flowering

Monday 12 December 2011

Forward farming, an awakening adventure.

The momentum is gaining speed. The farming of naturally grown produce nationwide is kicking into gear, and in the cogs of this green wagon are some very inspiring stories and individuals.

 It’s not the peak oil crises or the rise in global temperatures, nor the unsecured seas of the stock market that rivals mankind’s biggest threat to date. Man can survive without money, without fashion and other frivolous material pleasures, but without food our species will fail to continue its existence on this planet. So how is natural farming in South Africa going to save us and how can we all contribute to the survival of our species?

For the last six months my partner and I have been travelling around South Africa, visiting and documenting Organic, permaculture and bio-dynamic farms. These farms are our bridge to a new agricultural era, to naturally grown, chemical free food.

 Since the Industrial Revolution, deforestation, tillage or ploughing, development of cities and highways, has left the arable soil on earth radically leached and disturbed. Only in the past twenty years have we witnessed an awakening of people conscious of this urgent state of the planet. It is no wonder then that any fertile soil left is the new black gold, and nations who have already exhausted their land resources, seek and are buying up massive areas of virgin soil in Africa and South America only to further the exploitation and destruction of industrial farming.

The world works on supply and demand, and so the more people support and buy naturally grown and produced goods, the more our limited resources will be protected. The more you buy locally grown produce, the less oil will be spent on transporting and packaging and the fresher your produce will be. Speaking to your super-market manager about supplying locally grown produce, is something all of us can do. The farms are already out there, growing quality food for you and your family, all you need do is ask.

 Another alternative to supporting naturally grown produce is to connect up to an vegatable box scheme in your area. A full box of delicious, fresh organic fruit and vegetables from local farms, sometimes containing a few extra treats and interesting recipes for some of the lesser known produce,  are available and delivered to a convenient location in your area. One of the nicest things about the pre-ordered vegetable boxes is that every week it is different and a surprise awaits you on delievery.
 http://www.urbansprout.co.za/directory/activity/box+delivery+schemes/western+cape


Local weekend farmers markets are great places to buy your produce from and supports the growers in your area. The markets usually have other pleasure to enjoy and makes for a fun family outing. This sort of support is possibly the most important change we can make as a society, and enable us to be more in touch with the food we eating.
http://www.urbansprout.co.za/directory/activity/markets/western+cape


Everyone is responsible. Everyone can contribute to a positive abundant outcome by making conscious descisions about where and how our food is grown.

Bon appetit and blessings on your food

Thursday 20 October 2011

Artwell Chivinge talks to us about the youth and his relationship with nature.

An inspiring man by the name of Artwell Chivinge originally from Zimbabwe, shared with us his expansive knowledge of Home Food Security. Artwell speaks to us about youth involvement in agriculture and how growing up in rural Zimbabwe was his best teacher. Born to a family of rural farmers and brought up farming in a farming community, Artwell learnt the fine art of gardening organically as a very young child. He recollects his childhood with good memories of herding cattle and helping grow vegetables to make pocket money. He learnt how to harvest wild honey with his bare hands and observed from early on the importance of maintaining a healthy relationship with nature. In his community all of their vegetable, fruit and grain needs were taken care of by the community, only leaving the odd trip to the shop for salt and soap. Artwell learnt how to process their food, growing their maize and taking it to the mill, his family was always blessed with good fresh nutritious food. He grew up seeing his parents farming and understood that to eat they must work. It started as a hobby like playing but now he knows how crucial his understanding food security is. Artwells family grew their own sunflowers and processed them into oil, they grew groundnuts and turned it into peanut butter, His family was poor in one way, and very rich in other ways. He feels that it is a blessing they did not have money to buy fertilizers and had to really seek out the answers to good relations with nature from nature. Through this Artwell developed a great passion and dedication to caring for mother Earth.

 Artwell has gone on to become a lecturer for UNISA in their two new ‘House Hold Food Security’ course. He promotes home food security through talks and tours at his own urban dwelling. He dreams for a piece of land to do further training courses from, where he can teach the public with practical skills how to farm with nature not against her. He found moving to the city meant limited land, but this didn’t mean he was going to fold his hands. He is going forward and promoting urban agriculture, agriculture in whatever space you have. He has revolutionized the quaint apartment building he shares with his family of four and other tenants. Within the limited spaces of flower beds and using his imagination to turn any used container into a mini veg garden he manages to save up to R1900 on spinach in one year alone! In one small space he manages to grow onions, herbs, and his favourite variety of Zimbabwean spinach. Any empty containers do, he recycles all old milk and juice containers and uses them as growing pots. He keeps earth worms in a brilliant system of old car tyres and makes compost from all the tenants organic matter. He would like to take it further and create a living roof, but is restricted. Artwell also works for the Eastern Cape NGO Coalition, and spent time teaching in Tanzania about home food security. He wants his pupils to know that instead of focusing on the macro picture they can contribute to their own home food security in their own micro environments.

He speaks to us about over coming the obstacles of Youth and agriculture.

 The children need to be encouraged from early childhood. In the crèche and primary schools, they need to start becoming involved in a garden set up. This should be factored in to their curriculum so they can develop an interest from an small child that feeds into their teens. That interest can develop into a passion and or a understanding of nature and her abundance when managed in the right way. They can feel like they can make a real contribution to sustainable agriculture and if done in the right way through environmental clubs can further their knowledge and outreach. The incorporations of story telling, poems, plays and music can play a key factor in creating an interest in nature, and Artwell encourages parents to become involved in their children’s knowledge gardening. He says his parents were such a big influence in his relationship with growing food, and if children see their parents gardening they become interested and feel free to ask questions. There are plenty of fields for which aspiring youth can move into in a professional level, and so agriculture should be seen as a positive step towards a sustainable future. He says as a child he learnt to love and appreciate all the gifts the wild gave him, like honey and herbs, and edible plants. Where you destroy nature you destroy the bio diversity and life giving soils and so youth need to be encouraged and shown the gifts of nature.

Looking to Permaculture for sustainable solutions, and how small scale farming can save the world

   By Bill Mollison

DESIGN FOR REMEDIAL ACTION
When we design for permanence, we go generally toward forests,
permanent pastures, lakes and ponds, and non-tillage agriculture.
That is our business. Until we get more clues as to
what will be sustainable, that is what we have to play with.
Industrial water can be supplied from roofs. Settlements can
use that water. America is simply sort of tanks. Now there are
different sorts of tanks. One is the kind you put under the downspout
from the roof of your house. Tanks of another sort are
the cheap tanks - earth tanks. Absolutely no problem. Always
enough water for all our uses - fresh water, which we presently
let go into the sea.
We have three ways of water storage. We can store it in the
soils; we can store it in surface earth tanks, and we can store it
in sealed catchments. For an agricultural situation, we will use
the soils. For domestic situations, we will use earth tanks. They
are very much cheaper. For every 5,000 gallons we can store
in concrete tanks, we can store 250,000 in Earth tanks at the
same cost.
We have legal and financial strategies. We can convert locally
into far more self-reliant bioregions. The people who are doing
that are adding greenhouses to their houses and doing
their own gardening. There is an immense conversion going on.
That’s where we start, dealing with an acre.
Now the thing that we have ignored, not only turned our
backs on but often fled from, is conversion of high level investment
capital to these low energy systems. There are a whole
set of strategies to do so that we are assembling as an "Earth
banks" service. Some of these strategies will benefit our social
happiness as well.
The only way we can do things fast is by making the least
number of moves in the fastest possible time, and by very rapid
delegation of work to people. There is no hope that we can get
this done in the next five years if we keep it to ourselves. Therefore,
I have come here to break the monopoly of the elite alternative
in America. We have got to let experts loose on the
ground. We need hundreds and hundreds of them. We don’t
want at any time to patent anything or to keep any information
to ourselves, not even keep our jobs to ourselves. The time for
that is gone. What we are involved in is a cooperative, not a
competitive, system. There are a very few of us operating at
this end of the system, therefore we have to act in a very efficient
way in order to create the greatest amount of change in
the shortest period of time.
I think we have an ethic here: to stop admiring the people
who have money. There has to be a big ethical change. It is an
interesting time to be living in. The big twist we have to make is
away from our educational system. All the methodologies and
principles we use arose as a result of observation of natural
systems, and are stated in a passive way. The mind twist that
has to be made to create permaculture is to realize that you
can get hold of that and do it. We have to make our knowledge
active. We have to move from a passive to an active thought
level.

" Agriculture is a destructive system."
What are the strategies by which we don’t need agriculture?
Agriculture is a destructive system. Well, we need a lot more
gardeners. Gardeners are the most productive, most hands-on
sort of agriculturists. They always have been. There never has
been any debate about it. When you make a farm big, you just
accept a suddenly lower productivity and yield, but less people
get it. That is why it is economically "efficient." When you talk
about efficient farming of this order, you are talking about dollars.
When you reduce the size of the owned landscape, providing
you don’t reduce the lots to less than a quarter of an
acre, the agricultural productivity goes up. You get a lot of arguments
to the effect that breaking up large farms into five acre
blocks is uneconomic. Five acre blocks are. One to onequarter
acre blocks are not. They are highly productive.
Now gardenersÉHow many gardeners are there in the United
States? Fifty-three percent of households now garden. They
garden only 600 square feet on the average. They make something
like $1.50 a square foot. These household gardens are
producing 18% of the food in the United States, at a value almost
equivalent to total agriculture.
Now let’s look at Russia. The peasant farmer, on a half-acre
to an acre, is producing some 84% of the food. The state
farms, which occupy most of the agricultural land, produce the
remainder. But the state farms are not doing their job. They
have a 6% deficit, which is shipped in from Canada or the United
States. The glamorous agriculture, the large scale, broad
scale agriculture, is not the agriculture that is producing the
food.
We are now down to about 20 basic foods. The day of soybeans
is probably arriving. You can make just about anything
out of soybeans.

Control of Seeds

I don’t think that there are very many seed companies left in
the world that don’t belong to a consortium of not more than
10 companies. It is certainly true in Australia. The seed is now
being grown for and distributed by the multi-nationals. Can you
buy a non-hybrid corn in the United States? Here and there. In
Australia, we can’t. But we do have one seed company. It is
called Self-Reliance Seed Company in Stanley, Tasmania. Maybe
we have two.
[Self-Reliant Seeds is now defunct, but it was replaced by
Phoenix seeds, also of Tasmania. Ed.]
The next move of the large seed-growing consortiums was to
have been seed-patenting legislation. At this point, a lot of people
started to get a bit suspicious. The patenting of biological
materials was a slightly suspicious move. Then the World Council
of Churches looked into the situation and produced Seeds of the Earth
. The cat was out of the bag. So there has been a general
ground-level revolt against takeover of a basic resource.
Kent Whealy’s Seed Savers Exchange is just one of these
moves.
But one thing this may have taught is that you can’t run away
from systems. Holing up in two acres out in the New England
forests isn’t going to get you out of the system unless you are
into a seed-growing operation and know exactly what you’re doing.
Most people do not. If you are training yourself to be a good
gardener, there are still certain areas you just haven’t got into,
and seed growing is one of them. In one valley in Tasmania,
among a group of hippies living there, you might find 50 Ph.D.s.
Most of them are sitting home knitting or weaving or running
around getting blackberries, just leaving it to the really ruthless
people to get on with what they are doing. We must involve all
our skills to organize life forces, not just a few.
In the permaculture garden, we must deal with the question
of ways in which elements are to be placed. Some of these elements
are manurial or energy-exchange systems for other elements;
others are defensive elements that protect other plants
in a whole set of ways; and some act as trellis systems for others
or provide shade. So there are physical relationships involved
and there are whole sets of rules that govern why certain
elements are put together. And we understand some of
these rules. A lot of them are quite obvious.

Resource management One: A look at resource realities from 1981

Bill Mollison lays it out clearly to a group of young Americans, on his introduction to permaculture course.


THE TERRIBLE TIME OF DAY, By Bill Mollison 1981

I don’t think anybody has summarized what is happening on
the face of the Earth.
In order to change our ways, we seem to need to terrify ourselves,
anticipating tidal waves and catastrophes. Now those
things may come off, and the San Andreas fault may shift. But
we can’t do much about that. What is really happening is something
for which we, as human beings, are personally responsible.
It is very general. Almost everything we say applies everywhere.
The real systems that are beginning to fail are the soils, forests,
the atmosphere, and nutrient cycles. It is we who are responsible
for that. We haven’t evolved anywhere in the west
(and I doubt very much elsewhere except in tribal areas) any
sustainable systems in agriculture or forestry. We don’t have
a system. Let’s look at what is happening.

Forests

Forests have been found to be far more important in the oxygen
cycle than we ever suspected. We used to think oceans
were the most important element. They are not. Not only are
they not very important, contributing probably less than 8% of
the oxygen in atmospheric recycling, but many are beginning to
be oxygen-consuming. If we release much more mercury into
the seas, the ocean will be oxygen-consuming. The balance is
changing. Therefore, it is mainly the forests that we depend on
to preserve us from anarchic condition.
Of the forests, some are critically important, like the evergreen
forests, of which there are two extensive systems. One is
equatorial, multispecies; and the other, cool evergreen forests
of the Russian tundra and the southern evergreen forests.
Rain forests are critically important in the oxygen cycle, and in
atmospheric stability.
The forests also provide a very large amount of our precipitation.
When you cut the forest from ridges, you can observe the
rainfall itself fall between 10% and 30%, which you could probably
tolerate. What you dont see happen is that precipitation
may fall over 86%, the rainfall being only a small fraction of the
total precipitation. It is quite possible on quiet, clear nights with
no cloud, no rainfall recorded anywhere on any gauges, to have
a major precipitation in forest systems. It is particularly true of
maritime climates. But it is also true of all climates. Therefore
it is possible to very rapidly produce semi-desert conditions simply
by clearing trees from ridge top. This is being done at a
great rate.
It is the character of forests to moderate everything. Forests
moderate excessive cold and heat, excessive run-off, excessive
pollution. As forests are removed, immoderate extremes arrive.
And of course, it is the forests that create soils. Forests
are one of very few soil-creating systems.
What is happening to forests? We use a great many forest
products in a very temporary way - paper and particularly newspaper.
The demand has become excessive. At present, we are
cutting one million hectares per annum in excess of planting.
But in any one month, that can rapidly change. Last month, for
instance, that doubled because of clearing of the Mississippi
bottom land forests for soy beans.
Of all the forests that we ever had, as little as 2% remain in
Europe. I don’t think there is a tree in Europe that doesn’t exist
because of the tolerance of man or that hasn’t been planted by
man. There is no such thing as a primeval European forests. As
little as 8% remain in South America. And 15%, I think, is a general
figure in other areas. So we have already destroyed the
majority of forests, and we are working on a rather minor remnant.
Cutting rates vary, depending on the management practices.
But in general, even in the best managed forests, we
have a constant loss of 4%, giving 25 more years to go. But in
fact, what we observe throughout Southwest Asia and in South
America, and throughout the Third World, and wherever multinationals
can obtain ownership of forests in the Western
world, is about 100% loss. It is a "cut and run" system.
We have long been lulled into a very false sense of security
by reassurances that the logging companies are planting eight
trees for a tree cut. What we are really interested in is biomass.
When you take something out of the forest in excess of
150 tons and put something back which doesn’t weigh much
more than 10 ounces, you are not in any way preserving biomass.
What are the uses to which we put forests? The major uses
are as newsprint and packaging material. Even the few remaining
primeval forests are being cut for this. Forests that had
never seen the footsteps of man, that had never experienced
any human interference, are being cut for newsprint. Those are
forests in which the trees may be 200 feet to the first branch,
gigantic cathedrals. They are being chipped. There are trees in
Tasmania much taller than your redwoods. These are being cut
and shipped out as chips. So, for the most part, we are degrading
the primeval forests to the lowest possible use.
That has effects at the other end of the system. Waste products
from forests are killing large areas of the sea. The main
reason why the Baltic and Mediterranean and the coast off
New York have become oxygen-consuming is that we are carpeting
the sea bottom with forest products. There are, broadly
speaking, about 12,000 billion tons of carbon dioxide being released
annually by the death of forests. We are dependant on
the forests to lock up the carbon dioxide. In destroying forests,
we are destroying the system which should be helping us. We
are working on a remnant of the system. It is the last remnant
which is being eroded.

Climate

The effects of this on world climate are becoming apparent
both in the composition of the atmosphere and in the inability
of the atmosphere to buffer changes. In any month now, we will
break the world weather records in some way. In my home
town, we are very isolated and buffered by ocean and forest.
But we had in succession the windiest, the driest, and the wettest
month in history, in two hundred years of recording. So
really what’s happening in the world climate is not that it is
tending toward the greenhouse effect; it is not that it is tending
toward the ice age; it is starting now to fluctuate so wildly
that it is totally unpredictable as to which heat barrier you will
crack. But when you crack it, you will crack it an an extreme
and you will crack it very suddenly. It will be a sudden change.
Until then, we will experience immense variability in climate.
That is what is happening.
We can just go cutting along, and in maybe twelve more
years we won’t have any forests.
There is still another factor. It would be bad enough if it were
just our cutting that is killing forests. But since the 1920’s, and
with increasing frequency, we have been loosing species from
forest to a whole succession of pathogens. It started with
things like chestnut blight. Chestnuts were 80% of the forests
that they occupied. So a single species dropping out may represent
enormous biomass, enormous biological reserve, and a
very important tree. Richard St. Barbe Baker pointed out that
the trees that are going are those with the greatest leaf area
per unit. First chestnuts, with maybe sixty acres of leaf area
per tree. Then the elms, running at about forty. Now the beeches
are going, and the oaks, the eucalypts in Australia and Tasmania.
Even the needle leaf trees in Japan are failing. The Japanese
coniferous forests are going at a fantastic rate. So are
the Canadian shield forests and the Russian forests.

The Phasmid Conspiracy

Now we come to a thing called the phasmid conspiracy.
Each forest varies in each country in that its elms, its chestnuts,
its poplars, its firs, are subject to attack by specific pathogens.
Insects are taking some sort of cauterizing measures.
The American reaction would be to spray; the British reaction
would be to fell and burn; and in Australia, the reaction is to
say: "Aah, what the Hell! It’s going to be gone next year; let it
go!"

Really, is it these diseases? What are the diseases? Phasmids
are responsible for the death of eucalypts. There is the
cinnamon fungus. In elms, it’s the Dutch elm disease. In the
poplars, it’s the rust. And in the firs, it’s also rust. Do you think
that any of these diseases are killing the forest?
What I think we are looking at is a carcass. The forest is a
dying system on which the decomposers are beginning to feed.
If you know forests very well, you know that you can go out this
morning and strike a tree with an axe. That’s it. Or touch it with
the edge of a bulldozer, or bump it with your car. Then, if you sit
patiently by that tree, within three days you will see that maybe
twenty insects and other decomposers and "pests" have visited
the injury. The tree is already doomed. What attracts them is
the smell from the dying tree. We have noticed that in Australia.
Just injure trees to see what happens. The phasmids come.
The phasmid detects the smell of this. The tree has become its
food tree, and it comes to feed.
So insects are not the cause of the death of forests. The
cause of the death of forests is multiple insult. We point to
some bug and say: "That bug did it." It is much better if you can
blame somebody else. You all know that. So we blame the bug.
It is a conspiracy, really, to blame the bugs. But the real reason
the trees are failing is that there have been profound changes
in the amount of light penetrating the forest, in pollutants, and
in acid rain fallout. People, not bugs, are killing the forests
.
Soils

As far as we can make out, we have lost 50% of the soils we
have ever had before 1950. We have been measuring pretty
well since 1950. And we have lost another 30% of the soils
that remain. Now this is as true of the Third World as it is in
the Western World.
The rate at which soils are created is at about four tons per
annum per acre - much less in dry areas. Soils are created by
the fall of rain and the action of plants. The rate varies. In the
desert, they are being created at a much lesser rate. But in
these humid climates, at about four tons per acre. If you don’t
loose any more than four tons of soil per acre per annum, you
are on a break-even.
But let us look at the usual thing. In Australia, we lose about
27 tons of soil per cultivated acre per annum. You do a lot better
than that in America, however. Where you grow corn, you
can loose as much as 400 tons per acre per annum. While the
average may be twenty, it will go as high as 400 or 500 tons.
So we are not doing too well. In Canada, they are measuring
the humus loss, and that is about the same. There, they are
running out of humus. In the prairies, where they started with
good humic soils, they are now down to a mineral soil base.
Here is something that should be of interest to each of us.
For every head of population - whether you are an American or
an East Indian - if you are a grain eater, it now costs about 12
tons of soil per person per year for us to eat grain. All this loss
is a result of tillage. As long as you are tilling, you are losing. At
the rate at which we are losing soils, we don’t see that we will
have agricultural soils within a decade.
Apart from the soils that we lose directly by tillage, we are
losing enormous quantities of soils to what is called desertification.
In the state of Victoria, in Australia, we lose 800,000
acres this year to salt. That means not only a loss of soils
which are tilled, but also a loss of the soils that we don’t till.

Deforestation Causes Soil Loss

Now the main reason for disappearance of soils is the
cutting of forest. And almost always the cutting of the forest is
remote from where the soil is lost. That is, you can do nothing if
your soil starts to turn salty here, because the reason lies way
up the watershed, maybe a thousand miles away. We are now
starting to get soil salting in humid climates in Australia. It is
becoming a "factor out of place." It is no longer only occurring
in deserts. It occurs in quite humid, winter-wet climates. How
did this happen?
It is not a simple process, but it is easily understood. The
rain, as it falls on hills and penetrates forests, has a net downward
transfer. If we remove forests, we now have a net evaporation
loss. Forests transmit clean water downward, and they
release clean water into the atmosphere. This net downward
transfer carries with it the salts which are an inevitable part of
that additional four tons of soil per acre which is produced
from breakdown of rocks. These salts normally travel on out in
deep leads. They are not surface systems. Fresh water runs
from the surface and soaks down. Even in humid climates, we
have much saltier water at depth than we have on the surface.
This is because the trees act as pumps to keep the leads low.
If we cut the trees down, the deep leads rise at a measurable
rate, and they are rising measurably across enormous areas
in America, Africa and Australia. When they are up to about
three feet below the surface, the trees start to die of "phasmids."
And when they are up to about 18 inches below the surface,
other crops start to die. When they reach the surface,
they evaporate and the soil visibly goes to salt. Then the Australian
government starts providing free pumps to farmers and
they start pumping out the salt water. Where can they discard
the water they pump out? Big problem!
The next step is to have concrete delivered, so now water diverted
from the rivers soaks into the soil while they are pumping
the salt water off to the sea. And they have to be doing that
forever. You now want a thousand thousand pumps. At the
same time that the government is supplying pumps to farmers,
it is leasing additional wood-chipping licenses to the multinationals,
who are doing very well. They are selling pumps on one
hand and wood chips on the other. It is a happy circumstance
for some people, but a catastrophe for the Earth.
Most people, however, aren’t doing very well at all. So we are
losing soils and increasing desert at a simply terrifying rate.
And that is without any plowing for agriculture. You ask if the
analysts of the multinational firms are aware of these problems?
No, they have degrees in economics and business management
and all sorts of irrelevant areas.
Mining is also a major factor in salting on a local basis, and
has accounted on its own for the loss of whole hardwood forests
in areas of Western Australia and no doubt elsewhere.
Mining brings up a lot of residues which are evaporated on the
surface.

Highways, Cities and Wells

The largest single factor in Britain causing loss of soils is the
construction of highways. It is also a major factor in America. In
Britain, I think that there is a mile of highway for every square
mile of surface. And highways are being rapidly extended on the
supposition that you will never need the soil and that highways
will enable you to increase energy use. Highways account for
the permanent loss of soils, as do cities.
Cities are located on the 11% of very good soils of the Earth.
Canada is an interesting example, where cities are liable to
obliterate the top quality soils, without any other factor, and in
this decade, leaving agriculturalists to move on to less sustainable
situations. At the same time, we are calling for at least sustained
production, and in some cases an increase of production,
on the soils that remain. As the loss of agricultural soils is
largely due to the excess application of energy - mechanical energy
and also chemical energy - then the fact that we are attempting
to sustain productivity on the remaining soils means
that the rate of loss must increase due to the fact that we use
more and more energy on less and less surface.
Other factors work for loss of soils. In the arid southwest of
this country, there is a sort of cut and run agriculture in which
you sink a bore [drill a well] and pump up semi-saline water to
annual cultivated crop. You keep this up for four years. By then
the surface is heavily mineralized and you must seek another
area and sink another bore, which results in a sort of carpeting
destruction. You can see it. There are two or three good years,
then returns fall below economic level. The soils are usually
glued together with carbonates and they give up. pH rises by
about two points per annum. You might start at pH 8 and rapidly
go to pH 11. It is then that you pull out.
PDC Pamphlet I, An Introduction to Permaculture, Page 4
We look now at wind deflection of soils. This has brought
about failure of the inland soils in America. There are soils blowing
out to Los Angeles and falling as red rain. Soils from Central
Australia marginal areas fall on the cities as a sort of finely
diluted mud, measurable at 12 tons per acre per day. Wind is
a major factor in soil loss. The drier it gets, the more wind becomes
the factor that we look to.
We don’t have to look any further than the soil, or any further
than the forest, to see a finite world. I think we can say
with confidence that we don’t have a sustainable agriculture
anywhere in the world, or a sustainable forestry.

Water

Let us move now to water. Even a decade ago, somebody
said that water would become the world’s rarest mineral. The
water table everywhere is now falling rapidly. These are very ancient
systems we are playing with. Many of them are about
40,000 years in evolution. No longer is there any way you can
get cheap surface water. If you could, Los Angeles would buy it
and use it. A major factor in this is the way we seal everything
over in cities and towns. We don’t get any recharge of soil water.
We seal over huge areas with highways. We don’t return
water to the water table at all. As soon as water is in a river or
creek it is gone. It is on its way to the sea, or it is evaporated on
the desert salt pan. The flowing river is not really a very useful
thing. It is on the way out.
There are two very critical areas for water. One is within cities.
The other is on the edge of deserts. Both are running into
real trouble. Encroaching deserts are killing some millions of
people now in Africa. It is visible from the air as migrations of
herds and people out of the Sahara.
One of the dangers has been the long term disposal of atomic
waste in the deep waters. Some of these are beginning to
seep through the Sacramento Valley. You had better start
counting the radioactivity coming in the water table in Maine,
New Jersey and California, and, I have an idea, in lots of other
places as well.
Industry has simply used deep bores to put dangerous
wastes into the water table with the result that large areas of
this water table have become unpotable. I think Boston has
ceased to use its ground water. And you’ll never be able to use
it again. There will be no way you will ever clean that foul water.
In many towns and cities now, water is running at 700 parts
per million dissolved salts, which is at about the limit of the tolerance
of the human kidney. At 1100 parts per million, you
would experience fainting, accumulation of water in the tissues,
all sorts of problems. Most deaths from that commonly occur
in the cities, in Perth and Adelaide in Australia, in Los Angeles.
In all these areas, perhaps, we shouldn’t be using water for
drinking. It’s ok to shower in, although in Atlanta, the chlorine
alone almost asphyxiates you when you shower. PCB’s are a
cause of sterility. I think about 20% of American males are now
sterile by age 20.
The fact that water is becoming a scarce resource is manifestly
ridiculous, because roughly half a million gallons fall on
this roof right here annually. But you could be very short of water
here soon unless you build tanks or surface storages to
catch the water.
Now, of course the loss of trees has a pronounced effect on
this increased scarcity of water in cycle. The water is not cycling.
We are losing water on the surface of the Earth. I think
that 97% of water is locked up at all times and only 3% goes
into any cycling at all. We are reducing that very rapidly.
There are yet other factors. There is industrial pollution.
There is a desperate scramble for energy sources, whether
they are wood, coal, oil or atomic power. These are all really
dangerous things to use in terms of the general life system.
We are going toward real trouble. The danger is mainly in the
end result - what comes out of the process, what goes up the
chimneys. But in the case of wood, it is also the fact that you
destroy a tree.

By Bill Mollison - An Introduction to Permaculture

Wednesday 19 October 2011

Youth and sustainable agriculture

Lilifontein school permaculture project, Cinsta.

 Youth and agriculture

Our friend Kerry, knowing what she did about perm culture and having made contact with a local school in her area decided to set about establishing a perm culture garden at the school. Lilifontein school cinsta, is known to be quite forward and innovative in  extra activities provided by the school for the children. One of these extra innovative activities is spending time with Kerry in her on site perm culture garden, and getting in touch with ground issues.

This is one of the first main stream schools that I’ve heard of that offers anything remotely to do with practical sustainable agriculture. This for Kerry was one of her greatest reasons for starting the project, that and a love for nature and care for the earth. Once a week for a period of about forty five minutes to an hour, the learners from their respective grades go to join Kerry in her garden, and learn about the sustainable agricultural practices of permaculture gardening.

Permaculture is not just about gardening and growing plants and food. Its about growing sustainable futures for whole communities through environmentally conscious design principles. Implemented in housing designs, in zones incorporating large scale farms to small apartment balconies. Permaculture is the solution to so many issues that we inhabitants of mother earth seek answers too. In this thriving school in Eastern Cape, learners are being taught the answers to a sustainable future.

What the children learn in these short periods with Kerry is invaluable skills and information, practical and theoretical knowledge of how to create and sustain their own food, income and livelihood. To grow food organically without pesticides or petrol chemicals you need a good understanding of the soil and earth organisms that you working with. This is where your biology comes in, for the understanding of the earthworms to the millions of microbial organisms and how they function in their environment is how good healthy food is grown. Geographically one needs observe the soil structure, feel whether its clay, sand or silt and then work with your biological understanding to create the optimum environment for your produce. Geographical knowledge teaches the know how of site mapping, working out co-ordinates for designs with relation to weather patterns, gradients and seasons. Maths for technical proportions, art for ascetics, history for past crops grown in the area and ground economic skills for transporting your produce from earth to plate.

This is just a basic idea of how fundamental sustainable agriculture can be to an aspiring school and innovative learners concerned with their environment. What’s surprising is that most people seem to think agriculture is not an art, or not a science and perhaps herein lies the crises with modern day agriculture. Over the last sixty years the injection of black gold or oil has transformed small scale hands on and family run farming into machine driven, oil guzzling agricultural industry.  It has created a great separation between the earth and the eater. The oil is rapidly running out, and our consuming ignorance about this limited resource is fast becoming apparent. We have grown such a dependency on oil that without it, life as we know it would be unrecognizable.

At Lilifontein school they have seen the importance of teaching the children the skills they need to learn today to save tomorrow. The model set up at the school is simple and almost all of the resources needed to set up the garden have been donated by parents or sourced free from the surrounding farms and area.

After the garden is designed, created and planted, the produce grown can be used by the children or sold for income. A small turn over of capital would be used to buy more seeds, tools or build a small chicken coup or stall from which the daily traffic of parents could purchase fresh organic vegetables and eggs grown and supplied by their children. The turn over of a school stall would benefit learners interested in economics and business, and budding entrapaneurs could fine tune their ideas with social market days and home made products like jams and dried fruits. All these elements of a communal school garden encourage a sense of community and bring people together.

These are simple skills all people benefit from. Real skills to provide them with the tools they need to live in a healthy society. Empowering them with the knowledge they need to fulfil their most important needs as people. Shelter, that is consciously designed to be integrated harmoniously in nature, good food and a healthy society, to share, work and live in. All these needs should be normal agenda for children to grow up learning, if not taught by their parents, then the institutions we call schools. With these skills people would never feel they could not feed themselves, house themselves and live in a sense of community with others and nature. Nature is abundant, and there is more than enough for everyone, provided the right attitude and management of the earth is encouraged through projects such as these.

Kerry’s work is a shining example of how we can make positive and necessary changes in our schooling systems. Changes that will benefit not only the learners, but the future generations and our home, planet Earth.

It’s a great job to have at the school, and Kerry would love the help of any interested parents to join her in furthering the school permaculture project. Any parent or interested teacher could start a project like this at any school. Good luck and green on!

The Garden of Plenty

“The sun never sets on your work, and every hour of the day we are on the line with our bodies. Take heart, you are never alone, and you are building. Every week, there are more permaculture courses than I have given in my life time; you have made me irrelevant and for that I am grateful.

If you keep teaching, as you have been, your numbers will grow exponentially, and you will be a force in all areas of life. A force for common sense, goodwill, humane value, positive solutions, earth care. It is the only thing in life worth doing; all else is worthless. As you go to sleep every night, think of your friends, who may just be waking up; as I often think of you. When at times, you are impeded, frustrated, or seem to be getting nowhere, remember at the same time many of us are advancing elsewhere. In total, we always advance, always learn.

Many of us are academics, many of us are tribal. As a group, we stand as translators between modern and traditional knowledge, and combine both. Value all cultures and languages, they encode the memories and values of all people. Our strength lies in our unique attributes, joined by our shared values. We are of equal value between ourselves, deserve equal respect.

Words by Bill Mollison, from his autobiography ‘Travels in Dreams’

Just recently I started reading Bill Mollisons autobiography. It has been so inspiring, and given me even more enthusiasm, even more compost atop our forest of dreams in fruit trees. Ever day Justin and I wake facing the rising sun, up we get to go replant the Garden of Eden.

We have been super busy the last while, its left me little chance to up date our forward farming blog, so I felt with so much going on it would be great to catch up with everyone.

About three weeks ago we starting planting a food forest in Hogsback, Eastern Cape. Still breaking out the back door of winter, we have had to contend with some heavy frosts, strong winds and a few freezing nights. The farm is a back packers called Terra-khaya, and the owner Shane was inspired to go ahead with the food forest after meeting us in July and watching a Jeff Lawton DVD on growing a food forest.

So with over 150 fruit and indigenous trees and other plants to go in a space of 35 meters squared, on a steep cleared slope on the side of a heavily invaded black wattle forest, we have our work cut out for us. And what wonderful work it is, and what an incredible place to be planting our first (of many) food forests. Loki went to Queenstown to collect most of the fruit trees, apple, pear, apricot, quince, mulberry, figs, peach, almond, young berries, goose berries, plum, pomegranate, chestnuts, along with a magical melange of flowers, groundcovers like mint, geraniums, cow peas and creepers, shrubs and herbs!

We have been super blessed to have the help of two of Shane’s staff, Patrick and Jacob, they have been amazing in landscaping and shaping the slope. Giving us some more muscle to move and create this amazing space. We are so high up here surrounded by the formidable Amatole mountains, that some days we become completely engulfed in clouds, and it seems as if we are in a space less cottony white world.

Before coming here we had the privilege to meet a really inspiring lady named Kerry and her beautiful blue eyed baby boy named blade. Kerry has spent the last while teaching permaculture at a local school in Cinsta, near East London. She has created a garden in the school grounds where the children can come and learn about permaculture. This could be the most valuable thing they learning in school. From the ground all the way to the market environment. This ideal system encompasses such a diversity of life skills, from sustainable agriculture to commerce and trading, Its surprising that not all schools have a small model garden to learn from.

We are so happy to be able to do this project, to learn and to teach and share what we know. Hope everyone is well and continuing to explore what we have been shown.

Send news

Love and light

Gervaise, Justin and Baloo

Friday 5 August 2011

This is a little piece I was asked to write for the upcoming bio-dynamic newsletter. It gives a little more detail as to what we up to and what we wanting to create.
Agricultural Alchemy, the re-birth of earth

Times are changing. We see it and feel it at every farm we visit, doors being opened, ideas being exchanged, a new era of agriculture is dawning.

My best friend and partner, Justin and myself have been on the road about a year now, starting in tropical East Africa, Tanzania and Kenya and now travelling around South Africa. Our exploration has been about sharing and networking with the organic, biodynamic and permaculture farms who, as we have called it are endeavouring to forward farm. We recognized whilst running an organic farm and spiritual awareness centre in Tanzania how these ’Forward Farms’ are creating a model for which society as we know it now could grow towards in these precarious times. The practices and concepts on such farms are by no means new theories but are timeless ways of living ethically and holistically as true custodians of the earth. When was it that the majority of people on this earth forgot about their intrinsic relationship with nature and turned away from these timeless ways of being, and what does this mean for our present time here on Earth?

Well as far as events occurring presently on the planet, I’d say we’ve got ourselves into quite a mess, but is this not perhaps the climax end to an era of destruction and the beginning of a new way? We are in the change, and we are the change, together and now is when we can create the future, and what we have been witnessing is an inspiring leap back to the re-birth of earth. We saw the potential and at the same time the isolation many people feel embarking on their timeless organic journey, their reconnection to the natural rhythm. So after completing a permaculture course in March with the inspiring Avice Hindmarch and Hazel Mugford we thought we could go and share our energy and knowledge with people on a similar path, hopefully connecting farms and folks of like minded aspirations in a community or network of another kind. We have been travelling and staying on farms in a WWOOFing manner, that’s food and accommodation for a days work, this is also similar to old kibbutz style farming system in Israel. Some farms we have stayed a few weeks to a month on, some we have just visited for the day, all have been joyous to be where they are and doing what they are doing, to be part once more with the rhythm of nature and a witness to the abundance of the earth.

From fire ceremonies, to planetary formulas, full moon compost singing and whispering to hard working worms, the magic of the universe is re-igniting the stoic coals of lost hearts, the powers of observation and patience are paying off and slowly once again we can rejoice in the innocence and splendour of harmony with mother earth. The younger folks are tired of the superficial attractions of a crumbling society and more often are returning to the country, to set down roots and raise families in the older traditions of community and caring, and of relationship with the earth. We too long to care for a piece of earth, to grow and nurture a family surrounded by the love of a healthy, abundant environment and a food forest that will feed many generations to come.

We would love to hear from all you bio-dynamic farmers out there, any feedback and ideas are always welcome. If you interested you can go and view our blog
www.forwardfarms.blogspot.com or email us at earthstomper@hotmail.com

Societies disappearing soil


To plough or not to plough, so sad to see the soil go. Blown away on the whispers of wind or washed far from it’s source into the rivers and beyond to the oceans. No good will precious top soil do swimming about in the Indian ocean, feeding fish full of pesticides and fertilizers, and creating an even bigger disturbance in the ecology and fragile under water environments of reefs and swaying kelp gardens than on the land.

So why is the soil not staying put, not sticking to where it comes from and doing what its suppose to? Why is it being licked clean of the bed rock and ground and whirled about in the atmosphere, lost? At the moment, the earth is left gripping tentatively to the remaining percent of fertile ground on which all food for all the hungry mouths of the world need to be feed from. Strangely enough at the same time, society is left clinging hopelessly to the last remaining moral fibres that maintain a degree of peace on our hurly burly planet, however these too seem to be whirling about on the wind. Presently practices of commericial farming such as mould board ploughing and the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides are rapidly decreasing that fertile percentage and coupled with societies obscene addiction to consumerism, how will all those hungry mouths be fed and how will society sustain itself?
Its criminal really, because behind the glossy magazine advertisments and the world wide campaignes of humanity, the feeding of the people of the earth has been taken over by money hungry corporates and not agricultural intellectuals. Is it a surprise then, when I suggest that the quality of food being produced is hardly a scratch on the amounts being consumed. Quality can not be made up by quantity, and the quality of your produce is directly related to your soil, to the earth your crops are growing on. Taking it a step further we observe that we often think of food as mearly fuel to feed our physical bodies with, but often neglect to realize the effects of certain foods on our mental and energetic faculties and how the old saying of ‘you are what you eat’ has strong scientific holdings.

When we eat something, it breaks down and becomes assimilated into our bodies, effecting all our organs, cells and life fluids. The matter breaks down but the chemical compositions stay as is and are absorbed into our beings. This means that if you eat something that has been fattened with hormones, treated with pesticides or herbisides, or injected with anti-biotics you too will absorb these compounds… Knowing this, is it still a surprise that thousands apon thousands of humans are affected by the same ailments that the foods they are consuming are being treated for? Not only does such foods contain chemically destructive compounds but energetically carry the negative vibrations of the conditions it was grown or farmed in. It is in a similar way saying what goes around comes around, and if you are comfortable supporting mass feedlots, animal cruelty and the pilage of the earth, you will start to attract those very things unto yourself.

The vitamins in organic plants not only maintain the health of the body but, they neutralizing the highly reactive and electrically charged molecules known as free oxygen radicals, which are potentially active disease fighters as well. Free radicals are produced by air pollution, radiation, ozone, tabacco smoke, pesticides, animal and dairy fats and by normal body metabolism. They can reprogramme genes, and have been implicated in more than 60 diseases, including cataracts, rheumatoid arthritis, heart disease and cancer. Because they have lost an electron, free radicals have a powerful tendency to bond to other molecules, including genetic material, resulting in an alteration of a cell’s genetic code. That’s the science and simply without all the scary words it’s saying, you are what you eat!

This is not meant to scare you, it’s to wake you up, to make you realize that your diseases, your ailments are all of your choosing. And in realizing this you will also realize that you have the power to change what you eat, and heal yourself and your family completely. To do this we have to go back to the beginning, and the beginning is the soil on which we stand together. The forgotten Self and Soil, the most important corner stones of any healthy functioning society. Caring for your self is not just skin deep, it is a true inner nuturing that incompases your physical, mental and spiritual self. In that care we find compassion, for ourselves, for other beings and all creatures that live on this earth. Only then can we attain harmony and balance with the natural rhythm and realize the importance of caring for the earth, ourselves and each other. First Slow down.

The way society has lost its structure is very alike the disappearing soil structure. Today it is just possible to care for your immediate nucular family, outside that isolated nucleus is a battlefield of competition and war far. We have lost our sense of community and care amongst all fellows and further intensifies our feelings of solitude and desperation. Its impossible these days to find the quality time to fullfill all aspects of family, work and recreational life, all of which would in a healthy society be shared responsibilites but now, fall solely on both or most times one of the adult figures shoulders. Life, one would say is being leeched, everyone is in a rush, getting as much out of their time as possible, and why is that a bad thing?

Well its not, but after a while such a system will collapse, it will lose it’s lustre and become a dead thing. Much can be done, but with how much care and consciousness is another question. We can look at the soil and now compare, at how the precious top soil is sapped of all its organic matter, is drowned with chemicals and pesticides and all the living organisims imperative to healthy soil are destroyed. These atrocious practices have been carried out in order to harvest maximum produce at minimal risk with as much speed as possible. In this way the quality of produce is lost, the soil is left mutilated and as with life too, the faster we seem to go, the sicker we become.

So now you know, and you know you have the choice. Support organically grown local produce. It may appear a bit more expensive now, but if you understand that the world runs on supply and demand, the more people supporting organic farming the cheaper and more accessible it will become. This is a real investment, take care of your health now, be conscious about what you consume and avoid dis-ease later.

Green backpackers

For a while we’ve been rolling, collecting no moss and encouraging ourselves through the backdoor of winter. We have halted briefly along the remaining section of the Garden Route at some places that attracted our attention and again fuelled up on the inspiring stories and events that see us through each day. We heard of three backpackers who all were adopting ecological and ‘forward farming’ principles to their environments and encouraging conscious green thinking to their patrons through the nature of their establishments, so naturally we went where the going was forward and the idea’s were green.

Our first stop was Wild Spirit Backpackers in Natures Valley. We arrived in the wet windy night (seems a trend with us) and were greeted by a blazing fireplace and the friendly folks who dwell there. I had phoned earlier to make a reservation and I was convinced over the line by Jared that we should most definitely join them for dinner tonight. “Nut roast” he declared, “the finest you have ever eaten”. He had so much conviction in his voice about that nut roast that it felt as though he had some sort of spiritual affiliation with it. Well Jared turned out to be spot on about the dinner that evening, it was quite simply divine. Jenny the owner, matriarch, head chef and manager of Wild Spirits for the last 32 years had made it herself, and one could taste the love and care baked into it, like most things in the place. It turned out Justin had been there before, about ten years ago with Tristan and some other monkey punks probably round about Plett Rage, its almost a miracle the place is still running after that whirlwind swept through, even more it is thriving and seems to be acquiring an unmissable status in the backpackers choices.Jenny runs Wild spirits also known as Khoinania with her husband and her daughter Ola and a team of ’Earth Angels’ who arrive from time to time and help care for the place and have some nurturing themselves. They have embraced environmental issues like water awareness and recycling in a well thought out eco-centre on site. Here visitors can come and learn about recycling waste and water and perhaps even turn their hand at making some of their own African ornaments out of waste plastic or old car tyres. By each water outlet is a reminder of water shortages and how to conserve water in the area by using their ‘Bongi’ bucket system to save water. The vibe was relaxed but enthusiastic and the forest was meters away from the viewing deck with enticing walks into the forest starting at the backdoor. Well worth a stop over if you in the area, and perhaps an early request can organize you one heavenly nut roast.

Ubuntu means community in IsiXhosa and it may well have been that a loving, laughing band of surf crazy nature folks came to Jeffreys Bay and thought well here’s a fine place to make like a community… Its not exactly a community in the sense of people staying for prolonged periods of time together, well apart from some of the staff that intended to be passing through and ended up becoming part of the ubuntu and the surfing aura that surrounds J’bay as it is better known. And as one looks over the world famous super tubes waves from the balcony and takes in the easy going vibes of a mid week morning its easy to see why they stayed. Not only are they providing a quality service with their comfortable accommodation and lush relaxation Zen gardens but doing it with the environment in mind. By encouraging guests to utilize the different recycling and worm composting bins and observing the need to be water wise with slogans and messages throughout they add a touch of green consciousness to the already water wild crew that pulls through. Ubuntu is stretching out and not only enriching this own circle of influence but are also part of a local community outreach programme. Justin got a surf in which left him happy and I found a little book and coffee nook just by super tubes that did a brilliant fair trade flat black with honey in 100% compostable cups made of plant fibres, Baloo’s continued successful meaty bones manifestations means he too is as the surfers say ‘stoked’.

This may be a good chance to pause and reflect on how two sweet vegans as ourselves could be supporting our little wolves growing carnivorous appetite for bones and flesh. Well that’s what he wants, that just what his growing canine body craves for and perhaps it seems a bit queer giving a little creature what he wants but instinctively he knows exactly what he needs to strengthen his bones, build good body muscle and have a healthy shiny coat. It’s not just because he’s a wolf, this is applicable to all dog owners, more to the point conscious and loving dog owners. A man called Tom Lonsdale wrote a book called “Growing your pup on raw meaty bones” it’s a detailed account of the multitude of reasons why commercial dog foods are creating sickness in dogs and why a return to a diet of raw meaty bones, rice and lentils and some raw vegetables is the way forward for any healthy pooch. Sad to say but majority of folks feeding their best friends on convenient commercial feeds are mis-lead by packaging and sometimes even the vets who recommend it. Alike many doctors who are given little tit bits on the side from pharmaceutical companies to prescribe their drugs, vets are recommending to you certain food brands not for lassies benefit as much as their own back pockets. An honest vet suggested Baloo’s diet to us, he has been feeding his dogs like that for many years and both are in top conditions. A natural raw diet is not only cheaper but also decreases the amount of wasteful packaging and harmful plastics moving through your home. There plenty other reasons why the commercial pet food industry is nasty news but if you really want to find out all the details they are out there.

Ok so in the Eastern Cape now and off to one of my and as it happens ol’ J.R Tolkien’s favourite spots in South Africa. Yip you may have heard of him, Mr Tolkien, he became very popular with a series of books he wrote inspired by the very place we headed for. If you guessed Lord of the Rings you would be right and Hogsback the place. Terra-khaya, after the Greek terra meaning earth and the African khaya meaning home has been established on a wattle invaded mountainside overlooking the three Hogs Backs. It’s a breathtaking view over the hackled horizon, one is so high up that on occasion people have stayed submerged in the clouds for the duration of their stay. Shane a successful former catering company owner from Cape Town, had a very special connection with the place and decided to create this heavenly earth home. Along with a business partner, they have over the last three and a half years cleared massive sections of wattle, built beautiful adobe, wood and recycled material structures that accommodate backpackers and volunteers, and established spaces for vegetable gardens and livestock. Shane prepares some of the most delicious gourmet meals around and runs one to three day horse trails through the magical Amatole mountain range. He is very knowledgeable about natural horsemanship and has formed a special relationship with each of his horses. He is in the process of creating a food forest, which hopefully we will be around to help him with, and is mulching and composting in preparation for spring vegetable growing. He has succeeded in creating a very comfortable and homely atmosphere, while at the same time being conscious of recycling, water, and energy matters. One thing we enjoyed greatly was the open air bath, which uses water from the passing spring and is heated by a wood burning donkey system. On a starry night, it is an experience that can’t be missed. We also had the very good fortune to meet up again with Lily, an amazing girl who was on the permaculture course with us in Stillbaai. She had come to wwoof at Terra-khaya and share some of what she had learnt on the course with the folks here. It keeps happening like that, making synchronized link up’s and creating a network of like minded people. Hogsback itself is a very special space, with some epic hikes to waterfalls and bathing pools. If you looking for a space to come home to and reflect, this is it.

Next up we go visit Justin’s family in Dordrecht, have a good play in deep African snow, and go into some of the finer points of commercial farming.
Look forward to your comments and ideas,

Blessings to ALL
LOVE

Gervaise

Tuesday 19 July 2011

Farm 119

Farm 119 June 11’
Our next forward farm experience begins on a small plot on the edge of the epic knysna forest. We find ourselves back tracking about 50 km’s to the George side of Knysna to an area known as Rheenendal, more specifically Bibby’s hook which has become home to our new host family. The Factor family, Kevin, Tanya, Mila and Luke moved from Johannesburg permanently in 2009 in search of a greener way of life beside the forest. Three years on roots and relationships are budding with the help of plenty Willing workers and enthusiasm.
The Factors are not so much farming as endeavouring to live lightly and with as little impact as possible on the earth. They are off the grid that’s electricity and water and sewage mains and use solar power to run systems in their home made partly of recycled materials. They are water wise and use rain water captured in rain tanks to drink, bath, wash dishes and water their plants. Fortunately two dams help out the plants in droughts but don’t serve for drinking purposes. So as you can imagine times of water crises have proved very challenging and the Factors value these often taken for granted resources even more so now that they’ve overcome the survival pioneer stage of habitation on farm 119. From the stories of the early days of the whole farm flooding out with mud baths up to knee deep everywhere and then droughts where you not sure if you can sacrifice your precious water for the luxury of a bath to nowadays where the flood water is channelled down a furrow into a big dam and with the extra few rain tanks in place and peace of mind during dry times makes living actually very comfortable. All in all it is a very good example of living lightly with all your creature comforts. So with most of the structural elements in place we could turn our efforts onto food production on their plot.
A short list of work done on 119Laying a path from front parking to the back stoepWell after all that and here we are slipping in mud and trying to build a clear path out of it. This involved setting in big sliced tree rounds and blocking out the mud with plastic, laying a border and filling in with stone for good drainage.
  
Clear, level and lay out path in fenced area around little damLots of digging to get a level playing field. Then searching the farm for worthwhile timber and hauling it back to site and laying the boundaries. Black builders plastic was cut and lain out to prevent weeds and finally suzi our baki got a ton of stone at the quarry and this was the topping for our garden path. The path also served as a boundary for the beds that we cleared between the path and the fence where juicy plants could be grown away from the ever munching mouths of the two oxen in the field. We cleared the kikuyu with a double dig system and also used a method of laying down cardboard on the grass and mulching thick on top with wood chip creating a haven for earth worms to multiply.
 
A thought for all wwoofers and their hosts… wwooof stands for willing workers on organic farms. Willling workers… who works just for food and accomodation? Someone who loves what they do and that doing may be organic farming. Organic farming… is it about not using chemicals; pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, fertilizers? Yes, we don’t use them nasties but I think our focus should be on what we do do… and how? So this is where we put our foot down as wwoofers and stopped mucking about like labourers and said lets get growing!…

Raised garden bedsOur first real major wwoof job was to make use of a grow tunnel installed with the intention of growing vegetables and keeping them safe from the baboons. A very small circle space had been established to grow vegetables but apart from that the space was underused. Justin set about creating a design that would maximise the space inside the tunnel, while materials were gathered to create soil to fill the raised bed boxes. The earth in the area has a clay consistency not exactly ideal for propagation so a major objective of the job was to create the perfect soil consistency for the tunnel. This meant hauling in massive loads of river sand, mulch or really well composted pine chips (really well composted as pine is quite acidic and can create un imbalance in the soil if not ‘cooked’ and composted for a while) and large amounts of horse manure. These elements mixed in correct ratios with the clay soil create a hummus rich, aerated and nutritious soil. Justin using scrap wood and imagination, puzzled together a well constructed design which would utilize the available space and be strong enough to hold the frames in place.
During the process we had three days of rain, which did little to help the process but also gave us the opportunity to observe how the water would flow through and out of the tunnel. It didn’t… Because of the high clay content of the soil the water does not drain away very easily and so would just sit in fat puddles in the pathways. A clever gutter system similar to a French drain was called for and so a gutter was dug below the paths, then covered with horse feed bags to keep the shape and covered with small stones for drainage so the water would flow out of the tunnel and into a mini pond dug on the backside. Above the small stones were laid a thick layer of fresh pine chips which made the path soft to walk on and also aesthetically pleasing. Boxes in, and path laid it was time to haul in the new soil for the plants. That process took plenty of muscle power and in the wet and rain, a sense of humour.
This new soil was a treasure and pleasure to work with, we observed immediate results with the seeds we were germinating, and so we were super excited to get experimenting with growing our own micro-greens. These gourmet micro gardens in the kitchen are excellent sources of nutrients. For fresh salads, stir fry’s and dishes that require vegetables, micro greens are number one. It’s super simple too, all you need is germinating trays, a good potting mix (bought or made) and some seeds you would like to sprout. This process is different from simply sprouting seeds, as your micro-greens actually form minute roots and put out there first ‘true leaves’. These little gems are busting with nutrients and minerals all you basically get in a fully grown version of the plant, just in miniscule. It takes up practically no space at all on a sunny ledge, and depending on what you sprouting takes about a week to nine days to harvest. Harvesting is easy and a quick snip of the scissors gives you handful of fresh produce, also because the growing process is so brief you need not ever use any harmful chemicals or pesticides, making it organic and safe for eating. Kids also love the process, again because its so quick they can observe with fascination the growth that occurs from sprouting to true leaves. We found that sunflower seeds are really successful, they germinate really quickly and put out large and substantial sprouts. They need little attention and can be ready to eat in about nine days to two weeks. If you keen to give this fun and super nutritious project a try, have a look online at micro-green for some more details on starting your own.

Planting trees.Two yellow woods and a kuerboom were planted on the bank of the little dam. One day their shade will offer a wonderful picnic area.
Another 6 kuerboom were planted as a erosion control on the bank of the main furrow catching water for the big dam.
As the soil is so dense with clay the trees had to be planted out of the ground in wire baskets to prevent them from root rot and drowning. This all takes time and we were working well into the full moonlight. Theres a shot of us together just as we finished with a little grit on our face and big grins shining through!
 
In-between all these wonderful projects we found time to really enjoy the amazing and mysterious knysna forest which was literally on our front porch. Only a three or so km’s walk away was the brilliant Drupkelders, a fast flowing crystal clear waterfall and bubbling river that ran alongside ancient cliffs and cave systems. We too had the incredible opportunity to do the five day Outeniqa hike through the knysna forest, staying over in some great over night huts and hiking through pristine deep green forests. We had a close encounter one night with a troupe of the illusive Knysna elephants. We had miss calculated the length of our walk to the next hut and so found ourselves enveloped in the deep night, surrounded by forest and the freezing winter air. We were very happy to finally get to our over night spot and rest, only to be up again at seven to start the next section of the hike. We had much luck in coming upon some interesting Ganoderma Applanatus mushrooms which are an African cousin of the Chinese medicinal mushroom the Reishi (Ganoderma Lucidum). These mushrooms are well known for their healing properties and have long been used in ancient Chinese medicine. The Ganoderma is known to be eaten by elephants and other jungle or forest dwelling species like the Silver Back Gorilla for self-medication purposes. These wise animals know which roots, fungi’s and plants to eat to heal themselves and maintain general well-being. We gave these little layered bark like mushrooms a go but avoided the fabled Fly Agarics that popped up in our path. A mushrooms appearance can sometimes be deceiving, so do be sure about which is what before cooking it up in the pot.

Fun guys growing fungi’sBack at farm 119 and Justin as usual had got Kevin really keen on growing some mushrooms. We managed to track down a source of spawn producers in the area and gathered up all the materials we would need for the project. This has to be one of Justin’s favourite things to do, growing mushrooms, even in the late hours of the icy evening, he’ll be there cooking up his substrate in a big oil drum under the stars like a crazy old shaman… hmmmm, for me something’s can wait till morning. We spent many happy hours stuffing little plastic bags full of substrate and spawn and making safe homes for the bags to be colonized. We left Kevin with a big supply and have packed the rest, along with a tray of sprouting sun flowers into the back of the bakkie.
It was fantastic spending time on Farm 119. It really gave us a chance to put into practice all the fun things we have learnt and share them with some folks who will benefit and continue to share with wwoofers to come. We again ate vegan style like kings, and enjoyed our time next to the magical forest. Baloo made some special four legged friends with Mushroom the Labrador and Fettuccini the small spotted number and also enjoyed playing amongst the forest folks.

We hope you enjoy the pictures we putting up. Some are contributions from Kevin, who really took some great shoots of us and what we did on the farm. I hope to set up a link to my face book so all the photo’s of the different farms can be viewed. We are now heading towards the Eastern Cape and the fantastic communities and forward farms around there.
Looking forward to your comments, questions and any contributions
Love, light and abundance
Gervaise and Justin

Tuesday 28 June 2011

Quarry Lake Estate

Hello everyone, I’m excited to write about the next farm we went to visit. This time we pointed our noses in the direction of Plettenberg Bay along the N2.
We backed our bags and hit the road. It took us about five hours to get there from Prince Albert, allowing time to stop and swim at the magnificent Meringspoort waterfall and enjoy the windy road through to Outshorn. It was really wonderful to see the sea as we rounded the last bend of the Outiniqua pass and breath in the salty sea air all the way down to the coast. Our hosts are the loving and dynamic Italian husband and wife team of Lello and Lisa Incindiario and their two super spunky (styling funky monkeys) children Ilaria and Lorenzo. Sure we were in for another feast of delights at their grand farm, Quarry Lake Estate.

The farm is about 14 km’s outside Plett in the direction of George. It borders on the Bitou river and lush indigenous

 forest. They have been there about four years, moving from the busy city life, an established array of businesses and a large family home in Johannesburg. After a few life changing events, Lello decided the country and farm was more embrassing of their spiritual and holistic life. They have not however slowed down as one may think when moving to the country. Infact there are so many things going down on this fantastic farm it was hard to keep up. Coupled with Lello;s extraordinary energy and enthusiam the farm is moving forward at a rapid pace.
The Incendiarios are vegetarian, Lello is vegan and some what of a culinary wiz, so its no surprise that they grow and sell their own organic vegetables. It’s a super large scale operation, as they are not only supplying themselves and the weekend Harkerville market, but Pick n Pay and other green distributers too. Lello’s secret to this organic success is his wife Lisa’s love for horses. Eh? Yes as read on you will see the symbiotic harmony that occurs between all operations going on at Quarry Lake Estate. However I’ll briefly ellaborate here, the soil was hardly ideal for the kaleidoscopic array of foods Lello wanted to grow, so he had to create his own. His top tip here was mulch, mulch, mulch and horse manure and then some more mulch and then when you done with that do it again. He also creates his own mulch and compost, chipping alien vegetation on the property and leaving it in massive piles to heat and compost. Big worm farms along with many other beautiful wooden pieces, furniture etc are created in the woodwork area, which is next to the metal work forge. So altogether with the manure, magic mulch, worm tea and dedicated hands of the Malawian staff, the vegetable rows, neatly composed and lovingly grown, are a site to behold.

We arrived at a very exciting time, almost ideal for myself, as the first Land Art site Specific Show was being held in Plett, and Lello and his Viking metal forger Farnie decided to participate. Lello which rhymes with cello is quite alike the instrument, whimsical yet solid, demanding attention and fulling the space with energy, so this Land art expo was a chance for him to go big and go wild and play with his super fun farm tractor to create the piece. Together with Farnies eye catching medieval art the installation called “fields of wisdom” was bound to be a hit. So off they went, raging into the middle of Lisa’s green oat field, with bags of saw dust, a ten ton wisdom table and an intension to make people more aware about planting trees.

That too was one of Lello’s top tips, plant trees, plant trees, you can’t go wrong planting trees, plant some more tree’s. I reckon it should be a law that every human on this planet must plant at least twenty trees a year, prisoners should spend their incarceration planting forests, and above every dead body a tree should be planted… Think about that just a moment please. Imagine every cemetery was a green fruiting forest. Imagine instead of cutting down a tree when someone dies and burrying it, imagine planting one for their departed bodies to feed on. THE WORLD WOULD BE A MORE BEAUTIFUL PLACE! Surely, instead of tombstones there would be cherries and pomegranates, and blossoms would fall apon the forest floor where the remains of your loved ones once were...
Any how just a thought. And a very good one for that matter, infact Lello has even turned it into an opportunity to give someone a gift, for example the birthday of a loved one, the birth of a child, plant fifty tree’s. Could there be a better gift them the preservation of life giving trees on this earth. Even you, you could tomorrow in your lunch break go down to the nursery and buy yourself a tree to plant. Make it a really special one, perhaps a fruit you love eating and plant it somewhere you love to go. Sounds good. If you one of those extraordinary people who plants trees, you are amazing and thank you.


So back on the farm, this very special place of peace, it's lovely inhabitants and all the wonderful goings on there. Once again we ate like kings all the beautiful produce from the farm, and again we felt the awesome connection and vitality one gets from being close to the foods we eat.

Many thanks to Lello and his amazing family, you all made us feel so at home and so part of your extraordinary adventure, and we will continue to plant trees.

Saturday 21 May 2011

Tortoise Back Farm

Delicious. A special quality of timeless grace and the silent poetic memories of a bygone era. This was our experience on the beautiful Tortoise Back Farm (TBF) owned by the most gracious and warm Brett Bard.

Brett has owned and energized the farm with his special touch and green fingers for the past nine years. Along with help from David, the grounds man, Brett has created a place of abundance and fertility where before was over grazed and infertile earth. He has done this organically, using nil harmful pesticides or depreciating fertilizers and simply adding back into the ground with all the compost and horse manure and tender care that goes hand in hand with organic gardening. This is no small operation for two men, and it has been a labour of love and has taken not just physical energy but mental and emotional energy too, as organic farming is little understood and even less supported where old commercial farms still control majority farm land.
The farm lies in the Prince Albert Valley, a short distance from the spectacular Swartberg pass and about forty kilometers from Prince Albert. The valley is steeped in history and still breathes a sigh of a silent land that has been disturbed. We have witnessed a rebirth of earth on TBF and a preservation of the serene nature of the Karoo through the healing organic practices adopted here.
 
Brett "The Vet" is a heroic figure amongst the people of Prince Albert. Selflessly giving in order to come to the aid of any distressed or ill animal, he constantly gave of himself unto the community at large and was always available to assist projects and campaign in aid of creating more harmony and awareness of animal welfare. Brett is also an accomplished wordsmith and spokes person for Compassionable Farming, which aims to alleviate the suffering of cruelty and abuse to farm animals. The education we received on his farm was immense, and we hope to help spread awareness about the horrific conditions most farm animals are keep under. We also were enveloped in Brett amazing flair for food, his extraordinary taste in interiors, and his appreciation for fine music. Brett is a vegan and has inspired us to follow this path as far as possible. There is so many possibilities available to those of us wanting to heal our minds and bodies, for any of us wishing to cause less violence and cruelty on the planet and really it is just a matter of being informed. I think if half the people I knew realized what they were ingesting in the meats and dairies with all the hormones, antibiotics, steroids they pump in all the cows, pigs, chicken they would think twice before feeding it to their much loved children and themselves. The thing is most people just don’t want to know because they think that what they eat does not effect them, and it does enormously. We have seen the rise in cancers not only effecting the old but young, diabetes, obesity, depression, neurosis, lack of energy, hair loss, heart problems, cholesterol the list is endless! What we eat becomes part of who we are, to think that the fuel we put in our bodies has nothing to do with the way our minds and bodies function is absurd and the effects have long been hidden to the public because the money makers at the top of the massive agriculture industry would crumple if all the people out there woke up to what they are supporting due to what they were eating. You know what I mean, you see these sick people, people you love, maybe even yourself, you can feel it’s not right, so please don’t be blind be kind to yourself.

This is just the beginning and there is so much more to share. This is just a taste of where and what we are experiencing on our agriculture spiritual trans south African journey of awareness… ha ha. Enjoy the few pics I have put up, there are some of our new addition to the family, a young wolf hound named Baloo. Other pictures include Brett and his beautiful farm, the Prince Albert Market, and some of the incredible produce from Tortoise Back Farm and plenty of Justin hard at work, hand deep in the delicious soil.
Bless you all, love light and abundance

Monday 28 March 2011

Wild Olive Permaculture Design Course

We learnt so much over our twelve day Permaculture course on the Wild Olive Farm. Our facilitators, Hazel and Andrew Mugford and Avice Hindmarch were inspiring and brimming with knowledge. They were all so enthusiastic and energetic, which when digging a swale before dinner time with a motley crew, that were dreaming of their next delicious meal can really transform the situation.

Our group of budding permaculturalists was made up of a really colourful circus of people. We merged together by a strong desire to understand a better, more ethical and economic design system for being and existing in a harmonious relationship with nature and other surrounding elements. Some members of the group already had a farm or small holding, others were in the transition of moving from city to country side and some folks were quite happy to be starting small right on their front stoep. Some say Permaculture is common sense and one would have to agree, but common sense for those who already understand the nature of the outdoor environment and the glorious exchange between plants, animals and humans. Perhaps if we were all still connected to the natural seasonal cycles and the cosmic inter-play between earth, sky and planets our need to go on courses to relearn these principles of common sense earth dwelling would be unnecessary.

For the last stretch the majority of the worlds focus has been on industry and economics and has turned a damaging blind eye on the environment and the maintenance of the earth as a living organism. However more and more we see the fail harvest of distorted farmers and the torrential pollution which flows not only through the water ways and air but the minds of the people causing the destruction. We have seen the earth kicking back and lashing out in response to the abuse, the floods, the tsunamis, the earthquakes, the desertification, deforestation, dried up rivers, lakes, dams, infertile over grazed land, poisoned food and tasteless tomatoes and all to feed the money hungry, consumer driven societies of yesteryear.

Well one cant be afraid, it is fear that has driven this horrid greed campaign to start with. There is more than enough, the earth is bountiful and abundant and managed in a conscious fearless way we can make the shift we all desire. The only way is forward, and utilizing Permaculture principles, Biodynamic practices and Organic methods of living and farming, the earth will heal herself.

Every week around the world there are Permaculture courses going on, more and more people are rising up and moving forward and the movement is gaining strength and momentum, galloping onward towards a happy horizon. The old system is falling down and people are starting to look a bit deeper and observe closer what is occurring in our world.

Like our old friend Mahatma Gandhi said “One must become the change they wish to see.” And so we learn together on these inspiring courses how we can change, relearn and go forth and share this news of abundance that is starting to embrace us all.

So we are going forward with what we have been taught, and we wish to travel with it through our beautiful home country South Africa and share what we have learnt. We wish to be like the bees and pollinate as we go the places that we visit so we can all share and make some delicious honey.

Love and light and fertile flight

Gervaise and Justin