The Shifting Baseline, Food Myth Busting, and Food Forests

I just thought I would share some interesting information on the Shifting Baseline Theory, Food Forests, and Food Myth Busting. I came across these individual videos today while doing some research and some dots were connected in my brain. Each of these videos are short, less than 10 minutes, and together they are very powerful and absolutely inspirational (at least to me). I will give a brief explanation of each video with links and then give some extra credit to those that produced them. Continue reading

Practicing Biodynamics: Pruning in January

Permaculture Observation Journal Entry #1, January 7th, : Hayden and Ernest “Practicing Biodynamics: Pruning in January”

Today Hayden and I (Ernest) practiced pruning in the orchard. According to the North American Biodynamic Sowing and Planting Calendar “Dec. 26th to Jan 9th and Jan 23rd to Feb 5th is the Northern Transplanting Time. The Transplanting time is a good time for pruning fruit trees, vines, and hedges, with Fruit and Flower times being the preferred times for this work.”  Today, Monday the 7th until 2 pm central, was a flower time and a good time to be out in the orchard pruning. We are wanting to get ready for the January Orcharding Permablitz which will be during the next Northern Transplanting Time, on January 24th and perhaps the first half of the 25th if anyone is interested.

But for now, here is what we learned on our orcharding adventure today. Continue reading

January 24th Orchard Pruning Permablitz

This January the 24th, the Center for Sustainable Community will be hosting its monthly permablitz. We will be pruning and collecting scions in our community’s three-acre orchard. We will begin by reviewing some of the main principals of orcharding at 9 a.m., then begin pruning trees throughout the orchard. We will also demonstrate how to harvest scions and perform various grafting techniques. We will, of course, allow anyone who desires to harvest scions to take them back to their own communities for propagation. Continue reading

What to do with Apples from the Backyard Orchard

We are new members of the Center for Sustainable Community, but we felt right at home helping out this fall with the apple preserving, harvesting, and orchard maintenance.

This post is a general how to preserve apples article that demonstrates how C.S.C. worked together to preserve apples this year. We have a 3-ish acre orchard (mostly apples) that is quite mature and in need of some tender loving care. We have many apple trees that could be replaced and we believe the orchard is in need of greater tree diversity as well. But it is still an amazing orchard to spend time in with friends or just by yourself. This year C.S.C. built two chicken coops and experimented with raising chickens in the orchard. We learned a lot of things and are eagerly anticipating next year while enjoying the meat from our harvest throughout the winter. (For more about the chickens, visit the Midwest Permaculture Blog post.) Continue reading