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!!!!!!!