Easter at Full Bloom

My wife Eden loves Easter.  I’ve never been a huge fan.  It conjures up to mind pastel colors, bad candy, and disturbing Easter bunnies trying to ride on the coat tails of Santa but failing miserably.   Coupled with a lot of commercialization and a general lack of “spiritedness”  or reverence for the sacred.   After sweet little Easter egg hunt on Sunday things are shifting around a bit in my world.  First off the egg dying was a great excuse to get together and make some fun art together.  We used these natural dyes that our friend Leah makes (check her out at http://bit.ly/1mvuq7T ) and made all sorts of truly gorgeous eggs. Disentangling all my less than favorable notions of Easter I found myself engaged in a process of turning this blank, yet profoundly shaped object, a chicken egg, into a piece of art.

Easter Morning after we had another epic waffle and whip cream community brunch, Eden and I went into the community garden and started to delicately and somewhat mischievously place these egg shaped art pieces in the shade of rocks, on top of sprinkler heads and in the coil of the garden hose.   Then the kids were unleashed and that was the biggest joy: to see them totally transfixed, carrying their baskets and joyously grabbing eggs from here and there.  In that moment I realized how simple and a profound of a ceremony we had created.  I didn’t think of it as such initially, but that’s truly what it is.  Its a sequence of events, of movements that bring the community of humans in closer contact with the mystery and the beauty of this life.   The realization also hit me that ceremonies can be fun and a chance to bring more art and a magic into our lives.

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Our community member Sky with her basket of eggs

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Kids from the neighborhood on the hunt in the community garden

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Easter is very important to me, it’s a second chance.

Gardening as a Spiritual Practice

Every spring I can’t wait to get my hands in the dirt, preparing the garden beds for another season of growth: the rich array of colorful flowers, the crisp sugar snap peas, the deep greens of kale and chard.  I can see them all now in my minds eye even though the garden is mostly bare except for the few perenial herbs and flowers.   Now in my 7th year of heading up the community garden I see how every year is so unique and yet holds so many constants.

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The Full Bloom Community Greenhouse

The garden reflects my own growth; this year I am particularly noticing a greater sense of thoroughness and patience.  For instance I’m really making sure that every little plant start in the greenhouse has just the right amount of water and I’m looking closely at their growth every day, noticing any sign to insect damage or nutrient deficiency.  The thing about gardening is that you’re working with living breathing life forms and ultimately its way beyond your control.  Ultimately its a relationship, a relationship that deepens over time endlessly.  I will always be learning more about the plants, the soil, the elements that compose this magical nexus of relationship called “garden”.

When I first began gardening and farming here I was mostly focused on how to grow food for the sake of offsetting my environmental impact and supporting the sustainable/ecological agriculture movement.  Recently I’ve sunken into a richer experience of being in the garden that includes more intangibilities like developing a greater sense of curiosity, feeling a deeper sense of place, and stepping for fully into the unfathomable diversity and beauty of life.   Gardening has become one of my strongest spiritual practices for it offers an opportunity to discover the truth of my connection to life, to dispel a sense of separation and for my egoic tendencies of control and manipulation to be reflected and exposed as not serving me or the garden.   To me “spiritual practice” is the art of becoming more fully present to life and a garden is just one big invitation to do just that.   Thanks for reading and please share your own reflections and thoughts on the matter.   Till next time…….Ryan

 

Pruning the Orchard

Last week an amazing veteran Orchardist came to Full Bloom to share his pithy wisdom and love for the art of Fruit Tree care.  His name is Terry Helfrich and he’s been taking care of fruit orchards in the Rogue Valley for several decades now.   It was a blast to see him trim up some of our trees without any hesitation, leaving them in a shape that will be super easy to maintain in the years to come  His approach really simplified things for me around pruning as I’ve been exposed to several different styles and they have left me a bit confused and tentative as I attempt to prune our now 60 tree orchard.   Thank God for good teachers!

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That’s Terry in the Red, droppin’ the pruning science

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What I really appreciated about Terry was his ability to empower each of us to take to our own trees and just go for it, giving us encouragement to not get caught by thinking there is an absolute right way to prune.  There are basic principles, then its just a matter of seeing being in relationship with the trees over years and noticing the impact of what you’ve cut and haven’t cut.

Its really difficult to convey his style in a blog post, especially since I’m relatively new to the vocabulary and would have to sketch out some nifty diagrams, so I’ll just have to let you know ahead of time the next time he comes out in case you want the direct transmission.

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.”  Martin Luther

The Art of Simplicity

As I sit in meditation in the morning I look out my window which captures a panorama of the heart of the community: the central garden, the community building, the chicken coops, the bathhouse and a cascade of to do’s and anxieties often floods me.  There’s just so much to do and think about!  I close my eyes and come back to just this moment: my breath, the sound of a vehicle, the mild ache in my back and I can rest in the simplicity of what’s just actually happening right here and now.  I’ve come to realizing that I need to rest in that simplicity otherwise I go crazy with the never ending lists of projects that come with being land steward, a husband, a human being. I originally thought that moving out to the country and starting an intentional community would be a simple life, living in harmony with natural cycles and deep in a supportive web of like minded companions.  I can now see that to truly experience simplicity requires a deliberate cultivation of perception    It doesn’t just come about with circumstances (human beings have the magical powers to turn any situation into a circus of craziness).  It requires the deliberate cultivation of perception, the refinement of how I choose to perceive myself, others and the things of the world.  Becoming mindful of the story I am telling myself and choosing to tell a story that is coherent, inspiring and not too complex (e.g. simple). For example:  I could sit here on this beautiful morning on the farm and let my mind go wild painting a chaotic picture of all the things I “should do” or that could go wrong and that go out the door putting out fires and generally running around like a chicken with its head cut off.  Or I could choose to take some time to really get in touch with the elements of my life that are truly most important to me, that I can be pretty sure will make fill my heart with the good stuff (satisfaction, joy, connection, pride) then proceed to craft a day or week that reflects that orientation. My sincere wish for Full Bloom is that it becomes ever more supportive for individuals to stay connected with the peace and inspiration that comes from living as an artist, an intentional story teller. “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” ― Joan DidionThe White Album

The Greenhouse Advantage

At Full Bloom we a have a pretty extreme climate leading to a relatively short growing season.  We’ve been know to have a frost as late as Early June and as early as early October leading barely a 4 month frost free growing window.  But that’s outside.  The Greenhouse changes everything; it gives us another two months on either side.   For several years now we’ve been able to get a major head start on our  tomatoes in the raised bed in the greenhouse planting them in April and still harvesting tomatoes in December.

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Every year I do dance with the greenhouse to get in our winter salad greens sown just after the hot weather crops like peppers, and eggplants begin to slow down in early October.  Its taken years to get that timing down ( and develop the nerve to pull that pepper plant that may have one or two peppers still to ripen) and this year I was very proud of myself for clearing the bed space and sewing tons of arugula and salad mix for our enjoyment during the winter (note: outdoor greens can end up getting pretty much killed during the winters here. Especially when it gets down to 6 degrees like it did this past December.)

Given the extreme productivity and season extension power of a greenhouse I’ve been pondering lately how we can add another to the land here and/or build a “field house” for the agricultural fields outside of the central area.  These can be put up for minimal cost and can really increase production and protect crops of frost damage.

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An example of a “field house”. A no frills green house that one can even drive a tractor through for cultivation.

Well that’s it for now.  Off to the greenhouse, cause its basically already spring down there and its time to prep the soil and start sowing some spinach and lettuce.

Till next time……Ryan

Who loves a garden loves a greenhouse too.”  William Cowper

Winter Camp has Begun….

The beginning of 2014 brought with it the arrival of an amazing crew of devout forest tenders, naturalists, and bold experimenters in “social forestry”:  Winter Camp.   What exactly is Winter Camp?  Its collective of 10 mixed gender individuals committed to learning together what it means to truly care for the forests of this Bioregion.  Using whatever skills and practices they have at their disposal (Permaculture, Regenerative forestry practices, primitive skills, non-violent communication/process work) the winter campers are discovering and rediscovering practices that bring human beings into a more intimate, regenerative and sustainable relationship with the forest ecosystem.  And by all accounts they are having a fun time doing it!

Yesterday most of the Full Bloom residents participated in a work day at their site, where we helped gather and burn the lopped branches from several days of  thinning the forest (Historically the native people performed periodic understory controlled burns to keep the larger trees healthy, reducing competition and cycling in nutrients) and peeled usable poles that came from the forest thinning.

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Burning Cedar branches and returning nutrients to the forest soil, while providing the most pleasant of aromas…..
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Burn Pile
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Pole Pealing Party. These poles can be used as posts and rafters for small cabins on the land.

After a morning of working together on the poles and the burn piles we gathered at their camp headquarters for a delicious meal then the group as a whole began a ceremony initiating the restoration of an Oak woodland that had been taken over by conifer species (cedars and firs).   Rather than going right at it with a chainsaw we started with song and hand tools, which felt good and not so much like work.

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The beginning of our ceremony: we are all gathered around an old oak tree that is barely perceptible amid the crowd of conifer trees.

I feel deeply appreciative for the vision of these young folks to have put together such an undertaking that provides untold benefits to the land and to the residents here at Full Bloom.  Yay Winter Camp!!

The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.
John Muir

If you tell a joke in the forest, but nobody laughs, was it a joke?
Steven Wright

The Great Potato Harvest……

There’s something undeniably satisfying about getting on your hands and knees and digging in the earth in search of large tubers that will later become rosemary home fries, creamy mashed potatoes, and other comforting fall and winter foods.  Over the weekend we harvested the Full Bloom potato crop which amounted to over 800lbs of potatoes and it didn’t really feel like work, it felt like a treasure hunt in the dirt.

 

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Several Full Bloomers on the hunt for taters.

 

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Mica (a current resident) and myself showing off some of the harvest

As Fall transitions to winter it becomes essential to store properly all the abundance from the growing season so that it can be consumed through the winter and on into the spring.  With proper storage there can be a continued sense of connection to the land as the prime source of one’s life rather than the supermarket.   That’s not to say there isn’t still a lot of food being brought to Full Bloom from off-site, it’s to emphasize the importance of cultivating a deep sense of place.  As we open this place to more and more visitors in the years to come, I hope that sense of place can be enjoyed by all who come.

“It is easy to think of potatoes, and fortunately for men who have not much money it is easy to think of them with a certain safety. Potatoes are one of the last things to disappear, in times of war, which is probably why they should not be forgotten in times of peace.” 
― M.F.K. FisherHow to Cook a Wolf

Our First Permaculture Design Course at Full Bloom

We recently facilitated a permaculture design course on the land through the Siskiyou Permaculture Insititute (http://siskiyoupermaculture.com/).  Some of you may not have heard of the term so let’s look at wikipedia’s definition:

Permaculture design emphasizes patterns of landscape, function, and species assemblies. It determines where these elements should be placed so they can provide maximum benefit to the local environment. The central concept of permaculture is maximizing useful connections between components and synergy of the final design. The focus of permaculture, therefore, is not on each separate element, but rather on the relationships created among elements by the way they are placed together; the whole becoming greater than the sum of its parts. Permaculture design therefore seeks to minimize waste, human labor, and energy input by building systems with maximal benefits between design elements to achieve a high level of synergy.

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Tom Ward on a site walk at Full Bloom with design course students.

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Class time in the Full Bloom farmhouse with co-teacher Karen and Tom Ward on the Right

The course was geared for experienced permaculturalists and focused primarily on doing design work for Full Bloom (rather than going over general permaculture principles).  It was taught primarily by Tom Ward who has been designing farms and properties in Southern Oregon for several decades now and is an absolute treasure trove of information and lore of the area.

It was a joy to participate in the course and take in so many differing perspectives of the land here, as well as to recieve some really creative design possibilities such as changing the way people drive onto the land so that we don’t have a road through the central area.  It was also very humbling to recognize how little I really know about all the natural systems that surround me here (geological, hydrological, wind, etc.).

I am excited to continue to hold courses so that we all can be come more literate about how we as humans affect our local environment, and how we can make that affect a positive and regenerative one.

“From where we stand the rain seems random. If we could stand somewhere else, we would see the order in it.”
― Tony HillermanCoyote Waits