In early February at THE SEED ARCHIVE’S “Seedy Sunday” event, 70 people came to pick up and learn about seeds. It was a bit of a pileup. Four gallons of homemade, homegrown (last season) posole was never slurped so fast. Experienced growers shared their seeds and carefully picked through the collection, taking the most rare and unusual. The inexperienced came empty handed and stuffed their pockets. As my friend Erik said: “Wait until they have 200 radishes to harvest and have to figure out what to do with them.” Particularly exciting arrivals to the SEED ARCHIVE were blue lotus, mandrake and white alpine strawberries.

A public-access seed archive relies on its PUBLIC which to me means a broad diffuse network of folks learning how to grow seed out and bringing it back is essential to not only a seed’s continued life but the vitality of the archive as a community resource.

Many seeds can only be stored for a short period of time. Potatoes need to be grown out every year to remain viable. Lettuce seeds last only a year or two before they reach the end of their shelf-life. We can’t just stuff seed away and we can’t just grow things out willy-nilly.

Taking an informal poll here (in case any of you wish to respond, you are invited to) Why were people taking so much seed? Too much to grow and use for an experienced grower/eater.

This came to mind at the moment Vandana Shiva stepped up to a podium of a packed auditorium in Chicago. Shiva comes from a farming, conservation and teaching family and as an environmental activist who has written over 15 books also has a PhD in quantum physics. She is a GRANDMOTHER WARRIOR fighting Monsanto and the other four transnational corporations that control our global food supply – pushing GMO’s, toxic pesticides and herbicides affecting our seed and therefore farmers and their families, rural communities and ecosystems of plants and animals, soil quality and even us urban consumers. She uses an old form of resistance – inspiring a dedicated (read strategized) and devoted (read heart-solid) group of people, mostly women to put their bodies on the line. Among some things, she has brought down the likes of Monsanto and Cargill on seeds and CocaCola on water rights. Shiva travels the globe extensively inserting toothpicks between our eyelids so we can see what the heck is going on. And like the toothpicks, it ain’t comfortable.

Four years ago I had the privilege of serving her on her week’s teaching residency in SW England. She was puffy, her breathing heavy, full of congestion. She was so unhealthy that it made me question the ability of a human, any human to hold such a large public identity and still remain whole and vital.

She looked better a few days ago. She spoke about the Chipko movement of the early seventies an organized resistance to the destruction of forests in India. Village women organized the Chipko – the spontaneous actions of thousands of women hugging trees stopped the destruction and popularized the action and use of ‘treehugging’ around the world. Chipko’s stance: forests support food, fuel, fodder and stabilize soil and water. In otherwords, forests are integral to subsistence another way of saying: Ecology = Economy.

She also spoke about the great Bengal famine of the mid-forties when hundreds of thousands of Indians died due to the misdistribution of rice. Women, armed with broomsticks confronted the British East Indian Company to demand a lessened “tribute” of their rice crop so they could actually feed their families. Their message being – let us keep more of the rice we grew or kills us now. Women and broomsticks mind you. Witchy farmers, but not witches. These women also stopped them.

Shiva has given a strong voice to SEED SOVEREIGNTY. She started an organization called NAVDANYA whose mission is: to protect nature and people’s rights to knowledge, biodiversity, water and food. Navdanya works with almost half a million farmers and urban people to establish and maintain 34 seed banks throughout India. These seed banks hold 2000 rice varieties, numerous grains, pulses and greens – some of them drought resistant, some salt water tolerant. They hold and share the crops that for thousands of years have been selected and cultivated and saved and passed on from generation to generation.

To echo Grandma Shiva: an agriculture free, biodiverse and in the commons addresses economics as well as food, soil and water security for all us creatures.

THE IDES OF MARCH

Toxic land increases but nutrition does not. Since we are what we eat, it’s time to start planting and cultivating and foraging our lands. But we need to know how to do that first before we start stuffing our pockets with living embryos – an instinct called hoarding. When two separate attendees to the SEED ARCHIVE’s early February ‘Seedy Sunday’ event proudly reported sowing every single seed they brought home immediately after the event, my smile cracked. Too early, folks!

In Chicago, there remains two months until our first frost-free day. This means that in eight short weeks, the evening temperatures won’t drop lower than 30 degrees and it will be safe to plant out tender plants like basil. Frost-free areas of this country like Miami and Honolulu need not worry about ever stopping sowing and growing.

Check out the USDA ZONE HARDINESS map (google it) and find out roughly what zone you are in to know when your frost-free growing season begins.

So roughly….

• Feb 15 - Mar 15 – Zone 9 (Houston, St. Augustine, Tucson)
• March 15-30 – Zone 8 (SF, Seattle, Gainsville)
• April 1-15 – Zone 7 (Oklahoma City, Little Rock)
• April 15-30 – Zone 6 (St. Louis, NewYork)
• May 1-15 – Zone 5 (Chicago)
• May 15-30 – Zone 4 (Kansas, Nebraska)
• June 1-15 – Zone 3 (Upper Midwest/Upper Great Plains)

On the back of many seed packages you will read ‘sow 6 weeks before frost ends’ etc. Knowing this plus where you are on the thawing continuum, you will know when it’s time to sow your seeds outside or inside in your egg cartons and soup cans.

Right now in zone 5 (Chicago) the soil is workable and cool, ready for certain cool season sowing. Three days ago it was 17 degrees; yesterday it was 50 degrees and I planted: peas, potatoes, kale and daikon radishes. I don’t cultivate lettuce or spinach as I prefer wild greens, but it is time to plant these too. Inside I have already sown: tomatoes, chilis, eggplant, basil, lemongrass and a huge bunch of other oddball medicinals and edibles. My horseradish that anchors my center garden and the hops off the back alley is out of the ground a few inches!

No need to wait though, food is already here no matter how much frost you’re met with in the morning. Plenty of weeds are hurtling through the soil and unfurling – dandelion, dock, ramps, garlic mustard and ground ivy are already big enough to nibble on and in a week or so, I can start delicately picking my dear friend nettles.

SEED SKEEBALL

• - Mix half compost with half clay-y soil or river clay. Use the local soil you have around you. You are afterall, reseeding locally.
• - The seed ball has to stick together, but should not be too dense. The rain needs to penetrate the soil ball and the roots need both the structure and the air space to grow into their location. Use more clay or compost until you get a good mix
• - Moisten the mix so it is quite wet. Mix in 1/2 teaspoon of seed per quart of soil. (if you are metrically oriented, use 2-3 ml of seeds per liter of soil.) more seeds is not better. Too many seeds will crowd each other out.
• - Roll a palm-sized ball of soil. set aside to dry. (you will need to distribute the seed balls fairly soon as water + seed = germination! i suggest doing this within 2-3 days after you make them.)
• - Bowl, place or lob seed balls into areas for greening and future foraging opportunities.

MAY DAY!: 'LEANING IN' TO OURSELVES, OUR WASTE AND OUR OTHERS

Weedeater - nance klehm

When Mexico City manages to close its shop doors and empty its streets of 20 million, it is darkly impressive. In a city that was once floating and whose main environmental pressure was flooding, current advice of frequent hand washing was exacerbated by one of the main water pipelines of fresh water shut down the previous week affecting a quarter of the city’s population of 5 million. This is not the first, nor the last drastic water rationing for this populace.

With a high level of street culture where informal interactions are inexhaustible and richly layered (In my deepest belly, I xox Mexico City even though I usually come out bruised after a prolonged stay.) I can’t help to ask how do we ‘lean in’ when social distancing is becomes policy, however temporary.

In Egypt, pigs are not only a food source for the non-Muslim population, they are the “clean up crew”, an integral part of the solid waste disposal system in Cairo.

The pigs in Cairo are mostly handled by the Zabaleen (Arabic for ‘garbage people’). The Zabaleen are landless farmers who migrated to the city 50 years ago from northern Egypt and became the unpaid grassroots garbage collectors of the city. The 60,000 or so Zabaleen make their living absorbing, sorting and reintroducing as usable 30% of Cairo’s waste. Raw materials such as steel, glass, plastic, etc. are resold and other materials are repaired, reused or burned as fuel. Their low-tech, metabolic system represents a 80-90% recovery rate.

Pigs are kept in apartment courtyards and fed food and other waste where they process it and return that fertilizer to earth as well as produce food for the people.

At the start of this year, Egypt hired foreign multinational contractors to manage Cairo’s waste stream replacing the Zabaleens and existing systems and resulting in higher disposal fees and a much lower recovery/recycling rate of materials.

And now Egypt is in the process of slaughtering all of the 300,000 or so pigs in the country.

Why would a country hire a transnational at a high cost when they have for decades had a highly effective grassroots labor of an indigeonous group do it voluntarily?

In light of all this panic around a possible ‘pandemic’, my seed saving pal Damon recently reminded me of an herbal anti-viral elixir, the historic anti-plague remedy called ‘4 Thieves Vinegar’. The story distilled from many versions goes like this: In France, during the bubonic plague of the early 1600’s, poor mountain folk were hired as gravediggers to dig mass burial pits and thieves made busy looting homes of dead families. It was a few individuals from both of these groups that had some herbal knowledge around anti-virals and put them to use ensuring their ability to ward off the deadly virus. It is said that a few surviving thieves who were captured for their crimes were released when they shared the elixir’s recipie with the authorities.

How to make a Four Thieves Vinegar

Use a quart jar or larger vessel, gather equal parts of dried or fresh thyme, peppermint, rosemary, sage, and lavender, a teeny bit of clove if you’ve got it and if you’re a believer in the stinking rose, you could also add some garlic. Pour enough of your homemade fruit scrap or cider vinegar to just cover the herbal material. Put the lid on tight and keep it someplace that you pass every day like near your coffee maker or bed so you can shake or stir it once or more a day. Do this for as many days as you can up to six weeks (optimal tincturing time). Strain liquid form plant material and drink a teaspoon several times daily or wipe down skin and surfaces with it for disinfection or do both as you feel necessary.

Viruses do not contain the enzymes that are needed to live – so they need to have host cells which could be a plant, or an animal or even a bacteria in order for them to “live”. Outside of a host, viruses die.

Many of the plants in this remedy are anti-virals – others are also anti-bacterial and/or anti-fungal – I’ve included a full list of easily forageable and cultivatable anti-viral and flu foe plants below.

I’ve taught you how to make fruit scrap vinegar (“Breaking it Down” Weedeater column in ARTHUR #32) and Molly has talked about the uses of apple cider vinegar in past editions of print Arthur. If you have some of that around then use this as a base if not – make some so you always have some on hand. (Vinegar is so healthy and antiseptic, not to mention delicious, it behooves you to have some on-hand.)

As per my conviction, I only include plants that are easily forageable, cultivated or ubiquitously in any neighborhood store urban or rural. This is a decent list but not an inclusive list. I encourage you to do more research around anti-virals and the listed plants.

ANTI-VIRALS

• Aloe Vera — Wound healer extraordinaire that is also anti-bacterial, anti-inflammatory and when the juice is drunk helps repair digestive track and soothes ulcers. Always have this plant or a leaf on hand.
• Eucalyptus — You lucky Californians! The oil from this common weedy tree is also anti-bacterial and anti-fungal. It breaks up and expels mucous, relieves congestion and cools fevers.
• Garlic - The ubiquitous garlic is antiseptic, anti-bacterial, anti-parasitic, anti-fungal, immune-stimulating and anti-protozoan. Growing garlic is easy… try it!
• Ginger — Yummy and fairly easy to find, ginger is anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, diaphoretic, anti-spasmodic, circulatory stimulant, anti-arthritic, anti-inflammatory and more. Can also be used in baths to warm the body and promote sweating.
• Hen of the Woods – Forageable mushrooms -Yummy!
• Lemon — Again this is a ‘forageable’ for the Californians… Lemon helps fight infections and stimulates immune system
• Shitakes - Easy to grow indoors. Investigate this!
• Thyme — Chases mucus from the body. Thyme is antiseptic, antibiotic and anti-microbial.
• Wildflower Honey – In its original undiluted state, there is no shelf live for honey. If you don’t keep bees, or know someone you do, work on either of these relationships this season. Honey is anti-biotic, anti-inflammatory, immune stimulant, anti-carcinogenic, laxative, cell regenerator, anti-fungal… etc.!

FLU FOES

• Clove — Anti-bacterial, anti-septic, anti-microbial, bactericidal. Useful for infectious diseases and respiratory infections. This is something you pick up off a grocery shelf. Invaluable pain killer. I have used this on tooth and gun aches with huge relief.
• Common Sage — wonderful for throat and upper respiratory infections.
• Hyssop — This is most delicious as a tea. It relieves congestion, cough, sore throats and the constant beautiful blooms makes bees deliriously happy.
• Juniper — Anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, antiseptic. Useful for upper respiratory infections, urinary tract infections, candida, salmonella, e. coli… maybe I we should burn this by our dry toilets… forageable
• Oregano — This common culinary herb is an anti-infectious agent and an immune stimulant. Who knew? Easy to grow too.
• Peppermint — Fights infections, relieves congestion, clears sinuses – yumyum and so easy to grow.
• Rosemary — Anti-fungal, anti-bacterial, anti-parasitic. Also for respiratory infections. I love to bathe with this plant. The steaming of this plant also helps relieve migranes. Forageable for you west coasters.
• Walnut – A bitter as heck blood cleanser, anti-inflammatory an anti-parasitic. Forageable.
• Western Red Cedar – Binds wounds, helps on clearing lungs, diarrhea and an antifungal. Forageable.
• Wormwood — Here is my friend Artemesia again, though not the common weedy one. It’s her cultivated cousin of yore…. Wormwood is anti-malarial, anti-bacterial, anti-fungal and anti-inflammatory. In public gardens and therefore forageble with discretion.

mellow yellows

I first tasted dandelion wine when I bought a bottle of it at a folksy gift shop in the Amana Colonies (yes, Amana of the appliance fame). The Amana Colonies is an Amish community dating back to 1854. It was settled by the communally living German pietists then known as: The Community of True Inspiration or The Ebenezer Society. Their tenets included avoiding military service and refusal to take an oath. The Amanas are nestled in the middle of what is now a sea of genetically modified corn and soybeans known as the Midwest, more specifically Iowa.

I had wanted something to drink at my campsite that evening. When I opened the bottle, I anticipated something more magic than what met my tongue. It was cloying yellow syrupy stuff, which resembled soft drink concentrate. I poured it out next to my tent, returning it to the earth where she could compost it. I was sure that I’d never get close to it again.

That was fifteen years ago, and now I have been drinking dandelion wine for about two years. The new stuff is stuff I’ve made myself from dandelion blossoms gathered in Chicago. I’m happy to say that it is divine. I am sure now that the colonists actually keep the good stuff in their private cabinets.

Upon mentioning “dandelion wine”, Ray Bradbury usually comes to mind. However, after I heard a radio interview with him a few years back when he passionately made a case to colonize the moon so we can ditch this trashed planet and survive as a race, I got confused. Enough said.

So the point is, I am going to tell you how to make dandelion wine. I encourage you to do this because dandelions pop up everywhere and every place. They are nearly ubiquitous pioneers in our landscapes of disturbed and deprived soils. Consumed, they are a magnificent digestive, aiding the heath and cleansing of the kidneys and liver. Amongst vitamins A, B, C and D, they have a huge amount of potassium.

As a beyond-perfect diuretic, dandelion has so much potassium that when you digest the plant, no matter how much fluid you lose, your body actually experiences a net gain of the nutrient. In other words, folks – dandelion wine is one alcohol that actually helps your liver and kidneys! Generous, sweet, overlooked dandelion…

When you notice lawns and parks spotting yellow, it’s time to gather. The general rule of thumb is to collect one gallon of flowers for each gallon of wine you want to make.

Enjoy your wandering. People will think you quaintly eccentric for foraging blossoms on your hands and knees. Note: collect blossoms (without the stem) that have just opened and are out of the path of insecticides and pesticides.

So here’s how I make dandelion wine…

I pour one gallon boiling water over one gallon dandelion flowers in a large bowl. When the blossoms rise (wait about twenty-four to forty-eight hours), I strain the yellow liquid out, squeezing the remaining liquid out of the flowers, into a larger ceramic or glass bowl. I compost the spent flowers (thanks dandelion!).

Then I add juice and zest from four lemons and four oranges, and four pounds of sugar (4-4-4 = E.Z.). Okay, now what I think is the best part - I float a piece of stale bread in the mixture sprinkled with bread yeast. This technique is used in Appalachian and some European recipes.

Then I toss a dishtowel over it so the mixture can both breathe and the crud floating around my house stays out. I continue stirring the wine several times a day until it stops fermenting. This takes about two weeks or so.

When I am certain it has stopped “working”, I strain, bottle and cork it up and bid it farewell until months later. In fact I wait until the winter solstice, when I can revisit that sunny spring day by drinking it in.

Transition: as such an effective diuretic, dandelion is also know in French as “pis-en-lit” or “pee-in-the-bed”. Which brings me to YELLOW LIQUID #2 … that’s right, pee!

Pee is 95% water and 5% salts and minerals. When it comes out of the body, it’s sterile. Admittedly, I haven’t drunk my first whizz as part of my yogic practice, however, I habitually save my pee to potentize my compost as well as for making a nitrogen-rich fertilizer for my plants. Our bodies are nutrient factories – let’s value our post-consumption products and offer them back to the Mother.

Us humans pee on average a bit more than a quart a day, at a dilution rate of 1:5 (the recipe). Each one of us are producing more than two gallons of free plant fertilizer a day. Or around 750 gallons a year - which is enough fertilizer to grow 75% of an individual’s food needs for that year.

Did you know that most of the algae blooms - whether in the Los Angeles river, the shore of the Great Lakes, the mouth of the Mississippi and many other waterways - are largely due to agricultural run-off of nitrogen fertilizers applied to our corn-fed nation’s farmlands?

Peeing directly into your compost pile is great. So is collecting it in a jar or a bucket and dumping it into the pile later. Not composting? Then just dilute it fresh (remember the recipe again, 1:5) with some water and use it directly on plants or let it oxidize and turn into a nitrate (i.e. leaving it out until it gets nice and dark) and then apply it undiluted. Not only is this something that has been done for ages around the world, it is still being done. Most people are just hush hush about it.

Why are our municipalities cleaning water so we can flush our toilets with it? The separation of the solid and liquid body waste is an extensive and costly process for the water treatment plant and we pay that cost twice by flushing it all away. We have urine blindness…

Before I sign off, I want to put a bug in your ear – this terrific yellow liquid that our own bodies produce can also produce gunpowder. But maybe I’ll approach that topic in other column – or maybe you’ll just have to do the research yourself.

Crossing the Piscataqua River, the State of Maine’s welcome sign reads: ‘The Way Life Should Be’. We’ve chosen to resettle here, and after driving 1600 indirect miles to leave the lower 47 behind, with the river far below, the dense forest of maple, beech, pine, hickory, and birch flanked us like sentries heralding the end of the drive, and the beginning of our journey.

We’ve been in Maine for one month now and the boxes are unpacked, the artwork hung, the pantry re-stocked, and a daily routine emerges. We’re living in Portland: a population of 64,000 makes this the largest city in the state; its 17-story building the tallest in the state; its deep water port, free of ice year-round, is the largest in the Northeast and the primary anchorage for Eastern Canada. Maine is about natural resources not urban living, and this serves our purpose well. We settled in Portland for the interim until we find land to homestead, to nurture, to reconnect.

I work at Thos Moser Cabinetmakers, building chairs on the first shift. My day begins at 4:30 am heading north, across the backwaters of the Casco Bay, as the rosy-fingered dawn erupts. Dense fog is an almost daily occurrence, and with very little traffic my workday arrives wrapped with solitude. My car radio is tuned to the local NPR station, and its BBC broadcasts bring daily reports of violence escalating around the globe. The news, shattering my solitude, underscores the point that this move need be more about mind space than geographic place. Mainstream consciousness, man’s world, is root bound with strife and stress. I can easily turn off the radio, but can I as well shift my perceptual focus towards things less contentious, more pure?

Thos Moser’s shop seems to be a good place to ponder this. Thomas began as a sole craftsman in a basement workshop and now, more than 30 years later, employs 90 craftsmen and women, and operates six showrooms. The output is prolific and each week a 53-foot trailer leaves the workshop, filled with heirloom quality furniture built of solid cherry, ash, and occasionally, walnut. Notwithstanding its large scale, the company remains a mellow, pleasant and thoroughly decent workplace. A recent anecdote captures its spirit. George, a teacher from New Jersey, worked in the shop this week, again, as he has, since 1987, spending one vacation week per year building chairs in Thos Moser’s shop. On Friday, at noon, a voice over the intercom proclaimed "everyone please gather at the break room." The head of operations made a joke about "32 more weeks to go until George gets a review" and then George quickly expressed his gratitude for 20 weeks, nay 20 years, spent in the shop and proceeded to hand out ice cream to everyone. The entire shop stopped to eat chocolate, vanilla or rum ice cream.

Since our arrival, the twice-weekly Portland farmers market has been a staple of our routine. In mid-June the market offered flowering plants, annuals and perennials, or lettuces, herbs, and mixed greens. Gradually carrots, radishes, Swiss chard, bok choy, and countless varieties of sweet pea emerged and now, after four weeks, the baskets and crates overflow with red or gold new potatoes, summer corn, summer squash, string beans, broccoli and kohlrabi. The summer is ripe, and sinfully sweet strawberries have given way to raspberries and blueberries.

Attending the market was a top priority upon our arrival, and we’ve come to know some of the farmers. Chris, a former architect, fled the corporate world about three years ago to pursue organic farming. We can learn from this intensely cerebral young man, who proudly displays his status as a registered organic grower. Chris tills about five acres near Bowdoinham (bowdoinham.com), a town along the Cathance River, where it flows into the Merrymeeting Bay. Settled as early as 1662, Bowdoinham is home now to about a thousand people, mostly farmers, and Lola, the town cat. The Merrymeeting is a freshwater estuary and the soil there ranks among the most fertile in the state; eastern Sagadahoc County is referred to as Maine’s Fertile Crescent. He mentions the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) with the suggestion that we research soil types across the state before buying land. The point makes sense: for farming, better to purchase land from the soil up, rather than the view down. With each week our roots go deeper.

Chris was the first farmer we met, on our first visit to market. We talked about books: Michael Pollen’s ‘Omnivores Dilemma’ and Elliot Coleman’s ‘Four Season Harvest’. On the matter of the strict adherence to organic growing, even when it may consume more fossil fuels or allow the use of harsh pesticides, Chris acknowledged that a local regimen would be his preference, but the organic registry is too strong a marketing tool. The mention of Elliot Coleman (fourseasonfarm.com) lead to discussion of Helen and Scott Nearing, whose book, published in 1954 is titled ‘Living The Good Life: how to live sanely and simply in a troubled world.’

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