Permaculture Blog

Source: Juanita Jean Asks an Impertinent (and Relevant) Question | Sheila Kennedy

A lovely post about looking at a situation from the other side, aka thinking outside the box, aka having the irony gene!

Juanita has taken note of the seizure of a national park headquarters building by supporters of Cliven Bundy
[Snip]

Her impertinent question/observation?

Now I want you to consider this: Let’s pretend it was Muslims who set federal land a’blaze and that Muslims overtook a federal building. In your wildest dreams imagine Fox News and Ted Cruz [snip]
sure looks different when the demonstrators (terrorists?) are white.

Just one more day in America, where the double standard runs so deep that satire is on its deathbed, and self-awareness is likewise a vanishing commodity…..

How true how true and I get upset about the 99percenters being run out of town when they were protesting Wall Street.

And there does have to be a line about when a protest, that has taken over an area, is out of line but the 99percenters were not armed and I think that makes a big difference whether you are considered peaceful or not.

The irony gene. What if some people are physically (brain chemistry) not able to get the irony in their behavior. Is being a Neanderthal the Neanderthal’s fault?

Best
Bob

So I was reading a post on Diane Kennedy’s wonderful Facebook page about corn and people.

It is not that long and I suggest you look at it now.
https://m.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1174068439274649&id=100000145136797&set=a.194732157208287.54613.100000145136797

And I decided to google the phrase

Why sir,” said the farmer, “Didn’t you know? The wind picks up pollen from the ripening corn and swirls it from field to field. If my neighbors grow inferior corn, cross-pollination will steadily degrade the quality of my corn. If I am to grow good corn, I must help my neighbors grow good corn.

There were thousands of hits.  There were books, PDF articles, blogs, websites.  There were many Christian sites.  The word Hindu caught my eye, and then Muslim, and I decided to do the same search with some of the major religions included with it. Buddhist, Shiite, Sunni, Judaism.

Just like the movie Groundhog Day, all the major religions say “oh that’s us!”

Sure would be nice if we acted like it.

But I think this is the perfect illustration for why I just recently posted … that I believe open source software is such a Permaculture concept. And it’s also why I tell people as much as I can … as much as I know, about how they can have a chemical free pond or pool.

Community: community has never been about “I’ve got mine, and I’m going to keep it just to myself.”

And community is also the reason why I am critical of specific organizations.

I have received a variety of concerned comments about my posts regarding permiesdotcom and most recently Deer Park.
I very much appreciate all the concern and give the following response:

How beautiful to work _with_ the world instead of against it. I think this corn post is beautiful. It _is_ all of our responsibility to encourage those around us and try to increase the happiness in the world — and decrease the hatred!

And yet at the same time it is difficult to find a line in our lives to _not_ support something.

If we simply support everything, we ultimately support primarily the easy things. The weeds of the world… Weedy solutions such as Pesticides, GMOs, Herbicides, –make everything get out of my way — poisons. The quick and easy solutions. The careless solutions!

If Permaculture is truly a community we need to be free to tell our own people that they might be wrong.

And to promote something or someone just because it has the name “permaculture” on it will give us the same thing in the long run as “organic” does today.

I don’t hate the people I criticize. (I do hate seizures, autism, muscular dystrophy, muscular sclerosis, ADHD, Parkinson’s, mad cow disease, Alzheimer’s, other neurological dysfunctions, etc, etc).

And I don’t tend to criticize people that I don’t believe are capable of thinking about the criticism.

Happy 2016 to all!

Here is another of my clients who do get it. I was terrified after a month or so in the beginning that this wasn’t going to work out. They were so enthusiastic! They kept changing everything! Everything! :-) They also became members of the Koi club and were adding fish right and left :-) .

It has settled down and they are wonderful people. Just a minute ago they sent me a link to an Audubon article written about what I did. www.sandiegoaudubon.org/images/PDF/sketches/skjan16.pdf

It starts on page 3

They are also involved with
www.sdchildrennature.org
And I can’t think of anything more wonderful than getting children exposed to this kind of idea right from the start!

One can see from the pictures that the pool is still murky but I kept their infrastructure intact and they easily could go back. They won’t because they love it so much more and get such pleasure in having this wetland ecosystem in their backyard. They tell me how they are constantly saying that they “have waterfront property.”

One of the reasons that it is still murky is that we wanted to work with a friend (Chris Meador of permasystems.org) to built half of the modular system. Initially we spent some time fine tuning these new modules and soon they will be filled with my wetland systems and the pool will ne clear again. Chris did a great job of working with me on them and I hope to work with him again in the future.

And give me another couple of months and the entire system functioning and I’ll post the pictures of it clear all the way to the bottom!:-)

Bob
www.PuraVidaAquatic.com

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Banking into the wind and then gliding out of sight, a male California condor flew back into the wild after a captive breeding program that helped save North America’s largest species of land bird. AC-4 needed only a few minutes to get his bearings before flying out of the pen and over the canyon, said Joseph Brandt, a lead condor biologist with the wildlife service. “Many people have poured their heart and soul” into saving the condors, Jesse Grantham, a former condor program coordinator and part of the original team that captured AC-4, said in a statement from the wildlife service.

Source: California condor that helped save species returns to wild

Biologists believe AC-4 was 5 to 7 years old when they captured him for the captive breeding program. He fathered the first chick born in the program, giving the program’s founders greater hope they could save the species.

In all, AC-4 sired 30 condor chicks that have been successfully released into the wild.

And maybe someday in addition to bald eagles flying around over my property there will be condors. One can only hope.

Big things can come in small packages.

Source: The tiniest chameleons may actually have the most powerful tongues

Oh I so want one! Well ok they’re not native, they would do much better in their own environment, and just because I think they’re really really cool I don’t have to have it.

When I was little and would catch lizards, I would want to have them and keep them. My mom who was a teacher: everything from preschool, to high school, to college; told me one time that to grow up was to be able to appreciate something without having it. I try to do so. But they are cool :-)

A new study says that wild bees in the US are declining in many areas because of increases in the amount of corn being grown for biofuel.

Source: US wild bee numbers decline as land is converted for biofuel – BBC News

In the areas that have seen the most serious reduction in wild bees, there have been 200% increases in the amount of corn planted.

And look at the graph below that shows the increase in use of GMO corn. Bt-Corn: corn that has been engineered by Monsanto to have anti-insect Bacillus thuringiensis toxin in its pollen.

(Ht is herbicide friendly)

Oh my.

Source: Genetic Manipulation of Organisms: Legal Victory in “Paris vs Monsanto GMO Cabal”

On 6 November 2015, the High Court of Paris indicted Professor Marc Fellous, former chairman of the French Biomolecular Engineering Commission, for “forgery” and “the use of forgery,”

[Snip]
A fellow at the renowned Pasteur Institute, he is President of the Association Française des Biotechnologies Végétales, and he is responsible for assessment of risks of GMO at the French Ministry of Agriculture, as well as Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Paris.

He forged documents to discredit a Séralini report. The Séralini report described…

finding signs of toxicity in the raw data from Monsanto’s own rat feeding studies with GMO maize, Monsanto’s MON 863.

So in a nutshell the former chairman of the French Biomolecular Engineering Commission forged documents to promote Monsanto. At least that’s what he’s been charged with. Wonder if he was in fact the chairman at the time he did it. Hmmmmmmmm. Wonder why! Did he just believe? :-)

During these hectic weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, many of us think a lot not only about family, but about food.

Source: Heather Leibowitz: The chemical behind the great bee dieoff

The insecticides may actually be addictive to bees, just like nicotine in tobacco is addictive to humans. Bees have been shown to actually prefer food sources treated with these pesticides to natural alternatives like sugar water.

They are also a neurotoxin — as if we don’t have enough human neurological issues. Sigh

I have a neighbor next door who is wonderful! .  The other morning, after I had sent her the post on this blog about the bald eagle, she sent me the following response.

The other –

morning just before 7 am we had a fun start to the new year.

We sat in bed for about 30 minutes watching a bobcat under our bird feeders.

First “B” noticed that there weren’t any birds around and thought that he saw a rabbit sitting under the bird feeder that is on a pole when he realized it was a bobcat!

It was sitting there grooming then went over to a gopher hole in the same area and sat and watched the hole.  She (don’t know if male of female though it was on the smaller side) started to crouch, then sprang on the hole catching the gopher.  She drug it a few feet and proceeded to have her breakfast (later “B” didn’t find any trace of the gopher – so she ate everything).

After eating she groomed then:

Got a drink of water out of a water tray “B” has there.  After drinking she started to play in the water with her paws.

Groomed herself some more under the bird feeders.

She went back over to the hole & started to throw dirt around.

Ran partway up one of the trees.

Groomed some more.

Then went off to the shrubbery in the gully between our houses.

It was so cool just to watch her, especially when she was playing around.  Looked just like any cat.

Being able to watch her, the coyotes, weasels & birds of prey is always a reinforcement of why we don’t put out poison for either the gophers or ground squirrels.

Love living here & being able to watch all the wildlife

I have another neighbor across the street who lets his dogs out in the morning with no fence and no leash and they harass the people walking up and down the street, run around on everybody else’s property, and cause damage.

And the other morning he told me that quote _my_ coyotes had attacked and seriously injured one of his dogs. And he meant it!

He was not kidding around. He was not laughing at himself. He honestly believes in his head that because of me his dog got attacked by coyotes.

I’ve been looking at several websites that promote adopting cats to use as rodent defense in barns and outbuildings in rural areas. I think the people running these programs are wonderful, kind hearted, and are doing all they can to try and stem the tide of unwanted animals.

But I must completely disagree with their good intentions. And if a reader is one of these good intentioned people or is close to a similar program, I’m very sorry.

But I think that it is absolutely appalling to dump a flood of unwanted city cats in rural areas. And if you are thinking of doing this, Stop!

While initially it sounds like such an obvious and wonderfull solution. It is not. Outside cats kill the native reptile preditors, they kill our song birds, and discourage the presence of owls and hawks.

I was a member of a big community garden and we finally got rid of the cats. Against several old “cat ladies” wishes. We then actually had less rodent damage. And fewer gophers. The redtailed hawks would come down and sit on fences and railings and get the gophers. :-)

I actually saw the red-tailed hawks doing just that, eating gophers and dropping their skulls, on multiple occasions. I, on several occasions, walked over and got the skulls that the hawks dropped and know that several were gophers. And I love biology and its not that hard for me to tell the difference between a vole skull, a mouse skull, and a gopher skull

More and more people are realizing that outside cats are not the answer. And to take the flood of city bred cats and place them in a rural environment where they cause great havoc is not a long term solution.

And to the people running these programs, I realize that you are trying to make a living but sometimes its best for the environment to find another way.

Best to everyone for a great 2016

Bob www.PuraVidaAquatic.com