I finally put something on the www.nonviolentworm.org site on the energy savings of the AIR system. You can find the fact sheet at AIR Fact Sheet. This simple, well-known fact of how air can insulate is easy to do, but hard to explain and make happen. If you have any suggestions how we can better communicate this energy-saving idea, please let us know at Air@nonviolentworm.org. April Air (as well as that between May and March) can save all of us energy costs.
Today we got a few truckloads of wood chips at the DMZ garden. Dawn, I and others started to lay down cardboard on the vacant lot and put wood chips on top of the cardboard. This carbon base will be the base for our growing mounds of our homemade soil, and prevent weeds and grass from growing in our planting area. It will take some more work to lay this base, but once it is done, it is done. That is the nice thing about this home model of growing (G.R.A.F), once you do something you can build on it in the future. For example, this, my third season of GP growing power, I have enough of my own soil, worms, castings and compost to build my garden. It still takes some work, as with any garden, but the production per space should be much greater. This way of growing is built on a cumulative system; the more you grow this way the more you can grow effectively. For example, the hard work of putting cardboard and wood chips on the vacant lot of the DMZ garden will last for many years and much growing. It might need renewing in time but not redoing.
From Waste
Comes Compost,
Which, with the help of worms becomes
Castings for the seeds
That Grow into Food
Be Prepared - Monday, April 28, 2008
Be PreparedWhen I was a Scout, many years ago, I remember the scout motto was “Be Prepared.” What we were preparing for was never quite clear but we were getting prepared. A garden needs to be prepared to have a good harvest. These are the days of preparing the garden, building the mounds, making soil, making castings, setting up the rain barrels, purchasing and planting seeds. Preparing takes more time and energy than planting and harvesting. However, once the garden is fully prepared, it becomes a matter of broadcasting the seed and maintenance. Since there is so much to prepare for a good garden doing a little bit of this and a little bit of that is okay as long as the garden is ready when the planting times comes.
RachelThis afternoon Loren, Stacy and new baby Rachel came over for dinner. Loren, a good friend of my son’s, was living in our home when I first got into Growing Power. In fact he was the builder of the GP Box in the Sunroom and the Worm Condo outside. Today we talked about some new garden projects dealing with irrigation systems that Loren will be helping with. However, the star of the visit was new baby Rachel. Her innocence stole our hearts. I often talk about how my life has evolved and now is returning to younger days. I used to say to teens as a youth minister that when I grew up I wanted to be a three year old. (Some adults may think I have already achieved this goal.) Looking at this one-month-old baby I can see where our lives come from, innocence and where they are destined to return, innocence. In spirituality we say that we came from God and are returning to God. Seeing this baby also made me realize how I much I need to catch up with innocence. Paradoxically the only way for an adult to catch up is to slow down and become more in touch with the child or God in us.
Framed Hope - Saturday, April 26, 2008
Framed HopeToday for the Resource Fair at our Church I took along one of the eight storm windows in my house that I use the AIR method of insulation on. When I got home I decided to take a picture of this storm with clear plastic on each side before I put it back on the window. I leaned it against the rain barrel in front of the house that has flowers on it and shot the picture. At first I was disappointed in the picture, for although the plastic coverings and glass are clear the reflection of the house across the street can be seen, as well as some of the painted flowers. Looking more carefully at the picture tonight I see it as more of a symbol of the hope we experience these days. Our clarity of vision is framed by our experiences, yet we can see the flowers through the glass and plastic. Our view is not clear, we also see in the frame images of everyday life around us. We glimpse the hope of life through the frame, but it is clouded by framed realities of our everyday experience.
Today our home was honored by a visit from two Brazilians, Alexandre Ramopazzo and Tatiana Polestri, a husband & wife documentary film crew. They had just completed a documentary called “Nas Terras do Bem-Vira” or “In Search of the Promised Land”. It is the story of the destruction of the Amazon rain forest in Brazil and the use of slavery to do this. It is also the story of Sister Dorothy Stang, an American nun who organized and fought for the rights of the people of this state in Brazil from the 60’s until she was murdered a few years ago. You can watch a trailer for the film on youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhSFmz5-yn4. The film makers are in the USA to produce a documentary on another Dorothy, Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement. They feel Dorothy Day was a similar person in spirit to Sister Dorothy. I had met them the other night at a gathering of local Catholic Workers, and since Catholic Worker and Dorothy Day had affected my life they called to speak with me. Speaking with them on and off camera about the Catholic Worker and Dorothy Day made me realize how much my attraction to Growing Power and Growing Renewable Affordable Food (G.R.A.F) is rooted in the same value system as my interest in the Catholic Worker movement. I always felt and knew there was a connection between the Catholic Worker spirit of works of mercy and nonviolence and my interest in Growing Power, but today that awareness was deepened. At the end of our visit I gave them my copy of the DVD documentary on Dorothy Day called “Don’t Call Me a Saint” and they gave me a copy of their DVD. You can find out more about the Dorothy Day documentary and watch a trailer at http://www.dorothydaydoc.com/home.html. I felt I got the better part of the trade, since I can always purchase another copy of the Dorothy Day documentary but if I hadn’t met these two young adults, now my friends, I most likely never would have watched their documentary.
GP Magic ShowLast summer at the children’s library where my wife works I did my first Growing Power magic show. This Saturday at the Resource Fair at our Church I will do it again for children and adults. I used four clear plastic containers to show the progress of waste turning into compost, then, with the help of worms, into rich soil, and then growing a plant. Tomorrow at the public school across the street from the DMZ garden I will take a smaller version of the show using four jars rather than four plastic containers. The magic comes in with the ‘time machine’, a box I use to speed up the time between stages. Last summer and Saturday I used a box called “Uncle Bob’s GP Time Machine”, tomorrow I will just wave a green magic cloth to make the transformation. The first container or jar is filled with everyday waste, like banana peels, coffee grounds, and leaves or wood chips. The children like it best when I have them eat bits of banana and put the peels in the container. The second container or jar is the ‘cooked compost’. To this jar worms are added and the compost turns into enriched soil. A seed is planted and with the magic of the time machine a plant appears in the fourth one. Of course we can add some flash and show biz. For example, on Saturday my wife the storyteller will, at the start, read the children’s book called “Diary of the Worm.”
Kale in 07Dear Harvey Taylor,
Two years ago you introduced me to Kale,
A wonderful plant, like spinach but better;
A plant that comes up year after year,and
Lives through the cold winter.
A plant so good that I even planted some in the GP Box in the Sunroom, the winter before this one.
Last year I heard that it flourishes every other year, so even though it was abundant I planted some more, just in case this was true.
Now I am working in the garden and noticed that the Spanish onions you gave me last year are coming back a long with the chives, mint and perennial flowers.
But there is no Kale.
Where did it go and will it come back?
Where did all the Kale go?
Earth Day - Tuesday, April 22, 2008
DMZ Garden 04/08Today on Earth Day I went by the vacant lot where we three, Dawn, Marna and I, hope to create the DMZ community garden, with the help of the children and parents of Lafollette School across the street from the lot. Dawn had put cardboard and wood chips on part of the land. On this base we will place our homemade soil in mounds. We have been building our compost pile nearby in the backyard of one of Dawn’s Foundation Dwellings houses. In the future we hope to make our soil, compost, on the lot. We all have plants starting inside at our houses and are getting some advice and help from Growing Power and friends. Friday we are meeting with children and teachers at the school. Our hope is that all these pieces — children, compost, seeds, plants and neighbors — will come together as “Together We Are Growing Power.” This experience reminds me of a library, community
Community center in Venezuelacenter, and place of music, youth had built on a some vacant land in a barrio in Venezuela. It took a lot of years and a lot of sweat but they did it. The night we visited this community center it was full of teens, young adults, children, music and life. Hopefully something similar can be said in a few years of this vacant lot. But rather than music it will be a place to Grow Renewable Affordable Food (G.R.A.F.) in the central city. And while we are hoping, maybe the other eight vacant lots on this one block and the thousands of vacant lots in this area will be growing healthy organic food for the people and by the people in the community. This is a good Hope for Earth Day.
CosmosLast week Edward Norton Lorenz, American mathematician, meteorologist and pioneer of chaos theory died. He was the inventor of the “butterfly effect”, the theory that a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil could cause tornadoes in Texas. This order-to-chaos interests me, and it has been coined with the term chaordic. Today in my collection of humor mail from a friend, I received a modern day realplayer video of the butterfly effect. (I will, with help of my wiki gnome, Tegan, find a way to attach this video to this site or I can email it to you. Contact: bobsyouruncle@nonviolentworm.org). Besides being funny it makes the same point as the original theory, how something very small can have a major impact. This thought came to me today as I was planting some very small salad green seeds in a mound in the garden. The soil the seed is planted in, water, and light all can play roles in how the salad greens grow.
Barrio CarapitaThere are so many good things to say about the people of Venezuela that I hesitate to mention something negative. Although the people of Venezuela are very attentive to personal hygiene, and they are very clean in personal appearance, litter fills the streets of the big cities. You can walk out of a clean spotless subway system in Caracas to face a bunch of litter on the street. To their credit they are trying to do something about it but it is a very difficult task to change the ways of a people. The litter problem is especially true in Barrios, former shantytowns built on the side of a mountain. As people improved their life they built better housing, concrete instead of tin and straw, expanded their houses and made many improvements. However, the houses rest on top of each other on the side of the mountain, leaving little room for anything green. There are just spots where people drop garbage down the mountain. On a Sunday when we were at the Barrio Carapita outside of Caracas, a mechanical machine was on the road down the mountain shoveling up garbage into a truck. Growing up in a Barrio without seeing green and nature may have left some to not notice the order of nature.
This morning I took my cups of herb plants to a gathering, in the atrium of the Cathedral, of persons from various churches concerned about human rights and needs. Our church, Blessed Trinity, although the smallest in the district, had the most representatives at this gathering. The speaker, a Capuchin priest, spoke about “servant leadership.” This type of leadership is not based on manipulation or intimidation, as much leadership is, but based on ‘empowering’ others to serve. Normally I would have been bored with such an academic, conceptual talk but today I was interested. The reason was that the type of ‘servant leadership’ the speaker was talking about was what I experienced in Venezuela. The speaker just gave me a concept and some words to describe it. It is a leadership based on “listening”, gratitude, and asking others “what do you think?” Hugo Chavez is that type of servant leader in Venezuela. His image appears everywhere. At first this bothered me, but now I understand he is a symbol of ‘servant leadership’. Someone who knows how to listen and certainly empowers others to act.
Worm MenDuring our G.A.T.E. journey in Venezuela, Lisa, our guide, kept saying that I needed to meet the “worm man” in her rural community. Finally at a dinner at her house I did. It turns out that the ‘worm guy’ of Venezuela was into this way of organic gardening long before any of us worm guys in Milwaukee, including Will Allen of Growing Power were. He has been a farmer for over 25 years. About 16 years ago he, his wife and child started to feel sick and were tested for chemicals in their bodies. They all had bad levels of chemicals because of the fertilizers and insecticides they were using for farming. It was then that he decided that he needed to make a change. He went back to the ancient method of farming using worms to enrich compost and soil and to produce a liquid, we call tea, to fertilize the soil. Now after the socialist revolution his way of growing organic, affordable food is gaining status in Venezuela and people from all over the country visit his organic farm to seek out the “worm” man. He, like Will and many others around the world, is doing on a large scale what I am trying to do on a very small home-gardening scale. We are using one of the least and greatest of creatures, the lowly worm, as livestock, to produce abundant and healthy food.
A Simple Cup - Thursday, April 17, 2008
A Simple Cup This Saturday there is a summit of Human Concerns-Social Justice committees from a number of parishes including my own Church, Blessed Trinity. A member of our Human Concerns committee had a great idea for centerpieces, small herb plants. She asked me to grow the herbs. Then she had an even better idea: why not plant the small herbs in a recycled cup with saucer purchased from a Goodwill store? This is what I did today. As I was filling the small cups with homemade soil, I thought what a wonderful symbol these cups are. One of the basic human concerns and rights is for food. The whole idea of Growing Renewable Affordable Food (GRAF) is represented in these centerpieces consisting of a simple cup with a plant.
“Same Old, Same Old Soil”Today was a beautiful spring day and I was able to get outside to build two mounds of the same old, same old for future planting. The mounds consist of some compost, fresh waste of coffee grounds and wood chips, some enriched soil with castings and of course worms. I learned from Will at Growing Power over the winter when he was talking to us in the DMZ garden that the mounds of homemade soil need to be 18–24 inches high to be most effective for growing. I will add some more compost and some of the enriched soil from the GP box in the sunroom before I broadcast the seeds. One of the mounds will be for salad greens, which I can plant any day now. This paradox of using waste and turning it into enriched soil for growing amazes me.
Venezuela Is RisingWe are back home from our G.A.T.E (Global Awareness Through Experience) journey to Venezuela. The seeds of a nonviolent social revolution have been planted and are taking root. This Bolivian revolution, as it is called, is a bottom-up revolution. Venezuela is changing from a representative democracy to a participatory democracy. Venezuela is a country driven by missions, a mission of education, health care, communication, participation in government and food and housing for all. Everyone from the least person in the barrio to the wealthiest businessperson is treated with dignity and respect. This social revolution is not perfect and has a long ways to go. However, the majority of the people are determined and with each day the revolution grows and new seeds of hope are planted. More about Venezuela and lots of good pictures will be coming on the Nonviolent Worm.
Going South - Tuesday, April 01, 2008
The Diary of the Nonviolent Worm is going South and will return April 15, 2008.
Do not worry about the seeds planted in the greenhouse or the livestock, worms, inside and outside. One of the advantages of the Home Model of Growing Power and living in community, as I do with three other adults not going South, is that the worms and garden are low maintenance and there are three persons to water the plants and worms. The sun hopefully will take care of the rest.
