Year 2222 200 winters away How many generations will have passed? What will I&I enjoy in life? What of one's own ways will continue? What lessons will I&I have learned? What challenges will I&I face? What will I&I have of the essential gifts to sustain oneself? Wood, water, air, soil, energy? #TreesAreTheAnswer #WeAlreadyKnow #Hózhó
Tag Archives: regeneration
happy renewal
In cultures around the world, the quarters of the year come with special significance. Here at the midnight of the year we have the fullest darkness yet with that a moment of renewal, of a change in direction as if hitting a rock bottom. Hopefully a soil bottom, but anyway. . .
A merry Christmas celebration of the birth of the solar Son of G-d in many traditions; a happy חֲנֻכָּה lasting of the fuel of the flaming trinity which is a candle (flame, wick, wax); and to all the rock bottom & bounce back of seasonal midnight, winter’s dawn. With that: a new year, an inflection, an arc to bridge the fall and rise, an angle to connect the number lines of one’s lives. A threshold – where you going? I&I Hॐ.
שלום One Love
A Bag of Nuts is Serious Business
A bag of nuts is a serious thing. Shells full of a tree or food, storable staples: hazelnuts, oaks, hickories, walnuts. Sun to wood. Amazing, hilarious, serious business.
Agroforest Example: Black Locust in Silvopasture
In this video is a beautiful and simple example of agroforestry’s mutually beneficial closed loops in action: black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia).
Black locust is grown in pasture to create a managed savanna known as silvopasture, one of 5 common agroforestry techniques.
Black locust has a few roles in the silvopasture system. It is part of the fabric of holistic grazing, wherein herds of large mammals rotate around partitioned areas, intensively grazing on each then moving on to let it regenerate growing more soil each time. To manage livestock, many fence posts are needed, and what better wood for fence posts than black locust?
Black locust is rot resistent and can grow quickly (3-4 ft/yr in NY). Its density and rot resistance makes it an excellent material for firewood or weatherproof construction including fence posts. While it grows it fixes nitrogen from air into plant-usable form in soil; it offers leaves with similar nutritional value as alfalfa for animals; it offers honeybees and humans sweet flowers; and it offers many other co-benefits of trees.
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“Regenerative” as a Distinguishing Term
This idea’s not new to this site but it’s worth repeating and articulating in different ways. The text below is from a response I gave to a public Facebook post about terms like “regenerative” and “sustainable” being insufficient descriptors of permaculture.
I like the term regenerative, and its polar opposite degenerative, as descriptors of different practices depending on their ecological impact.
Lots of terms, like “sustainable” as I think you’d agree, are somewhat ambiguous either in their meaning or their subjectivity of success. A horrific example of that is how susceptible the 3 ethics of permaculture are to corporate greenwashing. Paul Wheaton of Permies.com has emphasized that, noting that companies like Monsanto could hijack permaculture ethics, e.g. claim they’re practicing “people care and fare share” by “creating jobs” or using tech to mine food from soil. The techniques they use are bad in so much as they degrade the systems we rely on.
Regenerative and degenerative are not so ambiguous or vulnerable. Does this activity regenerate or degenerate the systems it relies on? I need food, I buy food, what systems and processes are needed for me to buy food? Does the way I buy food regenerate, or degrade, the systems needed for me to buy food?
Contrasted with degradation, “regenerative” becomes easier to understand. It’s a term that can serve as a sharp distinguishing factor. I also suspect regenerative vs. degenerative practices correlate with mutualism and diversity: Is there mutual benefit? Is there diversity? Maybe all the more likely it’s a regenerative activity.
Watershed Restoration Agriculture
Everyone is connected to the land by some degree. And how does each being at each degree feel along the way, how is each life enriched or degraded? Best yet, living in mutual benefit.
Nice to see Stroud Water Research Center continue their great work implementing agricultural Best Management Practices with trees and water management, to regenerate rather than degrade ecosystem services.
Watershed restoration on a Pennsylvania farm highlighted in Stroud Water Research 2018 Annual Report
(Those pruning clippers serve well as a few things, including a paper weight!)
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).
The Importance of Diversity in Life
Among the regenerative and degenerative landscapes I’ve seen, diversity is a key factor in what kind of landscape one is. Agricultural landscapes annual (e.g. corn, soy) and perennial (e.g. almonds, hazelnuts) can restore or degrade ecosystem services depending on the diversity and complexity of the agro-life sytem. Eclectic interests keep one interested, diverse plant communities keep one resilient and rich (e.g. Biodiversity promotes primary productivity and growing season lengthening at the landscape scale – Oehri et al. 2017). Life itself is a diversity, an emanating Tree of Life with unique branches to each one’s own.
It’s true that great practice in one specific area brings great fruits. Whether an excellent organic farm operation or a kick practiced 1,000 times, a la:
I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who had practiced one kick 10,000 times.
Bruce Lee
Monopolies in business are a bitter-sweet example of this: bitter in how vulnerable and skewed the system can become; sweet in the fruits of specialization and the economies of scale if you’re on the good side of the skew.
However all the better that many kicks and maneuvers are practiced many times. On one level this applies to one’s own life in terms of adaptability and engagement with many aspects of life. On a spiritual level it is balance and vitality in the diverse branches of the Tree of Life. On another level this applies to the collection of many lives lived covering a diversity of ways: products in markets; species in ecosystems; geographies to live in; all the colors, shapes, sizes, and ways of life; forests.
Forests. What a vital instance of diversity in all our lives. Supporting, regulating, providing, and cultural. We humans are, after All, descended from arboreal creatures. Here’s to growing home!