Tag Archives: essay

Halloween pollenticks – sticky seeds of futures

(A short essay – tl;dr vote harris walz, minimize harm, which ‘worst’ you want to be making the best of with our precious time?)

Happy Halloween. I’ve come out of months long social media posting break to offer something scary for you. Trigger warning: political opinions, environmental catastrophes, collapse of safety critical systems.

Dear many friends who see that things cannot go on as they are,
The supply chains too brittle,
The relationships too strained,
Many of you plan a 3rd party vote in this most polarized presidential election of “the most powerful nation in the world”, or you might even be following RFK’s lead, or you might skip it altogether for any number of defensible reasons.
Many of you, dear friends, I see sympathize with a kind of accelerationist approach
Accepting how bad things are and responding with willingness for it to get worse, just to break out of terrible trajectories – is that minimizing harm? WIth all the harm caused by the hour in the over-developed world…
The sooner this self destruction grinds to a halt, the safer, some say
That’s the gist of conclusions I’ve heard from more than one thoughtful, experienced and educated person – active environmental stewards, tactful business people, balanced martial artists, all kinds of folks
I write this mainly to you, accelerationists and “never status quo”ers, especially those in swing states

This perspective is understandable. The status quo is very bad, and it is adapting very poorly overall to immediate catastrophes hammering away at itself and then some
Habitat loss, resource depletion, biodiversity catastrophe…the heavy grief of wars, of power abuses, I cannot even speak it, and yet overshadowing it all is -an extinction crisis-
The disregard for life
My heart is heavy. The world is heavy. And the systems that sustain us are, … It is hard to fathom or accept
Most of you reading this live better than most animals *ever* in terms of basic needs and safety and freedom and potential and
Yet we are struggling, in astonishing debt despite ¿ever?-growing profits, in chronic illness, in an alarming fertility crisis!, inoculated ¡¿forever?! with microplastics and >forever< chemicals
Depressed, anxious, angry, outraged at the systems that

What sustains us?

What sustains us?

This question has burned before me for a long time
What sustains us,
And how can we reciprocate?

OK
Let me get to the point, to why I do this emotional labor to try to establish some same pageness, for you to at least entertain if not accept

I will vote for Harris Walz, not because I want them as president, or want to validate and further a severely broken 2-party system, the DNC, etc etc
But because I do not have a workable alternative to this democracy-esque experiment
And not because I can accept the horrors of investment in the military-industrial complex,
Or petrochemicals,
Or over-development,
Or disrespectfully degrading rather than lovingly regenerating that which sustains us
I cannot accept that
But if I must face that
If we face these realities, and if we have a finite amount of time before safety critical systems fail under their many strains
Then what is in my power to really refuse is doing anything that could hasten or exacerbate harm
Using what little time we have, struggling under a politic that is actively agitating, suppressing environmental regulation and investment, violating women’s rights, taking an isolationist nationalist and what else *ist path to destroying the world that sustains us
A world that begets many worlds, vs. a world that devours and homogenizes
I cannot vote in any way that risks obstructing deep adaptation
And the only choice this election season that puts my puny power against 4?+ years of Trump, is the democratic ticket
I’ll do what I can to keep a chaos agent from making it harder to deeply adapt and build alternative safety-critical systems, /while we still can/
The more time we buy, the more harm we can minimize, before the next storm, the next fire, the next pandemic and supply chain collapse and
What is it that sustains us, and how do we relate to it?
We have so much important work to do
I cannot waste time and attention on a power hungry pedo friend of Jeffrey E and corporate cosmophagia
I cannot accept wasting the time we have with this historic level of capacity, of ways and means as a whole, historic
When we need more than ever to build capacity
Forestablishingaliveablefuturity

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Agroforestry Cooperative: Succession for Success (and Long-Term Land Tenure)

Temperate-climate agroforestry offers the potential for long-term ecological mutualism with humans and trees, and while it is time-tested in having sustained millennia of our ancestors, there are many hurdles to shifting lifeways toward agroforestry in 2020. In this post I introduce the main challenges I have identified, and I outline a potential approach to overcome these challenges. In short, that approach is an agroforestry worker cooperative that ‘owns’ (has rights of control, and rights to returns) land and practices stewardship so to advance tree crops and sustain itself.

I hope this clarifies opportunities that we can turn into realities, to support multi-generational stewardship of trees for basic needs in a way that is mutually beneficial to all relations involved.

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Hazelnut Happiness: Prose Proposing Corylus Seedlings as a Close Ally in Love and Life

The amazing abundance of trees from seed. Reforestation happens through a range of approaches, and from seed is one of the simplest, cheapest, and most time-tested of ways. It comes with pros and cons, the bad including relatively high loss and diversity of traits (such as shell thickness or fruiting time, which industrial operations seek consistency in). In such chaotic times diversity is good. This low-tech approach embraces loss en route to life. Life of the critters enjoying these trees & their seeds along the way, life that comes with the space and legacy of endings, life from letting life be as it will. Seed is a powerful source of sustenance, survival, and succession toward better local adaptation for chaotic futures.

Hazelnut seedlings growing in air-prune box nursery

Like the idea of trees and long-term improvement, enjoyment, environmental restoration, and if needed, sustenance? Hazelnuts are a tree you can trust to thrive easily and be enjoyable company. Measuring  in at 18ft high and 15ft across, these beautiful bushes have been at the heart of our ancestors’ lives for many, many millennia. Food; some of the healthiest fats available to us. Fiber for homes and many essential crafts. Fuel as both coppice1 firewood and as-energy-dense-as-coal residues (shells and husks) for burning (is that true? nearly2).

Hazel is a gift in social resilience as well. A folk hero. How do all the gifts hazel offers sound as renewables, compared with other strategies for food, fiber, fuel, health and wellness? Fossil fuels and  ‘renewable’ energy that depends on mining and toxic processing at industrial scales is degrading the foundations of life: water, soil, air, weather, ecosystems. How about a hedge of hazels instead?

How about a biocultural renewal? A deep adaptation? A relational agriculture that reciprocates and enhances nature’s gifts rather than degrading them.

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Acorn Acknowledgement; ‘Nuts as Staple Foods’ with Osker Brown; and More – for “The Creation of a Thousand Forests is in One Acorn.”

Acorns have great potential as a staple food. This may seem like it takes a lot of processing, but compared with conventional staple food sources with similar nutritional profiles and palatability, this and many other tree crops require less energy overall to enjoy, potentially require less capital as a cost-of-entry, and have numerous co-benefits. This calls for a different culture however, as there’s a shift in where much of the energy is expended in enjoying regional nuts and trees for basic needs:

In conventional systems, energy use and negative externalities occur “Not In My Backyard“, in rural areas and in far away oil and fertilizer producing places. In systems offering greater food sovereignty, resilience, and positive externalities, energy use is brought closer to the point of consumption and after the point of sale.

Shelf stability of acorns highlights a trade-off of this shift in the point of energy use to enjoy the crop: acorns and many nuts are very shelf stable, but when they’re processed enough to be ready to eat (e.g. as acorn tortillas or roasted hazelnuts) they become less shelf stable. This is not a critical issue, as acorn flour and many value-added nut products can last for weeks dried or refrigerated and be preserved for months or maybe years frozen. This trade-off affects the culture of use and markets for local nut crops:

Tree nuts are long-lasting, resilient, more intimate staple foods which require more labor close-to-home, but

tree for basic needs also bring home closer with the source of one’s well-being and being well in ecological mutualism with that which supports oneself.

And with this in mind, I give thanks to Osker Brown and Living Web Farm for the information below about acorns for landscapes and livelihoods.


Distribution of time for tasks to enjoy acorns:

  • 1/3 labor gathering and drying
  • 1/3 labor cracking, leaching, processing
  • 1/3 labor quality control, removing nuts with signs of mold

Gather & quality-control red oaks, dry, store in-shell . . . here is a very informative video series, starting specifically at part 5 which details home and community-scale acorn gathering.

Ready to prep for meals? De-shell red oak acorns using hammer, nut cracker, nut crucible…or for large home-scale (e.g. ‘5lbs batch weekly for two months’), Davebilt #43 nut mill has been found effective and robust.

Sort and quality-control, winnowing kernels from shells. Discard kernels that are not a shade of brown whether dark or cream colored, e.g. remove nut meat colored white, yellow, green, or blue), discard shells for mulch or fuel or tanning.

Leech (various methods) until astringent flavor is no longer noticeable when tasting nuts. Dry. Break down further into flour using food processor or similar methods. To begin with cut with 50:50 all-purpose flour and use as you would all-purpose flour. Acorn flour can replace all purpose flour for many recipes.

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Solarpunk Snapshot: O Sunny Days, Reflections on Heat Waves

Journal entry, JD175, YR2174
Location: New Heartwood, Great Lakes water unit East 37.

Heat waves

The mainstream still grows a harder gap to cross. It meanders more turbulent and wider. Its degraded soils worsen the waters. Bridge building continues, bank stabilization continues (thank stars for the willows), and inland waters are being healed. On days like today, I can’t help but think of all the heat and friction in the mainstream. Those high temperatures can hardly hold any dissolved oxygen, and life is slowly choked out. May the ocean of histories heal and renew.

I knew today would be like this. Most are. Hot. Dry. Dry. Even the winters are feeling drier. And even the good days are reminiscent of conditions in the mainstream now that I think of it: when we get water, it is heaved violently, it thrashes and impacts, it erodes. The waters crash down and wash up, and as they pass the ground is lost to downstream. The waters are like reflections from history, and those remaining islands and land bridges around the mainstream are generational systems, built on . . .

I won’t go on. Much progress to be made here and on the shorelines of the mainstream. Ladders, lamps, lifeboats . . . It is better inland, and I hope more life will find its way out of the mainstream and onto land, onto the earth element.

Despite being of a different world than that of the mainstream, we are still in the same world. Same goes for all the different niches in the mainstream, which fight so fiercely against each other and themselves to squeeze out what life is left.

Life is better here. Where we are a regenerative part of the landscape and not degrading or even dominating it. Where as many of our knobs are turned, as are the dials of ecosystem conditions which we try to control. Where the ways and wisdoms of the local first peoples are followed, and where we all connect with our own first personhood. Where there is ecological mutualism. Where generations behind us and ahead of us grow with us, actively in mind as we steward life and vice versa, in succession.

Life is mind, and may peace be upon yours.

Visions of Love, Gardening with Theurgy: An Imaginative Practice to Empower Plants

Plants are people that participate in our world in wondrous, mutualistic ways. Plants serve as the foundation of our human lives, in so many ways, grown by Solar rays of a very high Source. Plants bridge us and the Sun. How can we serve plants? A mystical practice, known as a type of theurgy, is one way to empower plants to give greater gifts as they go forth in life, using the power of human mind to imagine and visualize colors and light.

Definitions of theurgy tend to be vaguely described, as hints of it seep out from the mysticism of various traditions. Definitions often include compelling or querying supernatural beings and deities. I offer this definition based on my learnings and experiences on alchemy:

Theurgy is the mental animating of matter, so to bring out more of matter’s inherent qualities and potential capacities, without imposing a state or process on the matter that is not in harmony with its nature and natural laws of cause and effect [1].

There could be a lot to unpack here, but I will leave that to your own inner and outer inquiries. I raise this work to share an ecological application of it. Based in imagination, it is the use of visualization and color to enliven objects with their vital three-part nature.

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Basic Plan for Small-scale Black Walnut Food Source

From Tree to Nutritious Food; Cheap, Storable, Regenerative

By Robbie Coville with guidance from Edible Acres and Finger Lakes region tree folks
First draft November 9, 2019, last updated July 2020

Creative Commons License
  1. Introduction
  2. Gathering
  3. Processing for storage
  4. Storage
  5. Cracking and use – tools, method, time, and culture

Introduction

This is a basic plan for small-scale black walnut food sourcing. From gathering to use this entire setup can easily cost under $50 for black walnuts as a perennial food source, not including time or recommended ergonomic $100 Master Nut Cracker or better equipment to facilitate tree crop use and enjoyment. Many parts of this process are mulit-purpose and reusable.

This guide is intended to help the formation of small-scale black walnut cooperative enterprises, where people can work together to realize the abundance of tree crops. There are also farm-scale methods of cracking, sorting, and processing black walnuts, and value added products made using these nuts open many doors to enjoying this abundant nutritious food source. In some regions like around Hammons Black Walnuts in Missouri, there are more industrious scales and businesses for enjoying this tree crop. These nuts can be enjoyed simply as is or with enhancement – naturally suited to be sweet or savory – storing well and connecting us with age-old beings and traditions that are in our blood. A food for good living in good or bad times. May our relationship with this food source be accessible, equitable, and harmonious for all.

Gathering

Black walnut trees are common in Central New York and thrive in a wide range. They provide timber and nutritious food. They begin fruiting in 5-10 years of age. Conserve those tree allies and their diverse communities that are present with us, propagate and cultivate future generations and enjoy them honorably. We can live in mutual benefit with the source of this regenerative food and with each other.

Gather nuts from a prolific and ideally free source, which are common in many places. Nut gatherers in the Ithaca, NY area reported that while in season, they stopped and visited trees when they’d see an abundance of nuts on the ground and were able to gather 10-15 gallons per minute. With various short visits to different trees, hundreds of gallons of nuts can be gathered. An abundance of medicinal and regenerative food growing on beautiful timber trees.

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Bushcraft and whispers of culture

I begin giving thanks to the source, to the indigenous people of the land I’m in, and to the indigenous people of the ancestry I’m from.

Lest we forget, forests can provide for all our basic needs as humans. It may not be easy but it is true, and tight knit nutrient cycles remind us of our arboreal foundations.

This guy (Primitive Technology channel on YouTube) and bushcraft have been a huge inspiration for me. Whether that inspiration shapeshifts into homesteading or what, I have it near and dear to my heart.

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The Problem is the Solution: Carbon, and the case of Life and Death


The problem is the solution.

Permaculture Principle

Hearing about carbon and the environment, many people think of atmospheric carbon as a green house gas. Right alongside that are all the long-term massive changes in the carbon cycle from fossil fuel extraction, processing, and use as fuels and plastics. Carbon is problematic, but it’s so much more. In fact it’s a lot of things, and it’s ubiquitous in life.

On Earth, all known living things have a carbon-based structure and system.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothetical_types_of_biochemistry

Even fossil fuels contain this fact, that carbon is the building block of life. Fossil fuels are not inherently bad, they are just part of life systems, dead for millions of years only to be brought to life briefly for a fast flash then a slow decay. A decay of life systems themselves, a stumbling toward high entropy and climate chaos. How do we reign in the chaos, how do we lower entropy on Earth as Life overall seems inclined to do?

The complexities around fossil fuels, from geology to economics and ecology to justice, exist in full form only at scales (i.e. a hyperobject) that are hard for us to grapple with. It is how we interact with the the systems fossil fuels are a part of, to either degrade or regenerate those very living systems and life itself. Carbon can be the quickly-lost exhaust of burned billion-year-old oil, or it can be rich black organic matter that gets better with time, revitalizing soil that sustains us and all life on Earth.

We live at a time where there is widespread disturbance all around us. The ground is open and waiting for seeds. We can bemoan the tragedies that nature has endured or we can cast seeds and plant a future.
We can and do influence the ecosystems around us more than any other species. That influence can come through reckless destruction, blind abandonment, or conscious intent.

Trees of Power by Akiva Silver of Twisted Tree Nursery near Ithaca, NY

Carbon’s role in life systems can give momentum to feedback loops of degradation or of restoration and regeneration. Carbon can serve a core role in feedback loops that produce goods in the present and get better over time: trees, soil, animals enjoying carbon while sequestering and storing it, all in mutual benefit enhancing the systems one and all exists in.

Enjoying carbon? Enjoying it as in making fulfilling, mutually beneficial use of it. And enjoying it while we still can, that is, considering how dire some environmental situations are becoming in large part due to imbalances in the carbon and other cycles. We need the tools to shift the carbon cycle into a more wholly beneficial setting. We know the tools: trees; carbon farming; regenerative, ecological lifestyles and landscapes. And we have the main building block of those tools, waiting to take f(x) one way or another: Carbon. For life systems, ecosystems; or for the degradation, destruction, and death of those systems?

For life systems, or for the death of those systems?

Where’s the carbon?

Is it regenerative or degenerative?

Is it diverse or a monoculture/monopoly?

?

Tree Based Livelihoods

It’s a great situation to be in to always have a need for more trees in an area. Imagine a farmer or forester, happy to enhance and be enhanced by more trees in their life system. Life in mutual benefit with life itself: net primary productivity, biodiversity, etc. (e.g. Biodiversity promotes primary productivity and growing season lengthening at the landscape scale Oehri et al. 2017).

Akiva Silver of Twisted Tree Farm – a regenerative tree nursery near Ithaca, NY – once said how despite growing thousands of trees, he feels bad to find himself turning down customers when sold out of trees. It’s a wonderful problem to have, wanting to grow more trees! So long as they’re able to grow – sadly worth noting considering environmental and economic degradation and deforestation.

Thankfully, trees beget trees in many ways! Supporting the propagation of future generations of trees; providing material for the propagation & other operations; regulating the environment to facilitate life; and facilitating regenerative culture in all our lives.

How can you integrate the right tree in the right place for the right reason in your life? Think beyond the tree itself. What end-goals can (and do) sustainable, regenerative tree systems satisfy? Some ideas from the 6 F’s forests offer: Food, Fiber, Fodder, Fuel, Farmaceuticals, and Fun.

  • Food (fats, carbs, dietary fiber, protein, mushrooms and micronutrients from tree crops and products; soil enhancement for other staple crops)
  • Fiber (paper, lumber)
  • Fodder (animal foods and wildlife)
  • Fuel (firewood, pellets, biomass and biochar)
  • Farmaceuticals (tree-based chemicals and medicines, wild grown medicines), fun (culture, recreation and wildlife).