We wanted to share bit of knowledge from our trip to Tripple Brook Farm in Holyoke, MA last fall as part of our Permaculture Design Course.
This farm has been around for 100+ years, and is currently run by Steve Breyer, who has for the past 37 years. Once a poultry farm, they now operate as a nursery with over 500 species of plants for sale. They’ve been experimenting with 1000+ species over the years and their many successes (and mistakes) have been critical to moving forward the work many Permaculture practitioners in Western, MA (namely Eric Toensmeier of Edible Forest Gardens and Jonathan Bates of Permaculture F.E.A.S.T.). We had the privilege of hearing directly from Steve. He had only 10 minutes for us, and wanted our key take-away to be the importance of groundcover when establishing and maintaining any garden. Dwarf comfrey, mintroot, coreopsis among others, are a low maintainance way to keep weeds (that you don’t want) at bay, retain water, and feed your plants the nutrients and minerals it needs through the understory. It seems so simple, yet took many years for them to figure out. Part of what is so unbelievable about permaculture is its simplicity, making us realize that we already have the tools we need to create the world we want. It is matter of directing our will and energy towards the fulfillment of that vision. Once Steve left that day, we continued to learn about his ingenuity by using some of the tools he has developed and patented on sale on their website. He engineered and built an insulated greenhouse that pushed the zone up to 8 or 9 inside even during the winter. We got to try their human-powered tree digging system on a blueberry shrub that was having a hard time competing with nearby pawpaws and hardy pecans. We encourage you to check out their website, buy some plants, or ask a question. Steve is happy to help.
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We are looking forward to planting more seeds, learning new things, and applying permaculture design ideas to our shared family homestead this year.
In the past few months, we completed our Permaculture Design Course with Permaculture F.E.A.S.T. (for ecological and social transformation), completed a summary analysis for where we live, and are meeting more and more people into this kind of stuff in our area. We're looking forward to this year and sharing with you what we've learned. We thank you for reading and supporting us and would love to hear what you have been up to this past year and are proud about. Here are some pictures of what we've been up to but just haven't been able to share. My favorite movie as a young girl was Fern Gully. Thinking about it now makes me wonder what happens to us between childhood and adulthood that removes a sense of responsibility for the next generation? How can all these movies come out with Big Oil and Deforestation as the villains, yet so many often grow up aspiring to be those people, or at the very least dependent on those realities to survive?At the NOFA MA Winter Conference there was an old farmer sitting on a bench outside handing out flyers for a 60 acre farm. He said his siblings won't let him keep it, so he had to sell it. My heart fell; if no one grows food in our generation or cares for the land, what will we have left?I took a convoluted journey to get back to this work I am trying to do now with permaculture. I am happy to be here now, but sometimes I wish I could go back to my 8 year old self and whisper in her ear that what she felt watching Fern Gully was real and was not going away, and that she should try to fix it with all her might. - Jess
Just another thing to consider, how important the internet is to the "people". Being able to freely share information with one another right now is truly a freedom we simply cannot lose. Mozilla | FIGHT SOPA
donate.mozilla.org Right now, the U.S. Congress is considering legislation that could profoundly affect the future of the internet. It's called the Stop Online Piracy Act. *Since we posted this SOPA and PIPA did not pass, however the issue of internet freedom is not off the table. We found this great resource for congress updates that also has opened a channel of communication with your representatives. I’ve recently started saving all my empty containers, mainly from food, be it plastic or glass. I’ve always just thrown them in the recycle bin and before that, sadly, in the trash. I’ve started to notice a lot of possible uses for them now that I’m spending more and more of my time working in the yard. Of course there was the question of “is it safe?” What I found was that there should be a number on the plastic in question that tells you which type of plastic it is made from: As long as it’s a 1, 2, 4, or 5 it’s allegedly safe… and 3, 6, 7 = death :) I say allegedly because who really knows how safe, or better yet, how unsafe they really are. Only time will tell…
You can read the short article I came across on eHow. Currently we’re living in a house with a typical swimming pool in the back. It’s really nice to have that option of hopping in the pool after a long hot summer day. The cold water is nice, but the chlorine is not. Sadly, I feel like we’ve been spending more time saving helpless bees, beetles, and dragon flies from the chlorinated water than actually swimming. That’s right, I said it, we’re giant lifeguards for the wittle bees! It’s sad really, we can’t walk by the alleged beautiful water without seeing a bug fighting for its life!
Not that this is a solution to that but it’s definitely something we’re interested in doing once we get the proper land to do so. Natural Swimming Holes… doesn’t that sound nice? No more chlorine, no more testing/adding chemicals, no more expensive pool filter running all summer. We planned on using some type of pond system to clean our greywater for garden use, but this sounds even better! Head on over to motherearthnews.com (great site!) and check out their awesome article on building your own! Learn more about Chlorine Rushing between work and dance rehearsal in downtown Boston, I struggle with finding fast, healthy and delicious food to eat (even harder to find local and organic food). I ended up at b.good, a “real food fast” place on Mass Ave, thinking about the Slow Food Movement, contemplating if I could trust this place. On the tables were cards that shared the stories of the local farmers that grew and raised the food I was eating, like Kristi from Pineland Farms in ME and Frank at Swaz Potato Farm in MA. This place was actually trying to connect me with the source of my food, and make it possible to make local organic food available fast. As much as I care about where my food comes from, I can’t argue with McDonald’s fries once in a while. So why not replace all the golden arches with places like these so we can start to remember where our food comes from? Maybe we don’t always need slow. |
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