As mentioned in previous journals, I spent January-March building with Dan, Sean, and Matt. I thought I’d share a picture of the project we completed in March. We built this deck for two lovely women in Jacoby Creek. This project had special meaning for me. Our clients are getting married this month, and their ceremony [...]
When I decided to move back to Humboldt after returning from Japan in summer 2013, I was motivated by several different factors. One of the most influential was my growing trepidation about the problem of climate change, which birthed in me a desire to settle myself in a strong community and start learning about sustainable [...]
During the last six months, my labor has been a scarce commodity in our vegetable garden. I’ve been working on the house full time, volunteering weekly at Tule Fog Farm, and using my weekends to read, write and rest my body. All this left little time for maintaining our recently expanded garden. Ma assumed the [...]
We are living through the most overpopulated, wasteful, and polluted moment in human history. In response to the increasing data and alarm regarding the problem of climate change, many people have begun searching for philosophical and practical frameworks to illuminate how we can reduce our participation in environmental destruction and start healing Earth’s depleted ecosystems. Moral [...]
Every human struggle needs an image of a better future for supporters to rally around, but it’s never enough to simply know where we want to end up. The accomplishment of profound societal change, if sought peacefully, also demands a set of linguistic and psychological frames revolutionaries can use to inform, impassion, and ultimately persuade [...]
After last week’s unwelcome setbacks, I’m pleased to report that Jesse and I finished the new garden fence with relatively little trouble. With the posts already in place, we managed to run the fencing, hang the gate, and extend the existing retaining wall in just a few hours. The garden is now completely enclosed again [...]
It seems an inviolable law of nature that people who spend a lot of time working on home improvements must deal with the issue of project overlap. Some endeavors take longer than expected, some require the help of people who are only available at certain times, and some prove so psychologically or physically daunting that [...]
Since I started gardening, I’ve heard this adage more than a few times: “You’ll always want more growing space!” We are already producing so much food that we’ve begun hounding friends into taking home bags of greens and are also selling small amounts as well, but Ma and I are still committed to figuring out [...]
Following up on my last journal, I’m now thrilled to call myself the proud owner of a fully functioning, timer-controlled drip irrigation system. This system covers all ten of our main beds––five in the old garden as well as the five new beds I’ve constructed since returning from Japan. I’ve held off on running lines [...]
In this lovely time of year when blossoms burst forth, new leaves unfurl, and plants reach for the sun with great zeal, gardeners have to think seriously about water. Up to this point, it’s been easy enough for Ma to water the garden by hand. But now that we’ve doubled our growing capacity, that strategy [...]