Meeting Minutes October 14, 2007

House Meeting Notes - Sunday October 14, 2007

J~ G: summer is gone; miss summer alot.
H: knee is feeling much better. support brace is working. Thanks his
brother, J. Feel comfortable materially.

M~ G: none.
H: stoked about his back. Slowly healing. Enjoyed having L over. House
is looking good.

B~ G: rainy weather. Boo! fell off my bicycle. doing alright though.
H: saw the Rockapellas. car will be functioning this week.

Chores (rotation, etc.):
* general: J needs to clean refrigerator. M requests help with back intensive chores.

J: Bathroom laundry & laundry room.
M: Kitchen
B: Commons, trash, & porch

Stewardships:
B: Note taking, Website
J: House accounting: Everyone is generally paid in full, but still lagging in accounting.
M: Needs warm weather for spackling & patching. expects warm weather Wednesday. Barn assessment / walk through Monday.

Last House Meeting Notes: approved.

Old Business & Reminders:
1) The paper bag in the bathroom is for paper only. It is for the
worm bin.
2) Lights reminder: please turn off lights when not in use.
3) Recycling: Has been tried in the past. No facility near-by. No one
has taken it in the past when it is full. Recycling center is very
far away. To be considered. Someone can take a recycling stewardship.

Ongoing Business:
1) Shelves on front porch. B will collect recycled wood for the shelves
for M to fit. Shelves are approved for installation.
2) Chin-up bar project: Ideas welcome.
3) Stencil art in bathroom: stencils tell a story. also paint the \
bathroom. (b & j potential deadline October 21rst.
[before j has court])

New Business:
1) Possible Shelves in Laundry Room to hold food grade
buckets / bulk food.
2) Concrete Mixer price estimates?
3) We need to fill the last room. J has been posting to craigslist. \
Talk with friends, etc.
4) We need to organize the tool shed!

Next House Meeting:
October 21, 2007 7:00p.m

Meeting Minutes October 8, 2007

House Meeting Notes - Monday October 8, 2007

J~ G: got arrested at the Columbus Day protest
H: feels that this action is important. Is grabbing the
alienation of society by the horns. Louis Vuitton was awesome
this week. Lots of fun.

M~ G: back pain.
H: Blactail is perfect for healing, spiritual physical, etc.
Feels J handled arrest with grace. New piece will be published.

B: G: My car needs a bleeder screw.
H: Mission Statement, meeting notes now online. Trailer is fixed, we can get hay, etc.

Chores (rotation, etc.):
J: Kitchen
M: Commons, trash, & porch
B: Bathroom laundry, and laundry room

Stewardships:
B: Note taking
J: House Accounting, everyone is current & paid. Still lagging on updating the accounting for food and member dues for September.
M: Patching up the House. We need a "runner" for painting, etc: Also paint brush, bucket of vinyl spackling putty ~1/2 gallon. Will give J list of needed items to repair barn structure.

Last House Meeting Notes: approved.

Old Business:
1) Aaron is not moving in for two weeks.
2) Don't run washer and dryer at the same time. Don't leave sink full of dirty dish water because it will stain the sink.

New Business:
1) Let's consider building a shelf or shelves in the front porch area. J will get needed materials to fix table for porch. M knows how to build a shelf with recycled materials.
2) Now that trailer is fixed, we can get hay for various projects. Hay is in the budget.
3) The paper bag in the bathroom is for paper only. It is for the worm bin.
4) M suggests a chin up bar. Possibly between two trees in the front yard.
5) Lights reminder: please turn off lights when not in use.
6) Stencil art in bathroom: stencils tell a story. also paint the bathroom. (b & j potential deadline October 21rst.[before j has court])
7) Recycling: Has been tried in the past. No facility near-by. No one has taken it in the past when it is full. Recycling center is very far away. To be considered. Someone can take a recycling stewardship.

Next House Meeting:
October 14, 2007 7:00p.m

Mission Statement

Mission Statement:

Our forest garden is a living ark supporting and supported by hundreds of useful and functional, native and non-native plants, whose ecological niches run the gamut of ecological succession and make up a healthy and diverse landscape mosaic within a larger permaculture context. We gather our sustenance in every way from our garden, organizing ourselves in a non-centralized, autonomous, and directly democratic way to provide ourselves and our community spiritual, cultural, and physical living from this land and water.

• Desired foods and other useful products (types and season) and specific “must-have” species.

  • We eat fresh food from our garden May through November with a large surplus to sell, process and to put into storage for winter provisions.

• The forest garden and greenhouses provide a variety of edible fruits, nuts, berries, shoots, leaves, roots, culinary herbs, medicinals, edible flowers, and mushrooms.

• We cultivate honeybees, fish, crustaceans, poultry, eggs, pig and goat products from our aquaculture and forage arrangements.

• Other essential needs you want the garden to fulfill, whether spiritual, emotional, aesthetic, practical, or otherwise;

  • We create our living completely from our forest garden which provides us leisured repose, income, spiritual and physical sustenance, and knowledge.

  • We are a bioregional archetype for effective, sustainable, decentralized permaculture design.

  • We are an ecological haven for augmenting the Earth’s and societal health.

• Other (present and future) uses of the site with which the forest garden must be compatible.

  • Homes, microcommunities and their surrounding forest gardens within our ecovillage are nuclei that merge, compounding the ecological benefits of a social mutualism.

  • Our community is an effective space of resisting and eliminating oppression in all its human manifestations.

  • Our ecological community is a space for other local communities to gain support in their struggles against heteronomous power and oppressions.

• Desired successional stages and vegetation architecture or patterns.

  • Our forest garden is a mosaic of dynamic successionary stages, composing patches of forest and gap ecologies in the outer zones, and windbreaks and savannaesque oldfield mosaics in the closer zones, with the majority of the garden in midsuccession aggradation.

• We consciously direct the ecological succession of our environment, through intelligent rotating agroforestry, coppice rotation and polyculture guild development.

• Our forest garden has a diversity of “feels” – some wilder, some managed and manicured, some sunny and open, some shady, and some private.

• How your garden relates to the larger ecosystem and neighborhood context, e.g., are there functions you want the garden to perform to make the environment healthier or to improve your privacy, connection to neighbors, views, or other issues?

  • Our forest garden functions as a communitarian hub of activity, supporting community gatherings of all types and uses.

  • Our forest garden is an oasis in a currently degraded ecosystem, which positively influences our neighbors to want to create similar ecological manifestations.

  • Our garden is supportive of a vast biodiversity of beneficial wildlife.

  • We bring the soil and water back to life after protracted observation and intelligent labor, thereby maintaining a self-regenerating fertility and transformation of polluted ground waters into clean water.

• Your sense of your basic approach to key issues such as

  • use of native, exotic, and opportunist species;

    • We choose the species in our garden based on their ability to fit a specific niche regardless of region of origin, although we go out of our way to incorporate underutilized western prairie natives.

• how much you want to adapt to or modify problematic site conditions;

• To quickly maximize productivity, we modify the site to the design’s requirements in zones 1 and 2.

• In zones 3 outwards, we select species and develop a design that works with the existing conditions of the site.

• your willingness to work for desired high-maintenance crops or to eat whatever you can grow with minimal effort;

• We put in the required work our CSA requires and do not do not use any herbicides, fungicides or non-organic pesticides (organic pesticides are used as only a last resort method).

• Being adaptable to the necessities of our patrons, we grow all socially lucrative vegetable, grain, fruit, nut, medicinal, vining, root, and meat crops and foods we consume as a living cooperative, provided they are hardy to our climate zone and greenhouses.

• We emphasize palatable, resilient, “pest-proof” species where appropriate.

  • in what ways, if any, you want to experiment, and what you are not willing to risk.

• We experiment with various polycultures and guild arrangements, acorn grain milling and palatability, grafting, propagation, mushroom cultivation, and habitat creation for endangered species, with a caveat that our food supply is reliable and our financial needs are met through a successful CSA (until the capitalist epoch is superceded or until our situation is less precarious upon the vagaries of state land entitlement).

• We experiment with sustainable green building techniques such as greenhouse design, moldering compost toilets, and other building methods to expand and suit the human community and its daily needs.

• Your maintenance and establishment efforts and approximate total budget.

  • Forest garden maintenance is done by members of the worker’s cooperative, ranging between 1-6 people who put in anywhere between 30-50 hours of work a week depending on “rush” or “non-rush” garden requirements.

  • Zone 1 and windbreaks are planted as instant successions while zones 2 and beyond are relay planted, as nuclei that merge, to improve soil quality until higher value crops may be assured success when they are planted.

  • We rely on labor time of members in the worker’s cooperative, out of pocket and living cooperative financing for early garden establishment, and grants, CSA, market garden, and nursery revenue for forest garden development.

• Is this house your permanent, year-round residence? Do you expect to move in the future? If so, how soon?

  • This site is expectedly our permanent residence, contingent only on the decision making of Reisbeck Subdivision.

• Are the existing driveways and paved paths on-site adequate? Do they need expansion now or in the future? Can they be reduced in size? Will or do you need more area for parking, or for storage, of large equipment or recreational vehicles (tractors, boats, trailers, and such)?

  • For our current use, the existing driveways are adequate.

  • We expand access roads just as much as is needed to provide resource drop-off and pickup to and from the land.

  • We decentralize social life from the automobile by operating with a “no superfluous roads” precept.

  • Walking, mule trails, and some main vein bicycle paths are created for movement around the land.

  • Vehicle storage is done in the main extant parking lot, near the barn and along 112^th Ave. for overflow “party” traffic.

• Do you expect to increase the size of the house septic system at any time in the future? If you have a septic system and decide to add bedrooms, you will need to increase the size of the septic system to accommodate the extra bedrooms.

  • Our human waste disposal program uses the humanure moldering toilet system.

  • We integrate an attached moldering toilet to every new building we create.

  • Where appropriate numbers and use will allow, we use a digester to harvest usable biogas methane.

  • Our human waste recycling effectively makes a problem into a solution by creating a usable product out of otherwise pollution.

• Are the patios, decks, and so on adequately sized? Do you see any expansion of these?

  • Our permaculture design has earmarked for an attached shade house and outdoor kitchen with a wood fired hot tub attached to the North side of the main farmhouse.

• What activities occur outside around your house? Where do they occur, and what size, shape, and location of an area do these need? Are there any needs for lawn-sports areas, children’s play areas, outdoor cooking, group gatherings, and so on? How many people, what size area, and how frequently?

  • Large parties happen here at most twice a year of 200+/- people (Summer equinox and harvest) and use the barn space, vehicle lot and outdoor kitchen space.

  • There is an outdoor kitchen on the North side of the main farmhouse.

  • There is a small intimate and quiet space for small meetings (15 people max.) in the mandala of the forest garden.

• Do you plan or want to leave room for major landscape elements such as a pool, pond, tennis or other game court, shed, greenhouse, and the like?

  • We set aside land according to our desire to implement a large-scale, keyline aquaculture operation.

  • All houses, commercial buildings, and barns have attached greenhouses a la CRMPI.

• What other gardens might you have or like to have in the future?

  • All residential buildings have forest gardens around them, providing sustenance to their inhabitants.

  • All outer zones (2 and beyond) are the commons shared between residence buildings.

• What service area requirements are there now or might there be in the future, e.g., dog runs, clotheslines, compost and trash areas, septic tank pump-truck access, or gas and oil tanks?

  • Our static compost areas are relegated generally to zone 2’s.

  • Trash produced from our almost zero waste community is either taken to the dump, it is set on either 112th Ave., or Belle Creek Rd. to wait for pick up.

  • There is a clothesline that runs between the two telephone poles just 20 feet North of the barn.

  • We leave at least 90’ of pump-tank to septic tank and clean out line access.

Overarching and Specific Goals:

• Why do you want a forest garden? What are you yearning for that you believe a forest garden will give you? What value does it offer you, or what values does it embody?

  • The forest garden provides us with 85% of all our extant food needs

  • Our economic well being is taken care of by selling products that originate from our garden

  • Our spiritual and physical health is supported by our garden.

  • Our forest garden provides us an environment for repose and for the satisfaction of our curiosities.

  • Our awareness and ecological consciousness is sharpened and increased when we spend time in our garden.

  • Our garden is a place we are proud and excited to show to friends.

  • Our garden is romantic, mystical, and evokes a sense of yugen.

  • We are happy our forest garden is an ecologically biodiverse oasis, supporting the healing of the Earth after centuries of devastation from colonialism to modern industrialism.

  • Our garden supports the gathering of two hundred people for parties, group meals, dancing, classes and meditation in its outer zones.

• What are you looking for in a forest garden? What specific and tangible benefits do you hope to gain? How will you know you have achieved your overarching goals?

  • Our forest garden doesn’t even look like a farm.

  • The stream rushes down swiftly and we feel still. The flowers fall incessantly, yet we feel quiet.

  • Our forest garden supports its workers completely economically.

  • The bioregional archetype notoriety our forest garden has attracts others who want to create similar and connective ecosystems.

  • The self renewing fertility, sustainable water demand, minimal herbivory, minimal competition, healthy plants, and diverse succession stages all attribute to overyielding polycultures we use everyday and in business, signifying completeness.

Your Approach to Key Issues

• Natives, exotics and opportunists

  • We use whatever species best fit our niches, desired functions and uses without regard to place of origin.

  • We use natives copiously to fulfill our desired functions and uses.

• Adapt or modify

  • In zone 1 and somewhat in zone 2, we modify the site to the design’s requirements.

  • In zones 3 outwards we select species and develop a design that works with the existing conditions of the site.

• Work for valued crops or eat what grows:

  • Our market garden and possibly the CSA require us to work for crops whose general maintenance is relatively high.

  • We do not use any herbicides, fungicides or non-organic pesticides. We use dormant oils as they’re needed.

  • We experiment with tree pruning strategies a la Fukuoka.

  • All organic use of pesticides is a last resort measure.

  • We grow all socially lucrative vegetable, grain, fruit, nut, medicinal, vining, root, and meat crops.

  • We are adaptable to the necessities of our patrons.

  • We emphasize palatable, resilient, “pest-proof” species where appropriate.

• Experimentation:

  • We experiment with various polycultures and guilds as much as it doesn’t dramatically fool with the market garden’s and CSA’s smooth running.

  • We experiment with various polycultures and guild arrangements, acorn grain milling and palatability, grafting, propagation, mushroom cultivation, and habitat creation for endangered species.

  • Our experimentation doesn’t gamble a steady crop for the CSA.

  • We draw skills and knowledge from acclaimed masters in greenhouse design, moldering compost toilets, and building to create attached houses and toilets that work for our needs and special requirements.

Desired Crops and Uses

• What kinds of foods do you like to eat? Are certain kinds of foods a priority?

  • Our diet is diverse and encompasses any and all edible fruits, nuts, berries, shoots, leaves, roots, culinary herbs, edible flowers, mushrooms, fish, crustaceans, poultry, eggs, pig and goat products that are USDA hardy to our zone and growable in our greenhouses.

  • We prioritize fresh fruit, vegetables, nuts, poultry products, culinary herbs and salad greens in our growing strategy.

• What specific crops do you want to grow?

  • (see attached niche analysis form)

• Approximately how much fruit do you eat in a year? How many nuts? Would you eat more of these if you were growing them and had them available?

• What medicinal herbs do you regularly use, or might you use? Condiment herbs?

  • We use horseradish, catsup, honey, hot pepper Chalupa like sauce, and tamari, umeboshi plum vinegar, and miso as condiment herbs.

  • We use, grow, tincture, stock, replace, give, and sell numerous different herbs fitting to heal or relieve symptoms and sickness of all different kinds. We strive to thoroughly relieve our want of health insurance and do not need to ever purchase any pharmaceuticals outside of extreme, life-threatening situations.

• Do you want to process foods and herbs for storage (e.g., canning, drying, preserves, tinctures) or just use them fresh?

  • Food and herb processing is in alignment with our activity of almost complete food self-sustenance. We process foods and herbs in value-added activities and for cold season sustenance.

• Do you want your fruits and other produce to be spread throughout the season or lumped in batches of harvest? Specify timing if you can for different crop types, specific crop species, or crops for storage versus crops for fresh eating.

  • We produce fruit and nuts of all different types that ripen at different times due to inter- and intra-species variety, thus providing fresh eating and reduced processing workload, which is spread throughout the growing season.

  • Many crops, including root foods, grains, and some vegetables, are harvested in bunches at the end of the growing season to prepare winter provisions.

• What other uses and functions are important to you?

  • Our garden additionally functions to provide food for our chickens, pigs, turkeys and goats, and provides cut flowers for zone 0 use, forage for hummingbirds and butterflies, ornamental aesthetics, and scented plants in high traffic and foul smelling areas.

  • Our aquaculture setup not only provides us with a high protein food source, but also helps us bioremediate polluted waters that come from our underground aquifer.

Desired Landscape Patterns

• What kind of environment do you hope to create? A shady forest, an open savanna, a wild oldfield mosaic, a tidy orchard? More than one? A sequence?

  • Our forest garden is a mosaic of dynamic successionary stages in patches including forest ecologies in the outer zones, and windbreaks and savannaesque oldfield mosaics in the closer zones.

  • We help direct the ecological succession of our environment, through intelligent rotating agroforestry.

• Are there specific wild areas or gardens that you want to mimic? What is it about these places you want to bring to your garden?

  • Our garden is somewhat ecologically similar to Jerome’s garden at the CRMPI.

  • We mimic CRMPI’s taste for aesthetics, business, functionality and ethic in earth care.

• Review the patterns in chapter 2. What site patterns (#s 3 through 8) and patterns of the garden (#s 9 through 22) might you want to use? Do other patterns in the pattern language particularly speak to you? If so, list them.

  • We utilize and integrate the site pattern of habitat diversity throughout and in accordance to the different zones and sectors of the forest garden.

  • Site repair and water use in our forest garden decreases in activity and intensity as we move outwards in the garden’s zones.

  • Every zone of our forest garden has some place for casual living, whether conspicuous or inconspicuous.

  • Some conspicuous living rooms of our garden integrate the mandala design pattern (#10).

  • Our garden comprises an accumulation of various ecological patches more or less separated by garden paths.

  • Many of our pre-successionary forest patches are temporary shrublands before the forest matures.

  • Star and flower shaped minithickets of thorny, thicket-like plants, particularly of the Rubus genus, abound in zone 2 of the forest garden.

  • An oldfield mosaic is the dominating successionary feature in zone 1 of our forest garden.

  • Woodland gardening is prevalent in zone 3 and somewhat (40%) in zone 2 of our forest garden.

  • A mature-forest forest garden motif is prevalent in our windbreaks, windfunnels, woodlot, and in zone 4.

  • Sporadic gaps and clearings permeate the zone 4 mature-forest forest garden.

  • The overall landscape of our forest garden is a shifting mosaic at different ecological successionary stages.

  • We consciously plan the successions of the forest garden to match plant lifespan and coppice rotations.

Logistical and Budget Issues

• How many people will be maintaining the forest garden? Who? How much time per week on a consistent basis per person? How much time per week during “rush” work periods, such as planting and harvesting?

  • Maintenance, guidance, and creation of the forest garden will be done by workers in the worker’s cooperative and by volunteers.

  • Numbers of total workers may range from 1-6 people.

  • Each person puts a total of 30-35 hours a week into the forest garden.

  • Each person puts a total of 40-50 hours a week into the forest garden during “rush” work periods of planting and harvesting.

• What kind of budget do you have for system establishment (time and money)? Do you intend all-at-once or piecemeal establishment (See pattern #s 30 through 34)?

  • Our primary succession stages call us to relay-plant biomass producing plants, dynamic accumulators, and nitrogen fixers until the soil is healthy enough to support more useful and desirable plants.

  • The windbreaks and zone 1 forest garden are planted as instant successions.

  • The zones 2, 3 and 4 forest garden is planted as nuclei that merge in order to save money on plant expenditure and to observe the polyculture’s combination interactions.

  • Money for the development of the forest garden comes from market garden, CSA, nursery and other farm product sales revenue and from gifts and grants, including the government’s Conservation Reserve Program.

  • Labor time comes from members of the worker’s cooperative.

  • Early stage forest garden financing comes out of pocket, from gifts, and from whatever money the living cooperative consensuses to provide.