inveniam viam

A couple things I'm thinking about this afternoon:

To be viable, this community needs infrastructure - power, wifi, water, sewer

Inward facing, we are visualizing "neighborhoods" within the forest, groups of four to six families. Each neighborhood would have it's own well and septic/drainage field. A central greathouse would act as community center and town hall, where we'd meet, share weekly meals, plan.

We're looking at wood fired boilers that would bring heat and hot water to the homes. Wifi would have to be satallite. Power would be multi-layered and I think we'll depend on solar, wind, and water, too. We'll have to take a long look at how we use power. More fresh foods, with canning, smoking, and dehydrating instead of freezing. Manually washing clothes and line drying. There are some really good manual washers on the market. This is very different than what we're used to, but doable.

Each of the current adult members of the community have decent jobs. I'm trying to think how we'd structure the community finances. For this to community to be viable, we would need a non-insignificant number of people working on the land. Those people need to be paid, too. And we'd need to have income streams that come from those workers, too. I'm not sure who might take on the job of financial officer. It sounds horribly thankless. But what it comes to is that the people who have outside jobs will have to pay some kind of mortgage that would pay for the land, the taxes, the reserve fund, and paying the people who do the land work.

For example, just pulling a number out of the air, say we need 100 hrs/wk of land work - taking care of orchards, gardens, bees, livestock, and forest management. Let's say each of those hours will cost $20 plus the farm worker gets a pass on having to pay into the mortgage, so free housing. That's $2000/wk that the outside workers would have to pay. If we have 10 community members that have outside jobs, they'd pay $200/wk each, plus another $100/wk for land mortgage/taxes/reserve fund. On top of that, they'd be paying on their building loan, transportation, clothing, healthcare, entertainment. But, let's say I decide to work 10 hours for the community over my days off. Then I also get paid $200, which would offset what I'll owe. This would encourage community members to do the work the land requires, but does not require them to. They can pay someone else to do the work.

If we have four neighborhoods, each of those neighborhoods could have a designated Forest and Farm Manager whose job would be to not only manage the individual neighborhood orchards, gardens, and livestock, but also coordinate with the other managers for big jobs, like harvest time, taking down trees, building and maintenance.

Outward facing, we're looking at developing some type of public venue - camping, retreat, wedding. We'd need to put in water/sewer/power/wifi for this, too. It's possible that we could sell fruit/veg, eggs, meat, milk, butter in some kind of CSA, or rather sell to the local food co-op. There's not much money to be made with that, though. We wouldn't be producing enough volume. Organic honey has possibilities.

Feel free to share and critique. The more ideas I get the better!

So, this is actually a scary thing to contemplate. By opening our land up to new people with new ideas, I open myself up to criticism and decreased power. I think that both of those things are good, but they're scary.

From Nicole Reese, who studies Ecovillages:

"The #1 need village builders express is finding capable, aligned community members."

Other great bits:

"Ecovillages 2.0 were about retreating into nature to excape an unfriendly world and build a cozy fire for the few.

Ecovillages 3.0 aim to build solar punk enclaves with fully modern amenities, implementing biomimetic tech, and be part of a global community."

"Village Tech is a thing. People are building softwares, protocols, and alternative currencies just to support designing, building, and operating regenerative villages."

I've joined a platform called Tribes.

One of the main challenges that we are facing as a group is Time. There is so much work that needs to be done, and we all work full-time jobs. Additionally, everyone in the family is raising children. So, for example, the two big jobs we have for this season is improving the road and planting trees. The amount of days that people have for working on this is in the single digits.

Setting aside the plans for the maples (syrup), white oaks (acorns), high bush cranberries, hazelnuts, and wild rice, this post is about the more structured orchard and gardens.

I havn't studied orchards and agriculture, so I might be Doing This Wrong. I guess we'll see!

Broadly, the plan is to plant the fruit trees in a hexagonal pattern, spaced about 15-20 feet on center. Most commercial orchards plant trees in rows at 8-10 feet on center. But that's so that the trees can be more efficiently picked.

The current plan is to have a Hügelkultur, or some other type of raised bed, in the middle of each hex, and nitrogen-fixing perrinials scattered on the outer and inner perimeter of the fruit trees. The central vegetable garden could easily be 10 feel long and 4 feet wide.

This year, we'll pick our site. I'll be looking for a very slight slope facing north. The north slope protects the trees from coming into flower too early; that's a problem for us. We often have a spring thaw followed by another week or two of hard freeze. Trees come into flower and then the flowers get frozen. It's better to let the flowers come later.

At 20-feet on center, the hex will be 40 feet across at the points. Counting the outer layer of nitrogen-fixing plants, each hex would be around 2340 sq feet.

Chickens and bees will round it out. That's enough for now.

I bought hackberry trees.

From the article:

- Hackberries were found in the tomb of Peking Man, dated to be 500,000 years old, which has the potential to make them the earliest known plant food eaten by humans!
- They were also found at the Çatalhöyük site in Turkey, which dates to about 9000 years old.
- Evidence of their use is widespread around the world on many continents, from Peru to China, Sudan, Indonesia and South Africa, and of course, North America.
- Many Native American tribes make/made use of the berry. Noted by Moerman were: Acoma, Apache, Chiricahua & Mescalero, Hualapai, Laguna, Navajo, Papago, Pueblo, Tewa, Dakota, Keres, Meskwaki, Omaha, Kiowa and Pawnee tribes.

Last week I was assigned the care of a woman who is dying of cancer. In the morning, first thing, we peek into the patient's room, and when they are awake, we nurses introduce ourselves, ask if they have any questions, and in there's anything that they need right now.

Heidi is about my age. She is fair skinned with long hair that was bright red but is going white now on top. Her face is worn and strong. When I introduced myself, she was in pain, so I went to get her some medication. Throughout the day, her pain never really went away, but it went down enough so that she could get some sleep.

When we nurses come in for a stretch of days, we're assigned the same patient's during that stretch. It's called continuity of care. If the patient wants to talk, you get to know them a bit. That day, Heidi wanted to talk.

"Well, I'm dying," she said. "I ... it's all so strange. It's all so scary and I don't know if there's something else I'm supposed to be doing? Just laying here and dying? Am I going to stay here in this room?" She rubbed her head. "I can't think, it hurts so much."

I began to talk with her, trying to suss out who her support network might be. Her husband had died of ALS twenty years ago. She'd never had children, her parents were gone, and she had no siblings. She had a friend that she'd been sharing an apartment with, but now the friend couldn't afford the rent and was going to move in with a daughter,several states away.

On and off through the day, she asked me questions about what might happen with her. She is on Medicaid and SSI, and I told her about how hospice worked with nursing homes.

She began to tell me stories of her life. Little snippets of this and that. She's lived in a lot of different places working mostly service jobs. "When John died, I didn't handle it well," she said. "Really, really didn't handle it well." She rubbed her head it the spot where the cancer was pressing. It really must hurt like hell. "I was homeless for a while, drugs, all that stuff. Tried to kill myself again." Her lips twisted, "Well, I don't have to worry about that now."

On the third day I was assigned to her, we were talking and she began to weep. "This is just so unfair. I've never been a bad person." I just sat there, listening, holding her hand. "But I guess that I let people go. My two best friends died, and I just never made any other friends. And now I've got no one." She let go of my hand to take some swipes at her cheeks, staying to rub at her temples. "I don't know how to do this by myself."

Her hands flopped in her lap, so I took one and squeezed it. "You aren't alone. I will help you."

We were sitting side by side on her hospital bed, and she leaned her weight against me. "How can you do that?" she said after a minute. "You don't even know me."

I shrugged. "How can I not?"

The next day, I was off. I'd told Heidi that I'd come in the afternoon to check on her. "I guess they're moving me," she said. I sat with her while the social worker went over the plan - the hospice service and the nursing home they were going to transfer her to. When the hospice nurse came, Heidi talked about her uncontrolled pain. The hospice nurse was excellent and decided to transfer Heidi to the inpatient hospice, instead of the nursing home, until her pain was controlled.

Heidi didn't have any clothes because she'd come by ambulance after collapsing at home; home was a couple hours away in rural Kentucky. But she had some of her SSI check left on her debit card, so while they set up transport to the hospice unit, I went and got her a couple of knit sleep pants and tops, and a comfortable pair of slippers.

After getting back with her new things, I sat with her until the transport came to take her to the hospice. "I'll come by tomorrow afternoon," I said.

So that's what I did. It's all kind of worrisome to me because I feel a little like I have no business doing this. Who am I to shephard this woman through her final days? I'm worried about screwing things up, but another part of me is saying that there's just not that much there that can be screwed up. It's mostly just being there for Heidi; listening to her stories and rubbing her back and getting her stuff that she wants. And I tell her what I know about nursing homes so that it's not so scary, and telling her that I'll come by after work and on my days off. I just can't not do it, you know?

I want to grow a couple medelars. After bletting, or aging, the fruit are sweet with a flavor (says the internet) between apple and fig. They can be made into jelly and chutney, mashed and added to yogurt or pudding, or eaten like applesauce, and I'm sure into sweet breads or filling for bars, like Fig Newton's. They're a good source of antioxidants and potassium, magnesium, and calcium.

They can tolerate zone 4 and prefer a sunny, sheltered spot with deep, rich, slightly acitic, well drained soil.

putting this here so I don't lose it

Apples: For clay soils, use apple semi-dwarfing rootstock M111. This is a vigorous semi-dwarfing rootstock that produces a tree that grows to about 85% of a standard-sized apple tree. They are considered one of the more adaptable of all rootstocks; they are quite winter hardy, have a fairly shallow-spreading root system, and are relatively drought tolerant. They are also resistant to woolly apple aphid, collar rot, root rot, and fire blight. Trees grown from an M111 rootstock will bear fruit at a relatively young age. The M111 rootstock is also known by the names MM111 and EMLA 111.

Pears: Marianna 2624 rootstock will produce a large semi-dwarf tree, can be easily maintained from 12 to 17 feet tall. Tolerates wet soils and good disease resistance; moderately resistant to phytophthora, crown rot, root rot, and oak root fungus. Root-knot nematode resistant. Can sucker in adverse conditions. It is compatible as an understock for plums, apricots, and some almonds. Incompatible with peaches and nectarines. Hardy to USDA zone 4-10.

Cherries: Gisela 6 will produce a large semi-dwarf tree, can be easily maintained from 12 to 17 feet tall. Tolerates wet soils and good disease resistance; moderately resistant to phytophthora, crown rot, root rot, and oak root fungus. Root-knot nematode resistant. Can sucker in adverse conditions. It is compatible as an understock for plums, apricots, and some almonds. Incompatible with peaches and nectarines. Hardy to USDA zone 4-10.

Plum and Peach: Krymsk 86 Based on experience in Russia, should be hardy in all major growing areas of the US. It has big anchoring roots that are reportedly well adaptable to heavy clayish soils. It should not be used in soils prone to Rootknot Nematode infestation, nor where high Ring Nematode populations have been detected.

hrm. I can't get the gif to work, :(

click on the links for a larger view - everything below 1.5 year ice will melt out next summer, and much of the remaining ice will get swept out the Nares and Fram Straits.

Buckle your seat belts; we're about to see what happens to this old watery rock when there's no summer ice albedo.