Hi there, everyone! Thanks for tuning in. This is the first of a flow of updates and stories from the S.H.I.R.E. Pilot Project down here in Manor, Texas at the Hundred Acre Wood. I'm excited to share with you what we have been up to; there's so much to say, I don't know where to start. In lieu of boring you with endless descriptions and chronologies, I think each time I'll just pick one "theme" to focus on. So here we go!
A brief description of the space, so you can construct a picture in your head: The land is rectangular in shape and is a mixture of native grass pastures, about 40 acres of agricultural pasture, and a brushy forest of cactus, mesquite, and scrub oaks. Wandering around the land for just 15 minutes brings enthusiastic brainstorming about the potential of the space and what can be done with it. Near the north end of the property there are various buildings: a two bedroom house, barns and sheds, and a beloved old green shack, whose paint is flaking slowly off to reveal the weathered wood beneath.
So far in 2010, the overarching theme has been growth! The year has started off on a productive note for us. We kicked off the year with our New Year's Solutions volunteer day on January 9th. Around 20 volunteers came out for the day and participated in various activities.
These included building water filtration islands out of used plastic bottles, mesh fencing and water plants, constructing erosion control terraces around the back pond, building bird and bat houses with reclaimed building materials, starting seedling flats for the kitchen garden and even picking rocks out of a field in exchange for hot cider and freshly baked pastries! It was a great day; very brisk and sunny with a high of 35. We have kept the ball rolling in the weeks since and whenever the weather is nice we are outside working on land improvements and projects. When the weather is more rainy and cold, we stay under the eaves and do research and planning for future projects and events.
On top of all this internal activity, we have had some lovely and interesting guests come to stay and are expecting three long-terms visitors to arrive by the end of January. It is fun to imagine all the progress that will be made in February with the help of all these eager extra hands.
As Sandor briefly mentioned in his article about the Hundred Acre Wood, we have three goats, two pygmy does and a Nigerian Dwarf buck. January is also a month of growth for them; I am happy to announce that both of our does are pregnant! We will have 2-5 brand new baby goats bouncing around sometime soon! The kids will be a pygmy/nigerian dwarf mix. We are raising all our goats for meat and milk; I am excited to soon be adding cheese-making to my repertoire!
I'll be sure to keep you updated as kids are born and veggies start producing! We are beginning out spring workshop series in early March, so keep checking the calendar to see when you can come out and learn how to build a wind generator or can that bumper crop of green beans and okra.
In the past year The New SHIRE Institute began a relationship with a Texan friend of sustainability, resulting in our first demonstration site. We have put together a work trade lease with the owner of a property called The Hundred Acre Wood. The owner of the Hundred Acre Woods intended for the land to serve as an event-space, focusing on sustainable practices. We became involved with the project as sustainability consultants and green builders, partnering with the landowner to improve the property, "greening" the infrastructure. We will help turn the Hundred Acre Woods into a sustainability demonstration site, holding workshops to showcase various green building practices and appropriate technologies. This one hundred acre property is less than thirty minutes from Austin, TX, a city renowned for a vibrant music scene and progressive populace.
Currently, the Hundred Acre Wood is being managed by four residents. They work around the property, doing work trade to pay for the lease. Lease credit projects are approved by the land owner in bi-weekly meetings. The work being done on the land ranges from beautification, pond construction and maintenance, small livestock management and grey-water system development.
Austin has been in a drought the past few summers. This makes water issues a big portion of what The New Shire Institute is doing on the property. Before we arrived the property featured two large ponds to hold water and minimize runoff. These work as a passive rainwater catchment system (as well as a great way to wash the dogs when they get muddy!) We have been improving the ponds by fostering the development of a functioning ecosystem within them, planting water plants from various local aquatic environments.
In addition to the human residents of the Hundred Acre Woods, three dogs co-inhabit the land, performing various functions around the property. One of these is Brutus, a Great Pyrenees, acquired to keep the coyotes off the land. The other two dogs- Romo and Star- are vocal backup when the coyotes decide to try to come on to the property. The dogs guard the three pygmy goats and seven laying chickens from many wild animals.
Eventually all the property will be used for farming but there is not enough time and labor to manage all one hundred acres. In the mean time about thirty acres are leased to a neighbor for pasture hay to keep the land categorized as being "agricultural". Additionally, the residents planted a small garden to minimize the amount of food purchased off-site. The residents planted a future CSA field with rye grass and beans in preparation for the other crops to be planted as the weather warms.
A one acre field was planted with rapeseed and rye-grass. The rapeseed is a test plot for oil production to make bio-diesel. This trial run of bio-diesel production, from seed-to-tank, represents the sort of experiments The New SHIRE Institute will do more of as resources become available. As we are able to put more land in production (and as we learn the ins and outs of bio-diesel production,) we hope to run a bio-diesel co-op on the property. Ideally, this bio-diesel will be a mixture of waste vegetable oil and fresh pressed rapeseed. The bio-diesel brewing equipment we will be using was acquired from Dieselgreen in Austin.
As additional labor, money and equipment become available, we will be able to increase the scope of our projects at The Hundred Acre Wood. With such a large property it takes a lot of time to do anything. Just moving stuff from one place to another can take a while: it took four weeks to burn half the brush excavated from one of the ponds. Though intimidating in scale, this pilot project will allow us to test ideas as we create a sustainable living space. Our hope is to get more projects going by exhibiting how we can make this property a sustainable habitat incorporating renewable education. By creating one SHIRE at a time we hope to create a future into which we can be proud to bring our children.
Darkness recedes from my mind and the fields at about the same hour.
Heavy boots wet from early morning dew, drag along worn dirt paths. Legs hang off the bed of a Ford 350 4 by 4. The feet barely skim the ground, feeling every pebble, puddle and bump, a gentle massage for tired soles. Cracked hands hold onto the truck, fingers calloused and strong.
The sky above is nothing but clouds, blue skies haven’t been seen in 14 days in the month of June. We are wet. Everything is wet. The sky is still above us and the soil is still underneath.
Harvest. Urgency palpable. Truck comes to a stop. Jump off. An organized chaos, a dance executed with precision. Hustle to the fields, to the beds, were the firework colors explode, the rubber bands snapping the only rhythm besides a breath in and a breath out.
The earth brings forth sustenance, our labor coaxing it to our vision. Ruby red radishes, pearl white turnips, deep maroon sexy velvet beets, rainbow chard, a forest at dusk dark green spinach. Soil rich and wet from the rainfall, as inviting and sweet as chocolate mousse. The dance has us bent over, our heads hanging near chests like ragdolls, legs straight, hands constantly moving, pulling from the earth the harvest.
From the hustle and chaos I catch a glance of her at work. She sees me looking and her eyes catch mine, and an explosion rocks my heart and it takes a moment before it remembers to beat again. Full of desire, dreams, passions, love and lust forever entwined; my eyes widen. She looks away.
The whirlwinds blow and bring me back to the task at hand. Boxes are packed and rushed to the truck, rushed to be washed where their colors explode all the brighter, and then rushed off to market… We feed people. Sometimes we bring smiles.
Winds blow across the fields and I stand to feel their touch. I close my eyes; a smile shines on my eyelids. My arms flung wide pressing my body back against the wind, an embrace that has traveled far to meet me. These moments when we are forced to pick ourselves up from being bent over and hunched, on our knees and crawling, backs bent and carrying, you have to pick your head up and feel. Because the wind is strong and free, it is bigger than me, it blows from the North and has traveled since forever.
Every pore is filled by the knowledge that I am not hurting anyone, or at least I am trying not to. I am doing my best to not be destruction. I am, but not here. I open my eyes, the wind turns to breeze, the breeze turns to stillness, and a chorus of killdeer, mocking birds and chickadees fill the air.
Stillness lasts as long as a breath. The harvest and its urgency begin again. I hang my head down and look back to the earth. My eyes pause on my worn hands which say it all: calloused and strong, dirt under my fingernails and ingrained into my skin, but stronger than they were when the earth first began to thaw. I am stronger. My spirit fills my muscles.
The room was awkward from the beginning: it was scantly adorned and made a weak attempt at appearing filled. On walls, and on a large and cheap folding table were displays and pamphlets announcing the various projects of Environment California, the project which this PIRG was working for until just before that weekend.
“We switched campaigns on Friday,” I was informed nonchalantly. I had been perhaps a bit too exuberant to list off the various campaigns that Environment California had worked on.
“I have spent the past two days looking into the campaign of Environment California,” I had mentioned.
“So I would like to take a moment to inform you about our new campaign that we are working with called Progressive Futures,” my interviewer said and handed me some brochures of men in hardhats, a child being seen by a doctor, and a woman embracing a soldier who had implicitly just returned from war.
Before I could look at them the woman who was interviewing me began reading, off of her clipboard, for about five minutes. I listened intently. Mission statements, however, have always struck me as vague and perhaps as a result I cannot remember in detail what she said. But I was firm about how it made me feel at the time. And so when she finished and asked, “Does this sound like a campaign you could work for?” my reply was immediate and direct.
“I don’t know. I don’t know enough about the details of what this program is advocating for.” I referred to the essay I had been asked to write upon entering the office. The topic question was what I thought was the most pressing issue facing human society today. She hadn’t bothered to read it before the interview began, only because she began the interview as soon as I had said I finished my application.
I continued with my response. “What I wrote about was that it is not just what we are consuming that is at the core of our current environmental crisis. It is the degree to which we consume, the how of what we are consuming is what I think is at the core of the issue. And so I’m asked can I support this campaign and work for it? My answer is that I like the ideas you are talking about but I wonder what the plan is for implementing them.”
“Well, don’t you think that we should get the idea out there first, have the legislation passed, and worry about the how of things later?”
I was already deep in a hole and refrained from comment on the difficulties California was having with exactly that concept in its Proposition program. I simply reminded her that was not at the core of the issue. I tried to make an analogy.
“It’s like when you are building a house. The plan can be grand and beautiful, but if when you begin to construct it, you do not pay attention to the foundation, one will find that there is no way for the house to come together.”
It had been a few months since I had been employed and so I was getting desperate for a job. Hunting on Craigslist as a Californian is for some a way of life. I found that the non-profit sector listings in the San Francisco Bay Area sounded the most lucrative financially and did not require any long-term contract. It sounded appealing. Furthermore, I justified, this is work that I can feel good about. Raising money for environmental and social justice, even on the grunt level of canvassing, certainly would be more rewarding than pumping gas at an Exxon. And if it was a topic that was dear to my interests I could speak with passion and educate people and be successful at advocating for such causes, so I thought. I could see no reason why these places would not want to hire me as an advocate for their cause.
The dialogue with my interviewer left me fumbling for words, the rest of the interview too inconsequential to commit to long-term memory, and I left feeling somewhat shocked, mouthing words of the ongoing conversation in my head as I took the BART back to my friend’s house. I had come in and had my enthusiasm to display my knowledge about their campaign brushed aside and replaced with a piecemeal mission statement that I was then asked to advocate for with the same passion.
Upon departing from the interview I informed the woman who had interviewed me that I would read up on their new campaign and call back with any questions I might have the following day.
I sat at my friend’s apartment that evening and began reading the pamphlets I had been given. Progressive Future’s subtitle is “Promoting progressive values through grassroots action.” Progressive values? I thought this was an environmental campaign. What did they mean? My jaw dropped as I continued on.
I was appalled to find this simple brochure riddled with divisive, aggressive, and generally problematic rhetoric. One phrase in particular caught my attention:
“ From oil companies to… right wing ideologues…. The guardians of the status quo will not move aside without a fight.”
I Googled the campaigns’ web page and looked at their blog. The title of that day’s blog was “Worst Person In The World” and singled out a Republican politician. It is understood that there are many in this nation who are frustrated after the last administration. But how do we best move forward as a country, as an entire Nation?
One of the main lenses through which we are beginning to study and understand the current environmental crisis is the science of Ecology. Ecology is a science of holism that speaks of complete systems and the integral part that each and every component plays in maintaining its health in dynamic equilibrium. It will be impossible to create a responsible approach to such a system without integrating such a values into our own society; how can we expect to embrace a holistic system when we continue to divide and separate ourselves? Sure, there is corruption, and there are corporate interests, but if we are going to achieve a “Green Economic Recovery” this cannot successfully come to fruition by putting our ideological dukes up in opposition to the groups of people who we share this country with. Ecology knows no borders.
To use a bit of anecdote, I can recount many experiences with the USFS and my studies of Anthropology and Environmental Studies in university, where I found that notions of land stewardship are not by any means isolated to those who are of a socially “liberal” ilk. Many of those who are of a socially conservative leaning are people who make their living off of the land. Ranchers, farmers, and foresters; these people have a deep vested interest in the perpetuation of their lifestyle, one which many have been following for generations. There is corruption and corporate interest involved with such groups, indeed, but again this is not so much a matter of what we are doing but how we are doing it, in this case manifested in the form of scale and the disconnection such large scale projects create for those in the executive seat of such operations. But by publishing such rhetoric we are isolating those groups who represent the conservative constituency who are touching the land everyday. And if this is grassroots citizen advocacy, then it should really be about the citizens and their interests, not about combating “oil companies” and “right wing ideologues.” Green economic recovery, while inherently based in society and so therefore social, should not be entering into the debate of a socially liberal versus conservative society. Only unity will prevail in this circumstance.
The final irony came at my second NGO canvassing interview. I applied to interview at a children’s charity group called 'Children’s International'. I thought that here I might a get a more “pure” experience not tainted by the political gee-gaw of some of the environmental campaigns.
We sat in a room on low chairs: it reminded me of a preschool classroom. The director came out and introduced herself to the interviewees and then began to introduce the job.
“This is the toughest job you’ll have,” she began. Later she continued, “This job is all about bull-$%itting people. Bull$%itting them into thinking that you are providing them with a service that they feel they need. I have found that I love bull$%itting people, and that is why I have done this work for so long.”
I am one with a penchant for directness and so I found myself failing miserably in my interview where I was asked to display my skills in the realm of Cutco style social justice grassroots canvassing.
Whether I put out the energy that I didn’t want it or I wasn’t qualified, needless to say I received no return phone calls the following days. I could not see myself working for such divisive political campaigns. Their structure and marketing strategies ironically and shockingly reminded me of the very processes of corporate culture and political propagandizing that they were, in theory, created to counter-balance. On the tally sheet of checks and balances I see nothing progressive to their vision of the future. In the face of the environment, there is no enemy but us. And that is only because we choose to fight, and separate, rather than find a holistic approach that truly embraces the niche that each American fills in this vibrant and diverse country. As has been noted many times before, that, potentially, is the source of our greatest strength.
From withinreachmovie.com, They are Biking around the USA, visiting sustainable communities and giving talks about what they are doing. Here is one of there first blogs on the road. For earlier blogs check out there web site.
WITHIN REACH STARTS THE JOURNEY!
We have officially left Laguna Farm, Sebastopol, CA to get down to the Maker Faire in San Mateo, CA to show off our solar bike trailer. We had an incredible few months staying there and creating our first sustainable community. We not only were blown away by the quality of people that we have been sharing our lives with there, but the immense love we shared made the goodbyes difficult. We look forward to our return to Laguna Farm in a year and a big shindig of a party to celebrate the end of the completed bike journey.
We had to rent a pickup truck to get down to San Mateo by tonight, as we have been working so hard to get it finished that we don't have time to ride it down there in time for the weekend faire not to mention we haven't done a range test on it yet!
Getting the bike trailer built was a huge struggle. There were so many tiny obstacles to overcome;like getting the many many many holes drilled to secure the tent, getting the right amount of paint to paint it, getting the right screws to fasten all kinds of joints, hinges, panels, etc. The legs of the extended bed are very wobbly and though secure are in need of a redesign for peace of mind while asleep. The electrical system is in need of a complete redesign, and all new connectors. The solar panels are still in need of the correct components to get it working, the electric bike we have been borrowing needs connectors to allow it to hitch to the trailer.
Once the pressure of the deadline for the Maker Faire is off, we will have more time to attend to the gazillions of tiny details needed to ensure a safe and sound journey.
We will be heading to Oakland after the Maker Faire, then on to Davis, CA.
Check out our Map for specifics on our route, which will be updated on a regular basis from now on.
We met an amazing soul named Brother Scott in Wimberley, TX last week. He is part of a community called Solstice which is a non-residential group of homesteaders who share information, resources, and celebrations with each other. He is writing a book about the forming of their community which they documented. So he has a lot to offer the world about the realities of trying and SUCCEEDING to create sustainable community.
His list of the top 5 reasons that communities fail is important information to be aware of and to share so please spread this around:
1) Recreational things (i.e. substances) inhibiting the planning and execution of necessary thought, clear relations, sense of reality and the completion of essential tasks.
2) Unprepared and unrealistic dreamers who just want to play.
3) Conflict with the outside community (bring your best to the surrounding community)
4) Interpersonal conflicts within. Mostly either no chief at all or too many chiefs. No authority, no consensus, no leaders, anarchy, or battles of leaders with different visions. Or one really far out dude with a bunch of people going this is getting weird.
In the past year The New SHIRE Institute began a relationship with a Texan friend of sustainability, resulting in our first demonstration site. We have put together a work trade lease with the owner of a property called The Hundred Acre Wood. The owner of the Hundred Acre Woods intended for the land to serve as an event-space, focusing on sustainable practices. We became involved with the project as sustainability consultants and green builders, partnering with the landowner to improve the property, "greening" the infrastructure. We will help turn the Hundred Acre Woods into a sustainability demonstration site, holding workshops to showcase various green building practices and appropriate technologies. This one hundred acre property is less than thirty minutes from Austin, TX, a city renowned for a vibrant music scene and progressive populace. 
A one acre field was planted with rapeseed and rye-grass. The rapeseed is a test plot for oil production to make bio-diesel. This trial run of bio-diesel production, from seed-to-tank, represents the sort of experiments The New SHIRE Institute will do more of as resources become available. As we are able to put more land in production (and as we learn the ins and outs of bio-diesel production,) we hope to run a bio-diesel co-op on the property. Ideally, this bio-diesel will be a mixture of waste vegetable oil and fresh pressed rapeseed. The bio-diesel brewing equipment we will be using was acquired from Dieselgreen in Austin.
Darkness recedes from my mind and the fields at about the same hour.
Every pore is filled by the knowledge that I am not hurting anyone, or at least I am trying not to. I am doing my best to not be destruction. I am, but not here. I open my eyes, the wind turns to breeze, the breeze turns to stillness, and a chorus of killdeer, mocking birds and chickadees fill the air.
The room was awkward from the beginning: it was scantly adorned and made a weak attempt at appearing filled. On walls, and on a large and cheap folding table were displays and pamphlets announcing the various projects of Environment California, the project which this PIRG was working for until just before that weekend.
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