Macska Moksha Press -

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March 5, 2023 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

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Macska Moksha Press
This site, which is my blog & bookstore.
Substack: “Speaking for the Trees (No Matter Where They’re From)”
Content focused on plants and ecology. No posts about politics (except how it relates to the environment). Both free and members-only content (including excerpts from the book-in-progress about “invasive” plants by Nikki Hill & me).
Wildflowers of Joshua Tree Country—photography & nature literacy
A field guide of plants in the Mojave Desert and nearby locales, featuring animal associations, Native American ethnobotany & translations of scientific names. Non-commercial & educational. Structured around my own photography.
YouTube: Radio Free Sunroot channel—podcasting and more
“Speaking for the Trees, No Matter Where They’re From” (active) plus the back catalogs of “Voices for Nature & Peace,” “Kollibri’s Weekly Column” and “Farmer K’s Diary.”
Radio Free Sunroot—podcasting hub, with links to subscribe on various services
Patreon—members-only content

Bringing Land Use into the Climate Conversation

September 16, 2024 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Most of the time, the conversation around climate chaos is narrowly focused on carbon emissions, to the exclusion of land use as a major factor whose effects are at least equal if not greater. Both the mainstream corporate media and independent/activist media commit this same lapse. This is due in part to the fact that proposed policy around carbon emissions can be neatly folded into the appetites of industry, whether Capitalist or Socialist, without interrupting business-as-usual. Capitalist profits are not threatened by carbon trading. Socialist “development” can continue unabated with new energy infrastructure. Ecocide, however, marches on with both, and that’s what’s left out of the popular narrative as it’s currently told.

In episode 3 of the “Speaking for the Trees, No Matter Where They’re From” podcast, Nikki Hill and I talked to Nikos Giannakis is a biologist with the University of Leeds, currently working in Greece. His graduate work was in environmental pollution control and agricultural chemistry, and his PhD was on soil microbiology. His national service requirement in Greece led to environmental consulting including impact assessment. Currently he is living with his wife (an architect specializing in natural building techniques) and six cats in an abandoned village in a national park in northwestern Greece. His activism focuses on defending nature from “green energy” projects and on bringing land use into the climate conversation.

Ep. 3 teaser: Bringing Land Use into the Climate Conversation

September 7, 2024 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

In this interview with biologist Nikos Giannakis, Nikki Hill and I delve into these topics and more.

Paid subscribers to my Substack and my Patreon will have early access to the full, unedited interchange (2 hours and 12 minutes in length) on Sept. 9th.

The edited public version, at 1 hour and 25 minutes, will be dropped on Sept. 16.

Here’s a six-minute teaser!

Listen:

or watch on YouTube:

Ep. 2: Eugenics & Conservation: Too Close for Comfort

August 19, 2024 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

YouTube

In this episode, Kollibri is joined by co-host Nikki Hill for a conversation with Calyx Liddick, founder of the Northern Appalachia School. Calyx has taken a deep dive into the common origins of the eugenics and conservation movements in the US in the early 20th Century, and what she has found is alarming. The boosters of race science, white supremacy, forced sterilization of “lesser” people and other now discredited concepts were the same who founded conservationism, and their odious residue remains. Conservationism must now be re-thought so that what is good can be kept and what is bad dismissed.

In our far-ranging discussion, we talked about all this history plus “invasive species” (a central pillar of eugenics as expressed through anti-immigration sentiment and law); the futility of “fortress conservation”; how the wilderness ideal erases Indigenous people and their relationship to ecology; the importance of reciprocity, integration and coexistence in our interactions with nature; our disagreement with the characterization of “invasive plants” as agents of settler-colonialism; climate change, and more.

Calyx Liddick is a bioregional herbalist, ethnobotanist, holistic nutritionist, wildcrafter, writer, wildlife tracker and a mother of two. She is strongly interested in exploring the relationships between plants and people. Find out more about her and the school she runs at:
northernappalachiaschool.com

Subscribers to Kollibri’s Substack or Patreon enjoy early access to all episodes in their full length. (Public episodes are edited for length and clarity.)

I Got to Pretend I was a Beaver for a Day

August 15, 2024 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

The teams came together to haul this big log down and put it into place.

One of my first stops after leaving the farm in Sonoma County (see the recent series: part 1 | part 2 | part 3) was at a remote location in Plumas County in the Sierra Nevada mountains for what I would call a Beaver work camp. Nikki Hill took me there to volunteer with a project run by Swift Water Design. Founded by Kevin Swift, the company implements beaver-based and process-based restoration projects to heal human-damaged watersheds.

As Kevin summarized it, watersheds in what is now the western US suffered massive deterioration through a series of events: the genocide of indigenous people and the end of their land management practices (which prevented the kinds of catastrophic wildfires we now experience); the near extinction through over-hunting of beavers (who were the original ecosystem engineers); the draining of wetlands in riparian areas (much of it encouraged by law); and relentless overgrazing by cattle and sheep (who further degraded water course structure and wiped out much original vegetation).

What we’re left with now are streams and rivers who are disconnected from their surrounding land, which has resultingly been transformed from wetlands to dry meadows and forests. Nothing against trees, but as they migrate into areas that were formerly marshy, they act like straws, drawing up the water and further depleting moisture. The water is still there, it’s just being held in a different way that is unsuitable for wetland ecology, with all the plants and animals who make their homes in such places.

There’s a lot of science behind all this and I won’t be going into the details here, but suffice it to say that we’ve studied these things enough to see much of what went wrong for such areas and some of what we could do to reverse the process. One solution is to reintroduce beavers, but short of that, we humans can imitate what beavers do, in part to kick-start the healing process, and in part to attract beavers back to the area on their own.

Podcast ep. 2 teaser: “Eugenics & Conservation: Too Close for Comfort”

August 10, 2024 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Episode 2 of my podcast is upcoming!

Aug. 12: full unedited version for paid subscribers of my Substack or my Patreon (3 hours and 14 minutes long)

Aug. 19: edited version for the public (2 hours and 34 minutes long)

Here’s the teaser on YouTube:

Or listen here:

In episode 2 of the “Speaking for the Trees No Matter Where They’re From” podcast, I am joined by co-host Nikki Hill for a conversation with Calyx Liddick, founder of the Northern Appalachia School. Calyx has taken a deep dive into the common origins of the eugenics and conservation movements in the US in the early 20th Century, and what she has found is alarming. The boosters of race science, white supremacy, forced sterilization of “lesser” people and other now discredited concepts were the same men who founded conservationism, and their odious residue remains. Conservationism must now be re-thought so that what is good can be kept and what is bad dismissed.

Also, check out Kelly Moody’s 2023 interview with Calyx on the Ground Shots podcast, which inspired this interview.

How Will Communities Handle Troublemakers? [part 3 of a 3-part series]

August 6, 2024 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

“?” courtesy Khaydock, CC BY-SA 3.0. Landscape: the Coast Range in Sonoma County at sunset.

Part 3 of a 3 part series. In part 1 of this series, “Farewell to a Garden,” I shared photos of my veggie growing this year at a farm in Sonoma County that I just left. In part 2, “Why I Hate Market Farming,” I explained my departure. In this final part, I discuss some big picture reflections highlighted by the experience.

An increasing number of people are collapse-aware. They see that the United States is in decline, economically, politically, socially and otherwise. The systems that provide for our needs are at once decreasing in quality and increasing in price. The status quo serves fewer and fewer people even as its ecological footprint metastasizes beyond the finite limits of our planet. Sooner or later, something will give way that reveals our system as the house of cards that it is. Whether this is gradual or quick is unknown, but regardless of the timeline, the collapse aware know that the time to prepare for other ways to live is now. This is why I got into farming in 2005. The disaster that struck New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 showed me that we cannot count on big institutions to take care of us; my anarchist friends who traveled there to help out reported that the localized, community-based efforts were much more effective than FEMA or the Red Cross. Hurricane Katrina was but a small taste of the wider-spread challenges we will face as the big institutions either fail or turn openly authoritarian (perhaps simultaneously) and as climate chaos becomes more intense, so we need to build alternative means of support based on mutual aid now. Metaphorically, the time to plant a vegetable garden is not when the grocery shelves have just been emptied. You want that food in the ground already, and if this season is just a drill, you’ll have some nice meals anyway.

Margaret Killjoy talks about the triangle of prepping: gear, skills and relationships. Gear includes physical resources like tools, blankets, camping supplies, first aid kits, plus food stashes like buckets of rice and beans,or boxes of canned goods (and a can opener!). Skills include knowledge and experience in how to do practical things, including how to use the gear. Relationships are about people to cooperate with when times get hard (and to learn from and have fun with in the meantime!). I’d say that, in the end, having trusted, reliable people around would be better than going it alone with a cache of firearms and ammo, though I know folks who are prioritizing both friends and guns, and I don’t have an argument with them.

The first two, skills and gear, get the most attention, and there’s plenty of resources out there about those topics, so I won’t be addressing them here.

Relationships/Community are my focus today, and specifically the question of “How do we deal with assholes?” (I put “troublemakers” in the headline in case people share this post on social media.)

Why I Hate Market Farming [part 2 of a 3-part series]

August 4, 2024 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Part 2 of a 3 part series [Read part 1 here]

“Zeus” cherry tomatoes

Agriculture as currently practiced in the United States is, by and large, quite harmful to both the environment and to human health. Yes, there are a handful of people who are trying to be respectful of the greater-than-human world and beneficial to their fellow Homo sapiens, but they are the exception, not the rule. Unfortunately, much of what is labeled “organic” is part of the problem, with the industry’s mechanized practices, utilization of plastic, depleting of soils, killing of wildlife, profligate use of water, and labor abuses, among other issues. As I’ve mentioned before, the single greatest threat to biodiversity worldwide is habitat destruction, and its single biggest driver is agriculture. Further, toxins routinely applied in agriculture have deleterious effects on local and far-flung ecologies and on workers and consumers alike. Agricultural labor is some of the most dangerous in the United States (ranking far ahead of policing; maybe we need one of those black and white American flags with a green stripe in it to show solidarity for those suffering far more than the members of the “thin blue line” for their service to the populace).

All this is without even getting into how agriculture changed human cultures for the worse. We broke our ties of reciprocity with our home ecologies, and became dominators, leading us directly to the multiple environmental crises we are facing today. As well, agricultural society spawned patriarchy, slavery, private property, debt and elevated war to new levels of violence.

In sum, it’s a big mess.

So, in terms of environmental and social collapse, if we are to have a livable planet and healthy societies, one of our central efforts must be to radically change agriculture. For some starting points, see my “Six Things We Must Do So That Farming Is No Longer Massive Ecocide,” in which I spell out that agriculture must be de-monetized, de-corporatized, de-mechanized, re-localized, re-seasonalized, and re-naturalized.

People may be surprised to hear me say this, but, in service of these goals, farmers markets and the market farming that support them are not, in my opinion, all that helpful. Yes, they are local and seasonal by definition. However, many if not most are mechanized, few are naturalized, and all of them are dependent on monetization, which leads to corporatization for the larger operations. Farmers markets are all about income generation, which means bowing to market pressures that are driven by customer expectations, or at least the market farmer’s perception thereof. Which can end up resulting in a heavy focus on crops that are resource-intensive to grow or serve only a minor role in providing calories. Think heirloom tomatoes and fancy salad greens.

Farewell to a Garden [part 1 of a 3-part series]

August 2, 2024 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Attentive readers may notice that I did not post last week, and that this week’s is late. Fear not, I’m now making up for that with this 3-part series, to be spread out over today, Sunday and Tuesday. My excuse is that that my time was taken up in prepping for a move, which entailed finishing up a paid gig and passing along important info to the person who would be tending the farm beds after my departure. “Wait, what?” you might be asking. “Wasn’t this farm the place you were going to stay all season?” Indeed it was, and more on that later, in part 2.

This installment is a share of garden photos, which I’d been wanting to do all along but hadn’t had time for. Part 2 will detail my reasons for leaving, and part 3 encapsulates my big picture reflections on what I learned and how it applies to what I already knew.

At this farm, a market farm, I had four beds of my own to plant up and harvest from personally. Most of my time was spent on general farm tasks and in setting up beds for the market operation, but these beds were of course my favorite and served as a vital home for my heart as well as being a provider for my stomach. They were a mix of veggies, medicinals and one trial grain crop. I only got to enjoy a small amount of everything because most of it wasn’t ready yet when I left, but I passed the beds along to a friend of mine at the farm, and she will definitely be appreciating it all.

Me with Klip Dagga and friends

Every summer I am torn between farm work and wildtending/foraging. I appreciate the wild/feral experiences because they are all about connecting with ecosystems and their denizens and exploring how to interact with them with reciprocity, in part by observing what not to do: that is, how destructive we civilized humans have been to so many places. I appreciate farm work because I love fresh vegetables, and I am deeply interested in how to cultivate respectful relationships with plants being grown for consumption, which is a challenge that is ignored by most people in our culture, including most farmers.

Postcard from the Grand Mesa

August 2, 2024 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

View west from the Grand Mesa

In mid-August, I met up with Nikki Hill at a trailhead on the Grand Mesa. She was there to scope out sites for the field course she’s teaching next week, on Human-Landscape Relationships, Ecology, & Ethnobotany. Summer wildflowers were blooming and berries were coming on. Within earshot of our camp, a fork of Kannah Creek was babbling over the rocks on its journey down into the valley below. Birds and chipmunks twittered and squeaked. No traffic noises except the occasional passing car on the nearby gravel road. No light pollution but a few twinkling lights on ranches in the valley. Fresh air, scattered clouds, and lovely overnight temps. A truly idyllic spot.

But the star of the show was the view. In the far distance were the peaks of the La Sals range, over 100 miles away as the crow flies, in Utah. Below was the Grand Valley, which is part desert, part irrigated agriculture. On the other side of the Valley, and extending to the horizon, were the tumbled ridges and deeply cleft canyons of the Uncompahgre Plateau. The vista is startling in its expansiveness, like little else I’ve seen before. The sense of space is so vast, it almost feels like being at the ocean.

The rough terrain of the Uncompahgre Plateau was especially evident in the morning light:

View of Uncompahgre Plateau from the Grand Mesa

What’s “invasive” in this photo? Let’s take a close look

July 11, 2024 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Hay field as observed from within a wetland reserve, with so-called “invasive” plants in foreground

The other day I went into the nearby town of Sebastapol to do grocery shopping. In no hurry to return to the sweltering heat of the farm, I went to a wetland reserve on the edge of town to seek some shade by water. I found a good spot to enjoy and on the way I stopped to take this photo to share with my readers.

Between the path and border of the reserve is mostly Himalayan Blackberries and Poison Hemlock, both much maligned as “invasive” plants, as well as a collection of other “weedy” plants below them, at least some also categorized that way. Beyond the border is a huge irrigated field of what I assume is a hay crop because it’s grass (or grasses). Beyond that is a line of trees, mostly native Oaks. I don’t know what’s on the other side of the trees, but the landscape of Sonoma County is dominated by agriculture, vineyards more often than not. Indeed, I was surprised to see a crop that wasn’t wine grapes. Oaks also grew along the path, and their branches are hanging down in the top of the photo.

The very first Blackberries were ripening, and no flowers remained. The clusters of berries, resembling loose bunches of grapes, dangled invitingly towards the path, but most were still green, only a few were red, and precious few dark purple. I’m happy to report that I got to enjoy a single, perfect juicy one, sweetened by the sun. I’m looking forward to more!

The Hemlock was past flowering but its fruits were not yet dried into seeds. The foliage was drained of its vibrant green but was not yet desiccated. Given that they are not perennial, I was seeing these plants near the end of their lives, at their peak of maturity, fulfilling their raison d’être: to reproduce.

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Episode 2 of my podcast is upcoming!

Here’s the teaser on YouTube:

Or listen here: