Get your diet localized!

I feel the local food movement is getting some legs. I just wrote an article for my friend Scott Horton's mag Permaculture Activist, musing over an idea that we could develop a strong food web of local production. Researching my topic I got to see some really great projects that people are up to these days.

Out of my own shared yard I just harvested chard, dandelion greens and chayote blossoms. I also gathered some oca, providing some carbohydrates. Oca is an oxalis that forms edible tubers. The strain I'm growing looks like fat, finger-sized grubs (or as Xena graciously calls them, "carrot-potatoes").

The tubers, or corms, grow right at the surface of the soil. I simply follow the fleshy stalks of the oxalis back to the crown, dig around a little and break off the corms, leaving the plant rooted. It's a nitrogen fixer, and is helping other plants in the beds to grow. Covering the soil with leaves is also important to help remind our cats that the beds are not litter boxes.

I tried to disguise the appearance of the oca by quartering the corms before I stir-fried them with the leaves and flowers. I didn't need to disguise their flavor; they taste like very moist potatoes. The chayote blossoms are supposedly edible as well, but I don't think they added anything to the stir fry. Raw, the flowers are sweet. Cooked, they are gritty.

One aspect of eating locally that I glossed over as I wrote is getting a balanced diet. If I surveyed my friends about food sources for potassium (for example), everyone would respond "Bananas." But bananas don't grow here (Christopher Shein is having some success growing bananas at the other end of Oakland, but not here). So, if I grew Jerusalem artichokes instead, what changes in food preparation are necessary? A banana is a peel and eat food. Jerusalem artichokes are dirty, rooty, and need cooking. To eat a local diet requires changes so we eat what in fact grows in our local bioclime.

I'm confident that sufficient calories, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals can be grown locally, even (and especially!) within a city. I'm less sure about protein. I'm also fairly sure that eating a 100% local, nutritionally balanced diet requires getting used to unfamiliar foods.

Reflections on former housemates

Jess and Aaron organized an appreciation dinner for our new satellite community.

We went to their home, oo'ed and ah'ed over it, noticed how nicely it is coming together, felt the raw energy of joy and potential there, and ate together.

Nini asked for and received permission to lead us in an appreciation exercise. I was very moved to learn how deeply coming to live here with us has affected our friends. They've washedup on our shores after their home burned down, or with relationship problems that felt insurmountable, or with life lessons to learn or with holes in their souls, and they are leaving with far more strength and wholeness than they dared to hope for.

"My daughter is a changed person after living here. She's confident, happy and courageous. She goes up to people when we're at the park and starts talking to them. I know it's from living with you."

These people threw themselves into community in a powerful way: they hosted events and parties, they built things, they supported the other community members as they finished the nearly exceedingly rigorous effort to secure mortgages and they served on committees and initiated co-ops. They gave to us prodigiously. In giving, though, they clearly got much of what they needed. The take-away is that living in community supported each of them in some way that was unexpected, welcome, and transformative.

A Permie Plant

The chayote is blooming!

It's true California is blessed with an amazing climate. But in my ignorance before embracing permaculture, I thought of winter as an off season. Now I'm enjoying finding crops that are winter crops, like tree tomatoes, fava beans and chayote.

We are using the "edge" of our deck to grow this monster vine. The root is down below next to the gate and fence. I protected it from children, pets, and watered it often and deeply. It took a year to get established well, growing from a spindly, sad little vine (like the sorriest cucumber you've ever grown) to its current glory.

This slim vine is very cold to the touch; on a hot day the effect is almost shocking. I would guess the plant has tapped into the water table and literally gallons of cool water are being transported through this stem every day to nourish all those leaves and developing squash.

I've been told that chayote is a perennial. If so, then this is a great example of permaculture design. I spent a fair amount of effort getting the plant established, it's growing in a margin (edge) adding value, and it offers a stacked function of providing food while enhancing the privacy of the deck.

Bare Earth Farming

Driving along Hwy 120 between Manteca and Oakdale these past months, I've been watching the corn and almond crops. Signs are posted clearly showing the corn is a Eureka hybrid, and a quick visit to their website suggests all their hybrid seeds are GMOs. Driving that stretch of road, it's like twenty miles of scraping my fingernails on a chalkboard.

The uniform, emerald green of 12-foot-tall corn, ears held close to stalks, gave way last week to fields stripped bare. The fields are now upon row of clay-colored dirt, with fragments of leaves blowing about. The signs are gone. A fine dust fills the air. Is the corn being processed into tortillas? Ethanol? I don't know.

The road and sky are dustier still as I pass the almond groves. Great columns of dirt fill the sky. I cannot see the machine inside the maelstrom, but it appears that it is designed to scrap the meager bit of grass off the ground, a sort of mechanized goat, leaving bare earth between the almond trees. I know grass steals nutrients from trees with shallow feeder roots... but what nutrients are in this soil? It's scarcely soil at all!

I am so glad to get back to my own garden. We're harvesting tomatoes like crazy, there are plenty of greens to saute, our tubers are tubering, fresh herbs jump out all over the place, squash and beans are over-ripening, the strawberries are giving up their last fruit of the year and there is no bare soil. There is no room for weeds, with everything growing all amongst each other, mutually supporting each other, nitrogen fixers next to nitrogen feeders, and the soil is so rich you almost want to eat it.

I admit there is currently no way a farmer could plant the way we have and create a harvestable crop; our garden is designed for frequent harvesting, allowing the plants to act as our larder, giving up their bounty in a near constant trickle. But I look at the soil going into the sky, and I look at the complete removal of biomatter from the field, and I look at the dead earth between the almond trees, and I wonder if even a little bit of intercropping would be beneficial?

How nutritious can those almonds possibly be? An almond tree in its natural environment is part of an entire guild of plants. Although I shudder to adopt a reductionist tactic, aren't there two or three plants that could be grown along with the almonds, sheltering the earth, supporting the health of the trees, and even offering additional income streams to the farmer?

A House in Transition

In typical Bob fashion, I am casting a possible negative as a positive.

My housemates are moving out. What I imagine happened is that a former housemate "poached" my current housemates. She's avoiding me, so I haven't asked her.

What is in fact happening is that Karl, Nini, Liz, and Renee have found a home to share together on the other side of town. Karl tells me it's a big gorgeous house, not requiring the amount of work this house requires, but having a large south facing backyard ready for planting.

It sounds great.

The new landlord called me while checking referrals. The thought did cross my mind to tell her that these were terrible renters; perhaps then she'd turn them down and I could keep them! But I didn't do that. I told her the truth, that they are great people and great tenants.

Years ago, before I even started this blog, one of my goals was to forge a community that spawned other communities. Here it is! A houseful of people who have lived together under this roof, now going off to be their own collective, propagating the dream, and bringing it to a new neighborhood! Yay! Amazing! As I described this vision to people years ago, they all looked at me askance... yet now this is exactly what is happening.

I really enjoyed getting to know these folks. I'm daunted at the prospect of finding new good folks. The word is already out a little, and people who are looking for bargain basement living costs have already begun emailing, "I have $300 a month I can spend, do you have room for me and my kids?"

I really wish you well, people who need to find out how to get by on even less than I have. I don't know how you'll do it. However, I'll be looking specifically for housemates who are on the Abundance train. I've got to take care of my own basics before I can be of any help to others. I've got to keep building my connections within community so I have the support to do the bigger works as they are asked of me.

Tired

After a couple of months away from the blog, I find my skills rusted. Where will I find that delicious pithiness, that juxtaposition of hope with reality, or merely a well-turned phrase, sparking an "aha!" for my visitors?

The thing of it is, I am tired.

There's a concept known as "cosmic timing." It's being the right person in the right place at the right time with the right skills, and you get swept along into the great rushing river of Success.

I see people expending less effort than I expend and they achieve better stability, better financial success, better familial harmony... sure, most of them are blind to the effects of a consumptive lifestyle on the opportunity for others, but is that what it takes? Is that what Abundance demands of her disciples?

Where is my ease?

Where do I yet sabotage myself?

Balancing the cat equation.

Natalie Angiers of the NYTimes wonders about free-range felines.

Willow House typically has a dog and a mix of cats. The cats are hard on the local ecosystem; they poop in our garden beds and they hunt small game. Fledglings are the most vulnerable, and our yard has certainly seen a few nests but not too many fully reared birds.

We've had buntings, woodpeckers and sparrows attempt to raise families here. Mockingbirds are apparently smart enough to try elsewhere. I see very few lizards or snakes around; I suspect two of our cats keep the population low.

The studies that Ms Angiers points to could be reductionist folderol. But there is a mention that coyote predation on cats in habitat fragments does increase bird diversity.

As an individual element, the cat, the most abundant predator in North America, is out of balance. Here at Willow House, we appreciate our cats' mousing skills when they are inside. The goal is to modify cats' impact in the yard, where their poop is unwelcome in the garden beds of potatoes or carrots (pause and think on that for a moment) as is their predation on small beneficial vertibrates.

The problem isn't necessarily an excess of cat; it could be a lack of dog.

We let the dog run about in part of the yard. It has little to no interest in birds. It is very interested in cats; some felines it appears to want to play with, and others it appears it will tear them apart. The dog keeps rats away. The dog also scares off raccoons from nesting in the attic. I've watched our cats stand aside and let a raccoon wander through the yard, sampling produce, staring longingly at the chickens. The dog tolerates none of that.

We're doing a style of gardening that seriously limits the amount of fresh-turned earth that is so attractive to cats. To keep the poop out of the garden beds, we have a sandy litterbox. The cats clearly consider it a last resort.

Overall, biodiversity is high in this yard. Squirrels, jays, ravens, voles, mice, newts, lizards, woodpeckers, buntings, robins, possums, raccoons and humminbirds all make homes or wander through. Considering we're surrounded by asphalt and concrete it's sort of amazing.

Working a balancing act with the cats is part of the discovery.

Long Delayed

When we moved in three years ago, Mariposa Grove members danced with joy: "Take down your fence! Become part of our community!"

"Great!" we said. "What does being a member of the community mean?"

"We don't know, but it's part of our mission, to be a community center. We'll figure it out later!"

Cut to today. It's SO much later. I haven't blogged in three months as I drive all over the state getting trained on my new job, and it's been a about a year since the "Bridge Committee" got tasked with figuring out the thorny issues facing opening the existing HOA into a larger collective.

Today we retreated.

I was on the Bridge Committee, but I shirked my responsibilities. What I notice now, is that I was unable to successfully represent myself in committee. The mission felt to be: "Let's find a way to charge for the common house." I identified some assumptions and called philosophies of power/ownership/equity into question, but I allowed myself to get steamrollered to an extent.

Today, the remaining committee members presented the work we'd done. We still don't have a methodology for distributing costs. But other voices in the community listened to the proposals, acknowledged the immense effort that went in to getting us even this far, and frequently noticed assumptions and questioned those.

One of our community works in a co-op as well as living here in our cooperative. "At Rainbow Grocery, it's clear: we are either members or on the membership track. That's not an option here."

Another noted: "Renters will not have the same opportunity of ownership, so will we ask them to be paying the same amount as an owner?"

A direction appeared to coalesce from the work of today, so that's huge and good. We also did a very good job being with each other. There was only one segment that got ugly as some talked over and above others. A few minutes later we acknowledged that wasn't how we wanted to behave, and we were respectful and engaged the rest of the time.

Sure there were some near meltdowns and soem tension, but we are handling a really difficult task: how to convert a a closed system into an extensible one. We are dealing with money, with property, with liability, with privacy and with beliefs around generosity and community.

It's cutting edge stuff; other cohousing communities are closed, or new developments. Ours is one of the few retrofits, and perhaps the only one that combines affordable housing with market rate housing.

I give us a big "A+" for today.

Now I'm going out dancing.

Sponges

Sponges and paper towels together offer a disposable option in place of rags. But, at Willow house, we do not really dispose of them.
This is Dad's illustrated life cycle of a sponge: You buy it, you use it for dishes, you cut off one corner and use it for counters, you cut off another corner and move it to the bathroom to scrub the floor.

These are our sponges. The green ones are really, really clinging to phase one of the cycle. If that is the piece of steel wool I think it is, we have been using it for more than a year.
I replaced one of the dish sponges, and I just threw away the soft, saggy sponge it was replacing, because the counter and floor sponges were in better shape than it.

Resisting Obsolescence

Note: This is a Caitlan Post. I know it is confusing because I am a contributor to this blog but rarely post

This is going to be a post about my cell phone and obsolescence. (obsolescence is simply things becoming obsolete, that is, useless or unwanted, because they break down over time or are replaced by more desirable products. I suppose it is inevitable for a lot of things, but also it is deliberate (planned obsolescence) on the part of marketers and producers, which is manipulative to consumers, and bad for the environment.

In a way obsolescence is just part of progress, and entropy, but it is taken to a massive extreme for the middle class in the US. I am very taken by the little rhyme "use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without" but also, incidentally, I am not content owning old boring things. I think this is a clash of my desire to be in charge of my own purchasing decisions and the desire to have new awesome things instilled in me by, idk, society.

So, obsolescence in the case of my cell phone (I have the kind on the right in the image at the top):
The motorola RAZR phone debuted in 2004, 5 years ago. The hot pink version came out in 2006. By 2007, the nicest phone everyone wanted was an iPhone, but at my high school everyone still wanted a pink razr because not that many phones are pink. My friend Dr. Danielle gave me her Dad's pink razr, and I was very excited. Then in 2 years it got a little scuffed, and also everyone has got an iphone and razrs are old now. But I think they are the best cell phone for calls because of the shape when opened (they are a bit slow for texting compared to the ones with keypads).

So basically, it is still a good phone but it is obsolete because
1. function: people like to text more than they call people (I am always vaguely surprised to hear my ringtone, in fact)
2. form/style:
A. It looks very distinctively like the phone people wanted in 2004, and is thus "old" (ok, I would not wear jeans from 'o5...)
B. Also, the color of pink is out of style now- (yes, really. pink phones released recently are either a silvery metallic pale pink, a pale pearly pink, or have tones of coral or something. My phone is bright pink.)

So. I could just carry on liking my phone. But, I didn't.



Nice, right? I think it is hard to throw away (or even want to) a little cyclops even if you have had it for 2 years, can't send photos, and the iphone can navigate with a gps.* So, yeah, this is an example I guess of revamping something/recommitting to it by investing a bit of effort.

*I *love* driving new places when my passenger has an iphone. GPS is so cool. Instead I am making a set of direction cards (like the boxes of recipe cards)to keep in my car. Because a GPS is I think $200, and google maps is free. I am using obsolete card catalog cards and I am going to make them a little box decorated with a map that I use for collages. They are pierced on one side and I am wondering if I could make a tiny stick semi permanently fixed to the dash so I can post them. If my steering wheel were magnetic this would be more straightforward.

Karl Keeps Me in Line

"Blog liar!"

Surprised, I turn away from making salad for a birthday dinner. "Uh?"

"Blog liar!" Karl repeats.

"What the heck are you talking about?" I ask (choruses of Blog liar! B'liar! erupted from the peanut gallery at this point).

"You made it sound like there was a pile of e-waste laying around. You didn't even mention that I took it to the free e-waste day at the school.

"In fact, they were really glad to see me! I think they'd had a much lighter turnout than they'd hoped for. So when I pulled up and asked for a cart, they all said, 'You need a cart!' I filled all three racks on that cart."

Xena jumps in: "He plays pretty loosely with time on his blog. Of course, he's not that anchored in time to begin with, so it's not like he's doing it on purpose."

Karl said, "Well, right, but you've got a responsibility to your readers. I get it that you wanted to make it personal, but you've got to be accurate."

So the facts are that some of our pile of e-waste was nearly three years old, and some of it was less than a year. We were hiding it under camouflage netting behind and between the rain storage barrels. Karl, God bless him, heard my pain about never finding a free e-waste event until it was over and kept his attention on finding one prior to its ending, and he and I loaded up his van and...

he made that pile go away.

Because sometimes there is "away."

Tired of piles of e-waste

Saving the world on a budget is tough. When a CFL burns out, or the cell phone craps out because you dropped just one time too many, what do you do?

We used to store them until we had enough to make it worthwhile to take them "somewhere." IKEA recycles batteries and CFLs. We have a box labeled "Take to IKEA" with batteries and CFLs in it.

"Let's go to IKEA," Xena will say.

"Yes, let's!" I'll say. "We'll endure the parking lot, the shuffling throngs, the maze of furniture and greenwashing and spend more money!" Invariably, as we get out of the car, one of us will turn to the other, "Didn't you bring the box?"

Clearly, storing batteries and CFLs in a box to take to IKEA is not a solution that works for us.

Another option that doesn't work well for us is to store these things and wait for a free e-waste fair. I always see the notice "Free e-waste recycling at Emeryville High School" on the day after the event. So the e-waste simply piles higher and higher at my home. Soon I will be forced to pay for its removal, and that's not sustainable behavior for my wallet!

But now, from the people who brought us the Pony Express, the USPS is piloting a program to help recycle small items such as inkjet cartridges and cell phones. This is super convenient for us! We just pop our dead lump of plastic and silicon into the little recycling envelope and leave it in our own mailbox.

Convenient, at-home e-waste recycling is a solution that works very well for us.

Recycling at the US Post Office

Growing produce and protein in an urban setting

Many people are aware these days of how far their food travels, becoming less fresh and using up petroleum to get to their table. The Suncurve is a demonstration project growing produce and protein in a very small footprint. It could be integrated into the side of a multi-tenant residence in an urban center, providing fresh greens and berries and even legumes year-round in many parts of the United States.

Renewable solar and wind energy powers a pump to circulate water through the 1" thick biomat, bringing fishwastes to the roots of the plants. Some organic matter falls from the vertical bed into the fish pond, feeding the fish. A more robust system could even be imagined, processing human wastes back into food.

The engineer in me thrills at this system of massive intervention and resource allocation. The permaculturist in me recoils at the embodied energy this system represents. The urban permaculturist in me rejoices at how many "green" jobs this sort of infrastructure could create while leveraging our current relative abundance of resources into a system that ensures a steady supply of extremely local food for years and years.

Short Attention Span Day

I started a group on Facebook, "Short Attention Span" day.

Xena and I planned to paint the ceiling in our bedroom. It's an oppressive smoggy pink, a sort of intestinal mucosal membrane color. Short Attention Span to the rescue! Instead, two leather love seats, a handful of ottomans and a few sacks of craft supplies came home. Instead, we drove out to Napa and bought a 22' travel trailer. Instead, I did laundry and vacuumed. Instead, Karl and I caught bees (I got a small sting). Instead, we scheduled to go look at a vegie oil Mercedes. Instead, I babysat our chiropractor's lovely daughter. Instead, we partied with an impromptu bar-b-que. Instead, I foraged urban lemons. Instead, we began moving stuff into the attic.

So what's the progress on painting? We bought paint (yes, it's the enviro-friendly zero VOC kind!), we did some room prep, and Xena scrubbed part of a window's trim with TSP.