Permaculture!

I had a lot of plans for what I was supposed to get done today and all I did was research permaculture. Personality-wise, I see things as very inter-connected. I don't see things in simple cause and effect or isolated at all, I see everything as having connections with everything (I know this vague, but maybe if you imagine me pinchingephemeral little dots in the air and pretending to make little connections through them then maybe this makes more sense).

This is exactly the strength of permaculture! The strength in permaculture is the connections, not the specific elements. Wikipedia (click the image for the link) actually had a lot of information on permaculture that is easy to understand.
Today was mostly spent understanding the basic concepts behind permaculture, and flitting around the internet trying to identify the experts, location of high concentration of permaculturists, and types of movements.
Permaculture explained in my own words:
Permaculture is basically what nature does. Look at a forest for example. It requires no human labor, produces no waste, yet it thrives. What a permaculturist does, is mimic this system, except with more edible varieties that perform the same functions. In a permaculture garden, it is not the individual elements that are important, it is the relationships between them that are. A single element can perform different functions. For example: birds serve as pest control, insects and seeds are sources of phosphates and when the birds eat them, they are distributing phosphates by pooping everywhere. Fungi distribute nitrates (I think) while also protected plant species from diseases. The goal is complete sustainability, with minimum intervention from humans. The disadvantage is that it takes years and years to get it there, because you can't simply copy the design from another location. The designs are very specific to each site.

I tried to find hosts that could teach me about permaculture and I only found one that excited me, which is a lady who teaches permaculture courses. I am still excited to work on other farms, because realisically, it is going to be a while before Ryan and I will settle down to put in all the work to design one. So traditional farming methods will have to be used in the near future.

Natural World: A Farm for the Future: a documentary

Me & Sunsugars and a Silvery fir

The season's first frost came in and killed our garden. Ryan started clearing the dead plants away and it has made me sad. No more fresh real veggies till next year. It was our first garden, and we planted tomatoes, peas, cauliflower, carrots, onions, peppers, basil, cilantro, lettuce, rosemary, eggplant, cantalope, zucchini, and cucumber. Not everything worked out (most disappointingly the cauliflower and cantalope), but we had a huge tomato harvest and that alone was worth all of the work. Whenever I eat a home-grown tomato, I feel like I am eating the sun.
But I found this documentary just in time for me not to be too sad about seeing all the dead gardens around Provo (you can watch it for free by clicking on it). You can watch it and a lot of other documentaries for free on that website. Anyways, LOVED this documentary. The beginning is a bit boring for me because it spends a while convincing the viewer that our contemporary acrigultural methods are not sustainable because of its dependence on oil. Nothing I had not heard before, but the part that got really interesting was when the narrator interviewed permaculturists. Permaculture is something I did not know about so this was fascinating! If you want to watch the documentary and don't want me to ruin it for you, then stop reading and go watch it now.

Cucumber & pepper about to go into our omlette

The most person I found most interesting is a man named Martin Crawford, who studies the woodland forest native to his area and mimicked it by slightly shifting it by using more edibly-desirable plants. The idea is that nature doesn't need humans to come and tend it, it is entirely self-sustainable. Not every plant produces food, but every plant has a purpose: some attract beneficial insects (like mint), some have long roots that bring nutrients up from deep in the soil, some deter pests, and some help with drainage, some have shallow roots that hold together the soil, and some choke out weeds (like raspberries).
The man says he labors on average about 1 day a week, and that if his woodland farm were designed for high-yield (it is not because he is doing lots of experimenting), it could support 10 people per acre. That is amazing.

Me being a Black Pineapple tomato

I didn't spoil the whole thing, there is lots more to be learned so you should still watch it! I really want to visit some of these farms when I am in England.
I must learn more about permaculture. We did square foot gardening this year, which I am questioning right now because plants in nature are not neatly organized into squares and rows, they grow where they need to.

I remember a specific instant when I was mad at the mint because it was taking over the area around are garden and I was afraid that it would infiltrate. So I started pulling it up by the roots (did you know mint's roots grow horizontally instead of straight down, making it easy to pull up, but hard to dig up with a shovel?) but then I realized that it had tons of spiders living in there so I left them there. This bit of knowledge excites me because it is something I learned on my own. My first self-initiated bit of permacultural knowledge! I am a bit overwhelmed by the idea of permaculture because I only know a little bit about each plant, but nothing different between species or the relationships between them. The connections between them seem to be the key.

Cherry tomatoes. This picture is sideways. 

 I don't know much. But the internet does...  

I don't even know...

I probably should have made this switch a month ago, but I was not ready for it. Now I am.

No more Byzantine art, I am interested in:

Farming

and Contemporary art


Yep. Joe made the suggestion that I do this instead a while ago. I guess he could see it and I couldn't so I didn't listen to him. But I finally see it now, so I made the change.


Why farming: I am bothered that most of my food is processed and individually wrapped in plastic that is going to be around for a very long time. I feel weird that the produce I eat is grown thousands of miles away, picked unripe, and sits on a truck as it travels across the country before it gets to me. This is a topic for another time, but I am very interested in growing my own food, learning how to live sustainably, and fiscally supporting my local community. What started out as a logistical decision of participating in a work exchange system of working on farms in exchange for knowledge, room & board, became a primary focus in what I will be doing in Europe. It is a complete life-style decision and I want to learn specific knowledge from the families we will be staying with as well as what the life-style is like. I will be working on paintings while working on these farms.

And the "Grand Tour"? The Grand Tour was a educational and social rite of passage for emerging artists from the 17th to 19th centuries. It involved traveling around Europe to see "the masters". Even now, art students go to Europe to make a similar trek to see not only the masters of the past, but also the present. I will be going to the "must-see" museums, focusing on the top contemporary art museums. Contemporary art means art that is above all, concerned with creating dialogue about current issues. It can also be called Modern art. Generally, it is more conceptually-driven than aesthetic or design-based. I believe concept is power and aesthetics alone can be rather empty.

I will definitely have to elaborate on these topics later, but that is the update on my shift in focus.