A Damselfly in the Wilderness

Posted on May 23, 2013 by Harold Rhenisch

I live in Oregon Territory. My part is owned by the Government of Canada now, but it started here, in the musings of an American in his last hours. His name was Henry David Thoreau.

The sun sets on some retired meadow, where no house is visible, with all the glory and splendor that it lavishes on cities, and perchance as it has never set before–where there is but a solitary marsh hawk to have his wings gilded by it, or only a musquash looks out from his cabin, and there is some little black-veined brook in the midst of the marsh, just beginning to meander, winding slowly round a decaying stump. We walked in so pure and bright a light, gilding the withered grass and leaves, so softly and serenely bright, I thought I had never bathed in such a golden flood, without a ripple or a murmur to it. The west side of every wood and rising ground gleamed like the boundary of Elysium, and the sun on our backs seemed like a gentle herdsman driving us home at evening.

So we saunter toward the Holy Land, till one day the sun shall shine more brightly than ever he has done, shall perchance shine into our minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening light, as warm and serene and golden as on a bankside in autumn.

Henry David Thoreau, Walking, 1862.

Sounds like this wilderness is a pretty beautiful place! There’s only one snag: it was recently cleared of its Indigenous peoples; the wilderness that Thoreau sees to the west of New England, and which the United States will soon populate, is a created object. Thoreau treats it as a refreshment for inbred intellects and a place for re-creating wild life within humans — which he identifies as “Indian” life. What Thoreau doesn’t mention, and likely didn’t know, is that it had to be achieved by killing those “Indians”, because they were in the way of this life-giving wildness. Ironically, they are to be honoured by creating wildness within American souls. And so we get this …

Vernon Rowing and Paddling Centre, Swan Lake

Settler culture re-creation on the shores of a Syilx food lake.

That is the point of North American history. It comes down to that image. For a time, there were dreams of growing food and healthy children on this earth, but, well, a look around the paddling centre (a former farm) will show you just how temporary that idea was …

… and a closer look will show you something amazing…

Damselfly in the Invasive Weeds

Still making a go of it after all these years; still turning the sun into pure spirit; still moving it around.

The earth just doesn’t give up! In contemporary Okanagan culture, the rowers, the weeds and the damselfly live in the same relationship to agriculture and its attempts to find a language halfway between local and distant cultures. They have all gone wild. The only difference between them is that the damselfly has moved from non-wild Syilx earth into wild Syilx-less earth, while the others have moved the other way. It’s the only one not looking for wildness, because it’s the only one already in it. In other words, the wildness was never in Syilx territory. It was in Thoreau’s head, and in those of his countrymen. all along. When you row on Swan Lake today, you are rowing in Thoreau’s head, laid as a map over the water and the land. Beautiful, eh!

Next: Wildness Moving Back to the City; culture and respect moving back to the land.

The Scent of Spring

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Harold Rhenisch

Here’s the queen of our wild flowers … it smells so fine, it finds you before you find it!In wild rose season, everyone gets to be a bee. Bees gather pollen after being lured by the scent… and humans? The intriguing creatures stick their noses into the centre of the flower and breathe in deeply. That’s just as practical as the bee thing. It can change your life, and your attitude to the world around you. Instead of creative writing classes, we can just send people out to breathe deeply.

They will return as humans.

All flowers found on Tuesday in Bella Vista.

Beyond David Suzuki

Posted on May 14, 2013 by Harold Rhenisch

My friend Claude has reminded me of David Suzuki’s observation:

“We need air to live, we need water to live, we need food to live. If we continue to destroy all these gifts of the Earth, we will have no livelihood.” David Suzuki

By “We”, Dr. Suzuki means, I think, creatures like this:

Crowd in Hong Kong Source

Dr. Suzuki is an eminent politician. He knows how to influence humans. His “we” reflects that. To ensure the earth survives human self-absorption and over-population, however, this vision will need to evolve to include, among the ‘we’, this person…

Killdeer

Leading me step by step away from its nest. Waiting for me when I stop, moving when I move on.

And this one, too…

Look how its whole body breathes …

Western Tailed-Blue, Bella Vista

With my fellow earth people and the planet in mind, I’d like to expand Dr. Suzuki’s vision for the new century and the future that must be built:

We need air to live, we need water to live, we need food to live. We, the people of the earth, from the smallest bacteria to the largest whale, are these things. Whoever in this community continues to destroy these things and their living connections is separating life from the earth and individuals from community, thereby destroying life and sowing death in its place. We, the people of the earth, from the grizzly bear to the salmon and the human child to the black widow spider, the blue-bunched wheatgrass and the rocky mountain maple choose life.

If you can shorten that, I’d love to hear your version. Consider it a work in progress.

Bringing Life to the Political Table

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Harold Rhenisch

Politicians represent humans and the workings of their societies. I believe that is just not good enough. For instance…

Not Represented by Politics

In a political process that is skewed towards dealing with human society separate from the greater society of which it is a part, many citizens of society have no voice. This yellow-bellied marmot, for instance, freshly up for his four months of sun. Did his appearance appear in the local newspaper? No it did not. There isn’t even a reporter covering the marmot beat. No articles on the quality of the balsam root crop this year. Nada.

One assumption behind the culture that creates human-centred political philosophies is that life will take care of itself — it’s a kind of an accidental thing that evolves and changes and adapts through a mysterious process called “wildness”. Well, when you live on a piece of land and it is your identity, there is no wildness You can only get to such a place if you assume that it is there for human use, and as soon as you assume that, you are not there. Behind that assumption is the one that humans and life are somehow different. Behind that is a notion about specialness and God (Adam and Eve munched the apple and then were kicked out of the garden.) God must be miffed to be so misunderstood. The garden is still here! Here God is, saying “deer”, and lo a deer walks across the grass, but politicians hear only “resource”. Anything else is for children. Sentimental, you know.

Half-Starved Doe

Denied a viable life by human predation on her food, shelter and travel needs, this is one half-starved critter with a nasty-looking sore on her other cheek. Locally, this is known as a “problem deer”. The suggestion is “removal.” Another word for that is “death.” Another is “no room on the planet for you.”

Here’s an idea: if it’s for children, it’s probably about right. If that doesn’t seem right, it means you left the garden and are looking for a canister of weedkiller and some rodent bait. That means you are the problem. Politicians, for example, propose ensuring the health and sustainability of the human societies they see as their business. Around here, the different ways of doing this are strangely reduced to a choice between “the economy”, which means building roads and buildings and green space, like this …

Multi-Million dollar Plan to create 4 blocks of Green Space With a Road…

… where there was a road before.This is “economy.” Vernon

… or through a thing called sustainable resource use, which is like saying, “We’re going to look after the earth…for people.” What, are we slave owners? After 17 months working on this project and paying attention, as best I can, to the land around me, I have learned a different road. Take a look …

Resource

No, not the arrow-leaved balsam root, or the last clumps of bunchgrass sheltering beside it, or the sagebrush, but the pile of old trees. Some kid came up from the orchards long ago and built himself a fort out of grassland trees. That’s a resource. You use it, it fills a purpose, and then you’re done. Meanwhile the ants, termites, birds and bees that lived in those trees are… gone.

The earth is not a resource. To say it is one is like saying that your mother is a resource, or your child, or the blood in your veins, or the spinach you planted in August (the stuff that overwintered under the snow for four months, and now, mid-May has made a spinach pie for eight, out of 6 spinach seeds (6!) — which is what I served here last night), is a resource. No, it is not a resource. It is life. If it were a resource, it would be so to something that is not-life. Is that you? Not-life?

Skeleton Weeds Given the Heave-Ho

If you’re not in favour of public intervention in the grasslands, if you consider it wild and consider that it will look after itself, or that the budget must wait because a new sports field in town has a 5 million dollar priority, then you’re in favour of the replacement of the grasslands by this noxious weed, brand new here and waiting for no political discussions.. If we don’t stop this evil of human neglect and carelessness now, the entire valley will be wiped out of half of its life within a couple decades. Next year is too late. My year-to-date: 2000 plants removed. That is 20,000,000 viable seeds removed from the wind. You want to know what evil looks like? It is this.

So, let’s have a look at something else popular with Green politics: “The Environment”. Have you ever seen an environment? Let’s look. Is this an environment?

Balsam Root and the Earth’s Deep Mantle Blasted to Make a Subdivision

Not an environment. Life the whole way. And some reshaping of the living earth to fit automobiles (non-life).

OK, is this an environment?

Arrow-Leaved Balsam Root Gone to Seed

Hardly an environment. Many insects live on and around and off of this plant, but that doesn’t make it an environment. It means that, together, the insects, the plant, the air, the soil, the microbes in the soil, the sun, the snow, the marmots, the deer and the rain are life. Life, lives all at once. A lot of it is living off of those balsam root seeds. To illustrate that, take a look at that image of the balsam root and the ruined “tree” fort that opened this blog, but two weeks later …

Balsam Root Seeds, All Gone

The deer have been by.

The seeds are hard to gather and shell, and once you’ve done so you have a lot of work for very little… if you’re a human. That might be worth it, but the deer do it easily. They just digest the whole flower head. There’s a point in there about wildness. In contemporary thinking, that deer is wild. In earth thinking, that deer is a person — as are cattle, politicians, and grocery stores. It means that it needs a voice in politics. Since it can’t speak for itself, we must speak for it. It doesn’t mean it cannot be used for food, especially since it is such an efficient and gentle harvester of wild sunflowers, but it might mean that it can no longer be harvested for sport, because it is us. Any use of deer for food is a sacred responsibility, that starts with looking after the earth as if it were our mother and our child. Any politics that talks about resources will fail. There are no resources. There is life, and there is death. There are only our sisters and our brothers. Some of them serve a role as food, but they still have a place at the table, on their terms, not ours. Oh, and as for the Garden of Eden?

After a Morning Rain

God didn’t kick us out. All he did was give a choice: live in the garden or live in the weeds. He was kind of hoping, though, that we’d choose the garden. Every morning we are presented with this choice anew.

Up to this point, politicians have largely been the kind of people who choose weeds. I’m not kidding. I found three election signs today, all hammered into the northern flanking motion of hawk skeleton weed in the valley, the number one threat to the long-term viability of the Okanagan Valley. It makes almost every other species here an endangered species — and not in some unforeseeable future. Obviously, the people working for these politicians did not know that there is evil, or that it must be dealt with now, not with talk or pounding in signs, but by doing the real work. In my speechlessness, I offer red arrows to show where the largest of the weeds (769 individuals in total) are …

So much for the social democrats. And …… so much for the Neo-Conservatives, and …

… so much for the other Neo-Conservatives. As for the Green Party, our most enthusiastic candidate from a city far away urges us to build an economy out of local food processing. That’s a good start. It will do amazing things for human social infrastructures. It still doesn’t subordinate humans to life, though, or bring life to the political table. When that party does that, then the economics of the other parties will become as foreign as the skeleton weed is now. I don’t want humans to continue to be that weed, or to continue to vote for it. Yes, vote for it. The state of the land is a direct representation of the state of our politics. That hurts, but sometimes it’s good to stare the truth in the face and then to start in on the real work, with renewed vigour.

British Columbia Election: of Zombies and Skeletons

Posted on May 11, 2013 by Harold Rhenisch

Since 1990, the budget and staff of the Environmental Ministry of the British Columbia Government has been reduced by something like 92%. As a result, no one is there to deal with the zombies.

Skeleton Weed (Foreground). Pure Zombie.

These shoots of concentrated evil are present in 2 areas of the Okanagan: north of town, and up the hill from my house. Both are in the City of Vernon. The zombies have been here for less than a decade. They can be stopped. Someone has to do the real work.

The civic government is planning a sports field, one penny at a time. The provincial government has no time, energy, desire, funds or personnel to deal with the death of its rangelands, or any other part of its environment. Meanwhile, we are in the midst of a provincial election that exists on TV only, as such performances usually do. Out in the world, as a result, it’s rather a skeleton election: one party got us into this mess, another also got us into this mess, another has offered a candidate from a city 6 hours away, who has not even come here to pull a single weed, and then there’s a guy who says, “Vote for the other guy.” And he’s the “Independent!” Sheesh. Meanwhile, I vote, like this:

Skeleton Weed Meets Its Match

One zombie at a time.

Tally for today: 253. That’s 530 year to date.

The Creative Economy and a Living Earth

Posted on May 9, 2013 by Harold Rhenisch

Here’s how the earth came to be alive up on the hill.

Spider Making the Most of Invasive Knapweed

Here’s how the earth came to be dying up the hill. An investment company hoping to transform a section of living earth into a piece of “land” which could be sold socially blasts it to bits to make roads and building lots. Now that a rare remaining grassland was a part of social life and no longer a part of the living earth (it was now “land”), the company could sell it as a cost to society. To make this cost as large as possible, a vineyard was planted. Its presence made the earth around the development seem like a piece of Provence (a social image) and the “land” seem like a piece of New Mexico (a social image of a hot place). These attractive social ideas were incorporated into the architectural and landscaping plans of the development. They had the potential to increase the land’s cost to society, which would then be private profit for the developers. For complex reasons to do with global economic factors, a collapsed real estate market, and so on, the development went bankrupt. At that point, the final phases of the vineyard development were abandoned, although the sagebrush and native plants had already been scraped off of them and piled up to the side. In other words, it had already been transformed from life into “land”. At this point in the development of a piece of living earth into a monetary engine, the project’s capital investment was written off, and the developers moved on, free of encumbrances. Well, almost. They left behind a life-debt, from the earth’s perspective, and a creative debt. Here’s what the creative debt looks like:

Bamboo Stakes, Rotting Away

These stakes were likely harvested in China and bundled and shipped at great expense. As this creative input and the life-debt behind it was never put to use to help raise young grape vines (by saving on labour costs — another social cost contributing to greater profit for the development company) it was ultimately wasted. Instead of leading to social life, as a substitute for original earth-life (which would have preserved and expanded the creative capacity within them), these stakes became only capitalized objects, discarded as easily as the capital debt. Unlike the debt washed clean by the bankruptcy process, however, this debt remains. Here’s some more of it…

Vineyard Infrastructure … Mostly Ruined Now

Strangely, the laws around private property are so strong that the banking companies left with the abandoned project never sold off this material (while it was still useful) so that the creative input that went into it could be used, to help clear its life-debt. Instead, it was treated like the capital that invested in it. Capital, though, is a social concept. The earth’s debts are not so easily erased. There is, however, a way to do it, that gives some hope for the future. For one thing, the wire still holds its creative potential. In the bank of creative potential, it still has a positive balance in its account.

The rest of the story is what is happening around that stack of wire. Here’s a closer look …

Yes, humans are messy, and this form of economic organization is messy, but that’s not the point. Look more closely …

Yellow Clover!

You see that? The “land” creation process made a desert of blasted bedrock, yet life is establishing itself there. Not social life. Not human life. Not the original grassland. Not a vineyard. But life. New life. With new goals. In this case, the great debt this “development” created within the living earth can be partially erased by observing that in what is supposed to be “Provence” and “New Mexico” and “hot” and a “desert”, new crops are showing up, capable of living on dead land without irrigation or soil and making it alive. The creative potential of the bamboo has been wasted.

The removal of the slopes from the earth to create a vineyard to increase property costs was a waste. The death of the land and its now-rare grassland was a waste. All of these wastes are debts. Nonetheless, the earth can be returned to this place, and it can be alive again, with the input of human creative energy. In other words, by giving human social energy to the earth (rather than using the alienation of a living earth to create social debt which can then be turned into private profit), humans can help the earth give them a creative profit: a living development, with an economy of life stronger than the life that was here before, and a social life in tune with the earth. There can, one day, be profit here again, but it will be in the life created out of developing human error and transforming “land” back into living earth, complete with new crops, new reclamation strategies, new systems of earth-based economics, and new lifestyles. It is too late to go back. We can, however, go forward with hope. If we chose not to, we are choosing death…

Death

Transformation of a Living Earth of 1000s of species and great water efficiency into “Water Smart” Rock Landscaping and invasive knapweed and a few strands of cheatgrass, and nothing else.

…instead of life …

Life: Beautiful Natural Grasses (Foreground)

Doing a better job of aesthetic gardening than the “Provençal” plants in the back.

I mean, look at the beautiful colour of this stuff…Lavender looks no better, but this stuff can grow here without water, and can host insect worlds. Of course, even the knapweed, for all its sinister, hellish qualities, does a better job of that than lavender…

Crab Spider, Nicely Camouflaged

Let’s work with the earth. Let’s live.

Wild Bees Going Wild

Posted on May 8, 2013 by Harold Rhenisch

Wasps, bees, hornets, bumblebees, beetles, ants, butterflies … everyone is out in the wild cherries today. Nobody is in the orchards ten feet away. And not one single domesticated bee in sight. Look at them flying around!

Here’s a blue wasp sucking the sweet nectar of life…

And, not to be outdone, a blue ant …

… and this beautiful creature, whatever it is …

… and all the while, these guys are flying around …

I gave up on photography and just stood in the swarm (they cared not a whit). I noticed this much…

Mourning Cloak Butterfly
Blue ant … Blue ant? … yeah, blue ant!
Shiny blue fly.
Grey bee 2 cm
Blue wasp 2 cm
Blue grey bee 1.5 cm
Blue grey bee 2 cm
Black wasp 1 cm
Black bee-fly 1 cm
Beetle-like bee 1.5 cm
Small round beetle with grey scribbles on its back 5 mm
Yellow bee with black stripes 1.5 cm
Yellow and black bee 1.5 cm
Multiple tiny bees and wasps ± 5 mm
Black hornet 4 cm.
Black bumble bee 4 cm
Yellow bumble bee 3 cm
Yellow jacket 3 cm
Black and white striped bee (fat) 2 cm … and
Wasp with red abdomen with black lightning strike decoration, like a black widow …

Gold fur and black chitin is a very lovely look …
Here’s what it looks like in flight …

And not a single bee, wild or domesticated, in the orchard. Does it really seem an accident that domesticated bees are dying out? The poor things are as poisoned as we are. Now, just so you can share in this glimpse of a possible future for beekeeping, here’s a video, a bad video, a wobbly video with a ridiculous airplane filling it with NOISE, but, still, full of bees, for your pleasure…

They care not one bit whether a human stands in their tree or not. Got that? We’re not the story. Culturally, in these parts wild bees are considered excellent pollinators and … well, that’s about it. But it’s not about pollinating a future crop, and it’s not about honey. It’s about the presence of a crop right now. One ignored by humans. One that causes hay fever among humans with non-localized immune systems damaged by human environments. One that nonetheless provides pollen. Huge amounts of pollen. Here’s the skinny on that:

That is, um, more protein and less fat than a T-bone steak. And we don’t harvest this stuff? Imagine a world in which there were flowers everywhere, no agricultural chemicals, because they didn’t matter, and we just harvested the pollen and staggered around surrounded by beautiful insects and birds and blue (Blue!) ants. I mean, wouldn’t our work places turn into this?

Beats flogging burgers at MacDonalds. Look again …

See? No grease. Humans, it seems, are always the last to know. That’s because we’re still new on this planet. I think the best thing to say to young scientists might be: Get out of the lab! Go and stand in a tree at 3 in the afternoon on a hot day! Thirty minutes there are worth 5 years in a place of higher learning. Oh, and stay out of the orchard! That place can kill you.

Want to See Something Beautiful?

Posted on May 7, 2013 by Harold Rhenisch

Look at these guys!

Knapweed Root Weevils Going to Town

Knapweed, the scourge of the West, the plant from Hell (well, Stalingrad), has met its match, thanks to a pest importation program. And, boy, these guys are hungry:

Monsanto, Say Good-Bye.

It’s about time!

The Future Economy is Here

Posted on May 6, 2013 by Harold Rhenisch

On Friday (click), I mentioned that the future is here. Now. Not tomorrow. Not on the second Tuesday after the signing of the Keystone Pipeline Accord. Right now. Look up. There it is! It is just a matter of learning to see it. Here, this is what it looks like, in case it’s night or your window has curtains…

Lambs Quarters in the Spring Sun

In a world of monocultural agriculture, in urban configurations that include huge amounts of waste space, and in which most space is not productive of life, the earth sends forth lambs quarters to heal the soil. To capitalist agricultural traditions, this is called a weed and is actively suppressed. So is the economy that it supports.

It is amazing. Wherever the soil is removed from life, which is a complex series of mutually-supportive relationships unfolding in time (an economy, if I’ve ever heard of one), lambs quarters and other colonizing plants sprout, to begin the process of regeneration. That’s our clue to regenerating our economies. We just need to look. If we look, we might see lambs quarters showing us the precise place in the living earth where true profit can be made and true healing can begin, with beautiful lambs quarters salads and cooked dishes to replace spinach and all its cello-packed long-distance trucking hydrocarbons. Healthy for the soil, healthy for local economies, healthy for the atmosphere, healthy for farmers, and healthy for our bodies. Take a look at this dry hill…

Lambs’ Quarters and Its Buddy Wild Lettuce Doing Their Magic

The soil is dust at this time of the year, but they are deeply rooted and thrive on natural water. No water infrastructure required. Got that? No tax burden. No capital costs.

And if we look around, we might see another wet season crop finishing up at the beginning of the dry season:

Desert Parsley

This is the plant that kept the Syilx alive on this land for eight thousand years of spring hunger. This is the one they burned the grasslands for, to keep the cycle of renewal in a youthful, productive phase.

Do you see? Once the land has been let go for a few years, it starts to look like this:

Sagebrush Getting Out of Hand…

… but the balsam root (a food crop) still doing well. Mind you, only a few crops are thriving here.

Up close, that sage really looks like this …

Sagebrush

A monocultural desert.

That’s why succession agricultural is the way to go: as the first colonizers are replaced by food plants, which are replaced by woody plants providing shelter and food for winter birds, the full richness of what the land can provide is spread over time — about 15 years of it. After that, it’s time for renewal — not plowing, just clearing away, and then …

… the desert parsley will be doing more than hanging on. This is a form of agriculture that creates a living economy. Rather than future potential being stored in capitalized mutual funds or in heavily indebted water systems or in monetary objects of various kinds, they are stored in the future creative potential of the land. Human creative potential is directed towards ensuring the health of those investments. Instead of investing for the present, and passing the debt on to our children, we invest in the future and pass the profits on to our children. In this respect, monocultures like this …

Dwarf Royal Gala Apple Walls

… are also forms of economic organization. In this case, heavy capitalization. This 20 acre orchard likely has a capitalization of four million dollars, and a return on investment of approximately zero. It is, in other words, an economic system that doesn’t work in any practical sense. What you see in the above image is the creative potential of the wild earth to produce life (a complex system of inter-related relationships) reduced to a small number of species, including grass, dandelions, mallow and a few other wild plants trying to heal the soil, and dwarf apple trees. The idea is that by concentrating all of the creative potential of the land into one product, it can be produced in abundance, and the difference between a complex living system, in which the life energy here were shared with many species, and this model, in which only one species (humans) benefits, the investor (the farmer) can use the excess as profit, and turn it into money (a social relationship.) The next year, the land can produce the same wealth again. Well, that system is broken. The only profit being taken here is by the capital systems (banks, chemical companies, post companies, trucking companies, packing companies, supermarkets, and so on), leaving the farmer, the land, and all the hungry people and animals unserved. Here’s where the profit goes …

Farmer Spraying Poison to Thin His Apple Trees

When I was a young man, we did this work by hand. It was a major source of employment. In order to keep food cheap, it is now done by poison and, logically enough, thousands of people in this community go to the food bank to try to keep from starving. The farmer is using a canister spray mask c. 1970, a pair of gloves, an old shirt and a turban as protective gear. Good luck on that.

You see how that works? In a fully-capitalized form of agriculture, fully-privatized and removed from community (employment), profit must be extracted by reducing social costs (which were once the profit), rather than merely reducing competition for life energy. Humans with no access to the life energy now have to pay for it. Well, it doesn’t have to be so. The land is shouting the future to us:

1 Hour Before Spraying

Ignore the apple blossoms. They’re not the future. They’re just debt. The future is the dandelions growing between the rows. In the current model, they are mowed down to prevent soil erosion.

That’s how to see the future. Look at what is being ignored, yet which is still alive. Until 20th Century Industrial Chemical Farming (largely a Nazi invention … really), dandelions were a source of salads, wine, syrup, coffee, and medicinal herbs, with great value. Surely, 2 out of 3 rows of apples returning NO profit to earth or humans but only to non-living systems (which must remove life energy from earth and humans in order to concentrate that profit) could be removed, to leave more space for dandelions, and a series of succession plants building on their healing of the land, OR 1 row could be cropped in an annually-regenerating crop of aromatic saplings for meat and fish smoking facilities, eliminating food refrigeration costs and providing shelter for birds, OR 1 row could be given over to community gardens, or … well, one could go on, because the current system does not produce life or profit, so you can do anything else and add wealth to town. Tomorrow, I will expand this story. Today, though, I wanted to make an initial economic point: 1. any form of agriculture is a form of economy, written large; to understand the economy, look at what’s in front of you; 2. in industrial agriculture, profit is the life energy removed from living systems, with the flaw that 3. the living systems cease to regenerate and systems become old, tired and no longer capable of supporting complex life (such as humans or slugs), and 4. for living systems this is the deal breaker, because the alternative is a dead planet. However, 5. successful economic systems renew and 6. the living economy is attempting to do just that. By observing the opportunities it is taking, we can see the opportunities that we can take, for renewed economic profit, renewed living environments, and renewed social and personal health. When humans become impoverished and are the weeds in their economic system, they need only look to the weeds …

Pineapple Weed

Growing in the iron-hard soil of a roadway (with the frilly leaves). Zero water. That’s a bit of wire weed (looking very flush with spring water) with the broader leaves, poking through. You cannot kill wire weed, and you cannot pull it out without explosives. Well, I exaggerate, but, tough, right?

Pineapple weed flowers make a far more beautiful tea than chamomile tea, it grows everywhere you let it and many places you don’t, and has the beautiful and relaxing aroma of fresh pineapples. Water requirement? Zero. Wireweed is an ancient herbal remedy and a key ingredient in Vietnamese cooking. At the moment, these crops produce zero dollars for the economy, but they could produce millions, with almost no capital cost. The future is here. It just needs to be seen, because once it is seen the path to wealth and prosperity is very clear. Contemporary agricultural practices are tired and old, and at the end of a cycle. They require more and more input for less and less return. Yet, new crops are everywhere (and renewed economic models), and require almost zero input — except for the creative input of seeing them.

Arrow-Leafed Balsam Root Seed Crop is Ready on the Hill!

While “cultural tradition” says it’s not yet time to plant a garden.

Making the Future Now

Posted on May 3, 2013 by Harold Rhenisch

Two days ago, I spoke about the great lie that lies behind contemporary economics. It involves a fruit marketing company, originally designed to erase lies but now in the thick of them, and a beer can scaring a coot in a spring flood creek. My friend Tamara reminded me that such stories are hurtful to human hope. Thank you, Tamara. I will now try to restore that hope, because I never meant to weaken it. It’ll take me a few weeks, but I’m excited about the prospects. You can read the original post here. Now follows the first attempts at a new vision, based on the principle that the future is with us. All that stands between us and a new world are words — or, rather, the lack of them. I am now going to make an attempt to find some of them. Here goes. First (sorry, Tamara), let’s start with an assessment of where things are.

Davison’s Orchard, Vernon, British Columbia

After 90 years of farming in the valley, the colonial orchard continues to devour the earth.

The Davisons are a hardworking, devoted and successful farming family, in a country where most farmers have failed. That is deeply honourable. Nonetheless, the image above shows the contemporary economic condition very clearly: in order to make profit, the living earth must be destroyed and translated into an artificial version of itself. Monetary systems, both capitalistic and communistic, work on this principle. Humans have been so successful at this, that it has come to the point at which the choice is very clear: either the earth becomes a simplified, artificial machine, or humans adopt a new economic method, which allows the earth to produce life once more. I am solidly behind the latter model, because I don’t think the first model will lead to anywhere other than poverty, in all sense of the word. But I promised hope. Look, here’s hope:

Davison’s Five-Year-Old Williams’ Christbirne Orchard

Don’t look at the pear trees, look at the grass. There is the hope.

If a capitalistic economic system requires profit to be drawn from the land, on the principle that the land will continue to produce life and energy, freely, without input, which can just be drawn from, the future economic system will realize that profit comes from creating complex webs of life, rather than only complex social relationships, because the webs of life are obviously not going to keep on without help. The image above shows how this might take place. This farm creates pears, which people purchase as part of a harvest celebration in September. It also, however, creates a large amount of green material, which is mowed down and considered waste. A future economic system, one that works towards maintaining the earth, will reward investment not on the profit that is drawn from the land, but on the increase of diversity within the land itself. Simply put, the profit that is derived from the efficiencies of chemically destroying competition for the pears and easy access for machinery on the land, will be compensated by harvesting dandelions, grass, and a large number of diverse wild plants between the pear rows. As a benefit, wild bees will pollinate the fruit, birds will thrive, and this monocultural zone will produce two kinds of profit: profit for the farmer, and life for the earth. Instead of profit being derived from objects, such as pear trees, it will be derived from the creative potential of the land. This will work in a practical sense, because the crops grown on that land will not require heavy inputs of water, which cost both human society and natural environments a great deal. It’s possible, it’s do-able, and it’s exciting. All that stands between us and a living earth is greed and stupidity. Against greed, we can act collectively. Against stupidity, well. Have a look.

Smokebush (Valanidh)

In Bulgaria, Valanidh (a variety of sumac, in the mango family) is a mainstay of the health system, and a very profitable herbal crop. In Vernon, British Columbia, it is a decorative plant, which grows too quickly for poorly-planned aesthetic gardening and so is hacked back with clippers until it is ugly, defeating its purpose. Yet, it is still full of life and beauty.

We could create an industry around this plant in 3 years. All we would have to do was to put the pruning clippers away and work together, rather than apart, and work for practical ends, rather than pretty ones. But that’s not a loss. Practicality of this kind is beautiful in itself, and will result in beautiful, free-growing trees, right within urban space. It can be done. It can be done easily. That our university is not working on this is to its shame. That our city prefers to talk about 100 million dollars for road and water infrastructure is only an indication that words are lacking for the future that is already here. We who walk these roads and hills will have to lead the way. I find that inspiring.

Okanagan Okanogan

Uniting art and science in the earth.

Category Archives: Land