The API Chronicles

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by David Braden on November 15, 2011 at 7:57am

Meet the Team

 

We all want the same things . . . to be fed, to be safe, to be loved. We seek fulfillment through the groups to which we belong and conflict between groups is the greatest threat to our well being.

 

There are six of us as of this writing. We are of diverse backgrounds and circumstances but share this interest in what we can do to make our community a better place to live.

 

Don and I have been working together on the Broomfield gardens for some three years now. Don rents a place in Broomfield, about 20 miles from the API, but he also keeps some of his bees here. Don works four ten hour days in a customer service position across town. David W and Sidnie got involved because of a town hall meeting on urban agriculture hosted by our state representative Max Tyler. Sid has a house about a mile south east of API and has a temporary consulting position. David W is a stay at home Dad with two young daughters. His home is maybe 2 miles south east. Ruth got involved through an interest in Time Banks and a connection through Transition Colorado. Ruth has a home about 4 miles north of the API on the way to Broomfield and owns a coaching and training business. Carol has a full time job and owns a condominium just about ½ way between David W and Sid. Carol got involved through an organizational meeting for Transition Golden and the Ethical Eating committee of her Church which is just down the block from the API.

 

We have talked about all the different things we could do to develop our skills in organizing ourselves to provide for ourselves. We have active gardening projects at the API, David W's, and the common areas at Carol's condominium. We have a number of projects that we can undertake . . . there is a design for Sid's yard . . . we need to do a design for Ruth's yard . . . Don wants to have more bee hives in more places . . . I have some designs for a green house and raising fish and chickens.

 

All the things that you could think of to be living sustainably, this team could choose to undertake. As we work together and learn to produce for ourselves, it is a savings, not an expense, in both time and money. Rather than interacting with the world from a position of scarcity, the more people we can engage, the more we can do, and the more there will be to share. The goal is to develop the know how to organize ourselves so that each of these team members can engage new team members, and engage in new projects, even closer to their homes, until every neighborhood in the world has a gardening team developing community sufficiency technologies.

Permalink Reply by Chris Chaney on November 15, 2011 at 2:22pm

I'm interested in getting involved and I know my wife would be interested as well.

Permalink Reply by David Braden on November 21, 2011 at 9:38am

Chapter 1

 

This is not about peak oil, or climate change, or economic collapse, although, any or all of those may cause significant problems. This is about building the world you want to live in, whether or not there are problems.

 

We are all, already, engaged in a set of interactions with the people, and other living things, around us that creates the world we experience. We do not, ever, see all the interactions, and for those interactions we do see, we do not always understand the impact of those interactions on us. For example, we tend to think that we depend on the success of this group or that group, without thinking about how the success of the group depends on all the interactions taking place around and through it. No group exists unless it meets a need in the society and no group exists unless it fulfills a need of its members.

 

At the API we are not interested in setting up a new group to compete with all the existing groups. We think of ourselves as being members of a community that consists of all the people, and other living things, within our locality. There are, already, groups with resources interested in every aspect of what we want to do. The key is to engage each of those groups in a coordinated effort to meet the needs of more people, and other living things, within the community. We seek to engage every group in our community in developing the know how to organize ourselves to provide for ourselves.

 

Some of the gardening team got together a couple of days ago and we talked about one such group. The Maple Grove Grange is about a half mile from the API. Don and David B are both members of the Grange and the Grange has resources including a meeting space, a need for new members, existing members who might participate, and a historic commitment to community and husbandry. Except for an anachronistic ritual, they are perfectly situated to support the development of suburban permaculture in our neighborhood. The team discussed our members joining the Grange which would then give us use of the building and insurance for community projects.

 

Every organization in your neighborhood is a potential resource for your gardening team and the development of community sufficiencies. Every business, religious and fraternal group, and all of their members, benefit from a healthy society, of healthy people, within a healthy environments, based on healthy soils.

Permalink Reply by David Braden on November 26, 2011 at 11:24am

Chapter 2

 

The entire world is made up from individual interactions. If any interaction does not take place there is less contributed to the function of the world.

 

The Sunday after Thanksgiving Don is holding a class on making “bee candy” at the API. Bee candy is supplemental food to keep hives alive through the winter in case they have not made enough honey. The event is sold out to members of the beekeeping group in which Don is a member.

 

The interaction of bees with flowering plants and the interaction of animals with the fruits of those plants is fundamental. It is a good example of concern for the needs of people and other living things leading to more contribution to system function, leading to a world more like the one in which you want to live.

 

Bees are under stress from agricultural poisons and viruses and mites. We want to talk to our bee keeper friends about enlisting the help of the community in making our neighborhood safe for bees. A neighborhood safe for bees will, incidentally, increase the safety of our neighborhood for humans, and increase contribution to the function of the world. We are hoping to develop a system where there are more bee hives in the neighborhood, producing more new hives every year, allowing nature to select the best genetics for this place, and maintaining the genetic diversity the bees will need to adapt to changes going forward.

 

We see two key elements to this project. First, we want to build inexpensive bee hives and place them in good homes (that do not use poisons). Second, we want to rally the community to locate all bee swarms and make sure that they are given a hive. I think we will need a 'swarm coordinator' who can reach out to all the existing bee organizations, identify all hives that need bees, and make that information available to those who are collecting swarms or dividing hives.

 

Our goal is bee hives everywhere and so many new bees every year that all the hives are always filled. We will chronicle our efforts as they produce results. This approach is to think about problems in the context of how one thing is related to another and everything is related to everything else. There is a series of blog entries called 'Start the Collaboration' addressing how thinking about the needs of other living things guides building the sustainable world we seek.

 

 

Permalink Reply by Donald Studinski on November 26, 2011 at 1:29pm

Just a small vocabulary point from a beekeeper.

There are many types of bees in our area.  We need them all.  This project is focused on Honey bees.

Honey bees live in colonies.

Honey bee colonies live in a hive.

Sometimes, the hive is a managed hive, like a Langstroth or a top-bar.  Other times, the hive is not managed, like a tree hollow or the eves of a barn.

When a colony is healthy in the spring, they can decide to give birth to another colony.  When this happens naturally, we call this a swarm ... half the bees fly away to find a new home.

When a beekeeper decides a managed colony is healthy enough, the beekeeper may choose to do an artificial swarm, we call this a split.  This is attractive because then the beekeeper doesn't lose a colony ... both the old colony and the new colony remain managed.

 

hope this helps everyone ... dons

Permalink Reply by David Braden on December 3, 2011 at 9:26am

Chapter 3

Habitat is the interaction of the things in a place – living and non-living. Our interactions contribute to the creation of habitat whether we are conscious of their effect or not. Being conscious of our actions' effect, we can choose to contribute to improving habitat for all living things.

We had the “Bee Candy” demonstration Sunday. It was 8 of us learning to assist bee colonies to survive the winter. We are setting up stands for the hives that will go to Ruth's and David W's places and we built our first Warre' hive components to see if we want to offer an event on building those at the API.

It was interesting to talk to beekeepers compared to talking to transition folks. I am generalizing of course. To beekeepers it is all about the honey at the end of the year. To transition folks, its all about adjusting to peak oil and climate change.

At API we have been talking to people about looking up from their individual interests to see how 'what they do' fits in with everything else. Think about how habitat is created. We tend to think of habitat as something we must maintain for some other poor creature that we have endangered. What about our own habitat as it becomes a danger to us?

A habitat, like a rain forest, is a collection of things. But the important part of a habitat is how the interaction of those things creates the flow of nutrients through the system. The fact that humans have these things called money and markets does not change the fundamentals of interaction creating habitat. They do not change the fact that the quality of our individual lives is derived from the volume and quality of that which flows from those interactions.

As a gardening team, we are thinking about how our actions impact our habitat. We are thinking about our own interactions with the flow of time and money. We are thinking about the resources we have, after providing our own needs, that can be used to assist other living things in their contribution to the habitat. We may not be able to figure out how to get a return in money or products but it is still worth the effort if our actions improve the habitat and thereby our quality of life.

Permalink Reply by David Braden on December 10, 2011 at 7:25am

Chapter 4

Every Dollar your neighborhood saves producing something for yourselves, is a Dollar that can be invested in more capacity to produce for yourselves. That is the feed back loop that will bring our systems back from the brink of disaster.

The problems we face are systemic and cannot be solved one at a time. To solve the big problems like peak oil, climate change, poverty and environmental degradation, we have to change the way the system functions. One big stumbling block to that kind of change is the belief that work must be converted to money before it can be converted into goods and services. The market is a great system to convert work to money so long as there is demand for your skills. If there is no demand for your skills, the system has no other way to use your potential contribution. The system will make you beg or starve or maintain you on some form of government assistance.

At the API we are developing Community Sufficiency Technologies. That is, we are figuring out how to organize ourselves to provide for ourselves in ways that supplement what we get participating in the market. When we take this other approach, and invest our time in developing the capacity to provide for ourselves, labor is not a cost. Labor becomes an investment in all that will be produced from the capacity we develop. In the case of building bee hives, we are investing in all the honey that can be produced in those hives. If we simply distribute the honey to ourselves, there need be no money involved after purchase of materials.

The way things lay out, 7 Warre' hives is an efficient way to use 4X8 sheets of plywood and a few pine boards. We are looking for 4 people with $100.00 each who want to help build those 7 hives and take one home with them. The $400.00 will buy the materials for all 7 hives. The a retail value of similar hives purchased in the market is about $2000. Our team will supply the facility, the tools and the expertise and we will keep 3 hives. The event will be a joint venture of all the participants to invest in capacity to produce for ourselves . . . and improve our habitat by increasing the number of honey bees.

The main objective is to figure out the relationships that get us over the stumbling block and closer to the kind of world in which we want to live. It is a step toward a neighborhood with gardens and greenhouses that provide all the food the neighborhood needs. And a neighborhood in which anyone can get a share of that food by contributing what they enjoy doing. As Geoff Lawton says in Greening the Desert; “You can fix all the world's problems in a garden”.

Permalink Reply by David Braden on December 20, 2011 at 7:22am

Chapter 5

It is said that a double hand full of healthy soil contains more organisms than there are people on earth. It is those interactions that form the basis for terrestrial ecosystems. Healing nature and producing abundance starts with the soil.

At the Applewood Permaculture Institute we teach gardening techniques called sheet mulching and hugelkultur. They are based on encouraging the interaction of soil organisms to maintain a healthy habitat for themselves, to produce the nutrients our plants need, and form the basis for a healthy habitat for humans. Tilling destroys habitat for soil organisms. That is why traditional gardening and farming deplete nutrients from the system.

Interactions in an organic soil produce a flow of nutrients that cannot be duplicated by manufactured fertilizers. The interactions form an ecosystem if the nutrients flow in whole cycles . . . each step supporting the next step . . . continuously . . . building nutrients into the system. That takes a complete set of organisms to use the nutrients through the complete growth, decay and regrowth cycle. Each of those creatures has needs that must be supplied by the habitat . . . or that creature cannot contribute its gift to the system.

In our gardening system, in Colorado's front range climate, human participation comes in four stages. 1) We build gardens with sheet mulching and hugelkulturs, providing the carbon and nitrogen to fuel the soil habitat. Carbon and nitrogen will be converted by the soil organisms into a full range of nutrients to cycle through our system. 2) We start indoors those plants that need a longer season than we have and plant outside those plants that like the cool season. 3) We set out our plants and put in seeds for our warm season crops and make provision for the water they will need. 4) We watch our plants grow, identifying the tiny seedlings and making mulch of the other plants that volunteer . . . accepting their gift.

There will be several events at the Institute, and hosted by API team members, for each of those stages. The events will be listed on the Organic Landscape Design web site and on the events calendar for Transition Colorado. We ask for a $25.00 contribution, to attend these events, to support API and its work but, if you are also engaged in this work, by being on a team of gardeners tending to your relationships with the people and other living things around you, then these events are free . . . then, they are a collaboration in developing the technology to build better habitats . . . to heal nature and produce abundance.

Permalink Reply by David Braden on December 30, 2011 at 9:50am

Chapter 6

Demanding that someone else do something to fix the world is generally ineffective. The important question to ask is, “What can I do to improve the habitat for myself, and the other living things around me?”

We are, already, a part of something larger than ourselves: our habitat. Our health depends on its health. Every living thing in your locality is a part of it . . . starting with the soil ecosystem . . . and the health of every living thing depends on the health of this habitat that we, collectively, create.

The plans to Building 7 Modified Warre Bee Hives are ready and posted on line, or I can e-mail a set to you. On January 29 we will build 7 hives as an exercise in alternative production systems. We have 4 people who contributed $100.00 to participate in the build. That will cover the cost of all the materials for 7 hives. Each of those participants will take home a hive worth about $300 retail. Our team will have three hives in exchange for our efforts and expertise in holding the event. That makes it a partnership in developing the capacity to produce honey.

I am making the plans available free of charge as a part of developing the technology. The technology we seek is the know how to have productive relationships with other living things that are not mediated by money. It requires being aware of the needs of other living things, and their contribution to the habitat, when we choose how to spend our available time and money. I have expressed that as, “Honoring the gift of the least among us”.

You may not be interested in raising bees, or have carpentry skills, but there are people in both categories in your locality. All of you, and the habitat in your locality, will benefit from more bee colonies, in more bee hives, with more diverse genetics, pollinating more flowers, in an environment with fewer poisons.

Making those connections, for the people around you, is one thing you can do to improve your habitat.

Permalink Reply by David Braden on January 20, 2012 at 1:19pm

Chapter 7

The design task is to make positive change to a complex adaptive system. The set of interactions in which we find ourselves is the most complex adaptive system that we know.

There is currently a controversy among permaculture practitioners about the propriety of including sections on spirituality in a Permaculture Design Course. Some practitioners think of what they do as design science. Those advocating a scientific approach are concerned that including the instructor's views on spirituality will turn off potential students who associate spirituality with impractical “new age” practices. Some suggest that associating permaculture with spiritual beliefs is what prevents the widespread adoption of permaculture practices.

The failure of permaculture practices to be widely adopted might be due to its association with spirituality but the focus on what is essentially landscape design may also share some blame. The issue is appropriate design for human participation in a whole system and humans have emotional needs that are addressed by spiritual teachings. I do not think we want to promote a particular spiritual teaching or that we can afford to limit our search for answers to the scientific method. The scientific method is a reductionist process and we are dealing with a whole system. There is a middle ground.

The design task is to make positive change to a complex adaptive system. The set of interactions in which we find ourselves is the most complex adaptive system that we know. It encompasses everything we know. Humans are a part of that system, like every other living thing. Humans have needs that must be fulfilled by their habitat if they are to thrive. Just as we design for the needs and products of a chicken, if we want to take advantage of human products in our proposed changes, we must consider the needs of those humans participating. We will not attract participation unless the design change meets at least some of those needs.

Humans have emotional needs as well as physical needs. We need to feel like we belong, that we are contributing, that there is a purpose for our existence. Associating permaculture with any particular spiritual or faith based set of beliefs will exclude all those who hold a different set of spiritual or faith based beliefs but we can design for meeting certain emotional needs. To do that may require that we move beyond what is considered science.

Each of us is already participating in a set of interactions with all the living things around us. Those interactions create the habitat we experience. Every choice each of us makes impacts those interactions and the condition of our habitat. Our individual well being is inseparable from the well being of that habitat. In that way, it is in our self interest to contribute to the well being of our habitat. That is not a spiritual understanding. That is how the system functions.

Ideas such as gardening teams, leading in the direction of community sufficiency technologies, are experiments in developing new ways to meet human needs through participation in system function. The goal is to create a sense of belonging to place, a sense of participating in the ecosystem, and to develop an understanding of the role humans could play as a keystone species within an environment of increasing diversity . . . creating a habitat that meets the needs and accepts the gifts of an expanding number of participants, including us. I am hopeful that the practice of permaculture can expand to encompass this whole system understanding. We want permaculture practitioners to join us in designing for the role of humans in whole system function . . . because we all still have a lot to learn about what it takes for people to adopt permaculture practices as a way of life.

Permalink Reply by David Braden on February 1, 2012 at 7:32am

Chapter 8

Poisoning pollen and nectar is tantamount to suicide. Humans cannot live on this planet without the services of pollinators.

On Sunday we gathered as a community to build 7 bee hives. The event went smoothly, exceeding my expectations. We had cut the pieces for the roofs, quilts and floors so we could start out running and that worked well. We had all the remaining pieces cut and rabbeted by about ten o'clock and that left plenty of time for assembly. The only mistake we really made was in counting frame pieces and we had to set up the saws again toward the end to cut the missing frames. There are some minor modifications to the plans, and jigs, that I would make for the next build but, on the whole, the plan worked well.

We had an observer drop by toward the end of the day who compared what we were doing to an old fashioned barn raising. I think that is probably right. Every one jumped right in, everyone was willing to do whatever needed to be done. We took about an hour for a great lunch prepared by members and friends of our team. We had a chance to talk about the practical parts of beekeeping and a chance to talk about the importance of bees in our habitat.

We accomplished 7 new homes for bee colonies and made an investment in the capacity of the participants to produce honey. That increases the opportunity for honey bees to adapt to conditions here on the front range. The more neighborhoods that have hives, the more opportunity there is to discuss with neighbors the problem with spreading poisons.

There is, right now, at your garden center and hardware store, pesticide products, including bagged top soil and potting soil, containing neonicotinoids. These chemicals are “systemic”, meaning that they are absorbed by the plant and are present in all parts of the plant, including the pollen and nectar. We don't use any pesticides in our gardens. We do not have pests. Those insects eating our plants are food for the creatures that want to protect our plants. You can't have one without the other. We would never think of poisoning either one. Poisoning pollen and nectar is tantamount to suicide. Humans cannot live on this planet without the services of pollinators.

Perhaps we should occupy the local garden center and explain how these chemicals work to those who think that they are a safe way to have a pretty flower garden. Or . . . get together a few friends and build some bee hives.

Let us know if we can help you set up an event similar to ours. This is necessary and important work.

Permalink Reply by David Braden on February 15, 2012 at 10:51am

Chapter 9

Money is a measure of relative scarcity. That is not good or bad. It is just what it is.

I am on the the Board of the Mile High Business Alliance. The Alliance is a trade organization for local businesses based on the premise that money circulating locally benefits the whole community compared to money spent into the global economy. The Alliance asks the community to support local business and I have proposed that it is a two way street. Local business can also support the local community by facilitating the implementation of Community Sufficiency Technologies.

As a business owner, I know the pressures to maintain your existing connections and build new connections. It requires an intense focus on where the cash is flowing. Business owners have to keep on top of how cash flows in, how it flows out and what, if any, is left over to meet the rest of the owner's obligations. That leaves little time to think about how your flows fit into the larger pattern of flows in your community. Even more, because connections are so fragile in a market economy, a suggestion about changes to the flows often feels like a threat.

There is, however, potential profit in being able to step back and examine the larger pattern. We can find ways to assist others that feed back into the stability of our business. Especially in a recessionary economy, there are segments of the community who have no place in the market. If we can find another way for people to contribute to the community, the entire community benefits, including our business. I call these techniques Community Sufficiency Technologies.

Money is a measure of relative scarcity. That is not good or bad. It is just what it is. Of all the things that we can produce at a given point in time, some of them can flow out through the market because they are relatively scarce to someone else who has the money to pay for them. If we only measure value in money, if we do not see the value in anything that cannot be sold, then all the rest of what we could produce is not produced. All of that potential to produce is wasted.

There are things that we want to be abundant. We want food, clothing, shelter, education and health care to be abundant. Those are the things that are required for humans to thrive. What sense does it make to say that once those things become abundant they have no value . . . because they can no longer be sold . . . because there is no market for them? What sense does it make to say that these things cannot be produced because there is no one with the money to pay for them . . . when there are people who clearly need them?

Imagine a network of gardens and greenhouses that produced enough food for every one in the neighborhood. The neighborhood already has the resources to start building that network. It requires little to no money. Then imagine that anyone in the community could get a share of that food by contributing according to their strengths: fixing cars, reading to kids, cooking, sewing, carpentry, home repair, gardening, making cheese . . . In that way, we begin to utilize the dormant potential to produce that already exists in our neighborhoods.

The local business that helped a neighborhood develop that kind of community sufficiency would build customer loyalty in the same way as a business supporting a youth soccer league. It need not take a lot of money from the business either. Your neighborhood may just need a place to meet, a way to connect with other neighbors, or someone to offer advice on how to do it.

Every dollar the neighborhood saves by producing what they need for themselves, is a dollar potentially spent at your business. It is creating an opportunity to contribute for those who are not now contributing . . . increasing the flows for the whole neighborhood. It is one of the most satisfying marketing approaches you will ever find.

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• 2
• Next ›
• Page