Propagelle Project

The Language of Work

2011-10-23T04:36:00.000-07:00

“The Great Recession of 2008 proved every anti-capitalist critic right.” Thus begins a wonderful essay by Mark Kingwell, professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto in the July 2011, issue of Harper’s Magazine. He wrote the original essay for a book entitled, The Wage Slave’s Glossary. His piece caught my attention as I was meditating on the constant media calls for jobs and watching many of my neighbors without a job and the disquiet such status engenders. What is it about Americans and our addiction to work? Mark gives us some needed vocabulary to get at the back story behind unemployment and who’s to blame for it.

“The system was bloated and spectral,” Mark writes, “borrowing on its borrowing, insuring its insurance, and skimming profit on every transaction. The FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate) sector had created the worst market bubble since the South Sea Company’s 1720 collapse, and nobody should have been surprised when the latest party balloon of capital burst. And yet everybody was.”

And then he adds a disturbing line, “Since then, new awareness of the system’s untenability has changed nothing. The role of gainful occupation in establishing or maintaining biological survival, social position, and, especially in American society, personal identity is undiminished.”

Capitalism is probably beyond large-scale change at this point, but we should not waste this opportunity to interrogate its most fundamental idea: work—Kingwell writes. The values of work are still dominant in far too much of life; indeed, these values have exercised their own kind of linguistic genius—creating a host of phrases, terms, and labels that bolster rather than challenge the dominance of work. Here Mark hits the mark!

The pervasive vocabulary naturalizes and so makes invisible some of the dubious, if not evil, assumptions of the work idea. First of all, what is work? To answer this question, Kingwell quotes Bertrand Russell who defined it in his essay in 1932, “In Praise of Idleness” this way: "Work is of two kinds. The first kind is altering the position of matter on or near the surface of the earth. The second kind is telling other people to do the first kind. The first is unpleasant and poorly paid. The second is pleasant and well paid. The second kind is capable of indefinite extension for there are those who give orders to those who give orders. A bureaucracy is composed of those who give the first order. If two opposite kinds of advice are given at the same time, then that is known as politics.”

Prof. Kingwell goes on to say that the greatest work of work is to disguise its essential nature. Work is the largest self-regulation system the universe has so far manufactured, subjecting each human to a panopticon under which we dare not do anything but work. When we submit to work we are guard and guarded at once.

Why has work as a tool of Capitalism spread so completely around the world and what purpose does it serve other than to create surplus profit for the taking? Even when we have become commodities to be bought and sold we do not stop to consider our squirrel cage plight.

Kingwell suggests that it is work that is the opiate of the people, rather than Marx’s religion. Work keeps the awareness of the hopelessness and meaninglessness of our daily lives from surfacing in our consciousness. If I’m working, I’m okay, we tell ourselves. Not to have a job or not to be working hard for the American dream is to be a loser! We never question where we got that idea.

Kingwell concludes with a quote from a French socialist, loosely translated to mean, “Beneath the pavement, see the beach!” Humans are not resources, we are not machines, we are not consumers, and the world is a site not of work but of play and delightful idleness.

An Antidote to Loneliness

2010-09-08T09:06:00.000-07:00

One of the overriding concerns for the human species is what to do with ourselves between birth and burial. We are born alone and helpless, and for fully one-third of our lives we will require nurture and protection so we can enjoy the middle third. The last third is then on the down-hill side, when we become aware that we must meet death. At birth we are alone. And at death we are alone again. In between we spend our money and energy overcoming loneliness—which is how we express the consciousness of our de-facto aloneness and separateness from other human beings and Nature itself.

The existential question, or problem, that every human is asked by Nature is: “How can I find union within myself, with others, and with Nature? We all must answer that question, sooner or later.

We Americans often answer the question by not answering it--by living in a fantasy world, striking out reality inside of ourselves, living completely within the shell of ourselves and thus overcoming the terror of separateness. We try to overcome the anxiety of human distance by regressing to an earlier state of union before consciousness—never allowing even a crack between us and our childhood parents and the assumed security of their care. And, there are many other forms and intensities of escape which our society offers, and they serve this one purpose—to prevent a person from becoming fully born or fully conscious of our separateness and thus not having to deal with the pain.

Our society enables many to evade, or completely forget the question of Nature to us all, by occupying our minds with problems of prosperity, property, prestige, power and productivity. These occupations help us put off the question. When we deal with these distractions, we need only be awake to the degree that social functioning requires. We manage to survive rather than become fully alive, fully born.

Why is it that we are not more conscious, more alive and loving--besides the fact that our economy virtually enslaves us, and our media occupies our minds? What would happen if we were to wake up, to be born again? What happens is that, for the first time, a person becomes aware that they are alone, that they are frightened, that they are full of pain and anger. Before this moment, they lived with the necessary fiction of themselves as modest, brave and loving. This new insight will hurt, but it will also open doors. We will be required by this new self-awareness to stop projecting onto others what we repress (deny) about ourselves. Continued attacks on others is the surest sign that we have chosen not be born again in some dimension of our lives. They also assure us continued loneliness.

As a result of a new insight, we can become less repressed, freer, less in our heads, and more open to sensual awareness—especially to Nature. We can even begin to feel genuine compassion for others, which is the sine qua non for a relationship that is the antidote to our loneliness.

Based on “The Nature of Well-Being” quoted by John Welwood in Awakening the Heart.

Plum Silly

2010-06-05T16:04:00.000-07:00

Last year, we had a very late freeze, which destroyed every blossom on every fruit tree on our place. We got nada for fruit. This year we had a normal cold winter with plenty of rain. We just missed a killing late freeze, and got our bees set up just in time for a major effort at pollination. All that to say, this spring we have had a truly awesome fruit set and promise of an overwhelming harvest. We have just harvested plums.

Never have I seen so many delicious plums on one tree. The secret? We did nothing. We don’t spray them with winter oil or any kind of insecticide, let alone fungicide. We lost one plum tree and one peach to borers, but we have nearly sixty-five fruit trees on the place. There are stink bugs on the rotting fruit, but no borers; and even the birds can’t make a dent in this harvest!

Each year we plant the trees that will take over the main production as the older ones turn into firewood and mulch. We have several varieties of plum to ensure vigorous cross-pollination. Our main producers are Methley and Bruce, but we
also have Santa Rosa and Wixson as well. All seem to love the sandy soil and sunshine. We do fertilize them in spring with either chicken litter or some triple-13 to provide some needed phosphorus for the blossoms. They are also mulched with hard wood chips. We have had to water them this spring because of the hot weather and being behind over 6 inches in rainfall.

Nevertheless, these four buckets of plum are one picking and we have had three pickings for storage. We eat as many as we can without getting sick—right off the tree! Nothing more gratifying than watching a grandchild stuff her mouth with juicy, entirely natural, home-grown fruit!

The not-so-fun part is pitting them and getting them ready for the freezer. We haven’t decided exactly what we want to do with them, except that it won’t be make jam. Not with all that sugar! We are leaning toward fruit leather and just a compote for breakfast and on desserts. As tedious and messy as the job is to cut up and pit the plums, a system like that shown in the picture allows two people to work and turn 50 pounds of whole plums into 25 or 30 pounds of pure fruit in less than a hour.

We won’t feel the pain when you pour this fantastic, sweetness over our home-made ice-cream in the summer!

Nutrient Cycling in Small Pasture Paddocks in Rotation

2010-03-26T06:00:00.000-07:00

Spring has come to East Texas. March, and it is hot already between episodes of freezing. The fruit trees have all blossomed out and are laden with pollen which the bees are busy hauling back to their hive. Spring is a lovely time to walk about and enjoy the new life rousing from its winter slumber. Spring is also a time to get ready for the hard work of gardening and field planting if we expect a decent summer harvest.

Our veggie gardens are in good shape and the soil is ready for compost and plants. The tricky issues evolve around planting grain patches and making sure the pastures are in prime condition for forage. We are committed to grass-fed beef with supplements of grain when the mama cows are fresh. Grass, with the exception of alfalfa, and clover, just do not provide all the nutrients a cow needs for steady milk production along with a good body score. We’ll grow the grain (corn and sorghum) near the fish ponds so we can “fertigate” these heavy feeders with fish waste. Getting pasture soil fertility right—and I don’t mean in theory—is the hard part.

We know that we must build up soil organic matter to create the soil structure and fertility it needs for its own sake. Soil is a living biotic community in its own right. To grow a rich pasture forage crop on top of that means even more nutrients must be added. The problem is relatively simple to state: the mass balance of organic matter (OM) in the soil must be maintained, so whatever you take from the soil, you must put back. Here’s an example—Coastal Bermuda-grass in Texas producing a stand of grass equaling 6 tons of weight over the course of a year will remove about 258 pounds of nitrogen (N) if it has a crude protein of at least 12%. That’s pretty good coastal hay. You will also lose 60 pounds of phosphorus (P) and 280 pounds of potassium (K).

Lucky enough, the small cows we have weigh about half of a normal cow and eat about half. Our mama’s require about 40 pounds of grass a day and 2 pounds of richer supplements. Given the ideal three head herd (2 mamas and 1 bull), they together would consume 120 pounds of Coastal a day for 365 days or a total of 44,000 pounds, which is 22 tons. If we get 6 tons per acre, we will need about 4 acres in pasture. This we have already set up in paddocks for rotation.

You can begin to see the problem we face. We will remove 4 A @ 258 lbs. = 1000 lbs. of N, 4 A @ 60lbs = 240 lbs. of P, and 4 A @ 280lbs. = 1120lbs. of K out of those four acres this year. How will all that macro-nutrient get returned to the soil along with enough extra to keep the soil OM going for its own sake?

Fortunately, with the right rotation through half-acre paddocks, we can keep all the dung and urine from the cows on the pasture. Some of it volatilizes and leaves as gas, but most of it is buried underground by dung beetles and other critters. Our paddocks are contoured, so we get very little to no run-off and uniform infiltration of water and effluent. For the sake of this discussion, let’s say we get back 80% of what the animals ingest. We will need to find the lost 20%, which is not small change--200 lbs. of N, 48 lbs. of P, and 200 lbs. of K to make up the loss and maintain the forage mass balance—or maintain the soil organic matter (OM) annual equilibrium.

But the forage loss is not the only loss in the system. The soil by itself, without any kind of tillage or crop, will lose 2% of its organic matter annually. Let’s assume we begin with 40,000 pounds of humus per typical acre. We have less, but a 2% loss would leave 39,200 pounds. That’s 800 pounds of new humus to add per acre per year--just to keep up. To get that 800 pounds per acre back in the soil, I must add over a ton of plant residue per acre per year in addition to the loss from forage.

I can make up the humus loss by importing large, one ton bales of Bermuda hay in the winter. I can also mow the grass the cows leave and allow it to rot in place, reducing the nutrient demand a little. However, to get a forage crop without ruining the soil, I must buy and spread chemical fertilizers carefully, based on regular testing. No one has yet showed me how to make up the losses organically. I get lots of theory and advice, but I have not seen a system that works without chemical inputs that has functioned for longer than ten years.

The Amish get around this mass balance dilemma by using zero tillage, all their manure, and herbicides instead of fertilizer. It’s a sustainable practice, obviously, since they have been doing it a long time and are economically and ecologically successful. I cannot afford the equipment for zero tillage, nor do we have the space. The average Amish farm is over 100 acres. Mine is 12. While I understand herbicides, I choose to err on the side of limited chemical fertilizer when soil and forage tests show a need. Small amounts of chemicals will not burn the microbial biomass and do not lead to salting.

Some folks would argue that all the nutrients I need can be found in the soil microbial biomass, held in microbe bodies. If I broke them down, the nutrients they hold would be available. Let’s look at nitrogen. Say I have an optimistic 4% total biomass in my soil and the total OM (humus and microbial biomass) is 80,000 pounds. My loss is 2% or 1600 pounds of organic matter per acre per year. Of that organic matter 5% is N. I would lose 80 pounds of N per acre just from soil respiration—not a crop!. I must input over 2 tons of detritus (biomass) per acre per year just to maintain the original OM equilibrium. What would it take after that to get a crop?

I now need to know what I will lose to any crop. If I plow or till, I will lose even more OM as CO² to the air. Just to grow pasture grass with decent forage quality, I will need to find over 200 pounds of N per acre per year. 80% of it will cycle back in waste, but I have to have the N available before that. If 2 tons of detritus yields 80 pounds of N as above, then I will need to import over 5 tons per acre to get the N I need organically. Furthermore, I will lose the N in the soil to microbial decomposition of the detritus for about 4 weeks after every application.

It would seem that if I put 8 acres to grass pasture and mowed, hayed and manured all of these, I could conceivably meet all my nutrient needs organically. That’s an IF I don’t have the luxury to assume.

Wisdom from the Garden of Eden

2010-03-25T09:14:00.000-07:00

Spring is here and thoughts turn to gardening.

One of the great, universal stories of mankind from ancient Egypt to modern America is the story of the Garden of Eden. This story explains one thing above all else when it comes to gardening—we expect it to be hard work, with lots of weeds and pests. We get our food the old fashioned way—by

working for it. No wonder the mall and fast food are satisfying. No sweat. Food appears magically.

Technology seems to have undone the curse of the Fall. At last, humans have overcome stubborn Nature that throws up its thorns and weeds to punish us. We are “round-up” ready!

Not so fast. There is another way to “read” this great story of gardens and thorns and trouble. I came across it in Gary Coate’s book, Resettling America, 1981, as he related it as originally told by Gregory Bateson, who is perhaps our centuries’ most important, systems thinker. It goes like this:

Once upon a time there were two anthropoid creatures who lived in a garden. They were more intelligent than the other creatures. They could talk and think. The garden was beautiful and provided for all their needs. It was a balanced ‘system,” an ecology, if you will, that included humans naturally. The two enjoyed the place and its ‘grace’. Everyday was a gift—each receiving and each giving.

However, one day on their walk-about, the two humans observed a new fruit way up high on a strange tree. It was beautiful. They could not reach it on tiptoe. Adam sat in the shade and began to think. He wanted to pick it, to taste it, and perhaps own it. He let Eve taste it first to be sure it wasn’t poisonous. It’s newness and elusiveness frustrated him. Suddenly he had an idea. He sent Eve off to find a box. Standing on it, he still could not reach it. He sent her for another, and another, until he finally was able to pick that fruit.

It didn’t taste that good, but the two were intoxicated by their discovery. They had found the best way to get what they wanted. Make a plan. Follow steps ABC and you get D! They began to do things the new way, by specialization and planning. This new way took over the concept of their own total system natures in the context of total systemic Nature—the Garden, or as they called the higher mysteries of how things worked, God.

After they had cast God out of the Garden, they really went to work on their purpose driven lives!

Pretty soon the topsoil was gone, plants had become weeds and some animals pests. Adam found cultivation very hard work. He did not like sharing the fruit of the “sweat of his brow.” I am being punished by an angry God, he thought. I should have never climbed those boxes.

Things began to change between Adam and Eve too. Eve was caught up in her purposive activities just as much as Adam. She resented his intrusions for sex and even more that she had to be the child bearer. The pain at birth angered her. How come Adam could do this to her and just watch? She resented him and his strength to rule over her. Her ability to enjoy being alive in her body, to love, to provide hospitality were all diminished. God has punished me, she thought. He should defend me!

They both came to resent the place and the hard work they had to do every day. They were afraid to leave by themselves, so they left together with their children. They never wanted to go back there again.

It should come as no surprise then that the next generation had a great deal of trouble with love and kindness and relationships. The humans, Home techne and Homo fabre, had difficulty finding anything meaningful in life. They wandered around a lot. Their first son, Cain, however, took this purposive business to a new level. He not only fashioned tools, but weapons. With these, who needed boxes. You could make anyone you want climb for you! Food anytime, anywhere!

But Cain grew to hate his little brother, Abel, who wandered around without purpose and did not help him with the business. Abel was a shepherd, and seemed content to live in the natural world with its constraints and limitations. He seemed lazy to his industrious brother. He refused arms to protect himself and yet he was unafraid in the wild. Able even shared food with his busy brother. So why would Cain want to kill him? The memory of the Garden was disturbing and was incarnate in his peasant brother. It haunted Cain and made him question his purpose. Cain’s new God assured him that life without this bad memory would be better. Put this reminder of the Garden out of your mind!

So he did. He literally buried it. And then Cain had his own son, Enoch. Father and son constructed the first and archetypal city where the Garden was totally out of mind. Everything was man-made and artificial. The consequence of building with boxes was long forgotten. Here was a “box” fit for human habitation--tall, neat, and controlled. This is the box in which we find ourselves today.

The Wisdom of Creation (Nature) and the consequences of disregarding The System in which we live are severe, but not irreversible. God is not a punishing God—remember, the story begins with Grace! The System still works and continues to offer all of us its original grace and wonderful gifts.

Cathy and I have left the city, but we still climb our “boxes” to get our food. We hope they will be fewer each successive year as we step down and learn to live with more Grace.

Bees

2010-02-05T07:25:00.000-08:00

Nothing makes you feel like Spring is here than to see and hear bees buzzing in the soft blossoms of a fruit tree. There is so much hope and energy in that tiny body and the hive they all work so hard to sustain. There are thousands of books on the shelves from ancient times right up to today on the subject of bees and their culture—apiculture. None of them capture the reality and mystery of a living hive. These tiny insects draw us from our libraries into the garden to listen and wonder as they feed, clean, nurse, and defend their queen and coming generations, and, finally, die of exhaustion.

It was my privilege to work in Africa with traditional beekeepers and their iconic log beehives hung from a tree on a forked stick. Recently many Africans have found the top bar hive less destructive of hives and a shift in apiculture across the continent has occurred in the last century. They work their bees just like we do with a little narcotic smoke and no shirts or screens or gloves. African bees are anything but gentle, but they are tough. We may need to see some of that toughness bred into our very gentle but weak strains of bees. American forests still hold strong bees that are disease resistant and yet gentle, so we may yet find improved varieties that will overcome the onslaught of disease and environmental compromises that trouble American bees these days.

If bees are in the plan for your homestead, the best advice is to read everything you can find and then attach yourself to a local beekeeper with a good long history of not just commercial beekeeping but a love of bees for their own sake. They yield their secrets to love, and that may be why they are dying in this age when everything is turned to productivity and profit. I actually think they are the “canaries” in the economic mine-shaft of contemporary capitalism run amok. Their stress and immune failure and compromised health from environmental toxins parallels the human condition perfectly. Stop the gentle rain of coal fired mercury and cadmium, arsenic, nitrous oxide as well as the benzene and chlorine by-products from other industries and we may find that we and our bees are feeling better. Unfortunately, profits will trump health every time in our current economic system.

But we must go on with life and so will the bees. If you are lucky to find a hopeful beekeeper, he will surely begin his instruction by revealing the hives division of labor. Let’s assume you have figured out the bee hive structure itself from a diagram. You’ll confirm this knowledge as you go along anyway.

He will pull off the top, and using his hive tool, wedge open a brooder frame to show you his queen who is very shy and very busy—diving into cells and depositing her eggs as fast as she can. She’ll be longer than the others as you can see in the picture. She will almost always be covered by her attendant bees who feed her and clean her. There will only be one queen, although others will be nursed and ready to take over from her in a process called supersedure. If she weakens, she may be killed or have to kill a rival to continue the right to propel her genetics into the future. She manages the hive by her pheromones (scents that she emits) to signal work to do or conditions to be achieved—its too hot y’all, cool this place down etc.

The worker bees are short and have wings that do not reach their stingers, which are immature mating apparatus. They have two distinct composite eyes. They are all female, and they number in the thousands, changing their diet and work roles as needed by the hive.

The other type of bee in a hive is a drone—yup, the males, who number only a few hundred at most. Drones are bigger around and hairy compared to workers, and their wings are longer, reaching past their abdomen. They can also be recognized in the melee of a hive by their massive eyes which seem to cover their heads like helmets.

These guys, like male elephants, are sent off to a holding area where virgin queens fly to find mates of different genetics. Several drones can mate with one queen, and she holds their sperm in a vesicle in her body with which to later fertilize her eggs.

How does Nature ensure that the genetics of all these bees don’t get mixed up and weaken the entire species? It just so happens that after every drone mates, he loses his “stinger” and dies. Thus, he is unable to mate with his own progeny.

It isn’t true that without bees there would be no pollination, but they are such a pleasure to have on the property. The honey isn’t such a fantastic health food as it is high on the glycemic index, but hey it isn’t worse than sugar and far better than the toxic waste of artificial sweeteners.

But I think bees, above all, are important as a symbol of ecological health. Like hawks and owls, they signal health and the absence of toxins and pollutants in the food chain. The bees are far more sensitive and are in fact the early warning system of environmental stress. They are also a living feedback system to its caretakers, telling them how well they are doing with the bees and thus their entire ecosystem.

This pictures a friend from Africa handling his beehives, created from logs.

The Dawn of a New Age

2010-02-01T19:21:00.000-08:00

It is winter in Texas now, and unusually cold. All of us are anxious for spring to arrive. This cold reminds me of a winter a decade ago in Raleigh, North Carolina. A group of friends had met for breakfast with one of the world’s great human beings, the late Thomas Berry.

With his back to a big fire, he spoke to us in his gravelly voice, listening to our questions and concerns. Then, gently and efficiently, with a twinkle in his eye and his crooked grin, he explained his views about our issues. I wanted to know how to guard the “individual” person, tree, leaf, etc. as we move into a new age of the ecological when whole systems are what’s important. I did not want to lose the gains of the last age, the Anthropocene, when human beings differentiated from family, tribal and now even national herds. What he said is a summary of his two books, “The New Story” and “The Great Work,” which was published before he passed away in 2009.

Essentially what he assured me was that in the new paradigm for the 21^st Century (the dawn of the Ecozoic Age) was that the positive gains of differentiation that had been won would not be lost but in fact continue. He explained three concepts that would distinguish humans in the Ecozoic Age:

differentiation, subjectivity, and communion.

As regards differentiation, it seems that one of the primordial intentions of the earth process is to produce variety in all things from the atomic structures of plants and animals to the appearance of human beings, who differ from each other more extensively than beings in any other realm known to us. Not only do human individuals differ, so do social structures and cultures.

Thomas insisted that the value of an individual was the inherent and indestructible foundation of Nature. But he then reminded us that there was no “model” for how to be an individual human. Trees and animals had one, but not people! This lack of a model offered in Nature created a spiritual vacuum in cultures, which have always sought to fill it with their religious heroes and behavioral restrictions. America today is a cultural war zone between corporate business and corporate church as to who will determine the meaning of being an individual. In response to either artifice, we must simply be what and who we are and open ourselves to the larger life.

After differentiation, the most important value is subjectivity—interiority. Every being has its own unique essence, its Self, its mystery, its sacred aspect. To deprive any being of this sacred aspect, to diminish the interior self, is to disrupt the total order and intention of the Universe. Reverence will be total or not at all! The Universe does not come to us in pieces any more than a person stands before us with only half of their body or part of their being.

Finally, there is the intercommunion of the Universe within itself and each part with the whole--each particle in communion with every other particle in the vast web of the Universe. It is our present duty to develop this capacity for communion on new and more comprehensive levels.

So the call to each of us is to become our Selves and to honor all others as we begin, each of us, the great work of learning, restoring and loving our home, this Earth. And thus ourselves!

Small Scale Methane

2009-08-02T09:14:00.000-07:00

In my work in the remote villages of Eastern Kenya, I searched for a way to provide cooking fuel and lights that did not degrade the local forest cover and require hours of extreme labor chopping and carrying fire wood. I met a crusty, retired, Prussian cavalry officer from the Eindhoven stove group who was promoting methane fuel from biomass—mostly manure and grass. Already the inhabitants of the huge dumps of Nairobi had discovered that rotting garbage produced a gas that they could cook with—the fire of God they called it. I began to experiment with easy ways to enclose biomass in anaerobic (air-excluded) vessels or bags and extract the gas the evolved. The 3-drum digester you see was a design that was quite successful and produced enough gas each day to cook the villager's biggest meal and provide reading lights at night for school children. There is no loss of water or nutrients in the liquid effluent which went straight to the tree nurseries.

Basically methane is generated from the microbial digestion of properly mixed biomass that has the desired water-nitrogen-carbon and heat ratios that support rapid bacterial growth and consumption of this material. An acid substrate forms quickly and then the methanogens devour this. A byproduct of their digestion is flatulence which is, like in humans, a flammable gas. Think of the problem when we eat too many beans or veggies, and you get the idea. The gas produced is combined with sulfur and carbon dioxide and is very wet. To get pipeline quality natural gas/methane from this gas called bio-gas, you must scrub the sulfur by passing it through an iron filings filter. You remove the carbon dioxide by bubbling it through lime water, and the excess moisture will condense on the pipes and must be led away to U-tubes where it can evaporate.

To understand the entire process, just think of the digester as a huge cow stomach. Chopped nutrients go in and are “ruminated” into a brew that is bacterially digested in the gut. Gas and a slurry are pushed out as new material is fed into it. This is called a plug-flow system—grass in, sludge out in equal volumes. If a floating lid is placed over the digester tank, the bubbles of gas and carbon dioxide will be captured and lift the cover. With a little pressure, this gas can be forced along a pipe to an inverted tank in a water bath/seal, which will float up with the gas under pressure. To push the gas to a point of use, a bucket weighted with water can be used to achieve the desired inches of water column pressure needed to make any device work.

At our farm, as you see in the photo, we have a digester that holds 1,500 gallons of water and slurry. The gas-collector/top of the concrete digester (buried in the ground for insulation) is a floating steel tank 4’ wide x 9’ long x 2’ deep. The single small gas collector tank has now been replaced with 2 fiberglass tanks for added gas collection. We use it for cooking and demonstrations mostly, but it is now at capacity, and when connected to the genset which runs on propane and or natural gas, it will run the 16 kW generator for 1 hour for each 3 cubic meters of gas we make. Our sole substrate for making methane of very high quality is grass clippings which have a perfect C:N ratio and produce such good gas that we do not need to filter it.

The photo of the gas burning reveals a high quality flame of dark blue with no orange tips or smoke. Here is the closest thing to a free lunch I have ever known! The amount of gas we could produce is virtually unlimited and the effluent is perfect for fertilizing trees—a little too low in pH for veggies or grass. There isn’t room to discuss all the safety issues, but I can say that it is much safer to use in the house than propane.

Our system has been running for the last 4 years with very little maintenance. As a demonstration unit, it has surely proven to be worth every dollar invested. If you are interested in a spreadsheet with calculations of each component and productivity, then you can contact me through my profile.

Update

2009-07-30T12:32:00.000-07:00

Well, I say this all the time, but I am constantly amazed at how quickly time flies now. If only I had known this at 20--when a whole summer took years to pass. Now, the year passes so quickly, it turns my head as it moves past. :)

But as time passes, so projects progress. Our barn is nearing completion and the garden was productive this year. We just finished our first batch of very tasty spaghetti sauce and we are making salsa today. Yumm! We have had delicious watermelons and cantaloupes, but the squash, peppers, and beans did not fare as well. The plants produced enough for some fresh produce, if not to put up. We are looking forward to a fall crop of potatoes and peas. It is still too hot to plant much in August, so we usually plan for September and October--adding fall crops as well as green mulch like clover, rye, and vetch.

We should have some updates on solar and wind power in the next month or two.

Persimmons - Yum?

2008-12-11T19:22:00.000-08:00

Along our main drive, we have planted persimmon trees. Some are native species and do not produce much fruit, but others produce large orange fruit in the winter, starting in November. Now, persimmons are a tricky fruit. They are terribly bitter and astringent if they are not eaten at exactly the right time, but when you get a good one, they taste better than a ripe mango. :)

This is one of the smallest trees on the property, but it has a nice symmetry. The fruit can be used to feed people and livestock, but ours mostly feed birds and bees.

As they ripen, they turn a lovely deep red. If not picked, they fall to the ground and then insects and birds love the sweet syrup and flesh.

Many Things to Be Grateful For

2008-12-09T19:13:00.000-08:00

I found this shot of two of the three generations on our campus sharing a snack at a very messy table, but then I started looking at the picture and it is quite symbolic of our family. There on the wall is a lovely very large painting done by the youngest girl in our family. Below that is a portrait brought home from Africa--one of many momentos of a different life. The mess on the table is pretty common, along with the book reading. We don't have cable TV, so our time is spent reading, working, painting, thinking, and sometimes watching DVDs. It also struck me that we are very lucky to share this time together with a granddaughter, parents, and children all living near and with each other, sharing a commitment to a life filled with peace, fellowship, and fun (and good food! :D).

And of course, there is always the beauty of the outdoors to be grateful for (yes, I found some more lovely photos of flowers from the summer LOL).

Barn and Garden Update

2008-12-08T18:50:00.000-08:00

The garden is pretty much done for the fall. We planted some peas, broccoli, lettuce, and cabbage for the winter, but the chickens have eaten most of the lettuce and the others have not produced much. :(

The one thing we did harvest the winter was GOURDS!! Lots and lots of gourds. Here is a sampling. The one on top was painted as a swan (gorgeous, huh? :D)

I took this picture of the gourd flowers this summer and they are quite lovely...along with the shadows on this green gourd. It is such a little treat to find old pictures that brighten your day.

The barn is also moving along. Mostly weatherproofed now and siding and trim are slowly going up. There has been a break over the past few weeks what with thanksgiving and family coming up. We had a lovely thanksgiving, enjoying time with the 3 kiddos and Auntie S.

Remembered Beauty

2008-12-07T18:42:00.000-08:00

Here are few of the lovely flowers around the property, taken this summer in the hot Texas sun, which is nice to remember right now in the dreary cold of winter. :)

Barn Raising - sort of

2008-10-12T16:58:00.000-07:00

Well, the barn is under construction! It is a 2-story building with living quarters above. The bottom floor will have a milking parlor and kitchen for processing of food and milk. It also has storage and an office space. This has been built primarily by two guys....pretty impressive huh? :D It has taken about 6 weeks to get here.
The floor is concrete and the walls are typical wood construction except for the fact that it is braced way above code.

Hurricane Ike

2008-09-22T17:12:00.000-07:00

Hurricane Ike came through not too long ago. We were very lucky and sustained no serious damage. Here is a shot during and after.

Well, well, well!!!! All Watered Down Around Here

2008-07-26T06:38:00.000-07:00

We recently began installation of a 330-ft deep well. We were very impressed with the drilling team and their expertise. The father/son(s) team is now the third generation of their family to drill wells in our area.
The well itself was drilled, bored wider, cased, and then flushed after a gravel filter was added. The pad and pump were then set and clean-up of the area commenced. This was a time consuming process that took nearly 3 days.
The drilling was done mosty by touch and experience as they described it. They went through three pockets of "water" prior to determining that they were deep enough for clean, safe water. The water is actually sucked from sandy water pockets.
The pictures below show the drilling rig.

Tilapia Fish Ponds

2008-07-25T06:30:00.000-07:00

This year we created two fishponds and stocked them with 200 2-inch (5 cm) talipia. We choose talipia because of their protein levels and also that they can easily be utilized as human food or used to create organic animal feed. The food source for the talipia is a grass basket that grows algae, which they in turn eat. We are curious to see how they survive the herons and frogs that surround and live in the ponds.
The ponds themselves are shallow (about 12x25x4 feet)and heated by the sun. Aerators that restock the water and remove gases at the same time draw water from the large pond at the botton of the hill. The water is pumped using solar power from an array of PV panels. The set up is shown below.

Garden Plan

2008-07-22T10:53:00.000-07:00

For the past three years, we have attempted gardening without doing much research or planning. We simply picked a spot that was close to the house and got enough sun (10 to 11 hours of full sun) and that we could water. We choose not to use any fertilizer and we papered the ground in between the beds and tried to do no-till gardening. This year, we adapted our plan and used raised beds based on a book by Houston master gardener and organic guru, Bob Randall. You can find lots of great information at Urban Harvest.
We did not strictly follow the plan, but used it as appropriate for our climate and time.

Below are some pictures and the plan that is suggested for planting. We planted 9 beds within a fenced area of about 1,200 sq feet. We have planted the vegetables that are most useful to us and that we enjoy, thus we did not provide ourselves a living diet...we had to supplement with groceries. We bought organic compost (a very expensive option, but we wanted a good base) and have begun 4 compost piles that will supply us with topper soil during the next growing season.

Rather than try to illustrate the complicated rotational plan of the gardens, we chose to list the starting plants in each plot and then note the cropping schedule for each plot throughout the year. It is easier to follow the changes in each bed or plot than to follow the movement of each plant variety from season to season and place to place. We begin with Plot #1 and note the plants for each of the other eight in a list below:

Plot 1
Plant clover in November and let it grow until March.
March- plant squashes (tatume, clababash, luffa) harvest till November

Plot 2
November- plant 30 sq.ft. of snow peas harvest then plant pole peas, petit pais
December to March- harvest English pole peas etc.
March to July- pole, snap, and bush beans
July to November- purple hull peas, zipper cream peas trellis—long beans, baby lima-beans
August- plant bush snap beans

Plot 3
November to February- plant 70 sq.ft. of lettuce, non-cabbage salad greens
November to May- plant 4 globe artichokes
March- Ambrosia, cantaloupes, watermelons—center of bed
September- cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, radishes

Plot 4
December- plant broccoli, cauliflower, radishes
January-February plant beets
May- sweet potatoes

Plot 5
Mid-August to November- plant lettuce & salad greens
April- plant tomatoes, corn, tomatillos (when tomatoes are done, plant squash, lufffa, okra and buckwheat
September- plant carrots, garlic, chives, multiplying onions

Plot 6
November- plant bulb onions, garlic, cilantro
March- plant cantaloupe
August to October- plant beets, chard, green beans

Plot 7
January to February- plant 70 sq. ft. of lettuce
April- 50 sq.ft. of cucumbers
May- plant Southern Peas
July to September- set out 10 to 16 tomato plants down the center of the bed

Plot 8
March- plant green peppers
May- rotate in eggplant
**Here we actually have two rows dividing them into strips interplanted with strawberries.
***We made changes to this above recommended plan as we do not have enough time to do all as suggested.

The most important lessons we learned are that you must have good compost (becuase we didn't want to use artifical fertilizer) and the time to paper and mulch between the beds to prevent weed spreading (we use old hay...straw is recommended because hay may sprout). Planting is only a small portion of the time needed to maintain a garden. At least 10 hours a week should be alloted for a garden our size to pick, weed, and just generally maintain the garden.

Introspection

2008-03-25T08:43:00.000-07:00

Life must be seen as a preparation for succession and renewal rather than a journey to extinction. The divine circle of life is thus described reminding us that we move from life to death to new life. Joy comes to us when we move beyond despair and the fear of death and grasp the notion that the spirit of life persistently manifests itself anew in unexpected form. The spirit will always push up and out, taking the materials at hand to draw attention to its secret power.

The mushroom continues to remind us of this power as it pushes up with the spirit’s energy to announce new life and beauty in the presence of decay.

The land is the key to our inner nature, its beauty and its violence but a mirror of the light and shadow in the human soul. Landscape then is a revelation of the Self and a key to our own moods and inner changes. Each landscape asks the same question, “I am watching myself in you - are you watching yourself in me?”
— A Passion for this Earth, Valerie Andrews

In the presence of one wild bluebell I am humble and joyful. If I were given all the learning and all the methods of my race I could not make one of them or even imagine one. Solomon in all his glory was no arrayed like one of there. It is a privilege and the labor of the apprentice of creation to come with his imagination into the unimaginable, and with his speck into the unspeakable.
— Traveling at Home, Wendell Berry

But God’s own descent into flesh was meant as a demonstration that the supreme merit lay in risking spirit in substantiation.
Spirit enters flesh and for all it’s worth charges into earth in birth after birth ever fresh and fresh.
We take the view that its derring-do thought of in the large is one might charge of our human part of the soul’s ethereal into the material.
—“In the Clearing,” Robert Frost

Propagelle

2008-03-23T19:18:00.000-07:00

The propagelle was chosen to symbolize the life our family wants to live because we have come to believe that the present order is not sustainable. A new way must spring up that is perhaps tiny at present but powerful in that it contains that information and hopeful spirit that will prove helpful for many. We have the opportunity to create an alternative that will be elegant yet economically and environmentally sane.

"A propagelle is a tiny, mushroom-like spore which can overwinter and endure dessication as more information than mass. With new light and water, wham! the new mushrooms spring up everywhere to transform the landscape. Letting go, eliminating the unnecessary, is the first part of a larger longer cycle of life."
--Re-imagination of the World, David Spangler and William Irwin Thompson

The Hundredth Monkey

2008-03-22T10:24:00.001-07:00

Where do we join the daunting process of transforming a fossil fuel addicted, artificial culture into a solar, sustainable one? Is each of us responsible to make changes or do we wait for the ‘hundredth monkey’ and total system change? Some would say we have to begin by changing our imagination since we cannot share a future we cannot visualize. We do seem to need a vision that can energize us to leave the Egyptian brickyards and lead us into a promised land. But vision alone has never guaranteed a generation won’t get lost in the wilderness. Then there are those who say, ‘just do it’. Do anything rather than wait for the herd mind to move us. Surely we need dreams and actions, but neither is the controlling factor in change. So where do we place our fulcrum and lever to shift the world.

If we find ourselves in one state or condition that we cannot pay for (read, sustain) and want to create another set of conditions, we begin a process known as transformation. In the transformative process, the limiting factor is finding extra accessible energy. Without a surplus, no change can occur at any level. You cannot ask a single mom supporting two kids to build a new house! She is in survival mode as surely as an African villager. But there are always surprising sources of extra energy available even if they are not perceived by those in a survival mode like most of us.

We must begin a transformation of our personal lives with some accounting of energy—its cost, availability, and form. Right now, we are totally dependent on fossil fuels. The end of this supply is drawing to a close and we are prepared to fight wars to ensure the supply. The real problem with our addiction is that our own technology will shortly choke us off. Oil industry analysts have warned that in the near future if will take a barrel of oil to produce a barrel of oil in the U.S. Then there is the expense that is measured in the cost of guarding supply lines, shown in military increases and possibly measuring near $500 a barrel.

We must learn to use new energy sources and save energy by recycling our waste on site. On our farm, we are capable of producing electricity from biogas (using grass clippings and manure in a digester), wind power from a 1 kw wind turbine on top of a 100-ft tower, and solar power from 8 PV panels.
We are by no means there yet, but we are traveling towards having at least one house powered totally by alternative power sources. During this transition, we are experimenting and seeing what works.

As we learn to conserve and cut expenses, however, we will slowly be able to convert to a sustainable compound powered by alternative energy sources

If all the major cities of the U.S. composted their solid waste, ten million acres of farmland could be organically fertilized—saving five tons of oil for every ton of artificial fertilizer. Since 1990, New York City alone puts out over 100 billion pounds of compostable garbage annually.
- Secrets of the Soil, Peter Thompkins and Chris Bird.

The choice of technology for cleaning up our environment is one place we can demonstrate the efficiency of natural systems over mechanical ones. What does it cost to plant and maintain a tree compared to a machine that has to work twenty-four hours a day for thirty years and cannot clean up after itself?
An acre of trees will
*Remove 2.6 tons of carbon from the air a year
*Trap and hold particulate pollutants like smoke and ask
*Produce enough oxygen in the process for eighteen people every day
*Absorb enough carbon dioxide each year to equal the amount an individual produces by driving 26,000 miles.
*Cut your electric bill by as much as 15% if you have large trees around the house.
- taken from an article by C.I, Baker in The Growing Edge Vol. 4 #4

Below is a set of plans for Meinel cusp, four power solar concentrator (click on the picture to enlarge it). It's a pre-heater for a hot water system. It should not be installed as the primary source of hot water.

Will it help you?
Check the solar band zone map to determine what percent of your water can be heated by the sun.
Can you build it?
Well, it took about 2 days of fooling around. You may write me for more detailed plans.
Why this kind of heater?
There are many types of solar heaters, but not many concentrators. Because of the shape of the arcs, you get four times the heat, and this one has the advantage of collecting rays from 180 degress as soon as the sun rises until sunset.
What's the downside to this thing?
It is heavy and bulky--not as clean looking as the plate collectors like the $1500 Copper Cricket, but for a backyard system, I don't think it can be beat.
How much does it cost?
We has a custom stainless steel tank made fora bout $160. The rest of the materials came to about $100 with stuff like R-19 insulation blanket in a double-walled box. The mylar reflector was only $5...an emergency blanket from K-Mart.

Windmill Pictures and Upcoming Topics

2008-03-18T11:12:00.000-07:00

Spring is starting to 'spring' around here, so it has started us thinking about finishing up projects and starting new ones like gardening again, and milking the cow. Our Dexter recently calved, so we would like to milk her, but she has little insterest in cooperating and we haven't the proper physical setup to ensure safe handling and processing of milk. Safe milk is extremely important to us because of the 4 year old in residence. :D

Here are a couple of shots of lowering the 100-ft windmill tower prior to a large storm. The winter sky was amazing that day.

Spring also has us thinking about the larger topics that we would like to address in the future. We want this blog to be informative and to share the lessons that we are learning.
We hope to discuss at minimum these topics, mixed in with our thoughts and other topics (so if there is something that would interest you, just drop us a note).
- alternative energy selection and installation (wind, solar, and biogas)
- organic gardening planning and installation
- milking cows
- broadscale planning (contouring of property, water collection) and regnerative design
- fish pond planning and installation

Out, Out Damned Waste

2008-03-16T22:05:00.001-07:00

Tied into our living in wonderland metaphor, our family moved to rural East Texas to make simpler living possible and to build some diversity; we are in search of something healthier than weak tea with cream. We had a dream to build a new homestead system that will thrive by utilizing waste products (what the poor have left) while restoring eroded soil and polluted water. Ultimately, sustainability will mean reenacting the great cycles of life on our land and in this region. The more loops we close, the more yield we can expect from natural systems so there will be enough for all without degrading the environment.

But we were right away brought down to earth by another kind of waste problem. With no curbside pickup, the garage filled quickly with daily trash and garbage. Our city lifestyle would not work here. The nearest sanitary landfill was 50 miles away and charged $5 a bag. Burning or making our own landfill were not options for us at first. We also discovered that the two septic tanks needed work. In a month, we were a metaphor for many municipalities and even our whole nation—overwhelmed by our own waste!
A few of the adaptations we made to transform waste into well-being included building a burn pit that provided ashes for soil amendments, recycling of plastic and glass, building constructed wetlands (passive sewage treatment) and reusing paper and food waste in the gardening process. The constructed wetlands will be discussed in detail later.
Instead of adding to the garbage bin, we create a pile of fresh vegetable and fruit wastes to be fed to the chickens. Paper from boxes and mail is saved to be used in the garden. Our organic garden (to be discussed in detail later) includes 8 raised beds in a fenced area. To reduce weeding on paths, we paper and mulch with hay to stop grass from spreading. A current gardening plan will also be included later.
In earlier years, we instead used this paper to create a mulched garden. The sketch below shows one such garden variation.

Much of what we have done is small scale and largely symbolic, but such changes represent the hopeful adaptations we may all make so more families can join the global search for new patterns of sustainable living.

Living in Wonderland

2008-03-16T21:49:00.000-07:00

Today, all humans in the world will add 15 million tons of carbon to the atmosphere, destroy 115 square miles of rainforest, create 72 square miles of desert, eliminate between 40 and 100 species, erode 71 million tons of topsoil, and add 2,700 tons of CFCs to the stratosphere, and increase the population by one quarter of a million.

The world’s environmental crisis is rooted in s a social and ethical crisis. We live in a nation where the wealthiest 1% own more than the bottom 90%. We in America are less than 10% of the global population yet we consume almost half of all the nonrenewable resources each year. The American Dream has become a nightmare for the rest of the world. It is futile to offer modernity to them. We wouldn’t allow such a blatant maldistribution in our own families, how have we come to support it among nations?

Fortunately, there are growing numbers who suspect that our culture is not sustainable. Our response to global crises cannot be simplistic insistence on more conservation alone. We must also have wiser use of all our resources and a greatly reduced waste-stream. We are caught in a double bind, however, because we know we must change yet we cannot imagine living any other way. Lewis Carroll illustrates our situation with his bread-and-butterfly in Alice’s wonderland. Its wings are thin slices of bread, its body a crust, and head a lump of sugar.
“What does it live on?” Alice asked.
“Weak tea with cream,” replied her guide, the gnat.
And a difficulty came to Alice’s head: “Supposing it couldn’t find anything else?”
“Then it would die, of course!”
“But that must happen very often,” Alice remarked, pondering.
“It always happens,” said the gnat.

The double bind, painful as it is, may be just what we need at this critical time in history. We are challenged not to just tinker with the system, but to transform it. We must do something completely new. History offers little guidance here. We have never been at this juncture before. I suggest we keep our “sugar heads” and find ways to nurture (culture) our lives and to allow other nations to do so, each within our own borders.

Site Plan and Layout - Past and Present

2008-03-16T11:51:00.000-07:00

Below are the original plan created in 1994 (in sketch form) and a more updated version drawn in 2005 (also a sketch).
As evidenced, plans evolve over time with changes in family, income, and time.

ORIGINAL PLAN (drawn in 1994)

UPDATED PLAN (drawn in 2005)

In sum, the property now has the following structures and resources established or in progress.
Shelter:
Two residences
Office
Chicken Palace/Greenhouse by gardens
Barn under construction
Tool sheds/Storage
Power shed for batteries
Animal sheds

Food:
Organic gardens/Berries
In progress orchard and vineyard
Chickens (meat and eggs)
Cows (beef and in progress milking)
Tilapia ponds under construction, nearing completion

Waste Treatment:
Constructed wetlands

Energy:
Solar arrays (8 panels)
Wind turbines (2)
Biogas digester

Water:
Rain catchment through a swale system to harvest water
Town-supplied water
Future 600-ft. well

Just as a reminder, the propagelle symbolizes our lives because we are small and not very powerful, but we are in search of an alternative to our contemporary culture that we hope will inform and encourage many others who want to change. A new way must spring up to demonstrate an alternative that lies within reach of many and that will be both economical and elegant. We are committed to finding such an alternative using our own surplus cash and muscles so that others without many resources can believe there is way out.

Reason for Starting

2008-03-16T10:48:00.000-07:00

Ever since we returned from Africa (to the U.S.) as community development missionaries, our family has been looking for a way to live many of the values we came to appreciate in Africa—strong community, no split between body and spirit, man and nature, and an enjoyment of the goodness and bounty of life and people.

Our family is determined to live a life that reflects our growing understanding that there are enough resources for us all when we cooperate with nature, not try to control it. We need not accumulate to survive or be successful. In true community with others and the land, our needs will be met with sustainable bounty and beauty.

We’ve learned a lot together in the process of trying to express a lifestyle that is neither excessive nor a crude retreat from nature. One of the key objectives of our design is to allow us to retrofit many different technologies since this property must function as a research system as well as our homes.

Our house and accompanying system have been designed with a living systems approach, loosely based on Permaculture, an integration of the words permanent agriculture, developed by Bill Mollison.

In Permaculture: A Designer’s Manual, Mollison says:

Great changes are taking place these days…it is now possible to consciously design and maintain economically productive ecosystems which have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural systems. It is now our duty to harmoniously integrate man and landscape where local people meet their needs in a sustainable way. Without permanent agriculture it is impossible to have stable social order.

Ian McHarg, the landscape designer, expresses our new worldview so well in Design with Nature:

The world is a glorious bounty. There is more food than can be eaten if we would limit our numbers to those who can be cherished, there are more beautiful girls than can be dreamed of, more children that we can love, more laughter than can be absorbed. Canvas and pigments lie in wait, stone and wood and metal are ready for sculpture, random noise is latent for symphonies, sites are gravid for cities, institutions lie in the wings ready to solve our most intractable problems, parables of moving power remain unformulated and yet, the world is finally unknowable.

Our eyes need no longer divide us from the world, but unite us with it. We can now abandon the simplicity of separation and give unity its due. Let us abandon the self-mutilation that has been our American way and give expression to the potential harmony of man and nature.

We desire to live this truth even though we are extremely conscious of how much we have been conditioned to think in terms of scarcity and competition—survival of the fittest. The violence of our culture is a tribute to the power of the organizing myth of scarcity. It’s time, however, to give cooperation a chance.

We can, I believe, heal the earth and ourselves. But we can only heal what we love, and we can love only what we know. And we know only what we touch! It feels wonderful to be in touch with the earth on this farm every day.

Pictures of Propagelle

2008-03-03T20:01:00.000-08:00

This is a complilation of some shots from around the property. As we go along, we will share the details of our physical plans and what is currently going on at Propagelle Project.

Propagelle Project Summary

2008-02-25T08:32:00.000-08:00

We began the Propagelle Project in an abandoned 11-acre cotton field in East Texas. Having no existing structures, roads, or power—the property was truly a blank slate. A master site plan was drawn up in 1992, and after studying the soil and natural drainage patterns, we designated appropriate Permaculture zones throughout the property.

With our plans complete, we began the first phase of development in 1993. In approximately 5 years, the family built an 1,800-square foot home, separate office, multiple decks & gardens, greenhouse, tool sheds, passive waste treatment system, rainwater catchment system, and water tower. We have since begun development of other zones- including completion of a second three-bedroom home, larger vegetable garden, planting of fruit trees, windmills, chicken coop/greenhouse, roads, and walking paths.

Each zone is optimized to yield a part of our diet as well as provide for large animals—whose protein and waste are integral to organic food production. Food and garden scraps are used for animal feed and composting. Animal waste & grass clippings provide biomass for a digester that produces methane gas for cooking and fertilizer for the gardens.

At the core, this project is about recognizing available, renewable resources and using them to create a productive, sustainable way of living. We have implemented:
- Efficient building systems, tailored for the humidity and heat of East Texas
- Solar orientation of all structures to enable passive heating, cooling and natural light
- Hybrid power production incorporating solar, wind, and methane gas
- Methane digester, powered by cow manure and grass clippings
- Constructed wetlands to allow passive treatment of human sewage
- Rainwater collection and storage for livestock, irrigation, and fire prevention
- Design of roadbeds and swales for water collection in ponds and landscape
- Organic gardening using on-site materials for mulch and compost
- Soil and pasture development with compost tea and natural amendments

Our goals for the near future include:
-Providing internships and residencies for college students
-Further minimizing of external power usage
-Networking with like-minded families and organizations to share resources and information

We believe in the prime directive of Permaculture, which states:
It is now possible to consciously design and maintain economically productive ecosystems which have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural systems. It is our duty to harmoniously integrate humans and landscapes where local people meet their needs in a sustainable manner because without a sustainable food source, it is impossible to have a stable social order.

In summary, we hope to model a One Planet lifestyle for our grandchildren who, we believe, will have no choice but to live within those limits.

The propagelle symbolizes our lives. We feel small and not very powerful, but we are collectively in search of an alternative to our contemporary culture. A new way of thinking must spring up. Creative alternatives exist that are both economical and elegant. We are committed to cultivating such alternatives using our own surplus cash and muscles so that others without many resources can believe there is a way out.