Was holdin’ it down here for the last couple weeks while Keli was off in the bay.

Started off up to my eyeballs in soil biology, scrambling to finish an incomplete course on the soil food web from last semester.  The soil food web is the community of micro and macro organisms living within the soil, from earthworms to bacteria.  More and more its becoming clear just how important of a role the smallest members of the community play.  For example, you can profoundly impact what sort of plants will grow by nurturing different balances of fungi and bacteria in the soil.  These are the decomposers, microorganisms that break down organic matter, making all that energy available again in the system.

One of the ways of effecting microbial populations is through compost teas.  I joined Michael Scott, who has a local composting operation, for a tea brew, and brought 15 gallons back for our freshly transplanted tomatoes.  This is, pretty much, what it sounds like, and can be really satisfying in a mad scientist sorta way.  Take a little of the nicest compost you can find or make, put in a porous bag, suspend it in water (from a 5 gallon bucket to a 300 gal tote), get a pump big enough to keep a good air flow going through whatever size container you use, and add in fungal and bacterial foods to encourage the populations of desired critters.  Then, let the whole concoction bubble and froth for a day or two while ya cackle to yourself.  Finally, while it’s still fresh, full of oxygen and aerobic micro beasties, apply it to the soil around yo plants.

We checked out the brew under a microscope, and it was, well, a’ight.  Lots of bacteria, some useful predators, some fungi, it’s always hard to get enough fungi in the brew.  Regardless, the tomatoes seem to have taken to it, all lush and happy.

Some days, everything happens at once.  Found myself in town for an impromptu dance party on the street, gettin my kokopelli on playin flute with a couple local drummers who’ve spent a good while studying in West Africa.  Wound up playing with them that night at this ill little restaurant.  In between, ran into my friend Leo on the street who invited me to Huasteca for the weekend with his fam, leavin at midnight that same night.  So, after finishing at the restaurant, grabbed my gear and took a taxi over to the Salsa club where Leo was finishing up a set with his band.  Around 3 in the morning, we finally rattled outta San Miguel, little brother, grandma and all.  Huasteca is this incredible region of the country that dips in and out of desert, oak forest, and jungle, with waterfalls and swimming holes scattered liberally.  Marked the full moon over a campfire in a river valley, wedged between green mountains.

The following week, Cesario and I joined up with Jaime and the Via Organica folks to visit Jaime’s mentor, Miguel Maya.  Miguel is simply an amazing human being.  He has land out on the other side of Queretero where he’s done over 600 bordos (water capturing ponds), a huge terraced orchard, that, because of the bordos, requires no irrigation, land restoration projects, has a production nursery, and has established a self sufficient homestead complete with 75 chickens, 7 borditos, lots of reused material art, a small pine forest, and composting toilets.  We visited a nearby piece of land which is a treasure trove of 37 different varieties of Oak in a region that is rapidly being deforested.  Here, the riverbed has one small tiny remaining perennial section.  To guard this last oasis, and to slowly spread it back out and return health to the landscape, Miguel has undertaken a massive terracing project with his family.  First, they constructed a porous stone dam in the riverbed, not to trap the water, but to slow it down and harvest the rich soil which had eroded into it from the mountain sides.  Then, all along the hillsides, they’ve been constructing massive stone terraces, which in themselves are beautiful, and overtime will serve well to protect soils from erosion and recharge the groundwater.  In 20 years, the landscape will be unrecognizable in the best way possible.  More than anything, the man’s work ethic and attitude towards time is incredible.  Someone who is really living to provide for that 7th generation.

Sometimes, San Miguel feels, frankly, old.  There’s a lot of retirees and tourists passing through the town, and it can get a little overwhelming.  So it was a relief to find some youngbloods for a banger party in a carpentry shop, fresh graff goin up on the walls, crazy sculptures built from wood scraps, spinnin of fire and beats, and some electro kokopelli, all till just before the sun came back up to check out what was causing the ruckus.

On the electro kokopelli tip, this is what the campo here sounds like if you squint your ears jusssttt right…

http://soundcloud.com/biomimicrant/dangling-my-toes-in-the-sky

Wrapping up the little mini-tour I stumbled into, joined some of the Via Organica folks for a sunday Barbeque at Gaia, an eco community where Atahualpa and his family live, a little bit outside of the city.  They’ve got it together, getting all the power they need from solar panel and little windmills on their roofs, and collecting all their water from the rain and rivers during the rainy season.  Also just good people, great afternoon of french jazz songs and lazy kokopellying.

Handing the torch to Keli, who got back from the states a few days ago, and in the morning, headed to Oaxaca for a week or so.  No idea where I’m going, but my poi are almost finished and I know somewhere there’s a beach waiting for me.  I’d hate ta disappoint.

Cheers.

So, here we are, sitting by the dry riverbed, making little terraces as the groundwater runs out, listening to stories of how the Rio Laja used to flow freely all year round, and wonderin’ bout the future, if we can possibly make any noticeable change in a dying river that stretches across the municipality.

We’d run into Augustine Madrigal, who works for Salvemos la Rio Laja, and he invited us out to Global Water Watch certification checking the health of bodies of water, and more generally, taking care of the cuenca (watershed).

Global Water Watch is a worldwide network of certified water monitors checking the quality of water and uploading their findings to an online website. Their mission is to give the power to the people to find out what is in their water and provide proof and strong data to present to authorities.

What we hadn’t realized was who else would be coming to the workshop.  It was small, only a handful of people really, but among them were campesinos, gringos, government, and ecovillagers, representing projects all along the rio, from its beginnings in the small branching veins of tributaries in the mountains, to its end in the lake which neighbors the city.
Our teacher, a worm farmer from the south of mexico, led us through the process of giving rivers a checkup, measuring pH, checking for Ecoli, hardness, and turbidity.  We met a new friend who works with the government, who offered to help us deal with the contamination Bachoco (a corporate chicken farm) causes.

The hacienda’s once more becoming a center for classes.  Went by the secondary school a few weeks ago, where I met Randy Brohman, who beyond having a kickass name, is a cool old retired gringo who’s been giving computer classes to the kids (As he puts it, old men need something to do).  They’re doing basic things like microsoft word and excel.  Reminded me of teaching computers in Ghana.  Myself being less than thrilled by excel, I approached him about working with some of the kids afterschool on using computers to make thumpin’ beats and such as a continuation of the class.  The following week, I returned with my big travelling backpack full up of laptop, speakers, keyboard, and a microphone.  After demonstrating a song off Ableton Live, I set a beat going, and had kids, teachers, and the Brohman lay down synth and vocal parts in real time.  Shit was fun, by the end the doorway was packed with giggling kids who’d filtered in from the corners of the schoolyard.

Last Wedensday afterschool, 8 kids came to our studio for the first class.  Going slowly, we went through the process of creating instruments, using drum racks and synths, and editing recordings into looped pieces.  Rotating turns at the computer, we made a trippy lil beat together.  I’m stoked to keep it going, and also for some extra helping hands (We’ve been trading time, classes for help with our project).

Also started guitar and keyboard classes with Gustavo and his friend, who are a bit older than me, helping them with basic chords, and learning a song together about smuggling coke (sorta a common theme, there’s a whole genre here called Narco Corriendo. means drug running.  Think gangsta rap with accordions and phat tuba bass lines.).
Friday, early-early, on that get the worm tip, the hacienda came to life with another group of kids from the secondary school, who’d come out for a birdwatching course that Augustine had set up as a way to begin engaging the community with the local ecology and the rio.

After the water workshop, Augustine asked if we wanted to host a bird watching course here for 10 participants from La Cuadrilla. We agreed and I went about trying to find the 10 participants. Many couldn’t come so I finally went to the secondary school with mike and found 6 students, 2 boys and 4 girls that were genuinely really excited to get to come. I didn’t honestly think I would find that many but almost the entire classroom raised their hand when I asked who wanted to come! The course was for two days and the kids got friday off from school to come. We learned some interesting things about the physiology and the behavor of the birds that migrate on the River Laja and why it’s important to understand and monitor them. Birds serve as an indicator of eco-system health. Their peaks in population, daily habits, and numbers in diversity tell us many things. The kids amazed me at how interested they were in the topic, and even more, how much they already knew. The instructor was also very happy to have such excited students.

Saturday morning I joined them.  Arturo was leading the course, a very calm, pleasant man who works on oak forest rehabilitation near Guanajuato.  I was surprised how enthusiastic the kids were, roaming the banks of the rio in groups, checking out the birds in the binoculars.  On the way back, I was walking with Arturo and one of the boys, and we saw 5 or 6 hummingbirds zipping through the mesquite.  This whole place has been coming to life with the mesquites exploding in new green foliage.  A hive of native bees have made their home in the wood above my balcony, and every day I see more and more of them carrying legfulls of pollen.

Saturday afternoon, I started recording these bees (for future whompage), and wound up following my ears on a two hour scramble through the campo that included recording a whole drumkit full of birds, frogs, and the shattered glass, stones, and resonant walls of an abandoned old shrine, and the discovery of a dusty one ring circus on the edge of La Cuadrilla which I returned to the next night with a beautiful neighbor.

Been pretty much living in the music studio when not working in the gardens or the hillside.  In honor of the beez, here’s the first piece of a project I’ve been working on using monsanto advertisements, bee synthesizers (including some of the bees next door), samples, live instruments, and all manner o’ craziness…
McWagner’s Bad Medicine pt. 1 by Biomimicrant
Continuing work with Jaime, we’ve learned several ways to find the contour lines along our hill.
We used two tools, the water level, and the “agro-nivel”. The water level is fairly straight-forward: using a 14 mt. long tube full of water and two stakes with two marks placed at equal heights, we search for the contour line based on weather or not the water levels are aligned with the marks.

The agro-nivel is a tool to help find the amount of slope between two points. This helps us find out how far apart, or how high, our terraces need to be.

Tracing these, we’ve started terraces from stones and the abono (bonus) from the tree and cactus cleaning we’ve been doing (paistchle, dead branches, and dry sections of cactus).  Smaller than swales, these terraces are not for water catchment as much as to slow the water down and give it a chance to infiltrate, and above all to prevent the soil from being swept away.  It’s been remarkable to discover the rich tierra negra beneath the mesquite, to see how much the trees provide to the habitat.  After seeing this, we’ve started planning an understory native herbs and tea garden for beneath the first section of grove we’ve cleaned and terraced.  There’s been talk of a local organic tea co-op, which would be a perfect channel for the garden, It’s gonna be so beautiful.  Thalia’s gonna help us make it happen.

Thalia’s a youngblood (meaning our age in the rather floridaish environs of San Miguel) from Massachusets who’s interning with Via Organica.  Check out her dope blog at http://rawculturecollective.wordpress.com/ where she’s done writeups of via organica and our project here.

AND, we finally got the beds prepped in the Jaula (the soil looks way better than I expected, it’s amazing what water, mulch, leaf mold and compost can do.), and got most of it seeded and transplanted.  Plenty of tomatoes interplanted with carrots, radishes, beets, and onions, several beds of greens, and 12 beautiful three sisters mounds of corn, squash, peas, and cosmos flowers.  Also made a perimeter bed on the outside of the jaula, where I broadcast chives and flowers to attract beneficial pollinators and deter pests.

During the GWW course,

there was a moment,

It was something Eduardo said, brought it

Flooding my vision

With glazed eyes,

I looked across the serpent folds of a river

As all the people sweated

Not behind counters at gas stations

Or building forever empty hotels

Or sitting behind computers

No, their sweat fell from them

Joining with the waters of the river

As they worked in small groups

Isolated idioms

Joined together by the common urgency

Of our failing body.

Short and Simple:

This week had lots of mesquite in it, a moon getting ready to be full, and sore sore muscles. The more we work on the land, the more people we see involved in the collection of wood, usually in a very unsustainable way, ie: cutting live branches, or uncleanly cutting branches and allowing for a termite to worm its way inside. Some boys from La Petaca came to help us in exchange for leña (fire wood) by cleaning and pruning the trees. Their attitude wasn’t the best, and they didn’t seem to effected by our talks of “the ecological crisis befalling man”, however we interacted, and we all talked, Jaime Ocampo shared with them some of his knowledge, so, who knows. My father Andy gave them a ride home, met their family and came back with a bag full of some of the most tasty tortillas I have found here.

So many young musicians have come through…
One evening Cecillia called us in from the Mesquite grove, saying, check it, there’s an accordionist and his whole crew jamming out with Andy.  Stumbling into the front patio, we found Ernesto and a motley crue of characters in their 10s to 20s serenading Andy and Ceci with cartel songs, the campo polka equivalent  of gangsta rap.
Later, we introduced Ernesto to our young student and friend Lalo, who plays drums. We believe a concert will be on the way.

Fernando is a local carpenter and helped us add frames to our soil block trays for better water absorbtion

Our gardens are going well. Many baby plants ready to be transplanted, eggplants, chiles, tomatoes, tyme, basil, chia, zucchini, corn, mustard greens, misuna, spinach, beets, carrots and many others. The weather has been very fluctuate. Hot days, and warm nights, then hot days and cold nights. Cesario put out a bed of tomatoes and broccoli to stick a toe in the water of the swimming pool that is our climate.

Mike and Fernando made a three more trays of soil blocks. We added lips to the trays so water could pool at the bottom and soak up into the roots.

Borage really really attracts insects such as aphids and white flies. We want to put it everywhere.

Not so much because we have a deeply felt and self destructive love of aphids, as the idea that the borage is taking one for the team, distracting all the undesirables who’d otherwise be chowing on our tomatoes.

We have a squirrel trap in our possession and are about to enter into operation, squirrel relocation.

Relocation to my belly.  still got the barbeque sauce.

Thinking about the bees a lot. The bees go, we go.

In so many ways, honey bees co-colonized the Americas along with european human beans.  Much of the food we take for granted is made possible by collaboration with honey bees.  For perspective, in China, where there is a severe shortage of pollinator allies, swarms of ‘humans are sent out into the fields with brushes to pollinate apple trees.

This beautiful flower will one day give us a tasty pod filled vine that we can dry, grind, and bake into the most delicous bread you have ever had

We’ve been talking with a local beekeeper about possibly bringing a hive to the hacienda.  The mesquites are about to bloom, and I can attest to the deliciousness of  mesquite honey.

In addition, with continued devastation of bee populations due to colony collapse disorder, beekeeping (which our friend makes clear is very different from bee-having) takes on new significance. For a few words about this from our friends at the Bayer and Monsanto corporations, as well as the bees themselves, dig it…

Permaculture is a very real way to structure your life and learning how to do so is incredible. Our land loses a lot of energy, but it also produces a large amount, and trying to find the best way to harness the energies outputted, is an amazingly fun challenge.

Don Lleno took us on a riverside journey to find Arnika

Don Leno came by and shared with us some of his knowledge of herbal medicinals. We ate some tunas from the Cardon cactus which help purify the blood.

He showed us where to find arnica on the riverside for bruises and sore muscles. And apparently that it can be drunk to relieve internal bruising. I misunderstood this and proceeded to drink an extremely concentrated amount which resulted in an agonizing day of sickness. I’ve learned my lesson, only take the correct dosage of herbal medicine, it’s potent.

This is Arnika and is found by the river here, it's everywhere!

Mike and I celebrated the full moon with a bottle of tequila, some potatos, and our instruments. Sleeping out on the hill makes me feel even more integrated with the ecology.

AAAAWWWWWWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

It’s all a process and it’s all moving.

INSPIRATION

We’ve been starting the week off by spending a day at the Via Organica greenhouse with Luc, Asu, Primo, Cesario, and a rotating cast.  It’s a good way to get motivated. So many of the things we’d like to be doing at the hacienda, they’re actualizing on the daily.

We arrived in time to help with the early-morning harvest at the green house. Today we are cutting Mustard greens, two varieties of Arugula (Sputnik and an italian variety), Mizuna Greens, Cilantro, Parsley, Cherbil, Dill, Chard, Carrots, and Radishes. The VO team distributes a portion of their yield to local hotels as well as providing a integral part of their store’s inventory. It’s interesting to see how much their 30 mt. long green house can produce. I would say that the amount harvested just once a week (they harvest twice a week) would satisfy the produce needs of a family of four. Everything is cleaned, from the truck that carries the veggies to the containers that the veggies are in, to the veggies themselves. All quantities are logged in kilos and grams. This is an example of the workflow that must be maintained in a peer-certified organic community. Via Organica has helped create a board of people that define Organic methods and certify local producers following these regulations.

Once the harvest rush is over we weed and cut the past-mature arugula where it’s root comes up from the soil. VA leaves the roots in the soil so that Mychorrhiza can colonize new roots once plants are planted in.

(Mychorrhiza are strands of fungus that form symbiotic relationships with plant roots (think hair extensions, nature’s weave, trading soil nutrients for the sugary enzyme goodness the plants produce through photosynthesis.  ;)

However, in one of gardening’s many uncertainties, I’m not actually sure that the mychorrhiza that colonize tomato roots can colonize other veggies too.

We finished the day by transplanting Tarragon into bigger pots and organizing the green house by grouping all the potted plants by their type. VO sells a wide variety of these for people to plant at home, from Artichokes to Sage, diversifying their income, as well as encouraging small scale agriculture in their customers.

Notebook scribbles and scrawls:
- Borage helps strengthen the flavor of strawberries
- Broccoli is difficult to grow organically here, however Kale is a more efficient brassica.
- Prune basil by plucking off the central growing stalk and leave to branching stalks, much like a tuning fork.
- Basil like loose soil, if topsoil becomes compacted, “fluff” with fingers on the first 1/2 inch of soil.
- A very large amount of carrots can be grown by creating small rows 1 inch each apart and placing seeds one-by-one in a triangle pattern. When harvested these carrots will fullfill a function of aerating the soil without tilling.
- Think of cover crops all year round ie: Strawberries, Chives, Arugula, to protect from water evaporation.

PERSPIRATION

So it turns out its not the easiest thing in the world to be a travelling homesteader, an acoustic dj, an american mexican, a school-free student, or a digital organic human type of bean.  Whodathunk?

S’alright though, easy gets boring pretty quick, eh?

Lots of little things not happening and happening and not going right and actually working out all at once.

Today I realized doing the five bio-intensive beds in my course plan would be hard if I couldn’t even manage one, so I refocused  to creating a mini bio intensive bed in the center garden. Here, I am using clay pots to water basil plantsWater goes into a clay pot embedded in the soil, rather than directly onto the soil surface, allowing for a slow steady release through the porous clay that provides for optimum moisture over extended periods ;) and a row of carrots while simultaneously preparing the soil for onion and tomato. The basil, onion, tomato combination is the Italian equivalent of  the “three sisters”  of North America (corn, beans, squash). I also added a section of chives to serve double duty as pest control and ground cover and a calendula flower for attracting beneficial bugs This garden’s an exclusive party, got bouncers with the VIP list and the black list checkin names at the door ;)The soil is very compacted, however there are many earthworms, and a diversity of plants that is unmatched on the property, so instead of double digging i just loosened the soil with a pitchfork, added compost and leafmold on top, and lightly mixed. I added clay pots at even intervals and mulched the Basil plants while leaving my small rows for carrots exposed.

Spent most of the noon with Mike transplanting Tomatos, Zucchinis and Corn. We put them in bigger pots awaiting warmer weather. I much prefer soil blocks for tomatos, they seem to get stunted and weak in the plastic trays.  Corn in soil blocks doesn’t seem like the most practical thing when seeding large amounts of land but we are doing a test to see if the head start is advantageous.

The compost piles we created  are not heating up exactly as hoped.

Keli had been having trouble getting the horse shit compost piles to heat up. After he’d spent weeks asking everyone he met if they knew of anyone with nice piles of cow shit, Cesario finally found a source in a nearby pueblo, and early in the morning, we clambered on the back of the big white truck and rolled out with shovels and wheelbarrows.  That morning, we invented a new sport (coming soon to an olympics near you).  The recipe is as follows…

Take one extremely narrow plank
Set it at a steep angle onto the back of a flatbed truck
Fill one rickety old wheelbarrow with a heaping mound of decomposing cow shit
Now, take a deep breath (careful of the dustclouds), take up the wheelbarrow, and try to run it up the plank onto the truck without
A) Falling off and landing in cow shit.
B) Losing Momentum halfway up, tumbling back down, and cow shit landing on you.

The winner rides back triumphantly through bumpy dirt roads atop a steaming pile of glory.

With our newly won bounty, we built 2 trial compost piles, one a mix of our homegrown horse poop with chipped and shredded foliage, straw, mesquite chips, and oak leaves and twigs, and the other the same, except with the cow dung.

Wound up adding a 1/3 bale of alfalfa to the compost pile horse manure pile which was just at 120F. The cow manure one is just way to cold to do anything about.

Cow Manure Compost

Ideally, to kill any potentially harmful pathogens and weed seeds, you want the compost to reach at least 130 degrees F  for 3 days straight.  Gotta come with the hot shit!

The Coop

-There’s four chickens living here at the Hacienda.  I’m a lil more tuned in to chickens now after having a few as next door neighbors in my Berkeley summer shack.  We didn’t really know how to take care of em, and each time I went traveling I came back to find one less chicken (we also had raccoons as next door neighbors…).  The winner of Survivor: Berkeley Hippy House edition was our very own Goldie.  We got to know each other at our most unguarded moments (fond memories of running outside in my boxers with a pitchfork at 2 in the morning to chase the damn raccoons out of her pen)…  But I digress.

Anyway, the chickens here didn’t have the best system going for em.  They had a bare concrete floor, two shit covered doors for a roost, on a diet of corn kernels, and only getting out to forage a few days of the week.  With Keli’s help, took out the doors, replaced it with a chicken wire screen that the poop can fall through to the floor, which we’ve covered with straw as bedding and to make cleaning easier.  They’re getting out a little more too, although the corn diet still seems less than ideal.  (For people too.  Slowly, slowly, put down the coke and corn pops, and walk away…)

"El Ranchito"

-In the Ranchito, which is our large unsheltered garden, we’ve been trying to figure out the best approach to use.  Drawing inspiration from the world’s foremost zen farmer, Masanobu Fukuoka, and our own natural born inclination to laziness, we’re hoping to manage it to be as productive and hands off as possible.  When we started, the beds were in bad shape, dry and naked (bare soil is like an open wound on the land).  About two weeks ago, with the help of a group of local kids from the music exchange, we broadcast clover (a nitrogen fixer) and rye over the right half of the ranchito as a cover crop.  Only a handful of rye blades seem to have sprouted, the clover’s doing a little bit better, forming promising little patches of green, but mostly we seem to have simply jumpstarted the weed population (arguably still better than bare soil).  We are in the process of acquiring fava beans, alfalfa (both nitrogen fixers), and more clover (all nitrogen fixers), which hopefully will have more luck.  Also, Keli found a really cheap source for straw, which we’ve used to mulch all the pathways and bare beds in the Ranchito and the Jaula, which should help with protecting the soils, retaining moisture, and building microbial communities.

Bales of Avena

Keli, Fernando and I mulched the “Ranchito” beds and pathways which were very dry. Where we had planted rye and clover we only mulched the pathway. The irrigation was chewed up by the “ardillas” or “squirrels”

(cue old school Bela Lugosi film score)…

Within the old cold stone walls of the Hacienda, lurks evil.  Pure, voracious, furry, kinda cute evil.  This evil has a name.  They call him Ardilla.  He is a rock squirrel.  He and un chingo of his kind haunt the hacienda eating everything except beans and onions.  My last stay here, I helped build a big ol’ chicken wire prison (The Jaula) for our main vegetable garden.  Now, they seem to have escalated the battle.  There’s a ridiculous number of leaks in the drip irrigation of the Ranchito, and Cesario is convinced the perpetrator of these puncture wounds is our old nemisis, Ardilla himself.  Don Rueben stopped by Via Organica with a possible solution, a Da Vincian wooden Ardilla trap.  Word from the La Cuadrilla oldtimers is that Ardilla is some good eatin’.  And so, surrounded by vegetarians, and armed only with my dad’s recipe for barbeque sauce, I venture forth alone to confront our dread foe.

-We’ve officially started with the rehabilitation project.   Our mentor, Jaime Ocampo, came out to the Hacienda, joining us for an early breakfast.

Over Cecilia’s Huevos Rancheros, we discussed where to start the rehabilitation of the hillside and the social as well as ecological complications we are facing. Our community is consuming more wood then the land can sustainably support. This is occurring for various reasons. One is lack of employment. Many cut mesquites to take into town to sell for cash

Mesquite and I are gradually coming to a greater understanding.  My first encounter was less then friendly, while building the “Jaula” (Wire Jail) being caught in its thorny embrace many a time.  Now, knowing the delicious taste of  mesquite muffins, the extremely agreeable smell of mesquite fires, and the water infiltration properties, I’m much more inclined to approach the tree with respect.

We walked the hillside, deciding the top was a good place to begin the terraces. If we build terraces from the bottom up the entire force of the water coming down from the top might overpower them, however if we start at the top and gradually continue downward the water will be less. We also looked at where we could build a road so that we can bring the chipper shredder as well as a truck with a water tank up.

Choosing A Place To Start

We spent the day pruning the Mesquite trees and Granejo bushes, cutting dry, dead branches to channel the energy of the tree into upwards reaching new growth.  Living Time Sculpture…

This is a magical little epiphtye

Paschtle (Tillandsia recurvata) is an epiphyte (not a parasite) that blocks photosynthesis of a tree. The thorns and rough bark of the mesquite provide a very secure surface for the the hairy seeds of the Paschtle to attach to. The paschtle is looked upon as a parsite, and pest, however, it is a blessing waiting for our harvest. The paschtle is high in nitrogen and can be used as animal fodder or compost material. In these arid lands, building soil is our number one priority, paschtle can help us. We also utilize paschtle to build terraces to retain soil. There is some basic research into the use of ball moss extracts for anti-tumor and anti-inflammatory uses.

We might have discovered a new, seemingly inexhaustible source of chicken food ;)

It feel amazing to finally dedicate some time to helping the hillside recover…

…And to find a use for these strangely nimble human hands of ours.

ARRIVALS

I’m back at the hacienda property, and the first couple of days are hard. To find roots again, to ground myself in what I am doing and where i am doing it is awkward and off balance.

But slowly, almost starting all over again I’m finding my place again. Reintegrate with the ecology. Explore the sun and the moon more in depth.

Aayyyyyy! So rudely transplanted by airplane engines and globalized Shopping malls.  But I´m here now, regrowing some of those carbon shredded roots.

 Plans fell through to roadtrip from New York to La Petaca.  A little out of tune with the momento and with friends, rebooting my mentality ended in a last minute airfare from the suburbs to Mexico City.

 (Short sidetrack into Mexican hospitality…) 

Met a new friend in the jfk airport, and wound up kicking it in Queretaro for the night at the house of his friend´s family.  The friend of a friend´s parents took us out to eat, and slowly unravelled that I was one step removed from a perfect stranger, but were still very gracious to me.  In the morning, we ran around the city running a few errands through what turned out to be a perfect approximation of the US, malls, walmarts, and all.  After sharing some dubstep, I got on a bus to San Miguel, and rolling out of Queretaro, finally saw the spacious desert hillsides that I´d come to live in.

Mike Wagner is here and I am amazed at how much easier the Prescott model is with another student. It’s the perfect mix between a classroom and independent study. It provides more structure to my week, things get done more.

We are doing two main classes together, Native ecological restoration and Soil Management in Arid Lands, but also studying bio-intensive organic agriculture with Via Organica. We have been meeting and trying to figure out logistics for documentation of these classes. For example: Taking before and after photos of everything to have comparison data. Also creating this learning journal, both online and hardcopy. This is the background information. Now here is some more detailed stuff.

The place has grown so much since the last time I was here.  There´s a real abundance of amazing people, all seeming to be on a mycelial kick, i.e. beginning to network together, share information, and and push their fruit out into the wider world.  We visited Via Organica, which is manifesting the movement towards sustainable human beings on many different fronts, from  their organically sourced restaraunt and market in town, to their rooftop garden and the workshops held up above, and culminating with an incredibly dialed in greenhouse production garden on the far side of town.  Here, rows and rows of carefully tended, intensively planted crops thrive.  I love the claypots embedded within the soil, used for watering.  Water slowly disperses through the clay into the soil, creating a time release system to maintain optimal moisture with minimal energy.  Here, along with a gringa from some of the same bay area circles as yo, we learned how to use a soil block maker (think a giant hyphy soil mix cookiecutter alternative to rows and rows of plastic trays and messy root shredding  transplants like the airplane delivery I suffered)

San Miguel is full of amazing people. In the last week I have met a nutritionist, cob and super adobe builder, and a bee keeper. I have worked with michael scott from COMPOSTI to do applications of compost tea on las ventanas property. Michael Scott has taught me a lot about soil microbiology as well as gardening. The most interesting thing has been seeing the difference between people and their practices. I learn some things with Via Organica team, and another from Michael, and yet another from our soil management and native ecology restoration mentor Jaime Ocampo. After hearing all these things I get to process and mix them together to create a new workflow, or perception, or practice. It’s like a soil mix of compost, leaf mold, and black earth. 

Saturday, posted up at Tianguis (the newborn organic market in San Miguel), playing music with Keli and the Three Manu Chaoitos.  Here, met our mentor Jaime for the first time, and he gave me a fucking delicious muffin made from the flour of the Mesquite tree (a desert tree we are trying to rehabilitate here in La Petaca).  Later we visited him at his ranch.  Here is a truly sustainable man, who has spent 30 years in a beautiful relationship with the land.  We were invited to some of the delicous fruits of his labor, saw before and after pictures of the land that put bowflex commercials to shame, and left wearing some of his clothes and hoping to one day be able to walk in his shoes.

I have been focusing on the idea of integration with ecology. Of a dynamic/static role in the ecology of where you are. There is so much to be learned from staying in one place, and so much to learn from moving...  

 Borrowing the soil block maker from Via Organica, we got about 900 little seeds planted, in the process of germinating under the watchful lights of an improvised indoor greenhouse.  Tomatoes, carrots, cosmos, marigolds, squash, sage, peppers, beets, lettuces, kales, mustards, eggplants, and on and on.  It should probably be embarrasing how exciting planting seeds can be.  I´m glowing like a pregnant momma.

Mike Wagner and I have created around 850 soil blocks and germinated everything from Eggplant to Chia, from tTomato to Cosmo Flowers, from White Sage toRomaine lettuce. In the past we have grown food, but have documented poorly our results. It is not that we are not learning from our mistakes, but we are not capitalizing on them as much as we could…but now we are entering a new phase of understanding and documentation. I predict this season will be very fruitful. With a mix of paradigms ranging from teachers all over the world we are combing a very interesting set of practices and implementing them here.

- Soil blocks
- Soil Food Web Compost and Compost Tea
- Native Plant Propagation
- Mulching and ground cover crops
- Worm farming
- Companion planting
- Native ecology protection
- The use of technology and music as an integral part of the ecology and of education for youth

Also, 

drunkenfranksinatramariachichoirs

singfelizcumpleanos

asclowningwhiteboysenrage

MTVenrapturedpueblogangs,

Abeautifulgirlnamed’beautifulgirl’

sellsrawmilk,

Anda90srave 

oom-sah 

wafting from the landlocked clubs of San Miguel

Crys out for a whirledstep intervention

inalanguageolderthanspanish
I’m interested in documenting our progress over the coming months to see where we can arrive and what we learn on the way. I think these journals will develop their own form so for those reading. buckle your seat belt?

This is gonna be fun ;)

Yey! This band is really involved here at septima studios, recording their album as well as taking part (A HUGE PART) in the learning exchanges and teaching the youth from the la cuadrilla.

Felicidades SCREAM ROCK

From seedlings to servings

Such a awesome example of how to help the world right now.

Tripped out, beautiful, crazy art—check it out.

Mis Hijos Bastardos

Found this great link off of Paul Glovers facebook.
I want to write a synthesis of all the different info I have found but for now just a link

Trade School