Feb 27, 2017
By Nicole Newell
Did you attend the Awakening the Dreamer Symposium in December? I did, and it woke me up. I was ready to see what was next, and signed up for the Pachamama Alliance’s 8 week Gamechanger Intensive program. The Gamechanger Intensive is an online class that you can access whenever you have free time. I started each day watching a video or reading an article that is beyond inspirational. One of my favorites included Annie Leonard and the Story of Stuff’s 20 minute video that will make you think about the true cost of things before you buy. Lynne Twist spoke on the politics of optimism and how people in despair almost never change anything.
It is clear to me that now is the time to deepen our values and, find connectivity with every single human being. Fierce LOVE is required at this time. We need each other. Together we are genius. These words inspire me to get out of my comfort zone and do what I know is right. I share the vision with the Pachamama Alliance. I too want an environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling, socially just human presence on this planet. To wake from the “American Dream” and create a New Dream for humanity. I used to think that I wasn’t smart enough or I that didn’t have anything to offer. Taking this class has helped me to get the courage to take action, in the way that feels most right to me–as Sustainable Landscaping Program Manager. I am currently doing tasks that are completely new to me (like blogging!) but I know stretching my comfort zone is worth it. If you are looking for ways to reflect, find each other, and be genius, check out the Pachamama Alliance website to learn more about the Gamechanger Intensive.
Feb 27, 2017
Nicole Newell, Sustainable Landscaping Program Manager and a graduate of our Land Caretakers program.
Do you want to learn how to get involved with Sustainable Solano’s Sustainable Landscaping program?
This series of events is designed to prepare a group of volunteers to help implement Vallejo Sustainable Backyard program. If you are interested to become a part of this movement in Vallejo, please plan on attending one of the landscaping classes (link), a L2L hands-on workshop in Benicia and this training/ potluck at the house of Nicole and Jason. This training is mandatory for people applying for a food forest. We’ll offer another short series at the end of March.
From 5:30 to 8pm on March 3rd, Land Caretaker program graduates, Jason and Nicole, are hosting a volunteer training/potluck dinner where they will share the basics of sustainable landscaping, while showing attendees their own evolving food forest and laundry-to-landscape greywater system. Jason and Nicole are passionate about Sustainable Landscaping, and both were inspired to further their skills and knowledge following the Land Caretaker’s training. Jason has since completed greywater installation training with Greywater Action to learn how to maximize secondary water use, and Nicole completed Toby Hemenway’s permaculture design course to acquire her Permaculture Design Certificate. They are excited to share their sustainable landscaping knowledge, and prepare interested volunteers and food forest keepers for the upcoming installations in Vallejo.
Jason and Nicole will provide vegetarian and hatch green chili pork taco’s, and request that attendees bring a side dish. It will be a fun opportunity to learn about sustainable landscaping, eat some delicious food, and meet people from your community. Please email Nicole if you are interested so she and Jason can plan to comfortably host everyone.
Please email nicole@sustainablesolano.org to get communications on location and event updates.
Feb 27, 2017
By Roman Johnson
Resilience.org is a publication that focuses on creating platforms to stimulate conscious conversations about community building strategies. The Sustainable Solano Communications Committee recently stumbled across an article regarding trade policies that we feel is an eye-opening conversation starter. The article, titled “Why are my Highly Educated Friends so Ignorant About Trade?”, was written by Isabel Marlens and presents a straightforward, stimulating concept that makes the case quite well for local economy. In an interesting way though, Martens does this not by exploring the benefits of localizing, but instead by pointing out the practical drawbacks of international trade partnerships and how they holistically affect resource allocation around the globe.
The title is jarring, though the thought process left me identifying as one of the “ignorant friends” that she refers. She explains reasons for why so many reasonable people fall into this category and even adds ways to lift the veil and shape the ways in which we do business, business that aims to fulfill the primary intention of what trade seeks to offer: mutually beneficial exchanges between well-intentioned parties.
Overall, there might not be anything inherently wrong about large scale trade. It does, however, in its application, open the door to leaving out the little guy. This piece is a wonderful jumping off point for beginning the discussion about why that is and what can be done about it. Upon reading this article, I was left with 2 questions: 1) In what ways can we support the local economy? and 2) In what ways might a local economy improve the way we conduct large scale trade partnerships abroad? Have a look at this short article and let us begin to discuss your answers to these questions and see if we as a community can come up with some uplifting solutions.
Feb 27, 2017
By Jason Lingnau of Intuitive Design
The pruning workshop on Saturday was informative and timely. The winter pruning season is upon us and my wife and I have some work to do but have been hesitant to “make the cut”.
The speaker , Ann Ralph had such a wonderful approach to the subject and gave the group hands on lessons in pruning various types of fruit trees.
Ann is the author of Grow a Little Fruit tree and has a long career in the Nursery business. It was hosted by Sustainable Solano through Benicia Community Gardens. The workshop took place at the Benicia Community Orchard on a brisk February morning and this wonderful outdoor experience was part lecture and part story telling. Ann brought my rough understanding of pruning into focus.
I had a sense that pruning was an important part of keeping a fruit tree productive but learned the how and why of it. Ann broke it all down into simple and practical steps that anyone with a fruit tree of any age could perform.
There were folks from Vallejo and Fairfield that brought the discussion around to growing patterns from other parts of the county.
I was particularly interested in her promotion of the first “knee cut”. Others in the group knew what that meant and were just as horrified as Ann herself was when she was told to perform this on “all bare root trees that left the nursery”. In fact she says that she refused to do it! I hid the fact that I didn’t know what all this meant, but for me this pruning workshop just took an intriguing turn like an Agatha Christie novel.
My curiosity did push me to raise my hand and ask Ann to explain to me in more detail about this mystery “knee cut “. I was to learn how this dramatic cut really does set the stage for a future tree that produces a better crop of fruit. But I was unsure if I could do it to one of our freshly purchased bare root asian pear trees.
This hard pruning technique that was once ridiculed by nursery’s throughout California is now a standard practice for many or a suggestion given to those purchasing bare root trees from Bay Area nurseries.
The group learned how very common sense pruning can be and some tricks that are counter intuitive. I look forward to taking the techniques learned from Ann to promote stronger, more fruit producing branches in our little back yard fruit orchard.
Feb 27, 2017
By Kathleen Huffman of The Repurposed Oakie
On Thursday, February 2, the Benicia Community Center provided a warm respite from the winter drizzle for curious gardeners getting ready for spring. Inside several ecologically minded citizens from all over Solano County, came to learn about Sustainable landscaping and water resource solutions from local landscaper Kathleen Huffman, owner of The RePurposed Okie. The presentation took the attendees on a guided tour of sustainable concepts, practices and design creation along with a discussion of secondary water resource management. Additional topics included lawn abatement rebates and how to prepare and apply them in various cities.
The main concepts of the sustainable landscape program start with the idea of “Earth care, People care and Fair share.” With these grounding principles in mind, Kathleen gave ideas and suggestions on how to apply them to your own yard in quick, easy, and cost effective ways. A discussion of design elements included examples of how to get the most of each square foot of garden space using “Guild” planting practices.
The water resource management discussion covered the basics of using secondary water. Examples of secondary water included ground swales, rainwater catchment and installing a simple greywater system. Simple swale examples were shown and the class was given formulas to calculate the amount of water savings the homeowner could expect. The greywater presentation covered regulation, design and expected cost. An example of a greywater 3-way valve setup was shown to the class to better explain the components and how the system attaches to the homeowners washing machine.
In ending, the current lawn abatement rebate program was discussed and attendees were given the necessary applications and were given time to discuss the specifics of their own lawn and garden concerns.
It seemed that all the gardeners left with a spark in them to give their gardens a “sustainable” make-over and looking at ways to “plant” more water on their property. Happy gardening!
If you are interested in attending these FREE classes in Vallejo or Benicia, there are more coming up through April. Please check Sustainable Solano’s calendar and register through the Greater Vallejo Recreation District or Benicia Community Center.
