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.

I’ve been asked to join the board of the Center for Sustainable Living, and there’s a big effort underway to develop an Urban Sustainability Center in Rochester. There’s a meeting at Brighton Town Hall auditorium, Wednesday, October 29 at 6 pm for those interested in participating.

While the garden wasn’t terribly productive this year, it’s continuing to evolve. The third iteration of my shoestring greenhouse has now survived several weeks including some moderately windy days. I harvested the last of the carrots this morning. My tomatoes and pepper were total non-starters this year, but I was grateful to find out that Rochester Roots didn’t have a very good tomato harvest either.

I did have tomatillos galore, so I’ve been making green salsa and looking around for other tomatillo recipes. If you have any good ones, send them in. I did put them in a Thai stir fry as a substitute for the little round green Thai eggplants.

As part of the PDC last module, I adapted a soil mineral analysis troubleshooting tool from Mollison to index cards, and it looks like I have a leaching problem and need to lime and add potassium. At some point I’ll adapt this tool further and post it as a form-based application here.

Finally, there’s been a bit of a groundswell of stuff about bio-char which I know nothing about, but looks really interesting. I’m hoping to get my friend David, who attended a workshop on the subject, to write a guest post. I also discovered, or re-discovered what a great thing library book sales are.  I got a number of great gardening, survival, how-things-work and fix-it books for less than $20 this morning. Church rummage sales are another good source, along with Craigslist, Good Will, the VOA and Salvation Army.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 17th, 2008 at 7:14 pm and is filed under Personal, Sustainability, Permaculture, Rochester, Green building. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.