DRAWDOWN SYMPOSIUM

Soul Circle

Steven Lewis (Rama) who lives on the farm has done two of these and they are joyful and beautiful.  He is planning another for Dec. 21st and I provide this bookmark here so  you will not miss it.

Ag Bank Mergers Exacerbate the New Farm Crisis

Not only is Big Ag a very sick system of growing food for the planet, it is very bad for farmers as well.  While access to operating loans keeps them in business doing the same old bad practises and thus it is hard to sympathize, it nonetheless keeps them out of bankruptcy.  If there are no farmer -- only slave labor -- there will be no farms or farmers or rural culture to convert to best practice. They need loans despite our differences and then they need access to organic and soil building technology to transition to sustainable farming. This article from Food & Power

Last year, the Nebraska Rural Response Hotline, which connects farmers and ranchers with legal, financial, and mental health services, set four monthly records for the number of new callers in financial distress. This spike reflects the broader hardship facing rural Americans in the midst of what some are calling the new farm crisis. 

The crisis has many causes, including falling commodity prices and the rising cost of farm inputs like seed and fertilizer. But another contributing factor that is already making the consequences of these deteriorating fundamentals far more severe is the massive consolidation of ag lenders that has occurred since the last farm crisis in the 1980s. 

Grain and dairy farmers, in particular, depend on annual operating loans, which can be more than $1 million dollars, to pay for their upfront costs. But according to Joe Schroeder, an advocate with Farm Aid who takes calls from farmers in crisis, “it’s getting tighter and tighter across the board for people depending on operating loans,” to the point where accessing credit “becomes an annual nightmare.” 

Farmers are finding it harder to get new loans due to their declining income and mounting debt. But another cause is the displacement of local agriculture banks by large distant lenders with which farmers have no personal relationships. 

“So many banks have consolidated that the local bank is not locally owned, it’s just a branch of another bank,” says Vern Jantzen, Vice President of the Nebraska Farmers Union. “In the old days there was a relationship there, the banker knew how this family was operating and he could figure out if this is a good risk or not, but all of that is gone.”  Posted by Claire Kelloway in Commodities, Grains, Mergers & Acquisitions, Newsletter

http://www.foodandpower.net/2018/08/16/ag-bank-mergers-exacerbate-the-new-farm-crisis/

Morality of Eating Meat

I am glad somebody raised this issue.  I have long held that factory farms are the problem and that keeping animals on a family or village farm that are integrated members of the farm that give and recieve care and value are morally justified especially it they are eaten in moderation, (not greedy, selfish and childish.)  This article challenges even this position.

    “The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? Why should the law refuse its protection to any sensitive being? … The time will come when humanity will extend its mantle over everything which breathes … ” Jeremy Bentham, father of the theory of utilitarianism

     Making factory farming more humane misses the point of immorality and injustice of the use of animals as resources. Indeed, there are those philosophers who believed that animals do not have moral status equal to humans. Human exceptionalism
     Human exceptionalism is based on the premise that humans have superior abilities compared to other animals. For example, humans can have social relationships, in particular family relationships; they also have the ability to use language; they can reason and feel pain.           French philosopher Rene Descartes

     More astute observations and scientific studies, however, have shown that animals do experience pain analogous to humans and have feelings. For example, elephants have complex emotional lives, including grieving for loved ones, and complex social and family relationships.
     Animals can reason, communicate with one another, possibly use language in some cases and behave morally.
     Thus, excluding animals from moral consideration and eating animals cannot be justified because they lack these characteristics.

https://www.alternet.org/heres-what-philosophers-have-say-about-eating-meat?src=newsletter1095151

Oasis' place in a world in crisis

If Oasis can be a sanctuary that speaks to connecting visitors to the earth it would be of value beyond ourselves in a world alienated from the very dirt beneath our feet and sky above our heads and the imperative to change our relationship to it.. If we agree that part of our purpose here is to restore a sense of natural wonder  by "looking and seeing" and hearing what the land would say if it could speak and then helping it grow to its best sense of place, then we have found one part of our common cause in our relationship to this very land and our community.  Our activism can flow from this center.

PanGaia creations come out of the necessity and urgency for the protection of the Earth.  We share out of a fierce need, and out of an ‘inner call’ to give voice to what the Earth would say if it could speak in human language.

We have been listening and creating a unique sound in New Age music —primal, multilingual, multi-sensory— a sound that can help people connect to their original Nature blueprint and integrate some of their shadow parts such as grief... or awe. 

Our live performance ceremony blends world music, ancient instruments, poetry and collective ritual. PanGaia believes in bringing their medicine to the places and people where it is most needed, where a re-connection between humans and the land needs to be established, such as we did in “Offerings to the Russian River”.

click to listen

https://www.pangaiamusic.com/

Juice is like soda, without the bubbles

I saw a comment in some of Lydia's Natural Foods literature about how commercial juices are actually made and am both aghast and validated -- it is just mostly an unhealthy sugar drink when you look behind the processing curtain.



https://www.treehugger.com/green-food/juice-soda-without-bubbles.html

Whole earth catalog... I was there and indeed I was inspired

Although I did not see it until 1972, together with my communards I was inspired by the prospect of building a new world that was simple and functional, do it yourself and not destructive. I was a maker and this catalog was full of cool, simple ideas and gadgets.  At the deepest level we were dropping out of a system that seemed founded on abuse of spirituality of nature of people and that disregarded issues of social justice and wallowed in a crass plastic culture of consumption, war, violence and domination.

The book itself was in fact just a catalog of stuff and commentary. It was not deep nor academic but rather was a signpost at a time of  historic cultural shift that went mainstream with the counterculture and has left an indelible mark on consciousness in the West.

https://www.alternet.org/thing-makers-tool-freaks-and-prototypers-how-whole-earth-catalogs-optimistic-message-reinvented

Colluding Pork Packers Accused of Pigging Out On Fixed Prices

This is not a food that I have eaten for over 45 years so I have not skin in the game.  So why is  it bad to collude to produce less pork so the price goes up?  Well I am just using this to show who has the power.  The pig farmer certainly is powerless faced with a relationship with a monolithic meat packing and distribution cartel.  In this case the packers got extra profits from not only higher prices to restaurant and markets but pig farmers lost there living as well in lower production and loss of outlets for their hogs, such life for a contract slave laborers that raise hogs and chickens as well.

Enough said -- as we well know meat packers are criminals so this should surprise nobody.






http://www.foodandpower.net/2018/07/19/colluding-pork-packers-accused-of-pigging-out-on-fixed-prices/#bookmark/0/

Agastache foeniculum Anise Hyssop | Prairie Moon Nursery

Agastache foeniculum Anise Hyssop | Prairie Moon Nursery:



"Anise Hyssop has very showy flowers, fragrant foliage and seems to be of little interest to deer. It self-seeds readily and often blooms the first year. New seedlings are hardy and can be transplanted easily. It's a bee, hummingbird, and butterfly magnet and makes an excellent addition to herb gardens, borders, perennial gardens, and prairies. When the leaves of the Anise Hyssop are crushed they smell like licorice and have been used to make tea and cold remedies.  Other common names in use: Lavender Hyssop or Blue Giant Hyssop" It is not particularly frost sensitive but may have some die back.  It is looks ratty you can cut them back strongly and they will bust out in the spring again.

difficult to germinate, cold stratify 30 days, surface sow and bottom water

'via Blog this'

Children's Garden Ideas

Below was first offered and published on our facebook

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As a summer project at Oasis Community Farm we will be working on creating a sensory garden and learning space for school groups and a space where we can host weekend workshops geared towards kids and families.

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Below are random images to inspire ideas for future projects in and about the garden.

Here is a themed sculpture garden piece that connects the tactile to the dinner table a connection that many people in the modern world do not make

As  you know rubber tires are forever so they may as well be forever beautiful and something to play on and plant stuff in.

This is an example of a project that Arlo and Marina and have been thinking about for some time.  It is simply done by using cutting from our willow bog and then irrigating them until they sprout.  Planted in late winter they will look like this by April and May.



One of my favorites.  We did fairy houses in the back yard of our old Jungle Vibes store in Petaluma.



A gate is an symbolic entry to place -- a child size gate would be perfect.



Color is important and participation can create a lasting sense of value, enhancing learning.  A picket fence like this is infinitely expandable and prettier than a name plate.



This one seems quite ambitious but it reminds me of a play garden built around a water feature at the Hopland Solar Living Institute grounds.  Plans for water recycling and serene water features are already under way at Oasis.  Perhaps in the future we can extend the that infrastructure to the children's area.