Braiding Sweetgrass, forest floors and urban permaculture (on Friday’s…)

This week I am mainly sharing someone else’s writing – quoted stories form Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Forest floor

“After dinner I take the basket of unwashed leeks to the tiny patch of forest above my pond to plant them. The harvesting process now unfolds in reverse. I ask permission to bring them there, to open the earth for their arrival. I search out the rich moist hollows and tuck them into the soil, emptying my basket instead of filling it. These woods are second or third growth but sadly lost their leeks long ago. It turns out that when forests around here grow back after agricultural clearing, the trees come back but the understory does not.

From a distance the new postagricultural woods look healthy, the trees came back thick and strong. But inside something is missing. The April showers do not bring May flowers. No trillium, no mayapple, no bloodroot. Even after a century of regrowth, the postfarming forests are impoverished, while the untilled forests just across the wall are an explosion of blossoms. The medicines are missing are missing, for reasons ecologists do not yet understand. It might be microhabitat, it might be dispersal, but it is clear the original habitat for these old medicines was obliterated in a cascade of unintended consequences as the land was turned to corn. The land is no longer hospitable for the medicines and we don’t know why. 

The Skywoman woods across the valley have never been plowed, so they still have their full glory, but most other woods are missing their forest floor. Leek-laden woods have become a rarity. Left to time and chance alone, my cutover woods would probably never recover their leeks or their trillium.”

This story got me thinking about the forest floor around Boodaville. It is bare earth in many places on the south facing slopes, and scarce scrubby vegetation on the cooler slopes. We have plans to implement some holistic management to retain water, build soil, and thin out younger invasive plants and trees to encourage balance. 

These forested slopes have never been used for farming, but have been subject to fires and replanting of pines – replacing the indigenous oak trees. 

I am left wondering if there are any pockets of land in the Matarranya with the “Skywoman” examples of what the original forest was like. A place where we can study the forest floor and see what is missing in most places. 

I honestly don’t think there is, but I will be asking around and exploring. Maybe in the history books there are notes on the composition of the forest hundreds of years ago. Of course the climate will have changed since then as well so it would be a combination of observation and experiment to see how we can regenerate forests to become rich in layers, resilient and biodiverse. 

the state of the world (another quote from braiding sweetgrass)

We’ve created a cultural and economic landscape that is hospitable to the growth of neither leeks nor honour. If the earth is nothing more than inanimate matter, if lives are nothing more than commodities, then the way of the Honorable Harvest, too, is dead. but when you stand in the stirring spring woods, you know otherwise. 

It is an animate earth that we hear calling to us to plant leeks and honour the gifts of nature*. Wild leeks and wild ideas are in jeopardy. We have to transplant them both and nurture their return to the lands of their birth. we have to carry them across the wall, restoring the Honorable Harvest and bringing back the medicine.”

(* I changed this sentence a bit to make sense in the context of the quotes)

This makes me think of the  Charles Eisenstein video “What if we survive?”

The beautiful future we want is healthy Spring forests, regenerated ecosystems, and Ecosocial design everywhere, and we have an incredible amount to learn from Indigenous Cultures about how humans can be a force for good for nature. 

This tweet from Sam Bliss about Bill Gates coming to save the world this week made me laugh, and the first sentence fits perfectly with my ideas! : 

“The first step to solving climate change is to take all Bill Gates’s money and give it to poor and indigenous people defending their land against extractive and polluting industry. The second step is stop listening to Bill Gates.”

THIS WEEKS CRAZY IDEAS AND NEW STUFF

This week I’ve been getting overexcited by Urban Permaculture and getting amazing things going in my wonderful neighbourhood of Poble Sec. The podcast idea is going anywhere very quickly so sorry to those of you who were waiting expectantly for that! Anyway I met up with Abel, another permacultor in the barrio and today went to a wonderful talk in the community vegetable garden about urban food production during the civil war. They were farming 1200 hectares around the city and producing tons and tons of food. There were some great contacts at the event :

Nick Lloyd who does Spanish Civil War online tours

Carol from the Hort de la Font Trobada 

The folk from Cuchara.cat

Marta Camps who gave the talk was great!

and a great association on their way to creating a platform for urban agriculture in Barcelona (Replantem) Huertos in the Sky

So yeah, that was a busy crazy week. All part of my plan to find an office in Poble Sec!! Maybe I’ll start recording the podcast from there. Or maybe next week I’ll jump into a crazy funding bid for “Communities of Practice” which are “how to research, share and adapt best practices and how the different transition movements can collaborate better to enable people to change” (No. I won’t be doing that, I can’t grasp anything concrete from that sentence. Is waffly networking doing much to help? It’s definitely not my thing.)

Other things Boodaville needs right now is help with social media strategy, more people to come on board with Rovira Regenerativa   and we are looking for two long-term volunteers resident in Spain!

More next week!!