March 2010 Blog Posts (14)

Celt's Garden - Seasonal Herbs

Herbs from the garden are seasonal. The season for leaves is just beginning. The thyme and sage are already leafing out. The savory will be strong enough to start taking clippings next week. The chives are already starting to form flower buds. Just cut those off and chop them up and drop them into an omelet.

This is the time to delight in the return of fresh herbs to the kitchen. Soon, we can start harvesting handfuls and drying them. The thyme, savory, oregano family are harvested and… Continue

Added by Celt M. Schira on March 30, 2010 at 7:00pm — No Comments

"Is a Truly Sustainable Society Achievable As Long As Corporate 'Rights' Trump the Rights of People" . . . . . . . . . Paul Cienfuegos - Audio-Recorded Live Talk" 2/26/10

Quote- "This is Paul Cienfuegos' talk on the ascendancy of corporate rights over the rights of of people as citizens, and how this trend can be reversed. The assertion of corporate over citizen rights came into sharp focus this January with the Supreme Court's "Citizens United" decision which opens the floodgates of unrestricted corporate money into election campaigns, under the guise of free speech. Countering this trend are citizen revolts, many in small communities, which assert the right…

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Added by Heather K on March 29, 2010 at 11:30pm — 1 Comment

Eco Shock Podcast well worth listening to

I'm glad I listened to this podcast. The first segment is with Shaun Chamberlin, author of "The Transition Timeline." He discusses the Transition Movement in Britain and does a great job summarizing the positive aspects of transition.

The promo for the podcast:

DARK OPTIMISM How do we handle Peak Oil AND climate change? Shaun Chamberlin from UK Transition Towns, energy writer Kurt Cobb, plus

Richard Heinberg on renewable hope, with Lester Brown.

You know we are…

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Added by Rob Olason on March 29, 2010 at 2:36pm — 1 Comment

Celt's Garden - That French Feeling

In the back of "The Enchanted Broccoli Forest", Mollie Katzen helpfully included fake sheets for major world cuisines. Let's deconstruct one of them, home style French cooking, and see what we can grow in the garden. Classical French cooking has had a resurgence of interest with the popularity of the movie "Julie and Julia". Thankfully, home cooking in France has always been simpler than the elaborate dishes that Julia Child learned at the Cordon Bleu in Paris after World War II. When your… Continue

Added by Celt M. Schira on March 29, 2010 at 1:30pm — No Comments

Celt's Garden - Backyard Wheat

In 1986, I had a field of golden wheat in my backyard. The field was 20' and 20' and my backyard was in suburban Clarksville, Tennessee. The former mistress of the modest ranch house had a big garden in the back yard. The first summer, I rented a rototiller and tilled up the lot. Then, contemplating the expanse of bare black earth, it dawned on me that she was a stay at home mother with two school aged kids. I had demanding work, a long commute and a baby. So, instead of recreating the big row… Continue

Added by Celt M. Schira on March 27, 2010 at 12:30pm — No Comments

Celt's Garden - Oats in the Garden

It's time to plant spring oats in beds you won't be using until late summer. Oats have multiple uses. Spring planted oats get going strongly by mid-summer and are turned over in the green and fluffy stage to break down and nourish the winter garden that you will be planting in July and August. You are planning a winter garden, right? You want that good stuff to feed your family all fall, winter and next spring. When you see organic kale at $3 a bunch in December and lettuce at $2 a head, you… Continue

Added by Celt M. Schira on March 25, 2010 at 9:00am — 1 Comment

In response to the Venus Project

(Hello. This blog entry is copied from my response to a discussion on the WWU student forum http://forum.wwu.edu/node/11528#comment-29451. I'm not sure if that's visible outside the school, but I put a lot of effort into this, and it is relevant to our work here, so here you go:)

First off, the Venus Project site is down right now, so I'm having…

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Added by Brian Carpenter on March 22, 2010 at 2:30pm — 2 Comments

Celt's Garden - Going Crackers

A small garden adds significantly to the gardener's quality of life. Many small gardens and farms together produce a significant fraction of an area's vegetables and fruits. Vegetables and fruits are mostly water, so the less trucking about of water that we do, the better.

Calorie crops are whole different problem. Calorie crops, the energy dense grains and legumes that provide a big chunk of our diet, are hard to find locally.

It was not always so. In the 19th and early 20th… Continue

Added by Celt M. Schira on March 22, 2010 at 12:30pm — No Comments

Celt's Garden - The Joy of Horse Poop

It's horse poop season. Now is the time to check around for used horse bedding, borrow or rent a truck and go shovel some up. Horse bedding and its embedded poop is far easier to come by than cow manure, for social reasons rather than sheer volume. We have some 83,000 dairy cows in Whatcom County. Their manure is either a resource or a problem, depending on how you look at it. (Gene Lodgon's comment about dealing with the manure from large dairy operations was that it consisted of making a… Continue

Added by Celt M. Schira on March 21, 2010 at 11:30am — 4 Comments

Celt's Garden - Slow Bread

Wheat breeder Dr. Steve Jones, the director of the WSU Mt. Vernon research station, gave a talk recently on small scale grain growing, harvesting and threshing at Inspiration Farm. It was standing room only, and the packed house included a broad spectrum of farmers, the young and pierced, the middle-aged hippies, the boys from long time family farms in Lynden. Steve's message was that there is a resurgence in small grain growing in communities all over the country. We have lost the… Continue

Added by Celt M. Schira on March 19, 2010 at 12:30pm — 2 Comments

waste not want not

this morning i read an article about how the water and sewage systems in many cities are badly in need of repair. this comes at a time when the government is broke. what a pickle!

if sewage systems were designed at the neighborhood (or city block) level, it would have prevented a lot of the costly problems we face today.… Continue

Added by David Zhang on March 18, 2010 at 12:04pm — 1 Comment

"Capitalism-A Love Story" now available on dvd

Many of you are most likely already aware of Michael Moore's latest documentary, "Capitalism-A Love Story."

However, if you missed it during its theatrical run, I suggest you will be well rewarded by viewing it on dvd. The reason for saying this is not just the value of looking at our capitalistic economic system with "fresh eyes," which you will get with Moore's trademark humor (and cynicism), but also for the extras contained on the dvd that… Continue

Added by Rob Olason on March 13, 2010 at 8:53pm — No Comments

Celt's Garden - Managing your small urban garden

In all gardening, start with your life. What do you like to eat? How much time can you devote to gardening, really? I always suggest that people start small, something between 32 and 150 square feet. In really tight spaces, you may have even less garden. Not to worry, the most challenging gardening is the first 10%.

The philosophy of square foot gardening is to maximize the value of small spaces. Square foot gardening is a very old idea. F.H. King wrote about small space intensive… Continue

Added by Celt M. Schira on March 8, 2010 at 2:00pm — 5 Comments

Life after Growth

In this fascinating article, Richard Heinberg summarizes his forty year journey of discovery that led him to become a persistent voice of warning that our endless growth economy was nearing its conclusion. After the failure of the Copenhagen talks, he says he's done warning, now is the time to create a new future.

"We must assume that a satisfactory, sustainable way of life is achievable in the absence of fossil fuels and conventional economic growth, and go about building it. This… Continue

Added by Rob Olason on March 5, 2010 at 1:22pm — 1 Comment