An outpost of hope

These past weeks I've been totally absorbed in research, site analysis, and site preparation of my back yard as I decide how to create several forest gardens there.

As part of this process, I've taken out trees in the "front 40" on the east side of the house to clear a sunny space for fruit trees, berry bushes, and hazelnuts; I've identified areas for potential development and marked out the flooded low areas from this year's snow melt to guide planting decisions; I've made spreadsheets of what trees and bushes I want to plant where, with soil, water, and light requirements; I've taken a stab at writing down what I want the end result of all this effort to be; and I've eaten and slept with volumes 1 & 2 of The Edible Forest Garden by Dave Jacke as I try to get my head around all the possibilities. At times I felt as if my head would explode.

My biggest challenge has been how to transform the back yard into a forest garden without losing its park-like, unmanaged feel. The thought of turning this semi-wild place into a formal cultivated garden for purely human purposes makes me cringe like nails on a chalk board. I fell in love with this location because of the creek and woods and native (and yes, invasive) plants all make me feel like I'm camping even though I'm looking out my back window. On some level I fear that anything I do might detract from this wonderful environment and sully it so it loses some of its un-interferred with natural appeal.

And yet that's what I must do, at least to part of this place, if I am to grow food here. Success for me would be to somehow integrate human intervention into this natural setting so that the forest garden that rises up slow-motion from the earth will eventually look just as natural and inevitable as what's growing here now. I make my interference with humility and apologetic awe. I don't really know what I'm doing, but what I create whether well or badly will be here for many, many years to come. Because I have been here with my consuming vision of what could be, the world the will be different.

Yet perhaps not so different. Nature will continue to take its course, and whatever I do may not have much of an impact in the long run as natural forces sort through which of my efforts to keep or discard. My hope is that whatever happens, this land might become an outpost of hope as the new edible plant seeds and cuttings make their way around the neighborhood, hand to hand, a living bastion against food insecurity in a world that's quickly falling apart.

Pretty big intentions when I haven't planted anything yet! But I can dream, and it's dreams that make the world.

A political rant

This morning I got another email from a Democratic group outraged at what Republicans are doing. I unsubscribed, saying:

Democrats no longer stand for anything different than Republicans--results in Congress show that both bow to big corporations. All the shouting and bluster between the parties is, in the end, a smoke screen to hide the fact that democracy no longer exists in America (if it ever did). Participating in such a corrupt process is a waste of precious energy best spent in taking local actions to address how to survive when the nation takes its final plunge toward economic collapse.

I used to be active in the Democratic party, attending caucuses and pushing for changes to make the leadership in this country more responsive to the needs and priorities of living, breathing human beings and the planet we live on instead of big corporations and the military. I believed I could make a difference.

That began to change in 2000 when the country was held hostage to a radical agenda and blatently sold lock, stock, and barrel to the wealthy and to powerful corporate interests. These interests controlled the halls of power and wrote the code for voting machines to ensure that no one could get in office who wasn't pre-approved by the ruling "elite."

The outrages piled up as the country I grew up in changed in unrecognizeable, horrific ways. It embraced torture, effectively eliminated the Constitutional right to a fair trial, began illegal and immoral wars for oil, crushed the middle class by rewarding corporate thieves, got hyped up on fear, and mocked actions that might have saved our children from the worst of climate change. The nation became ugly, coarse, and arrogant, making civil discourse and true progress toward common goals impossible. Just as the powerful intended, we became demoralized and unable to band together to confront social, economic, and political issues. Numb, we embraced passivity.

The political corruption continues with President Obama. Elected by a country desperate to change direction and roll back previous outrages, in nearly every instance he continues the policies of his predecessor. My conclusion is that change is not coming from the political sector--it has to come from each of us working where we are, on the local level. To continue to participate in a rigged system to create change is a waste of vital life force.

Fortunately there is a solution coming, though it will be wrenching and painful for all of us. From the information I've seen, the economy will take its next plunge toward total collapse within the next year and the corrupt political and economic structures are going to implode along with it. We'll be able to start anew, from the ground up. If there is any hope in this situation, this is it.

Birthing

For a change of pace, here's a poem I wrote for my niece and her husband as a gift as they were expecting their first baby.

Birthing

What is hidden shall become manifest--
     but not yet.
You are in that pregnant pause before pain
     and the utter, naked vulnerability of birth,
When the body will riot
     and conjoined souls divide
          to create a new strand in the web of life.
It takes courage--
     no one, after all, gives birth with their pants on,
          or is unchanged by the outcome.

So peace to you, Laurel
     as you change the history
          of the world around you,
And peace to Nate as well.
The new is ending the old
     and birthing a new way of being,
          of loving,
               of living.
It won't be long and it will begin--
     but patience.
Today will lead you to tomorrow soon enough.
For now, breathe deep and long,
     calm all fears,
          release control.
It's all part of the journey.

Unfettered from hope

When I look at the changes in me since I gave up hope, I'm surprised I didn't do it sooner.

Popular culture is constantly harping on the importance of having hope. While having hope in the future is a healthy thing to develop when confronted with a failed relationship, it can be absolutely debilitating when the problem facing you is bigger than your mind can comprehend and has horrifying consequences that will affect humanity from this point forward. That's where we sit now for any number of reasons, all of which are well underway and converging in a perfect storm that leaves even civilization's future in doubt. (I don't feel it's necessary to justify this belief--the information is out there and plentiful.)

In the context of something so threatening, so massive, "hope" is not only ineffectual, it's simply delusional. Hope is a very understandable coping mechanism that in our current circumstances easily turns into depression and numbness, because on a deep subconscious level we know that hope is a stall tactic--it gives us some psychological cushion, but it won't change anything. It puts us out of synch with our genuine inner knowing, which is a deeply wrenching experience over time as hope and reality drift further apart.

In my own case, as long as I hoped that I would get a writing contract with one of my standard corporate clients or even full-time employment, I was paralyzed. How could I do anything constructive in facing the larger realities dead ahead if I had to avoid spending money on preparation until I got an income? And how could I whole-heartedly throw myself into critical survival tasks when at any moment I might be yanked back into the 8:00 to 5:00 thing, thus losing any traction I might have to move forward toward a more livable future? These quandaries were a direct result of "living in hope." Whose hope?

Hope is based on the popular opinion that things can, should, and will go back to "normal," yet normal is dying before our eyes. Giving up that illusion was the best thing I ever did for myself. Today I'm focused, energetic, involved, and evolving. I'm  wonderfully free in a way I've never been before, a participant not a spectator. I may never benefit in the long run from anything I'm doing, but I am free--and the actions I take to build a forest garden is my legacy, a gift of love to someone I will never know.

A few green shoots

It's amazing how healing nature is. Yesterday an e-mail popped into my box with a video showing how to use a new gardening tool that could help immensely with growing from seed, and immediately my thoughts jumped to last spring.

I had put in a raw, never-been-used raised garden in the front yard the previous fall and as a garden newbie, I was eager to do everything right when it came to planting. I ordered heirloom seeds, studied how to grow them, made planting pots from newspaper, spent hours and hours designing the garden layout in a graphics program, and learned all about four season gardening and root cellaring (I was very hopeful). Reality intervened later in the form of spindly seedlings and aphids, but as plants really did grow from those insignificant seeds I was thrilled every time and when I actually harvested--what a wonderful thing! I harvested!--I knew I was witnessing a miracle.

When I ordered that new garden tool yesterday I was inspired to transfer all my planting information from last year's calendar onto this year's, and suddenly the winter mentality I'd been living in ended and a healing took place--just from the thought of participating in that intimate, fundamental, life-affirming dance again.

And life-affirming it is. By committing myself to planting my own food, I am committing myself to live another year in spite of all the problems and difficulties I and this nation are facing, problems that could disable me with their terrifying, horrendous magnitude. Planting places me on the side of life as our nation and culture continue their wild downward slide and, on the other side when our usual way of life is gone, begin the slow upward swing of renewal.

Even planning to plan for that day of renewal is healing. Gathered seeds await.

Taking care of the first responder

I do a lot.

I do everything from making yogurt and cheese to felling, cutting, and splitting my own wood, literally keeping the home fires burning. I'm also furiously researching and writing articles for the web on forest gardening in the hopes that--one fine day--I might be able to pay a few bills or even (gasp!) the mortgage.

All this work is stressful. I am stressed that I don't have the time in my schedule to design and buy trees for the forest gardens I've been writing about, stressed that I haven't planned what to do with the vegetable garden out front, stressed that the vast majority of household maintenance and upkeep chores fall on my shoulders, stressed that my partner and I are trying to live on an income that pays only one-third of our bills, and, lying darkly underneath and as pernicious as a creeping cancer, I'm stressed that the world as all of us have known it is in the process of crashing down around our ears and I may not have time enough to prepare even though I see it coming.

I've been throwing myself at these issues whole-hog, every day, relentlessly. I often feel a caffeine-like buzz inside my body as my mind hops from "I have to" to "what about" to "how do I," a symptom of continually butting up against impossible challenges and obligations. I've been holding up OK so far, but yesterday I realized I can't do it all, no matter how important everything is. I've got to stop taking care of everything else and take care of me or eventually I'll go over the edge.

It occurred to me that in all of this I am a "first responder" when it comes to my life. There's this huge, life-threatening mess engulfing me, and I need to act like an ambulance EMT, who's first priority is to take care of themselves. (It sounds selfish, but a dead or injured EMT is of no use to anyone.) Sure, stocking food will take care of me in the long run, but you know what? I'll never last long enough to use it if I have an increasingly heavy emotional elephant sitting on my chest that may well crush me. It's time to take care of the first responder.

I'm not sure how to do that, except that I'm sure the first step is to back off and let go. Maybe take a half-day holiday now and then and allow myself to feel totally, refreshingly irresponsible in doing so. Have an adventure. Get lost in a snowy woods. Deliberately not learn something new. Visit an understanding mentor or friend. Play with a child, as a child. Draw a picture. Make a valentine.

The elephant can wait.

Why am I doing all this?

When I woke up, I stoked the stove on our lower level with wood from the basswood and boxelder trees in my back yard. I chainsawed and split the logs myself last spring, and yesterday I finished stacking it next to the back door as new snow floated down. After stoking the fire, I flipped the new cheddar cheese I made 10 days ago so it ages properly, and added yogurt I made from a half-gallon of skim milk to my oatmeal. Today I don't need to bake bread (rye, three loaves at a time), but I might do a bit of laundry and dry it on a rack set up next to the wood stove. I've made my own crackers, replaced a zipper in my winter coat, and always shovel the driveway the old-fashioned way with a a shovel and a grunt.

In the spring I'll put in my front vegetable garden from seeds I saved last fall, plant the nut and fruit trees I plan to buy, put up a separate raised herb garden, and fertilize everything with compost from two separate "bins" made of straw. Summer projects will be to build a clay oven from the clay-heavy soil out back, cook more with the solar oven I bought last year, and possibly (if I can ever find the energy) dig a deep pit in back that can be used to store vegetables or age cheese.

Why am I doing all this?

Part of it is economics--it would never have occurred to me to try to make anything from scratch if I had income that supported me comfortably and if (big if) I thought the larger economy would continue floating safely along so I didn't need to change in order to survive. But of course, I don't believe any of us is safe in the times that approach us, and I am big on avoiding bad things if I can. It may be that my efforts at self-preservation will be futile, but you know what? I can live with myself if they are, because I will have done my best. I know on the deepest of levels that I am here to grow my soul, and that that growth is my purpose. I don't grow by being safe and avoiding bad things--I grow by engaging them. And part of that engagement involves not only doing wise and prudent acts of preparation prior to the collapse, but also and perhaps most importantly, developing the personal links that form a genuine community. None of us survives alone, in spite of all the "rugged individualism" rubbish that's part of our national psyche.

For me, developing that supportive community with friends and neighbors is the most challenging part of these times. I'm an introvert by nature and social niceties escape me. Establishing real community is my soul's growing edge--much more difficult than felling trees and making clay ovens.

An act of hope and defiance

I am in the middle of writing an article for Suite 101 on how forest gardens can provide food security over the long haul as a buffer against the food shortages that are likely to occur during an economic collapse caused by __________ (name your poison--peak oil, astronomical U.S. debt, etc.). But food forests are not only about feeding ourselves. If we are successful, they are a long-term committment to the future, a legacy and a gift we can give to nameless others for potentially generations to come. And in the present, while the gardens are being established one seemingly insignificant plant, tree, or bush at a time, the act of planting is both an expression of hope and an act of defiance. Hope because with evidence mounting that humanity is on the edge of a great and wrenching shift, planting a tree is an act of faith that we will indeed survive this somehow. And defiance because with all the news of impending collapse and disaster, we will not be immobilized like deer in the proverbial headlights into a passive acceptance of this civilization's demise. The act  of planting empowers radical thinking.

The potential of forest gardening

This is an excellent video with three segments on forest gardening. The first segment is an interview with Robert Hart, one of the founders of the permaculture movement; the second is an interview with Ken Fern of Plants for a Future, showing how he is transforming a hostile environment with forest gardening; and the third is an interview with Mike and Julia Guerra, a couple who are growing enormous quanities of food in the backyard of a very small English home. My goal is to incorporate the principles of permaculture and the tactics of forest gardening to gradually transform my little bit of forest just as these pioneers have done. It's that process that I will be documenting in this blog.

Forest Gardening- Watch more Videos at Vodpod.

A legacy

The property I live on is unique in that it is like living in the midst of a forested park with a wandering 20-foot wide creek on the southern and eastern sides, yet it's in the middle of a small town. The land on the east is a flood plain that in the back--on the south--rises abruptly to form two small hills bisected by a flat notch. (The "hills" are actually remnants of an old mill that used to operate around these parts in the 1800's.) From the house we can look through the notch to see the creek and the tip of land we also own on the opposite bank.

When we first arrived it was impossible to walk behind the hills because the property was so overgrown with brush and because it had been used as a dumping ground for felled and rotting trees. I cleared a trail and found there was a patch of flat land behind the hills that had been overrun by canary grass, which I mostly got rid of using both black plastic and by laying all the felled and rotting logs down in a single layer over the ground next to the creek. Last year I converted that reclaimed area into a garden in an attempt to grow squash and melons, but it didn't work out quite as planned when powdery mildew took out the whole crop.

Except for that gardening experiment, I have tried to let the land alone so it could become itself again and revert back to a more wild state. I know now that, given how intrusively humans have developed the land over the years, that little that was native was left. The land had been taken over not just by canary grass, but buckthorn, creeping charlie, scrawny honeysuckle, and miscellaneous burred or throny plants. The forest was there--the boxelder, basswood, and cottonwood--but the trees weren't all that desireable.

This winter, though, my mind has been on fire with new and wonderful possibilities of what could be. Why not plant trees that will feed me in my old age and give me a product to barter with when the economy stops teetering and actually slips off the face of the cliff? That question led me to researching nut trees, then cranberry bushes and wild garlic and ginseng and all kinds of food plants that could grow in my forest and feed me eventually and perpetually with minimal work. Permaculture intrigued me, but the idea of the edible forest absolutely inspired and energized me to levels I haven't felt in a long, long time.

What excites me is that the idea of the edible forest is a legacy, my legacy. I can give this gift to the future, to people I don't even know, and they will be better off for it. And in the meantime, for as long as I'm here, I can benefit from it, too.

Spiritual underpinnings

My work in devolving to a more life-affirming and sustainable lifestyle has spiritual underpinnings. Even though my past includes deep religious feelings and convictions, over my lifetime I have been weaned from religious institutions and spiritual groups and followed a more eclectic and individualized path of spiritual discovery. One of my discoveries has been a powerful and ancient esoteric "hymn" or invocation that I use to ground myself on espeically difficult days. Before proceeding with it, let me apologize up front for the male-centric language--the Ancients were wise, but not politically correct.

The sons of men are one, and I am one with them.
I seek to heal, not hurt;
I seek to serve, not exact due service;
I seek to love, not hate.

Let pain bring due reward of light and love;
Let the soul control the outer form and life and all events,
And bring to light the love which underlies the happenings of the time.

Let vision come and insight,
Let the future stand revealed.
Let inner union demonstrate and outer cleavages be healed.
Let love prevail,
Let all men love.

I find these words to be comforting and uplifting reminders of who I am and what I wish for the world.

Welcome to Urban Homespun!

Urban Homespun is a chronicle of my ongoing adaptation to a devolving lifestyle. This adaptation was initiated by circumstance (a common tale--no work) and by fundamental personal convictions and beliefs. I am convinced, first of all, that we are living on a planet in extreme peril, and that a finger can be squarely pointed in the direction of humanity as the perpetrator. I am also convinced that American culture as we've known it and its talisman, the dollar, are going the way of the Dodo bird. I could list all the reasons why, but there are tons of sites laying that out way better than I can.

My earnest belief is that it's time to make the shift to something new of my own choosing while there is still time to gain the knowledge, skills, and tools necessary to live in a non-technological world-- a world where dollars and cars and other such frivolities are worthless and social networks and bartering are crucial to survival. To me that means learning how to:

• Grow vegetables, fruits, and nuts in my yard to create a sustainable, edible forest
• Make food basics from scratch (cheese, crackers, bread, etc.)
• Find off-the-grid fuel (wood, solar) for winter heating and cooking
• Mend and make clothes
• Make my own clay oven
• Exchange help, tools, and information with neighbors
• Encourage my city to become a transition town
• Change local ordinances to allow raising chickens
• Start a gardening club to exchange labor, tools, and expertise
• Locate and use alternative transportation

I have a lot of work to do.  I hope you'll join me.