this day

my grandpa died of cancer this morning
a good friend hung herself to death one year ago
my life partner's little sister is getting married this afternoon

I caught a smallmouth bass yesterday
I had to hit it on the head with a hammer many times until it took its last breath and let its fins go limp
today I sauteed it in some butter for breakfast and it was very good
there was another fish that I caught but I killed it while trying to retrieve the hook from its mouth
I left it for the birds

I have to go to the dentist
I have to get ready for tomorrow
I haven't gone to work today

the cycle of life and death goes on and on

Flowers

shamanic happenstance

We had wonderful weather yesterday. The heat drove us to the river and we were treated to breakfast by family. I fished but didn't catch anything, because it was too hot of course. Then, with sweat dripping from our brows, we drove for home into stormy weather that dropped much needed rains on our parched soils. We decided to check out the movie Sicko which saddened us and gave us energetic anger. It was an interesting weekend. We also saw amazing fireworks.

Garden Trelliseseses

New photos from the garden. We made trellises out of sticks and twine.

Preachy

That last post was bitchy and preachy.

Anyway, I feel like I have one hundred things to do. I have creative plans, practical plans, project ideas, vacation inspirations, and of course life choices. Life is full. My work is good, and it tires me out most days. I'm learning and enjoying my life as an independent contractor. Maybe not so much when tax time rolls around. Hopefully my rental rebate will cover my taxes. I'm sure you really care.

Well, my next post should have some pics of the garden. Hopefully the weeds haven't taken over.

We're planning on fishing later today, so maybe I'll have some whoppers to tell later.

My Sustainable Life Criteria

1. Compost Everything. (Including cheese and meat scraps and paper towels and old underwear. All those recommendations you find about what to compost are full of shit.)

2. Reuse Everything. (Forget the bourgeois idea of middle class wealth. We're all poor, unless you're in the top ten percent that owns the world.)

3. Use your bike, carpool, use public transportation. (If you drive around in an SUV you can go to hell. I'm not interested in your reasoning; you suck. Even you know that. So knock it off. Also, thanks for destroying my world.)

4. Meat is something to eat once or twice a week at the most, once or twice a month at better, none at best.

5. TV kills your brain. (Stop watching it. Make something.)

6. Cook your own food. (With friends preferably. Use only local organic ingredients. Make with love and compassion. This is our main focus as humans.)

5. Grow your own food. (Anything. A couple of potato plants in a 5 gallon bucket is good. Some chives. You've just changed the world. You are part of the revolution.)

6. Do nothing. (Save the planet and meditate. Read, sleep, sing.)

resurrection

Also, many of our tomato plants died in a long frost at the beginning of the spring. But they really didn't, they somehow survived. Now they are teeny but pressing on. No pictures here, just some squash. Also, a picture of borage which is taking off.

garden goings on

The gardens are going on without us. Life is happening while we are busy making other plans. We haven't added any nutrients to the soil as of yet, but we plan to add a thin layer of compost when we have the chance.

last job

Here are a couple photos of Local Roots last job. We finished up yesterday and I think it turned out pretty good. Sadly I don't have any before pictures.

100th post

Today is Friday June 8, 2007.

At Local Roots we have finished up a number of projects. I will post pictures of them when I can find the time to download and upload and all that. The transformations are amazing. My back is killing me though.

I have to figure out what to do this weekend. I want to camp and fish, but I also want to build a wind turbine. Go figure. I'll keep you updated.

what is the point?

I operate with three basic assumptions.

1. A single omnipotent being that presides over the universe is extremely unlikely.

2. An infinite number of sentient beings are constantly creating the universe, from the smallest molecule to the largest galaxy, consciously or unconsciously, via evolution, procreation, innovation, homeostasis, etc...

3. I exist within this mind boggling complexity as an aware being, and I have the ability to act humanely with prescience and wisdom.

These basic assumptions guide me throughout my daily life. You could say they are the seeds of my own personal religion. Since society relishes labels, I tend to tell people that I am a Buddhist, but my Buddhism is primarily a practice, and my spirituality is constantly evolving and changing as I grow older and wiser and learn to love and cherish what I have and what is out there in this beautiful world.

Many people would say that I am a nihilist or atheist, but I find these labels irritating and inaccurate. I believe that the world has inherent value, and I believe a higher power exists, but not in the way that monotheistic religions do. I believe that an invisible "god" shapes the universe to it's will; it's called energy. And the study of the movement of energy is called physics.I believe it is good to shed old unproven suppositions when new proven theorems are shown to possess a modicum of truth. Therefore I would advise anyone with a brain and a heart to discard their religion if it has done more harm then good, for you or for humanity.

I have always believed that every person creates there own belief system out of their own experiences and emotions. By this I mean that even if you say you are a Evangelical Christian who is against abortion and for the war, you still have your very personal vision of what heaven and hell are, what god is, what the world means to you. Religion is not objective, it does not exist without being thought into existence. Religion is not Family, Genus, Species, Varietals. Every person has a highly personal religious and spiritual idea, and to me it's somewhat hypocritical that one religion can shun another. It's the same with politics, and more comically with sports. You have a bunch of people from Minneapolis against those from Chicago, partitioning themselves based on various differences that in the long run don't mean diddly squat. In the end we all have our separate homes which mean more to us then any city or country could. But they wouldn't exist outside the framework of these arbitrary boundaries. Ever since we crawled out of the sea, and even in the sea, we have been exceptionally good at creating boundaries, shells, bark, skin, walls. This is our imperative as living biological creatures, in order to survive and flourish. I'm off on a tangent as usual.

So my point is that you have your own personal God, no matter what religion or prophet you say you follow, and in the end you write your own bible out of your own experiences and emotions. This just seems completely obvious to me.

I write this thinking of my Grandpa who is dying of cancer at home alone, with my Grandma wandering around a nursing home and losing her mind. I wonder what their religion has done to console them or even help them along on their life journey. It seems to me to have done nothing good for them. All I can think of is that we have only one life to live, and to waste it in fear of hell and condemnation for improper behavior is absolutely depressing. That is the problem with most religions; the idea that you can store up your treasures in heaven, that the best parts of your life will be after you die. What a fucking joke. More like a papal conspiracy. If you can get all the peasants to think that it is their lot in life to suffer, and that when they die they will be rewarded with infinite riches in heaven, then your job as ruler is ever so easy.

I am convinced that the riches are all around us. The earth is the only source of any real wealth, or any real spirituality. Religions mostly teach you to ignore the physical world. The world is full of suffering but happiness is achievable by anyone. Everyone has been led to think that religions are necessary and good. I propose that they are unnecessary and mostly harmful.

I welcome any commentary. But I'm not interested in any bible verses. I don't give a flying shit about what the bible has to say about itself. It's an interesting and rich book, I give it that.

Permagarden

We started our permaculture garden pretty small and very unpermaculturish. You gotta start somewhere.

We have a 15x48 ft. (720 sq. ft.) area. I tilled up the creeping charlie and grass numerous times, but the grass would just not go away. We pulled out a lot of weeds by hand. Giant crazy roots. Fuck grass.

We worked Sunday through Monday. Monday was really hot and I got really sunburned.

We put in more then a dozen heirloom tomatoes, peppers, basil, thyme, sage, peas, radishes, spinach, lettuce, borage, garlic chives, melons, a number of different cucumbers, some flowers, and some other things I can't remember. I will have a full reporting of everything growing in a month or so. I still have a tray of thyme and yarrow, and a bunch of seedlings that we might transplant when we go back up to plant onions, potatoes, cabbage, and broccoli.

I have a word of advice: Do not chug four beers when you are totally sunburned and sunstroked.

We muclched the whole thing with four bales of straw, $4 each, $16 total expense. We did not enrich the soil with compost or fertilizer. I am hoping the soil is fertile enough. Otherwise this year we are basically building up fertility with green manures. Maybe we'll put a few cubic yards of compost on a little later.

Double Dig Deux

Hey there. This is the next installment of the the tiny 7 by 10 foot (70 sq. ft.) plot in front of our apartment. We did this after visiting the Friends School sale and buying $90 worth of plants. This is about a quarter of our plants. We finished this up on Saturday morning before we went up to the farmstead to plant our 720 sq. ft. plot.

New project

We're working on a new project in the Victoria Crossing neighborhood of St. Paul. It is a long and arduous journey. Here are a few pics.

Mayday

It's May. I'm tired because I moved a lot of bricks this week. Today it started raining.

We were planning on going backpacking somewhere beautiful but the weather foiled our plans. Now we're stuck here in the city, forced to enjoy friends, the Green Expo, the Mayday parade, and other terrible things.

My Grandpa has cancer and burned down a big garage with tractors in it. Life is nuts. I hope he lives twenty more years and doesn't burn anything else down.

Stonewall

This was my first project at Local Roots.

Before:











































After:

Double Dig

I decided to do a little experiment in the front of our duplex. I decided to combine the Biointensive double dug bed and the newspaper sheet mulching of Forest Gardening fame. The area I had to work with was about 10 feet wide and 7 feet deep. I left a small 4 by 7 plot there on the south side with some Solomons Seal, tulips, ferns, and a small oak tree. I'm not sure what we'll plant there but it will probably be a combination of shade tolerant perennials and some edible annuals.

In the first picture I have dug the first row out and put it on a plastic sheet to use for the last row. I then spread a small amount of compost I picked up at the local free compost pile. It was pretty nice stuff, not too much sticks and garbage. I had barely enough to count, but at least it was something. I then dug the next row and filled the first row. With my crappy shovel I loosened the second row up. I noticed some clay compaction.

















You can see my progress. The soil was dry but nice and black. I mixed in the pine needles that lay about from the big white pine north of the house.

It was sweaty work, and took about an hour and a half. When I was done I raked the soil so that it was somewhat even. Then I soaked a whole bunch of newspaper and laid it down on top of the the loose soil, overlapping the edges by six inches or so, 5 to 8 pages thick.

The paper dried quickly, and I noticed it blowing away, so I decided to go get some more free compost, two garbage bags worth, and spread it on top to keep it from blowing away. Now it kind of looks like shit, but what can you do. At some point I want to get about 4 times as much compost to lay down on top, and also a nice layer of mulch to retain moisture and prevent overheating of the soil, but I'm done for the day and I have work tomorrow and a full weekend so maybe I'll get to that next week at some point.

Carbon-based life forms

So here's the scoop on carbon sequestration.

We burn fossil fuels to produce energy, and the byproduct of this process is the rapid release of carbon dioxide into the environment. Carbon dioxide is the principal greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming. Global warming is part of our overall global climate change, which has devastating consequences such as the melting of the polar ice caps and subsequent rising of the oceans, affecting weather patterns around the world. We can offset our own carbon dioxide emissions (driving our car, heating our house, buying our food) by carbon sequestration.

"Carbon sequestration refers to the provision of long-term storage of carbon in the terrestrial biosphere, underground, or the oceans so that the buildup of carbon dioxide...will reduce or slow." (1)

"A carbon dioxide (CO₂) sink is a carbon reservoir that is increasing in size, and is the opposite of a carbon "source". The main natural sinks are (1) the oceans and (2) plants and other organisms that use photosynthesis to remove carbon from the atmosphere by incorporating it into biomass. This concept of CO₂ sinks has become more widely known because the Kyoto Protocol allows the use of carbon dioxide sinks as a form of carbon offset." (2)

Here in Minnesota we can preserve and create carbon sinks by protecting and planting forests and prairies. Native plants are better adapted to our soil profile and climate, as well as having natural pest and disease resistances.

On the individual scale, Scientist Jonathon Foley has been creating a carbon budget alongside his financial budget. He and his family have reduced their carbon dioxide footprint as much as possible, including using energy efficient appliances and moving closer to work, as well as getting rid of a car.

"Every square meter of forest, Foley says, stores 10 to 15 kg of carbon in biomass above ground and 10 to 15 kg in the soil. A prairie stores only three kg above ground, but 30 to 40 below. Midwest soils are deep and fertile because the prairie built up humus there for millennia. Prairie restoration is a popular community activity around Madison, so the Foleys will help do the work and also contribute money to prairie and tree planting groups." (3)

Jonathon's brother David has taken up organic gardening. When David and his family first began, the soil tested at only 1 percent organic matter. Now it's at 7.7 percent, about double your average farm soil. His brother Jonathon runs the numbers for him to see how much carbon he has offset.

"A silt-loam soil, Jonathan says, weighs roughly 85 pounds per cubic foot. Eight inches of it weighs 56 pounds per square foot.

Organic matter is about 58 percent carbon. So soil with 1 percent organic matter contains (hmmm, 1 percent of 58 percent of 56 pounds) 0.3 pounds of carbon per square foot. Soil with 7.7 percent organic matter contains 2.5 pounds of carbon per square foot. David and Judy have increased the amount of carbon in every square foot of their garden by 2.2 pounds.

It's a big garden, 0.4 acres. (Actually it's a communal garden, which David and Judy share with their neighbors.) That's 17,424 square feet. Multiply by 2.2 pounds of carbon per square foot -- let's see here -- that makes over 38,000 pounds of carbon removed from the atmosphere -- 19 tons!

Jon writes to David: "You have sequestered 19 tons of carbon into your garden over the last 10 years. If you think that the soil test is representative of a deeper soil profile (let's say 16 inches instead of 8), then scale that number up. This is impressive! The average American releases 6 to 6.5 tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year. So you have offset about three years of an average American's emissions." (4)

Obviously this is only part of the solution. Fossil fuels are non-renewable, and Peak Oil is just around the corner (or maybe it's in the past). But by reducing the use of fossil fuels and increasing our use of renewable energy sources like wind and solar we can certainly take a giant leap forward.

If the average American can reduce their consumption by 50%, down to 3 tons of carbon per year, they would have to plant the equivalent of about 15 trees a year. At 20 to 30 kilograms of carbon storage in a cubic meter of an average forest vs 33 to 42 kilograms in an average cubic meter of prairie, prairie plantings are 40% to 65% more effective then tree plantings in the storage of carbon in terms of area. Given the chthonic perennial nature of the biomass of a prairie vs. the terrestrial linear expansive nature of a forest, prairie plantings would fit into the urban niche better then forest gardens.

The old paper vs. plastic debacle

"Reusable vs. Disposable Cups

University of Victoria 1994

This classic life-cycle energy analysis was performed by University of Victoria professor of chemistry Martin B. Hocking. Hocking compared three types of reusable drinking cups (ceramic, glass and reusable plastic) to two types of disposable cups (paper and polystyrene foam).

The energy of manufacture of reusable cups is vastly larger than the energy of manufacture of disposable cups (Table 1). In order for a reusable cup to be an improvement over a disposable one on an energy basis, you have to use it multiple times, in order to "cash in" on the energy investment you made in the cup. If a cup lasts only ten uses, then each use gets "charged' for one-tenth of the manufacturing energy. If it lasts for a hundred uses, then each use gets charged for only one-hundredth of the manufacturing energy."

-Link

Spring doth cometh

I predict that spring is here to stay. According to this, here in MPLS we should be frost free by the end of the month. That's odd though because here it shows that May 15 is the cutoff date. So between the end of the month and the middle of May is when we are free to plant our little baby plants without fear that they will die a miserable frozen death.

But in any case I think that Global Climate Change has altered the climate such that spring has sprung for the year.