ThinkLady

Not going Annie Oakley … yet

Dear Raccoons -

I don’t mind that you have a virtual Raccoon Highway along the southern fence line of our tiny backyard. I don’t mind that you have a raccoon toilet along the highway behind the brick wall under the cedar tree. Everyone needs a rest stop and since it’s under the tree, hidden, doesn’t smell, to each to his own I say.

I don’t mind that you occasionally climb and nap in the cedar trees.

Don’t care that you use the trees as your own private jungle gym, or that you snuffle through my yard, digging in the monkey grass beds for grubs. Nice of you to keep the soil aerated.

But I draw the line at the garden beds. After last night’s apparent bacchanalia in my newly planted veggie bed (please see above photo), you're lucky I'm not Annie Oakley. Raccoon stew is sounding mighty good right now.

So here’s the deal … I’m putting up the raccoon fencing … again … which as we know after last fall and winter, is inconvenient and annoying to us both. Last year I watched you try, with your tiny hands, to get through that netting. I watched one of you get a hand stuck in the netting and squeal and elocute to the high heavens before managing to escape.

Wow. Not only are you guys prehensile but you’re really pretty whiny about that netting. Glad I don’t understand raccoon-speak as I assumed – based on your comrade’s tone – that you can be quite naughty with words.

Anyway, the fencing goes up and if you leave the fence in tact, I promise not to go all Annie Oakley on you and I'll skip the raccoon stew. I’d have to do a bunch of Google research on how to skin and butcher, it’d take a lot of time, be messy, etc., etc., and really … between you and me … I don’t much have the stomach for that sort of stuff. Not that I couldn’t in a pinch … I’m just really not a Woman v. Food kind of gal.

Bottom line – ramble along on the Raccoon Highway, play and sleep in my trees, use your toilet -- but the stay hell out of my veggie beds and you’ll live.

Not so warmly yours,

ThinkLady

Technorati Tags: animals,nature,ecology,gardening,raccoons,humor

Voluptuous veggie

Meet last spring’s Early Wonder beets – a voluptuous veggie – sweet, crunchy, beautiful, delicious. Plotting the fall/winter/spring garden now and silly me – admit to being giddy with anticipation.

Technorati Tags: gardening,seasons,local food,beets

Smells like garlic love

Monday’s harvest

Hangs deliciously tantalizing.

Rollicking, savory, pregnant with

Pungent promise.

32 cloves

Planted in October

Grew and grew and grew

And now harvested at the end of May

Fat, plump,

Drying and waiting to be braided

to hang with sassy promise.

Aware of their singularly noble place in

Soups, sauces, dips, pastas, casseroles, or even a sandwich or two

Sliced thin

Peeled

Chopped

Minced

Simmered

Roasted

Versatile

Aromatic

Voluptuous

They are sly,

Provocative,

Full of garlic joy

And

Taunting.

We love them.

Technorati Tags: Food and drink,hope,joy,local food,garlic,gardening

Full-scale Permaculture course comes to Oklahoma

I’ve been working with Transition OKC (TOKC) as a volunteer co-chair and co-founder for going on three years now. The Transition model is deeply rooted in the Permaculture design system, and although I am still very much a beginner when it comes to understanding Permaculture’s beautiful principles and how to implement them, no matter how often I read about them, and see them in action, I never fail to be inspired.

So it is with great excitement I write about this Permaculture Course TOKC, which is a program of Sustainable OKC, has organized. And full disclosure – I’m selfishly really looking forward to taking the course myself!

A full-scale Permaculture Design Course, all 72-hours of it, is now open for enrollment, and will take place in Oklahoma City and at Turtle Rock Farm near Red Rock this fall. The course will be taught by Scott Pittman, of the Permaculture Institute of Santa Fe, with guest teaching by Oklahoma City permaculturist, Bob Waldrop.

The course will take place from Aug.–Nov. 2011 and is designed around two long weekends (Thurs.-Sun.) and two weekend-only sessions (Sat.-Sun.), for a full 12 days of instruction. This means working people will miss only four work days total (calculated on a regular work week being M-F). Classes are generally 9 a.m.–5 p.m. This is a certificate-level class.

A $300 deposit is required to reserve a spot in the class and a short questionnaire/essay is also required, to be submitted at the time of deposit payment. The Permaculture Institute is handling registration via their website – dates of the classes, registration, course syllabus, essay outline and other details are available.

Permaculture design offers an array of solutions for growing and designing resilient, healthy and sustainable communities, and compliments fields such as biomimicry which emulate natural models. Or as Bob put it in a recent article about Permaculture in the Oklahoma Gazette,

“It [permaculture] is the art and science of designing sustainable human habitations and systems that care for people, care for the planet and have a care for the future.”

Some long-range planners, analysts, designers, sustainability advocates and environmentalists believe Permaculture has the potential to guide humanity through many of the challenges we face, such as economic instability, volatile energy supplies and prices, peak oil, climate change, environmental degradation and biodiversity loss. As an affirmation of this concept, last year the U.S. Army sent several members of Oklahoma's National Guard through a specially designed Permaculture Course at the Permaculture Institute in Santa Fe prior to deployment to Afghanistan. You can read more about that inspiring effort here.

Transition OKC received a grant from the City of Oklahoma City Office of Sustainability which lowers the full fee for the class to $750 (a very nice discount from the usual $900 or $1,000) so we’re very blessed. Big shout out to Transition OKC team member Randy Marks for obtaining the grant. Lodging and meals are not included in the tuition and are the responsibility of course participants.

The first session will take place at Turtle Rock Farm Retreat near Billings, Okla., about an hour and half north of OKC. This is a working farm, Platinum certified with Oklahoma Tourism’s ECO program, and part of the Oklahoma Agritourism program as well. They serve as a center for sustainability, spirituality and healing, and are located on the beautiful, rolling Oklahoma prairie. Grounds include a labyrinth, a recently completed straw-bale hermitage and lake. The farm has alpacas, honey bees, gardens, chickens, wheat and cattle.

• Meals – Bring your own lunch.
• Lodging. Participants are responsible for their own lodging.
• Turtle Rock offers a limited number of accommodations on a first come, first serve basis. Accommodations include a 100-year-old farmhouse overlooking the prairie and a brick rambler overlooking a lake. Some rooms include double beds so if you’re willing to share a bed with someone, more spaces are available. If you stay at Turtle Rock, a continental breakfast is provided. More details on Turtle Rock’s website or contact them directly if you have questions. You’re also welcome to camp out on the farm and utilize their bathroom facilities. They may also have a teepee available for camping. Please bear in mind it will be Aug. – likely very hot.
• Perry and Ponca City are about 20-25 minutes away (Perry is south of the farm, Ponca City is north) and both offer lodging and eateries, with Ponca City being the larger town. Both offer the usual hotel/motel chain lodging as well as locally owned B&Bs and inns. TravelOK.com offers great information on lodging and dining for both towns. Just go to the website and enter the town/city name in the search line, you’ll get info on the offerings in both categories – just click through to see what appeals to you.

Please feel free to share this info with others.

Here’s to happy Oklahoma permaculturing!

Technorati Tags: biomimicry,change,community,design,ecology,environment,future,hope,green living,gardening,inspiration,nature,species,sustainability,resilience,permaculture

Good news for urban homesteaders

Happily resources for learning how to live a more sustainable and resilient lifestyle seem to multiply daily. Just discovered this one last week while on a vacation jaunt to Santa Fe -- Urban Farm magazine.

With the tagline “sustainable city living at your fingertips” I’m thoroughly enticed. The magazine debuted this year and will publish four issues in 2010 before moving to a bi-monthly in 2011. The fall 2010 issue is on the stands and features scads of interesting info. I haven’t subscribed yet but did sign up for their “Farmer in the City” newsletters to get a better understanding of what they’re all about. 

A sampling of article topics in the most recent issue provides an inkling of the territory they’re plowing into:

• vertical farming
• step-by-step beer brewing
• growing micro greens indoors
• cohousing
• seasonal crop rotation

I applaud the idea of the magazine and hope it will prove to be a useful resource. Beyond that I see it as encouraging that its publishers (who also publish two other Hobby Farms magazines) apparently see urban farming and homesteading as a niche that’s prolific enough to warrant a magazine to serve it. My guess is they have market research and data to back that up.

Other magazines such as Mother Earth News (I’m a long-time fan and subscriber) have partially filled this niche, but Urban Farm appears to be poised to speak directly to the particular set of issues and challenges that billions of city dwellers are facing in transitioning to living more resilient and sustainable lifestyles in their cities.

Urban Farm’s website, www.urbanfarmonline.com has even more useful features organized into six primary categories:

• Urban livestock
• Sustainable living
• Gardening
• Community
• Videos
• Books & magazines

As the City Mayors Society noted in 2007:

In 2008, the world reaches an invisible but momentous milestone: For the first time in history, more than half its human population, 3.3 billion people, will be living in urban areas. By 2030, this is expected to swell to almost five billion. Many of the new urbanites will be poor. Their future, the future of cities in developing countries, the future of humanity itself, all depend very much on decisions made now in preparation for this growth.

So from billions of us urban dwellers, welcome Urban Farm magazine. Your debut couldn’t be more timely.