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Toward a GE-Free Lake County

5/11/2011

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-submitted by Thurston Williams, www.gefreelake.org

American agriculture has been described as the conversion of fossil fuel into food. In fact it takes on the average of 10 oil and natural gas calories to produce just one food calorie. The math has never been close to sustainable. But as we know, the party is ending. Transition is beginning and with it our concern about how we will feed ourselves in the post carbon era. Locally grown food sounds good, tastes even better. Everyone acknowledges that we are a long way from being sustained by a local food shed. Our farmers are too few and too near retirement. What will we need going forward to feed the population of the Clearlake region with a local agriculture. That is a tall order which I hope to address in a series of future articles here in The Shift.

To begin with I want to talk about legacy. What are some of the ecological lessons and challenges inherited from a history of pioneer agriculture through the conventional pear, grape and walnut plantings of today? In the last 10 years we have seen many pear and walnut orchards torn out. Some land has been replanted to grapes, but much remains as abandoned fields. What has years of conventional farming left behind? Unfortunately, heavy metal and other pesticide contamination remains as the legacy of chemical farming. DDT and its relatives remain detectible. Annual use of synthetic fossil fuel based fertilizers has left the soils low in organic matter, the only sustainable source of plant nutrition. Before this ample acreage of fallow land can join our food shed of the future it will require bioremediation to make it suitable for vegetable production. Fortunately, with patience and a new attitude toward the land that sustains us, abused land can be made sustainably fertile again.

Beyond chemical contamination there remains one more potential barrier to building a local agriculture. There is a new type of contamination that threatens Lake County, the genetic contamination brought by planting patented genetically engineered crops, also referred to as GMO seeds. The very nature of these “frankenfoods” is to spread their genes to non-GE crops and disturb the ecology of the soil. The massive use of herbicides that accompanies these “herbicide tolerant” plants has already created over 130 super weeds in parts of the country where these plants are extensively grown. After farmers stop planting the GE crops, the super weeds remain as part of the legacy of the foolish adoption of a technology that should have never left the laboratory.

As part of the Transitions movement, the GE Free people want to limit the damage current agriculture can inflict before the reality of peak oil brings them to a halt. Any region that can remain GE Free during the transition will be that much further along the road to launching a new and vital local agriculture.

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Post Title.

5/8/2011

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Check out the short video below, chronicling the birth of Cobb Mountain Community Garden.

For more info on the still-active garden, located at the corner of Bottle Rock and Rainbow Road in Cobb,
visit their Facebook page, or email Nicole at riverglen@rocketmail.com
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Transition Town Middletown: Thinking Globally and Acting Locally

5/6/2011

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(reprinted from the Harbin Quarterly, Spring 2011)

Transition Town Middletown: Thinking Globally and Acting Locally 


-by Rebecca Rees, Transition Lake County

The Transition Movement for local resilience, which originated in 2005 in an Irish college permaculture course, is one of the fastest-growing grassroots movements on the planet. And Middletown, the last little town (population 1,000, elevation 1,110 the sign says) you come through on your way to Harbin Hot Springs, just took its first step to joining the global Transition Network, with a screening at Middletown Methodist Church of the film “The Turning Point.”  

“As you watch this film of Transition Towns in Scotland, we invite you to consider these two essential Transition questions: What do you envision for our community? And what are you willing to create?” said the speaker introducing the Transition Town film to the Middletown audience.

The film features an international conference at the Findhorn Community Eco-Village. Long time lovers of intentional community will remember this now-venerable New Age community, founded on a trailer park off a windswept Scottish beach and famous for its magnificent Findhorn Garden nourished by seaweed and co-operation with the “nature devas” of each plant. The Middletown Methodist church sanctuary was packed, and members of the audience included, of course, many Harbinites, who have been practicing ecological living and building local community for decades.

In fact, the first Re-Skilling class for Transition Lake County was a home workshop offered back in December by a Harbina: a class on acorn-gathering and preparation taught by “Acorn Annie,” Harbin Quarterly Editor Ann Prehn. “I just want to teach people not to be afraid of acorns!” Ann said at the workshop, her face beaming as she served up her savory hot acorn loaf made from the Valley Oak acorns which were once the winter staple of the local Pomo people.In the Transition film, the Findhorn Eco-Village embodies the movement vision of “Going Local” to build community resilience in the face of the three challenges of our time: Peak Oil, disastrous climate change, and a failing global economy. Set against a background of green Scottish hills, this inspiring film shows a windmill park producing all the community’s energy, local businesses of bakery and dairy producing yummy-looking bread and great wheels of cheese, local currency, car clubs, greywater processing, Community- Supported-Agriculture farms plowed by massive draft horses, and a permaculture garden foraged by a self-described “Feral Elder.” The film is enhanced by interviews with pink-cheeked locals speaking with a strong Scottish burr, as well as with Buddhist activist Joanna Macy and Transition founder Rob Hopkins.

After the film the Middletown audience was addressed by representatives of local workgroups: Local Food Middletown, Re-Skilling, and the Lake County Energy Co-op, as well as by a local Grange president, also a Transitioner. Members of the Harbin community joined our Transition workgroups. The face of one Harbina lit up as she described her investigation into local energy co-ops and offered to share her knowledge with our Local Energy group. Watch out, PG&E! Here comes LCEC!

More information about the local and national Transition movement may be found at www.transitionlakecounty.org and www.transitionus.org. Find or found your local Transition Town!

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Creating an Herbal Medicine Garden… Upcoming Re-Skilling Classes

5/2/2011

5 Comments

 
-submitted by Catherine Hammond

The great thing about gardening is that you always have a chance to correct earlier mistakes. Each season is another chance to do it right. And there’s plenty of people around to help us out if we ask. It actually took me three years to get the hang of it; to allow the whole experience to seep into my bones.

Gradually, I began to realize that the turning over the clay soil, feeding it amendments,  waiting for the cold and rain and then the heat and sun to have their effect on the earth and plants, was opening my awareness to the eternal turning of the seasons. This process was reconnecting me to the great repetitive cycles of time and nature. But most importantly, it was reconnecting me to the vast web of life of plants and animals and to our human belonging within it.

Gardening can bring us home to this earth where we belong…

The first year was particularly rough; I lost half of my veggie and flower plantings from improper water and heat balance. But, what seems to do best here are squashes, salvias, day lillies, tomatoes, sunflowers and herbs. Lots of herbs.

And, I learned to keep the so-called weeds that volunteered here;  medicinal calendula, plantain, California poppy, and of course, dandelion. During the backbreaking work of pulling out half an acre of 3 - 4 foot high weeds, I decided to create a medicine wheel; To pray over this depleted and neglected patch of dirt until it came alive again.  It only took 30 days…

Well, a medicine wheel needs medicine, so the idea of teaching the process of basic herbal gardening came forth. I asked my wonderful herbal teacher, Donna d’Terra from Willits to give the class on my land.  But, she didn’t have time as she is starting her yearly women’s herbal apprenticeship program… So, she encouraged me, even as a beginner, to give the class myself.  So, I am and it feels great.

We’ll have handouts and we will talk about each of ten healing hers. Then, after lunch,  we will plant all the seedlings I’ve started into the medicine wheel after praying over them to send them into the earth and light. And finally, each participant will have a plant to take home and a lot of basic information to start your own medicine garden.

The dates for the all day classes in the medicine wheel are Saturday, May 21 and Sunday, June 12, 2011.

The class is by donation this first time and bring a notebook, a lunch to share, and wear loose clothing and bring a sun  hat. We’ll have fun!  My phone is 707-994-2872 in the mornings, for directions to my house.  Thank you to TLC for giving us a chance to express our skills and learning…

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