Organic Seed Alliance

I'd like to draw attention to an organization, the Organic Seed Alliance, not because it's new, but because they have been doing some amazing work in the last few years. And because they have a model for collaborative seed saving, education and advocacy that could easily be emulated by regions outside of the Northwest.

To give a taste of their ideology, I've copied this from their Vision Statement...

VISION: Seed is both our common cultural heritage and a living natural resource fundamental to the future sustainability of food production. Proper stewardship of our genetic resources necessitates not only its conservation, but careful management in a manner which allows seed to continually evolve with challenges of the environment, cultural practices of sustainable agriculture and the need to feed people. Through advocacy, collaborative education, advisory services, and research we work to restore and develop seed varieties for current needs while safeguarding invaluable genetic resources for future generations.

They have recently won a court challenge against the introduction of Round Up Ready Sugar Beets in the Northwest, which can be read about on their blog, seed broadcast. But most interesting to me are their publications, (which by the way have been licensed under the Creative Commons, allowing the information to be freely distributed and used, as long as no money is made by doing so). Their field guides on seed production are the most detailed, specific seed saving publications I have read, with truly good applied science and organic cropping techniques. Not only that, but they are an alliance, or collective, of organic farmers in a bio-region who organize to pool their resources, land, time and expertise to breed vegetable, herb and grain varieties that meet both the changing climate conditions, as well as the low-input techniques of organic food production.

Their model is participatory, re-engaging farmers in our once openly held seed heritage. To quote them again, on education...

In addition to this loss in genetics there has been a concurrent loss in the base of knowledge and skills necessary to properly steward and improve plant genetics in a ecologically and ethically sound manner. Farmers, once the primary seed stewards around the globe, have rapidly been removed from the seed circle - no longer participating in plant breeding or conservation. Only a few generations ago, the practices of on-farm seed saving and basic crop improvement were not only common, but necessary.

And their ethics incorporate social justice, environmental stewardship and food security through the advocacy of maintaining intellectual property in the Public Domain, and out of the hands of private or corporate ownership.

Organic Seed Alliance believes that as humans, we hold an important responsibility to steward resources in a manner that is just, equitable and recognizes the needs of current and future generations. We are working with farmers, breeders, lawyers and ethicists to develop a philosophical approach to seed development and stewardship that will include recognition of the valuable contributions of traditional agriculture and indigenous communities, promote farmer's rights to save and improve seeds, and support the long term integrity of the genetic resource of seeds. We believe this can be accomplished while recognizing and compensating for the investment of breeders, research and development.

We believe that the public good can integrate with commerce and that conservation can coexist with innovation. This approach will incorporate elements of the Open Source software movement, applications of the Precautionary Principle, and recognition of the value (social, economic, nutrient sustaining) of natural resources to future generations.

Chocolate and Collaboration

For the last three years we have been living in a conservative rural area, where the unemployment/ welfare and illiteracy rates are well over 50% (before the recession even). There's plenty of places like this, all across North America. We both came out here, from large centers of Environmental and Social activism, as an act of going to the "frontlines". At the time, I felt that if all the activists stayed clustered in self-affirming sub-cultures, that we would all end up preaching to the choir, so to speak. I had never lived in a rural area, and I had grown quite cynical about the effectiveness of my urban protests, boycotts and activism through selective consumption. I wanted to become a producer, at least of the majority of my own goods, but our ultimate goal was to start a micro-CSA. We knew that we could keep our costs down in a rural area, and have ultimately outdone our own figures, living comfortably on $100 a month (including rent, utilities, food, transportation, you name it). Granted, it is a very different life than I had once lived, but it is full of rewards I would not have otherwise found.

There is one undoubtedly necessary piece missing: community. I am quite satisfied with the practical aspects of our lifestyle, I would not easily go back to flush toilets, grid power, or anything less than fresh, high-quality, organic food grown by the output of my own physical labor. But I'm simply aching for some creative community outlets. I recently heard an interview with Frances Moore Lappe and she quoted a study done on the physiological effects of collaboration: it stimulates the same brain center as chocolate, a well known pleasure center of the brain. I have proven the inverse of this study, though experience, that social isolation is impoverishing, unhealthy and ultimately depressing. It saps my energy from the work I love to do in the garden. I have grown to realize that what we do out here is ultimately unsustainable without community, and that creatively working in collaboration has always filled my reserve of energy, rather than draining it.

Our original plans for a micro-CSA, growing a variety of vegetables, grains, meats, eggs and dairy products for just one or two families or individuals, would easily have supported our financial needs, and allowed us to make responsible choices in investing in the tools and machinery for growing food in a post-Carbon Climate Change context. In our plans, we gave ourselves two years of building our soil, and providing for our own needs first, while we put the word around in the local communities, mostly having to explain what a CSA is, and why it is a more sustainable model than a market food economy. We also gave our rural neighbors time to get used to us, used to new ideas and ways of doing things, (and there is no doubt that people were curious about us when we moved here), before trying, let alone accepting, these alternatives. We lived by example, and watched as the same cars drove slowly past our raising barns, grazing animals and growing crops of vegetables and grains; very few actually stopped to meet us, they just watched, and definitely talked (we heard some pretty amusing rumors about us, accidentally making their way back to our ears).

In other words, I do not feel that our expectations were unrealistic, we had a solid plan, a realistic idea of the amount of hard work it would require, and had scaled our income requirements to fit a very modest local interest in fresh, organically grown food, available at or below supermarket prices. But I am still at a loss for words to explain the utter lack of interest in what we offer. Anywhere else I have lived, we would have a waiting list. And this lack of interest is intimately tied to our social isolation, we simply have not met people who share our same concerns about the world, and about the future. Individual people have shown us kindness, done us favors (which we have enjoyed returning almost more so than the acceptance), and tried to make us feel welcome, but not one of them has been willing to collaborate with us. And that is the one thing we simply cannot do without, the one thing that makes our life unsustainable.

When I started this blog, it was my attempt to find that sense of community and collaboration over the internet. I wanted to explore the possibility of using virtual spaces to organize and activate, while remaining on the "frontlines", in the communities where alternatives are hard to find. I have found friends, and supporters through this blog and other online platforms, but I need to feel that the work I am doing every day is contributing to a larger social goal, not just maintaining our existence here, and that is hard to do "virtually".

I have only occasionally referred to the social aspect of our life here, partly because I am sometimes at a loss for words about it, partly because it sounds like a bit of a sad story, and I only want to share it publicly if it has some sort of point. And I suppose it is only just recently that I have put the pieces together, and fully understood the power of collaboration. Without community, we are constantly hobbled, unable to reach our potential. And it is really that: constantly striving to reach my ever growing and changing potential, that defines my purpose, my goal, my spiritual practice in life. Being hobbled for too long has begun to trick me into thinking that I cannot go any further.

Which leads me to a decision we have been ruminating over since winter, we're moving on from here. It's difficult to know when it is time to move on, but there's simply too much work to be done for us to be stagnating. I have used our three years here well, getting some serious gardening and animal husbandry under my belt. I have also gained confidence in my resilience, my ability to adapt, and in my great satisfaction in living an agrarian life. The cynicism I once held for the effectiveness of my actions on making a positive social and environmental impact has been transformed into resolution, courage, faith.

Where? We are going West, we are looking at certain areas from Oregon to British Colombia. But most importantly, we are looking for a community in which our skills and desire to work creatively, collaborate, and contribute to building a sustainable local food culture are welcomed, appreciated, and allowed to flourish. When? Next June is the goal. We have our garden and market garden this year to bring us through the winter, and time enough to organize the move, and begin to make contacts. The market garden was our last compromise to try and work within the established market food economy, and possibly influence it from within. The conventional farmers around here are skeptical at best, about organic production methods, and we hoped that our flourishing garden, high-quality produce, and low levels of disease and pests would give them a new impression. But those are mostly pipe dreams, and we mostly knew that already. In reality, the market garden is what we thought it would be, one big gamble. If we hit our luck, we will take the money and run.

Regardless, we are moving under our own steam, by bicycle. It will be a grand adventure, decompression time, a journalistic look into how climate change is affecting the land and agriculture, the best way to travel, and an opportunity that a dairy-maid hardly ever gets: a month of exploration with nary a bleating, clucking mouth to feed.

There is one place we have our eye on, the Slocan Valley in South Eastern British Colombia. They have some very inspiring community initiatives going on there. Including an Integral Forrestry Innitiative that sustainably manages a massive region of the local forest. As well as Canada's first Grain CSA in the Creston Valley. (This is just one of many sites and articles describing the Grain CSA, if the link eventually breaks, simply search under "Grain CSA Creston") This project really got me excited. In it's first year there were 200 shares sold, and 600 plus a waiting list for 2009, for local organic Wheat, Spelt, Kamut, Hulless Oats and Lentils. I have become particularly interested in the question of supplying regional grains, especially as more and more people are growing their own vegetables, but do not have space to grow grains. And in my own experience of growing and hand-harvesting our grains, it is a task more efficiently done with a community investment in small or appropriately scaled machinery.

We will continue to blog about the season of growing and preserving our food this year, but as you can imagine, our focus has shifted in many ways. Our eyes are on a broader horizon. And we invite you to continue following us on our next big adventure.

This summer's crop of organic bread wheat

Appropedia Needs You

Staying connected to the internet is a challenge in rural areas. Services are limited and expensive, and often the perfect site for a homestead is not necessarily provisioned with all of the services easily accessed by city-dwellers. In our case, we are far from agribusiness and the drift of gmo pollens or chemical sprays, which was a priority for us, and we are in an area with relatively affordable land. But the power and phone lines end 500 feet down the road. It was our intention to live off-grid, so this was not a hindrance, but it has been a challenge for us to find an affordable solution to connecting to the internet. Our only option for internet at home is satellite, which is really too expensive to justify itself, and we prefer to search for more community minded solutions. Gratefully, we found affordable public access at a local community center, only 7 miles from our home. We have been members here for over a year, and do all of our blogging and browsing (mostly downloading to read at home) and research from the community center. But with a busy gardening season, weather (we ride our bikes here), and various projects at home, our time online is limited, and it sometimes takes us a while to find all the great sites, blogs, wikis and projects that are springing up all over the net.

In January, we started to brainstorm about the wealth of information related to homesteading, city-steading, and low-impact living solutions we see on the net, and wanted to see it collected into a reference site, something like a wiki site where the various plurality of solutions to issues such as energy and food in a post-carbon world, could be compiled, and easily researched. We thought of starting a wiki site with our own skeletal topics, under the Creative Commons License, and inviting others to contribute their blogs and experiences. But I wondered whether there was a project like this already going, because I know how crucial the internet has been, as a research tool, in my own journey from an agriculturally ignorant city-dweller, and I know I'm not the only one. Well, this week I found that site. Appropedia! And it is set up as a wiki, completely open to editing and contributions. I have only begun to dig in, and have downloaded much to read at home. It looks like there are still plenty of gaps to be filled in, and it looks as though there is a very active team working hard on this site. I am looking forward to contributing our own little golden nuggets of survival skills in a post-carbon world, and I hope you do too!

A conversation on ecological sustainability: Part 2

In my post A conversation on ecological sustainability, I made these statements: "I no longer believe that over-population is the dominant problem, or even the root cause of many of our ecological crises. I firmly believe there is more than enough for everyone alive right now on this earth to be nourished, clothed, housed and enabled with dignified work. This is not an utopian ideal, but an ethical principle." I am aware that overpopulation is one of those controversial hot-topics, which is why I feel it is so important to return to this issue and keep churning it.

First off, by simple mathematical equation, arriving at a concrete number for the carrying capacity of the earth, no matter how large or small, requires a calculated footprint for each human being. If we take the current available arable land on this earth as a base, in order to calculate how many human beings can live on that land mass, we need to know how much land each person requires. So which standard of living do we use? When we first began homesteading, one reason we moved into an underpopulated rural area was because we thought that we needed 100 acres to homestead on a largely self-reliant basis, and these depopulating areas held the best chances that we would be able to afford a piece of land that size. In the three years we have been on a 100 acre parcel (10 ac cleared pasture, 90 ac wooded), we have found, through practical experience and meeting the majority of our material needs, that we need a lot less land. Really, 10 acres would almost be too much. Even with wood as our sole source of heat and cooking fuel, and harvesting wood for building all of our barns, fencing and sheds, we have only begun to thin 4 to 5 acres of bush that was clear cut 20 years ago. The trees we harvest are primarily quick growing poplar and fir, and they are not large, average diameter of 6-8", and at least half of the trees we used were dry-rot because the regrowth was crowded and had not been managed. So if we were harvesting our wood out of a sustainably managed woodland, with hardwood for fuel, we need only 2-3 acres, at most. As we develop more solar hot water and solar cooking technologies, we need even less. And this sustainably forested area could also serve as a source of grazing for goats and rabbits, wildlife habitat to shelter natural beneficials in the garden, and food sources such as bramble fruits, orchards and nuts.

As for arable land for gardens, grazing, hay and grain, we first thought that we would run out of room on the 10 cleared acres. And these unamended, unimproved, tired pastures were just enough to carry one dairy cow, a horse and some pigs and poultry, so our first approach was to improve the pastures to increase the carrying capacity. The real revolution for us was to change the kinds of livestock we carry. One dairy cow provides enough milk and dairy products for a large extended family, and without a sustainable community approach to dairying in this area, this one cow was consuming most of the land resources as well as our time and energy, and even with my best effort to use up every drop of milk, in reality, we were producing too much. In switching to goats as dairy animals, and grazing animals such as rabbits and ducks instead of the grain intensive pigs and chickens, we are now able to meet our dairy, egg and meat needs (including growing the grains to raise them) on less than half the land. So as we continue to improve pastures and soil, we can grow all of our food (except coffee, tea and salt) on less than 3 acres, in Zone 4b. The carrying capacity of this zone is just about equivalent to the marginal lands surrounding deserts, we have a 3-4 month growing season, and 8-9 months dormancy, trees grow slowly and pastures do not provide more than one cut in a season. It is the same in a semi-arid climate where the growing season after the rains is only 3 months, with the dormant dry season extending throughout the rest of the year. So in a temperate zone, we could easily decrease our footprint by half or more. A large majority of the land mass of this earth is in the temperate band, if these lands are managed on a sustainable scale, using very low-tech methods and traditional fuels and foods, I would suggest that one acre is plenty to support one adult and a child. If we then continue to innovate, improve and build soils, push back the deserts, and use the types of methods Bishop's Homegrown detailed, the potential is endless.

We also thought that we would run into water issues, even here with a large snow pack and heavy precipitation, because we moved on here with a shallow, hand-drilled well. The well consists of a 2" diameter pipe drilled down to about 25 feet. The water table is usually between 10-15 feet below the surface, but it replenishes slowly because it is only ground water. We are not tapped into any water veins or the fossil water 100" below the surface that our neighbors access. We have to manage our water usage, both in the summer if we go 3-4 weeks without much rain, and in the winter when the ground water and precipitation is locked up as ice and snow. We have often thought of drilling a deeper well, or of using water catchment to meet our non-drinkable water needs. We cannot irrigate the garden on this scale, and even meeting the water needs of the dairy cow began to drain our well, especially in the winter. We mulch the garden and build up water-retaining humus in the soil, and only water tender transplants. On this level, even without rainwater catchment, we use about 10 gallons a day to meet all of our water needs, including livestock, garden, laundry, processing our canned food, etc. Our shallow well only taps the groundwater in a small diameter around it, I would guess that our water footprint, in an area with heavy precipitation to be only 10 cubic feet of ground water. Mr. Fritillary farmed on the edge of a desert, and using permaculture and water management techniques such as heavy mulch, shade houses, etc, he was able to catch enough water for 6-12 months with 5 inches of rain off of a 112 square foot roof. Most semi-arid zones receive 5-10" of rain a year, so with the appropriate rain catchment and storage techniques, water needs can easily be met on the land scale suggested above.

So now for manufactured goods, materials such as metals that require mining, electronics and technology such as solar panels and wind generators. We do our best to make either life-time purchases or buy used goods. We spend well under $1000 a year on purchases such as electronics, bicycle parts, solar panels, generators, tools, grain mills, cookware etc. And that number gets smaller each year. We could easily meet our fiber, clothing and leather needs on the footprint given above. We do not purchase things that are considered "consumables" or pure entertainment. Local theater, arts, artisan crafts and the like are sustainable ways to fulfill our desire to express and entertain one another.

Our power system is on the same micro-scale. We meet our power needs, including powering a laptop, radio, mp3 player, cell phone, household appliances (including a fan in the summer), small power tools, lights and electric fencing on 1200 Watts a month. On this scale, designing and building a power system to meet household or community power needs are easily achievable. Villages in Africa are building their own wind generators out of "scrap" and bicycle generators to power their cell phones, laptops, radios, lighting, etc. The more localized the power generation, the more efficient, because power is lost the further it is pushed down a line. Google is beginning to source renewable power to run the large server farms that provide the Internet. By locating these server farms in appropriate places where there is a consistent power source like tidal, geothermal or wind/sun, we can sustainably build up the global communication network that the Internet provides. Access to the internet can be broadcast over radio-waves, requiring only simple receivers, and data can be stored on-line at these renewably powered server farms, eliminating the need for fiber-optic lines, tele-communication satellites and power-sucking desktop computers.

Transportation is a pretty easy issue to resolve, it just takes a lot of reworking, and restructuring the way we live, but it is technologically and practically possible for us to transport ourselves and our goods without the use of fossil fuels, with low-impact mining and manufacturing. For ourselves, we use bicycles as local transportation, even through our winters, and carpool trips to town a few times a year. But we are working on an electric bicycle design, using a tandem and a trailer, powered by a compact marine wind generator to keep the battery charged. With this bicycle we can comfortably carry 100 lbs in the trailer and 50 lbs on the bike, and travel 100 miles a day at a maximum.

We do not usually "boast" of these facts about our life because we are typically met with a combination of pity and aversion. But we live this way, and are comfortable, nourished, healthy, happy, fulfilled, we have friends and a great marriage, so as far as standard of living, I think we are very well-off. We work hard, but we are not breaking our backs. We live within restrictions, but we are not stagnated by poverty. We are not Luddites by far, and use the latest innovations in technology when they improve our quality of life without harming another's. These are ethical choices, at heart, but they are also practical solutions. It has been a kind of experiment for us to live this way, and because of what we both have learned, we also have a high sense of security and confidence that we are able not only to survive, but to thrive and contribute to our community under incredibly adverse conditions, including the climate disasters to come. I looked into the definition of pragmatism, because I know that I am no longer an idealist, since we have been living by and redefining the ideals that we only held in theory when we lived in an urban environment. By the definition below, I believe, if these kinds of labels really matter, that my approach to this issue has been entirely pragmatic.

"The goal of pragmatist theorizing is not to solve abstract philosophical problems but to attain knowledge of a concrete, social reality and to focus on the problems of actual experience. This knowledge and experience will then direct political action and social change: theory and practice are interrelated. Based on this experiential and practical foundation, pragmatists hold, among other things, that there is a plurality of values and meanings, that human action can better the human condition, and that there is a relationality between the experiencing subject and the experienced object."

So to re-state our belief that overpopulation is not the problem, to us, it is not a question of whether the solutions are out there, the question is whether those of us who have been used to a higher material standard of living are willing to make these changes before it really is too late.

In doing a basic google search for concrete numbers on the arable land available on earth, I found this page:

Surface Area of the EarthEarth has a surface area of 196,940,400 square miles, slightly less than a perfect ball with a diameter of 7913.5 miles (which is the mean diameter of the Earth - see "Prove it" under 103).

The surface area of the seven continents and all the islands of the world is about 57 million miles, while the total area of the six habitable continents (Antarctica excluded) is around 52 million square miles.

Including Antarctica , over one fifth of the globe's land mass is under water (oceans, lakes, rivers, etc.) or ice. This leaves about 45 million square miles of exposed land.

The human population on earth has crossed six billion. If we distribute all the exposed land evenly among all mankind, 133 people would have to share one square mile. What that means is that every single person on Earth, man woman and child would have close to five acres of land for his or her use. More precisely, each person would get 209,000 square feet of land, or a square plot of land 457 feet on each side.

Not all this land can be used beneficially however. A significant portion of the Earth's exposed land is unhabitable or cannot be used for any agricultural purpose. Large portions lie in the far north. Large portions are extremely arid. Large portions are very mountainous. In sum, only about one fourth of all the land on earth, or somewhat more than 12 million square miles, is arable.

Today, over half of the arable land in the world is in fact not under cultivation. Bringing the unused land into service in many cases would require huge investments of money and effort, and would do considerable damage to the environment. For example, only about 28% of the arable land on the African continent is used for growing crops. Immense tracts of forests or jungles would have to be cleared to bring the rest of the arable land on that continent to productive use.

Thus, only about one eighth of each imaginary plot of land distributed to each person is land which is under cultivation. In effect, each person has a piece of land about 26,000 square feet (a square 161 feet on each side or just a bit more than ½ an acre) at his or her disposal on which to grow all that he or she needs.

I believe that this is possible, and if our earth were being tended on an ecologically sustainable scale, we would be building soil and increasing the amount of arable land. By this I do not mean huge agro-tracts of monocrops, because these farms contribute to the loss of soil and arable land. I am starting to digress into another branch of this issue, so I will save the rest of this discussion for the next blog.

Encouraging change in your community

Well, I'm posting my responses back up as a new blog again because I would like to keep this conversation going. We had to take a few days to sort out how to respond back to the over-population theory, and I'll be posting more on that later this week. I also wanted to say thanks to Bishops Homegrown who really detailed a lot of the solutions that I only threw a passing reference to. But first off, I wanted to respond to Farmmom and Trapper Creek, fellow rural homesteaders who see a lot of the same things we see around us.

Farmmom and Trapper Creek, living out in the country as you both are, I am sure you see many examples of the devastating mismanagement of natural resources practiced in market-driven big-ag. And your own examples of low-input sustainable food production provide a stark contrast to this model. Because of this contrast, we often feel that we are living in a different world than our neighbors, which makes communication difficult because we lack a shared vision, and share only a few common goals, such as the notion of a continued quality of life for the next generation. But our notions of how to achieve that common goal is a wide gulf to cross. We greatly sympathize with both of your frustrations at being daily confronted with what seems clearly to all of us, not just a misuse of resources, but also an ethical issue. What Trapper Creek's cabbage growing neighbor does with his soil, water and crops affects all of us. It is painful to see that food go to waste, especially in the face of empty food banks, and the hungry children and families in our own communities. Every year that Prince Edward Island has a bumper crop of potatoes, the potato farmers collectively dump many thousands of tonnes of perfectly good potatoes into the ocean just to keep the price up. They report this fact on the local news in the Fall, and at the same time, the local food banks are broadcasting public service messages asking for donations to meet the high demands of the Christmas season and winter months.

I believe that a few of the farmers and food banks started to work together, and the food banks would accept bags of potatoes, but most food banks have restrictions on the types of produce they accept. And although the farmer gets a tax-writeoff for the donation, it does cost him money to harvest the crop. I wondered if a U-pick style would work, basically the biblical gleaning method. But I doubt that many of the families that must rely on food banks in difficult times would harvest and either store or process the food. Perhaps it would require a new approach to donating to a food bank. Instead of donating money or peanut butter and canned goods, people in the community could donate their time to meet the farmer half-way and either harvest or process/bag the “excess” produce. In some cases, even setting up a community food-kitchen to can the produce so that it can be stored and distributed by the food bank.

Of course this would require some sort of politicking and educating on the municipal level, and food safety standards would need to be met. But I would imagine that this kind of approach would open the door a little wider between “us” and the big-ag farmer who has been doing the same thing for years and perhaps cannot afford to take the risk (or cannot quite see the way) of dramatically altering the way that he farms. It does not work to approach the farmer in opposition, nor would it work to shove books and literature into his mailbox to try and “educate” him about a new model. We need to build a bridge to reach across that gulf. And that is usually harder to do than any of the work that follows.

We have a neighbor with a small farm, who grew up surrounded by big-ag, and who believes that the Green Revolution of chemical farming is the only way to feed the world. He uses roundup in his garden, and everything that goes along with that approach. He often ridicules our organic approach to growing food, and sees us as eccentric idealists. But we keep the conversation going, and we see him watching what we do. He looks through our garden, and sees that we have fewer pests or disease, year after year, than he has in his garden, and that we often get bigger harvests. He also watches our animals and how healthy they are, and that we have treated common ailments without antibiotics. He never openly acknowledges these things, we just watch him watching us.

When we planted our grain without any “inputs” and no herbicides, he came over and walked through the field and basically told us that we would not get much of a crop. But in the fall, when we had harvested a decent crop of grain, and most of the grain fields around here were lost because the farmers could not get their harvesters over the soggy fields, or had lost the crop to fungus, our neighbor kind of gave us a nod. He did not openly approve of our methods, instead, he put his own sheep and goat manure on his garden for the first time in decades and came over to explain to us how he would not need to buy so much fertilizer next spring. It was amusing to see him explain it to us as his own idea that had occurred to him when he thought back to the garden his mother used to grow when they were too poor to afford fertilizer, and not as any sort of response to what he had seen in our garden. He has good memories of his mother, and it is kind of a basic human response that we sometimes need to associate a new or opposing idea with something good from our past experience in order to accept that new idea, no matter how much physical evidence and data we are confronted with to try and convince us. We don't pay much mind to his ridicule of organic farming because we know it is backed up by years of thinking that way, and we don't much mind whether or not he openly learns anything from us, we have just kept the conversation going, and kept our door and our garden open to him, because he has to make up his own mind in order to change his well-worn beliefs and well-trodden paths. So I guess that's what I've got in response to your question Trapper Creek “any ideas on educating everyone, besides just keep plugging away as we are?”. Keep plugging away. Keep churning the issues, like churning butter. And keep the conversation going.

On a personal note, I've just read this out to my husband and he laughs and says to me that this blog is beginning to sound like a Dear Abby advice column. Ha! Oh my. Sorry if it sounds that way to you all too, I guess I'm full of advice and organic fertilizer! In truth I'm writing this out as “advice” and ideas for myself as well, and using your comments and this blog as a sounding board.

It is a lot easier for me to learn how to grow vegetables than it is to learn how to communicate well with people, especially people I do not share many common views with. My conventional education did not teach me much in the way of communication skills, conflict resolution and emotional intelligence, and by hiding in books most of my life, I got away without learning these skills. About a year ago, I found a great site about emotional intelligence and communication skills, it is practical and I like the way it is written (it's not flaky), and I find that most of what the author says is true. I am finding that these skills are just as important as "survival" or homesteading skills because in order to start acting on some collective or collaborative solutions, we need to be able to sit down at the table together and work some things out. Here's the link.