October 2013: A Month that Highlights the Importance of Resilience

Whew! Still scarred by the ravages of Sandy, we also got to suffer through the spectacle of our beloved country facing the inability to pay basic bills without an increase in its credit limit.

A messenger from Nature!

What can we do to make our own lives more resilient when we live within a culture that fails to design infrastructure that cooperates with natural forces and also fails to manage wealth meaningfully for the long term?

Permaculturist Peter Bane recommends establishing a home based "garden farm". After all, real wealth on Earth basically originates with the capture of energy from the sun by living plants. (No land? Not an insurmountable problem in our city. Check out https://596acres.org/ for some ideas!) To borrow his words, if enough of us become proficient in the skills needed for garden farming, we will progress towards collectively creating "a new commonwealth that can vouchsafe dignity and freedom from want to all of us". http://www.amazon.com/The-Permaculture-Handbook-Farming-Country/dp/0865716668


Eric Toensmeier and Jonathan Bates give a detailed description of their garden farm project in Holyoke MA:
http://www.amazon.com/Paradise-Lot-One-Tenth-Making-Edible/dp/1603583998

How do we get started? Green New Yorkers Meetup regularly posts local opportunities to learn and practice basic wealth creating and wealth preserving skills such as home composting, growing food, caring for trees, preparing herbal remedies, preserving food, harvesting rainwater, repurposing salvage, conserving fossil fuel energy, home design, and much more! http://www.meetup.com/GreenNewYorkers/

Tree Guards: the Good, the Bad, and the Downright Dangerous‏

We need trees as our partners to beautify our streets, temper the Summer heat, and, most importantly, to clean the air we breath. What can we do to protect our precious trees?

A well designed tree guard keeps people, dogs, and objects out of the tree pit but leaves plenty of room on the street side to allow cars to open their doors and passengers to step out. It allows rainwater to flow into the pit to feed the tree. The pickets are staggered so no one will be tempted to place anything on them. The pits can either mulched or planted with small bulbs or shallow rooted annuals and small herbaceous perennials. Here is the plant list from NYC's Parks Dept. http://www.nycgovparks.org/trees/tree-care/planting  Signe and Guiliana from the W 150 St Block Association in Manhattan point out that it is ideal when the neighbors and their children take an active interest in building and caring for the tree guards to protect the trees. Who can refuse when a child asks you not to let your dog poop or pee in the tree pit?  https://www.facebook.com/unify150

Here's an example of a "Good" tree guard:
Note that for the newest tree guards, the NYC Parks Dept would like to omit the streetside rail.

http://www.west150nyc.com/photos.html

An unprotected tree:
Stones block rainwater and compact the soil in this treepit and the lack of any tree guard invites intrusions such as this bicycle.

 

Photo taken on Church Ave in Flatbush

A "Bad" tree guard like this one, however, is at risk of damage from annoyed or unaware drivers and their passengers. In addition, the stones around the perimeter are blocking the flow of rainwater.

Photo from http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=tree+gaurds+photo&qpvt=tree+gaurds+photo&FORM=IGRE

A "Killer" tree pit grill is strangling this unfortunate tree:

Photo taken on Church Ave in Flatbush

Sadly, almost all the tree pits and tree guards we see in our city are in urgent need of improvement. What can we do for the trees near our homes, schools, and workplaces? http://stewardship.nycparks.org/add_trees.php

Citizen's Committee for New York City offers FREE workshops on how to construct suitable tree pit guards and invites New Yorkers to file for grants to cover the cost of materials.
http://www.citizensnyc.org/ http://www.citizensnyc.org/grants
Note that permits are required before any work is done near a city tree. http://www.nycgovparks.org/services/forestry/tree-work-permit

How about helping a tree near you?

Forest Fires: Insights From "Rebel Farmer" Sepp Holzer

Why are we experiencing devastating forest fires and what can we do to mitigate their damage?

Desert or Paradise: Restoring Endangered Landscapes Using Water Management, Including Lake and Pond Construction  by Sepp Holzer  http://www.amazon.com/Desert-Paradise-Endangered-Landscapes-Construction/dp/1603584641

"So called natural disasters and their consequences are created by humans." "Floods,forest fires, desertification, and loss of biodiversity are the logical consequences of the mistakes made by humans for generations." What sort of mistakes is Sepp Holzer thinking of? 

 Water Management

Water is the basis for life and is infinitely reuseable. Holzer retains water from snow melt in the Austrian Alps with a system of lakes and ponds. Polycultures of trees, shrubs, and crops are nourished by the water and in turn protect and improve the soil.

http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Krameterhof&FORM=RESTAB#a
  

In contrast, in California, water is quickly drained away from upland watersheds for use in the cities. Owens lake and more recently, the briny Mono lake, have seen their waters diverted. The surrounding ecosystems have suffered as a result. Is diversion of water one of the steps leading to the Yosemite Rim Fire? Sepp Holzer states that mature healthy trees do not burn, only trees that are already sickened.

After the Fires Come the Floods

The mixed vegetation in a natural forest, with its many layers of canopy and roots,  protects and maintain soil. After wholesale destruction in a large scale forest fire, the regrowth may not be sufficient to keep soil intact in the next season's rainfall or snow melt, hence floods and mudslides commonly follow.

How Sepp Holzer Restores a Forest and Prevents Flooding

He brings in the pigs! The pigs do what they do best - root around preparing the ravaged soil for the mixture of seeds that Holzer scatters. Holzer also piles up the remaining wood along the contours of the land covering them with soil forming Hugelkultur mounds which store moisture and nourish young growth.
Yes, Holzer's strategy is to observe ecological relationships and let nature do the work.
http://malikaci.wordpress.com/2011/02/26/sepp-holzer-tamera-ecology/

Can We Heal the Economy and Enhance Our Own Lives...by Growing More Food???

Huh? Is this a simplistic idea?

Today we have a staggering percentage of Americans on government programs such as Food Stamps and Medicaid. At the same time our government is loaded with debt and facing huge upcoming expenses promised by programs initiated decades ago.

How to cope? Austerity measures? Higher taxes? Neither strategy is likely to be politically acceptable.

Now consider the following progression instead:

Let's tap into "Nature's Money" by turning compostables into fertile soil, harvest rainwater, and reuse gray water in the garden, save our own seed and propagate our own plants, then, with the help of a team of like minded friends...
Together we can become healthier and more self reliant...

So...even if our earnings are low, our expenses can be even lower!

Can this kind of austerity feel more like luxury?
Can a self reliant citizenry be the basis for lower government costs and less need for taxes?

I'm trying this strategy out in my personal life. Please join me!

Farming: Garden of Eden or Hell On Earth?

Many cultures have a prehistoric tradition of origin in a

Garden of Plenty

 Yet modern day agriculture involves daily drudgery for low pay:

a Hell On Earth

 How did this come about?

And why is it called "Progress"???

Michael Pollan writes in Botany of Desire "an American farmer today grows enough food each year to feed a hundred people, Yet that achievement - that power over nature - has come at a price. The modern industrial farmer cannot grow that much food without large quantities chemical fertilizers, pesticides, machinery, and fuel. This expensive set of 'inputs,' as they're called, saddles the farmer with debt, jeopardizes his health, erodes his soil and ruins its fertility, pollutes the groundwater, and compromises the safety of the food we eat."  http://www.amazon.com/The-Botany-Desire-Plants-Eye-World/dp/0375760393

The farm workers' lot is far worse than that of farm owners:
Out of 2.5 million workers on America’s farms it is estimated that up to 500,000 are children.
http://afop.org/children-in-the-fields/learn-the-facts/#AFOP_estimates
What are their lives like?
http://theharvestfilm.com/facts
"Farmworker women ‘have it all,’ but not in the good kind of way,” says Levy Schroeder, director of Health & Safety Programs at AFOP. “They work in one of the most dangerous and lowest paid jobs—earning even less than their poorly paid male colleagues. They are also responsible for the care of their families and households, often rising first to prepare breakfasts and lunches, followed by 10- to 12-hour days in the field, and then dinner preparation, laundry, and seeing to any other needs of their families.”
http://afop.org/2013/04/17/the-hidden-faces-of-farmworker-women/

Can we bring farming back to Eden? Bill Mollison tells us we can!
"Mollison developed permaculture after spending decades in the rainforests and deserts of Australia studying ecosystems. He observed that plants naturally group themselves in mutually beneficial communities. He used this idea to develop a different approach to agriculture and community design, one that seeks to place the right elements together so they sustain and support each other."
Mollison: "Catch the water off your roof. Grow your own food. Make your own energy. It’s insanely easy to do all that. It takes you less time to grow your food than to walk down to the supermarket to buy it. Ask any good organic gardener who mulches how much time he spends on his garden and he’ll say, 'Oh, a few minutes every week.'" http://www.scottlondon.com/interviews/mollison.html
"if you’re an optimist, you could say (permaculture design) is an attempt to actually create a Garden of Eden." http://www.context.org/iclib/ic28/mollison/

How can we begin to learn to apply permaculture design and get more of our food from a modern day Garden of Eden?
The volunteer opportunities at local community gardens are a start:
https://www.facebook.com/SmilingHogsheadRanch
http://hspsfarm.blogspot.com/p/upcoming-events.html
http://www.nybg.org/green_up/work_event.php

Smiling Hogshead Ranch, Long Island City

Enjoy the Summer and its bounty!

A Disturbing Milestone: 400 ppm CO2

During May 2013, for the first time, NOAA's Mauna Loa observatory recorded an average daily CO2 concentration above 400 parts per million. This is indeed a sobering milestone.

 

 The Keeling Curve:

Scientists almost unanimously agree that human activity is to blame for climate change  

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/science/130516/unanimity-among-scientists-over-cause-climate-change-study

Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org:

"We're in new territory for human beings--it's been millions of years since there's been this much carbon in the atmosphere. The only question now is whether the relentless rise in carbon can be matched by a relentless rise in the activism necessary to stop it."

Dr. James Hansen, former NASA Climatologist:

"If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced ... to at most 350 ppm." 


"We've got work to do, and there's not a moment to lose."

From 400.350.org

Earth Day 2013: How Green Are Our Lifestyles and Habits?

 

The first Earth Day, April 22, 1970, was organized by its principal founder, Wisconsin senator Gaylord Nelson, as an environmental teach-in. Teach-ins differ from seminars in that they are meant to be spontaneous, action oriented, and energized from the grassroots.What have we learned and what actions have we taken in our city since 1970?

"The opportunity for a gradual but complete break with our destructive environmental history and a new beginning is at hand…. We can measure up to the challenge if we have the will to do so—that is the only question. I am optimistic that this generation will have the foresight and the will to begin the task of forging a sustainable society."  http://www.nelsonearthday.net/nelson/index.htm

What can we do as individuals to be part of forging a sustainable society? NYC currently provides a cornucopia of opportunities for training in sustainable living! Taking part in programs which help our members gain a broad range of practical green knowledge and experience is like going to Boot Camp.

Some Green New Yorkers Bootcamp Highlights:
GrowNYC recycle volunteer orientation
GrowNYC green market volunteer orientation
NYC Compost Project classes
East River Blueway Tour with LESEC
Tour Greenpoint Sewage Plant and Digester Eggs
Volunteer at an urban farm - BK Farmyards, Eagle St Rooftop Farm, Smiling Hogshead Ranch, etc
Just Food and Green Thumb classes - urban farming, chicken care, CSA organization, canning, pickling
GreenHomeNYC forums, career workshops, and green building tours
* Volunteer at Build It Green
*Volunteer for oyster planting projects
*Solar City Workshops
*Parks or shoreline cleanup

*on our radar for future Meetups

How far along are you in your Green Boot Camp training?