hoobastank culture, I mean . . . hugelkultur

Hugelkultur: article below from the website http://www.richsoil.com/hugelkultur/

a page on permaculture methods

garden beds: hugelkultur instead of irrigation



raised garden bed hugelkultur after one month



raised garden bed hugelkultur after one year



raised garden bed hugelkultur after two years



raised garden bed hugelkultur after twenty years










hugelkultur raised garden beds in a nutshell:

• grow a typical garden without irrigation or fertilization
• has been demonstrated to work in deserts as well as backyards
• use up rotting wood, twigs, branches and even whole trees that would otherwise go to the dump or be burned
• it is pretty much nothing more than buried wood
• can be flush with the ground, although raised garden beds are typically better
• can start small, and be added to later
• can always be small - although bigger is better
• You can save the world from global warming by doing carbon sequestration in your own back yard!
• perfect for places that have had trees blown over by storms
• can help end world hunger
• give a gift to your future

Jerome ran across hugelkultur in a Sepp Holzer book on Permaculture. We have a lot of tall weeds and some rotten wood around the farm. As mentioned above there are many immediate benefits as well as carbon sequestering. Carbon sequestering helps to prevent further buildup of Carbon in the atmosphere from the decay of the wood. In a way lessening the growth of the greenhouse effect in the atmosphere.

The compost that we added on the top of our raised beds on wood/woody weeds is from the city of Davenport. The city has a compost facility where residents can drop off "yard waste". They then compost these clippings and sell the compost. I like the idea of supporting a city compost system.

I looked into the different organic mixes the city offered. One was mixed with sludge from city waste facilities sometimes referred to as "biosolids" (though biosolids are sometimes differentiated as having gone through more of a treatment process than the general term "sludge"). There seems to be quite a controversy about gardening with sludge. This link shows a little about the sludge controversy. We got the compost without sludge, but unfortunately this type no longer comes in bulk. We will, however be re-using the bags in the bottom of our pounded tires.

The beds in this picture are planted with lettuce, kale, and swiss chard. If you look closely at the top of the photo you can see some of the rotten wood we are putting inside the piles. These beds are between buildings where the greens will receive partial shade. Last year the heat caused our lettuce to bolt pretty quickly in the sun, but this year it will be more shaded.

to be a woman

What is it to be a woman? I continue to cut my hair shorter and shorter. I am amazed at the reactions I get that somehow I have become masculine. This from young children all the way to adult men and women. Now there are a number of reasons why I like my hair short. The first is practicality, the second is, ummm, practicality, the third is that it is easy, the fourth is that it makes me look like the pixie I am. On the positive side, I also hear that it makes my eyes stand out.

Someone close to me cut my hair for me recently. I was surprised to hear her say that despite how woodsy I am she knew that I still like to wear make-up and look feminine from time to time. I continued to counter that no, I was not going to style my hair every day and yes, I think that I look attractive when I am healthy. After the conversation I was surprised at how flustered I felt. Side note: I can and have cut my hair by myself but unfortunately seem to have lost my touch to cut my own hair symmetrically as a friend pointed out 2 weeks after the last time I tried . . .

What if attractive meant healthy? What if beautiful meant strong? What if lovely meant kind? What if fashion meant personal style and artistic expression? What if sexy meant in touch with the sacred feminine? What if we were all strong enough to stand by our own definitions of what it means to be a woman . . .and supported each other in that instead of comparing and criticizing. Oooh, what if women around the world stopped spending so much time trying to adhere to someone else's standard of beauty and used that time to focus on something deeper?

Now, I know that I stand among these women. I have been in that place in life were I wore makeup on a regular basis. I will admit that when my skin breaks out it can be hard to find myself attractive and I try to cover and protect my "red dots", as Phoenix calls them. There are days that wearing mascara, a dress, and eating chocolate make me feel attractive (and of course this greatly depends on location and lifestyle). I am accepting of the contradictions in my life . . .but what if we all took small steps to redefine femininity with acceptance of ourselves? Change takes time, but its time to start building bridges of understanding. I think that cutting down on unnecessary consumption of products from the beauty industry is a step towards sustainability (I'm sure there are eco-friendly beauty products, so choose your place on the spectrum): but maybe the first step is toward a healthier self.

At Eartheart Yoga community men and women each day would meditate together and do yoga. Then, those of us doing work-trade all worked together on cabins or to build Maya's house. One night we had a women's night. Only women allowed. Each woman dressed in a way that made her feel feminine, beautiful, or sexy. This ranged from me with my braided multicolored (blue and green yarn) hair let down my back in a light blue dress to Kaylie in a fish-net hose with a short skirt and her own fashionized-cut-up-tied-t-shirt. Oh, and I can't forget to mention 3 month old Phoenix in her diaper, lace hat, and belly-dancing-coin-scarf/skirt. Then we sat around a fire and sang and drummed. Being around these wild, free, hard-working women helped me to find acceptance and love for myself. I think that I have never felt more like a woman.

(Top 3 pictures are of artwork in Costa Rica. The bottom one is of a flower that a man at a shop in the mountains of Costa Rica gave to me. He handed it to me and said that I was a beautiful woman--despite the fact that I had short hair and was wearing shorts that I've had for 11 years, long socks, and very dirty cotton slip-on flats :)

greenhouse warmth

We have been enjoying our early Spring and the greenhouse doors have been officially open during the day to cool things off. We did get a thermometer in there and I was amazed a few weeks back on a 54 degree day to walk in the greenhouse before noon and find the temperature at 91. Before we started opening the doors in the early morning there were a couple of days when I walked in there to find the temperature at 110 and even 117 --before noon. It was fun to watch Jerome and Phoenix have a water fight (in the greenhouse) when it was 60 degrees outside.

We have some green things poking through soil in our pots. Yesterday at the farmer's market in Davenport I spoke with a couple that had been growing lettuce and spinach in their greenhouses all year. They said that in a particular greenhouse they did not heat it at night, but planted directly into the ground and covered the plants at night with a cement blanket (the kind used to keep fresh cement warm in cool weather). This approach is something that I would like to try this Autumn. It is so warm out now, though, that we have peas and sunflowers sprouting outside, as well as my daffodils in full bloom.

communal, independent, religious, spiritual, collective

Today, about 20 minutes ago actually, we ran across Jonathan Haidt's TED talk on

Religion, evolution, and the ecstasy of self-transcendence

This talk is so amazing that I have to share it. This topic has special relevance to my life. Through high school and then a couple of years into college my life revolved around my religion. I even studied Biblical Studies for a couple of years at a private university and took Biblical Greek and Hebrew at the seminary there. The best classes there were on the Old Testament story and poetic structure offered by a professor from India. That man made the books of culturally misunderstood prophets beautiful.

Since that time I have stopped believing that anyone has the right to require someone to agree to one doctrine, one perspective and I ended up where many of the religiously transitioning/communally minded do, the Unitarian Universalist (UU) Society (in Cedar Falls, IA). Through this journey I have lived at an intentional christian community, and a yoga community as well as started a small community with another UU couple who studied shamanic arts. I have been a part of a secularist meetup group where we shared religious disillusionment experiences and attended a buddhist meditation group where we chanted and meditated by candlelight (at the same time period, but different days of the week). I got to hear the Dalai Lama speak on education and secularism. I think that I have gained a lot from all of these amazing people and all of these amazing experiences. . .but catch me on a grumpy day and I will tell you that I never want to have anything to do with a religious community.

I like that this TED talk covers religion, the group collective, and free-riders (when he discusses free-riders and group collective my mind immediately jumps to Ayn Rand novels). I love working with a group of people who share a vision and an intent. It makes me feel really alive. I want this type of community . . .but I also want my independence. I love that my particular modge-podge of spirituality makes me feel grounded and focused, but sometimes a few glasses of wine and some trance music (or Ella Fitzgerald) help me let loose as well. I think the ultimate goal of a spirituality is to have a life that lives ones beliefs, a life that is not split, but one. Whether one sees the world through a religious scope or just sees life in everything it is about connection and gratefulness, growing and journeying, balancing as we learn. Perhaps it is a pastor who is understanding and accepting of differences, or an atheist living a life devoted to caring for animals, a hippie that renounces the rat race to nurture plants, or a mother who loves her daughter, it is about integrating the best version of each of us to the rest of our lives and expanding that to show others this part.

We are looking at having community here, but ultimately what we want are independent, resourceful people who share a common vision. On that note I am very excited to share that next week we have our first possible member coming to stay for a bit and check us out. . . more on this later. I would like separate living spaces on this property (though one transitory shared living space). The type of community that I experienced that was the healthiest for me was during my internship at Earthships in Taos, New Mexico. At Earthships there are independent, hard-working people with open minds who know how to relax and have fun--and they are making a big difference in the world.

Intentional community doesn't have to mean "commune" or "socialism" (though it can if that works for you). I think that perhaps many people who live in unintentional communities aren't aware of how greatly their life, identity, and happiness are influenced by the existing social rules of that society or area. People working together toward a common goal (here sustainability) can be very powerful, but individual physical space seems to be a good buffer for acceptance of differences.

we have a Website!

A couple of weeks ago I threw together a website for our place.

There will be more to come soon, but events will be posted on the calendar if you would like to visit and help with building or pick some strawberries.

www.mooncatlife.com

We decided on the name moonCat life recently. Putting together the brochure for the first year of our CSA, we were forced to sit down and come up with a name. I wanted the site to be something fun and artistic. All of the pictures, unless otherwise stated are at the land here in Illinois.

Costa Rica part 2: a look at the land

We have been very busy here now that it has warmed up. I am finally taking a moment, however, to post a little about what we saw in Costa Rica.

Picture 1: Costa Rican lightning bug. We loved this golden firefly that crawled on our placemat at a coffee stop in the mountains. In the middle of the U.S. ours are black.

Picture 2: Bats on the outside roof of our hotel. These guys were so amazing! We are considering putting in a bat box on our land as well, to keep down mosquitos. These bats would sometimes utter soft cheeps, very cute.

Picture 3: We drove past a number of wind turbine riddled areas. Its inspiring to see renewable energy being implemented in different countries.

Though I wonder about the impact on bird populations.

I have a good book on turbines called

Homebrew Wind Power.

Picture 4: Beautiful spider. This gal was hanging from a web on a tree I climbed.

Picture 5: Beautiful tree in the middle of a cleared out field. It is clear in Costa Rica that they prize their beautiful eco-touristy coasts (as they should!) but as we drove from San Jose down to Povones in the south we saw that even beautiful Costa Rica has its environmental eyesores such as dark smoke coming from palm oil factories, pineapple mono-cropping, and

forest clearing as seen in this picture. Despite all this we have pictures of the flawless coasts as well, though I'm sure you can find those on any tourism website.

Picture 6: Serene Jerome and a flower on the beach.

Picture 7: Random mystery fruit. I'm sure I could find out what it is, but I'm kind of enjoying the mystery. This fruit had a large pit in the middle but tasted like a mix between cotton candy and gummy bears. With fruit like this

why would you ever want candy?

partnership & costa rica

Jerome and I having a heated discussion at Outback Dave's, an Aussie/Trash art restaurant with delicious food. We had dogs and cats wandering through to be petted. Every table had a basket of old glasses to wear so that we could explore different aspects of our personalities.

As of 1/11/12 Jerome and I have been married 1 year. A wicked lot has happened in a year. We found ourselves in January and February evaluating our past year of marriage. We also don't hold the traditional view of marriage. We eloped partially because it was practical and partially because we want this partnership to be what we make it, not what years of tradition in society say marriage is supposed to be (I see many people stuck in an unhealthy place because of societal expectations). Since the beginning though, our partnership has evolved around our mutual love of nature and desire to have our children continue to enjoy it.

The first couple of months of this year we filled in the calendar with our plans. Then we began looking for a space to have the honeymoon that we hadn't taken yet. In February Jerome got a bonus from work and decided that since Phoenix was going to be spending some time with grandpa he would see if he could take off a week from work and squeeze in a surprise honeymoon. Somehow it worked out. Three days later we found ourselves on a plane for some sunshine and adventure in Costa Rica.

Now I'm not going to say that the carbon footprint of a plane to Costa Rica is eco-friendly, but the country was very inspirational. Being in Costa Rica allowed me the space to bring up unresolved feelings from the past year, and we found that while our trip had not been what we expected it was cathartic and healing.

It was amazing to feel the waves wash away tension and stress while the sun warmed me. Persephone home in the warmth of her mother's joy. We walked along the beach and got a little extra crispy from the sun. We ate amazing fresh fish. We got a free surf lesson (I will tell about in another post). I had the challenge of relaxing and trusting Jerome with the details while both of us speak barely enough Spanish to ask where the bathroom is . . .

How does this fit into my blog about trying to be sustainable? It is part of our journey. Also, I am excited to share the inspiration I found there in the land, and the San Jose Art Museum.