Farm Art Blog: Parideaza Farm Art

Please check this out. Art and agriculture intersect in beautiful and innovative ways.

Rainshadow Farm Photographs

We are in the process of updating our photos. Currently most of the Rainshadow Farm photographs are located at http://turquoisemoon.deviantart.com/gallery/

a few more thoughts

More thoughts:

• Beginning small is okay.
• Sit with and begin to really know (be in relationship with) the land.
• LISTEN TO the land you are on.
• Listen to the people around you. Really listen deeply.
• Let things grow incrementally.
• Stay the course — let things take root!

 

This works with more than growing food in the high desert. In fact, I can’t think of any part of my life where it will not enhance living well with people, the community of all beings, where it will not enhance relationship, learning, and problem-solving.

 

art and agriCULTURE

You must visit this blog to see agricultural art, with a nice emphasis on the cultural: Char Truz: Creative Works I’m jazzed by this whole process.

I am becoming more and more interested in the aspects of agroliteracy/agricultural intelligences that emphasize the “cultural.”  This blog illustrates some of the areas I would like to pursue in my own “learning ecologies.” Regionally (and interestingly, this blogger is in Kansas while I am in southern California), people seem to be very interested in re-skilling that includes not only how to grow food in a semi-arid region, but also includes a variety of practical and expressive skills.  Along with wanting to know how to grow a family garden, how to grow and use herbs, how to harvest wild regional foods (yes, there are some in the Mojave Desert!), how to raise chickens and goats, how to compost, how to raise bees for local honey — people I have talked to want to learn skills like carpentry and other construction skills, breadmaking, canning or “putting up” as my aunts used to say, bicycle and auto repair, cooking and various ARTS!  Some people turn to youtube to learn some of these skills, or visit various great websites with detailed descriptions, but there is nothing like learning in community that is face-to-face.

I am also interested in seeing how to incorporate workshops on skills like these learning ecologies on my micro-farm.  In addition, I am thinking about including workshops on the almost-lost art of story-telling (more on that later), music (maybe even construction of musical instruments, eventually), dance, visual arts, fabric arts, all kinds of arts!

My vision for the southern Mojave is an interconnected mosaic of regional household gardens, human-scale farms and ranches that desire to work together for the basic human right to healthy food while advancing social, agricultural, and environmental justice.  This can all be done anywhere with some community organizing, a movement toward place-based thinking, and a relational outlook toward the community of all beings.

Hill Fire, 2010

One of the hazards of drylands growing is fire. This fire was a bit more than 5 miles from us. It was in a fire-adapted zone of our region with chaparral plant communities and many canyons making it harder to fight than if a fire were to begin in a flatter area such as ours. We have watched nearby houses burn down, sadly, but those fires are generally easier to control than the fires in less-accessible terrain. Two families I know were either put on evacuation notice or evacuated.  They are safe, their animals are safe. Our drylands firefighters are amazing. They risk it all for us and do an incredible job. Here in California, north and south, we have a propensity for building within fire-adapted regions. Partly because such regions are very beautiful, I suppose. We also tend to build in floodplains, forgetting that there are 100 and 500 year floods of amazing proportion. The latter, I suppose is done again and again all over the USA portion of North America.

Climate change is a reality. Most human-scale farmers and many gardeners can talk about this as we’ve seen it – especially if we’ve worked in a region for any amount of time. One hundred year floods are increasing, just as torrential storms are. Fires in the western USA and other drylands regions are increasing in number and scope. We really must take this seriously. I don’t have the answers but I know that teaching and learning are still one way to go.

Obviously…

I am going to have to learn how to align photos and text. Still, It’s good to see how far we have come in a marginal drylands area over three years of active horticultural-style micro-farming.

A few Rainshadow photos

   Here are some photos from the last year.

Re-skilling activities and workshops

RE-SKILLING WORKSHOPS – what some local people are interested in (this list was created by the Rainshadow Farm Collaborative Group):

• How to grow a garden in the high desert
• How to grow and use herbs
• How to ecologically harvest herbs and regional plants
• Backyard chickens and goats
• Beekeeping in the high desert
• How to milk goats and make cheese
• Help with zoning regulations
• Composting
• Carpentry, farm and garden related or otherwise
• Practical adobe construction, including building an adobe oven.
• Building a safe and useful firepit
• Bike and auto mechanics and repair
• Culinary skills including breadmaking, making tortillas and other flatbreads.
• Healthful and affordable cooking including vegetarian and vegan cooking
• Transformation of vegan and vegetarian cooking into various cultural food traditions.
• How to make soap and candles.
• Alternative power generation
• Biodiesel and conversion of autos
• Community education nights – films, speakers, local farmers, and discussion with dinner.
• How to advertize and market products
• Clothing swap
• Book swap
• Fabric swap
• Knitting and crocheting
• Putting up (canning)
• Organizing local seed saving and sharing
• Plant-based fabrics
• Fabric arts
• Visual Arts
• Decorative arts including flower arranging
• Tactile Arts like sculpture, wood carving, stone carving, plaster molding
• Calligraphy from various cultural traditions
• Japanese tea ceremony
• Performance Art including Storytelling: cultural stories have been suggested including Sufi storytelling and musical tales, Native American stories, stories from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, old Europe (“fairy tales”), Latin American traditional tales, and other storytelling including contemporary stories. This list is not comprehensive: these are suggestions by collaborative group members who have experience with these traditions that they would be willing to share with the community.
• Learning another language
• Music from a variety of traditions
• Construction of musical instruments
• Dance
• Martial arts
• Archery
• Eco-art
• How to deliver a baby (animal or human)
• Rainshadow Farm Café!!! (Bonnie’s Brainstorm – what a concept!)

There may be a person for every workshop and if not – we can find someone!

Moving away from “agroliteracy”

Orr (2004) and Bowers (2008, 2009) speak of ecological literacy as a means of incorporating or embodying ecological intelligence. It is an ability to sustainably connect and merge the natural world with human communities embedded in the natural world. The term “literacy” is perhaps a regrettable expression for intelligences that have to do with socio-ecological issues.  In fact, it may be best to use the term “intelligences,” thinking in terms of Gardner’s (1983, 1999) multiple intelligences, rather than “literacies.” Gardner’s (1983, 1999) several intelligences are biocultural phenomena, with his theory demonstrating that people are apt to learn based upon their own propensities, the instruction available to them in their environments, and the emphasis that their particular cultures may place upon a given activity. Individuals have varying talents and aptitude for different skills – all of which may be useful in envisioning and creation of sustainable societies. By thinking in terms of fostering various socio-ecological intelligences, rather than socio-ecological literacies, preeminence is not given to an epistemology of literacy over an epistemology of orality in natural resource management and in ethical and just social relationships.  Primarily oral cultures have frequently been sustainable societies, cultivating lifeways that have enabled them to live sustainably with the land they inhabit, with resilient lifestyle and resource management practices (Anderson, 1996; Anderson, E.N., 2005; Armstrong, 1995, 2005; Arquette, et al., 2004; Berkes, 1999; Cajete, 1994, 1999, 2000, 2004).*
Through traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), indigenous and traditional societies have cultivated lifeways that have generally enabled them to live sustainably with the land they inhabit, developing lifestyle and resource management practices that are resilient. Traditional knowledge holders exhibit socio-ecological intelligences that encourage respect for plant and animal spirits and taking no more than one need from the environment. In addition, in such systems, lavish use and over-consumption of natural resources are discouraged; legends and stories often recount misfortune following waves of over-hunting, which is equated with taking more than needed to sustain one’s family or immediate social group (Anderson, 1996; Berkes, 1999).

Various researchers have taken into account a need for modern Western ecologists, resource managers, and agriculturalists to deeply consider and learn from TEK, bringing a new ethic into their study and practice, along with an informed, intelligent human emotion and sense of place. Traditional knowledge holders frequently operate from cultures that may be literate but do not hold literacy above orality in constructing eco-social intelligences (Altieri, 1995; Anderson, 1996; Anderson, E.N., 2005; Armstrong, 1995, 2005; Berkes, 1999; Cajete, 1999; Netting, 1993; Peña, 2005).

While both orality and literacy are important for constructing ecological and social knowledge in the modern world, oral societies appear, in general, more attuned to communal life, deep ecological awareness, and relationship with the natural world and with other humans (Abram, 1996; Bowers, 2009; Cajete, 1994, 1999; Ong, 1982;).  In constructing effective farm pedagogy for fostering eco-social intelligences it may be vital to give attention to the socio-ecological practices of primarily oral cultures, both in land use practices and in teaching and learning situations.  Human thought, consciousness, and intelligences are more deeply and evolutionarily nested in emotion and speech than in text/literacy (Abram, 1996; Armstrong, 1995, 2005; Bowers, 2003, 2009, 2010; Cajete, 1994; 2004; Damasio, 1999; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, 1999; Milton, 2002; Ong, 1982).  While farm pedagogies can hardly ignore literacy, it may be wise to accord place to orality for all that it offers in fostering and maintaining socio-ecological intelligences; for its ancient and evolutionary presence in human consciousness, and its bioculturally effective patterns of teaching and learning.  Human adaptation is biocultural: it is composed of a variety of biological and cultural elements. The capacity of humans for culture is deeply grounded in biological conditions, both within our bodies (our genetic potential) and within our environments. Both biological circumstances and our ability to create and transmit culture have mutually influenced each other for millions of years. Our capacity for cultural development has enabled us to survive in a great variety of environmental conditions; we are thus biocultural entities that have coevolved with the natural environment for millions of years (Harmon, 2002; Maffi, 2001a, 2001b; Nanda & Warms, 2011).  Human culture has functioned within an oral framework for as long as humans have been languaging creatures, certainly far longer than we have had written language as an auxiliary means of communication. Exactly how much longer we have been involved in the world of orality than the world of written language remains controversial. Some contemporary societies maintain close ties with the oral past. Language as we know it, an open-ended communication system, may have originated in Africa around 150,000 years ago. Some linguistic researchers claim a much earlier date and a few a more recent date.  Using the standard approximate date (of 150,000 year ago), humans have been written language users for probably less than five percent of the time we’ve made use of any language at all. Human thought, in fact, is likely nested more in speech than in text: certainly oral expression can exist apart from written language, while reading and writing do not exist without orality of some sort, verbal or gestural (as in sign languages). Often, in modern Western education the deep and evolutionary value of oral teaching and learning has been ignored, perhaps in ways that damage human relationship with their environments (Abram, 1996; Bowers, 2009b; Ishizawa & Rengifo, 2010; McWhorter, 2001; Ong, 1982).

Ways of including the value of oral teaching at Rainshadow Farm have included making time for people to tell their stories about being in the natural world, or their stories in general which are all valuable to the general community and community relationship, interacting with elements of nature, and interactions with animals and other people in the natural world; emphasizing the importance of reflective learning; taking time to talk to one another about our interactions with nature and gardens.

* I’m not including bibliographies with this kind of blog. If you are insatiable like me, write me and I’ll share the reference. Most of these you can find on the Internet – some in their entirety.

Small change

I’ve decided to collapse the Agroliteracy blog into Rainshadow Farm. One of the reasons I haven’t been updating is that it just takes too much time to run mirror blogs for different purposes. Don’t want to read the unschooling and educational stuff and just get to the horticultural/agricultural items (WHAAAT?!) ? Fine – pass on through. Aren’t interested all that much in the teaching/learning items – again, readers choice! This may allow me to blog again, regularly. Between designing, building, and running this micro farm and learning center, family and friends, teaching, writing a dissertation, and….and…you know, l-i-f-e – this seems like the best solution. Thanks to Antonio and Paula for the push to get blogging again!