On New Ground

Even though I live in the Bay Area, where you can grow tons of plants and veggies year round, it's still that time of year, when folks are cleaning out old garden beds and dreaming up ideas for spring gardens. When deciding what to plant, I usually start from a basic question, like, "What do I like to eat?", or "Which plant would grow best in that shady area?", or "What would look nice over there by the fence?". These are important things to consider, but they overlook the idea that one plant can often serve many functions, beyond just food or aesthetic. One of the approaches repeatedly emphasized in permaculture is "stacking functions," or getting the most yield out of each element in a given system. In other words, getting the most bang for your buck, in this case, out of each plant. It makes a lot of sense. Why not plant your shrub so that it provides a wind block, builds your soil, and also attracts insects that benefit your neighbori...

I just finished reading this page-turner about Eustace Conway, a man who lives entirely off the land in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina. He takes the art of self-sustained living to the extreme, eating only food he has hunted or grown, wearing clothes that he has made out of animal skins and plant-fiber thread, and building houses from wood he has fallen on the 1,000 acres where he lives and operates his educational camp called Turtle Island . I initially picked up the book because I fall into the following dreamy category that Gilbert dispels in the first chapter:  “Eustace told me that people tended to romanticize his lifestyle. Because when people first ask him what he does for a living, he invariably replies, 'I live in the woods.' Then people get all dreamy and say, 'Ah! The woods! The woods! I love the woods!' as if Eustace spends his day sipping the dew off clover blossoms. But that’s not what living in the woods means to Eustace ...