ASLE 2: gardens

Jun 25

One of the features of ASLE conferences most beloved by attendees is the choice of activities slotted in to highlight the environmental features of the host region. My Friday afternoon pick was a tour of the Bloomington Community Orchard. The 44-variety organic orchard was planted last October, so it will be a couple of years before it’s bearing fruit (although there are berry bushes which will keep volunteers interested until then, perhaps).

It’s administered by a volunteer board and has received grants already from Toms of Maine and Edys Ice Cream. Our guide, board member Ross Gay, said the grants were helpful as they gave the orchard focus through its beginnings, since the requirements – to carry out educational projects and the like – had to be satisfied within a strict time period.

Situated at one end of land that was a former pig farm, the orchard is ringed by deer fencing and punctuated with handmade gates and posts of local locust wood.

They try to use local materials wherever possible: the paths are made from local limestone which, compacted for use, are firm and even enough for wheelchair access. The garden shed was built with reclaimed wood, recycled materials and volunteer labour; the compost included donated leavings from a local brewery (until the eau de organic matter put a halt to that ingredient).

Though water – and nutrients – are being carefully nurtured in the soil (groundcovers like rye and buckwheat are planted, and levelled with sickles), water will be an issue to be faced in the future because the cost of extending the water pipes is prohibitive for a nonprofit. So there are plans for a cistern and water harvesting in the works; meanwhile, in keeping with the permaculture principles being used in its design, the orchard boasts this swale which holds water along the contour of the orchard.

Efficient use of resources means improvising and using sustainable gardening methods. Permaculturalists love comfrey as a dynamic accumulator, its use as a green manure, and its size which keeps down weeds, so it’s been planted around all the trees. The bagged decorations are actually weights intended to train the tree limbs into a horizontal or downward growth; and most of the trunks are protected with wrapping (rabbits and other rodents would be the chief culprits here, I suppose, as the fencing should keep the deer out).

We had time to have a nose round the nearby community gardens as well, where a few people were pottering around on a Friday afternoon. Things were looking pretty healthy, despite a lot of Japanese beetles sunning themselves on corn leaves; a reminder that community includes shared pests… like this potato beetle in its striped pyjamas.

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ASLE 1: water

Jun 23

Every so often I end up temporarily on a new university campus, struggling to locate oddly-situated and randomly-numbered rooms in unmarked buildings. While I retrace miles of wasted footsteps, I have ample time to reflect on the importance of signposting and the absence of an inner compass which would allow me to make intended use of the maps and directional notes with which we start these journeys. The friendly young man who checked me into my dorm the other night, one of a clutch of sustainable buildings named for  trees (by his hand mine was spelled ceader) told me that I’d find most of the ASLE sessions by following a sort of path along a creek – “it’s kind of hard to explain,” he concluded.

I did eventually find that elusive path, and the buildings are starting to look more familiar. Somehow I’ve found my way to a few sessions over the past couple of days.

Aquatic Intelligence: A Panel to Explore Relationships with Water has been about the best panel I’ve been to so far  (aside from my own, ahem). Gyorgyi Voros started us off with an overview of the watery module in the Earth Sustainability course she taught, and particularly the role of the “Gathering of the waters” exercise, inspired by Basia Irland‘s similarly named 5-year project along the Rio Grande.

Kate Berry then stepped in to say a few words on Basia Irland’s behalf – as she’d had to cancel – about her Waterborne Micro-Pathogens project: she’s created “scrolls” from sari silk (because this is used in India to filter drinking water) with images of some of “the waterborne diseases that kill a child every eight seconds somewhere in the world.” They’re floated in rivers and hung in wells and other appropriate locations.

Berry, a geographer from the U of Nevada, then carried on with her own paper, The Rhetoric of Water Crises and Metrics of Drought, in which she deplored the shoe-horning of the term “crisis” into every contemporary environmental issue we face, and argued that while engagement is needed, crisis is not. Using this rhetoric pits those who acknowledge the crisis against those who don’t; and entangles it in bigger issues, making it something that endlessly changes and therefore becomes fundamentally unsolvable; and it tends to puts us in a position of having to master a crisis rather than adapting to a changing environment. Later a questioner commented on humanity’s search for stasis in a constantly changing world; although it was also agreed there’s a difference between evolving features and imposed/rapid change of the kind that does get labelled “crisis.”

Finally, Jennifer Wheat, from the U of Hawaii, spoke, in part from her own experience, on Never Turn Your Back on the Ocean: Wild Swimming and Eco-Activism, which touched on such aspects as the difficulty of engaging with something you can’t see – water can look clear but carry contaminants that can affect us by ingestion, immersion or accidental contact; she talked about the deliberate, Monsanto-funded poisoning of mangrove swamps that – though not native to Hawaii – do harbour native fish nurseries and protect against tsunamis; and the difficulties of ownership and custody of shared water.

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Windiana

Jun 23

There are several sub-themes to the ASLE conference this year, but I don’t believe wind is one of them. The epic thunderstorm that ranted around Indiana on Monday blew over or damaged a couple of hundred trees on Bloomington’s Indiana U campus, I hear, though so far it’s been relatively calm since delegates started arriving Tuesday.

But let me start in Indianapolis, because that’s what I did. Aside from dear friends reunited, an early major thrill was spending Monday afternoon (after the storm had passed) in the State Library, which is a wonderful place, and wonderfully popular with all kinds of folks. How’s this for a reading room in a public library?

As if that was not enough excitement for one day, I was then hustled into the grand old City Market building where we attended a beer tasting event, a fundraiser for IKE which works for better environmental (air, water etc.) quality for kids in Indiana, at the Tomlinson Tap Room, where there were five mystery beers awaiting thirsty minds, with taste profiles that hinted at their identities. I can modestly report that I guessed all five right, which was about five times the number of questions I could answer on the Indiana / environment quiz that followed. Fortunately my team-mates were much better informed. In fact one extremly interesting question they answered for me was the purpose of the wire that runs from the Taproom directly to the Three Days in Paris creperie below. This I know, thanks to them, is a zipline linking hungry Tappers to a source of fresh crepes. Civilized? I think so.

After a much too short visit to the Indianapolis Art Museum, it ws time for my final Indy treat: visiting the excellent food and winerie Goose the Market, which has lots of fine things including coffee toffee chocolates, house-cured meats, amazing cheeses from near and far, beautiful wines, amusing beers, and a dazzling array of local and not local condiments and essentials, like smoked salt, bourbon-casked vanilla and shagbark hickory syrup.

What could I do but pick up some cheese for the next leg of my journey? From the store’s Virginia collection I chose a herbed Piedmont: a raw sheep’s milk cheese from Everona Cheeses. Nice one. Very nice.

But the ravest of reviews were saved for this Monte Enebro, a gorgeous goat’s milk cheese from northern Spain, its rind blooming with blue mold and vegetable ash. I’m afraid it has already entirely disappeared, but with rapture all round.

And there I will leave you, for the moment as I think that is enough for one day. More on ASLE next installment…

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Tansey on food, wealth gaps and the Canadian Wheat Board

Jun 19

I was at a small and far too short evening with British food activist Geoff Tansey the other night. He was on holiday but kindly agreed to stop in at the Victoria Quakers meeting house to give up a couple of hours talking to local people interested in food issues, and we were treated to a mini-version of the presentations he’s been give at conferences in Nova Scotia and Montana this month.

About 20 of us gathered on a quiet evening when much of the population was tucked up in front of its televisions watching hockey. We started off with a short review of our various breakfasts: the cereals, eggs, breads and fruits were all, noted Tansey, the historical residue of European colonial trade, not local (aside from the salmon that one person had had) – relics, really, of the food systems created by colonial powers that are all on the wane today. And a reminder that food lays its historical tracks down our lives whether we notice or not.

Next it was on to the pillars of food politics. There are always four elements that affect contemporary food systems: power, control, risk and benefit. Power and control contain risks and benefits; understanding who benefits and whose interests are put at risk by the current system is one way of revealing flaws in the structure. Food security definitions, Tansey remarked, do tend to omit mention of power, control and biosphere issues.

He spoke about the economic concentration of power in our food systems which works against broader human interests: there’s a widening gap between the 10% of the world population which holds 80% of global wealth. The wealthy minority will carry on practising what he calls Liddism (keeping a lid on) where the fundamental truths are that we’re living in a bitterly divided adn finite world.

It’s important to acknowledge how greatly technology affects our food system as well, from genetic engineering of food products to customer profiling cards that drive the control of the food products we’re offered.

If we carry on as we are today, Tansey sees three options for global food in the future.

1. The system simply collapses.
2. There’s a technological fix, leading to what he calls an era of corporate feudalism: the rich minority doing all in their power to hold their position at the expense of everyone else.
3. Diversity/equity systems bring a more universal food system into play. There’s a lot of work being done now, but it’s often not very connected.

The tech fix might have a role to play, he added, but only if it aims to meet the goal of diversity/equity. Unfortunately what it’s aiming for right now is economic power and control which simply widens the gap between rich and poor.

There was more discussion after that during which he talked about his recent book, The Future Control of Food: A Guide to International Negotiations and Rules on Intellectual Property, Biodiversity and Food Security. Also about the Food Justice Report of the Food Ethics Council which provides tools for decision makers and is available as a pdf download on the web. And he recommended Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows.

He mentioned Manitoba film-maker Katharina Stieffenhofer (whose film …And This is My Garden “is about the power of education to foster healthier lifestyles and to reconnect youth to the earth”) in the context of concerns over the future of the Canadian Wheat Board, the farmer-controlled marketing agency that sells Canadian wheat, durum and barley on world markets, and which Stephen Harper has sworn to dismantle.

Harper thinks he has a mandate to take away the power over wheat marketing from its farmers, so please read all about it in Maclean’s. Then consider the pillar of control, and who his “free trade” solution will really benefit. And if you don’t think it’s going to help make food available more fairly and widely, write to him and to the agriculture minister and tell them  what you think.

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Island Chefs – another good spread

Jun 12

Today’s Island Chefs Collaborative Food Fest has just ended as I write. I got there early and enjoyed the offerings on this sunny, if not overly warm, Sunday. The festival is a fundraiser for the ICC and its program of micro-loans and grants to local farms, food producers and nonprofits who are working to improve the sustainability of local food systems. They have lots of community support

and of course a lot of happy eaters willing to put their mouth where their money is, including more than a few cyclists.

There was a bit of everything happening. Some salmon, of course

and melting Metchosin lamb, cooked whole on a spit and lovingly carved by Cory Pelan and his team.

Vegetarians could glory in Prima Strada pizza and a lovely assemblage that included Madrona Farm salad, asparagus roasted with balsamic vinegar and a chanterelle tart topped with a piece of oven-roasted Sun Wing tomato.

For the gluten-intolerant, there was pulled pork (barbecued in tomato-rootbeer sauce, apparently) in a gluten-free bun, and vegan chocolate cake.

The longest line always leads to chocolate: in this case a gorgeous chocolate cake from Canoe Club (and some nice looking beer to go with).

Nice things to drink: local beer, cider, wine, tea – and Victoria Spirits gin and vodka:

The festival’s site on Fort Rodd Hill meant that military history was not far away. A cook tent was set up to serve a bit of Spanish stew and tell people about Canada’s involvement in the Spanish Civil War, including our most famous participant, Norman Bethune.

Some farmers and nonprofits represented too: beautiful wares from Sun Wing greenhouses

and Saanich Organics, selling vegetables and starts, and our own Gorge Tillicum Urban Farmers, alongside our local SPIN farming operation, Donald Street Farms, selling inspiration for urban agriculture.

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