The Ghanian branch of the Australian Edge 5 Permaculture company, in partnership with the permaculture network in Ghana, has, since the year 2006, been supporting indigenous tree seed collection, communities tree nursery and forestation, tree plantings in schools and planting trees along rivers in Ghana.

The following activities in Ghana are causing the deforestation of vegetation cover, the drying out of river bodies, desertification, erosion, rainfall, lost of medical plants and animal habitat.

1. Chain saw operators
2. Conventional farming activities
3. Bush fires
4. Overgrazing
5. Farming along river banks

Edge 5 permaculture and the Ghana permaculture network are now working with fifty communities who are doing tree nursery work and planting trees to protect their river bodies which have been the only source of drinking water for communities. We would be happy for donors to come to our aid to support these communities. The research conducted so far has seen in these communities it is the women and children who suffer most as they must search for drinking water at large distances from their homes. With your financial and material support we can reach thousands of communities in Ghana who depend upon rivers as their source of drinking water.

To assist, please contact:

Paul Yeboah (Edge5 Permaculture Ghana manager, and Permaculture Ghana Network president).
Box TM 390, Techiman – B/A, Ghana – W/A
Email: yeboahpual70 (at) yahoo.com or paul (at) edge5.com.au
Mobile: +233 24 370 2596

The El Manzano community hold their finished hand pumps

Over the course of my short visit here the power has gone out, for one reason or another, multiple times, and when it happens the taps totally refuse to surrender their precious charge. I thus find myself almost compulsively filling my stainless steel water bottle at every opportunity.

Our dependency on electricity is great enough without exacerbating the problem manyfold by having that vulnerability daisy-chain on to such a basic human need as water.

As mentioned, the massive earthquake a couple of months back helped villagers to register and acknowledge their vulnerability. The two hand pumps in the village were a critical element in their being able to avoid the chaos found in the towns and cities at the time. Ten days without power would otherwise have meant ten days without water.

A few days ago the El Manzano community rallied to increase their water security.

Jose demonstrates while the village looks on

Jose (below centre), who works for a local NGO that helps train poor farmers how to improve their situation with inexpensive, low tech solutions, came to El Manzano to get the village set up with manual water pumps. Rather than just bringing pre-assembled pumps along and handing them over, Jose brought the components only, and got the village involved, and working together, in their creation. The villagers took ownership of this element of their transition, and in the course of doing so are now intimately familiar with how the pumps work, so are now well prepared to create more if needed and to repair any that may break in the future.

The villagers get busy creating their own from scratch

There’s more to such gatherings than just reducing resiliency for individual families, of course. Such hands-on meetings create opportunity for the community to unite behind a common need and goal. Days like this are active and fun and serve to build relationships and strengthen friendships.

Even the children got involved

The resulting hand pumps are six metres in length – more than enough for the very high water table they have here, yet deep enough to help filter water that’s seeped down from above.

Is your community looking at ways to build resiliency for the energy-challenged times ahead? Why not give it some thought…. Aside from the practicalities, it can be a fun way for families – old and young – to get together to do something practical and rewarding.

Rather than fearing the future, we have opportunity to take it by the horns and steer it in a positive direction – one that gives us a localised interdependence that has a measure of hope of seeing us through difficult times.

Or, the other option is to just sit and trust the government to take care of us….

Continue to Part VII: The House Building Gets Underway

The ‘Adobe House’, El Manzano’s ecological demonstration house.
All photos © copyright Craig Mackintosh

In the middle of the little El Manzano village, on display to all in the community, is the ‘Adobe House’. This demonstration house is a project by Eco Escuela El Manzano to demonstrate to the community several low-tech but effective techniques for improving quality of life whilst reducing a home’s impact on the environment.

Houses made from adobe bricks are common in Chile, although, increasingly, like many ‘developing’ countries, people are turning towards energy disastrous concrete instead. The Adobe House was not purpose built – rather, it is actually a very old house that was retrofitted in 2008. It is thus a good example of what many villagers could do if they had a mind to.

I’ll share a few of its features.

Against one wall they built a simple conservatory. The earth brick wall absorbs heat during the day, warming the home, and radiates it back out during the night – to ensure an extended frost-free period for vegetables. Well positioned terracotta tiles or other high thermal mass elements can increase this energy buffering as well (even just barrels of water can do the trick). Though not incorporated here, another addition can be to add vents between the conservatory and the home to allow excess heat to pass into the house.

During the hotter parts of the year the ends of the conservatory are easily opened up.

Outside the house and conservatory there’s a trellis hung heavy in grape. It creates an excellent, and edible, shade area under which sits an outdoor table and benches for summer breakfasts and lunches. The foliage dies back during the winter months to let more sunshine through.

Next to this sits a fantastic earth oven. And yes, the bread was as good as it looks:

Other elements include the all-important manual pump for water – without which this community would have suffered dearly during the recent earthquake (see Part I) – and a greywater system for biologically cleaning household waste water, returning it, slowly, to the water table after several stages of natural cleaning.

Potty Training

The ‘centrepiece’ of this demonstration site, however, is this:

A composting toilet (or ‘dry toilet’ as they’re called here)

This elevated, dual-chamber throne room (similar to the one at Zaytuna Farm) serves as the home’s fertiliser collection station. When enconsed therein, or thereon, as the case may be, the room is notable for its lack of odor. Any odor.

Although composting humanure should be regarded as an urgent… um… call of nature everywhere (the world is running out of potable water, and yet we’re crapping in it, and we still haven’t come to terms with the significance of phosphorus recycling yet either), it is arguably even more important here in El Manzano.

I say this for two connected reasons: 1) most of the community here rely on ‘long drop’ toilets (simple holes dug into the ground), and 2) the water table in El Manzano is incredibly close to the surface – in many places barely a metre below ground.

In case the obvious eludes you – this means that these smelly, bacteria-filled repositories will be seeping into the water table…. Yes, this is the same water table they’re pumping water from so as to quench their thirsty lips. If it weren’t for the very low population density here I think we could be looking at some serious health issues.

The Eco Escuela El Manzano team are therefore turning the problem into the solution, by demonstrating how a potentially disastrous waste stream can instead become a resource. The Abobe House has a constant stream of students and interns residing in it – all of whom are building site fertility rather than contributing to water contamination.

Continue on to read Part V: The Design Stage

Please consider contributing to this worthy cause – you can do so via donation links on this page!

Further Reading:

• Compost Toilet – Farallones (237kb PDF)
• Compost Toilet – Minimus (459kb PDF)
• Urine-Diverting Toilet, Vietnam (3.4mb PDF)
• Low-Cost Compost Toilets (3.45mb PDF)
• The Humanure Handbook

Meet Doris. Prior to the quake, before the little El Manzano community decided it was pertinent to seriously consider things they could do to build resiliency into their village, Doris was already paying attention. She took the advice of the Eco Escuela El Manzano team and got herself a hand pump, so if the lights went out, it didn’t have to mean she and her family would be without water as well. Hence her describing the fact that the community had TWO hand pumps to supply water after the quake hit.

Now the whole village wants to get a hand pump. Imagine that.

I’m uploading this after 15 hours without power. Some mischievous people nearby cut cables during the ‘wee hours of the night’ – taking a good length of them so they could sell the copper wire they contain. Quakes, cable theft, energy crisis – whatever. Low tech hand pumps are saviours here where all water must otherwise come via powered pumps.

Last week Permaculture consultant Nick Huggins spoke to Anne Delaney from the ABC Riverina Breakfast radio program in Wagga Wagga, NSW. Listen here:

Nick Huggins Talks to ABC Radio About Riverina’s Water Blues

A backgrounder: Two Permaculture consultants, currently drought proofing a property in Livingstone, are calling for an end to the Australian Government’s water buy-back scheme, saying turning off the taps rather than helping farmers repair degraded landscape is selling the Riverina’s future short.

Over 9 days, Nick Huggins and Paul David Stockhausen from the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia (PRI) are implementing a plan to turn a degraded property in Livingstone into a drought-proof landscape that will see it use less irrigation water as each year passes while still growing ever more productive.

Nick says the project is an example of how the Riverina could take the little water that’s left in the region and get back to full production.

“With a proper management plan there is enough water available to get this area looking like the sunshine coast but instead 60 farmers have been encouraged to sell their irrigation entitlements, effectively locking their land into a permanent dry and degraded state.”

Geoff Lawton implemented a series of swales 12 months ago. Paul said “A year on and the results are clear, the swales and dams are full and there are springs popping out of land that was brown and dusty a year ago.”

On the buy-back scheme, Nick said “The Australian Government’s plan of buying back water and turning off irrigation channels may free up water in the short term but it won’t fix the environmental damage caused by years of over-grazing and chemical agriculture.

“If the government continues promoting this program it may worsen environmental problems, destroy communities and could ultimately lead to less food security for Australia.”

They both believe the Government needs to look at the bigger picture and put a renewed focus on sustainable agriculture.

“Implementing Permaculture principals has turned this farm green again with relatively low inputs, it wouldn’t take much to do this across the whole region and it can only improve the situation”, said Nick.

“Over the next 40 years we need more food not less, but if we just stop using water what future does the Riverina have? They might have to shut the post office down as well!”

This might be hard for the average world citizen to understand, but I remember, after growing up in a land flowing with pristine water supplies (New Zealand) and then heading overseas, being rather surprised – even shocked – to be introduced to the concept of buying water. Coming from the heart of an island covered in stream- and river-laden mountains and valleys, the thought of surrendering my hard-earned cash for a bottle of water seemed obscene.

To me it was just one small step away from companies selling us the very air we need to breathe.

In some of the places I lived and visited, people regularly purchased bottled water due to the perception it was healthy or due to suspicions about the local supply. I remember the water industry being big business in Australia. In some parts of Sydney, at the time, a poured glass of tap water always had a slight yellow tint to it. This bothered me, and so once I placed a full glass of water on a bench, determining not to move it for a week or so. After about five days the water in the glass became perfectly clear – except for a 5mm layer of thick brown sludge at the bottom….

This experiment told me there are, sometimes, valid reasons for concern about tap water in places. But, from what I’ve seen, this is the exception rather than the rule. Many studies around the world have shown tap water to be just as good (and often better) than expensive bottled water. (Often bottled water is tap water.)

Consider installing a filter system, if necessary

Unfortunately, the last time I visited New Zealand I discovered the wonders of modern marketing had done their thing in my absence – as almost every supermarket and corner store has bottled water from France, Wales, etc. If New Zealanders, with their gloriously pure aquifers, can be convinced to buy water from the other side of the planet, it does leave one a little dismayed with industry motivations, and the gullibility of consumers….

Depending on where you live, your tap water is likely to be just as good or better than bottled water – but if not, consider having a filter system installed in your home. The one-off cost will soon be repaid in savings, and immediately compensated with peace of mind – not only in regards to your personal health, but also in regards to your environmental footprint.

What kind of future are we financing with our bottled water purchases?

Aside from health and environmental concerns, there are freedom and justice issues at stake here too. Another important reality is that our above-mentioned gullibility in surrendering to BigWaterCorp’s media marketing is financing the growth of mega-corporations who are working hard to control the world’s water supplies. These profit-centric corporations seek to privatise this precious resource under the guise of ‘managing it more efficiently’, but in reality they’re setting the stage for a future where only the wealthy (think well financed industry with a thirst for great quantities of water for their processing requirements) have access to the blue gold (highly recommended reading). Continued water conflicts will be the result. The following clip is a snippet from The Corporation documentary, and looks at the result of water privatisation in Bolivia in 2000, where San Francisco’s Bechtel Corporation won the bid for control over the water supplies of the country’s third largest city, Cochabamba. The company immediately jacked up prices to unaffordable levels and it even became illegal for people to collect rainwater without a permit. Several people were killed and hundreds were injured, many seriously and permanently, in the resulting unrest – until Bechtel was finally ousted and run out of town.

As an aside, last year we even observed the strange irony of World Water Forum protesters being subued by having water cannons turned on them by Turkish police. This is a scenario we’re seeing all too often – security, police and even army forces being utilised to enforce the ‘rights’ of Big Business. We are in effect financing our own subjugation through taxes and through being ‘good consumers’.

One of the ‘constants’ we observe and design around in permaculture is that water always flows downhill, and at 90 degrees to contour. This is true in natural systems, but in economic systems it’s also true that water flows uphill, towards money. Let’s not be the source of that funding. Reusable water bottles, water filters where necessary, water harvesting – they’re all ways to bypass the money machine and ensure water remains a human right and not a commodity managed for private profit.

One of 55 eco-friendly homes nestled amongst newly established gardens

An hour or so south of the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo is the fishing district of Kalutara. Although only one of many regions hit by the 2004 Tsunami, post-disaster relief efforts here were unique in that Sarvodaya determined to use the situation to create Sri Lanka’s first eco-village.

Designed with the technical advice and guidance of world renowned Australian permaculture experts Max Lindegger and Lloyd Williams, who are affiliated with Ecological Solutions Inc. and Global Eco-village Network (GEN), the village has become a model of sustainable development.

The Sri Lankan government allocated a parcel of land situated five kilometres inland for the purpose, and financing for construction came via Sarvodaya as well as the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (AJJDC), the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) and the Asia Pacific Forum for Environment and Development (APFED). The combined gifts culminated in the construction of Lagoswatta – a model eco-village, situated on a gentle five acre slope bordered by rice fields, that is now home to 55 families from three villages in the area.

I was of course very keen to take a look, and so after winding our way from the coast, through small farmlets and a rather beautiful and shady rubber tree plantation, I arrived in Lagoswatta for a brief look.

Beginning in April 2005 and completed in 2006, an important aspect of of the work was the involvement of the intended residents in the construction process itself – providing an excellent opportunity to build a sense of ownership and self-determination for their future, whilst giving survivors a sense of purpose that helps them deal psychologically with trauma, loss of loved ones and their subsequent dramatic change in circumstances.

Each earth-brick home in Lagoswatta is virtually identical, measuring about 46 square metres (500 square feet) and consists of two bedrooms, a living room, kitchen and sanitation facilities. Each home has its own garden, and practical involvement of residents are positively encouraged with training in composting, gardening, recycling and also maintenance of the solar panel and battery that provides electricity to each home – something many residents never had before. Homes are also equipped with a recycling receptacle and on the edge of the village is a small recycling station where materials are separated and stored for monthly collection. The project also included a Subterra biological soakage system for household greywater.

Water for drinking and irrigation is one of the biggest problems Sri Lankans face. Construction for Lagoswatta thus included fourteen rainwater harvesting tanks to collect roof run-off, five drinking wells and two communal bathing wells.

An important aspect of design for any eco-village are those that encourage community interdependence. In addition to housing, a multi-purpose community center was built that includes a doctor’s office (manned on Mondays), library, computer room, a childcare/Montessori school centre and a playground – all encouraging community interaction and the pooling and development of the creative abilities of individual villagers. Programs assisting in social mobilization and livelihood support foster this development as well.

A boy plays in the community childcare centre

The edge-of-town recycling station – emptied monthly

One aspect of village life I found interesting was that, unlike other Sarvodaya villages, where the very first stage of development is ‘awakening’ to the Sarvodaya principles based on earth care and the ten basic needs, the villagers of Lagoswatta were somewhat thrown together suddenly at a time of extreme stress. Additionally, many of the villagers were previously fisher folk, so once moved from the coast to Lagoswatta they’ve had to take on a whole new existence. Whilst villagers on the whole largely seemed content and adapting to their new surrounds, it was clear to me there wasn’t the same industriousness and cohesion found in some of the other villages who had opted to join the Sarvodaya network out of acknowledgement and appreciation over time of the principles that forms the basis of the movement.

In other words, these people were somewhat thrown together out of necessity, rather than inspired choice.

A Lagoswatta villager harvests compost from his bin

Practical examples of this could be seen by observing the state of different gardens in the village, where some were making excellent use of their land – cultivating quite a diverse range of fruit, vegetables and herbs and developing a lovely shaded environment that is a major advantage in the tropical heat – while others were making merely token efforts.

Some villagers were making excellent use of their garden space

I spoke with a few villagers about how well their solar system worked. One man spoke despondently about how after only four years the battery had already failed and he couldn’t afford the 15,000 rupees to replace it. Considering this man didn’t have power in the shack he and his small family lived in prior to its destruction, I was conscious of how this ‘upgrade’ in their life was making them dependent on polluting technologies that were too expensive for them to maintain. When I mentioned the failed battery in a neighbour’s house, it was explained to me that the first man had not been maintaining the battery as he was told (topping up with water) and so killed it from neglect. Considering this, I remembered that that particular man’s garden was also largely non-existent, indicating either a general lack of pro-active interest or difficulty in adapting, and it made me appreciate all the more the importance of Sarvodaya’s stepped program that prioritises individual transformation at its base.

Each home has a battery that stores power from a small roof-mounted
solar panel. The only appliances for most houses are normally only lights,

a radio and/or television.

As they say, a house does not a home make. In the same way, a collection of buildings and people does not an eco-village make. It became obvious to me that you cannot just lump a divergent range of people together and call them a ‘community’. A truly successful community requires some planning at a spiritual level to facilitate cohesion – and this centres in all involved being inspired with a sense of positive purpose and collectively shared goals. Disasters like that which gave birth to Lagoswatta obviously do not provide the luxury of time for such considerations, but I think this is an important facet to consider wherever possible.

Villagers said their conditions were improved – homes were warmer in winter,
cooler in summer, and power, water and garden features were all appreciated.

The good news is that Sarvodaya’s efforts in this regard continue to this day, and Lagoswatta has become an excellent model for not only Sri Lanka but also for village development and disaster relief efforts worldwide.

Continue on to read Part VIII….

The community centre is appropriate for culture and climate

The community library was spartan, but it’s a start

Composting toilets are culturally unacceptable to Sri Lankans, so Lagoswatta
utilises septic tanks for black water. Outside are rain-fed washing facilities.

A typical Lagoswatta kitchen. Some homes house two or three families, as
families would open their doors to relatives struggling after the disaster.

A children’s park completes the picture. The sign reads:

"This park is a gift to the children from the American people."

Fig. 24.The heat island effect. An excessively wide, exposed, solar-oven-like residential street in Tucson, Arizona absorbs the sun’s heat during the day like a battery, then radiates it out at night. This local warming effect has raised summer temperatures in Tucson by 6°F (3°C) since the 1940s, which contributes to global warming since the higher temperatures result in people using air conditioners more, which are powered by electricity generated through the burning of coal. Note that no shade trees are planted in the public right-of-way along the street, leaving street and sidewalk baked. All runoff is drained off site leaving the development dehydrated. Reproduced with permission from “Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 1"

My view of public streets was radically changed when I heard ecovillage designer Max Lindigger tell a story of an insightful walk he took with his grandfather. “Look there,” said his grandfather, pointing to condominiums being built on the once forested slopes above his village in the Swiss Alps. “That’s where we grew and gathered food during the war. The forests were common land, a reserve of community resources. What commons remain? Where will we grow and gather our food in the next catastrophe?”

I then looked at my Sonoran desert city of Tucson, Arizona and asked myself, “Where are my community’s forests, our commons? Where would we get our food in times of need?”

Over 450 native food plants grow wild in the intact areas of the Sonoran Desert.1 The velvet mesquite tree is one of the keystone species producing a reliable crop of diabetes-deterring, naturally sweet, protein and carbohydrate—rich seeds and seedpods in both wet years and drought.2 Thus it used to be a staple of the indigenous people’s diets. Yet the vast majority of these trees and the greater ecosystem have been bulldozed within my city to be replaced with a hot and inhospitable pavement of impermeable streets, parking lots and buildings or landscapes of water-hungry exotic plants dependent upon irrigation from dwindling water supplies. The pavement drains much of our scant 12 inches (304 mm) of average annual rainfall out of the community through runoff and evaporation. Yet, this pavement is also the excessively long corridor through which most of our food arrives. According to the WorldWatch Institute, the average American meal travels 1,500 to 2,500 miles (2,414 to 4,023 km) from the farm to the table.3 If oil supplies fueling semi-trailers disappeared we’d be without food. If the power that fuels our well pumps went out, we’d be out of water. We are creating the conditions for catastrophe.

But that can change by turning “wastes” into resources, and turning challenges into opportunity. The majority of public land—our commons—in the urban setting is our public streets and adjoining right-of-ways. All too often there is little or no vegetation there, let alone a forest. But the resources (soil, local nursery and backyard grown native plants, rainwater runoff, and people) to grow a forest, or at least regionally appropriate orchards, are there (fig. 24 and 25).

Fig. 25. The cool island effect. A narrow, mature tree-lined, and shaded street in Village Homes, Davis, California. This local cooling effect from shading has resulted in summer temperatures dropping 10°F (5.5°C), which reduces global warming since lower temperatures result in people using air conditioners less, which are powered by electricity generated through the burning of coal. Note that runoff from the street is directed to the trees that shade the street; beneficially hydrating the site, while also reducing downstream flooding. The trees are deciduous, so they drop their leaves and let more sun in during winter. Reproduced with permission from “Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 1"

Once established, native food plants can survive on our natural rainfall patterns without irrigation. With harvested rainfall these plants can thrive. The vast majority of Tucson’s stormwater runoff is currently diverted straight from roofs, driveways, patios, parking lots, and convex landscapes to public streets that flood to resemble rivers; the runoff then exits via storm drains (fig. 26). If we recognize that runoff as an asset rather than a liability, we can harvest it before it runs down the drain to sustainably grow native food forests on public rights-of-way along the neighborhood streets that act like ephemerally flowing riverbeds, and within public parks and on private property (fig. 27). This also greatly reduces potential flooding of downstream areas, while improving stormwater quality.

Fig. 26. A landscape wastefully draining resources away. Reproduced with permission from “Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 1"

Fig. 27. A landscape abundantly harvesting resources. Reproduced with permission from “Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 1"

That’s a big part of the idea behind a collaborative effort in my hometown called Desert Harvesters, which strives to promote, celebrate, and enhance local food production and security by planting indigenous, food-bearing shade trees in water-harvesting earthworks, and then showing folks how to harvest and process the bounty. Annual events include neighborhood tree plantings, milling events that grind mesquite seedpods harvested from neighborhood trees into delicious flour, and native/local food feasts.

Planting community roots

We encourage neighborhood activists to organize tree plantings in their communities, emphasizing hardy, food-producing shade trees native to the Tucson Basin. We provide a list of the recommended trees, their description, and some of their uses on our website. These trees are the best for the area, since they have adapted over millennia to our local climate and soils, and coevolved with the native wildlife.

Neighbors can purchase these trees in 5-gallon sizes for just $8 each thanks to generous subsidies from Tucson Electric Power Company and the local program Trees for Tucson. A community tree-planting day is set for each neighborhood to distribute their trees, and it’s kicked off with a free workshop on how to plant them in water harvesting earthworks. Volunteer crews of neighborhood residents then set out to plant trees along their streets, sidewalks, and in private yards. Within hours of planting the neighborhood feels changed for the better-more neighbors know each other. The trees show the care and commitment people have for their community, and water-harvesting earthworks can be observed by all (fig. 28). Within six years of planting the trees are full and beautiful, regularly blooming with seasonal color. Neighborhoods find that as native habitat grows back within the urban core, exotic pigeon populations start to be replaced by native bird life such as cardinals, flycatchers, cactus wrens, hummingbirds, curve-billed thrashers, white-winged doves, gamble’s quail, and gila woodpeckers. The community’s Sense of Place becomes reconnected to the flora and fauna of the local ecosystem, which is becoming reestablished, right outside their homes. Within eight to ten years of planting, the tree-shaded sections of the neighborhood are noticeably cooler than unplanted areas (compare figs. 29 and 30). This confirms what studies have shown – shade trees growing along streets can cool the summer temperatures of urban neighborhoods by 10°F (5.5°C) if the canopy shades enough of the hardscape.4 This can greatly reduce a community’s power consumption since less power is then needed to mechanically cool buildings. Plant a tree and you plant a living air conditioner.

Fig. 28. Happy tree planters and newly planted desert ironwood tree. Neighbors help each other plant trees, and thereby get to know one another and create a more dynamic, close-knit community. Photo credit: Brad Lancaster

Fig. 30. Same section of Dunbar/Spring right-of-way as fig. 29 after water-harvesting earthworks and tree planting, 2006. Used with permission from “Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond”

Additional indigenous food trees in the Tucson area include foothills palo verde (Cercidium microphyllum) and blue palo verde (Cercidium floridum) producing delicious flowers and barley flavored seeds, and desert ironwood (Olneya tesota) producing peanut-flavored seeds. Many native plants also have medicinal value and provide craft materials such as dyes, wood, glues, fiber, and more. Native food trees in other regions might include oak, pinyon pine, sugar maple, or date palm.

The harvest

Harvesting advice is given on our website, and harvesting workshops are given in areas of the community where the trees have been planted. The harvest extends well beyond the picking of fruit and seed. We also try to get folks to realize the value of harvesting the local resources that will support and enhance the trees – such as rainwater runoff and mulch. The implementation of rainwater-harvesting cisterns is encouraged to augment water-harvesting earthworks with captured roof runoff, and enhanced water-harvesting earthworks are utilized along streets to use street runoff to passively irrigate the trees planted along the streets. This simultaneously enhances local water resources while creating a beautiful, multi-purpose greenfrastucture of flood-controlling landscapes. For more information on these strategies please see my books “Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volumes 1 and 2” at www.HarvestingRainwater.com.

In addition to harvesting runoff, the basin-like earthworks passively harvest mulch in the form of leaf and fruit drop. The mulch increases the rate at which rainfall is absorbed into the soil, minimizes water loss to evaporation, and naturally fertilizes the soil. Rather than strip mining nutrients from the trees and soil by raking away fallen leaves and fruit drop (fig. 31), we encourage folks to let this organic matter collect within the basins around the trees to naturally decompose and cycle back into the vegetation and soil (fig. 32). Prunings are cut up into 4-inch (10-cm) long sections and laid beneath the trees from which they were cut. Harvest your leaf drop and prunings, and the nutrient loop becomes regenerative. Trees grow taller and stronger.

Fig. 31. Wastefully using fossil fuels to vacuum up leaf drop and nutrients. Photo credit: Jenny Leis

Fig. 32. Beneficially using prunings as mulch to recycle nutrients back into the soil and tree, while increase water infiltration into the soil, and reducing soil moisture loss to evaporation. Photo credit: Brad Lancaster

Milling and enjoying mesquite

We live in a society that is often short on time and in search of convenience. Traditional means of grinding mesquite pods and processing other wild foods often demand more time than busy folks are willing to give up. So we sought to speed up the process and make it fun. Thanks to a $4,900 PRO Neighborhoods grant we were able to purchase a farm-scale hammermill and mount it to a trailer to make it mobile. We take the mill to various public milling events around the community to which folks can conveniently bring their harvested mesquite pods (fig. 33). The hammermill can grind 5 gallons of whole mesquite pods into 1 gallon of finely textured, naturally sweet flour in just 5 minutes. Traditionally this would’ve taken hours (fig. 34).

Fig. 33. By taking our mill to various locations it is very easy for folks to get to the events by our favorite non-polluting, community-building, good health modes of transport – foot, rollerblade, skateboard, and bicycle. Photo credit: Brad Lancaster

Fig. 34. Primitive mesquite milling demonstration at the Dunbar/Spring Organic Community Garden mesquite milling and mesquite pancake breakfast.

The milling events are typically held in conjunction with local farmers’ markets or mesquite pancake feasts to enhance the diversity of available foods and to expose folks to the wonderful flavors and potential abundance of locally grown foods. The events are organized in October and November at community gardens, the community food bank, and community centers to correspond with the late summer garden harvest and the end of the mesquite pod harvest. Mesquite pancakes served with prickly pear and saguaro syrups or backyard honey “plant the seeds” of the native foods’ delicious tastes and potential within the minds and palates of the hungry public (fig. 35). (Click here for a video of one of the community fiestas). Sale of, and feasting on, local garden produce like corn, squash, tomatoes, and tepary beans, and cultural foods like tamales, sweet potato pie, and pickled cholla buds are encouraged. Local musicians play as folks eat and the hammermill is fired up to grind the mesquite pods brought by community members who harvested over the summer. Flour goes home with the harvesters, and mesquite breads, cookies, and sauces are cooked up in their kitchens.

Fig. 35. Hunger for the delicious mesquite pancake. Photo credit: Josh Schachter

By planting, harvesting, and sharing the produce of the native ecosystem and backyard gardens these foods become sustainable parts of our daily experience, community/cultural identity, and food security. Many of these plants, particularly the natives, do not need imported resources to grow. By incorporating such strategies as water harvesting, passive mulching, and strategic planting (such as along streets or on the east and west sides of buildings) local resources are enhanced, wildlife can prosper, neighborhoods are beautified, and communities are made more liveable. By sharing and celebrating community efforts and resources knowledge is spread, the value and appreciation of local resources grows, and community ties and investment build. All of this is an integrated means of designing to thwart catastrophe, while enhancing our lives now. And the benefits steadily grow both with the trees, the relationships we have initiated with our neighbors, and a deeper connection to place and the resources that sustain it.

Brad Lancaster is a permaculture teacher, designer, consultant, and activist living in Tucson, Arizona. He is a co-founder of Desert Harvesters (www.DesertHarvesters.org). In addition, he is the author of the award-winning books “Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond” Volumes 1 and 2 (www.HarvestingRainwater.com).

The potential of harvested street runoff 5

For every inch of rainfall

• A 10-foot wide paved street will drain 27,800 gallons of runoff per mile
• A 20-foot wide paved street will drain 55,700 gallons of runoff per mile
• A 30-foot wide paved street will drain 83,500 gallons of runoff per mile

For every 100 mm of rainfall

• A 3-m wide paved street will drain 300,000 liters of runoff per mile
• A 6-m wide paved street will drain 600,000 liters of runoff per mile
• A 9-m wide paved street will drain 900,000 liters of runoff per mile

References:

1. Hodgson, Wendy, Food Plants of the Sonoran Desert, University of Arizona Press, 2001.
2. Niethammer, Carolyn J., The Tumbleweed Gourmet – Cooking with Wild Southwestern Plants, University of Arizona Press, 1987.
3. Halweil, Brian, Home Grown – The Case For Local Food in a Global Market, WorldWatch Paper 163, WorldWatch Institute, 2002.
4. Hammond, Johnathan, Marshall Hunt, Richard Cramer, and Lauren Neubauer, A Strategy for Energy Conservation – Proposed Energy Conservation and Solar Utilization Ordinance for the City of Davis, California, City of Davis, CA Energy Conservation Ordinance Project, 1974.

Brad Lancaster, author of the award-winning books “Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond” and info-packed website www.HarvestingRainwater.com, demonstrates how we can get the most from the rain by planting it in the soil, then accessing it with living pumps of plants. These are simple concepts that help turn scarcity into abundance.

With chapters like ‘Crap Happens’, ‘Deep Shit’ and ‘A Day in the Life of a Turd’, this is sure to be an interesting book, albeit possibly not one to read over lunch?

With this wonderful substance piling up in all the wrong places (after all, we’re running out of clean water, and yet we’re crapping in it…), this taboo topic deserves a lot more attention than it gets. Enjoy the book – and special thanks to the author Joseph Jenkins for making this freely available (warning: 22mb PDF – if you want to download chapter by chapter, scroll down on this page, or just read online here).

Oh, want a hard copy of this book? Here you go.

Written by a humanure composting practitioner and organic gardener with over 30 years experience, this third edition provides detailed scientific information on how humanure can be hygienically recycled, without fancy technological do-dads, a large bank account, toxic chemicals, or environmental pollution.

This unique handbook provides information on composting, soil fertility and microorganisms, alternative graywater systems and much more. It also gives detailed instructions on how you can build or buy your own sawdust toilet and compost bins for only a few dollars.

Defecating in our drinking water is perhaps one of our culture’s most curious, but least talked about, habits. This book gives compelling and detailed testimony as to why humanure should be constructively recycled:

* to prevent water pollution: (almost 4 trillion gallons of sewage effluent are dumped into our coastal waterways each year);
* to fertilize the soil: (rich in soil nutrients, humanure can be safely recycled by thermophilic composting);
* to protect our dwindling drinking water supplies: (nearly 1/3 of all household drinking water is used to flush toilets); and
* to enhance our health: Fertile soil not only grows great veggies, but nourishes our health and community’s well-being. – josephjenkins.com