Today’s Op Ed piece on human waste treatment may be a harbinger of better times. I hope so, because according to one of my Village Trustees, about 75% of Village taxes go to our sewage treatment system.

A few months ago, a notice came around saying the Village would be sending a code enforcement officer to every house to ensure that we weren’t overloading the system with storm and sump pump excess water. Apparently, when the system runs over capacity, untreated sewage goes directly into Honeoye Creek! The nice officer came by, looked in the basement, looked at the gutters and gave us a pass.

As we were chatting, I asked if he knew of anyone doing greywater treatment in the Village. He said it was the first time he’d ever been asked the question- what did I mean excactly? I said, well, say I drain my washing machine hose out the window instead of down the drain, and into a reed bed or some other treatment in the back yard. That would lessen the load on the sewage system, and help to keep raw sewage out of the creek, right?

Oh no, you can’t do that- it’s greywater. Unless of course there’s some precedent elsewhere in the state where the DEC allows it.

Irony seems to be lost on government officials of all sorts.

Sunday was a little bit of a bust- I only had til about 10:15, and the whole show was over at noon. I was starting to come down with the flu, but I dragged myself out of bed early to be there at 8:00 for Phil Botwinick’s talk on The Two Faces of Money. Unfortunately, Phil was in a car accident a week before and wasn’t able to make it.

When I walked in the hall first thing I saw Kelly Keck and his partner David. They were excited about Kristin Gillibrand’s appointment to the U.S. Senate, as she was the Congresswoman from their district. Kelly had previously run for State Assembly or Senate and they said Kristin was like their friend and it was weird that she was now a Senator.

Since Phil’s talk was cancelled I instead went to Carol McNeil’s talk on Soil Testing and Soil Survey maps. Brian Boucheron and I sat together, and he updated me on the work he is doing now as an intern in Scottsville. I’m hoping he’ll do some guest posts here this year. Carol’s talk covered simple soil pH tests you can get from Cornell Cooperative Extension, and an awesome online soil survey mapping tool.

Carol also pointed us to Cornell’s online IPM Field Crop guide.
Finally, I attended Mike Kimball (Essex Farm) and the Thorpes (East Aurora) presenting on their experience with their CSA operations. Mike charges $2800 for the first family member, $2400 for the next, $2000 for the third and all kids under 13 fly free. This seems exhorbitant, but keeps the margins up and the no-money liberals away. Although most of the membership are wealthy liberals, they subsidize many other members, about 115 total, who can’t afford the CSA. It’s all you can eat, with some limits on things like baby zucchini and pork chops.

My impression is that these folks work exceptionally hard for no money. Someone said that they felt they were performing community service by being a farmer, and that was the take-away for me.

I was going to try to live-blog the NOFA-NY Conference last weekend, here in Rochester, but I couldn’t get a good, free Wi-fi connection, and then I’ve been ill all week, so I’m just now getting to it.

I missed the first session Saturday morning, so wandered around the tradeshow and found Mark Dunau talking to the tractor guys. In another life Mark was a playwright, and we got talking about irony and a remark he’d made back in November that I’d thought about since. We were talking about bio-char and he’d said the irony was that so much of the northeast had been de-forested to make charcoal. Later I started thinking that it was the playwright saying that. I started noodling on the connection between a sense of irony (or lack of it) as a connection to some kind of humility, to a connection to landscape in some way. I haven’t got this fully worked out yet, but it was important to think of sustainability as both a science and an art. In fact, art became quite a theme for the day.

Saw Jan MacDonald of Rochester Roots, who we were sharing a booth with, and she introduced me to James Allen, who’d put on a sustainability conference at U of R a couple of years ago. We talked about walnuts and berries among other things.

The next session I attended was on Apples. Lou Lego from Elderberry Pond Farm near Auburn had used a SARE grant to do some real analysis of heirloom and new apple varieties: which were the best for eating, baking, pies, juicing, cider, and drying. Some of the winners included Northern Spy, Pink Pearl, Cameo (best storing apple), Caville Blanc (best baking), Pristine (best eating, best early), Enterprise, Jona Free and the overarching winner Spitzenberg. This one had a story-Thomas Jefferson claimed it was one of his favorite apples, and the descendants of Jefferson’s apple are quite hard to come by. As a novice orchardist, I appreciated the detail of which varieties to look for.

For lunch, Jan and I went out to John’s Tex Mex in the South Wedge and talked about various projects, grants and art. Jan’s a former artist, and used to have studio space in the Searle Building years ago. We talked a fair bit about the creative work involved in gardening and sustainability efforts. When we got back we were both at a lunch discussion hosted by the CSL. Deb Denome, recent winner of the Canandaigua Athena award was there, but didn’t get too much opportunity to talk with her. Met Steve Melcher who runs Odonata Sanctuary just a few miles away in Mendon.

As I was wandering out of the lunch hall in search of better coffee (organic, free trade is nice, but I needed a good chocolatey French Roast) I ran into Maria Grimaldi, sitting at a table with Mike Kimball of Essex Farm. The topic was raw milk products and Mike’s ingenious way of churning butter using a milk can and a trampoline. I picked out a couple of “edges” running between groups at the conference. There was the age differentiator (”kids today”) and there was the meat / veggie divide. The livestock people were certainly very vocal.

Next up was a session from a Cornell post-doc who’d modelled New York’s ability (or not) to feed its population. The concept of a “foodshed” was put out there, and it turns out that Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse are well-positioned to feed ourselves, and of these Rochester had the best relocalization potential for food. New York City, as you may guess, is somewhat less apt to feed itself from nearby land. In all it was estimated that the State could sustainably feed about 5 million, a quarter of our current population.

The results of the Foodshed map are available at http://www.cals.cornell.edu/cals/css/extension/foodshed-mapping.cfm

Finally I ran into Lisa Wujnovich, who’d presented a poetry session earlier. She said that her MFA program was going well and was feeling more and more connected to the writing. Generally, I think she and Mark were happy for the PDC we ran at Mountain Dell and were even perhaps serious about pursuing some of the students’ ideas about labor housing.

As it all really winds down here, I’m looking forward to 2009, which kicks off with a bang for me. In January the Center for Sustainable Living holds its quarterly board meeting (of which I am a member). Then two weeks later, NOFA-NY holds its conference Meals Without Wheels here in Rochester. A bunch of my permie cohorts have threatened to descend on the area and my living room floor for the event.

Beyond that, I’ll be starting up a business using the Greenerminds brand, so expect a bit of a redesign in the next few weeks. The blog will keep on keeping on, but may be off to the side a bit. I plan to offer ecological design services such as edible landscaping, rainwater systems, farm redesign consulting, learning materials, permaculture training and workshops.

I’m also starting to talk up the idea of doing a Transition Town project in Honeoye Falls. I saw the handbook at the local Barnes and Noble, and asked for it for XMas, but I’ll be a proud owner, one way or the other, by the time the new year hits.

The greenhouse still stands, although a little worse for wear as we had a few inches of heavy snow last week, which popped one of the PVC pipes out of the ridge pole. Nevertheless, it still stands, and I patched it up this morning with a little duct tape. Inside, I’ve got a cold frame set up, giving me theoretically 2-3 extra hardiness zones. On Sunday I planted early purple garlic, so I’m still gardening well into December. I ordered some hardy cold-season greens which I hope to start indoors middle of next month and get set out in the cold frame by March 1. That would essentially create an 11 month growing season for me, rather than the usual 7-8 months.

I wanted to summarize some of the accomplishments for the year as it’s getting to be that time.

• Got my Permaculture certificate
• Started teaching Permaculture
• Sheet mulched and swaled half my garden
• Started seriously composting kitchen scraps
• Set up seed starter area in the basement
• Taught an herb spiral workshop at SWAN
• Pulled out all the heinous yews around the house
• Put in a stone wall around part of the front of the house
• Planned the fence for next year
• Grew decent amounts of lettuce, tomatillos, brocolli and carrots and had tiny, first time successes with apples, strawberries and melons
• Attended the Northeast Permaculture Convergence in July
• Read a lot
• Put up a Moodle with Permaculture course materials
• Cleared out the herb bed to revitalize it next year
• Installed several trees, shrubs, bamboo and added lots of new perennials

So that, I would say, was a pretty good and productive gardening year! Next year: fences, greenhouse, rainwater system, pond or two and CHICKENS!

Another goal is to start up the business side of things, so look for a facelift here at Greenerminds in the next couple of months. And don’t forget about the NOFA-NY conference right here in Rochester, January 23-25.

[UPDATE 12/24]: The greenhouse didn’t last much beyond this date. We’ve had two feet plus of snow since then and the thing collapsed into a plastic, duct tape and PVC heap. So I think I’ve come to the end of the PVC pipe-dream and will be building with wood going forward. I’ll post my designs here once I have something that actually makes it through a season!

A couple of months ago I ran into Scott Donovan of Donovan Orchards at the South Wedge Farmers Market, where he was pushing apples and other goodies from his farm. I was surprised because I mainly knew Scott from seeing him in a tie at work, as part of the Finance department.

That day I bought some fabulous organic Galas, and more recently ordered a bushel of these and a bushel of Jona Golds. I’m not any kind of expert on apple varieties, but I find myself more and more interested. I see apple trees in the landscape, especially overgrown strays by the side of the road. But up until yesterday, I can’t say I even knew really what a bushel of apples looked like. Now I know it’s a fair number of apples.

I decided I wanted to try to store them in the basement, so I did a little research. First, Scott advised me to use the Gala’s first, and that the Jona Golds were better storing apples. My research online suggests that hard, crisp apples store better, and sweeter, mushier varieties less so. I also found out that apples respire ethylene, which will rot potatoes, so don’t store them together.

Originally I was thinking I would store the apples in sand, but further research suggested they should be wrapped in newspaper and stored in boxes that are a bit ventilated, such as cardboard. Another tip is to only store pristinely perfect and unblemished apples, as even small bruises will make them more likely to spoil.

GARDEN UPDATE

I’ve been re-reading Eliot Coleman’s Four Season Harvest, which is totally inspiring. I’m starting to think it is possible to be harvesting cold-season greens in the depth of winter here. I’ve got my cheapo greenhouse up, and as of today, the calendula, collards, parsley, broccoli, and even eucalyptus and lemon verbena are doing fine in there. I harvested some parsley, and had a bite of the root (per Mr. Coleman’s advise) which was a bit like a licorice parsnip. I’m very excited by the idea that I could be sowing spinach, kale and salad greens over the next few weeks. Will they germinate? I’ll let you know how it turns out.

I also found that despite major hard freezes over the last week, the brussels sprouts and broccoli out in the cold zone made a comeback. I was about to tear them out last week, but they looked fine today. I’ve also still got some cilantro, which last year was good through about mid-December. I’m getting a very clear picture of warm and cold areas of the garden, and it looks like the main beds are going to need some overstory trees to cut down on frost. I’ve got a couple of black locust volunteers I plan to move out there in the spring.

We inherited a couple of guinea pigs last month and we’ve finally figured out that they love broccoli stalks as a way to get their substantial vitamin C needs met. This is good, becauses the broccoli I grew this year is about 95% stalk, although I did get decent cuttings off the few that grew. I’ll get them in much earlier next year. When I was a kid and had guinea pigs, I used to hate to clean the cage, but now that I’m composting, I almost look forward to adding weekly home grown animal manures to the mix!

I attended a very inspiring planning session for a local urban sustainability center. Good mix of young, energetic architects and builders and old-guard veterans, run by Rochester Green Living. I found out (officially) that I’m now a board member of the Center for Sustainable Living, but I managed to keep my volunteer hand down for this one. There seemed to be plenty of enthusiasm and passion for this project without me “adding” my agenda. There were a few friends there, but it was great to meet a whole bunch of new folks including Peter, and John from Ant Hill.

Green building is not necessarily my passion, although I’m certainly interested in learning whatever I can. The meeting was inspirational in that a few people had generated some momentum and attracted energy. I started thinking about how to apply this more locally to my village. I mentioned what little I know about Transition Towns, and what I like about the idea so far is that there’s already a template or framework for proceeding that I could quickly jump on. What’s frustrating about these planning meetings is that it’s difficult to actually move them to implementation. Having a small core group (a “board”) with a brain trust or forum or Zone 2, seems like a workable model to me. Anyway I downloaded the Transition Primer and hope to have a go at it tonight and take with me to Hancock this weekend for Module 4.

A lot has been going on in my life and wanted to share it briefly with you. Two weeks ago I was informed I’d be downsized in November, so much of my focus has shifted to finding a new base salary somewhere before people really start listening to Nouriel Roubini and realize how truly, deeply mulched-and-manured we are. In the face of it all, I’ve been wondering if I shouldn’t really get out of the mental-technical realm and learn something more practical like plumbing or carpentry, which I’m dangerously unskilled at today.

Second, I’ve been teaching the last couple of Permaculture Design Course modules down in Hancock with Andrew Leslie Phillips and Andrew Jones. This is a blast, but also humbling. AJ, for instance, has done projects in Thailand, Jordan and Macedonia and worked for years with the UN. He’s currently consulting with some business people in Florida who are doing some really interesting enzymatic recycling of food wastes into high quality fertilizers.

(more…)

We’ve had a couple really light frosts, but this morning we got the first real one. This was a good excuse for me to go out into the garden and see where the frost boundaries are. In general I only had one area away from the house on the southeast edge of the property that looked like it was much affected.

Later, I went for a walk on the Lehigh Valley trail between Clover St. and Quaker Meeting House Rd. I’ve been taking this walk all summer and it’s been very instructive. The trail cuts through a large marsh behind a beaver dam, and there are tons of interesting birds and plants. Today what I noticed more than anything was the leaves raining down off the softwoods- poplar, aspen, plane, sycamore and willow. Since these fall first, it would be interesting to see if there’s some reason for it, in terms of the layering of the detritus in the A0 soil horizon. I also noticed that the aspen leaves have the ability to twirl off a little bit away from the tree stem in no breeze. Again, I have no idea what this means.

I got to teach some parts of the Water chapter down in Hancock this past weekend, particularly around swales, dams and various drain and ditch types. Andrew did some of the other Water and AJ did Soils. We also interviewed Mark and Lisa of Mountain Dell and two teams started design of their property, which has amazing potential. We also watched the Sep Holzer video which was inspiring. Especially, to me, the polycultures he uses. Also learned from one of the “students” that wrens love cabbage worms.They teach me more than I teach them, that’s for sure.

In preparation for teaching I started using a troubleshooting guide in the Designers Manual used to determine mineral deficiencies in soil from plant problems. It’s becoming clear that I need to add lime and green sand to my site, which appears to leach pretty readily.

If its possible, lets for a moment forget that this megalomaniac of a president, his corrupt administration and the spineless Congress will soon pass a bill that shreds the Constitution.  Can we put aside the marriage of big government and big corporations exploiting and stealing from the U.S. population for a moment and talk about some REAL news?

That’s right… chickens!

There has been a lot of attention lately in this little city of ours in the past couple of weeks on the topic of backyard chicken flocks.  Starting off with an article in the local newspaper, followed by a popular radio show, followed by a few appearances at Farmers’ Markets, etc. by Rochester Chicken Club members, city chickens are in the spotlight in Rochester.  Whether propelled there on the wave of the “green living” trend, or just a genuine curiosity of the unusual, this author couldn’t be happier that folks in this city are talking chickens.

But the first question (followed by many others) that people have is simply:  Why chickens?

A short while ago, a local community activist, blogger, and fellow chicken club member wrote an articulate post on her blog HandCrafted Life which in many ways gets to the heart of the matter.  And rather than be redundant, here is Julie’s post “Why Chickens?”

I would like to add my thoughts though to this conversation, because despite the fact that its fun and crazy to talk about keeping chickens, there is something truly revolutionary about this phenomenon.  It is a fundamental, integral part of our culture’s understanding of the world that humans live above the ecological laws that govern life on this planet.  Keeping a backyard chicken flock undermines this suicidal worldview regardless of the extent that people realize it.

Yes, properly raised chickens provide us with a wholesome, nutritious and truly natural food source.  And having that food source come from one’s backyard is a beautiful enough reason to keep chickens.  But if one looks closer, there is something even deeper and more important than that fact.

Because there is not an ecosystem on the Earth that operates without animal influence.  And while having a monocrop lawn devoid of diversity, manicured to “perfection”, may be symbolic of so-called progress and the suburban ideal, it is also a symbol of our excessive waste and aversion to life.  Even conventional vegetable gardening practices, with their linear rows and chemical fertilizers, usually do not flow with the cycles of the natural world.

Enter chickens.  An early successional species that fits perfectly into their niche in a garden ecosystem, which often mimics an early successional landscape (meadow).  A simple ecological principle which triggers something as near magical as any other natural system.

All of a sudden you have an instant and constant source of fertilizer as manure recycles.  You have one more factor that greatly aids in keeping pests in balance.  They can till and keep grass short.  They’ll eat your leftovers.  By keeping the right amount of chickens for your family and land, you have stimulated a variety of cyclical, harmonious relationships that also provide a variety of lessons.

And lessons from nature are what our modern species needs right now a lot more than organic Pepsi and Palmolive Eco.

To have a backyard chicken flock is to withdraw support from an unsustainable food system.  It is taking one step closer to self-sufficiency.  It is embracing ecological diversity, productivity, and life itself.

But the most important reason to me is that when my children go to our backyard, their play space is not a dead “lawn”.  Instead it is living community where energy is recycled, food and entertainment are abundant, and a host of true and valuable lessons await.  A glimpse of hope of a new cultural paradigm that actually works as the rest of Nature does.

And if you get ahead of yourself by getting too many, and it gets too cumbersome or expensive to keep chickens, don’t worry.  I hear something about how the federal government now is in the business of bailing folks out.