s really obvious where the moisture is and isn’t in the ground, and where it flows. Little pockets and odd accute angles suggest places for anchor plants and shrubs. The garden starts to design itself.

Greenerminds is now officially a community project, thanks to Outback Brad who joined and posted for the first time this weekend. I’m looking forward to the details of his project, and what he’s going to share here.

For my part, I promised pictures, so here they are. These are a few weeks old- I dug the swales in mid-April, and did the sheet mulching the next weekend.

Here’s an overview shot of the main garden area, delimited by the swale in the foreground and the straw bales along the back. This area is about 40′ by 60′.

Now here’s a detail of one of the swales. I’ve overlaid a rough section drawing showing the water flow downslope and soaking into the lower side of the swale.

Here’s an overview shot of starting to do the sheet mulching. With the materials all collected this process goes very quickly.

I did an area about 20′ x 30′ (25% of the garden) in an afternoon. For the whole garden area I now figure I’d need 5 cubic yards of manure, 1 cubic yard of compost, and 36 straw bales. The sheet mulch will break down over a winter into excellent garden soil, thanks to worms and microorganisms that do all the hard work. However, you can plant directly into them by creating little pockets of topsoil in the straw. I’ll show this in a later post.

Here’s the detail on how the layers go.

Historically, I haven’t been very good at aesthetic design of gardens, and I have to say that putting in the swales and the pathways really helped to frame the areas. I have a main path running through the middle of the garden that will eventually include a patio area, then smaller paths extending off this along the upper sides of the swales. Keyhole garden paths then extend of these secondary branches.

This design framing was an added benefit I hadn’t anticipated. It also helps with plant placement, especially for larger anchor shrubs and trees by limiting the number of appropriate sites.

Here’s a quick status update on what’s going on in the garden. Well, maybe not so quick. There’s a lot going on this time of year! I’ll get some pictures up later this week. Mind you, I’m doing this all in my spare time while working full time, taking the Permaculture Design Course (PDC) one weekend a month, raising a family and so on. It can be done.

I got the swales dug, the paths laid out in straw, and about 30-40% of the garden plot (about 40′ x 60′) sheet mulched over the last month. I planted the paths and swales in white clover, but haven’t seen any evidence that the seed is sprouting.

I redeemed my “Christmas Cash” at the local nursery for a quince, a clethra and a variegated dogwood. The dogwood goes between the apple trees as a calcium recycler and “sweetener” to the fruit. Then I popped over to another fabulous nursery specializing in Japanese garden stock and materials for some clumping bamboo (fargesia rufa).

I also picked up a flowering dogwood down in Deposit this past weekend, but it was with a group that was devastated by the fungus now affecting many dogwoods in the northeast. So I’m a little nervous having it in the garden, but I’m going to try and keep it at least spatially isolated from the other dogwoods. I’ll also plant it with some lupines and poppies, which I believe have anti-fungal properties.

When down there I also obtained some free blueberries from one of my co-students in the PDC. My 9-year old and I planted these Tuesday night. I’ve been very into scrounging plant material, which is outrageously easy. I want a forsythia hedge (a “fedge”) along the back of the garden to keep the deer out, or at least discourage them. On my drive into work I saw that someone had cut back their forsythia, so I stopped and gathered up the free plant material. Later that night I cut the branches in small sections and stuck them directly into the ridge of the lowest swale. Hopefully this will be enough to get them to root.

Saturday night at the PDC we foraged for garlic mustard, dandelions and chives for a salad. We also boiled up some Japanese Knotweed (invasive relative of rhubarb and asparagus) to put in the desert. I wanted to go after the garlic mustard growing on my own lot this week, but sadly the guy who mows what’s left of the lawn cut them down. At least it looks better.

Another night I went exploring the old railroad tracks south of town and found a bunch of old apples, cherries and plums back there. Having brought along my clippers, I made a few cuttings, stuffed them in my pockets and headed home. I cut them at a bud or branch, on a diagonal, dipped them in rotenone to stimulate rooting, and put them in pots with about half garden soil and half potting soil.

Perennials and re-seeding annuals are coming up and out all over the garden: baptisia, yarrow, comfrey, lupine, bleeding heart, hosta, peony, hydrangea, rue, jacob’s ladder, bee balm, lungwort and pyrethrum. A number of these I dug up and made root separations, a great way to propagate many perennials.

This morning I started another biggish group of seeds for summer planting- tomato, tomatillo, fennel, stevia, purple bell pepper, ancho poblano, cayenne, jalapeno, perennial and annual sunflowers. I’ve been transplanting lettuces, tai sai, brassicas, cilantro, parsley, spinach and sorrel into the raised beds.

Theoretically, you can put pockets of soil directly on top of a sheet mulched bed and plant into these. I haven’t tried this yet, so this is my next test, as I am running out of established bed space.

Structurally, I moved the compost bin much closer to the back door, and started a compost bucket under the sink. I got some Aspen wood shavings from a pet store and I’m dropping a sprinkling of these into the bucket. The carbon is supposed to balance out the nitrogen and kill the ammonia smell that sometimes comes from kitchen scraps left too long. So far, no smell and no fruit flies.

Tuesday night I knocked the concrete off the iron pipes I dug up last summer. These were set as clothes line poles, sometime in the golden age of heavy industry. They were set about 3 feet deep with about 150 lbs. of concrete on each. These were not fun to dig out! Anyway, they’ve been lying there next to the garage with these big chunks of concrete on the end, until this week. The pipe is probably useful for something so I’m not getting rid of that yet. The concrete I’ll use as the base for a small berm which I’ll plant with shrubs like witch hazel and honeysuckle as a screen near the sidewalk and spruce tree.

I discovered a couple of cool videos on the Guardian UK about Guerilla Gardeners (here, and here). Then I found another on YouTube that really introduces the concept with some humor. I think this guy deserves a Nobel Peace Prize.