Eat Carbon Credits or Carbon-based Foods?

We all have read or heard about Carbon Credits, and other Environmental Credits accruing to Big Business... but I don't really understand all the logic in them. If an industrial plant produces too many greenhouse gases, it seems they can simply buy carbon credits from someone doing a better job for the environment, and continue polluting. I think partly it's just another shell game in financial manipulation, because it surely hasn't improved the air quality, ozone layer, global warming and greenhouse gases that I can see. 

There's a lot of talk encouraging us all to reduce our "carbon footprint" (and some of us do) but somehow I don't think we will run out of carbon based fuels (wood, oil, coal and natural gas) before mankind makes it almost impossible to grow anything edible on this lovely blue planet. Human beings are carbon-based, and our foods are carbon-based. How does buying and selling carbon credits help us grow more and healthier foods and live a healthier life?

On the other hand, burying small bits of carbon (natural charcoal, NOT charcoal briquettes) in my garden certainly improves the health of the soil, and lately I see many more earthworms and other visible organisms. (I can't see the gazillion others without a microscope.) I'm also beginning to see more and healthier production in the very earliest beds I amended with biochar 5 years ago, and I finally feel like I'm getting to be a better steward. Bits of carbon in the soil sequester carbon dioxide, which plants need to grow and produce fruit, grain or flowers. Sometime back, I wrote a piece on Biochar for DavesGarden.com. Reading it will give you some background if biochar is unfamiliar to you.

Our nearby land grant university got a grant of several million dollars to build a pyrolysis unit to burn factory (CAFO) chicken house waste into biochar about 3-4 years ago. The problem for me is that the biochar they made was such fine powder that most of it blew away during the demonstration I saw, long before it could be incorporated into the topsoil (even on a day with very little breeze). Plus, it was dirty and nasty to breathe that black dust while it was being applied.

I have a wood burning stove as my back-up emergency heat, although I seldom need it much. The small bits of charred wood left among the ashes are filtered out later and scattered across my garden. (I break them up with a hammer if they are larger than a walnut, but it's dirty work.) Since I don't till anymore, I cover the bits with a thick layer of compost and within a year or two it all becomes part of the soil, loose and fertile. Eventually that soil will be many inches deep, rather than the scant layer of topsoil that hasn't washed into the creek over many, many years! I don't walk on much of my garden, so it's not compacted other than on the paths.

My Cherokee "Trail of Tears" beans

I'm a believer in saving seeds, and keeping the heirloom varieties going. We have lost so much genetic diversity with "modern agriculture". This year I decided to grow the Cherokee 'Trail of Tears' bean.

My harvest will be smaller than I hoped, because a man doing some weedeating for me managed to cut the pole beans off at their base! Fortunately most were far enough along that they should dry on the vines; I'll add those to the pods that dried sooner. I should have enough for a pot of soup beans and still save a few beans to replant next year.

The pods start out green

and then turn purple

This variety has been given a ticket on Slow Food USA's Ark of Taste.The Ark of Taste is a catalog of over 200 delicious foods recognized as of cultural and culinary significance as well as being in danger of extinction. By promoting and eating Ark products, we help ensure they remain in production and on our plates.

The Cherokee Trail of Tears bean memorializes the forced relocation of the Cherokee Indians in the infamous winter death march of Cherokees from Georgia, North Carolina, northeastern Alabama, and Tennessee to what is now Oklahoma (1838-1839). They carried this bean throughout this infamous walk, which became the death march for thousands of Cherokees; hence the ‘Trail of Tears.’

In the face of its poignantly dismal history, the shiny, jet-black seeds are used with pride in many traditional American Indian dishes. The seeds are encased in six-inch, greenish-purple pods. These small attractive beans are often dried before being consumed, and have a delicious rich flavor.

This bean was first offered to the SSE (Seed Savers Exchange) back in 1977 by the late Dr. John Wyche of Hugo, Oklahoma. He shared that his Cherokee ancestors carried the beans over the infamous "Trail of Tears" in the winter of 1838.

The vines reach about eight feet producing six inch green pods with purple shading.  The seeds are a shiny, jet-black color.  They can be used when young and tender as green snap beans or left to maturing for dry beans. seeds

Sharon's Natural Gardens (Delmar, Delaware) had this to say:
"The fresh beans have a real bean flavor missing in modern beans. It is very resistant to any insect damage and has no disease problems. It also makes a good soup bean. We like to grow it on a fence, interplanted with cherry tomatoes and heirloom cucumbers."

The Red Wing Farm is a market garden and homestead in the Swannanoa Valley (near Asheville, NC). They grow this bean, and had this to say about growing it:

"A Cherokee man in Oklahoma donated seeds from this bean variety to the Seed Savers Exchange and so we are able to bring a few back to the mountains to plant in our river valley, where Cherokee people and their ancestors lived for thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans.

The Cherokee people, and the other peoples of the decimated cultures that remained after the European invasion of the Americas, saved the seeds that had been planted by their ancestors: corn, squash, herbs and flowers, grains. And beans: hundreds, maybe thousands of ancient varieties of beans.

How do we retrace the steps of these ancestors and recover the intimacy with the natural world that was at the core of their systems of living? By planting a bean, covering it with dirt, giving it water and sun. By encouraging all of the life in the soil and air and water that nurtures the seed: worms, beneficial insects, microscopic life forms. By cultivating intimate relationships with the plants that feed us and the earth, air, water, and light that feed them. By preserving the seeds that sustain human life for another generation.

Nurturing the small bean plants in my garden, I honor the lost, forgotten, fragmented, and violated cultures and people that stand at the beginning of an unbroken chain of life between the tiny green plants in my garden and the plants grown by peoples of the Americas before European invasion.

Harvesting the beans in the fall, I invoke and offer gratitude to the people who stewarded, protected, and cultivated the bean-ancestors of my garden plants. I say a prayer to the earth for the restoration of human relationships with the natural world. Planting beans in my garden, I give thanks."

Seed Sources
Seed Savers Exchange
Victory Seed Company

Or find Producers on LocalHarvest

The Importance of Trees

This is a gentle, touching and inspiring movie called "The Man Who Planted Trees", and I encourage you to fix a cup of herbal tea (or a glass of wine), and make the time to and sit back and enjoy watching it. The video is beautifully drawn in what appears to be hand drawn pastel charcoals; it is narrated by Christopher Plummer. Written by Jean Giono, this popular story of inspiration and hope was originally published in 1954 in Vogue as "The Man Who Planted Hope and Grew Happiness."

The Man Who Planted Trees tells the story of Elzeard Bouffier, a man who, after his son and wife die, spends his life reforesting miles of barren land in southern France. He patiently plants and nurtures a forest of thousands of trees, single-handedly transforming his arid surroundings into a thriving oasis. Undeterred by two World Wars, and without any thought of personal reward, the shepherd tirelessly sows his seeds and acorns with the greatest care. As if by magic, a landscape that seemed condemned grows green again. A film of great beauty and hope, this story is a remarkable parable for all ages and an inspiring testament to the power of one person.

There's an interesting story about the importance of trees in our world, "Why Trees Matter" published in the New York Times.

Excerpt:

 

"What we do know... suggests that what trees do is essential though often not obvious. Decades ago, Katsuhiko Matsunaga, a marine chemist at Hokkaido University in Japan, discovered that when tree leaves decompose, they leach acids into the ocean that help fertilize plankton. When plankton thrive, so does the rest of the food chain. In a campaign called Forests Are Lovers of the Sea, fishermen have replanted forests along coasts and rivers to bring back fish and oyster stocks. And they have returned.

Trees are nature’s water filters, capable of cleaning up the most toxic wastes, including explosives, solvents and organic wastes, largely through a dense community of microbes around the tree’s roots that clean water in exchange for nutrients, a process known as phytoremediation. Tree leaves also filter air pollution. A 2008 study by researchers at Columbia University found that more trees in urban neighborhoods correlate with a lower incidence of asthma.

Trees also release vast clouds of beneficial chemicals. On a large scale, some of these aerosols appear to help regulate the climate; others are anti-bacterial, anti-fungal and anti-viral. We need to learn much more about the role these chemicals play in nature. One of these substances, taxane, from the Pacific yew tree, has become a powerful treatment for breast and other cancers. Aspirin’s active ingredient comes from willows.

Trees are greatly underutilized as an eco-technology. “Working trees” could absorb some of the excess phosphorus and nitrogen that run off farm fields and help heal the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. In Africa, millions of acres of parched land have been reclaimed through strategic tree growth.

Trees are also the planet’s heat shield. They keep the concrete and asphalt of cities and suburbs 10 or more degrees cooler and protect our skin from the sun’s harsh UV rays. The Texas Department of Forestry has estimated that the die-off of shade trees will cost Texans hundreds of millions of dollars more for air-conditioning. Trees, of course, sequester carbon, a greenhouse gas that makes the planet warmer. A study by the Carnegie Institution for Science also found that water vapor from forests lowers ambient temperatures."

I'm planting trees this year, are you?

Permaculture??

Bill Mollison and his student (at the time) David Holmgren did a great thing when they developed philosophy of Permaculture in the 1970's. It's a topic that greatly interests me because it's as much about us, and how we treat each other and our planet, as it is about growing things. The more I learn about gardening, the more I realize how my garden is connected to everything (just like my self and my body), and how we/it all has to work together to succeed and survive.

But really, what IS Permaculture? For years I have heard that word, and read a smattering about it online here and there, but not enough to make any real sense to me until I read Toby Hemenway's Gaia's Garden last year. That book gave me a basis for understanding permaculture, at least in a general way, and I'm now firmly convinced that permaculture is the very best, and perhaps the only way to get us out of the mess we've gotten ourselves into.

Albert Einstein said, "We cannot solve the significant problems we face at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."

"Permaculture is a philosophy of working with, rather than against nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless labour; of looking at plants and animals in all their functions, rather than treating any area as a single-product system."
~ Bill Mollison (from the permaculture.net website)

This definition of permaculture expresses a basic concept in permaculture - examining and following nature's patterns. Permaculture advocates designing human systems based on natural ecosystems. Permaculture draws from several other disciplines including organic farming, agroforestry, sustainable development, and applied ecology.  But, there are many other definitions of permaculture, just as there are many definitions of sustainable living.

The actual term permaculture is a contraction of the words "permanent," "agriculture,” and “culture.” Although the original focus of permaculture was geared towards sustainable food production, the philosophy of permaculture has expanded over time to encompass economic and social systems. It is a dynamic movement that is still evolving. For example, some practitioners are integrating spirituality and personal growth work into the framework of permaculture.

At the very core of premaculture are Ethics, sadly lacking in today's BigAg in my opinion.

The three philosophical ethics of permaculture (in simple form) are:

1. Care of the earth means that our number one priority is taking care of the earth, making sure we don't damage its natural systems so all life systems can continue and multiply.

2. Care of the people means meeting people's needs (having equal access to resources) so that people's lives can be sustained and have a good quality of life as well, but without damaging the earth.

3. Accepting (or setting) limits to population and consumption is realizing that as a human species we cannot continue to increase and also sustain the planet. By governing our own needs, we can set aside resources for the 2 principles above.

I think those are some really exacting standards... but as we begin to embrace them, some wonderful things happen even on a small scale.

"Care of the Earth" happens in both big and small ways, and not just in growing things. I like Hemenway's distinction of horticulture vs. agriculture. He points out that the etymology of  horticulture is the Latin hortus, meaning garden, while the etymology of agriculture is the Latin ager, meaning field. The big difference in planting huge fields and planting gardens could be considered as a part of permaculture.

I remember when I was reading The Celestine Prophecy back in the early 1990's, how one of the Insights was what happened to the plants when he talked to them. They flourished! That's just a tiny personal bit of "care of the earth" although permaculture goes much deeper. What happens when we give plants the real food they need, rather than a chemical soup which ends up harming our ecosystems like our soils and waterways? What happens when we put plants in nifty little plant communities with many diverse neighbors, and each plant contributes something to the success of the whole?

"Care of the Earth" is about what products we use and discard like trash. I fight daily to get my family here to consider the effects of all the cleaning chemicals they use, when hydrogen peroxide and baking soda would suffice. We live on a now almost-dead creek (from pollution); our creek waters flow down to the Holston River where they eventually join up with the French Broad River near Knoxville; there they become the beginning of the Tennessee River... and then they travel together along to the Ohio River and finally join and mingle with the Mighty Mississippi near Cairo, Illinois, and eventually end up in New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico with the massive floating dead zones created by the polluted rivers. Every individual along the many miles of this creek, and all the rivers downstream, could change some of the dying creeks and rivers by simple "Care of the Earth".

Another biggie is what we allow commercial enterprises do to our Earth... fracking, strip mining, mountaintop removal, nuclear power plant waste products that are hazardous for 10,000+ years... and GMO's. (A bit of scientific research about GMO's show that they reduce sperm count from the get-go; lab tests in rats show GMO's render complete sterility in 3 generations... if you think about it, that's really population control, without consent.)

"Care of the Earth"  is also how we manage our finite resources (oil, natural gas, the metals we mine, water, and the topsoil we wash away) so that we can continue to exist, and still leave some resources for our children and grandchildren. (We should all work on becoming more realistic about what our basic "needs"  vs. "wants" really are.)

Then there is BigAg, with their/our dependence on the rapidly depleting supplies of fossil fuels. The majority of the food we eat world-wide is produced by BigAg, unless we somehow manage to supplement it with a fruit-nut-veggie patch in our yards or our neighborhoods. Having a garden, even if it's just potted tomatoes on a balcony, IS one way we can start to make changes, and assure some nutritionally good foods in our households as we do. (There are many other ways, but a garden is a good one.) Permaculture can be a pathway because it can teach us, among other things, how to increase yield while eliminating dependence on man-made chemical fertilizers. We just have to learn to do as Nature does!

 "Care of the People" is a vast challenge, and is more than just not making war on them, or even just feeding them. Most of us mentally divide "us" and "them", and we weep and gnash our teeth at problems that happen within our immediate family and those we know and care about, whether it's a health problem, an auto accident, or job loss. Of course, we also lament the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives in a catastrophe half way around the world, but it is a detached kind of lament and doesn't really touch us, deep down on some emotional level, like those at home do.

So, when we move manufacturing (sweatshops?) to foreign countries out of our view, we can act detached from the abuses. We prohibit DDT here in the US but sell it overseas, and we can pretend we have eliminated that particular toxin, even though it comes back to us in/on imported foods.

Here's a very simplistic "care of the people" test just in your own personal surroundings... If you work in a large office or plant, very likely there is a person you pass often, with just a cursory nod or "Hello". The next time you pass that person, stop and make a personal comment to them, something like "that color looks good on you"... or "hey, that's a great tie/tattoo/haircut"... just anything more personal than the previous impersonal nods. Watch the reaction... the whole energy pattern changes for the better.

"Accepting Limits to population and consumption"... Years ago, the Chinese limited the number and gender of live children a couple could have. It brought fierce turmoil to their people. But I think we all really KNOW in our hearts the world cannot continue to sustain the projected increase in world population. A big question for everyone is: are you willing to limit your number of children/grandchildren? Or is that just the responsibility of "others" in poorer nations?

But it's NOT just limiting population; it's about limiting resources so everyone has a fair share.

I personally believe that the principles of permaculture could cure the planet from the all the damage conventional chemical agriculture has wrought, and maybe save us from extinction.

The permaculture ideas I know about are wonderful, and I have adopted some of the food forest ideas, which are partially from the Permaculture crowd and partially from others... and they all pretty much follow the Wiki definition, "Permaculture is a theory of ecological design which seeks to develop sustainable human settlements and agricultural horticultural systems, by attempting to model them on natural ecosystems." 

I'd love to take a PDC but it is not likely; the charges for the PDC course vary considerably with location. Here in Virginia and nearby North Carolina, the going rate is well in excess of $1,000... while a friend in upstate New York can find the same PDC certificate course for under $300. I think the design concepts are important, especially the ecological ones, but I want lots of practical information applicable to my situation, too.

I must say, though, that if I had the opportunity (and the money) to take a PDC course from one of the established Permaculture giants like Geoff Lawton or Toby Hemenway, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

If money is an issue, as it is for me, there are some good alternatives to learning about permaculture other than taking a PDC. Unfortunatey for us in the US, much of the available information is for tropical climates, but that is beginning to change as the concepts are becoming more widely known across the US and Canada. There are some permaculture forums on the internet, and several blogs that focus on various aspects of permaculture.

If you learn easily from books, you can buy  Bill Mollison's Permaculture: A Designer's Manual; it sells for around $110. It is the definitive Permaculture design manual in print since 1988, and it is the text book and curriculum for the 72-hour Certificate course in Permaculture Design (PDC). Written for teachers, students and designers, it follows on and greatly enlarges on the initial introductory texts, Permaculture One (1978) and Permaculture Two (1979, currently OOP) both of which are still in demand over twenty years after publication. Very little of the material found in the Designer's Manual is reproduced from the former texts. It covers design methodologies and strategies for both urban and rural applications describing property design and natural farming techniques.

An excellent book if you are just starting out is Gaia's Garden (by Toby Hemenway) for around $20.

Another alternative is to investigate the work of Sepp Holzer, an Austrian man who has done some remarkable things in Natural Farming, much like the great natural farming pioneer, Masanobu Fukuoka. The Holzer Permaculture is a branch of permaculture developed by Sepp independently from the mainstream Permaculture. It is particularly noteworthy because it grew out of practical application and absolutely detached from the scientific community.

By the way, there has been lots of contention over who if anyone controls the legal rights to the word "Permaculture", meaning is it trademarked or copyrighted, and if so, who holds the legal rights to the use of the word. For a long time Bill Mollison claimed to have copyrighted the word permaculture, and his books reflected that on the copyright page, saying "The contents of this book and the word PERMACULTURE are copyright." These statements were largely accepted at face-value within the permaculture community. However, copyright law does not protect names, ideas, concepts, systems, or methods of doing something; it only protects the expression or the description of an idea, not the idea itself. Eventually Mollison acknowledged that he was mistaken and that no copyright protection existed for the word "permaculture". Source

My House & Garden, Elephants and Blind Men

I'm sure you all have heard the story of the blind men and the elephant, but just in case... In various versions of the tale, a group of blind men (or men in the dark) touch an elephant to learn what it is like. Each one feels a different part, but only one part, such as the side, tail, leg or the tusk. They then compare notes and learn that they are in complete disagreement.

The point is that we reach different conclusions depending on our exposure to partial facts.

I have been struggling with designing a drainage system to address the runoff from the hillside behind my house all the way down across my garden areas and on to the creek. I have this personal experience to add to the design considerations:

Three years ago I did extensive work on my garden area, building fluffy raised wide rows between narrow compacted walkways, all perpendicular to the creek. I was careful to only walk on the pathways, but I could plant and manage the vegetables from a path on either side of each bed. By the second year the rows were barely above what had been the paths, and by the third year, non-existent. I don't know how much of the soil went into the creek as run-off, but probably a lot between runoff and flooding. I'm sure some soil was trapped in the 20 foot wide grass swath between the garden beds and the creek, but not much.

Secondly, I also know from my own experience with drainage on the place my mother owned that drainage ditches fill up, and so does buried perforated plastic drain pipe in a gravel-filled ditch. They can fill up in as little as 2-3 years.

I had decided that some terracing in the slope in back of this house, using a hugelkulture bed idea on the lower edge of each terrace might work better than drainage ditches. And it still might be the easiest thing to do.

Then last week I came across this series of videos, which made me realize I was the blind man observing only part of the elephant (the area just behind the house). Our steep woods run behind/above the house, and then run parallel with the ridge behind the next several houses along the road. It's steep, but there are 4WD cart paths running through some of it; access to the paths is limited and I don't have one of those fancy carts, so I've never been up there. I need to get the local forestry person here anyway to talk to me about woodland management.

The first video segment in the series (linked above) is just an over-view and I didn't learn anything much from it except reminding me of how the rivers in the US carry topsoil down to the Mississippi Delta. However, starting with the 2nd video and building on it in subsequent segments, I began to see and understand "my part of the elephant" in a whole new light as a whole elephant, and some things that can actually be done to help the drainage/runoff. 

There is at least one more spring on our property, behind the next house 1000' up the road. I've never seen it, and don't know what feeds it, but it's on the lower part of the hillside about 200' from the road. For all I know, there may be more springs. It's a lousy steward who doesn't know the land entrusted to her care!

I am hoping there might be state or federal money available for woodland management, which might include planting trees to replace what was timbered out before we bought this place, as well as management of water runoff. If nothing else, at least there should be forestry advice available.