10% of our goal!

As we continue to teach people how to sequester carbon cheaply, efficiently and forever, we often overlook the fact that many either don't care or are frozen by their fear of the future. I have written often about how the oligarchs seek to turn our heads away from the truth, or perpetrate vast lies to get us to allow them to continue to rule us. Luckily, more and more people are waking up and realizing that it is the vast majority who hold the power to make change come. This has been somthing that has been talked about for decades. when the Hippies said, the people need to lead, then the leaders will have no choice but to follow, that's exactly what they meant. The status quo is struggling, we have them unsteady. Why, just the other day, I saw a sign that said, "Long-haired freaky people, please apply."
Our group just got a contribution from an anonymous donor of over five thousand dolars that will help us to buy land upon which we will continue teaching skills needed to build a sustainable culture. This puts us over 10% of the way toward our funding goals. We are continuing to seek a large enough acreage to hold classes, create demonstration plots for resoration agriculture and to provide a working habitat restoration project where people can come to learn in a hands-on way what they need to know to replicate our success. We have had more than a dozen teachers express a desire to teach at our facility and to share such diverse skills as wildcrafting herbs, foraging for wild edible plants, animal husbandry, building soil carbon, putting up the harvest for lean times natural home building and we will also continue taking people for the annual maple sugar harvest and wild rice encampment. Additionally, we have skilled tradespeople who have been building efficiency into our housing stock, reducing the overall consumption of resources and energy, all of which allow homeowners to live better for less. Even though we are saving up for a large land purchase, we continue to invest in the capabilities of our group to educate more people faster and create bigger impact with what resources we have available. Just last month, we got a larger biochar kiln that exponentially increases the amount of carbon we can sequester, allowing us to create enough biochar to amend larger acreages faster. we have already committed to taking it on the road to several private landholdings,to sequester carbon there, but also to set up at public demonstrations across the state where dozens of individuals can learn about the power of this ancient technology. The faster we grow, the faster we increase our effectiveness. As we continue to reach out, spreading the network of people who are excited about our work, the faster we seem to get invitations to present our work to others for the first time. Those contacts in turn lead to even more people hearing about what we do for the first time. We have also mad einroads with several larger groups and people involved with nation-wide and world-wide efforts to change course. It is not too late, but we must all learn the new rules, the old strategies that worked and renew our commitment to one another and the planet. Sticking our heads in the sane will not inspire or affect change.
https://gofund.me/52fa3b77 joing forces with one another and the natural world will have benefits that out-live us all. For the next seven genereations,Tony C. Saladino-Bioneer

1/120

One one-hundred and twentieth is a realtionship. Is the same ratio as 44 feet is when compared to a mile. If you live in a climate where temperatures can rach 100 and also down to -20, the ratio is about the same as one degree of temperature would be compared to the whole range of possible temperatures you may experience n that location. Another way of thinking about this strange fraction is that it is a little less than 1%, about twenty percent less in fact. A handful of readers already know that I started a gofundme site late in the year and it has reached 1/120th of the goal! The project is to protect 80 acres of inholding, land completely surrounded by National Forest. Our local not-for-profit has reforested hundreds of acres already, but they were spread across ten counties and several dozen individual sites. This larger acrage will allow us to focus our efforts near the highest ppoint in Wisconsin and concentrate our ECO-Tours in a finite space so that people can more easily see the transformation, pretty much all at once. Over the last twenty years we have spent thousands of hours on logistics, making sure all of our needs woul dbe taken care of at hundreds of separate events. We have been able to plant over 60,000 native trees and millions more native perennial plants, but since they may be only a few acres, or perhaps even a site as small as a few hundred square feet, we know they are there, but it does not look like much when viewed by satellite. This 80 acre parcel will change that. target="_blank">

Hens Laying In Wait

Quietly, all across America, chickens are being re-introduced into the urban environment. Many think that those who raise chickens must also have their noisy brethren, the roosters. In most locations, fear rather than fact inform many of the opinions held by both city regulators and the neighbors. Chickens seem to bring with them, a host of fictions and misunderstandings, many of which are quite interesting. I love the question, "Don't you need a rooster to get eggs."
"No." I will say, but then I have to explain. Women usually release an egg each month, to have a fertilized egg, you need a rooster. If you want to see some funny faces, just the mention of a "fertilized egg" can do the trick.

Tony & Nancy's Chicken Palace is a converted rabbit hutch. 

 

The worries that chickens are dirty, or that they carry disease are surely based on facts learned from massive chicken rearing facilities. What I have seen and learned over the past year and a half living with them in my yard, proves that quite the opposite is true. Humans are actually much more likely to get sick, make a mess or spread disease. In our city, we need a special permit for our birds. One of the hoops we needed to jump through to raise chicken legally, was to get a well-health check from a local veterinarian. Our vet remarked that people are far more likely to get sick from their dogs than they ever would be from chickens. The way our "girls" consume our food scraps and turn them into manure, they actually reduce both the amount of organic waste and provide a miraculous transformation of much of our waste into beautiful eggs.
Our ladies may not be unusual, but from time to time we have gotten eggs that weigh in at 1/4 pound! The sense of pride that overtakes one when one of these "babies" arrives is not unlike the proud father strutting that goes on in delivery wards across our great nation daily. We use our digital dietary scale to keep track of especially large specimens, but  the real joy is in the eating of them.
When we began our learning curve was quite steep. My wife Nancy and I had both had a bit of experience with chickens, but knew about as much about them as the average person. They give eggs and taste great with almost anything. What else is there to know, right? I was amazed to find out that they actually prefer to sleep perched on a horizontal branch or stout stick. It sounded too precarious for a landlubber like myself. I am a lover of gizzards. I eat them whenever they are available. What I only had a foggy idea about was the structure and function of these specialized organs. Chickens actually eat sharp gravel, which lodges in the gizzard and helps them to grind their food. In a little over a month we read and studied the habits and needs of our feathered friends enough to feel confident in adopting a few. One of the funniest things that happened right away was that when we read about these creatures, we noticed that chicken owners frequently referred to the birds as "girls", more specifically my girls. Fancying myself as more pragmatic and aloof, I told myself that I would never speak with such affection as to call them girls. Certainly not "my girls"! How surprised I was when on the very first days with our new birds, I walked out to their coop saying "Good morning Girls!"

Red, is more inquisitive and comes to hand easily.

For under forty dollars we were able to purchase enough fencing and hardware to contain our birds, giving them a safe place that is healthy and the tools and supplies to keep them well-fed and watered. I am the first to admit that I have a surplus of building materials at my disposal, but you certainly don't need to spend a thousand dollars to build your own Chicken Palace. Several birds can share the same nest box, which ideally is only about the size of a single chicken. For ease of feeding, watering and egg collection I put their nest box and feeding station  and a foot or two off the ground. That leaves the bottom level open for scratching the ground and pecking for scratch.
Our neighbor took up the hobby of hatching fertilized chicken eggs about two years ago and when his chicks hatched, they were so cute and interesting, that I began to get curious. That is how my own odyssey began. I have heard that there are several ways to start, but sometimes finding a good source for just a few chickens can be a little tough. Mine came from an old farm that had been managed by a practical old woman who had a mostly hands-off approach to husbandry. She raised birds for eggs mostly, but had an annual culling to dispatch roosters and a few older hens. When we got our girls, we had an understanding that any roosters could be returned to the farm from which the eggs had come. The fellow who runs the farm now wanted a younger rooster anyway. Whenever possible, remember the advice that I got years ago about animal husbandry. Start with the best stock you can afford. then care for the creatures to the best of your ability. Good care can overcome many (if not most) deficiencies in genetic make-up. However, poor care of any animal will yield sub-standard performance, no matter the genes.
Our chickens love most of the things that we eat and are able to benefit from most food scraps that we produce. They especially like broccoli, spinach and nearly every leafy green we have ever thrown them.
We have attempted to make their lives as interesting and varied as we can, in spite of the fact that they are "bird brained", we like to give them opportunities to "spread their winds" as it were. Having read about the wonderful side benefits that chickens can produce, we wanted them to have relatively free access to range around our yard. The second major undertaking, after their coop was to construct a chicken tractor. This is nothing more than a frame with wheels on one end and a handle on the other that holds a large chicken wire cage, a spare food and water source, and when in use, our chickens. By moving the chicken tractor around the yard periodically, it allows the grass to recover between times the chickens scratch the ground up, and it prevents predators from eating our birds.
Just two short generations ago, many of our families were able to care for these creatures and watch them with delight as they pecked their way around the yard. Today, we may need "our girls" more than ever.

Elizabeth, pictured in the nest box with the chicken tractor in the background.

Not only do they provide local food and a fun hobby, but a source of great joy for both owners and the neighbors, especially when they get a few eggs from time to time. Not only is it a kick to go out and grab an egg or two, still warm, for your breakfast. not only will you grow to love your girls, but they are more fun to watch than television and for the time being, in many jurisdictions, they are still legal. City chickens have come home to roost and are providing food, fertilizer and fun wherever they flock.

Kennedy Memories

In forming an opinion about JFK, much of my awareness is governed by mediated perceptions after his death. My parents never mentioned what a President is until he was gone. A toddler, I saw a man crying on television, he was saying that the President had been shot. I went to get my mother. I remember that I was still afraid of the cold air return vent in the hall, so I got down on hands and knees and went across it from the living room to the kitchen to get my mom. Even though I was just walking at the time, I remember the mourning like it was yesterday. No one around me was untouched by the tragedy and grief of loss. I have learned over my lifetime that as I was born, the Cuban Missile Crisis unfolded, terrorizing my mom and dosing her fetus with cataclysm-response hormones. Flight is ruled out during birth and in one's layette, so the fight response is required, but you are with only yourself, so who to fight? Yes, one self. Fight your fears, sense of loss, separation and anxiety. Fight it all, on terrain within one self. Existential I will admit, but real and true for anyone who has done it. One's opinion may differ, but the media heraldry has skewed our perception of Kennedy's Presidency toward the mythic.

Presidential scholars may rate him near the middle of the pack when it comes to performance, but except in rare cases, the values JFK stood for took a severe hit on the day of his passing. Youth and optimism did not re-enter politics until two generations later. The social justice movement that seemed alive and growing in the early to mid sixties calcified and ran aground, stagnating until it was subverted by the end of the welfare state. Only recently have we turned our faces again to the light. In terms of infusing a nation with a sense of mission to their fellow inhabitants of Starship Earth, no one stands out in modern history until Obama.

We all stand to gain when we build on a common moral ground. As much as some relished John F. Kennedy's death, they were the same sorts of folks who seek to gain from outdated competitive models. In relishing one another, and our innate capacities, giving from a place of plenty, capital loses it's importance. What more effective nail in Capitalism's coffin, than peace, love and understanding. The good old boys club is alive and well, don't fool yourself. Vigilante justice is just what the doctor ordered for political obfuscation. The Us/Them divide is surely smaller than the television reports. Our troubles are not caused by people flooding across our borders, or "drugs" that grow naturally and have the power to heal. We blame convicted pedophiles for actions that they may not take, but ignore the vast majority of child molestations, ignore where our food comes from but get angry when food borne disease breaks out. While pointing the finger at everyone else, we can easily neglect ourselves. This is what Kennedy excelled at, reminding our citizens that through cooperation and sharing a sense of purpose, we could create miracles.

I wish that we could point out the fallacy of lack to all those who claim that "nature's way" is competition for scarce resources. My own experience has taught me the exact opposite. Where nature thrives, a profusion of life breaks out like you can't imagine. Literally billions of organisms can reside in a cup of soil. Sharing is the rule rather than the exception in these systems. Successful human endeavors often reflect this co-operative spirit rather than a competitive one. Miracle can happen and often do, but what is required is for folks to again realize that we are inextricably dependent on one another and our success. We are all responsible for the cohesion of natural systems. We are most richly rewarded for being stewards of the planet, which can allow it to support each and every one of us.

Make Miracles Happen!

Welcome Home!

As Rainbow Family of Light and Love folks know, when you come over the last hill into a gathering and hear the words "Welcome Home!", you know you are surrounded by others who, whether they share your values or not will make sure that no harm comes to you, that you will be supported and integrated into their community. From this perspective, abundance is honored and respected, as are the folks sharing their experience with you. Sustainable systems are born of complex logical thought that defies logic. Spirit, alive in the environment guides the hand of experienced practitioners of sustainable landscape management. The very microbes and relationships that exist in permaculturally managed land is Welcomed Home! The relief that is taken off any organism, when it realizes that it is fully supported and integrated is immense. An analogy that a friend once used is lobbing in our "pitches", slow and easy over home plate so Mother Nature always hits one "out of the park".
Achieving ones highest purpose, optimal performance, or some say, soul purpose requires not only the fixed point in one's mind, upon whose axis revolves our direction and sense of calm, but an appreciation of these points in others that allow us to revolve around, and pick up inertia from, upon successful passing. like orbiting planets, our social and familial interactions determine both our own and other's happiness. By what powerful lie do we neglect our fellow man? How can we justify treating others as if they don't matter or have in them the same value and ability to perform miraculously?
The concept of loving one another predates Christ, Buddha, Mohamed, and most certainly the hippies. However you come to it, the meaning is the same. The rest of us are just glad you did! Make sure to let folks know that they are appreciated as integral to your way of life and it will transform them as well as everyone they interact with. Let go of your own narrow vision and groove on the flow involved in working with others, pretty soon you will be performing miracles!

Zeitgeist: Food System

As anyone familiar with permaculture can attest, the three legged stool that creates the stable basis of it's practice as well as the foundation of a sustainable future, rests on attending to People, Profit and the Planet. This overabundant process requires that we think differently about our relationship with one another and the planet.
The "Planet" leg of the stool is about lobbing our "pitches" right over the plate into nature's sweet spot, giving her the opportunity to thrive and hit one out of the park every time. Rather than demanding corn out of every available acre, plant grapes, asparagus and perhaps nut trees for a triple harvest of high profit nutrient dense foods, not just "commodities" that produce dollars at the expense of water quality, unnecessary demands on transportation and ill health amongst the world's inhabitants. The reductionist approach to our commercial landscape has created mono-culture of demonic proportions. Raping the earth of her soil, nutrients and tilth.
Similarly, creating artificial demand for products full of empty calories and fat laden goodies simply for profit is the antithesis of permacultural values and logic. People are much better served through food systems that nourish them and sate their hunger and thirst rather than creating disease and mayhem within their bodies as so many "products" do today. I once worked at a cannery that added ingredients labeled "not-for human consumption" because they helped reduce biological activity in the "product". Permaculture asks not, what will create the biggest profit, without considering the affect that the decision will have on the earth and her people as well.
Lastly, and this is occasionally the most difficult leg of the stool to comprehend or put into practice, is "People". Equitable distribution of surplus, for there is always a surplus, is one of the ways to consider people in the process. Giving away food that has been produced abundantly in a permacultural system is similar to taxation. It requires that you think about the needs of others, care about their well-being, and understand the connection between us and "them". We are actually all one. Unlike taxation though, the relationship is best practiced face to face and reorients us to our community and basic human needs, values and possibilities.
We are, after all, living in an age that demands reestablishing connection to the planet and one another. Capitalism was based on the myth of scarcity. What ever comes next will acknowledge abundance, rewarding thrift and conservation of the Earth as well as Creator's gifts (Air, Fire, Water and Spirit)which provide all things in abundance if we don't despoil her or them. Throughput and externalities will be integrated our future or we as a species will perish.

Getting Ready for Spring Planting

As the end of winter approaches, and the frost begins to come out of the ground, many of us look forward to the coming warmth of Spring, the yielding soils and the smells of thawing compost piles.
ECO-Tours of Wisconsin Inc. is looking forward to tree planting excursions and events that center around sustainability and permaculture. Spring is also a good time to reflect on plans for expansion and how far we have come in our pursuit of Eden. At last count we had over two dozen perennial plants that produce food each year with very little weeding, tilling, or trimming. The most work we do is the harvest.
We see our organization as a pollinator of sorts. Each of us and the groups we belong to are wonderfully complete in isolation, but once cross pollination occurs, new awarenesses and new forms begin to emerge. Through continued planting of seeds, we can reestablish life where none had been, create surplus where there had been lack and create life upon the harshest soils. Our home has been a microcosm of what we do on a larger scale across vast acreages. When we arrived here, there was one rotting Apple Tree and several very old Lilacs. The soil was prone to drying out and cracking. It had become so compacted as to only support invasive species, and very few of them. The grass always turned brown in peak summer and the water pooled around the house and made it's way into the basement.
We began a process of loving the Earth back to life, establishing a compost, mulching and introducing clay busters that would look beautiful and provide food for birds, bugs and butterflies. We planted several trees right away and added a few more each year until now there is protection from much of the harshest sun of summer and less of the biting winds o' winter for our bit of land to deal with. The longer we are here, watching what the climate dishes out, the more we see that can be done to make our part of the planet more hospitable.
Pemaculture has allowed us to find food at virtually every season, right near our back door. It has allowed us to see more wildlife, create a healthy, organic, and sustainable oasis in the heart of the city, and has led us to have such abundant harvests as to share our surplus with others. Our ecotours allow us a forum to spread the word about environmental recovery, sustainable approaches to housing, energy, and food so that more and more people can live better while using less. We invite you to share in one of our events or take a tour of our facilities. To arrange a tour, please either write or call ahead, so that we can be ready to make your stay great.
You can contact us through e-mail at: tnsaladino42@hotmail.com, write using snail mail at: 1445 Porlier street Green Bay, WI 54301-3334 or call using our number (920) 884-2224.

Patriotism: Religion of the Soil

Patriotism has been referred to as the "Religion of the Soil". We do have a mystic relationship with local microbes. After all, we mutually exchange gasses with the same "local" air. We rely on their existence, inhabiting all the spaces around and some within us. Without bacteria, fungi, and primary decomposers, we would drown in waste. In a single handful of living, healthy soil, billions of relationships weave a complex web of life. It is time for us to have a true worshipful attitude toward soil. Earth is a daunting concept to many of us. The sheer scale of our planet trumps our imaginations from grasping the entire globe. Think locally can likewise boggle our ability to appreciate, the full complexity, overwhelming our imaginations. We have virtually sterilized much of our part of North America, leading to much less diversity of species, and far fewer organisms overall.
Imagine, intact forest, towering eighty to over one hundred feet. In this matrix are many thousands of individual plants, a myriad of creatures, living just on the bark of the several hundred trees per acre! Add in the thousands of insects that would inhabit a single dead tree...You can see that in short order, we would find billions of organisms, then trillions. Truly mind boggling. Now, remember the last parking area that you saw. Not only is there a minute area on which life to exist, but the conditions over the entire area are at odds with any sort of ecologic system. We can reclaim paved areas, we just need the will, and respect for the soil that it deserves. The desolation that has been rolled, like dice, out upon the landscape can be reclaimed. By the simple act of respect, for the land, the soil, and our "need" to civilize and control nature on this most basic level.
Our fresh air depends on other living things, our food, many of our clothes, our homes, our very ability to make a living, depends on the Mother, Earth. The earth's systems have developed over millennia to be perfectly suited to their locale. Ours is to find a way to encourage the unity of complexity in and amongst the inhabitants of every thimbleful of soil that we can. We need to develop ways to add verticality to our landscape as well. Trees, vines, herbs and flowers all multiply the area that is available for life to thrive in and on. Profusion of life is the rule rather than the exception in nature. If we are to survive as a species, we need to fit ourselves to the web rather than trying to make it bend to us.
Today, we only got to plant a few trees, but each one made a huge impact on the local landscape. these were larger, specimen trees, and relatively tower above what had been there before. Shade, even dappled shade reduces extremes of both temperature, humidity and wind. This in turn encourages a wider variety of life-forms who add their energetic spin to the vortecies of life. all beings imbibe and sanctify Earth, Air and Water, and through the furnace of metabolism, and harvesting solar energy, Fire. Every organism also brings to the equation Spirit. The will to survive is at the root of all life. Although it has been suggested that the death drive is equal to the drive to life, I see quite the opposite. The death drive is almost always aberrant. Think of the Kamakazi Squirrels, who run under your tires, deer in the headlights, and teenagers for that matter. If they were like that all the time, the species would have died out long ago. We can strive for incremental change to have lasting affects. What we can do now is better than what we hope to do in the future. That being said, each of the trees that we planted to day has a high probability of outliving me. What better way to serve the next seven generations!
Please plant a tree as soon as you can, and if you would like us to plant a tree with your blessings, send donations to ECO-Tours of Wisconsin Inc. 1445 Porlier Street, Green Bay, WI 54301-3334