2005-03-07-2045Z


Had an interesting weekend... went to a Permaculture workshop hosted by Shu Chan and Dwayne Madsen at their 80-acre Living Foods Learning Center north of Columbus, NM. Permaculture is about using existing forces in such a way as to maximize the anti-entropic Life force in an area. These forces, referenced to as "sectors", include sun, wind, water (grade), and fire, as well as the more "artificial" sectors of people, dwellings, traffic, and things like HAARP and chemtrails. My homework, until the next workshop in a month or two, is to make a site survey of my own lot similar to this one (28 mb pdf file).

Shu Chan, for those unfamiliar with the name, was anointed as this generation's successor to Ann Wigmore by the legendary scientist and student of Rudolf Steiner, Harvey Lisle (and -- found this out later, 2005-03-16 -- by Dr. Wigmore herself!). Both she and Dwayne are working their butts off to make their Living Foods Center a place where people with cancer and other life-threatening diseases can go for three weeks hoping to avoid death, and come out with a newfound energy and zest for life. But they don't like wasting effort, either; one of the goals of permaculture is to help nature along, getting the most reward for the least expenditure of energy. For example, instead of the backbreaking work of digging or tilling the hard New Mexico soil, they use bags from hydro-gardens.com. Tumbleweed is planted to help break up the soil, and its large rootsystems draw nutrients from deep in the soil and deposit them on the surface when it tumbles away to rot in a new location.

Dwayne was mentioning the firehazards of grasslands, and I was going to mention the firestop properties of iceplants (Carpobrotus and Delosperma, for example) but didn't see a good point to break in until he got off the subject. So I'm putting it here where those who are interested will hopefully see it. Some Delosperma is growing outside of the Columbus office of Employment, and can be trimmed where it's encroaching on the sidewalk and the clippings used to start new plantings elsewhere. It's edible, as far as I know, and can easily be started by covering with a little dirt and watering daily for two weeks.

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