Permaculture resources for Sonoma County and beyond
Permaculture is the design practice of creating truly sustainable human settlements that mimic, honor, and cooperate with natural ecosystems. As "permies", we rely on deep, protracted observation of our natural surroundings to design systems that create conditions conducive to life around us.
I first heard of the Georgia Street Community Collective from the blog Sweet Juniper. I grew up within the AM-Radio shadow of Detroit, lived where we could see the smoke plums from the General Motors Central Foundry in our town, and became a fervent Detroit Tigers fan before I started kindergarten. And I feel real pangs when I travel home to visit family in Northwest Ohio and see what’s happened to the region.
But there are bright spots, and the Georgia Street Community Collective gives me a lot of hope.
Here’s their mission:
The mission of the Georgia Street Community Collective is to provide the residents of our community with:
Health
by maintaining the Georgia Street Community Garden and Market
Education
by establishing and maintaining the Georgia Street Community Center/Library
Leadership Skills
by providing positive role models
Protection
by having the Community Center/Library to give the youth a place to meet, and to
Rebuild and Sustain
Our Community: One House, One Block, One Neighborhood at a Time.
Their gardens were started by Mark Covington on empty lots that he cleared and began cultivating. Covington’s vision continued to expand and now includes a vibrant community organization that includes everything from gardens and local food activism to neighborhood reading nights.
Reading and movie night at Georgia Street Community Collective.
You can see more of what’s happening on Georgia Street by following their weblog. You might enjoy Lamra’s strawberry commercial, where the superiority of fruit from GSCC over store-bought is clearly demonstrated. And folks, let’s click through on that “Donate” button there. This is a group that’s clearly doing work that makes a real difference.
What feels better than a McMansion and is about a zillion times lighter on planet earth? When you step into a natural building, it’s easy to fall in love with their earthy, tactile surfaces and beautiful colors. The Natural Building Network is a hub for the practice of natural building, and is ready to point the way to resources, practioners, and classes.
Natural building is any building system which places the highest value on social and environmental sustainability. It assumes the need to minimize the environmental impact of our housing and other building needs while providing healthy, beautiful, comfortable and spiritually-uplifting homes for everyone. Natural builders emphasize simple, easy-to-learn techniques based on locally-available, renewable resources. These systems rely heavily on human labor and creativity instead of on capital, high technology and specialized skills.
If you’re not familiar with the beauty of natural building yet, check out the slide show on the NBN site for some most excellent inspiration.
I’m a huge fan of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs, and a happy member of Laguna Farm and the Sonoma Meat Buying Club. And now I’m a fan of CSFs, too! What’s a CSF? It’s a new concept being pioneered by Iso Rabins and forageSF:
Much like a farm CSA, San Francisco Bay Area customers receive a box of produce and fish on a weekly subscription basis throughout the season. The only difference is that instead of farmed produce, we deliver a seasonally rotating selection of all wild foraged food; And just in case you don’t know the first thing about cattail rhizomes or wapato root, we give recipes and suggestions on how prepare your edibles. Wild mushrooms (Chanterelles, black trumpet, morels), nettle, miners lettuce, cattail rhizomes etc….
Our mission is to rediscover a forgotten food system, reducing carbon miles,while helping to build a local food economy based on a true respect for the skills of our rural neighbors. Through a network of individual foragers, all harvesting what they know best (and getting 50% of the profit), we can bring an amazing array of selections to your table. From mushrooms to nettle, apples to sea beans, mustard greens to halibut, few weeks will be the same. In addition to food, subscribers will be first in line for guided forages, going out into the woods to learn about what they can glean from the wild.
The folks at forageSF also supply well-known restaurants like Mission Street Food and Chez Panisse. Boxes can be received biweekly or monthly, with the cost per box ranging from $20 to $80 depending on the types of foods you want to receive. And if you forage yourself, you can also participate and share the profits!
Check out the forageSF Blog also, especially if you’re interested in learning more about foraging for yourself.
Here’s a fantastic site that answers one of the most frequent questions people have about permaculture: How can I do permaculture if I don’t have land?
Barret has lots of resources for container gardening, community gardens, working with landlords and neighbors, and more. Definitely a blog to watch, and you can also follow on twitter: @leonardbarrett.
Many readers might know that I used to work for MAKE Magazine, and I’ve written a few articles for them. MAKE is a quarterly DIY (do it yourself) magazine that “unites, inspires and informs a growing community of resourceful people who undertake amazing projects in their backyards, basements, and garages.”
Every volume of MAKE is full of interesting reading and ideas, but Make: 18 is also full of permie bliss like worm bins, off-the-grid laundry, an interesting article about depression-era back-to-the-land-ers Helen and Scott Nearing, and much more:
Volume 18: ReMake America! These challenging times have presented us with a rare chance to try out new ways of doing things. The opportunities for makers are terrific — we can start at home to remake manufacturing, education, food production, transportation, and recreation. In MAKE Volume 18 you’ll learn how to make an automatic garden, heat your water with the sun, monitor and share your home energy usage, and more.
Yours truly even has an article in this issue, Lay of the Land, that introduces readers to permaculture, how to map your property, and how to make and use an A-Frame level and water levels. (Are you ready to make some swales?) View the complete online table of contents here and you’ll see why I love this volume!
Here’s an announcement that came via email regarding an exciting initiative in west Sonoma County: a Community Seed Bank with regular seed exchange gatherings. There’s no web site for this yet, so I’ll just past in all the info here:
Our first Community Seed Bank was great fun, we are excited about continuing them the last Saturday of the month, 10-1. We will be offering the materials to make seed screens for cleaning your seeds at cost. And we will also be sharing about seed saving of more difficult vegetables (not the easy three: lettuce, tomatoes, beans). There will be seeds and hopefully plants and a local food potluck at 12.
We hope to have the July class to be about planting your winter garden.
Community Seed Exchange hosted by the West County Community Seed Bank
Salmon Creek School Garden: 1935 Bohemian Hwy, Occidental
Saturday, June 27th, 2009
10 - 1 pm Drop in any time
Inviting all interested gardeners to join in cultivating a grassroots community seed bank that supports Sonoma County gardeners with free, locally grown, open pollinated, pesticide and GMO free seeds.
“Seed Saving Basics & Build a Seed Screen”
10:30-11:30
Seed & Plant Exchange followed by local food potluck!
West County Community Seed Bank is a grassroots organization that meets monthly to share seeds,plants, resources and local gardening information.
Next gathering July 25
For more information: Sara McCamant 829-5234 or saramc@emeraldearth.org
It’s the last day of Pedal Power Week on Permie.net…hope you’ve enjoyed it! I’m trying to be less of a fossil fool myself, and it’s been a helpful reminder of how many resources we have here in Sonoma County, a great place to ride your bike.
If you’re ready to start using your bicycle more, here are some additional resources that might help:
BikeCommuters.com - Sonoma County Bicycle Coalition’s Links page, full of great info and helpful sites.
Paul Dorn’s Bike Commuting Tips - advice and tips from Paul Dorn: “I commute by bike, and, for the sake of my sanity, avoid driving like the plague. The automobile is a fine thing for certain purposes, like killing wildlife, alienating people from each other, polluting and congesting urban areas, and directing huge sums of money to Exxon/Mobil and General Motors.”
Finally, how about a little inspiration from the Crimanimalz, a Los Angeles-area group who asks, “In a city made for cars, why are bicycles getting places faster?”
I first heard of the Georgia Street Community Collective from the blog Sweet Juniper. I grew up within the AM-Radio shadow of Detroit, lived where we could see the smoke plums from the General Motors Central Foundry in our town, and became a fervent Detroit Tigers fan before I started kindergarten. And I feel real pangs when I travel home to visit family in Northwest Ohio and see what’s happened to the region.
is also full of permie bliss like worm bins, off-the-grid laundry, an interesting article about depression-era back-to-the-land-ers Helen and Scott Nearing, and much more:
