Macska Moksha Press

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.

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

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.

“No” to a “Green Energy Transition”—“Yes” to an “Energy Reduction Transition”

July 3, 2024 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Mojave Desert collage from my photo collection: Clockwise from top left, Sphinx Moth. wind farm, solar farm, Desert Tortoise

Once upon a time—but not so long ago—environmentalism was about protecting natural places and the flora and fauna who make those places their homes. But over the last decade, the scope of institutional environmentalism has been reduced to the issue climate change, and in turn the focus of climate change has been narrowed to carbon emissions. (The “other leg” of climate change is land use; see Rob Lewis’ three-part series on Substack, here, here and here.) Only in a world where carbon emissions are the sole environmental issue does the “green energy transition” pitch make any sense.

The pitch makes a big promise: Industrialized civilization can be sustained by swapping out fossil fuels for renewable energies like solar, wind, hydro and geothermal (with some tacking nuclear onto that list). The ubiquitous adjective “sustainable” has quietly shifted from being about sustaining ecosystems to sustaining human systems. We could call this pitch the “green energy transition media narrative.” Like all media narratives, it’s comprised of a mix of information, misinformation and disinformation; in other words: facts, inaccuracies, and lies. Mostly the last two, I daresay, because the narrative is primarily shaped not by science or ethics but by corporate and political forces whose pursuit of profit of power usually puts them at odds with science and ethics.

But a media narrative is only credible insofar as it hews to conventional cultural perspectives, perspectives that are shaped by the culture’s inherent and usually unacknowledged biases and beliefs about the world. A narrative that “colors outside the lines” too far will come off as implausible. In the case of the green energy transition media narrative, an unquestioned and deeply-held cultural belief at its core is the conceit that humans have “dominion” over the world, and that we can take what we want because it’s all ours. Some grassroots environmentalists—as well as a few thinkers in the fields of philosophy, history and theology, and also just some ordinary folks with a decent moral compass—are certainly aware of how problematic this belief is, but they are not the ones steering the narrative.

Agriculture Was a Dick Move

June 18, 2024 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

An irrigated field of Alfalfa in the desert of the Imperial Valley in southern California

Given the state of the US these days, it can be easy for people to be cynical. Our culture is driven by greed and domination, resulting in profound economic inequality and horrific environmental destruction. The lives of most of us citizens are defined by struggle and anxiety when it comes to providing necessities for ourselves. In the natural world, wildlife habitat is shrinking and species are going extinct. Our politics are corrupt, our media is vapid, and social polarization is seemingly widening. An increasingly chaotic climate is stressing our systems and pushing the limits of adaptability for many plants and animals.

Some people assume that it’s “human nature” to be destructive, both to ourselves and others. Some welcome the prospect of human extinction or even wish for it. “Humans suck,” they conclude.

I am not so cynical, which in the eyes of some might make me “naive” or a partaker of “hopium.” These folks can believe what they want and give me any name they’d like. If they are so convinced that we as a species are nothing more than a blight on the planet, then I leave them to it. I know there’s no point in arguing with beliefs.

Yes, “beliefs” is what I would call them: ideas that are held not because they are unequivocally provable—they are not—but because, for whatever reason, they provide comfort, even though they are so despairing. And here I must quote Gandalf, who (in the books) said: “Despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not.”

Competition between Plants: What Biology Says

June 3, 2024 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Russian Olive (Elaeagnus angustifolia) foliage and berries, as observed on a tree growing by an irrigation ditch in Fruita, Colorado

The following is a draft chapter from the book that Nikki Hill & I are writing, tentatively entitled, “Don’t Blame the Messengers: A critique of the ‘invasive plant’ narrative.”

The most common accusation leveled by the “invasive plant” narrative is that introduced plants “outcompete” native species. As the story goes, they “aggressively” and “ruthlessly” “encroach on,” “choke out,” “push out,” “bully,” and “displace” native plants and that they “take over” ecosystems, thereby “degrading,” “disrupting” and “destroying” them, causing “ecological havoc.” The human response must be a declaration of “war” in which we “push back,” “stem the influx,” and “turn back the tide” by “fighting,” “battling,” and “combating” them, in order to “wipe out,” “purge” and “eradicate” them. We’re presented with a picture of horrible monsters we must slay in order to save helpless victims from being gobbled up. As an image to incite fear and enmity against supposed villains, it’s very effective, but how does it stand up as way of understanding ecological interactions?

Turning to science, let’s look at how biologists define “competition.”

James B. Grace, ecologist and senior research scientist with the US Geological Survey, says:

Any attempt to define competitive success must begin with a definition of competition. The variety of possible definitions of competition have been discussed numerous times and it is safe to say that there is no universally accepted definition.ⁱ

Okay, so we can see right away that this subject is not going to be cut-and-dry.

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Episode 2 of my podcast is upcoming!

Here’s the teaser on YouTube:

Or listen here: