The concept of a Passive Solar greenhouse has intriqued me for quite some time.  According to this article They've been building them in China since the 70's.

It looks like I will be starting a class next year on Farming and Food Production in my role as a Pre-tech teacher for Biddeford Regional Center of Technology.  Building a Passive Solar Greenhouse as part of this class would be a fantastic achievement!

Spring 2019 Fedco group order with Porland Permies

Just ordered blueberries, a Chestnut tree, an Apple Tree (Honeycrips - yum!) and and elderberry from Fedco as part of a group order with the Portland Permies Group. The plants are coming in preparation for the Permablitz I am starting to plan for our place in the Spring.
For anyone else in the greater Portland area who is interested in saving some money by participating in the group order, the deadline is Jan 11!
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Here are more details from Kate at Portland Permies:
Hey Plant Lovers,

A New Year's Day reminder that the deadline for our Fedco Group Order is January 11. That's TEN days away! I know it feels like winter is just beginning, but spring will be here before we know it. The group order is a great way to have your plants delivered to Portland, get a sweet discount, and support the work of the Resilience Hub. Everyone wins.
For ordering instructions, see this link:
http://resiliencehub.org/2018/12/04/fedco-trees-group-order/
Here's to more perennial food in the landscape!!

Visioning for the Future Exercise

It has been awhile, but maybe this post will breathe new life into this blog:

While looking at Facebook this morning, it occurred to me that a visioning exercise could make an interesting blog post The idea is to share visions of what a low carbon and reasonably pleasant (vs Mad Max or The Road) future could look like, including how's and why's along with supporting evidence for the different aspects of your vision. Ways of doing things will be broken down into different categories such as food, transportation, clothing, shelter, etc. Anyone who would like to participate in this visioning exercise, please share your ideas in the comments below.  Hopefully this platform will work for the exercise.

Personal Resilience and the Maine Primitive Skills School

It's been awhile - my focus has been elsewhere, recently, but I think it is time to come back to this.

This morning I was reading a book that I recently obtained, "The Knowledge; How to Rebuild Our World From Scratch" by Lewis Darnell, and paused, thinking about what I had read.  To survive conditions that he imagines could arise (collapse resulting from a pandemic), I am thinking that the approach that Arthur Haines suggested could be the ticket.  In the event of a collapse scenario centered around failure of societal structures, (as opposed to an epidemic), the 'prepper' approach  - stockpiling supplies and planning to defend them with weapons- seems unlikely to lead to success (survival) - if the perception is that you have things that others want, the likelihood is that someone, or a group of someones will come along and take what you have (or at least give it a good try), leading to much unpleasantness.  Haines, a re-wilding advocate, suggests that carrying ultimately portable survival information and skills in your head would allow you to escape and get to an area where you can live off of the landscape.
With this in mind, I went to the Maine Primitive Skills school website. They have put up a great series of videos: Here is one that I just watched on the Winter Trees: The balsam fir.

Pickling get-together Saturday, August 15

At Dilly Fest, we'll be making Dilly Beans, as well as dill pickles and anything else folks would like to pickle. We'll be doing it Saturday, August 15 at Neverdun Farm (259 Log Cabin Rd.) In Arundel, starting at 9:00 and going until 1:00 with potluck at noon. We'll also have a brief update on the state of the Community Asset Mapping project on which we've also been working.

I was just talking with Noah at Neverdun this morning to work on details of the get together, and we were thinking it would be a good idea to get a sense of people's experience levels with pickling.  I've pickled cukes a couple of times but would would imagine some people within the group have done more with it than I have. Please let me know if you are planning to come, and if you are, I'd also like to know if you are willing to share what you know about the process at the get together.

If needed, Noah will have available beans, cukes,etc. for pickling at a special Dilly Fest price through the Frinkelpod farm.

Looking forward to seeing you again, sharing skills, socializing and putting up some food!

Asset Mapping Session in Kennebunk, Part I

On this day when students were gathering in Augusta to focus attention on the issue of climate change, a small group of us gathered in Kennebunk to begin to map out and make connections between some of the many efforts that we have going on in our area that are moving our community in the direction of sustainability, local self reliance and resilience.  Before starting the mapping work, we had some great discussion around the goals for the mapping; who it is for, and what we mean by community, as well as about the barriers that need to be overcome - or worked around -  that prevent society from becoming sustainable.  We came up with a fair number of leads that need further research to compile contact information and a description.  A good bit of information was compiled on clothing with just a bit of research ahead of time.  For next time, focusing similar attention on some of the other areas will move this effort ahead significantly.

Kennebunk Area Asset Mapping,  Part I

Over the next weeks, I will be working to research and compile contact information and descriptions based on our work today, and will be sharing the result at the followup Asset Mapping Session (date and time TBA)

I left the session today feeling hopeful, positive and energized and that it was a worthwhile way to spend a few hours taking a tangible step forward. Looking forward to continuing this work with you all!

Kennebunk Area Connections - 1st project!

As one of the first projects that the Connections group will be doing as we work towards greater community resilience, we will be holding a community Asset Mapping on March 14 - location TBA.  This session will be a springboard to creating a catalog/guide to locally based business, groups and projects that are deemed to be important in forming a locally resilient and locally self reliant economy.  Where we notice aspects that are missing, that will serve to identify areas that need additional research and further networking, and ultimately, may identify opportunities for an individual or group.

This coming Summer, we'll be working toward a Dilly Bean Festival as we work together to celebrate and put up some of our harvest this growing season!  Stay tuned for more information.

Acorns as food!

Several years ago,  we (Elyse, Abby and I) took a class down at the White Pine School in York on Acorns as a food source.  Apparently, some native american tribes considered acorns to be a staple food, and at least in some years, they are so abundant that in those times, the only excuse for going hungry might be a lack of knowledge of how to utilize them.  They do naturally have tannic acid in them that needs to be removed before they can be eaten.  There are two ways to do this: the hot leach method, and the cold leach method. The White Pine School class we took focused on the hot leach method which entails repeated boiling and water changes, but it ends up using a huge amount of energy to do it and it cooks the acorns, and winds up removing some of the nutritional value  in the leaching process. I tried this method a couple times, but found it changes the taste, as well.  This year, I have done a couple of batches using the cold leach, and found that it is less labor intensive, uses very little energy - just enough to run a blender or food processor (and the human power to shell the acorns - that was a fun project for the girls on a snow day or two!), and should preserve more of the nutritional value of the Acorns.
Here are a couple videos on the cold leach process:
An Acorn Video by Arthur Haines, A maine based botanist and wild foods expert

And another that I found online


This video shows the technique I have been using lately.

Group order at Fedco through Portland Permies?

Anyone interested in participating in a group order with the Portland Resilience Hub and Permaculture group? There is a discussion thread here with details:

I (Ethan) would be willing to do a pickup from Portland and bring it down to our area.  You can expect to eliminate shipping, and save up to 20% on your order.
Deadline for ordering is Jan 16.  Please contact me if you are interested.

attached Lean-to hoophouse

Over the Winter break from school, I got it in my mind to build a lean-to style greenhouse.  At first I was going to build it solely from wood, but after I started pricing it out, I realized we couldn't afford to do it that way.  After thinking for a bit, I got the idea to recycle stuff we had on hand. - In the mid 2000's, I'd built a hoop house with some thick plastic water pipe back,  and for the last few seasons it had sat at the edge of the property looking sad and shabby.    As of this writing the new structure is still in it's early stages but I am hopeful it'll work out well.  Eventually we want to replace the deck on the south side of the house with a sunspace, so this will be a good test run.  In researching the project on line, I found this article from UVM with lots of good info.

2nd Community Resilience meeting

Bernie Reim and I met a second time this evening to discuss further what we'd like to do in terms of moving forward with our community resilience building effort.  The focus looks like it is headed towards fostering connections between people who are already involved in projects that increase the resilience of our community or those who would like to be.  In fact we decided to call it Connections.
We plan to feature a rolling brainstorming session whenever we get together that could spin out some exciting projects or help with ongoing efforts.

A project that I'd like to put out there and am starting to work on is an on-line sourcebook of ongoing efforts in different resource areas, such as food, energy, shelter, transportation, clothing, and so forth.

What do you think? Are you involved in anything that helps build a stronger more locally self reliant community in the area that fits in with what we're trying to do, or do you know somebody who is?

Looking forward to getting more connected!

A Journey of a thousand miles...

Last evening, Bernie Reim and I took the first step towards starting the Kennebunk Area Resilience Project (a name which may change) as we met to start planning the effort. 

As I may have mentioned before, the overall goal of the project is to increase the ability of our community to withstand potential threats such as weather related occurrences like Hurricane Sandy, economic difficulties such as the downturn in 2008, or other unexpected events that seem increasingly likely given the turbulent times in which we live.    We aim to increase the ability of our community to withstand such things by identifying opportunities for improvement and then acting on them.  This might be through  through fostering stronger collaboration by community members that are already working on aligned projects (networking!), for example, or  it might be by identifying  a need/opportunity and helping to start a new project as another example.  Ultimately, we are shooting for a stronger community and increased local self reliance.

Ultimately, we imagine a wide variety of things taking place to along the path to this goal.  This article in the Portland Press Herald describes the creation of a Community Solar Farm.  To me, it's not hard to imagine a project like this as being part of our overall effort.

Over the coming months we will be reaching out to people to join us as we work together to create a stronger, more resilient community.

Please come join us!

Primitive Skills Weekend in Wells

Among the many things we have going for us, resilience-wise, in this area is a rich knowledge of primitive skills - anything from how to make fire without matches, to how to forage our surrounding for food, the materials for making weapons and even clothing. This weekend in Wells is the Annual Maine Primitive Gathering, in which classes and workshops in a wide variety of such skills are offered.
Many organizations are involved in the gathering (or if not involved directly, offer related classes), including Broad Winged Farm and associated Homesteading Arts Cooperative, the Primitive Skills School, White Pine Programs in York, and others.

If you can't make it this year, but are interested, keep an eye out for next year's gathering.

Calling All Community members - an open invitation!

Earlier this week, I had a great back to school experience (I teach science at the Biddeford Middle School) during our Welcome Back to school in service training which inspired me to see if I can get a Resilience Initiative started here in our area.  Our new principal hosted us in a 10 minute sticky note based brainstorming exercise during which the staff generated some great ideas around how to improve the school both in the short term and the long term.  I propose to do a similar exercise in the early Summer of 2015 to kick off the Kennebunk Area  Resilience Initiative.

In the first post of this blog, I mentioned that I intended this blog to serve as a virtual Transition Town until we can get a true, face-to-face effort started.  In my previous attempt at starting a Transition Town, I found that the project was not clear enough for people to get behind. Hopefully we've all learned a few things since then that'll help us move forward with building a stronger, more locally self-reliant community, capable of getting through whatever comes our way, no-matter if it is an economic recession,  a weather related event like hurricane Sandy, 70's-like energy crunch or something else completely unexpected.  Moving towards a strong, resilient community like this is what the Resilience Initiative that I propose to start is all about.

How the effort is framed is key.  Several weeks ago, I was talking with some friends about preparedness and was joking about preparing for the apocalypse, critiquing the prepper, survivalist mentality as unlikely to be successful (for more on this, please read Arthur Haines' essay on the topic).  My friend's wife said she wasn't interested in being around for what  is left after the Apocalypse so why prepare for it,  and I realized that framing the issue in this way is not helpful. It seems to me that most of us would like to have been able to survive much more likely occurrences such as the great depression, or hurricane Katrina, and time and effort spent working towards developing resilience to help make surviving (and with a minimum of hardship and travail) more likely as time well spent.

I am generally not one to speak in high blown terms, usually preferring to understate things, but this project is truly about taking control of our destiny and working to make the our local future what we want it to be.  Certainly the federal government won't be able to do it for us, nor can government at the state level - at best, the government can help foster what we would try to do, and it is up to us to really make it happen. This will only work if community members are involved in significant numbers.

Please join me in making it happen.

BERRIES

Berries are in!  Here at our place on the Mountain Rd., we have ridiculous amounts of raspberries, mulberries (anybody want some?) and if we had more blueberry bushes, we'd probably have lots of those, too.

The Dragonfly Meadow Blueberry Farm (formerly known as the West Farm) over on Limerick Rd. has a great you-pick operation...check em out!  I've also heard that the Blueberry Plains over in Kennebunk are exploding with berries.  Good stuff!  I'm going to try to flash freeze raspberries and mulberries today. Anyone for making preserves?

Arundelian Local food production -

I’ve been noticing that more and more people are producing their own food locally, in and around the Arundel/Kennebunk area – this is certainly an encouraging trend in terms of food security.  We here in the northeast are lucky in terms of the rain we’ve had and our ability to produce our own food.  Many parts of the United States appear to be in the midst of record drought!

It seems like nearly everyone has their own chickens right now – there are several houses nearby that have their own chickens.  We currently get our eggs from a neighbor down the street and I would imagine that with so many chickens all over the place, there are many opportunities to obtain fresh eggs, even for those who don’t have their own chickens.

Frinkelpod Farm
Our friends Noah Wentworth and his wife, Flora started a new organic farm over on Log Cabin Road in Arundel with farmstand and CSA (Community Supported Agriculture).  It is really amazing and inspiring to see how much they’ve done in the relatively short time since they started!  Their operation  is called Frinkelpod Farm – take a look!  It sounded to me like the plan is to move towards a more permaculturally based model as things get going. 
This just in from the Frinkel Folk (pertaining to another farm here in the 'Del):
"We are excited to announce that we've just begun a new partnership with another small farm in Arundel, Sweet Thyme Farm. Garth & Margaret are UMaine students (he just graduated, she has a year left) and passionate, talented farmers. They are certified organic, growing on his family's land which is also home to a maple syrup operation, and currently sell at a couple of markets, but have found that they have more produce than they can sell right now. Since we have sometimes struggle to keep up with the demand from our CSA members and other customers, it seems a natural fit for us to carry some of their produce along with ours as needed. This partnership really fits in with our mission to support young and new farmers while also helping us keep the stand as stocked as possible with fresh, high quality veggies"


Random Arundel and Kennebunk area local food related links
Speaking of permaculture, Lisa Fernandez has created a FANTASTIC group up in the Portland area – Portland Permaculture (and Resilience Hub).  They are incredibly active and a great group of people. Participating in some of their many activities can do nothing but good for us all.
The Kennebunk Farmers Market is another great place to get fresh local food.
Kennebunk Community Garden is another great food production project going on.
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ML Day School Garden
A couple years ago, I built a raised bed over at ML Day school in Arundel with some of the Summer Rec kids using materials donated by Builder’s Supply in Biddeford and Home Depot (also in Bidd).  The garden effort over there didn't go very far beyond just building the raised bed, which is currently being used as an area to build fairy houses, but perhaps it is time to give it another try.  Anyone interested in helping out getting a garden started over there?

Survivalism?

At the very beginning of this Summer break I read a book entitled "Sugar Mountain" by Alfred Alcorn.  It was total coincidence that I came across this book: while we on vacation in Western Massachusetts, we were walking around Shelburne Falls, on a date-night. At 7:00 in the evening we figured that no book stores would be open, but when we saw the lights on at Boswell's Books we crossed the street to take a look.  As it happened, Mr. Alcorn was there for a booksigning.  I read the blurb about his book on the door and decided to go in, and before we left I bought a copy.  The book is about a family that escapes to a family farm as  Survivalist, "Preppers"  in the Shelburne Falls area during a global pandemic, and how they deal with the challenges of the situation, including marauding neighbors and mentally unprepared members of their own group. It was a very interesting read, and got me thinking in a couple new directions, having to do with preparation for uncertain times.

Arthur Haines has written a number of very thoughtful and thought provoking essays, including this one about the limitations of the prepper mindset.

If you are interested in building your skillsets to include bowmaking, friction fire building and related indigenous arts, the Maine Primitive Gathering in Wells, ME is a great way to start.

2014 (10th Annual) New England Human Powered Vehicle Rally

The very first New England Human Powered Vehicle Rally was held at the Northampton, MA Airport under brilliant blue skies, with parasailers drifting overhead.   This year marked the 10th annual NE HPV Rally, and the event was held in Kennebunk, Maine at Rogers Pond, a nice location with a pavilion and a closed dirt track next to the Mousam River which made for a great place to try out the different bikes and trikes.

Here are a few pictures, courtesy of Heather Roscoe, a Greenspeed GT1 rider who attended the Rally (thanks Heather!)

Here  are some reasons to ride yer bike:

A bike can get you farther down the road with less energy than any other means of transportation; pedal powered vehicles, and particularly velomobiles are the most efficient forms of transportation ever devised. In addition, pedal powered vehicles have many more benefits in moving us on a path to greater local resilience and overall sustainability.

They require no fossil fuels – the brittleness (prone to failure) of depending on such a huge supply chain for fossil fuels is absolutely crazy and subject to disruption – as seen recently when nearly all aspects of life were disrupted in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in the NY/NJ metropolitan area.

Obesity and poor fitness levels should dramatically decline as the rate of self propelled cycle usage increases.

Connections with neighbors and the promotion of community ties also should increase. (this has been seen locally with the completion of the Biddeford-Arundel-Kennebunk section of the Eastern Trail).
Keeping a pedal powered vehicle on the road takes dramatically fewer resources (and money) than motor vehicles, and in some cases is quicker and/or more versatile. Related to this is a dramatically smaller carbon footprint.

Riding a cycle fosters a much stronger connection with your surroundings.

Above all, the feeling of freedom that can be had while riding with the wind in your face through a huge range of different types of surroundings is incredibly rewarding and fun!!!!!!!

Absurdity and toasters (Rant alert)

Sometimes it strikes me how completely absurd our current way of doing things is - especially when I head south (meaning Boston and south of there) where they have  numerous highways with 4  lanes in each direction  or even bigger. By the the vast majority, it is accepted as normal for countless thousands of machines to be continuously burning a finite, ancient resource as if there were no end to it.  It becomes even more starkly absurd when stuck in a traffic jam - the burning is still happening, without even anything to show for it.  Similar examples are abundant;  drive-throughs (unless you turn off your engine), automobile racing, and on and on. It isn't surprising to me then, that all this non-stop burning is altering the chemistry of the atmosphere and the seas, raising the temperature and acidifying the oceans.  I'm going to start calling automobiles toasters for their contribution to toasting the planet.  The term could also be applied to people who drive everywhere without thought to the climate and environment altering consequences.

Has this been a useful post?  Probably not, but I just needed to get it off my chest.

What's the problem?

Looking at Facebook this morning, I just read the the African Black Rhino has been declared officially extinct, which makes me very sad. A friend commented, "take a ticket, our turn is coming," or something to that effect.

I thought about it for awhile and a thought that has been floating around for a long time in my mind crystallized, so I thought I'd share it: What is the problem here?  From what I've been able to tell, most of the native cultures were not headed toward over exploitation of resources, and self annihilation, (it may have happened locally, but at least not on a global scale), so the problem is the culture that we have developed.  Cultures can change, so we CAN change our culture, and we MUST change it, since everything and everyone that we care about depends on it.  Please change, mindfully.