Loss of a Mentor

Jim Otterstrom died January 22^nd, his memorial service will be held in his home town of Big Bear. 

Jim, and his wife Peggy, became my friends through my association with Orchid Black. They were close friends of hers, living a lifestyle that closely approximates her dreams. I spent only a few hours with Jim and Peggy, but found them to be like-spirits and I too admired their car-less life that had such low impact on the earth. Jim took fantastic photos and posted them to his blog. Peruse some of them if you will.

Orchid will read some poetry and I will play a couple of songs in the memorial service. He had head me play these songs the first night I met him and he approved of them. Music and art of all kinds figured large in Jim's life. The memorial service has been lovingly titled, “Otter-Strum” with a large of host of talented musicians of all flavors.

I wish I had many more hours with Jim in his garden, with his chickens and in their home. It inspired me to press on with my personal vision of how my life will be. I owe him a debt that will probably only be repaid by living the life of my own dreams, in my own way, on my own land.

I am grateful that I was offered the opportunity of knowing Jim Otterstrom. 

david 

Urban Homestead, Urban Homestead, Urban Homestead

A 'city-chick' pecks in her 'urban homestead' yard.  Doubtless she doesn't care about the controversy and maybe we could take a cue from her.  

There are major forces arrayed to stop people from living the homestead dream – in the city and in the country. There are big corporations that believe you need to pay them before you can plant a garden – or that you should not bother to plant a garden at all but buy your food from supermarkets – food that has been grown from trademarked and patented seeds, grown with trademarked and patented inputs like fertilizer and pesticides. The homestead movement, both urban and rural, has a huge fight on its hands everyday of the year against these corporations and the government they control.

On Facebook, the biggest buzz between most of my friends has not been against Monsanto or the Obama administration, or events in Egypt but against one of our own: Path to Freedom, a pioneering family (the Dervaes) project in Pasadena, trademarked the term “urban homestead” and began sending cease and desist letters (NB:  OK, so technically they are not 'cease and desist' letters, not actually using those words... However, read what the Dervaes posted - in their own defense - and tell me if that is an unfair characterization.)   to other urban homesteaders. It was a shock that one of the leaders in this field had become the 'other' and indulge in the same practices associated with land rapers and profiteers.

Let there be no mistake: It is hard to discount the inspiration, if not applicable information, from the Dervaes family. I got to visit their homestead before they were the famous icon of the movement they became. By that point, tours of the homestead were not on their agenda, they were too busy with increasing productivity. Their blog is often referenced in conversations and many people in the homestead vein relish telling newcomers about the chickens, ducks, goats and amazing productivity of the Path to Freedom project.

But we now are fighting between ourselves, those of us who are, or wish to be urban – or rural – homesteaders. Most are aligned firmly against the Dervaes' family simply because they recognize that this is headed to wasted energy that should be used in furthering the cause. There is no ultimate 'urban homestead' worthy of the trademarking of the name. There will never be. It, like the people who flock to be homesteaders, is an ever evolving idea, concept. To attempt to trademark the name is as foolish as an attempt to pin the concept to the present time.

Why even try? There was some feeble defense on the Dervaes' blog that they were trademarking it so the term couldn't be co-opted by industrial imitators. Good move. We know how 'organic' and 'natural' mean nothing any more because they have become ad terms describing something more natural, say, than steroid injections. However, if that was the real idea, why did the cease and desist letters go to those who aren't industrial – the Institute for Urban Homesteading, Eric Knutzen who authored, “The Urban Homestead” or Santa Monica Farmers' Market Association when they did a seminar on the subject? If that was honestly the thought behind the trademarking move, it begs even further explanation because the targets ostensibly were on the same side of the Dervaes family's ideology. It doesn't make any sense.

I conclude it was hubris. The Dervaes have done much and much is owed to them. Somehow, though, they seem to feel that they deserve homage more than recognition. They seem to feel that their advances in urban homesteading are so complete and revolutionary that they alone have the right to be 'urban homesteaders.' This is not true. They wish to deny all of those, for hundreds of years, that went before them, with no trademarks on anything they did, and those that will follow and will take the urban homestead to even greater pinnacles. 

On their website they state:  "We have now secured registered trademarks for certain unique names and images. By protecting our intellectual property we are better able to ensure that our work is presented accurately and contributes to our sustainable living projects and educational initiatives."  Unique?  Our intellectual property? Our work?  Our sustainable projects? They obviously believe that they somehow have come to own 'urban homesteading' which would come as a surprise to the many who have been doing this for years and selfishly wish to protect 'their intellectual property' at the expense of an entire movement.  Sorry, no one can own it more than any other can own it.

You cannot trademark this movement. It moves. It is constantly in flux. It grows. It recoils. And it eats those who think they have mastered it. It is a world of individualists that don't pay homage to a leader. In fact, one of the central ideals of homesteading, predating the 'urban' part, is anti-authority.  I don't believe that homesteader gives a rat's ass for the legal system to begin with.  And then to invoke trademark challenges against your own?  

I hope that we can soon return to our normal diatribes against our real enemies. I pray that the Dervaes family withdraws its poorly-conceived trademark ownership and spends its time and money on making a better ideal for all to follow and allows other urban homesteaders to do the same. This is not a battle we need.  Under even the best circumstances, the Dervaes family has abdicated their roles as leaders and sadly will be known as 'plays poorly with others' more than for their innovation and hard work in making their own urban homestead a truly innovative site in the homestead pantheon.  


While it will move through the courts, here the battle is over.  Let's move on.  We have real work to do.

david

Seminar: Essentials of Vegetable Seed Saving - Enroll Today!

Genetic diversity is evident in these ears of corn, all from the same batch of seed...  this richness must be preserved!

Happy New Year everyone! 
 
The Learning Garden at Venice High School is offering an exciting new seminar for January 29th, 10:00 to 3:00 (lunch included!): Essentials of Vegetable Seed Saving.
 
Seed saving has become a 'must-know' skill as people have recognized how utterly essential seeds are to our ability to survive. 
 
Generations before us understood the importance of saving seeds. Saving seeds to plant in the coming year was essential and, long before science showed the why of it, humankind understood we could select the best plants and improve the varieties we depended upon. This vital connection was lost as we began to purchase our seeds from seed sellers making the need to save seed seem less relevant. In recent times, we are confronted with GMOs and monster corporations controlling the seeds they created and with that came the very real specter of seed corporations having control over the food supply.

Saving our vegetable biodiversity today provides us

• those delicious open pollinated varieties that were bred to taste good.
  
• a wider range of vegetable varieties that aren't often available through catalogs.
  
• a closer participation in the cycle of life.
  
• a hedge against our own personal misfortune of losing a job or other financial setback.
  
• a safeguard against food shortages caused by natural or man-made disasters.
  
• with our own means to mitigate against global climate change and it's impact on agriculture.
  
• the means to fight our shrinking biodiversity.
  

Seed saving enhances the gardening experience even more because good gardeners become better gardeners and some will go on to create unique open-pollinated vegetable varieties – adapted to this place!

This is the seminar you need if you are concerned about -

• the presence of GMO's in our food. 
• the preservation of old 'heirloom' vegetable varieties. 
• equal access to good clean healthy food for everyone regardless of economic status.
• our ability in Los Angeles to produce vegetables acclimatized to our local (and very unique) climate.
• the future of seeds and food!
  

You will learn

• to plan for your seed saving – things to do to enable success.
• how different plants are pollinated and what that means to saving seed . 
• to identify different plant families and how that affects the seed saving process. 
• the best time to pick for the best seed viability.
• to ensure your seed is kept pure from other varieties and unwanted characteristics.
• to clean and dry different seeds and other processes for optimum storage.
• the equipment and essential supplies you will have to have if you want to save some seeds and what you won't need for MOST seeds.
  

Taught by The Learning Garden's Gardenmaster, David King, this seminar will emphasize how to do it and practical examples will show everyone how to best save the more common vegetable seeds with information on saving all kinds of seeds included.  

David King is an experienced lecturer, well known for practical seminars that are accessible and informative.  The lively lectures, full of quirky humor, move through the topic, getting to the heart of the matter without a lot of extra jargon, but with the data you need to get out and save some seeds!

Lunch will be served enable participants to join in community over the break (12 to 1:00 PM). Pamela Nears, an accomplished organic and 'fresh from the garden' chef, will treat all with a vegetarian stew and other menu items (price included in your registration) that will nourish and enhance the garden experience. Coffee, tea and water will abound.

Weather permitting, the seminar will be held outside.  The Learning Garden is usually cooler than any other place in Los Angeles, thanks to the three large trees shading the patio, please dress warmly in January - although if it is too cold, we will be indoors.

Early registration helps us plan and will save you money.  Registration at the door is on an 'as available' basis - seating is limited and we expect to fill!

  
Use the PayPal button below to enroll now.  If you have diet concerns (other than vegetarian) please make a note on your registration and we will work something out.

Members of Seed Library of Los Angeles (SLOLA) will receive a $5 discount - all other attendees will become members of the Seed Library of Los Angeles; $5 of your registration fee goes to SLOLA for your membership automatically.


Thank you, 
david

As of today, the 25th of January, this seminar is full.  If you are interested in a future offering, or wish to be on a wait list for this offering, please leave me a comment and we'll work something out - if we have enough interest, we'll plan a second offering as soon as we can.

Thank you, 

david

Visions of What SLOLA Could Be

A friend of mine shows off a Christmas Lima Bean, named for the bright red and white seeds.  A productive Lima bean that persists right through our winters,'Christmas' is on my list of seeds that I hope SLOLA will save - what is on YOUR list?  

Right now SLOLA (the Seed Library of Los Angeles) is in a formative stage and we have committees that deal with some things that aren't so interesting for most of us. We have to have rules/bylaws; we need to set standards and create protocols with structure – and we have to do it from whole cloth in order to make this vision of a seed library work and make it work for the generations to follow – if we set something in motion and fail to make it strong as an organization and institution, we could see all the work go for nothing if the seeds cannot be kept with pure genetic lines maintained and attention to all the little details wherein the Devil resides.

But... If you are at all like me, seeds are one of my playgrounds and I love to fiddle with them. When I'm not planting them, I'm dreaming about them and I'm making lists of what I'll plant later this year or what I hope I will be able to plant soon or maybe some rare heirloom that I can't find will obsess me for days until I either find it or give up trying.  I grew up in Kansas and during the winter, with snow over the garden, I would page through the seed catalogs, memorizing the ones with the descriptions that captured my imagination, making long lists of the ones I wanted Grandpa to buy.  He saved his seeds, so really never did take second note of my long lists, but I learned a lot from those seed catalogs and the fascination of a house-bound ten year old gardener for seeds is still with me today.

At the December meeting I asked everyone to come back to the January meeting (the 15^th) with a list of 25 vegetable seeds they would like to see be a part of the collection of seeds that SLOLA offers. I hope you've been playing with this list; I have! I have about already over shot twenty five, so anyone needing additional suggestions, I'm ready to supply you with several to give you a full list!

But after I had made the list, I began to daydream about the future of SLOLA; a time when there is no real bylaws committee and the database committee is ad hoc, coming together only to solve a problem or to work out a better solution as warranted.

When that time comes, I see a Potato committee, a Lettuce Committee, a Pepper Committee and a Corn Committee and committees for every seed for which there is an interest in carrying on specific traits or creating newer cultivars. Each committee is looking at that plant and the different varieties available and perhaps even making new open-pollinated cultivars that improve the plants we can grow in the Los Angeles Basin. Perhaps in a few years, the L A area could be awash in the just-released “Bonilla Potato” or the “Spitz Red Leaf Lettuce!” Maybe there will be a super-productive red-skinned (and fleshed!) potato called “Rose Spuds” or a “Souper Soup Bean!"

The possibilities could be even more productive than the hybrids we see today – the only reason hybrids have become so much more productive than open-pollinated seeds is the amount of research that has gone into them – and that productivity has been at the expense of other, arguably just as important qualities, like taste or ability to grow and produce well in the micro-climate of the LA Basin. What has been done with hybrids can be approximated with open-pollinated plants. Corporations won't do it because there is no profit in it for them that justifies the research and trials – but a seed library can and should put efforts into breeding more productive stock for our areas.

But we will also need people who have mechanical skills to create appropriately powered machines to help us keep our seeds and make them even more available to more people. I have pondered for years the idea of a bicycle powered grain thresher, a device that would pound the wheat kernel free from the husk that holds it and winnow out the debris of the husk leaving a person with a wheat berries to be ground. Already my mind is turning to a similar contraption that will remove all the corn seeds from a cob without burning blisters into a person's hands.

It's not just wheat seeds that need threshing – several other vegetables can be hard to break out of coverings – and who knows? - maybe one day SLOLA will offer some varieties of wheat that do well in Los Angeles – or perhaps rice or other grain – they do comprise a large part of our diets.

But first veggies. Then I'm very keen on herbs – culinary and medicinal and flowers – edible and medicinal - and even those flowers that are not edible and 'only' good for the spirit, like my favorite, sweet peas. They are 'food for the soul' as some wise person a few years ago said. 

The idea that one day we can have a small catalog of seeds available to members that will cover all the major vegetables and a few of the not so major ones as well, is tremendously empowering and exciting. I can't even think of this for a few minutes before I get all enthusiastic and I want to run out and plant another row of something that needs to be saved and dream of a future of a secure food supply, made secure by a few people who saw and acted on their uncommon common sense..

Times that are tenuous are often the times of greatest creativity. Certainly, in a turbulent economic time, faced with the greed of behemoth companies like Monsanto and others, a determined band of Los Angelenos came together to fight back the only way they could; by planting a seed of something that could grow.

I remember the old line: "Hope will never die as long as seed catalogs are printed.” Perhaps we can say, “Hope is ours to plant and harvest; we tend our own hope and hold our own destiny in our hands,” once again like our forebearers once did and we can claim their independence because of the seeds we have planted today.

Long live SLOLA!!

Here's MY current seed list of seeds I want to save first, subject to change as I think of more, in no particular order:

1. Queensland Blue Squash
2. Cannelini Bush Bean
3. Flammé Tomato
4. Tango Lettuce
5. Drunken Woman Lettuce
6. Merlot Lettuce
7. Merville des Quatre Saison Lettuce
8. Nutribud Broccoli
9. Burpee's Golden Beet
10. Five Color Silverbeet Chard (AKA Rainbow Chard)
11. DiCicco Broccoli
12. San Marzano Tomato
13. Cherokee Tomato
14. Pencil Pod Wax Bean
15. Royal Burgundy Bean
16. Parris Island Cos Lettuce
17. Jalapeno Pepper
18. Corno di Toro Pepper
19. Scarlet Nantes Carrot
20. Chioggia Beet
21. Purple Top White Globe Turnip
22. Copenhagen Market Cabbage
23. Winningstadt Cabbage
24. Country Gentleman Corn
25. Golden Bantam Corn
26. Garden Peach Tomato
27. Fiber Flax
28. White Cherry Tomato
29. Gossypium arborense
30. Gossypium hirsutum
31. Gossypium barbadense
32. Christmas Lima Bean
33. Albino Beet
34. Bulls Blood Beet
35. Calabrese Broccoli
36. Hutterite Soup Bean
37. Mammoth Red Rock
38. Early Snoball Cauliflower
39. Bloody Butcher Corn
40. Mexican Wedding Corn
41. Stowell's Evergreen Corn
42. Armenian Cucumber
43. Long Red Florence Onion

Hope your list is just as long and varied and I hope we can have all of these in our inventory by this time next year... Oh..  And Merry Christmas (Lima Beans) to you and yours!

david

Combating Hunger: A Growers' Bibliography

I was approached by a young woman wanting to learn how to teach others how to garden even though she feels she needs to learn more about it herself. Probably no other goal lends itself more to my passion and what I most love to teach. I have often dreamed I would run away from home and join the Peace Corps and go off to grow food in other parts of the world. I have fantasized about being sent to the country of Georgia (home to garlic), or other places where I could learn about the land races of different foods.

Back in the late 1980's I read Save Three Lives by Robert Rodale and Mike McGrath; Rodale was killed before the book was finished. This book galvanized my thinking and long before it was common knowledge that there was no food shortage in the world that couldn't be fixed with political will and transportation, I understood that our government - along with the other imperial powers - perpetuated famine a lot more than they actually relieved it. Since then, The White Man's Burden showed how that problem, in the years since Rodale's book had only gotten worse, not better.

When I went to Guatemala, I took copies Rodale and McGraths' book to give away while I was there - and I have frequently given this book to those I think could use it and grasp its importance. I still refer back to it and it occupies a place of honor on my bookshelf.

I also took Out Of The Earth with me to Guatemala, though it is not a 'how-to' agriculture book.  Daniel Hillel has written a truly readable book about mankind's relationship with the soil that approaches poetry in many paragraphs.  I have read passages from this book to classes I teach on soils - I have had students from those classes tell me five years on that the one thing they loved the most about my soils class was that I turned them on this book.  

But the book I read that first intimated that there are other ways to grow things was J. Russell Smith's Tree Crops.  The current reprint is from 1987, but the original manuscript was first published in the first third of the 1900's, reprinted again sometime in the 1950's!  This man should have won a bunch of prizes, because, like Small is Beautiful, Schumacher's brilliant essay written far in advance of everything else along that line, Smith at that early date decries the destruction of the rain forest (what would he say today?) and postulates the beginnings of permaculture.  And judging by the price on this book at Amazon, I'm going into my office right now and taking my copy home!  With this book and Rodale's book provide a solid study on a new way to feed people - especially in lands with erratic rainfall.  A term that could be used to describe much more of the Earth now that climate change is so obviously an everyday part of life on this planet. 

All these books set the stage for one to appreciate some new ways of frying the same old fish, but for a 'how-to,' one can't go much righter than John Jeavon's How To Grow More Vegetables and Fruits Than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land Than You Can Imagine.  I do NOT subscribe to Jeavon's double digging, but the crops he plants, the spacings he uses and all the data he has on how many row feet to feed this number of folks a good diet and all the data on compost makes this a reference that is unbeatable on today's market.  

Instead of all that double digging, I suggest the regimen first postulated by Fukuoka, in One Straw Revolution, especially when coupled with the work of Emily Hazelip as seen on You Tube videos.  She took the Fukuoka method and 'translated' it to a French market garden.  Although I have yet to put her methodology into total practice, I try emulate as much as I can and I have a goal to work towards.

Remember, the idea that we need machines, hybrids, fertilizers and insecticides to produce food for the masses is mostly a set of lies designed to sell us products we don't really need.  Mind you, I can see where a small tractor and some mechanical assistance would be helpful, but it's not essential.  In fact, the most productive way to grow food is not on a farm at all, but in a garden where most of the work is done by hand:  calorie for calorie the garden is the most efficient way to produce food.  In fact, the bigger the operation, the less efficient the process.  The so-called 'economy of scale' does not work for growing food unless one feels no compunction about poisoning the earth, the water or the workers and doesn't mind food grown in stressful conditions.  

And food of lesser quality as far as nutrients and taste are concerned.  Another bill of goods we have been sold is the idea of the unblemished, perfect fruit.  Those fruits that have no marks, no bites from them are only possible as long as heavy doses of poisons are used to kill insects.  It is a price Americans need to learn is too high.  In fact, the blemished fruit needs to be held up as the epitome of goodness, Mom apple pie and all that is right in the world.  

But that's a fight that will have to come later - right now, lets learn as much as we can about how one grows a complete diet at home for one family and understand the urgency and importance of that.  

david

Nikolay Vavilov And The Fight Against Hunger

In the world of hunger prevention and the honest efforts to better mankind's access to enough food for everyone, Nikolay Vavilov's name counts among one of the most important and dynamic pioneers. Unwilling to sit in a lab or in a university office, Vavilov made several very important excursions to areas where the beginnings of agriculture took root and there, where plants were first domesticated by humans, Vavilov sought to find, access and use that genetic diversity to help grow the crops that would feed the Russian people of the newly formed Soviet Union.

That Soviet Union supported Vavilov through out the beginnings of his career and allowed him to go on these international excursions – to Ethiopia, Mexico and the Amazon rainforest. Everywhere Vavilov went, he collected seeds, specimens and data on the many different plants that he came across being used as food for humans. He introduced species to be grown that could adapt to the growing conditions of the Russian farm belt and worked tirelessly to expand the food production capabilities of the Russian farmer.

Stalin's Soviet Union turned on Vavilov and threw him in prison, where, ironically enough, Nikolay Vavilov starved to death. Stalin's regime needed scapegoats and Vavilov would not endorsed the Soviet theory of genetics that Stalin promulgated. During the famines of the 1930's, Stalin undertook to convince the population that good harvests were just at hand because the new 'Soviet genetics' promised immediate changes in food plants' genomes. Of course, it wasn't true and Soviet harvests, just like American harvests, languished through the Great Depression of that decade regardless of propaganda. Vavilov, however, was just as dead as were thousands of Russian peasants who died of starvation as well. But Vavilov's ideas and his plants were not.

In WWII, then known as Leningrad, St Petersburg was besieged by the Nazi army. Scientists working at the Vavilov Institute protected Vavilov's seed collections with their lives – choosing to not eat rather than eat the seeds of Vavilov's work. All this in much greater detail is the narrative of Gary Paul Nabhan's Where Our Food Comes From: Retracing Nikolay Vavilov's Quest to End Famine. This small volume, incredibly readable, is one of many books Nabhan has written about our relationship to food. A quick read, it is none-the-less a fascinating tale of a truly gifted researcher who contributed much to our current understanding of food and how we came to have what we have to eat. Nabhan retraces Vavilov's journey on several of his important treks across our globe. It is a highly recommended read if you have any interest at all in eating.

Now, however, once again, the legacy of Nikolay Vavilov is again threatened, not by war, but by greed and development (I think the two words are practically synonymous – no, they don't have to be, they just often are). As reported on NPR a few days ago, the gardens that hold the plants grown from Vavilov's seeds is to be offered to the auction block for development. Please listen to the story. I am looking for a way to register my opposition to the sale of any property that is part of the Vavilov legend.

david

Check This Out: The Seed Library of Los Angeles (SLOLA)

Vegetable seeds tightly closed in jars to keep them more viable are all from The Learning Garden's growing over the past couple of years. These very seeds could be the beginning of a seed library for the Los Angeles area.

The idea for the Seed Library of Los Angeles (SLOLA) has been brewing for some time and it's still not quite yet soup. However, it is now closer to reality because The Learning Garden at Venice High School has made it one of the projects they are willing to support.

A seed library works very similar to a book library. The main difference – and the big problem to make it viable – is that seeds are living entities with a life expiration. This means stock has to be dated and rotated – and some will have to be thrown out when it's too old to sprout.

As a member of a seed library, you check out seeds just like you would a book. You plant those seeds and grow out the crop, at the end of the season, you return fresh seeds,taken from your crop, to the library. The library benefits from being able to offer the next person fresh seed and you benefit from having free seeds. It's a win/win for you and your neighbors and it keeps Monsanto out of your garden and denies them profit from feeding your family. Furthermore, the seeds gradually become more adapted to our climate and soils. By choosing the best plants from the crop, like farmers used to do, we gently move the genetic makeup to suit our needs better.

The Learning Garden is the perfect place for a seed library because of the wealth of variety of plants grown there. Their gardens include a cornucopia of vegetables, California Natives and medicinal plants from which they can stock the seed library and keep it fresh.
The Learning Garden also has space to grow out seed that is getting too old to germinate.

To make this happen,the needs are, as follows:

1. volunteers to run the seed library – catalog and inventory the supplies and to run the 'open' days.'
2. a database complicated enough to thoroughly track the seed and insuring viability for those checking out the seed but simple enough to be used by volunteers – experiments are underway with a free database to see if it would work.
3. a computer that can run that database – the Garden has an old Windows 2000 machine that might work, but it would be better to have something more up to date.
   
4. several cabinets of some kind that can store the seeds.

So, right now, consider this a canvassing for folks who think this is a good idea and find people who want to join the seed library, people who want to help create a seed library and people who would be willing to volunteer one afternoon a month to open the seed library to the community. There may well be a $10 joining fee so the seed library can purchase supplies, but the idea is low cost seeds, so, other than fines for failing to return the seeds, just like a book late fee, there should be no other cost involved.

Let me know if you are interested – and I'll keep you posted as we move forward.

david