The design is pretty rough (critics note: the Support us page includes a plea for logo design), but I’m going to focus on content first, and just keep on truckin…

Before creating Permie.net, I really questioned whether the world needed another web site. But I decided that no one is really covering this subject in the way that I want to. We definitely don’t need another doomer site…yes, there are bad things happening and they’ll probably get worse, but the truth is that bad things always happen. The apocalypse is always just around the corner. We need positive attitudes, fresh thinking, and, most of all, community building.

I want to do more than just a web site. I want to help create space for the permie community of west Sonoma county to flourish. We have amazing, deep taproots of sustainability in this left coast community. Re-use stores are mainstream here (and they’re NOT in other parts of the country). Did you know that more permaculture design courses have been held in west Sonoma county than the rest of California put together? We live in an area that combines the best of the counter culture with the pragmatism of a long agricultural tradition.

It’s time for this tree to bloom.

I’ve been looking for a good source of red wigglers (or Eisenia fetida, a species of worm prized for the rich compost (or “worm castings”) they produce. I’ve got my worm bin set up and ready to go, and am eagerly awaiting the arrival of these new critters.

We have a large compost area already, I really want a worm bin so I can make compost tea using worm castings. Compost tea is a liquid solution that I’ll spray on my garden plants to help improve their health. And I want to help others start their own worm bins through my business, Grinning Jaguar, so hopefully this first batch of 1200 or so worms will be fruitful and multiply!

Steve always says he’s expecting to come home one day and find a goat or two in the back yard. Wait ’till he finds out I’m getting new livestock by mail order….

I like to support the efforts of farmers who are raising heritage breeds of animals. Heritage breeds of livestock are often in danger of becoming extinct, because industrial livestock breeds create a monoculture of animals. Industrial breeds were developed for size consistency or volume of production, but unfortunately many of these breeds are not as hardy and require antibiotics or other measures to sustain them long enough to reach the age of slaughter. Heritage breeds are often sturdier, healthier, and are well-suited for particular niches of climate or other factors which make them great for non-industrial farms. The increased biodiversity that results in having more heritage breeds leads to a great resiliency in the food system.

It’s shocking how different a heritage turkey can be from a commercial breed. Commercially bred turkeys can’t even mate themselves because their chests are so oversized to produce more breast meat…they all have to be artificially inseminated! (Yup, remember that episode of Dirty Jobs?!) Check out this Definition of a Heritage Turkey for more details.

Getting a heritage turkey for our thanksgiving table is beyond our budget this year, but I wanted to be a part of the process anyway. When I was growing up, we kept chickens for both eggs and meat, and one year raised turkeys for meat, too. You might already know my story about George the Turkey; I wanted to see if I’d feel any differently as an animal-loving adult. And I wanted to re-learn how to process poultry in case I decide to do it myself next year.

The turkeys were raised by kids and teenagers as part of their 4-H projects. They were justifiably proud of their beautiful birds:

The turkeys are placed in cones, head down…the cones hold them while their throat is slit, then they’re allowed to bleed-out into the trough below.

The mood was amiable, and everything was very matter-of-fact. There was a spirit of generosity with lots of skills sharing.

Once the turkeys have bled-out, they’re taken to a scalder…now this kind of equipment was new to me:

After the scalder, they’re plucked. I dreaded this part; I remember plucking taking forever. But look — they have a crazy machine to do that now!

After being plucked, the few feathers left are removed by hand, and they move on to the eviscerating table. This is where I helped out:

I was surprised that I remembered as much as I did, but still had to have a whole refresher course on how to gut and clean a bird. I think I did ok, thanks to my teachers; the more experience you have, the better your final poultry looks, of course.

And into the van they go, ready for delivery and someone’s table on Thanksgiving day.

It was a good experience…I’m really glad I went.

Ahem. Back to the subject at hand. I’ve been contemplating the connection between citizen science and permaculture ever since returning from the permaculture design certification course I took this summer. The similarities seemed so clear; both include grass-roots (sometimes literally!) movements, foster a deeper connection to nature, and encourage exploration and experimentation. The more I contemplated it, the more I realized that permaculture helps get us back to our ancestral roots as everyday scientists. AND it has interesting implications to everything from tracking to rehabilitating our disastrous current food systems.

You’ll find the full essay here: Permaculture, Citizen Science, and the Opportunities for Sustainable Food Production.

Work days are great…they’re a great chance to learn hands-on skills from experts. On Friday, we met at Ohlsen’s new property where he’s establishing a permaculture resource center for teaching practical skills. We laid out swales, dug them, planted cover crops, and learned something of how a permaculture site is designed. Check out the photos below or view the set on Flickr:

If you want to participate in future events, try joining the Yahoo group…it’s been on hiatus for a while, but it sounds like they’re trying to get moderator privileges and re-establish it. I first saw the announcement on Permaculture-SF, which is another good one to join.

So one of my projects this summer has been to build a new hen house on a budget.

Luckily, Sonoma County has the world’s greatest landfill. I’m not kidding…several waste diversion programs combine to form a treasure trove of useful materials for backyard projects. Our new hen house was made using almost all reclaimed lumber and materials (the exception being the 1×1 fence used for the bottom floor of the coop).

The sides are pieces of beautiful plywood siding I found at the used lumber area of the dump (I think I paid $2 each for them); the roof is some corrugated fiberglass that a friend had taken down at his house.

The frame and roosts are made out of recovered 2×4s.

The nest boxes were made using other plywood scraps I found at the dump’s recycled lumber area.

The back of the hen house was an amazing stroke of luck…I found a cupboard door at the dump which fits perfectly across the back, giving me easy access to the interior of the hen house for cleaning.

The front uses some old fence boards. And the coop itself is made out of a giant roll of 2×2 fencing that I found for a mere $20 (also at “recycle town” — the perpetual garage sale area at the Meecham Road dump). Why so cheap? Some gnarly grape vines had grown through it, making it impossible to unroll. Steve worked for a couple of hours removing the vines, saving us a couple hundred dollars on fencing.

I found the paint at our hardware store in the “goofs” pile, where mistakes in color mixing are kept and sold for cheap.

It took longer to make than I guessed, mostly because I didn’t work from a plan and don’t know real carpentry. The design was inspired in part by a larger hen house in the book Making Mobile Hen Houses, but ultimately I decided that I really wanted a bigger and better version of the Chick-N-Hutch that we’d been using. I used suggested measurements for things like roost size and spacing, nest box size, and overall hen house size from the mobile hen house book and also from Storey’s Guide to Raising Chickens.

The design was simplified because I don’t need to shut my chickens in the hen house at night (so far, that is — knock on wood) because I have them in a completely fenced coop, and because that coop sits completely within the dog’s yard. Laika does a good job of deterring predators, rushing out her doggie door at night if she hears anything creeping around out there. When the two groups of chickens are combined, I’m planning to make a door along the yard fence side of the coop. That way I can allow the hens to free-range outside of the dog yard during the day (where they’re too much of a chase temptation), and have them stowed within the predator-safe zone at night.

All in all, I’m very happy with our new coop…and of course, the delicious eggs we get every day from our delightful backyard ladies!

One project has been to try to use sheet mulching to reclaim a part of the yard that was quickly being taken over by blackberries. Finding cardboard was easy (the town cardboard recycling dropoff is just down the street!) But the wood chip mulch that I wanted was a problem…we don’t have a truck, and to buy a load and have it delivered would have cost almost $300. Definitely not in the budget!

I decided to make do, and covered the area with a thick layer of straw.

Much too thick, as it turns out. The straw on top of the cardboard became slippery; Laika couldn’t run in her yard anymore. So I changed course.

On Monday I added a new garden bed on top of the sheet mulch, and then rearranged the straw so that it covered the entire yard. It was weeds and dirt anyway…when the rains come this fall (if they come), the straw would begin to decompose and I could seed it with a cover crop that would have a better chance of taking hold. In the meantime, I watered the entire yard heavily, hoping to settle the straw and get the new bed off to a good start.

It was making do the best I could with what I had. We’d just live with the straw for a few months and see what happens.

The next morning, I took Laika over to the Laguna preserve for her walk. The sound of heavy equipment annoyed me, but as we got to the corner and I saw the tree company trucks, my mood improved.

After our walk, I went back to the corner and talked to the foreman with the tree company; they were throwing branches into the chipper with gusto now. And he seemed to agree that dumping his truck on our yard just down the street was a better idea than eating up fuel to haul it to the dump and pay to dispose of it there.

So we have a beautiful FREE pile of wood chips in our front yard, that Steve and I have been distributing in the back yard one wheelbarrow load at a time.

It’s amazing. Had they arrived any earlier, I’d be stuck preparing the yard before I could use them. As it turns out, I’d finished all the preparation for it the day before, and then they just showed up.

Yup, we’re doing a-bun-dance around here…

Update: the chips are down!

What scares me even more is when the Wilsons tell that at the convergence center the night before, several police officers entered with guns drawn and made everyone lie face down on the floor. (This appears in the IndyMedia interview with Delyla Wilson, about half-way through). Both the the NYTimes and Starhawk have more info about those incidents.

Watch the PermieBus LiveJournal page or their tripod page for updates about the Wilson family and the PermieBus. I’m reposting their write-up about the seizure below in full.

POLICE SEIZE PERMIBUS

Please Post Far and Wide including any Media Contacts You May Have

At approximately 6:25 pm on August 30, 2008 Minneapolis Police, Minnesota State Troopers, Ramsey County Sheriffs, Saint Paul Police, and University of Minnesota Police pulled over the Earth Activist Training Permaculture Demonstration Bus (Permibus) by exit 237 on Interstate 94. Initially the police told the people on the bus to exit. When the people on the bus asked if they were being detained they were told that they were but police were unable to provide justification. When asked why they pulled the bus over they refused to answer. After repeated requests to explain why the bus had been stopped Officer Honican of the Minneapolis Police explained that this was just a routine traffic stop though he did not explain the reason for the traffic stop. The police then told Stan Wilson, the driver and registered owner of the Permibus, that they were going to impound the bus in case they wanted to execute a search warrant later. After more than an hour of being questioned by Stan and Delyla Wilson as to the legalities of their detainment and the impoundment of the Permibus, the police then informed Stan that the bus, which is legally registered as a passenger vehicle in the state of Montana, was being impounded for a commercial vehicle inspection. Shortly afterward Sergeant Paul Davis, a commercial vehicle inspector arrived on scene. Despite the polices insistence that the reason for impoundment was for a commercial vehicle inspection the Permibus crew were not allowed to remove anything from the bus including computers, toiletries, and 17-year-old Megan Wilson’s shoes. The police finally allowed the animals to be removed from the Permibus before it was towed, leaving the Permibus family standing beside their chickens and dogs, homeless on the highway.

The Permibus was relocating from the Bedlam Theatre in Minneapolis, where they had spent the day teaching Urban Permaculture, to a friend’s house in Saint Paul for a well deserved break. The Permibus has been in the Minneapolis area since August 2nd when the crew appeared at the Midtown Farmers Market for a morning of Permaculture education including Permaculture 101, chicken care, seed ball making for kids, and the Permi-puppet show. During the past month the Permibus has parked at several local businesses and, as a neighborly gesture of respect for local police, Mr. Wilson contacted the appropriate precincts just to let them know the Permibus was in the area and had permission from the business owners to be parked on their lot. Through this, as well as other casual discussions with Minneapolis and Saint Paul police officers, the Permibus crew found the local police to be interested and respectful. However on August 30th all that changed when, for no apparent valid reason the police pulled over and seized the Permibus. After the incident Stan Wilson said, “If the combined law enforcement of Minneapolis, Saint Paul, Ramsey County, and the State of Minnesota can pull over and impound a vehicle and home used to teach organic gardening and sustainability, one has to wonder what it is our government really fears. After all, we seek to teach people that the real meaning of homeland security is local food, fuel and energy production. For that we have had our lives stolen by government men with guns.”

As of now, after repeated requests to be present at any vehicle inspection, with an list of what they are inspecting for, as well as requests to be served any warrants for searches of the vehicles prior to a search and to be present during the search the Permi-family has been unable to ascertain the current status of the Permibus. On site Mr. Wilson was told that Officer Palmerranky was the inspector in charge of the case and would determine if the Permi-family’s rights protecting them from unreasonable search and seizure would be respected. Neither Officer Palmerranky nor his supervisor has yet to return Mr. Wilson’s calls. The loss of her home and possessions is particularly difficult on seventeen-year-old Megan Wilson. Megan, a shining example of what this country asks of today’s youth, has dedicated herself to making positive changes in the world. She was the youth keynote speaker at the Local to Global conference in Phoenix AZ, has taught conflict resolution at youth shelters and is the outreach coordinator for the Skills for a New Millennium Tour, the family traveling educational project. Megan believes that, “While I understand that the world we live in is not as it should be I strive to live and teach in a way that shows the world how life could be. What I don’t understand is why I can’t get dressed for an evening out with friends in my own home without armed men stealing my life out from under me.” The Permi-family, along with their dogs and Permaculture super-hero chickens are currently being housed by folks in the Twin Cities.

The Skills for a New Millennium Tour is a family education project that travels around the United States teaching homesteading, citizenship, and life skills at farmers markets, community gardens, churches, intentional communities, schools, and in people’s living rooms. The Skills Tour is a donation supported project dedicated to providing tools for sustainable living, including Permaculture, to anyone who is interested, regardless of income. “We believe that any solution that is not accessible to the poor and urban areas is not a real solution for the future,” states Delyla Wilson. Permaculture is a design system with ethics and principles that can be applied to food production, home design, and community building in order to increase sustainability in food production, energy production, and social systems. The Permibus is a rolling demonstration of small scale sustainable living with three people, three dogs, three chickens, and a box of worms as permanent residence. The chickens and worms are part of a closed-loop food productions composting system that supports the Permibus’s traveling garden. For more information on the seizure of the Permibus, the Skills for the New Millennium Tour, or Permaculture, the Wilson’s can be reached at 406-721-8427 or through email at skillstour@gmail.com. You can also see pictures and read stories about the last six months of their educational adventures at permibus.livejournal.com.

To our supporters: First we ask that as many people as possible contact precinct one in Minneapolis, MN at 612-673-5701 and Mayor Rybak at

Phone: (612) 673-2100 or
call 311 or call (612) 673-3000 outside Minneapolis

and demand the immediate release of the Permibus.

We are also in desperate need of donations. Though we do not yet know the full cost of getting the permibus returned we know that it will include tow fee, impound fees, and legal fees. To donate contact us directly for a local address or…
Donate On-line:
Go to: www.earthactivisttraining.org/donate.html

Click on: Donate Now!
Under “Gift Information” write: Permibus
Under “Please send acknowledgment of this gift to” write: skillstour@gmail.com

Donate by Mail:
Make check payable to: A.C.T.
On the “For” line write: Permibus
Send check to: A.C.T. 1405 Hillmount St. Austin, TX 78704

Geoff Lawton might be most famous for the “Greening the Dessert” video on YouTube:

It’s a remarkable story of how a flat, salt-ridden dessert was transformed into a food-producing area using permaculture principles and some fantastic (and unexpected?) mycoremediation.

Stone Horse Far, is a beautiful place, and I’m grateful to Stuart Schroeder and Rosalie for showing me around. Not only did I enjoy seeing the horses and hearing about how they were trained and used, but I really enjoyed meeting some like-hearted folks who share many of our interests and enthusiasm for a life in harmony with nature. And the idea of working with this enormous, friendly, sweet-smelling critters is really appealing. Here’s some photos from my visit (or jump to the set on Flickr):

Here’s an article from 2002 about the farm: Plowing Forward: At Stone Horse Farm, the tractor gathers dust.

Justin might ask, “Where is it all leading?”, and I still don’t know. But I’m certainly enjoying the trip there! I have a couple more permaculture-type field trips planned for this week, and the big Convergence this weekend — fun stuff! Oh, and this week we’re going to celebrate Fridaday, too!

The day started at the lovely Catchtail Gardens, where Djubaya and Deborah Grace showed us the amazing transformation of their property, which was just a grassy field and buildings six years ago. Today, with the smart application of swales and catch­ments, they put and estimated 12,000 gallons of water back into the aquifier AND harvest about fifty cubic feet of topsoil that’s run off from properties up-slope, keeping it out of critical salmon habitat. It was fascinating to see all that they’ve done here.

From there, we had a lunch break and then a walk in the Laguna preserve with a great discussion of the watershed lead by one of our favorite bipedal sacks of saline and member of the Junior Darwin Over-achiever’s club, Brock Dolman.

We finished the day at the Energy Farm of the Post Carbon Institute, also the home of Julian Darley and Celine Rich Darley. There we saw examples of a lovely urban graywater system that is almost finished (pending permits to turn it on). They’re growing both food and energy crops in this garden, and it was great to see examples of both, as well as honest discussion over what works and doesn’t work. This is an amazing resource to have here in Sebastopol!

Speaking of Sebastopol, the day made me feel really fortunate, again, to be living here. The permaculture work happening in our town amazing. And, as residents of the city, Steve and I got to take this tour for free, courtesy of the city government. If this keeps up, I may have to trade in my Point-Reyes-wannabe hat for one that’s embroidered with “Sebastopol” instead!

Here’s some photos from the day; browse them here or view the set on Flickr:

This set of notes has lots about water and soil, recurrent themes throughout the course. (See Part 1 of my online notes here.)

• Fun fact: the composting toilets at RDI don’t stink. The reason for this is that the urine is separated from solid waste…there are two seats in each outhouse; you pee in one and defecate in the other. Mixing the two causes the anaerobic reaction that causes the foul odor. (Personal note: I really liked the outhouse system in practice; I would personally rather dump a shit or pee bucket every so often rather than constantly trying to keep a porcelain throne clean in my house. A composting toilet never clogs. A well-placed outhouse is quite private and pleasant to use. And the more I know about living systems, the more absurd it seems to flush our waste into our water supply.)
• The Arcata Marsh and wastewater treatment facility rocks. I need to get up there to visit this; this constructed wetland is a well-known birding destination.
• Flow form fountains – allow the water to meander in a natural way; can help with water cleaning. These are beautiful; I’ve since seen one in action at OAEC and it’s mesmerizing.
• There is a pattern of civilization collapse related to topsoil depletion. Deforestation leading to desertification is also very typical in civilization collapse. The 1955 book Topsoil and Civilization by Vernon Gill Carter and Tom Dale laid this out in detail.
• Soil: Starhawk gave us an amazing introduction to this rich topic. Highly recommended for further reading: Elaine Ingham. The Klebsiella planticola controversy is scary and hard for me to understand completely; This page seems to give both sides a voice.
• Starhawk: We inoculate children with reading, writing, arithmetic, but they grow up not understanding ecology. Bill Mollison: “Evil is stupidity rigorously applied.”
• Water: 70% of the surface area of the earth is water. By volume, only 3% is fresh water. Less than 1% of the earths water is available to us and not locked up in ice in the poles and glaciers, or in extremely deep groundwatner. Half of that 1% is currently polluted. There is a finite quantity of water, but you might say infinitely available because it’s cyclical.
• Basins Of Relations: A Citizen’s Guide to Protecting and Restoring Our Watersheds written by Brock – great booklet.
• What is a desert? If evaporation is greater than precipitation, it’s a desert. (If these two are equal, it’s a Mediterranean climate.) If we use water in a way that evaporates it (or manage soil with the same result), we create deserts.
• California is the most hydrologically engineered place in the world.
• Ogallala Aquifer – underlies the Great Plains; filled by the Pleistocene glaciers (last ice age; studies of water samples have indicated that some of the water has been here for 20,000 years). Being depleted at an alarming rate.
• The Green Revolution could only happen with a corresponding and silent “Blue Revolution” — we’re mining our fossil water. At current rates, we’ll be asking for twice as much water as we do now.
• Desalination methods are typically petroleum-fueled. We must think in terms of Appropriate Technology.
• Andy Lipkin, Tree People, and Los Angeles: there’s enough rainfall to provide 50% of their water needs.
• Water testing: there is no overall test for everything. When you pay for a water test, you have to specify what you’re testing for.
• Usually get about 600 gallons of water on 1000 square feet with 1″ of rainfall.
• When you cache water off your roof, the materials of the roof will contribute to what’s present in your water supply. Vinyl or plastics? Wood shingles with fire retardants. Heavy metals like cadmium? Baked enamel on steel very good; expensive but long-lasting; glass also very good (cache off greenhouse?)
• Water tanks might be used as thermal mass to hold heat. Ferro-cement tank has very high embodied energy (every pound of portland cement requires three pounds of carbon emission to produce), but might be a very high use of this material.
• Adapting demand. How much do you need? 50 gallons per person per day?
• 20% of the electricity we use in this state is used to pump water. 30% of all natural gas is used to heat it. “Watergy”
• Strategy for caching water on the land: Slow it, Spread it, Sink it. If you want to save a watershed, start at the ridge line. Swales can help put water into the well. Ponds for short-term water storage, swales for long-term.

I’m about half-way through my notebook now…

From the interview:

We have the theory, we have the technologies. What we lack is the political power, the will, the cultural support, the supportive economics. So to say at this point that it’s impossible to avoid a crash is factually wrong, and it really only is saying that we are whipped politically and can never win, or that people are too stupid and selfish, greedy or fearful, ever to do things right. That’s a view that feeds into the power of the few over the many, that obstructs progress, that also, given the various hard-won successes of past history and politics, is factually wrong and cheaply cynical. Too easy, even cowardly. Well, I don’t need to be saying this to a permaculture audience. The optimism I advocate as policy (and temperament if you’re lucky!) is inherent in the philosophy and practice of permaculture.

It was also interesting to learn that Robinson and his family are residents of the famous (in permie circles) Village Homes. Robinson cites this sustainable planned community as an influence on his work.

Link to the interview.

I’ve debated how much of my notes to rewrite into my blog. There’s an immense amount of material to digest. I’ve decided to make a first pass through my notes, picking out the concepts or ideas that impressed me the most, and that might best serve to convey the kind of experience I had, and not write up the notes right now that relate to specific design techniques and practices. It’s difficult to describe to people, and I sense a sort of suspicion surrounding it. Maybe doing some of this will help; organizing the info might at least help me be a little more articulate about it.

• The Iroquois Confederacy has striking parallels to how the founding fathers of the US Constitution set up the US government. (Though there is debate on this issue, the evidence suggested here looks pretty good to me.) One significant difference is that the Iroquois clan mothers held enormous power, being the ones to appoint the council members from each tribe. The Iroquois handled issues brought before the council with a policy of consensus, or “one heart, one mind, one law.” If consensus could not be reached on an issue, each individual tribe was free to determine their own course of action, as long as it did not affect the other tribes.
• I’m ashamed to admit to the realization that I didn’t even really know what was meant by “consensus” before coming here. I’d thought it was a something like a majority, but probably much more than 51/49 split. The idea of consensus…that the entire group agrees to something…and that I hadn’t previously understood it…blew my mind. Obviously not something commonly experienced in my culture.
• Penny Livingston-Stark on permaculture: “This isn’t rocket science. It’s a lot more complicated.” (Fortunately, it’s a lot more interesting, too.)
• The practice of permaculture as taught by Bill Mollison has well-defined ethics:
  • Care of the Earth: Provision for all life systems to continue and multiply.
  • Care of People: Provision for people to access those resources necessary to their existence.
  • Setting Limits to Population and Consumption: By governing our own needs, we can set resources aside to further the above principles.

  The last point is often described as giving away or reinvesting the surplus. The mnemonic you’ll often see is “Earth Care, People Care, Fair Share”

• The most important design tool for permaculture is a hammock. Good design is rooted in good observation.
• Penny: “Permaculture is on the cutting edge of a 10,000 year old idea.”
• “Pollution is an unused resource” — Bill Mollison (or: “Waste = Food”)
• Here at RDI they believe in “sustainable hedonism”…for example, you can’t buy the food we’ll be eating. (This was absolutely true.)
• You’ve heard “you are what you eat.” Brock Dolman puts another spin on it: “You are what you don’t shit.”
• “Some people are more limited by what they know than by what they don’t know.” (Penny or Brock)
• We don’t plan for the future the way we used to. Examples from the past: The Beams of New College, Oxford; food storage of the Incas.
• Embodied Energy — this is a hugely important concept. We tend to think of objects in terms of their financial cost. But consider all of the resources used to create an object: raw material, labor, environmental impact, social impact, etc. All of this together is the embodied energy of the object. A stainless steel water bottle from REI might appear to cost $18.95, but when you consider the embodied energy, you’ll find that the cost is much, much higher.
• Permaculturists aren’t “plant fascists”…native plants are preferred when they serve the function required, but proven exotics are also fine and testing of unproven exotics, with proper monitoring, is encouraged. Even Scotch Broom, a hated invasive, serves a purpose…it, like many other exotic invasives, is a nitrogen fixer. These kinds of species make their homes in soil that’s been disturbed, damaged. The need is to bring the soil back to life, not the futility of killing the exotics. If the sheer logic of this doesn’t get you, consider that a large donor to native plant societies and others working against exotics is (drum roll, please)…Monsanto. “Monsanto Company has been a long-term sponsor of Cal-IPC with more than 15 years of consecutive sponsorship donations. As a company we are committed to supporting and assisting the invasive species control efforts of the members of Cal-IPC.” [ref]
• Another bon mot, either from Brock or Penny: “I’m so broke I can’t even pay attention.”
• California Native Americans actually tended the “wilderness”…it was not an untouched ecosystem, but rather one that was managed in a way that was invisible to Europeans. Great resource for this information: Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California’s Natural Resources.
• BLM: Bureau of Land Mistakes.
• Jon Young: I may write up my notes from his wonderful talk, but a couple of things need to be included here: We form new brain patterns from only two sources: our focus (what we long for) and what our senses take in. More information makes people mentally ill. Connection is what makes culture…connecting to the world around us via our senses, rather than constant information gathering with the brain. What is more important than information? How happy are people? How strong is their heart? This is more important.
• Phytoremediation: plants can be used to clean up toxins in the environment and treat water. For example, water hyacinths can be planted in water soaking with old photographic materials…they hyacinths will take up the silver in the water. You can then burn the hyacinths to recover the silver. Note that this also means you have to be careful about what plants you eat, with respect to what’s in the environment and what they migth be taking up. Note that we do the same sort of thing, taking up chemicals that cause us health problems. (Penny believes that a lot of us are walking around with a form of organophosphate poisoning from pesticides, and that it’s manifested as depression and inability to concentrate).
• Water treatment folks have to deal with “PPCP” — pharmaceuticals and personal care products. Many of the pharmaceuticals are endocrine disruptors and estrogen mimics (they pointed out that, given this, it should come as no surprise that viagra sales are up and fertility is down).
• What is “Away”? Our waste water, trash, etc. all goes “away”. Where is this “away” place? One “away” might be The Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

That’s about a third of the way through my notebook. More to come!

Browse the photos below or view the the entire two-weeks directly on flickr.

It was a profound experience and I’m still trying to gather my thoughts about it. More to come!