Blessed Unrest, Moving Forward

Continuing the Community theme on One Straw this week I would like to chat through some of my reaction to Paul Hawken’s Blessed Unrest. The underlying premise of the entire book is summed up in the subtitle How the largest Movement in the World Came into Being, and Why No One saw it Coming.

The book [...]

Community… Get Some

This has been a great week for community in my neck of the woods.  Saturday we had the annual meeting of our HOA.  I was unable to get anyone to take over as president, but I met several more of my neighbors and it was good to catch up after a long winter locked in [...]

Local Food: The Road to Damascus

Of late I am on a mission to reconnect (sub)urban Wisconsin to get back to their roots. Literally. I want more people growing more of their food. My Sub Acre Ag project is grand -designed to permit a family of 4 to meet most of their vegetable needs for most of a [...]

Permaculture Concepts Video

Right.
So anyone reading this blog has probably figured out that I feel that in many ways overt and subtle, Conventional Agriculture as sold by Monsanto and ConAgra is destroying the very fabric of society on top of our ability to feed ourselves. When you look at the physical and social damage done in the [...]

Phenology and Other Hard to Pronouce Words

I see two keys to a sustainable ag system -either sub acre or otherwise. The first is to restore the soil to very high fertility levels, including ecosystem diversity, and then maintain those levels despite harvests. The second is to build a stable ecosystem around the farm that reduces pest pressures to [...]

150 MPG Extreme Hybrid SUV
That last post was too depressing, even if its real. This blog is not about Doom and Gloom. Accept the reality, then work to avert the future it portends. Be the Change!

Oh Crap.

Inconvienent Truth and other studies from the past decade drew the publics attention to the ever rising amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere, and most recent numbers put The Limit of catastrophic CO2 concentrations at the 400ppm level.  But this recent (ok its 3 weeks old) column in the Washington Post drops that number significantly.
Research [...]

Hoop House Ramblings

I wake up early. During the week I start the day before 4am, so on the weekends even 5:30 seems like sleeping in. This morning at said time it was all of -9 degrees. Even by mid afternoon the temps hadn’t really crossed zero yet, this is one mean cold snap! [...]

Sub Acre Market Garden Rotation: 1st Stab

So I spent some time a weekend or so ago pouring over every book I had on crop rotations, and rechecked out the copy of Eliot Coleman’s New Market Grower that I had donated to our library. This file is the my current working draft rotation for the farm-and, yes, I know I need [...]

My Artic Tale

Our kids don’t watch much TV. Ok, our TV has been unplugged on our basement floor for 7 months and is gathering a nice collection of junk on top. We do watch videos as a family occasionally, and the kids (Sprout just turned 6, and Bird is 4.66) can watch some videos on [...]