ecosystem services

My work establishing good soil via restoring Nature's ecosystem services at Everybody's Garden is completed. As a permaculture planting, it now generates its own fertility. The life and death processes of all the plants, animals, and microbes can feed new life. The hawks nesting on the Laco building down the street have been seen taking both rats and rabbits. Transition to a more stable, peaceful planting can now be via only having trees and perennial flowers and herbs there, which will need weeded but not fed. I pulled up all the tomato plants, which were unstaked due to my having pulled my back in early spring and so have been feeding the rats. There will be no composting whatsoever there now. I'm distributing the last of the compost, and will distribute the chips to the walkways between the beds. I cut down the sunflowers that were gone to seed or fallen. The few still doing well I'll cut down as the bees and birds finish with them also. The list of plants to remain there from now on (no longer tomato, cantaloupe, squash, watermelon, or anything else likely to attract rodents): rose, garlic, rose-of-sharon, peppermint, orange mint, apple mint, pineapple mint, spearmint, hydrangea, aloe (to be taken in in the winter), sedum, asian lily, daylily, sunflower (re-seeds itself), lambs quarters, purslane, comfrey, horseradish, thyme, one pine tree, six peach trees, 2 apricot trees, about 8 or 10 figs, several flowers I don't know the name of, flag, amaranth, gladiola, strawberry, asparagus, dill (re-seeds itself), fennel (also re-seeds), sunchoke (Jerusalem artichoke), French sorrel, chives, basil (re-seeds), fern yarrow,...The banana I had Neighborworks pay for needs a winter home, and I have a couple papaya in pots people are welcome to take before they freeze. I will pot up more chives to give away, and there are some cayenne in pots people are welcome to, some basil, sage, and mint in pots.

My next project, I would like to be a part of establishing somewhere an enclosed bioreactor which uses gravity only (no electricity) and screening at the bottom (no turning needed due to the shape of the reactor and internal baffling which would mix the input as it traveled downward). This reactor would be able to handle, due to it's size (much larger than these residential composters) and the fact that it is enclosed, all types of biomass waste (including animal parts and manures). Anyone interested or knowing either connections or possible sites please give me a holler. Water flow w/passive solar could also be included in a system that was a conversation piece of art as well as a functioning low-cost off-the-grid part of a living machine.

Jim McCue
412/421-6496
appropriatebiotech@yahoo.com

Play

Most think of work as the opposite of play. But some of those most productive actually enjoy what they're doing, so (besides the money they make) working can be fun for them. At the miner/farmer's family farm in West Virginia I worked at years ago, I remember children eagerly digging potatoes at harvest time.

Doing something positive that suits you kicks in the miraculous - you're enjoying yourself so much you don't get tired (and you're more likely to do a better job). That's how I feel when someone compliments me on my "hard work" nurturing Everybody's Garden. "I'm enjoying myself," I say.

I hate to sound like an anti-capitalist, but too often the money system pushes us to do things we don't really want to. "Gotta make that money" is driving people all over the world to: cut down forests; go deeper into the oceans and ground for oil and gas; continue believing in nuclear power despite the pollution from Fukushima and a thousand other nuclear accidents; war over resources rather than find ways to cooperate to more efficiently use them; continue extincting fish and other wildlife via harvesting.

If we could liberate our imaginations (like children do playing), we could find many ways to be productive without harming. Here's an example:

Look at all that biodegradable waste we send to the trash. I was in the Strip shopping the other day and noticed in an alley a grocery's trash just overflowing with organic matter waiting to be picked up by the garbage crew. Knowing as I do how dysfunctional our waste management has become, with organic matter going to some distant landfill (at great cost for both labor and transportation)(and burning huge amounts of gasoline to get there) only to ferment to put methane and carbon dioxide greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, I couldn't help but feel hurt that we're still doing that. Years ago I queried Strip retailers about pre-sorting cardboard and other biodegradables to be composted nearby, but gave up finally when I found out that BFI had become interested in contracting to own that waste stream and had no interest in sharing the details with little old me. So, one more time, the profit motive gets in the way of good sense. Composting nearby, I knew, could be done without either smell or health hazard, saving transportation costs for a material that degrades into something with 80% less volume and so much easier to transport. But I didn't look like a business man (and still don't). It is a continuing pattern with human relations that those with the vision to see the long-term wide-angle good (including financial) for the most people are the ones who are thought by the decision-makers with the most wherewithal to be financially unwise. So here we are all these years later still wasting our organic waste. It leads me to conclude that in many ways we humans only learn, only are willing to change, when we are forced by crisis.

But trying to motivate people by fear (such as delineating how many ways the planet is in maximum danger now) is a mistake - scared people freeze up and make even worse (short-term small-context) decisions. So, oddly enough, I find myself coming to the conclusion that the way through this mess we're in is to relax and enjoy, celebrating the Earth's beauty and being grateful for what we have, letting our imaginations joyfully produce the cooperative ideas kids are constantly coming up with when they want to play.

Long years of logic, reading, and discussion have led me to the conclusion that we humans are not the only life forms with consciousness or the ability to experience love or enjoy playing. Too many times we stodgy adults have come to incorrect assumptions that are less idealistic than those of children. It is the children on farms who more often grieve at the ("necessary") butchering of animals for food. Adults so often think they're being "realistic" when they express cynicism that a better world is possible than the one we currently are co-creating. "Get real" they say when you try to tell them we don't need fossil fuels or the polluting nuclear power plants. "Good luck with that" they say when you tell them the people in a tough neighborhood can get along well enough to have a community garden in which all are welcome. Well, yes, our gardens have had problems, from vandalism to people accidentally being destructive because they don't know how you have to respect living things if you want them to produce. But part of the culture change that HAS to happen is that we are awakening to our need for all the other plants, animals, and even microbes that we share the Earth with. The only silver lining in the perfect storm of problems we are experiencing at this moment in history is that, finally, we can all agree - we are all in trouble and it will take all of us working/playing together to make it better.