Microbes

Again, we need to start with an object lesson. Imagine a cow and her calf, on an acre of healthy soil. Science has calculated that the microbes on this same acre of soil have about the same mass as Bessie and her calf. I have heard the claim that billions of organisms live in a tablespoon of healthy soil as well and I'm sure that the scientists are right, even though I can't see things that small and I will never be able to see a germ, flagellate or bacterium no matter how good my eyesight is! In my "initial contact" flyer, I have this to say about microbes,

"The biochar ecosystem provides all that soil microbes need, security, moisture, air and healthy food. Microbes can be added by using compost, or healthy soil. Waste products of microbes that live in soil, often as many as billions per teaspoon, actually feed healthy plant roots."

Microbes can be added by including some compost or compost tea in the mix. Some commercial mixtures are available that tout themselves as compost starter, etc. but the truth of the matter is that spores and bacteria are on the wind. It may be difficult to get a representative sample large enough to really get the char to transform into biochar, but in theory, time is really all that is necessary to get the microbes to take up residence there. I typically start to see insects hanging around my char after it gets minerals and nutrients added to it. Whether they are trying to eat some of the bits of rotted food, or harvesting smaller organisms that I cannot see will have to remain a mystery. I certainly don't shoo them away, because I see them as vectors for getting more beneficial microbes into the mix. To make compost tea, you just need an air pump, like you would find in an aquarium, some tubing you can weigh down with a rock , a five gallon (20L) bucket of water, and a quart or so of compost. Set the bubbler up so that there is a constant stream of bubbles in the bucket, then add the compost and let it go, bubbling away for 24-48 hours. The air is essential to getting a healthy representative sample of microbes. Adding some of the resulting water to the char after it has been made, micronized, moistened and mineralized will allow the microbes direct access to the territory that has been prepared for them.

Of course, there are far more idiosyncrasies and special circumstances to deal with than a short post can include, but for the most part, in the vast majority of locations, you can utilize local resources to make highly effective biochar. Jumping back to the previous post, "Minerals", nitrogen, an important soil constituent, can be added to char through the use of many different ingredients. Some of the best char I have ever made began as 75% grass clippings by volume and 25% char. Another excellent batch started by moisturizing it first with pure, fresh fallen snow. Once material breaks down or concentrates, less is needed. Most of the nitrogen in the batch I mentioned got a lot of moisture and loads of nitrogen from moist grass clippings. Additionally, I added urine every time it dried out enough to soak it up. Nitrogen can come from blood meal, bat guano, fish emulsion, urine (urea) and virtually any manure or offal. As you can imagine, the bacteria which break down these materials are typically present, if not common in soil. When needed, they proliferate quickly and die out after their food supply disappears. Remember though, even dead microbes feed the next generation, it is the cycle of life. Whether you make biochar with manure or urine is not as important as the fact that microbes can grow on either, or both. If animals are fed anti-biotics, this is less so. The goal is not so much to culture a specific set of microbes, but a flourishing, diverse community that utilizes all wastes, from all the different microbes, their predators and competition as well. In diversity there is balance. I often think about how much better off we would be as a civilization, if we accepted this, or at least understood the need for diversity among our human population also.

Char itself helps to moderate extremes as do the organisms who live on and in it. So does the water that it holds. Mitigating and ameliorating change is helpful for the whole soil biome. Instead of trying to give crops what they need for just one season, or rotating crops periodically to help the soil stay healthy, utilizing biochar requires us to take a much longer view of soil health and conservation. Once we put all the time and effort into healing the soil, building up the soil biome, we are loathe to abuse it or let it blow away. My county here in Wisconsin Brown County, holds the state record for the most soil lost to erosion each year in our entire state. Perhaps if people decided to value this finite resource, we would get true conservation started. Understanding that healthy food leads to healthy humans is perhaps a stretch for some who sit behind the wheel of a tractor, but we can't continue living as if it did not matter or we threaten our very existence.

Just as we have become aware of the micro-biome in the human gut, we need to also become aware of the science behind the micro-biome as it relates to soil health. Estimates of the value of the gut bacteria in our health range up to claims that 80% of our immunity comes from the gut. In soils, there can be billions of microbes in a tablespoon and millions of types and strains can live in close proximity to or atop one another. Like the unbroken forest that we hear, used to cover the Eastern United States, in which a squirrel could travel branch to branch, without touching the ground from the Atlantic Seaboard to the Mississippi River, microbes inhabit healthy soil, cheek to jowl upon each and every soil particle. Biochar exponentially expands the amount of surface area upon which they can thrive.

Microbe habitat waiting to happen. Atmosphere is automatic, moisture allows life to flourish, organic material, minerals and nutrients are needed by all life, even microbes. Meeting their needs is paramount to growing healthy soil. Remove just one necessary resource and life gets stunted or fails to thrive. Boutique biochar, such as I teach people to make, transforms soils immediately and lasts for geologic time. Valuing a technique that more than doubles crop production, forever, has an infinite value. What is this knowledge worth to you? Please remunerate me for my efforts and sharing with capital. You can send money through Paypal at account number: tnsaladino42@hotmail.com which also happens to be my e-mail. If you would like to contact me that way, I have brochures that you can use to spread the word about this ancient miracle in your local community. I can even Skype in on fire pit parties where you would teach others the same sort of class that I do. Humans must emulate natural processes and seek a state of peak evolution by mimicking nature's way of stacking function, producing nothing considered waste, just recyclable materials anxiously awaiting their chance to face the crucible of change. In soil, every trophic level can serve as top predator. This layers multiple levels of living carbon, inhabiting these surfaces, covering them with a micro climate that is warmer, because of metabolism. That warmth is held because soil air has a bit more carbon dioxide than the air we breathe a result of microbe metabolism. All good things for the rest of the community.

Just as we have 75% water in our bodies as newborns and it slowly dwindles as we age, down to fifty percent water when we are elderly, microbes have a high percentage of water within them as well; like us, over time, they begin to desiccate, even though the cell walls try to hold on to moisture, it inevitably reduces with time. Up to 75% of the water in soils can be bound within the cells of microbes. This moisture allows metabolism within the cell, but also makes the exchange of gasses possible, helps stabilize soil moisture and moderates temperature. Building the base of the soil food web invites heterotrophs and macro-invertebrates. Microbes that can not be seen with the naked eye are difficult to explain or understand, but the most important thing to remember is that less desirable ones tend to make dank, musty or off smells. The less desirable microbes also are more tolerant of conditions that have limited amounts of oxygen. 85% of bacteria are either innocuous or helpful to humans, many lend their aroma to healthy soil. You probably know what good, healthy soil is supposed to smell like, so too our body is able to sense bad organisms by smell too. With the pathogenic ones, typically you can overcome them with creating conditions favorable to beneficial organisms. Being careful to not let stagnant water develop, aerate more, stir the biochar more often and be careful to balance the amount of nutrients available and the amount of minerals and detritus as well. some less composted material is not bad either. Typically, I have found that in making good char about ten times more nutrients, especially nitrogen are needed by weight when compared to the amount of other minerals. If there is too much moisture, dry powdered minerals can help absorb it. Worm castings can also help absorb excess moisture. Balancing the moisture level so that the biochar never dries out, but never gets too wet is something that you will develop a feel for.

The typical make up of soil, as stated in previous posts, is 25% Air (soil atmosphere has more CO2 in it, from microbe respiration) 25% water, 40-45% minerals, 5-10% organic matter. Subdivided, this last 5 to 10% is 80% humus and ten percent each of roots, (both dead and alive), and organisms. Adding biochar, even at 1%, would provide habitat for more organic matter, most of which would be living creatures. These organisms are only 10% of that tiny 5% sliver of soil that is referred to as "organic matter" typically. The carbon matrix upon which biochar is designed and the pyrolysis process rendering it vitreous makes it both mineral, but immune to break down and able to foster microbial life indefinitely, growing habitat for these beneficial microbes, perhaps exponentially. This burgeoning microbial habitat helps stabilize soil moisture, holds minerals and nutrients and creates micro-biomes of better drainage, stucture and retention of moisture when it is available. It also raises soil temperature slightly as a result of microbial metabolism. All these benefits and carbon sequestration!

I realize that the discussion is currently about microbes, but the amount of habitable surface area depends on making the char a fine powder (see "Micronize") with the largest pieces being smaller than 2mm. About the width of Eisenhower's ear on a dime. The structure inherent in char unleashes massive amounts of surface area, the smaller you crush it, the more available surface area, the smallest powders we are typically able to produce are still cavernous for a microbe. Sorry for the repetition.

There is much for us to learn when we build soil this way. One of the most important things to understand is that all soil microbes are interdependent. When any overpopulation occurs and death of one group of organisms occurs, it is not a horrible loss, because others pick up the slack and pitch in to return the soil food web to balance. This interdependence and alliance of all in the community to work for the betterment of conditions for all other organisms is something human creatures need to take to heart as well. The complex interdependent relationships that occur naturally in soil need to be emulated and used as templates for layering functions withing our own lives and the human community as well. I wish you all a future of security and abundance and when we realize that it is unnecessary to deprive some "other" to take care of ourselves, many problems, many traumas and untold destruction will be avoided.

Mineralizing the Char

This is the part where I utilize non-scientific analogies to try to convey cold hard science. Minerals constitute typically, a full fifty percent of the mass of soil, almost half of the rest of the material we call soil is either air or water. With a tiny sliver of not-yet composted plant material and of course, the soil organisms. We need to understand and respect that when we add compost to soil, 90% of the carbon in this form leaves the soil profile in just four years. It leaves in many ways, because it is essential to the lives of other creatures. It is consumed, broken down, used up, turned into something else, given off in the form of gas, organisms eat it and leave, or the plants it grows are taken away to be consumed, elsewhere.

I drew the carbon cycle by diagramming the hexavalent relationship between the points of the carbon molecule, which also echo their relative abundance in these multi-variant forms. Six lines, forming a hexagon make up the skeleton of the diagram:

The soil and Earth itself is the bottom bar, the atmosphere is the top one. The two sides represent the plant and animal kingdoms, lower and higher trophic levels.

One excellent analogy of the Earth processes is that the soil actually breathes, high pressure conditions are like the soil inhaling and when the stormy lows happen, the earth exhales. Strangely enough, the opposite holds true for the moisture balance. Typically when the stormy lows are present, it drinks moisture, that holds dissolved nitrogen flows in and displaces some of the gasses. Atmospheric nitrogen is taken in to healthy soil, during high pressure, fair weather conditions.

Minerals are also required for proper cell function and minerals represent a hefty percentage of soil. when nature produces soil, bedrock is broken down by processes within to the soil, it helps to keep the soil biome healthy and feeds life the pure mineral upon which it sits. Because we are creating massive amounts of surface area, we also need to add mineral components and nutrients the plants and soil organisms will utilize to keep the soil healthy long term. This involves the big N nitrogen. Typically it can be found in fresh green grass clippings, the atmosphere, as I mentioned, in urine, manures of all types. Basically anything from the yard or garden or farm that smells strong has lots of nitrogen in it. Making the char hold a lot of this nutrient takes time. The pores are so excellent at holding this nitrogen that as they absorb the smelly nutrient, they fill, eventually, when we add too much, beginning to smell. The minerals from local soil are often best, but if there is a desire to temper soil that is either too acidic or too alkaline, the type of rock dust might be different. Granitic rock dust will help increase acidity or reduce alkalinity. Limestone powder would reduce acidity and make soil slightly more alkaline, but changing soil chemistry can be a very long term issue and it is often best in acidic soils to just grow what likes it there and in limey soils to find the crops that do best there.  Not everyone can grow blueberries, no matter what the nursery tells you.

There are many other nutrients that you could add, especially if you have gotten a soil test and understand what needs to be added, but typically, nitrogen is the most important. It is far more rare to have deficiencies of the other two macro-nutrients, phosphorus and potassium, but it happens. When choosing materials to add to char, one of the most important things to understand is the numbers on fertilizer packages all have three numbers on them. Representing N-P-K the numbers represent the number of pounds of each of those nutrients in 100 pounds of the material. high numbers are not necessarily good. Worm castings have very low numbers, but the plants can absorb that form of nitrogen very efficiently, so the functional value is better than more concentrated forms which may not be as easily assimilated by plants. Blood meal and urea are very high, but break down is required for the plants to take full advantage of that form of nitrogen. Typically, our compost has a little bit of everything we grow in it and I do import compost from within carrying distance when I can get good clean organic yard waste. When you begin to see your soil as a large sponge, giving you a tiny percentage of nutrients from the vast trove it holds, like a "nutrition battery" might do, you begin to understand how critical it is to feed that soil as well as harvest from it. In very real ways, the energy we put into the garden comes back to us, like winding up the rubber band on a child's toy airplane makes it fly.

I have been told many times by landowners, "Yes, this field is healthy, it has had nothing but hay grown on it for decades." as if he removal of tons of biomass could never deplete the soils. Without inputs, no matter what you grow and harvest, you will eventually deplete available and necessary/essential nutrients, minerals and soil life which is supposed to thrive in it.

Understanding the needs of the microbes, we culture the char with, is important. It helps us to  know how to prepare the char for the addition of the microbes. Typically, the nitrogen and rock dust are first in, but then I add tobacco and other herbs, especially ones I might use for my own health and healing, hoping to increase the variety of substances available to be broken down. Finished compost holds a wealth of nutrition for soil microbes. Loess, or wind borne soil particles add much as well. Many of the best soils that retain fertility were created when dust settled upon the surface periodically. I try to add at least some to every batch of biochar I make. If you can cut and chop any local plants that grow in un-tilled or "waste" areas nearby, adding that will also help boost the organic content in and around the char. At this point, you could add a variety of mineral rich preparations, kelp or other amendments and any of the biodynamic preparations to really help charge the char for the addition of microbes, but again I find myself jumping ahead.

Micronizing the Char

It sounds odd to say it, but the smaller the particles, the more habitable surface area the char will contain. The International Biochar Institute (IBI) has found that particle sizes less than 2 mm are best. These tiny bits are made up of many tubes which are the vitrified plant cells. Turns out, heating coals 'til they glow is like firing pottery. Not only does the material turn into something like glass, the particles lose half of their size as well. (The charring process shrinks parent material by half as the hydrogen and oxygen, tied up as carbohydrates, are driven off.)  When the carbon is heated to between 450 and 500 degrees F (230-260C) in the absence of air, it is transformed forever. See the entry: "Making". This small particle size also allows earthworms the ability to consume the char and have it come out the other end enriched with worm castings! 

 

This is what the structure of a particle of char looks like once turned to powder. This image is a scale model of what a 0.1mm (0.004 inches) piece of char would look like. This is still massive compared to most soil microbes. Many refer to char as being like condominiums for microbes. The moisture, nutrients and minerals we add to char are akin to stocking the refrigerators, mini bars and pantries of this massive complex for life.

Try as I might, some people just cannot comprehend this living zone under our feet. I understand that it will forever remain invisible, but we can understand what goes on there if we know how to look.

I have developed soils that were over 8% organics and when organics in soil get high, many weeds do not grow optimally, especially peculiar is quackgrass, which gets large underground systems that can't even put up a single leaf. It is almost like it is trying to grow toward poorer soil before it even tries to grow anything above ground. Remember though, 90% of the carbon added to the soil as compost is lost in one way or another, within four years.

Fully half of what we call soil is either air or water. Soil air, or soil atmosphere as some call it, has slightly less oxygen and nitrogen than above ground air and many times more carbon dioxide in it than air we breathe, again, a result of soil microbe metabolism. Atmospheric carbon dioxide is 0.04%. in soil it can be 0.25% In any case, depending on the water holding capacity of soil, saturation levels, and compaction, soils can range up to ten percent more air, or water, at intervals, it swings back and forth around 25% of each. Most of the remainder is mineral. Up to half of the material is just "dirt", a mineral complex waiting to become habitable. One might imagine parent rock as pure mineral without organic material added in yet. Often it is referred to as bedrock. Fertile soil, on the other hand has this once living carbon component that is residue of life. Soil tilth comes, in part, from this. Fungal hyphae exploit it and turn it into structural elements within the soil complex. The microbes who feed in, on and around these stored reserves flourish and give rise to other trophic levels.

Looking at just the tiniest section of the pie chart, the 5-8% which represents the organic carbon, dead plant roots, dead plant residue, dung, dead microbes and other life, etc. we see a community made up of billions of organisms per tablespoon. healthy soil is completely different than dirt. Just considering the tiny fraction of the soil we can control, component by component, further investigation reveals this:

Soil microbiome in healthy soil is diverse and contains all these interactive elements. So many epiphitic and filial relations exist between members of the soil community, it is difficult to diagram them all. Each trophic level can concentrate minerals, nutrients and, sadly toxins, to tenfold increase above background levels in their tissues. All parts of this system provide vital resources for other trophic levels. Unlike above ground life, every creature or plant can feed on the others, making them top predators.

I was challenged by a friend to create a diagram of the carbon cycle and this is just my first stab at it. Soil carbon as I have diagrammed here, is mostly living or recently living. The tiny bit of carbon biochar adds is less than a single percentage. The rest of the life that goes on, the biome, the active living tissue of billions of microscopic organisms per tablespoon of soil, once consumed or used as resources  for sustaining amoebae, ciliates and/or flagellates, however these same soil organisms can feed on the tissues of any of the representatives from any and all other trophic levels.

90% of organic carbon added to soil leaves within the first four years, so if you compost, never wait five years to add it to your garden beds or crop producing fields. Soil life depends on dead roots, dead leaves, manure and other organic matter, typically the sorts of things we throw into our compost bins, typically food that would smell bad within a few days. This is exactly the kind of stuff that soil microbes love. without a constant supply of nutrients, like us, they wither and die.

What makes biochar different is that vitrified carbon, pyrolized carbon, lasts forever. The organisms who use it for housing don't eat it or digest it, they just use the surfaces within it for habitat. That is, why making the surface area available, by making tiny particles, is worth the effort. Unleashing the power of char takes place when the material is crushed to powder. If you ever see a charred log in the woods, it is almost always virtually sterile. Nothing will grow on it. When the particles are tiny, it becomes possible to saturate it with nutrients and food for life. In a large chunk, there is comparatively little surface area exposed to air, water and nutrients.

My feedstock for making char is primarily sawdust. I live in a forest products state and have virtually unlimited amounts of it free. It is expensive to transport away. Making char from sawdust yields small bits that do not need to be crushed to powder or small grains. Perhaps you think it lazy, but really, it is efficient. If there are agricultural areas near sawdust anywhere on Earth, the highest use for them is char production! Get on this human beings, let's make this happen!
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When I heard that there is as much surface area in a chunk of char a third the size of a sugar cube to equal the area of a soccer pitch, my mind was completely and utterly blown. Looking at it another way, a handful of the stuff has fourteen acres of surface area. Again, mind-blowing. I'm nearly ten years in to my experience with biochar and my mind is still blown when I consider it! When you factor in the ability of microbes to flourish in and on the char, it has even more power to transform soils for the better. Water holding capacity is increased not only because char holds six times it's weight in water, but once colonized by the microbial community, that amount increases because the microbes hold water in their cells as well.

<2mm 2mm="" a="" again="" ahead="" am="" and="" becomes="" but="" can="" char="" charred="" clogs="" coffee="" could="" crushing="" difficult="" doing="" dust="" equipment.="" for="" full.="" get="" grinder="" hammer="" hand="" handling="" hard="" i="" if="" is="" it="" large="" material="" me="" mill="" moisten="" more="" of="" p="" particles="" pretty="" quantities="" quickly.="" requires="" respirator="" single="" sub="" terrible.="" than="" the="" thing="" to="" turns="" use="" work="" you="">
<2mm 2mm="" a="" again="" ahead="" am="" and="" becomes="" but="" can="" char="" charred="" clogs="" coffee="" could="" crushing="" difficult="" doing="" dust="" equipment.="" for="" full.="" get="" grinder="" hammer="" hand="" handling="" hard="" i="" if="" is="" it="" large="" material="" me="" mill="" moisten="" more="" of="" p="" particles="" pretty="" quantities="" quickly.="" requires="" respirator="" single="" sub="" terrible.="" than="" the="" thing="" to="" turns="" use="" work="" you="">When I began, I tried everything to crush the nuggets of char I made. In addition to being dusty as all get out, there were no good ways of doing it. I drove a large vehicle back and forth across a big burlap bag, lined with a plastic bag to catch as much of the char powder as possible, after about twenty times of driving over it, about a quart of use-able char was produced, the rest remained big pieces. I tried a hammer and made some small bits, but many bigger chunks went flying. I even tried a large mortar and pestle, which worked, but is not nearly as romantic as it appears in those movies they show in anthropology class. There is a reason that mills figure greatly into most local lore. Once you didn't have to pound or grind wheat to flour, by hand, things were golden! The tool of choice that I have settled on for smaller areas, garden beds and smaller, is to use a hand grinder for coffee. You can change the fineness of the grind and sub 2mm is easy enough to get with it. You just have to slowly feed chunks into the feed auger, which requires paying some attention to, but, if you are the person cranking the handle, you should not hurt yourself too badly. Please, please, please, do not breathe the dust!

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Finally, for larger acreages, you can utilize a hammer mill to crush char. Especially if you have acres to enrich, but only logs and large chunks of wood to char. It can be done, but do not breathe the dust! Always wear a respirator if you are going to be around char dust! Another caveat of the hammer mill that is if you try to use water to keep the dust down, the workings will get gummed up. Always remember, what seems tiny to us is cavernous to the microbes we are helping to thrive in the soils we are building.

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.

New 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