Reflections for the new year

 Jan 5, 2013

Cooking rice and lentils on our wood stove  

Four weeks without posting! I mean to post more often but things got in the way, I guess, among which, bouts of pain and hay fever, a theft at our house, and the holidays with family visiting from Brasilia.

One thing we have in abundance here is time to read, and we’ve downloaded numerous Kindle books on permaculture to help us develop our land in sustainable ways. Peter Bane’s The Permaculture Handbook: Garden Farming for Town and Country (2012-06-26, New Society Publishers. Kindle Edition), focuses primarily on gardens and farms in the US and Canada, so it leaves something to be desired for our rural area here in Brazil. But much is applicable and some of his analysis is universal. The following passages struck deep chords in me. The first helps explain my attraction to Brazil where a much larger percentage of the population remains connected to farming.

Today only 0.3% of Americans and 2.2% of Canadians derive their primary income from farming.  This is the smallest proportion of the population devoted to farming in the history of either nation or in the history of the world. No other societies have made our basic connection to the earth and the garnering of sustenance such a marginal specialty. Are we, as economists and prophets of progress proclaim, more evolved and more efficient, freeing up labor from the drudgery of farming to perform more complex and rewarding tasks in industry or the creative professions? Or have we so lost ourselves in thrall to the logic of the machine, that we will sacrifice everything to it — the quality of our food, our health, the land, even our very souls? 

This agro-forest bed planted on Dec 1 is doing really well.

Unfortunately “progress and efficiency” march on relentlessly in Brazil as well, and “the basic connection to the earth and the garnering of sustenance” is becoming “a marginal specialty.” Guy and I are part of an effort to reverse the trend toward huge monocultures and mechanized agriculture. We’re working with others to develop and model viable ways for young people and families to sustain themselves on small properties, raising much of their own healthy and diverse food. I believe this is a way to reclaim our souls.

Here’s the second passage from The Permaculture Handbook that I want to highlight, with its familiar critique of the suburbs and its surprising outlook for them.

The depression of the 21st century, outwardly visible from 2008 onward, has been the occasion of much writing on the link between energy supply, settlement patterns and the shaky basis of the US economy. Social critic and geographer James Howard Kunstler has called the suburbs “the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world.”  There can be little doubt that paving over much of the nation’s best agricultural land and cutting old growth forests to frame shoddily built McMansions was a tragedy of epic proportions, but the question is not whom to hang but what can be done with it now?

However disreputable its causes, the emptying out of many American cities and the spreading of the population over broad metropolitan regions marks a necessary and inevitable turn toward a state of lower social and technological complexity that will develop progressively as energy supplies decline. 

Guy can tell you how often I’ve remarked, when driving by large suburban properties in the US and gawking at the enormous lawns, that a whole third world village could feed themselves from that amount of land. Well maybe it’s the American suburbanites that will rise up as the new farmers, maybe it’s already happening. Our property here is about half an acre, most of which was pasture until we closed it in. We expect to raise enough vegetables, tubers and fruit to get by on if we had to, and if we raise chickens and perhaps a mama goat, fish, and rabbits, we’ll eat very well.

Our wonderful mango tree - don't you think you should start planning your visit?

Settling in and planting a small plot

December 7

We’ve moved in. I think we’ll be very happy in our own place despite the lack of many comforts and conveniences – no flush toilet, only an outdoor privy, no electricity, no hot shower unless we heat water on the stove and put it in the plastic camp shower. But we have beauty all around us, darkness and silence at night, good soil and water and plenty of sun and rain. Eventually we’ll probably have solar hot water, electricity and the internet.

My gardening workstation right off the porch. Could also serve as a tiki bar.

The view from our bed.

Brick wood stove with cast iron oven. Haven't baked anything yet but it's big enough for pizza.

Waiting to get electricity gives us the opportunity to explore other ways to meet our energy needs. It would be easy to simply connect to the grid, install the electric shower, get an electric pump to provide water for irrigation. For now we burn a kerosene lamp and a battery charged LED camp light for our nighttime use. I have a wonderful solar flashlight that someone gave me when I was “walking for the climate.”

We have one small solar panel that will charge Guy’s iPod but not much else. We hope to add a couple more panels and some storage batteries as our friend Mark, at Gaia Grove near Gainesville, Florida, showed us. From his years of experience aboard boats he learned many things, including how to use solar energy for light, radio and a fan.

Last weekend we spent the day planting a 200 sq. feet area according to the agroflorest principles that Guy and Sofia learned at the workshop in October. We had the help of one of our closest neighbors, Felipe. We planted mostly small fruit trees and vegetables of all kinds. Hopefully I'll be able to post more photos as the plants  develop but here are a few from last Saturday.

Guy and Felipe begin the work.

Sofia joins them. Straw hut, privy and Peugeot in the background, mango tree to the right,
babaçu palms center and left.

Work progresses, granddaughter Camila plays alongside. Access bridge to the property in the back.

Sofia adds organic fertilizers to hole for planting a tree.

Rows of vegetables will be covered with straw to hold in moisture and protect from sun.

Mushrooms and a rainbow

Another short update to share a couple of photos.

 

I've gotten to know the mushrooms in Eastern PA pretty well and have enjoyed eating several delicious varieties. But I don't know my mushrooms here in the Central Plateau region. I know there are psychedelic 'shrooms that grow in cow dung. Yesterday I found these gorgeous specimens pushing up through the leaves in the woods next to our homesite. Iridescent blue butterflies flew around while I went over to check these out, but were gone by the time I got my camera.

The stripped down cerrado is still beautiful! The trees are eucalyptus and the road is the dirt road that leads to our farm.

AgroForesty

Reflections from the blogger

What’s the point of posting for all to see and read the little facts of our life here on the Areias farm? Why tell our story, which might end up being very ordinary or even an abysmal failure? Who cares if we plant a few vegetables and a dozen trees on an acre-plot high on the central Brazilian plateau?

These are age-old questions for the writer who shares her own experience with her readers. Even a letter writer has to choose how much to tell about his own troubles and successes rather than sticking to more objective matters. And today it’s the email writer, the facebook poster, and the bloggist who walk the line between writing about other people, historical or scientific facts, or impersonal humor, and spilling their own guts and singing their own praises. 

I’ve taken my cues from a lifetime of reading - my own experience of learning about life from that intimate sharing that poets and novelists and essayists offer as they tell me about what it’s like to be them.
So I’m choosing to trust that our sharing of our life here might be worth something to our readers, whether it be information about the Brazilian Cerrado, and permaculture and agroforestry, or insight into the lives of retired ex-hippie activists, or inspiration for this age of climate change and 99% awakening, or simply entertainment.  

A report on the Agroforestry Course by Sofia Hart

About two weeks ago Guy and I attended a 4-day course on Agroforestry. Agroforestry is a way of farming that takes into account the needs of the earth, so that rather than just exploiting and depleting the soil and surrounding resources, farmers enrich the soil organically and grow food in cycles and combinations that complement each other. It is "pluriculture" (vs. monoculture - the big plantations of soy, corn, etc.) in that farmers are planting vegetables, legumes, root vegetables, fruits and nut trees, plants for biomass, and other kinds of trees in the same area.  Agroforestry exists in many varieties around the world, but in its manifestation here in Brasilia, we might plant things such as banana trees, mahogany, pineapples, coffee, tomatoes, manioc, lettuce, and arugula all in the same area.  The short cycle plants (the vegetables, etc), will produce first, then the medium cycle (bananas), and then the long cycle (mahogany). But while you wait for the longer cycle ones to grow, you can benefit from the shorter ones in the same plot.  I thought the concept of agroforestry was brilliant, but I witnessed just how labor-intensive it is. In the wake of the course, I planted a wonderful little garden at the farm.  So far, I've planted tomatoes, lettuce, arugula, okra, mustard, collards, cucumber, radish, and nasturtium (an edible flower).  I still plan on planting more things, including some flowers around the house.  In a couple of months, we'll have more vegetables than we can consume, and brilliant flowers blooming beside the porch.

The two photos, taken at Brasilia's Botanical Garden, model the agroforestry that many sustainable farmers are using to recover the Cerrado while growing food and trees for timber.

House finished - first garden beds planted

Just a quick update for those who check:

Looking down at the house from the West. 

Note jaboticaba tree at left - it's full of ripening fruit.

From the North. The water line is being laid today and tomorrow - soon the tank you can 

see at the back will be full and we'll finally have running water. 

 First garden beds, full of lettuce, radishes, arrugula, collards, mustard and more. At the front of the photo is a two cubic foot hole for our first trees: 

papaya, coffee and pitanga, I think. 

And here is Guy at our bedroom window - he's busy today sanding the concrete walls in order to paint next week. I'll be waxing the glazed cement floors in the meantime. As you may remember, we're not too happy with so much cement, but we needed to move ahead and this was the best we could do right now. From now on we hope to be greener, using more Earth-friendly materials. 

Fruits of the Cerrado

First an update on the house - we're adding a porch around three sides of the house, plus a water tower that will double as a shower room. We don't have running water yet but hope to set up a gravity-delivered system drawing from the stream that comes down from the spring above my son's house. Photos will follow when we start working on that project, hopefully next week.

The tiles should be in place by now and the porch floors - glazed cement - will be set by next Tuesday or Wednesday. Notice in the photo below how green the vegetation is becoming now that the rainy season has really arrived. Soon Guy will have to be cutting the grass with his scythe.

The rains also bring in the fruit and one of the first to arrive is the wild cashew fruit of the cerrado. My daughter, Sofia, collected a bag-full yesterday morning - here she is removing the pulpy fruit from the shell that holds the cashew nut, one nut per fruit.

Sofia and Guy made hand-churned cashew fruit ice-cream for Victor's birthday.

One of the goals of our new life project is to find ways to use the products of the cerrado that grow around us. For local people to stay on the land they need to be able to meet their economic needs as well as finding activities that are satisfying and pleasurable. You could argue that as retirees with a small but steady income (our SS checks) we have the privilege of enjoying the activities of collecting fruits of the cerrado and making ice-cream, jam, and other products, while such activities would be very labor intensive if they were intended to support one's family. Very true - but we see examples around the world of cooperatives developed by local people to ensure the economic viability of this kind of project. Hopefully we'll show many other products as we explore them in the next few months and over the years. 

House almost done - on to the planting

The building is coming to an end - the little house itself is complete but our friendly masons are putting in a porch on two and a half sides of the house, partly to keep the rain out, but also because it will be so pleasant. 

      Front of house, facing South.

       North face of house.

Despite the negative aspects of the current local building techniques (high carbon footprint for factory-made bricks and cement due to fossil fuels for baking, processing and transportation, and land degradation for extraction of materials), we are pleased with the simplicity of our house. We are installing a water tank that will be filled by gravity-delivered water; we will most likely have dry/composting toilets, solar heated water, and a draining system that will recycle gray water for irrigation. We plan to use solar cooking as much as possible, with gas and wood stoves to supplement.

And we are moving into the planting phase. This past week we paid a fine young biologist, Juã Pereira, who specializes in agro-foresty, for an onsite consultation, and next week Guy and Sofia, my daughter, will take a four-day course in agro-forestry. More on that in a future post. We are grateful to our friends from Lepoco who in July gave us a generous donation to help with this project.