Commonweal Garden Blog

We are thrilled to announce the arrival of two new members to the RDI family - twin baby goats born on April 21! These beautiful babes, birthed by Iris, are the third generation of goats born at Commonweal Garden. With three new milking goats this summer, we look forward to an abundance of milk for making kefir and cheese. Our Earth Cafe Culinary Program will be devoting nearly a full day of class to cheese making with this precious resource of healthy raw milk!

 

 

It’s a time of transition at Commonweal Garden. Wintertime activities like pruning are coming to a slow close and we are beginning to sow the seeds for the summertime crops. The days are growing ever so slightly longer and the sun is cresting over the ridge earlier each day. We’ve had a lot of good youthful energy on the land with a visit from 30 residential students of the Wilderness Awareness School in WA and 15 high school students from Marin Academy. They helped the farm staff and the RDNA students with various regenerative projects such as pulling scotch broom and pampas grass, as well as weeding and forking garden beds. Preparing ourselves for the upcoming bounty of plant
starts we are prepping beds full tilt. And many hands do make light work!

Not only are human hands helping with the soil preparation, our chickens are also getting in on the fun and took their first ride of the season in the chicken tractor (pictured here). This contraption allows us to get the birds into the garden beds so they can scratch up the soil and snack on the bugs that like to feast on our plants.

The land is literally buzzing with energy as the bees emerge from their winter dormancy. Just like us they
are taking advantage of the beautiful and fragrant flowering plum trees. We think they are as excited as
we are about the upcoming beekeeping workshop in late March. Come out and join us as we celebrate the growth
of light and life!

The rains are providing abundant water for our crops this time of year, and the swales are doing a good job of slowing, sinking, and spreading the abundance of water into the land. However, when our apple trees are seeking water this fall to fill out their delicious fruit, the rain will have long since past.

Greywater systems are a great way to treat your fruit trees to water year round, as well as, reduce the consumption of this precious resource. Last week, Art Ludwig - founder of Oasis Designs - joined our Regenerative Design and Nature Awareness (RDNA) Program to share his wisdom and experience with grey water systems. After a slide show, dance party, and a walkabout with Art, the RDNA participants worked on designing some new systems for the farm, including one for our greenhouse sink. Above is a photo of the output of the system they installed - a branched, mulch basin design that feeds the four apple trees on the south side of our greenhouse. As our staff and students use the greenhouse sink year round, the water will be routed directly to 10-inch deep basins around the tree filled with wood chips. The wood chips - which can often be gleened from tree cutters as a waste product - help slow the water, making it more available to the tree roots, and create more habitat for beneficial organisms.

Grey water systems can be very simple and inexpensive to install. One of the easiest ways to get started is rerouting your washing machine water into one or more mulch basins in your back yard! For more details, check out Art Ludwig's website.

 

The farm has weathered the winter storms quite well, and the rain has brought the bright new growth of tasty wild edibles like miner’s lettuce, fresh young plantain and the distinctive orange glow of fresh chanterelle mushrooms! Matt found this beautiful King Bolete on a mushroom adventure in Inverness after the first big rains... but he won't tell you where!

With the storm’s passing, the mornings have brought a beautiful show of light frost on our hearty winter crops, as well as, a burst of activity from our resident quail and visiting golden crowned sparrows. Wish Creek is now running and singing its way through the center of the farm.

Its been quiet since our seasonal staff left for the holidays – a big thank you to Emma, Erin, Adam, Ambrose, Brad and Leslie for all the amazing work they’ve done. We are delighted that Gavin and Paula are joining us again after the holiday break.

With departures there are always new arrivals. Amara Frida Berry is growing faster than the plants and she amazes us everyday. It is a true blessing to have new life on the farm during these dark winter months of reflection!

The Global Oneness Project, a special project of Kalliopeia Foundation, was created to discover and document the diverse ways in which the emerging consciousness of oneness is impacting people's lives.

They are traveling worldwide with a small camera crew, asking people from a variety of disciplines whose work is grounded in a perspective of oneness for their stories and insights.

A few weeks ago, they interviewed Penny about the power of Permaculture...
Click to view the video.

There's definitely a beauty in letting your plants go to seed and discovering how and when in nature's course they come back to reinhabit the garden. The wind, the birds, and jubilant garden frolickers all do their part in dispersing mature seeds through the garden and beyond. Today at Commonweal Garden, our garden crew - Gavin, Erin, Adam, Leslie, Ambrose, Emma and Paula - took advantage of the clear dry morning to collect some of the mature seeds in the garden to save for next season's planting. They winnowed broccoli, tat soi arugula, parsley, mache, bok choi, purple orach among others garden favorites.

This age-old tradition of seed saving enables food growers to collaboratively work with the plants to cultivate local seed varieties that are well adapted and thrive in the local conditions. It also allows food growers to work within the cycles of nature rather than being dependent on purchasing commercial seed that can have substantial external costs - be it be the fossil fuels needed for resale and distribution or, more seriously, the costs of genetically modified seeds that endanger nature's delicate balance, require harmful pesticides, and create situations where food growers become dependent on the policies and market prices set by large seed corporations.

Community seed swaps are a great way to share and distribute the abundance from local gardens, and preserve our local food varieties. It’s also a wonderful way to meet your fellow food growers and learn tricks of local growing trade. Commonweal Garden will be sharing our local seeds at the Marin Organic Seed Swap at Pt Reyes Farmer's Market on Saturday, October 27 at Toby's! Find out more here.

We are blessed this year with an amazingly abundant fruit season! This dry spring allowed for a huge fruit set and these hot summer days are sweetening our pears, apples, plums, and berries to perfection. In addition from the agreeable weather from mother nature, we also treated our orchard trees with sheet-mulch with plants from our pond and recycled cardboard sheets from the floor of our chicken coop, plus a healthy compost foliar spray.

To quote Bill Mollison, we are in fact living in grave danger of falling food! What to do with all this fruit? The local wildlife are certainly taking their share, including the fox, coyote, wood rats, bees, yellowjackets, and lizards (yes lizards! We spied a lizard lapping up the juicy flesh of a fallen plum!). Nonetheless, we are busy drying, jamming, juicing, freezing, and grazing on all the delicious fruit. We even used a fresh plum puree to sweeten a Wild Food Pate for the Taste of Marin last week.

It has been wonderful to see how the happy hands of our seasonal staff, volunteers, and course participants have contributed to so many facets of the health and abundance of Commonweal Garden – not just the orchard, but also our annual plant care, integrated animal management, natural buildings, grey water systems, and more. We extend our thanks to everyone for their contributions!

Our natural building workshop was amazing! Michael Smith, Janine Björnson, Ambrose Desmond, Erin O’Reilly & Penny Livingston Stark inspired us with their incredible depth of knowledge and instruction in a myriad of natural building techniques – including cord wood, straw bale, straw light clay, straw wattle, cob, and timber frame construction which utilized eucalyptus poles harvested from our land – as well as natural plaster and paint finishes. Take a look at these beautiful structures in progress: slideshow.

We had a wonderful day of Bamboo building with Martin and Grace Coto from Costa Rica. It was truly a pleasure to watch Martin demonstrate his mastery with bamboo joinery. Darrel Deboer, bamboo architect, Kevin Rowell and Marisha Farnsworth of Kleiwerks International West also came and shared their work and vision with us. Course participants got to try their hands at constructing some basic bamboo joints, and the yurt now has a beautiful bamboo shelving system!

Get involved!

We know many of you wanted to attend this Natural Building workshop but couldn’t make it. There are still opportunities to get involved, so we invite you to come and get your hands dirty! This month we will be plastering, building cob and light straw clay walls, as well as finishing the roofs on two of the structures. Join us on Fridays during July and August, from 10:30am – 5:30pm. We will also be working on most Saturdays through the end of August – check in with the office if you are interested in coming on by.

Martin and Alison, two of our work-trade staff, describe their thoughts and experience with planting the three sisters - a traditional guild of corn, beans and squash practiced by many Native cultures and adopted by many Permaculturists!

MARTIN:  My experience planting the 3 sisters was very fulfilling.  Being part of this ancient tradition made me think how much more meaningful our actions are if we include a bit of
ceremony.  I also realized that if we follow what native people practiced in their land, we feel connected to them.  It shows respect and admiration.  They practiced by intuition a few principles of Permaculture, which now we have to learn as we’ve lost acting by instinct.  It was a great experience and they’re doing now very well, growing fast and healthy!!

ALISON: I greatly enjoyed the pattern and process of planting this traditional combination of beans, corn, and squash that make up the Three Sisters. We began by forming small mounds of earth and compost across the entire garden bed.  It was hard work breaking up the clods of clay-rich earth and mixing in compost to make the mounds, but when we were finished we had a charming miniature mountain landscape to feast our eyes upon.  We then planted in each mound, beginning with four kernels of Chiapas Resistance Corn on the top of the mound, each one oriented so that they faced one of the four cardinal directions.  Next, we planted a circle of 8 Anasazi beans around the corn kernels, aligning the beans with the cardinal directions as well.  Finally, we pressed squash seeds into nutrient rich balls of compost and buried 4 of these seed balls into the sides of the mound, also oriented with the cardinal directions.  

I found it very meditative to plant this beautiful pattern into each mound.  Each time I started a new mound and found the North to orient my seeds, I was reminded of our connection as humans to the earth and to the food we are privileged to grow from it.  I especially liked imagining Native Americans, many generations before me, planting in this same pattern and performing this same process of cultivating food from the earth.  Lastly, I enjoyed imagining the cooperation of growth that will soon sprout from this mound.  The squash will act as a living mulch by growing to cover the mound, as the corn grows up to create supports on which the beans will climb, and the beans will in turn fix the nitrogen in the soil for the corn and squash to thrive.  Thinking of the way in which each plant in the mound will assist the other, much like a community or family, makes me realize how appropriate the name Three Sisters is for this traditional planting combination.

Today during our RDNA Open House event, students created a living willow arbor to shade the cob bench by the pond. The arbor was designed by a small group of first year RDNA students, and they led the rest of the group through selecting and harvesting the willow and implementing the design. The willow will sprout, root into the ground, and provide a shadey and artful oasis in the garden. After all the hard work, we celebrated with a big luscious potluck with garden greens and other bounties of the season.