Permaculture in New Zealand

Healthy soil means healthy food, which means healthy people! Caring for our soils is caring for ourselves.

A good soil consists of 45% minerals (sand, silt, or clay), 25% water, 25% air, and 5% organic matter. Most soils aren’t naturally like this, but thankfully theres lots we can do to adjust them.The main goal of most soil building is to create more humus, which is organic matter (material that is or once was living) that is decomposed. Humus acts as a literal sponge for nutrients, and the more you have in the soil, the more productive plants will be. Increasing life content (bacteria, fungi, and micro-organisms) is another major goal.

 

Many of our soils are now deficient of most nutrients and fairly devoid of life due to the use of chemical fertilizers. Giving a garden an N-P-K cocktail is like sticking in an IV, the plant is fed a huge supplement of nutrients which it already naturally knows how to receive. Plants receive nutrients by releasing exudates out from the roots, molecules full of starches and sugars to draw in bacteria, who will feed on the them. Protozoa come to feed on the bacteria, and they all release nitrogen as they produce waste from eating and when their bodies decompose after death. Plants even know how to release many different exudates who can attract varying bacteria to bring whatever nutrients they need help with. It’s a system of extreme effectiveness that’s evolved since the beginning of life on earth. When we direct wire a plant a synthetic version of nutrients, the plant stops releasing exudates because it has no need to. But this creates a vicious cycle of addiction, as the plant will keep needing more and more chemicals. Without the abundance of life in the soil that is fed by roots, necessary functions of maintaing that healthy balance of water, air, and organic matter aren’t met, and that leads to nutrient leeching and erosion.

Soil tests are a human-created way to read what’s going on underground, but the soil uses its own language through the presence of weeds. Soil is full of seeds, and when it needs something, it will activate a plant can relieve the negative systems. For instance, mats of creeping buttercup likely means the soil is compacted, as the roots of buttercup are designed to loosen and aerate poor draining soils. Thistles do a great job at extracting silica, so seeing them pop up everywhere means a possible deficiency. We can do our best to listen to the needs of the soil we see from the weeds that pop up and replace the unwanted plants with useful ones that benefit us. In the case of creeping buttercup in compact soils, we could replace a patch of it with black currents, for example, which perform the same function and give us a tasty yield.

 

Composting, mulching, and cover cropping are the key to feeding the soil! We practiced these skills, along with basic soil testing, in the community gardens at Tui.

Other methods we talked about but didn’t get to practice are Hugel Kulture (burying logs under soil to slowly release nutrients and contribute fungus), worm farms (feeding food scraps and human waste to worms in bins to break it down and excrete worm castings, containing quickly accesible nutrients), and leaf moulds (bins full of fallen deciduous leaves, kept moist to develop fungus and turn into almost pure humus).

My knowledge of soil science was greatly expanded as I learned about how and why we need to work with this complex system of life that lies beneath our feet. Nothing excites me more than a handful of rich soil, moist, fluffy, and crawling with creatures!

 

The world is facing a huge issue with water, as it is a super finite resource with only an estimated 1% of it being fresh and drinkable. In the past year it’s been ranked as the highest urgency crisis for the next decade by the World Wildlife Foundation and the World Economic Forum. Statistics show that without a change in practices, the demand for water will be 40% greater than supply by 2030. That’s less than 20 years away and will soon become a serious issue that will effect the daily lives of all beings if we don’t start using water wisely.

 

It’s not that we’re getting less rain than we always have, it’s that the fresh water is becoming either toxic or inacessable, and rapid population growth means tapping more rivers and springs more than they can handle. One major source of loss is the lack of water retention in poor soils causing us to irrigate more and lose more to the groundwater table. Another is the use of water for sewage systems, and the fact that in urban environments, water isn’t absorbed into the soil at all, it just absorbs pollution in the streets and gets drained and emptied out elsewhere. Many of these pollutants in the water are permanent, and we don’t yet know if we’ll ever come up with a way to remove them to make the water fresh again. Wetland environments are also frequently destroyed for property development, and these environments are crucial to filtering our water.

 

In these daunting times, designing our lives to use water in the most efficient and regenerative matter is one of the most crucial things we can do. When water arrives on our property, we must ask ourselves where it enters and exits, and how we can leave it cleaner when it runs off than it was when it arrived. The permaculture mantra is ‘slow it, sink it, spread it!’ Conventional house design often just directs rainwater off of the property and into the sewers rather than using it at all. In order to make the best use of this resource, we can use some techniques to use it for our advantage.

One of my favorite examples is the use of swales and terraces. Swales are small ditches dug next to plant beds or trees to create a basin for infiltration, which means when water runs into them, it stops and is slowly drained into the soil rather than sliding off and causing erosion. It’s often implemented on slopes to allow for more even irrigation. Terraces are just like staircases made on hills that are used for the same reasons.

Another popular method of wise water usage is called keyline ripping. A plow comes through with fork like prongs that dig lines along the contours of the land, loosening up the soil and providing slits to let water soak in. This can be done a few times to create a bunch of little pockets of water storage in a landscape.

Fascines, piles of brush lined against ditches and swales, or other areas where water puddles up can be used to add organic matter and provide mini shelter belts from erosion by holding on to water and letting it drip slowly instead of rushing by.

Raised beds are also a pretty key factor for water retention as porous, absorbent mounds of rich soil can hold on to the water and provide it to plants. To really improve freshwater usage, it’s just important to fill the soil with as much biomass as possible, keep it covered in plants and build up the organic matter layer with compost and mulches.

Then there are plenty of ways to make better use of our water. Driveways and sidewalks can be made with permeable surfaces instead of entirely flat concrete. Gardens can be made in areas where storm water runoff collects from roads, and on top of rooftops!

 

It’s also best to catch water where it really counts. The inflection point is the spot on a slope in which the angle switches from convex to concave, and immediately following it is the keyline point, where the force of water movement changes from erosive to depository. Mapping the topography of a slope allows us to find these points and create a structure like a keyline dam, which simply collects water there and then channels outwards to the rest of a field for even distribution.

I got the chance to practice a few different methods of mapping a slope!

We also clay-crafted an island and then mapped the topography of it by etching it in with matchsticks. We even built a miniature keyline dam with dendritic irrigation channels expanding from it, and poured water on top to watch it all working.

 

Mother nature speaks in its own language, and we can read it and speak it once we take a deeper look, thus allowing us to utilize this beautiful evolutionarily crafted tongue.

The patterns found in ecology have been refined over millions of years to allow for dynamic exchange of energy and resources. There are endless amounts of patterns we can identify that serve different purposes, lobular and dendritic, serpentine and radial symmetry, and of course there’s the golden ratio and many, many more. These mathematical depictions show that edges are key- and increasing the surface area of marginal spaces is the key to being able to maximize inputs and outputs. There are two important skills to using patterns. The first is tracking, first identifying individual marks, then following a sequence of marks to see a trail, and lastly encompassing a network of trails into a pattern. We can do this by both inspecting (infinitely looking within an element to find the root analysis of why it is the way it is), and aspecting (infinitely looking outwards from an element to understand the forces which have acted upon it). Humans are not capable of uncovering the mysteries between many connections of an ecosystem, so we must constantly be re-asking why and how, using the patterns as our teacher and our minds to unlock the codes. The second key is to think creatively about how to re-invision patterns into ecosystems that are man-made to benefit and regenerate an earth full of ecosystems that have been spun out of whack by human disturbances.

 

Using ecological patterns to design landscapes allows for amazing nutrient exchange, and lets the elements in a system prosper in the setting they’ve learned to live in. Designing with and for nature creates a balance that can withstand challenges.

One way to use patterns is to actually physically create the structures. Some examples include keyhole beds, mandala gardens, curving pathways, and companion and guild plantings, all expanding the rims around elements so they can fully interact with each other.

Every permaculture technique implemented into a design shifts the pattern, and hence, the system.

 

 

There

All permaculture systems are created based on the concepts of natural morals and principles. We spent some time looking into why nature is our best teacher and this method of thinking is so efficient!

 

Nature is not a machine, it’s inner workings are non-linear, and the connections between all elements are of greater complexity than we can ever understand. There are no lines between organisms, and every element is in constant interaction with itself and everything around it. There is no such thing as an “end” of a stream or a “top” of a tree, as energy is exchanging between every cell of all life, every second of the day. An invisible web of nodes, connected by links, forms a resilient loop, perfected by evolution surrounds every ecosystem.

The whole universe is a network of nested systems, an atom within a cell, a cell within a tissue, a tissue within a body, zooming out all the way to the limitless boundaries of our cosmos. The stronger the bonds both within and between these networks, the more resilient it is to change and destruction.

 

In permaculture design, it is important to remember that every particle of soil, every plant, every ray of sun, and every drop of rain, is serving a purpose in the design, and it is up to us to figure out how to improve the way each element is connecting and benefiting one another. We can identify “open” loops, sources of energy that are flowing outwards rather than within the network, and convert them into feedback loops that can contain and sustain all nutrients from each other, without depletion or leaks. It is also important to consider a place’s position within its neighborhood, a watershed, a biome region, a continent, and a globe. When design decisions are made, analysis must be made with the idea of accounting for all of these connections. Aristotle said “The whole is greater than the sum of all its parts”, which is extremely relevant to permaculture, as the purpose is to develop progressively more and more effective whole systems through increasing the functionality of their parts. As humans have interfered and artificially changed the course of these evolutionary systems, we have created immense imbalances within ecosystems, and it is up to us to now incorporate the age-old, time-tested successful method of integrated, mutually beneficial relationships for strength.

Additionally, the more diversity present in a landscape allows for heightened productivity and acts as a safety net. If we plant, say, 10 varieties of a crop versus one, it is more likely that we can obtain a significant (and more interesting) yield because if one species doesn’t produce, there will still be nine others. Stability comes from a high number of varying aspects filling different niches, utilizing their spaces and gifts fully.

 

Stepping away from the land-based side of things, societies that embrace differences and individuality, allowing for positive social interaction through equality, are more resilient to stress through community. If every human in a culture is supported and embraced for their unique strengths, they can flourish to their optimum potential.

Our current state is a society that is streamlined for efficiency of economics and specialization of labor. Most of our cultural designs in “developed” countries value the rich and privileged, and our decisions are made with a money-driven mind considering only the aspects that suit us rather than the whole picture.

To create a world in which humans can thrive, we must build a network like nature does, supporting every node with a strong link.

 

 

 

These past 3 weeks have been more than I could’ve ever hoped for, full of learning and growing. I have had the chance to meet many new friends from all over the world, absorb the wisdom from 4 insanely knowledgable mentors, and to look deeper into how we interact with our earth and what we can do to make a positive impact. Taking this Permaculture Design Course with Earthcare Education Aotearoa was probably the single most empowering and life-changing experience I have ever had. I am now feeling incredibly motivated to get out there and make big changes. The permaculture movement is alive and thriving, and I can feel it in every breath I take, pulsing through my veins in a feverish, determined rush to help people and help the planet. Being fully immersed in permaculture studies has filled my mind and heart with hope for the future, and the understanding of how we can shape the way our society takes care of ourselves and our homes.

 

Some context for the course-

The place:

The Tui Treefield is a teaching space within the Tui Community, where PDCs, festivals, and other educational events are held.

 

The teachers:

Robina McCurdy: A very smart woman who did her permaculture training with Bill Mollison (often deemed the father of permaculture and author of staple texts on the matter) and was encouraged by him to become a teacher due to her extreme enthusiasm. Has since taught with David Holmgren in many countries and does large scale design projects, primarily building communities in third world countries. She founded Tui Community in the 1970s and lives here with other permaculturists. She’s always an inspiration, can motivate anyone at any time, and is more in touch with the ways of the world than anyone I’ve ever met.

 

Courtney Brooke: From the southeast of the United States, with a background of environmental education. She lives part time in North Carolina at a permaculture institute called Earth Haven, and is based here in Golden Bay where she works with Robina. Has also spent much time learning from David Holmgren and doing design work throughout the world. She is very generous and carefree, and always there for support!

 

Phoenix Husthouse: From Auckland, who started off his career by working with the government to establish a flourishing community garden to help provide organic food for free to those who couldn’t access it. Now, he is a professional designer of properties throughout the country and helps convert unsustainable agriculture enterprises into healthy ones! He always has innovative suggestions for improvement and fine-tuning work and is incredibly relaxed and fun to be around.

 

The layout:

Our typical day started at 7 am and consisted of five 1 1/2 hour sessions, though some days were even more packed than that! Sessions were balanced between powerpoints and discussions, hands-on activities, writing exercises, community involvement through site visits, and building practicals. I’ll be making some blog posts covering the main topics we dove into along with some skills and ideas I gained through the work.

 

This afternoon I’m taking off for the Tui Community, just outside of Takaka. I will be taking a 19-day intensive permaculture design course led by a nationally renowned permaculture figure, Robina McCurdy. It’s kind of a miracle how I found out about the course…. I was reading a book published in Britain at Lynda’s farm in Motueka, (called Permaculture Design by Arayana), and really enjoying the authors theories and outlooks, thinking to myself ‘wow, this person has a really in-depth understanding of garden systems’. Mid-way through the book, he mentions that he did some permaculture training in Golden Bay, New Zealand with Robina! I looked her up and lo and behold, she was teaching a course to begin in (at that time) just a few weeks. If that wasn’t life knocking at my door, I don’t know what is. I am just bursting with excitement for the class, and am sure I will learn lots!

My wifi allotment is just 30 minutes per week, so expect limited posts from me for awhile. In the meantime, I’ll be taking lots of photos and notes to share with you later. Wish me luck, and goodbye for now.

Communication is the essence of a community, and I was fortunate enough to land myself in the Takaka community at an amazing time. This weekend the Community Gardens hosted a Sustainable Golden Bay Event, and I had the privilege to participate with a wide variety of people from the region coming together to work on making their region a better place. Several workshops over two days have given me a strong insight of issues and solutions present in the area, and have inspired me to bring back the ideals of this event to the Olympia community.

The place:

The first workshop I attended was all about network mapping, in which locals listed all of the natural resources, businesses, organizations, cultures, and systems present in the immediate surrounding town. We then discussed which areas were draining un-renewable resources, and areas that could use some improvement in the field of environmental consciousness. Some key sectors identified were large dairy operations, logging in nearby hills, and the pollution of the Takaka river. One participant suggested that they could build a 3D model of this “map” in a public space and allow people to come in and write suggestions on how we could change our use of resources and the connections that link them together. I found this to be a powerful and important first step of the event, as everyone was able to come to a shared awareness of where they live and have it fresh in their minds.

Following this, Sean Weaver gave a talk on how society as a whole can ‘scale up’ our sustainability in the most efficient way possible. He explained that there is a sort of bell curve of lifestyles, those who hold an aversion to adapting eco-friendly practices at the bottom, those who use some sustainable ideals here and there but could use further education and implementation at the peak, and those who already have lots of environment-positive activities going on in their daily lives. Sean’s opinion is that to make a big step, we should focus our energies on the people at the top of the curve, providing them with suggestions for simple solutions they can introduce into their regular actions. The discussion that followed this was stimulating and inspiring, as we were invited to talk about how best to get our messages across to people who may not know as much about caring for the earth sustainably. We came to agree that we must first listen to the reasoning behind the other persons ideas about what they are currently doing, and then gently identify the problem but spend most of our time discussing strategies for fixing it. Sean brought to the table the fact that in activism attempts, if more than 20% of what you say is negative, the positive solution you are trying to get across won’t be received. Another criteria we came up with was the idea of trying to ‘take down the fence’ rather than try to pull one another to one side. Once common ground and shared values are established, change can occur because the idea of being adversaries falls away. After setting some guidelines for how these conversations can happen, we brainstormed what conversations should be happening. Particularly, I learned, people in Golden Bay are worried about soluble fertilizers in waterways, poor stock management, over-intensification on the land, monocultures, and corporate involvement. To further examine the root of the problem, we identified some causes of these issues to be economic drive, closed mindset, and the general difficulty to go against the grain of mainstream culture. The main solutions we could think of were to simply be a model, take a stand against something if you don’t think it’s the right thing for the earth. Pave the way for people to follow you by fighting for changes in policy and showing that it can be profitable and satisfying to create sustainable operations. What was really touching for me about this chat was the diversity of people at the table, we had farmers with lots of land or just small gardens, shop owners, students, teachers, café workers, artists, musicians, and so many more. All of them had two important interests that I observed; they want to preserve the land they live on, and they want the people who inhabit it to flourish.

The next workshop took a look at what is called “Life Cycle Assessment”, a practice where every item used in a household is examined for environmental impact. The journey is mapped out to discover things like the carbon footprint, transport and disposal methods, and energy usage. After quantative meausurements are taken into an inventory of inputs and outputs, alternatives are considered and weighed out in a balance. Sometimes even though, for example, energy usage is decreased, ecotoxicity might be increased. Social aspects can be considered as well, for example giving an afternoon off to workers who may be dealing with struggles in their life may increase their productivity as they feel more compassion for the company. Furthermore, increasing wages can also lead to increase in profit even though more money is being spent to pay workers, because they will be motivated to channel all of their effort into the time they are working. The Takaka community brought up the point that they lie in an isolated valley surrounded by really tall hills, and every item that has to come over these hills has a huge impact on the environment because it takes lots of gas to drive over them. Therefore, those who live here need to be incredibly aware of how they can try to source things locally whenever possible. It’s quite inspiring because I know that this effort isn’t just an idea- there’s plenty of little shops and markets 3 times a week offering hand-crafted, community-produced products. I feel refreshed seeing a localized society really pushing to make their economy central and break away from larger enterprises, opting to work together to create a chance for reducing the harmful tread civilization has on the world.

We continued our stream of ideas for change by talking through a panel-system, with the community gardens organizing five speakers to mediate conversation and answer questions. Five voices were present, including Richard Kempthorne (mayor of the Tasman District Council), Kate Fulton (green party member), Sue Brown (Fonterra shareholders councilor), Abbie Langford (from the Golden Bay Community Board), and Siti Jongkind (Golden bay high school student). I find it incredibly brave that these members were all so ready and willing to step up to the plate and participate in this discussion. Fonterra (which Kate Fulton supports) is the largest dairy operation in the country, and actually a huge international corporate company encompassing 13,000 dairy farms. It is because of Fonterra that many small, localized dairy farms have struggle selling their milk because they can’t compete with the supermarket prices that Fonterra offers, and many of the environmental concerns discussed earlier in the day (poor stock management, over-use of land, corporate involvement) were targeted directly towards Fonterra. However, the fact that Kate was here and now, sitting down to talk with those who disagree with the company, proves that positive change is definitely possible. A saying I’ve heard, ‘If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen’, came to mind as I witnessed her take a seat right in the spot. However, it wasn’t an intensive debate or battering, the community did a really good job of remaining positive and using positive tactics to create a warm approach. One person in the group had a really good idea of actually making a small Fonterra processing facility in Takaka that just collects milk from Fonterra farmers here. That way this collecting tank can service the supermarkets on this side of the hill, rather than using valuable petrol to transport it across the steep slope to be put into a tank, and then being sent right back over again. Another suggested that she work with Fonterra farmers to assess if the amount of dairy cows they have is the most economically efficient number. A woman named Nicky mentioned this, and explained that when she took cows out of production, she actually started making more milk, because more grass per cow meant more milk per cow. Thus, costs went down and profit rose. Kate seemed open to these ideas and I think that’s a huge step in a good direction. I truly applaud Kate for stepping into the mouth of the lion and hope that she realized that the community just wanted to gently recommend things rather than grill her. Though I’m sure she felt intimidated at first being in a room full of people that disagreed with what she stood for. Other topics were tossed around as well, another major one being that the community feels that climate change is encroaching more and more on their environment and the government isn’t acting fast enough to make a difference. The conversation was ignited by a woman asking “Is it possible for the systems we have to respond in time to community concerns about climate change, and if not, why should we continue to support these systems?” Richard and Abbie, both being government representatives of these people, responded by saying that in a democracy, things take a long time to process. It is the most effective form of government because it considers the voice of those who live with the policies, but this means debate is slow since there is lots of differences in terms of how to enact strategies of change. Both officials agreed that the councils and boards aren’t acting as fast as they’d like, and that in the mean time it would be beneficial for members of the community to take some actions (within the boundaries of current laws) without trying to pass complicated policies through the legal system. A specific issue in which this is applicable is that the council is currently trying to ban the use of soluble fertilizers, at least within a certain distance from freshwater, but it’s taking ages to get pushed through. Community members are now discussing working with the farmers that are causing this problem directly to convince them to just stop or slow their usage of chemicals without government enforcement. This dialogue was special to be apart of, even though I was mostly a listener as to not draw away from the local voice, because I could literally see people opening their minds to new ideas and innovative ways of managing the region.

Sunday morning began with a talk on agroforestry, primarily focusing on implementing edible crops in the understory of the gigantic pine logging areas. Pines aren’t native here, but there are pine plantations all over the area because pines grow much faster than the native trees and therefore have quicker economic turn around. Courtney Brookes and Phoenix Hursthouse led the talk, and showed many examples of successful food forests, both around the area and all over the world. While growing native edible shrubs underneath the alien pines would sound like the optimal option, there really aren’t any marketable food crops that come from native plants, so the logging companies wouldn’t be too keen on putting them in. The edible crops that could be planted don’t necessarily have to be native as long as nutrient cycling and sun/water requirements are considered to chose plants that could work well with the system. To further reduce erosion, another benefit would be convincing the logging companies to only cut selectively, chopping down trees from different areas of the plantation as the demand comes about. Many of the large pine operation owners are actually very willing to begin using these practices because of the education that people like Courtney and Phoenix have been sharing. When these companies plant forests, they know that they are long-term investments in which they don’t see a financial return for many years. The fact that they could be making money quicker by producing high dollar crops like ginseng and shitake mushrooms is very appealing. Additionally, when they later go on to market their wood, they have the added plus of getting to claim that they are preventing erosion and making better use of the land they own. Another way that food forests could become a larger part of Golden Bay agriculture is by alley cropping, in other words, planting rows of trees with either sectors of vegetable production or grazing pastures in between. Given the huge amount of sheep and cow farms in the area, there’s plenty of room for trees to really make a difference by being a part of these systems. The passion that the two speakers had in talking about creating these changes was huge, and they have a goal to spread their message across the country and hope to see food forests become the source of 50% of the south island’s food supply by the year 2100. With the momentum and dedication that they possess, and their tenderness in talking with farmers about how to get these systems established, I believe that goal is surely within reach.

My next hour was spent listening to the Rhodes family talk about their dairy farm, and current issues in the industry. Their property is home to 135 cows who all have names and personalities that they’ve taken the time to get to know. It was enchanting to see their smiles as they talked about them, and how they scratch each one of their heads as they enter the barn for milking every day. They are enthusiastic about managing their land well, rotating cows to a different pasture every other day, and lining their paddocks with wide shelter-belts of shrubs and trees. Someone in the audience asked about the effect of compaction from their farm, which can cause run-off during heavy rains. They explained with a rather intriguing answer, that their soils were incredibly high in humus from all of the manure implements throughout the years, which grabs on to nutrients and holds them without allowing much to leech through. They actively test both their soils and the water in the stream that runs through the land (protected by a thick riparian buffer zone) to ensure that they aren’t causing trouble. They also supplement their soils with lime and magnesium to prevent soil plugging. I think the Rhodes family is a real role model for maintaining viable dairy systems, and I hope their knowledge can reach some of the farms in the area that could use improvement in terms of ecological awareness.

The first afternoon workshop consisted of three organic farm owners talking about their experience in the field of local agriculture. Kokalito Organics discussed their usage of food forest like practices by keeping sheep in an orchard area, and their desire to farm here because they wanted to provide jobs for locals that they could feel good about. Parapara farms, which just began 15 months ago, expressed their love of the birds that live amongst them. They have large patches of native forest surrounding them, and the bird population works wonders for keeping their pest problems down. They’ve even furthered the birds involvement on the farm by providing wekas (a native flightless bird that feeds on slugs, snails, and even mice too) with brush habitat and interesting sticks to play with. They are also huge on beneficial insects and have introduced parasitoid wasps and lady beetles to reduce pressure from aphid and whitefly. Bay Subtropical Farm started with parents who first wanted to grow good food to feed their young children but ended up loving it so much they turned it into a full time job. They now sell a lot of mandarins, because they are easy to peel and contain 3 times the Vitamin C of oranges, and they market them to other parents as the perfect snack to put into lunch boxes. They focus on selling nutrient dense food, and use things like liquid fish fertilizers to really boost the quality of what they provide.

Progress on solutions for the Takaka area extended as we gathered to learn about Sustainable Youth Initiatives (SYI). Siti Jongkind, the high school student from the panel, and Claire Webster (an EnviroSchool representative) presented their goals for the future of the younger population wishing to get more involved in conservation. EnviroSchools is a program in this country that allows schools to become certified as a body of students and teachers that take action to protect their local environment. At Golden Bay High School, the students are motivated to really take this idea to the next level. They established a ‘crew’ through an organization called Earth Guardians, consisting of those who want to be leaders in ecological preservation. One thing they like to do is get together to create music and art that channel their feelings about changes they want to see. They follow events and issues in the ‘adult’ community and back them up with the voice of youth, even having their own collective seat on the district council, giving them the ability to speak at committee meetings and allow their opinions to have a real voice. The current goal they are focusing on is making their school 100% zero waste. They work with the community gardens already a little bit, having their own plot where they grow snacks to offer students, and now they are looking at using the worm farm here to dispose of things like food scraps, paper and magazines, and even water that has paint dissolved in it (which apparently worms can digest just fine). Deliberation on how to enact this occurred as they discussed with the garden management here as to who would be responsible for sorting, if students needed to help take care of the worm farm because they’d be using it, and how to get funding for bins and make signs explaining what can and can’t go in. I witnessed the birth of a new idea, too, as a member of the water department in the Department of Conservation invited the student group to join him on his weekly water testing of Pupu springs. The project is on Maori land and his job is to monitor the quality of their drinking water and take action to protect it if pollution becomes a major threat. Siti expressed strong interest in gathering her colleagues to help. I am astonished at the determination and hope in the minds of the younger population here, and wish I could have had a group like this to join when I was in high school. Fortunately, at Evergreen we have many opportunities like this to be apart of! It stirs hope in me to see that it’s happening all over the world too, especially in the young generation. One cool difference that I see across the ages is that while the older people seem to feel obligated on focusing on the politics of things, the younger groups tend to be more interested in actually using their own minds to put their hands to good use. This is a very inspiring notion because it means we can get a lot done in terms of taking charge of our future.

The final meeting was a gathering of many people to share new ideas that have sprung from this event about strategies for getting some solutions in place. Five people pitched their ideas, and then we split off into small groups to brainstorm further on them.

Pitches:

Problem- lack of awareness in collective agriculture community

Solution- sustainable agriculture hui (a hui is a Maori protocol, where a group of people gather at a local marae and follows a set of steps to come to a goal of shared understanding)

Problem- government not acting fast enough

Solution- forming a committee separate from the government to act on issues they can do something about

Problem- plastic bag usage

Solution- introduce tax or ban for stores that use them, or find funding for biodegradable bags

Problem- proposed widening of the highway to accommodate traffic

Solution- create an online carpool service

Problem- voices without a place to speak

Solution- organize a festival with music and art for people to express activism ideas and spread knowledge

All of these ideas are amazing game-changers that I hope get more development than what we accomplished this weekend. We split off into small groups to brainstorm further on each concept, beginning with listing our visions for what the end goal might look like. Then we wrote down what steps would have to be taken to get there. I was part of the group looking into a non-legal committee of people taking action. We discussed having rotational leadership, allowing anyone to join and participate, focusing on one issue at a time to channel maximum energy into it, and the need to set achievable goals.

Overall, even though everyone that participated this weekend only put in 12 hours of time, we got so much done and everyone learned a lot. The community gardens are already planning to get people together for one more full day in a few weeks to continue developing new projects. After attending and learning some practical techniques for enacting sustainable strategies, I am really hoping to instigate some sort of event (maybe on a slightly smaller scale) in Olympia. I have the contact information of the coordinators and speakers that planned this weekend, and they are happy to help in whatever ways as I figure out how best to go about it. I’m hoping to get many Evergreen students and faculty together with interests in conservation or ideas about the future to try to contact and bring together people in the legislature, USDA officials, farmers on both large and small scales, business and home owners, high school teachers and students, people in the Nisqually tribe, and anyone else who might have something to say. Perhaps we could all gather in the Longhouse or the library, if we can get the school on board. This event could be a really powerful time where we can identify different ways in which our resources could be better managed and work together to come up with effective solutions. I am feeling empowered and driven to enact these kinds of changes in America, where we need them desperately. The “big guys” (i.e. federal government, huge corporations, commodity markets) will only change when they see many “little guys” (grocery stores, local government, small businesses) making a difference with the support of the people. I think Olympia has the capability to be a model, we have a strong liberal community who are very aware of environmental issues and passionate about changing them. The more sustainable we can become, the better example we can set for the rest of our country.

 

Kevin was once visiting a friend with a farm by the sea and was invited to come gather sea grass for mulching. Apparentley, several coastal gardeners around the country do this. Being an ex-chemistry teacher, Kevin wanted to know more about if, and why, this method had widespread praise. Going deeper than he originally planned, he ended up starting and heading an actual funded research project in collaboration with Lincoln University, the Department of Conservation, and the Royal Society of New Zealand. He didn’t go through all the trouble of producing a peer-reviewed, academic article full of stats, but did produce an informational leaflet which was distributed to gardeners via host shops, and had it printed in an issue of Organic NZ magazine in 2013.

What he, and participating colleagues found, was quite astonishing. The most shocking thing they discovered was that the native sea grass here contains higher concentrations of Boron than any other plant they know of that grows here. It also contains unusually large amounts of magnesium, and has significant levels of calcium, manganese, and zinc, and sulfur. Additionally, it possesses valuable amounts of nitrogen and phosphorous, in concentrations similar to general-purpose mulches like woodchips and straw. Kevin’s article proves that the use of sea grass for mulching is a really good idea for many people in Golden Bay, because after doing extensive soil testing in the area has concluded that most farms are lacking in copper, sulfur, and selenium, and that there are plenty still which suffer from boron depletions, including his own garden. While there isn’t high enough concentrations of copper or selenium to really address any lacking, sea grass still contains small traces amongst the other benefits. He also concludes that sea grass is especially useful in growing boron and magnesium-loving crops such as brassicas, asparagus, garlic, beets, peas, beans, fruit an nut trees, sweet corn, and celery. I found it really inspiring that he went through all of this research, not because he was looking for money or academic recognition, but just because he wanted to assess the purpose of a previously majorly un-studied method of gardening and share his knowledge in a publicly accessible manner.

Anyways, Kevin’s garden was running low on the sea grass supply, and since he collects it from a beach he thought I’d enjoy visiting we decided to go and get some more to last him through the summer. When harvesting, we were sure not to take too much from any one spot, and instead walked around only grabbing a handful or two from many sites. We got 13 big bags full in the end, plenty for him and some to share with the neighbors too! It smelled pretty funky and had various shells and crawling, jumping insects so we shook it all out and tried to get the beach remnants off before hauling it into the car.

It’s best used dried, so we piled it up and covered it with a tarp to slowly become dense and lose some seawater. In a couple weeks it will be lumped underneath the apple, pear, plum, and peach trees, as well as some developing cabbage heads and sweet corn.

Since meat is expensive and Kevin doesn’t produce his own source of meat, one of his favorite things to do is forage for mussels. Of course, I was extremely excited about the idea of going to the beach to find dinner! The native mussel here is called the green-lipped mussel, and it’s flavor is much more powerful than your typical black or blue mussel. Lined with a thin strip of an alluring, lush green color, these shells house a mushroom-like, rich pouch of briny meat. At certain places, like Tata beach where we went, each person is allowed to collect 25 mussels per day. Of course, the mussels can only be reached on certain days when the tides are right.

The place of harvest had a strong flavor of its own, walls of curving sandstone smothered in a tropical-esque forest housed little inlets of golden sand and rocks bearing mussel treasure. We strolled up and down the long beach, in search of the fattest shells.Once we were satisfied with our lot, we drove away under the setting sun. Once home, the shells needed a good scrubbing before we steamed them. They had all sorts of kelp, mud clumps, barnacles, sea slugs, and things sticking out all over. Then they were placed in boiling water with garlic, olive oil, and herbs.