Everyone Has A Right to E.A.T. April 30, 2008

The Food Crisis is sparking a wave of violence throughout already destitute countries such as Haiti, several countries in Africa as well as in the Far East.  My heart aches for all those wondering how they are going to sustain themselves for the months to come with basic commodity prices soaring to insane highs.  The saddest aspect of this crisis is the fact that so many native people have given up their natural born right to grow their own food, some due to outside forces, and others through a growing disconnection to the land and what it means to caretake it and benefit from that.

Like the powerful movie “Life and Debt” by Stephanie Black demonstrated, many farmers in Jamaica and world wide have been forced out of business due to their inability to compete with the flooding of their local markets with foreign, primarily gmo’d foods.

Project E.A.T. held a public viewing of the film this past weekend to expose the greater public of Ft. Lauderdale to this information. Many felt like the film was “preaching to the choir” for them yet there was an overwhelming sense of helplessness and an inability to counteract these superpowers and the damage that is being done to poor people worldwide.

The most important and self empowering thing we can all do right now is start with the basics. We need to be saving seed, planting seed,composting our foods, reaping food planted with our own hands, and  buying from local farmers and going GREEN in every single way that we can…

As I sit here in a beautiful home in South Florida, a literal swim away from the island of Haiti, I think about the gross disparity of here and there and the fact that children are eating mud pies mixed with oil to stay alive right now.  As much as many Americans and world citizens want to block out the reality, it is going on all over the world and should not be ignored or dismissed as ‘karma’.  It seems like we have to start at home, taking small steps to create the change that reverberates throughout the globe.  It’s up to us….

The Need to Save the Seed April 29, 2008

With the current food crisis upon us, the need for further control over our own food is of utmost importance. Backyard and kitchen gardening with compost and other organic products are some practices we can all incorporate into our lives to increase sustainability. There is a growing shortage of organic seeds and heirlooms on this planet now especially with the common practice of planting gmo and using other unnatural substances such as chemical based pesticides, herbicides and a whole host of frightening substances that negatively effect our health and environment.

Seed saving is a simple way to take charge of our food and our lives.

Steps to seed saving (the simple method):

1. Remove the seeds from all fruits and veggies that you have eaten, especially those that were most delicious to you since those are the strains we want to see proliferate again.

2. Clean the seeds thoroughly with apple cider vinegar and distilled water or even a biodegradable soap, ensuring that none of the fruit flesh remains on the seed.

3. COOL AND DRY. These are the key words for storage of these seeds. Allow them to be in a cool and dry place for as long as needed to ensure thorough drying. You’ll know smaller seeds are truly dry if they break as opposed to bend when pressure is applied.

4. Store the seeds in labeled containers such as paper or plastic envelopes and if storage is for extended periods, then place in a jar and store in the freezer.

These are some simple steps to saving seeds and will allow us to preserve our organic seeds and continue in promoting the planting of natural, healthful foods!

Earthen Buildiing with that good ole Georgia Red Clay September 24, 2007

From 2004-2006 we had the chance to be a part of a group that focused on introducing urban communities to alternative building methods in the Atlanta area. The purpose of the group was to train locals, particularly youth in mud brick building using the abundant red clay in their surrounding environment. The idea was that in many indigenous cultures, communities and villages would come together to help all the members to create living structures for themselves and their families. It was a communal effort based on fun,music and dance,in celebration of their own self-sufficiency and relationships. The hope is as times change, people will find ways to tap back into that communal spirit and create villages for themselves with the materials given to them directly by Mother Nature.

We would bring live musicians out to jam while the children and adults would dance around in the clay softening it up for process of creating red clay bricks or for making parts of a structure by packing the clay and shaping it. The community would be involved in all aspects of the process of prepping for the creation of a structure. Many of the structures we created were put up in privately donated spaces. They consisted of things like community benches in parks, outdoor meeting spaces and community ampitheaters.

The most exciting thing about this method was that the communities we worked with really looked forward to their opportunities to get down and dirty in the red mud, and create something significant for the community in the process. Books on Cobbing

Hawaiian Paradise Eco Community Living September 23, 2007

Peace to all of you from the beautiful Big Island of Hawaii. Bienvinidos, Welcome!!! With this blog we want to focus on issues surrounding sustainability and the building of alternative and ecologically based communities. This is a space to build on ways to increase our passion and knowledge for living more naturally and harmoniously with our beautiful mother Earth. New eco-friendly inventions, methods of organic gardening, alternative building techniques, biodynamic farming, eco village formation in the US and abroad, wwoofing and other interesting topics in sustainability will be dealt with here…

Over the last few years, I’ve been gaining increased interest in ways to live closer to nature and outside of the mainstream urbanized mindset. I find myself dipping in and out of cities, floating between bricks and mortar to occasional respites in pristine locales across the globe. The dream is simple though: Find a way to live in communities that are based on loving, living and healing the planet while still benefiting from all her abundance.

On Kauai my 2 year old and I got the chance to experience staying on different farms and living off grid. We stayed on land with transient hippy types interested in living communally in gorgeous natural environments. We lived on 5 acres of pristine, lush land with almost every tropical fruit tree you could imagine, sacred plant vines, veggie gardens and plenty of space to set up camp. The property was encircled by an astonishing, thick keiki bamboo forest with a cool, fresh water creek perfect for summer after noon dips. It was while living in this community that we became first exposed to what it means to live in an eco-village type of setting.

Everyone lived in their own tents, natural built structures or even under tarps in throughout the land and within the bamboo forest. Unlike a lot of work exchange situations you find on the Hawaiian islands and abroad, we lived without rigid rules for our stay there. Everyone just kind of did what they did to maintain the gardens,trees and the common spaces. There were no laid out ‘hours’ of work that had to be fulfilled. And because of this everyone did what they were inspired to do to insure that the land continued to flourish, without following the route of a lot of eco communities and becoming cultish.We were all able to maintain our autonomy while still coming together harmoniously with other like minds in service of the land of the beautiful Island of Kauai, Mama Earth, and ourselves. It was a model for community living that worked. Though it was just a small slice in time in which we lived this way, before the owner came back from the mainland and cleared the place, it still gave me inspiration for the future of living in community.