We have been teaching people to make and use biochar for more than a decade, but the past year we have turned almost exclusively to online classes. It has been much easier and more efficient in many respects, but there are still a number of people who would rather have in-person classes. That is why we are fundraising to buy land on which we can teach about this and other skills important to become more sustainably oriented. Permaculture design, foraging classes, animal husbandry and regenerative ag. skills, even home economics and other sustainable living skills are more necessary now than ever and there are dozens of great teachers who have offered to teach at our facility. Things from knitting to soap and candle making, canning, drying and putting up th eharves during the fat times so we still can appreciate Earth's abundance during the lean times, etc.
Making and use of biochar can be taught in a fairly comprehensive way in just two or three hours, but some of the other skills we teach can take considerably longer to learn. For guests who want or need to stay longer, we have a plan to offer glamping opportunities as well. Just enough "roughing it" with just enough luxury to have fun and stretch to the limits of our comfort level. That is why we are developing a broader plan to purchase a significant acreage upon which we can offer opportunities fo rno trace camping while teaching a variety of management strategies that layer functions, emulate nature by closing the loop on nutrients, energy, carbon, water and other "resources" and adapt creatively to our rapidly changing world. In our experience, we find that appreciating the gifts of the nature and investing in them often pay dividends that are not necessarily financial, but are every bit as important to our quality of life. what we put in, or give away often comes with unimaginable rewards.
One of the most important aspects of permaculture is that one needs to look, listen and learn, really get down to the level of what goes on in nature, before ever trying to make change happen. The often quoted belief that native people have that every decision needs to be weighed for the good of the next seven generations may seem like far too long a timeline to consider seeing as many are predicting that human actions may make our species extinct within a decade or two, but for those people who have been paying attention, we know that even if people don't want to change, they are going to have to. Far from being a drag, or predicting destruction of society as we know it, we teach ways that the recovery of sound ecological practices will enhance quality of life, jobs and the sense of community that seems to have evaporated under the powerful, but often nearly invisible hand of capitalism.

Far too many use words to describe themselves that were arrived at by focus group or polling data, so I try to refrain from naming myself, our group or the direction our guests are headed. A wise older gentleman laughed at me once, when I was struggling to give him a word to describe myself. I know that far too often descriptors can be pejorative. He said, "I know what you are, a bioneeer!" and at first it felt a bit like the same slap in the face that tree hugger had always been, but as I learned the depth of meaning behind the term and came to understand that he meant nothing negative about it, I took it to heart and more and more have grown to like it. After all, pioneers are eternally optimistic that perhaps over the next rise will be some sort of Shangrila, a place where the cool fresh springs will be plentiful enough that our livestock will have water and that the lush, green grasses will feed them abundantly, the winds and snows won't be too harsh and that we can find straight, tall and strong timbers with which to build shelters that will serve the coming generations. Bioneers do the same, but they can find their lush abundance right where they are, without packing all of our worldly goods in a prarie schooner and striking out across a vast sea of grass to get there. We often find rich abundance by turning over a single rock, or collecting enough from nearby to build the foundations of a new, rich and abundant life, through interaction with the natural world. We invest time required to turn wast to resources or trash to treasure, getting creative to save money and eliminate waste. When I was first called a bioneer, I was still a young man. I had explored hundreds of thousands of places, slept out under the stars in hundreds of them, gotten to know biota on their terms and within their various biomes. I had come to find many dozens of wild foods that thrive where I live and learned how to propagate ones that were finding it difficult to thrive, learning what they needed that had been missing, creating more stable and habitable niches not only for myself, but hundreds of thousands of other species even though I could not name them all.
At this point in my life, I may be an elder, but the motivation I have is not the same as the elders I met and saw when I was young. Most of them had exuded a holier than thou attitude and explicitly said that things were "My way or the highway." Many of the elders I had when I was growing up taught me far more abotu the wrong way to be than how to grow adapt and create meaningful positive change in the world around them.
I choose to continue to strive toward something better, more fulfilling, to learn and grow, even though it sometimes brings painful consequences. Yes, I am sometimes forced to admit I was wrong or to stretch my boundaries, adapt and change. That hope for a better place, for the bioneer lies in the same space we are in today, the same culture, the same location, we don't find it by traversing a vast wilderness. More likely it lives within us already and by digging deeply into the difference between needs and wants, understanding that there is no "away" and that once we discover how to help nature to be abundant, the hardest task becomes equitably redistributing the abundance. I have written at length about the give away, or the give back. The time I have left may be short, but the depth of experience I bring to the table will not die with me. Stories allow us to transcend death, as long as people continue to tell them and find the meaning worth putting into practice. When I teach people to make and use biochar, it is a story that was told over nine thousand years ago. Before humans had developed written language, there were those who knew how important it was to give back to the soil. The only thing that has really changed is that today it is far more important to know, instead of me speaking, think of it as our long dead human ancestors, reaching out across time to show you how to make the soil healthy and life thrive.

FDR

When we did have a Democratic Socialist, he was voted to be our President four times. The oligarchs were so afraid of people like him getting into office again that they implemented term limits. Of course, FDR brought us out of the Great Depression, The Dust Bowl and virtually all of World War II. He did it with style, compassion and in many ways more honor and respect than we have seemingly been able to muster for any President since. Many parks and libraries, infrastructure and aspects of our society that make life better to this day were funded unde the alphabet soup of agencies that he helped to create. If you are unfamiliar, it is worth going back to the speeches he gave to Congress, not telling them what to do, but what our nation needed and the elected officials got to work in order to make it so.
The Dust Bowl that blew away the single greatest resource our nation had, the very soil itself was stopped by planting over 3.5 billion trees. Under his Administration he also built over 3,000 fire towers to look after our forests. Not because he was a draconian and power hungry leader who thought it was a good idea, but because We The People banded together with common purpose and said with one voice, this is where we put our foot down, here this will end, and together, we made something that seemed impossible not only possibly but real. We rebuilt and refurbished water supply systems, modernized roads and bridges, expanded the links between and among our great cities and beat back the rising tide of poverty that threatened to mire our nation for decades. our future is still made possible by programs he signed off on. Social Security, perhaps the greatest humanitarian program ever conceived was signed into law under his term in th ehighest office in our nation. He was beloved and today, many of us still celebrate his life. Of course he was limited by the times he was living in and there were a few things he did that were not the best, but at least he had the guts to strike out, creating the CCC (Civilian conservation Corps) which paid unemployed people to improve and protect our soils, the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) and the REA (Rural Electrification Act)to bring the majority of U.S. households into the Twentieth Century. Hundreds of programs that led to increased quality of life came about bnecause of his leadership and the drive which he exhibited and was able to get the people of our nation to get excited abotu as well. It is interesting that we don't have a holiday to celebrate the birth of this great leader. He was born, January 30, 1882 and sadly passed away while still serving as President April 12, 1945. Less than four months later, his successor Harry Truman ended WWII by dropping bombs, developed under the Presidency of FDR, on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima, August 6th and Nagasaki, August 9th of that same year, killing between 130,000 and 230,000 innocents. There is no doubt that he had saved more than that many lives in this nation during the course of his three full terms in office and the American People were so greatful that they rewarded him with an unprescedented fourth term. now, when a political figure tries to make sweeping changest that improve the lives of the entire nation's citizens, he is called names. Socialist has come to mean something unrecognizeable. terms like bleeding heart and dso-gooder are thrown at him almost as if the ultra-rich are spitting in the face of decent leaders. their right to serve in office is questioned, or their transgressions are magnified as if that makes their decent and logical policies suspect. The fact is that ownership of nearly all of our media has been transferred to the very oligarchs FDR taxed to pay fo rthe improvement of the lives of all our citizens. At this point, those ultra-wealthy folks have had fifty years of fighting in court, being allowed to buy candidatres who know better than to bite the hand of those who feed them and to consolidate their positions and offshore their obscene wealth.
Americans for Tax Fairness points out that: The number of Billionaires has increased more than nine fold during the three decades between 1990 and 2020. Increasing from just 66 individuals to over 615. This unfathomable amount of money had to come from somewhare and it is directly seen in th eerosion of our middle class and th ecomplete collapse of our social safety net. We need anothe rleader like FDR to put this nation back on course.

this image is just one of thousands of park shelters in use today that were built with labor provided under one of th emany programs FDR signed off on. I'm sure there are places in your town that have the hand of his Presidency upon them and we are all better off because of the sacrifices made by people who were actively participating in making our country better for generations they knew that they would never see.

700 Posts and the Surpassing 1%

When I began this project, it was with the intention of not just writing about topical subjects, but to write about events and ideas that have staying power. That lift us up, inspire, and share the powerful reality of knowing more and understanding deeply issues that have been with us for decades and centuries. Some millennea-old that need our attention and remain with us even if they are purposefully obscured from public knowledge, or easy view. I have done thousands of hours of digging through dusty archives, old-school card catalogs, poured over old arial photos and detailed studies and research papers as well as thousands of primary sources that would bore the hell out of the average person, not because it was all that much fun, but to get a grasp of what is going on around me (us) and true facts, essential aspects of our situation regarding our relationship with nature and what we know about living in harmony with rather than at odds with the planet. I know that I try to pour more into the average sentence than may be good sometimes, but this is the way I have found to bring many of my subjects to light. Seven hundred posts ago, if someone had told me that I would take hundreds of people out on ECO-Tours, teach thousands to mqake and use biochar or that a developmentally challenged friend would have the most composed and accurate understanding of why planting trees is a good thing to do, I might have scoffed. I could not have guessed that our small group of friends and a few hundred people we did not even know at th eoutset, would come together to plant over sixty-thousand trees across Northeast Wisconsin or that we would plant even more native perennial plants across our watershed. Seven hundred posts on, I no longer question whether it is "worth" it to write. I do not wonde rwhat miraculous things are yet to transpire. That was settled long ago. If one person can benefit from the thousands of hours of research, struggle to find the right words and the editing, re-writes and late nights spent burning the candle at both ends it was all worth it. There have been times when more than a thousand people a month were reading my posts and that was pretty heady stuff, but now, I have slacked off my brutal schedule of seven posts a month, choosing instead to branch out and share my works in other places. I may write here less frequently, but my aim remains true. I came to understand, as I wrote more and asked people to share something with me if my writing touched them, just how little asking can mean to some people. What I found is that few are able to step out of a capitalistic system; into whatever comes next. We stand at the threshold of a new age, but people don't know how to jump, or they stand transfixed, stock still, like deer in headlights. I know I have said it before, but this paralysis needs to stop, or we may never move on. In the landscape of pay-per-view, paywalls, service fees, premium packages, ad-free for-a-fee and endless advertisements distracting from serious content, I have taken a different tack. I put the best information I can find into words that my readers seem to appreciate. Many have followed me, or commented or even complimented me on what I have written, but this is not the same as being given th ecoin of th erealm, to help me cover the expenses involved in producing content for free. Few have felt the need to pay for the effort I have put forth. The giving economy needs to be supported in some way, but many who are getting rewards from the sacrifice of others seem to delight in their own privilege. Taking, taking, taking, becoming belicose in their consumption, as if the more they consume without giving back, the stronger they become. This only proves they have not heard the underlying message, the through line of all my years of effort. They must feel entitled to all the benefits without having to give back even the slightest amount. In no way is this meant to call people out, condemn or demean them, it is only to say that we are not yet in practice for whatever comes next. We, as a people, are hamstrung by convention. We have become so used to, or accustomed to, cash on the barrel-head and exploitation for money that when someone lets them take on an honor system, or puts a candy bowl out for people to enjoy a bit of sweet with the commerce they must enguage in, they cannot help but fill their pockets or purses without leaving anything in return. Sometimes, without leaving any for the next guy either.

Our next mega-project, mine and ECO-Tours' is to use restoration biology to build back soils on an 80 acre parcel in Northern Wisconsin and we are getting some great response to our call for help in that respect. I'm glad that protecting and regenerating the land is getting a better response than my writing has. As my last post detailed, we were at 1/120 of th eway to our goal. Less than amonth ago w ewere at that level of support and have increased the number of people supporting us and the amount raised for that purpose. We have now raised more than 1%, or 1/100 of the amount we need. We have come from one place, only to arrive at another. They say that we can never go home and in my experience, that is true, but we can return home to the landscape, the soil, our mother, Earth. We will eventually all return to her anyway, but we can choos eto do it now and learn to live in th ereciprocity of giving and taking ,as all creatures have since th ebeginning of time. When we arrive, all of our ancestors will be there with us, whether they be named or even remembered, our spirits will continue to reflect them. This reaching and surpassing the 1% mark has let us do several things. We have been able to solidify our understanding of the size, scope and extent of funding our project, make some preliminary estimates of how many people will be required to make the purchase happen and how long it might take if we continue along at our current rate of fundraising. It has also allowed us to begin to see patterns about who is helping and for what reasons. If all things stay the same as they have been, we might expect a thousand people to be involved, possibly even 1,200 by the time we reach our goal. If this is the case, each and every contributor, on average, will be saving about 3,ooo square feet! how much is that worth to you? https://gofund.me/52fa3b77

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">

Now Or Never

How many times have we heard those words? I can think of dozens of times myself and oddly enough they were often the last words I heard before doing somthing pretty dumb actually. Get your driver's license they said, "It's now or never." I was twenty-five and my grandfather had never gotten his driver's license. I guess the people who cared about me most didn't want me relying on others for transport if I needed to move my body across the planet faster than walking, biking or busses might move me. I felt no compulsion to drive, no alacrity whatsoever. I had lived on the East Coast and had seen the genteel, efficient culture and lifestyle that often springs up around urban areas served by efficient transit. Walkable villages proximal to rail links, after generations of only having to have one car, can add up to tens of thousands, perhaps eventually hundreds of thousands of dollars, saved; plus time spent commuting can be infinitely more productive and rewarding than when just driving back and forth, moving your skin bag around.I have always figured that if people truly like the place they are, they won't feel th eneed to move about as much anyway. The irony of self-driving cars is they will continue to try to emulate mass transit, but they can never become as efficient or safe, because they are mixing it up on the regular streets, where accidents sometimes happen. This, combined with autonomous vehicles being small, you lose that shred of extra safety that comes from every other driver knowing, you don't want to hit a bus. You may be able to make self-driving cars not turn left into traffic, but one can never know another driver might do it to you. Another time these words were spoken was when the neighborhood kids had built a platform, high up in the largest tree on our block. There was a giant cable we had pulled out of the river that one of the crazy adults we knew attached to an even higher branch, so our "rope" swing was over sixty feet long and produced a huge swing arc. I'm not sure how, bu tsomeone managed to put a giant knot in th ebottom of the cable that even acted like a seat. Anyway, I climbed up to the top platform and the kids of the neighborhood gathered, one swung the cable to me. The idea was to hold on tight, let yourself fall off the platform and slide down thick plastic covered cable. Well, I just could not do it. I was th efat kid and the tiny knot of kids surrounding the rope swing had doubled and doubled again until I was sort-of the show. At least half the kids in the neighborhood thought I would chicken out. I probably thoguht I would too, but I knew it was safer than trying to climb back down the tree. The words were said,"It's now or never. Besides, you don't want the whole neighborhood to know you chickened out." Well, I leaned off and nothing happened I was suspended in mid air by my two hands clutching the cable and my underwear had gotten stuck on the head of a nail as I left the platform, so I was attached to the rope swing by me two arms and for a fat kid, that's scary enough, but my ass was nowhere near the wooden platform, so there was no way to go back. This may have been th efirst time in my life that time slowed down because what may have only been ten seconds seemed like half an hour. Those assembled were pointing and yelling, laughing and screaming. I saw my sister cover her eyes and knew that couldn't be good. One of the adults immediately started climbing up, bu tin th eend, the guy who chided me to "go!" stopped laughing and pointing long enough to release me, from the rear end and I came down fast, but safely. My hands burned from the friction with the great plastic sheath, but my face burned more from humiliation and disgust. No one enjoys being the butt of jokes, especially when it is because of somethnig so close to your butt! Nearly as often, though when I jumped off or got that driver's licnse, it was the start of something grand, somethnig that surpassed even my own expectations about what that decision was going to make in th erest of my life. Going to college was one of those now or never things. Making my first week long canoe trip and embarking on my Great Lakes Bicycle Trip all had that moment of fear and trepidation that comes from hearing thos ewords, so often paired with challenge and difficulties, most often unbidden. Who can know before we leap into the abyss what the future will bring? My family history is replete with stories like when we left The Coal Region of PA headed for Denver and the first day out the cooler got dumped and shorted out the main wiring harness of the car. It presented us a truly now or never choice. We would either make it back to Denver or not. That was the big question of the moment, but the repair had taken one of our three travel envelopes. We frequently travelled like that. We would add money to the envelopes equally, over a seriries of weeks or month, saving up for our trip. The envelopes were lovingly labeled Food, Fuel and Fun. The "Fun" envelope got it's contents removed, a full third of our budget for the whole trip evaporated on day one. The Sun had not even set yet and we expected to get to Iowa by nightfall. That was the start of a trip that re-introduced me to the first true love of my life. A friend from Middle School who is smart, beautiful and compassionate, exciting to be around, with high moral character and who had always been able to arouse my animal instincts. Had we not decided to go, as crazy as much of the rest of the trip was, my life would have never been the same. Sadly, I think it was me, not wanting to "now or never" something or other that led to our moving apart. All of this has been a convoluted preamble to NOW. Sometimes stories of old are not enough. They act as touchpoints, signposts or lighthouses, helping warn of the rocky shores and sandy shoals but sooner or later, we all need to leave the safety of shore and jump off, into the unknown. We need to do it before the echoes of the words "now or never" die out in our ears, we need to move! We can never plant the tree we needed to plant twenty years ago, we can only do this one in this moment. We cannot take back words not said, we can only offer what words we have now. It is impossible force opportunity to find a way back, when we find it is more conveinient for us or for us to bid opportunity wait unitl we actually feel ready. If those things were possible, we would all be famous and rich and living the life of Rilley. Strike while the iron is hot, change is gonna come, but only if we get with th eprogram and do our part. I promise, if you get caught up by the underwear, or are in over your head, I won't point and laugh, I will come to your aid. We can all see the predictions and trend lines. If we want to have seven generations revere and honor us, we have to do the same for them.

EcoTours

I never thought to offer this short video here. I will have a complete series of short videos about all six steps required to make and use biochar available soon. They are in the works as I write this and will be ready just before planting season begins.
When we formed ECO-Tours of Wisconsin, it was literally a dozen friends and we used annual tax returns to buy as many native trees as we could, planting them wherever we knew they would thrive. We even found out ways of getting free trees that I have pledged to keep to myself. After 60,000 our focus shifted. We got tired of hauling around soil and we were using so many plastic landscaping pots that I needed to have a lot of space for storage. At one point we had tree nurseries in five different people's back and side yards! The way we typically do our work now, at least for the trees is by seed harvesting and re-distribution which has reduced our carbon footprint per tree immensely and eliminates the stress on the seedlings of re-potting and planting. This simple step has freed up vast amounts of time and allowed us to do more with less, again saving orders of magnitue on time freeing us up to experiment with beneficial ground covers and more forbs, native perennial food and medicinal plants. We plant far more native pioneer species, because so many areas are so degraded that they have become too harsh for trees. In many areas that have lost virtually all of their organic matter, we have to first build soil, before we can ever hope to get trees to live. Instead of focusing one all the reasons this enjoyable process is needed, let me instead tell you about our results. There are, of course, intangibles, but in very real ways, there is plenty to document in the way of positive impacts. One of our first plant-ins, over three hundred trees were scattered across less than 2 acres. Now, they create a small block of fifty foot tall, extremely young mixed forest with conifers dominating. In addition to eliminating the cost of mowing twice each summer, which was the management scheme before our plant-in, it has both reduced summer cooling and winter heating costs, provided a buffer to road noise and made the area around the house more like an oasis. Although the tree block is well away from th ehouse, it still gives delicious afternoon shade and has eliminated a major drainage problem in the area. Another place that we had planted very in our history is a natural area that has since become a wildlife corridor. Baird's Creek Parkway is the current name. in our early days, we just guerilla gardened it with thousands of trees, not waiting for "official" protection that was to come years later. One day, at a plant in, as our group had settled down for a mid morning break, a bird landed on one of the trees that we had planted there, not a half-hour before, it perched there for fifteen or twenty seconds, long enough for everyone to see it, then it squirted some fertilizer near the bas eof the tree and flew off. Today, there is a mixed young forest there, again improving the lives of th epeople as well as th ewildlife of the area, the soil life has re-establise=hed itself and dozens of gallons of fuel are not burned to mow the area, again, the previous management of this area was heavy on th efossil energy use. We offer thorugh as many outlets as possible, opportunities to improve efficiency, save money and time, stack functions and maximize quality of life. for those who are specifically interested in biochar and the sequestration of carbon, please check out our gofundme page: https://gofund.me/52fa3b77 look down past the video, and scroll down to "older updates", click there and scroll down to the oldest, that is my slide share Powerpoint that I use for the classroom portion of our biochar classes. Anyone who gives at least fifty to the land purchase campaign can get up to two hours of consulting to go with the Powerpoint, or to help you accomplish the six steps in your, unique situation. I ask people to give what they can so that we can continue sharing our stories of success and inspiring others to be involved with rehabilitating our planet and her soils.

Desperate Pleas For Help

 After several trips through the most lily white rural communities, my quarantine partner said, I don't want to live around a bunch of people who think Deceitful Traitor is a viable option. I have begun to think of him as Dodger to the fourth power, meaning he's a tax, draft, truth and responsibility dodger. It helps to understand who thinks what. To morph "being smart enough to not pay taxes" into we should elect this clown is a heinous crime against humanity. He's a criminal and he is the head of a criminal enterprise, his fabricated "wealth", just an elaborate shell game meant to con the casual rube. Under investigation, the veneer cracks and peels and The Donald shows his hand.

His only weapons are to lie or point the finger at someone else, most often when he is guilty of whatever the transgression is, himself. The point is, we desperately need to find ways to help people across the gap, between accepting a racist liar and seeing the real facts about the boss in charge. People often cling to their hate, as James Baldwin wrote, because on some level, they know that as soon as they abandon it, they will have to experience pain.

When I see evidence of  support for this terrorist-coddling Gong Show Reject, I see it as a call for help, another reason that mental healthcare needs to be covered under the same, single payer healthcare system as our teeth, our hearing and our eyes. Folks, it is globally, time to put on our proverbial adult pants and get down to work. We can blame our parents forever for leaving us a steaming pile of shit, but it wastes time we need to be spending doing the things that work. When we broaden our perspective, it helps understand the depths to which our very communities have been hollowed out. Their only value now exists on paper and shifts dollars far, far away.

Blessings.