Preparing Our Vegetable Garden for Winter

 

BMB Stronghold, 75% Scrap Materials approx. 30' x 12'

    Closing out it's 6th year, this backyard plot started as the usual city-parcel mat of grass and has only been cultivated with simple hand tools and consistent amendments with mulches, composts and mycological fertilizers.  Redesigning it's shape almost annually, we've managed to maximize the use of identifiable growing space in a compact area and also our ease of movement between it.  Subsequently, we've found a suitable enough microclimate to raise storage crops and even a few seed crops as well.  We were also able to limit our infrastructure expenses by using salvaged wood, pipe, stone & planters which left a minimal cost for fencing, posts & a few cinder blocks.  

    Three central rows were lightly turned before punching our garlic in for next year and then covered with the remaining compost & ash fertilizer we raised back in spring.  By time all that comes out, they will be ready for summer greens & herbs and at least one round of hopeful fall carrots before clearing out for garlic again.  The PVC pipe pieces play like permanent pots (unintentional tongue twister) to allow for edible ground covers like purslane, watercress, sorrel, plantain & dandelion to develop amid dedicated spacing for our cultivated crops.  We used the bordering fence as a trellis for many years but our reorganized structures account for so much other vertical growing space that it will be much better suited to cycle thru shorter crops like peppers, peas, leeks and greens.

    In the foreground are 2 fenced screens easily mistakable for a cold-frame, when it is actually an outdoor playpen for the family painted turtle, Bob.  We bring Them out to romp with longer tasks on the chore-list and try to spot any bug-hunting efforts, but most of the time They just bask.  Many lessons to learn from Bob.

    Our cause to abandon the bordering fence as a trellis came with the reinforcement & posting-up of these old greenhouse table-tops along with the northern fence one bed over to create 3 distinct spaces that can better control some of the more indeterminate crops we hope to store for winter like cucumbers, snap beans & tomatoes.  The pallet boxes have a bit rockier soil than the rest, but have been a great place for our herbs and we will likely try raising a fair number of leeks alongside them (maybe even also in the white potted beds).

    We have been chided for our use of leaf mulch as a winter pathway smothering agent, but we believe that sourcing leaves from within the garden's reach can not only help insulate our soil for the health of microbes & worms but also restore nutrients back to our trees.  When thaw comes in March, we'll likely rake it all back to the garden's outer borders so birds & other neighborhood predators can help clear pests away and the soil can harden off to start watching for ground covers to pop up.

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    As the moon approaches it's waning apex, we plan to cleanse our garden with a Smoke Bath Ceremony and consecrate with Huergelmisuatn crafted from this very site.

    Fara Fram, Knatta Thin Theinn Uell.

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Greenwashing As a Tool to Separate Social Class

Barese Chard Ferment, 10 Total Food Miles from U-Pick @ Small Axe Farm, Springfield IL

    There is excessively over-researched articulation from the century’s turn regarding how food is grown and where it comes from to try swaying consumer interest toward an illusory connection with manufactured abstract concepts. Among the social spheres hoping to empower it, the word “local” is rarely allowed an opportunity to maintain an honest definition and immediately demands an intention of psychological impact. “Fraud” has limited application with food because, whether it’s “good” for us or not, anything deemed edible (by one or another) can still provide some sort of sustenance. Across the spectrum of justifications, it is most common to find either research groups studying an inevitable mountain of evidence that insists enough banality of suggested dangers to imply insignificance or a distinct flood of self-praise over the projected expectations for how much good they might do anyone who can participate. These mentalities begin to siphon off many aesthetic challenges mostly faced by companies in the energy field, but green-washing also helps shift public opinion of why it is so essential to understand where our food comes from and how we can empower ourselves to ensure a continuously developing network of people providing it for their surrounding environment.

green·wash

/ˈɡrēnwôSH,ˈɡrēnwäSH/

noun

noun: greenwash; noun: green-wash

disinformation disseminated by an organization so as to present an environmentally responsible public image.

    The US Federal Trade Commission provides extremely lax enforcement for how this sort of language gets used, which contributes to skepticism of green claims and takes away power from consumers to encourage the people and/or brands they support towards progressive development within sustainable practices. For the grand scheme of solar energy providers and electric car designers, the less their actions are monitored or their processes verified, the more common it is to find things like corporate posturing. As a result, the Australian Trade Policies Act can now find organizations guilty up to $6M in fines (along with any expense incurred to provide honest transparency about their actual impact) for providing misleading environmental claims. (Unfortunately, those amounts are usually still “affordable” enough to justify). A great example of this misappropriation is a political phrase known as “linguistic detoxification”, where legislation changes the definition of toxicity for certain substances to dissociate a particular classification as toxic (originated by Barry Commoner). The same practices can be found on a county- or city-wide scale, where organizations may have personal connection with business or restaurant owners to inflate perceptions about some actions in an attempt to shadow others.

lo·cal

/ˈlōk(ə)l/

adjective

adjective: local

belonging or relating to a particular area or neighborhood, typically exclusively so

    The misconception of this term comes from how many different communities choose to define it and for what reasons (many times ignoring basic concepts like “particular area”, “neighborhood” or “exclusivity”). A primary concern for most of them is creating a network of producers and consumers within a particular area that they might become more reliant upon themselves as well as a community who share similar focus and determination. Some prefer to focus on economic virtue and subsist on the Food, Conservation and Energy Act of 2008’s combined definition where “the locality or region in which the final product is marketed, so that the total distance that the product is transported is less than 400 miles from the origin of the product” and later included as just the state where it was produced. Using the technicality (or whatever it’s mutated modern equivalent is), Wal-Mart and Aldi market local Wisconsin Apples and local Michigan Cherries to consumer appeal. The ratio of product quantity to region of dispersal can surely be identified with language that provides fair amounts to everyone, but we could also try using such data to create a map that better visualizes what crops a “particular area” truly demands and who might be willing to try supplying them within a shorter radius… perhaps even learn storage methods or urban farming and so on. While many scientific studies speak against calculating food miles, their opposition lies primarily with including a total amount of energy used in producing a product (which is very limited among small-scale produce farming and even less-so with horticultural experimentation) and removes more potential for us to raise foods and medicines ourselves by physically watching and helping them grow.

    Farm-to-Table, also known as Farm-to-Fork, is a social movement promoting the use of locally sourced food-stuffs (however that be defined) in restaurants and businesses (with even some cases of Farm-to-School cafeterias). Not limited to just farms, any product created under their preferred standards of location is suitable to fly under the banner. Many farms attempt selling their own crops or products to such places, but most buyers have projected sales demands to meet which can be compounded by the size of their establishment(s), typically heading in two directions: (1) where regional distributors are researched and supported to provide a consistent availability of selected ingredients or (2) they cut. “Cutting” is a process where restaurants or businesses will buy a small percentage of their weekly groceries (many times publicly) to fractionate with larger amounts of distributed product. The illusion created projects a philosophical desire to know and communicate where the food comes from without much transparency as to where all of it really comes from. Large accounts of fraud in both Tampa Bay and San Diego were found, ranging from discrepancies about restaurants previously buying from area farmers then switching the source without updating menus to blatantly lying about their source (even after the source confirmed sale never occurred). To be fair, the marketability of social movements like these does have a relative air of “exclusion” as many of the price-points offered under this kind of language do reflect an upper echelon appearance, leaving others outside of such groups to consider what is actually being said about the qualifications of such products and who provides them. In some cases, people believe the “farm-to-table” horseshoe they’re being served might actually be healthier than another.

 

Kitchen pantry, easily accessed by nose-y dogs with many signs of rodents & full of outdated commercial products, on a communal farm site boasting progressive food justice, sustainable living, healthy diets and home-remedy medicines.  Basement pantry twice as large with even more regular signs of rodents and housing some foods over a decade past expiration.

    Food Fraud is a term meaning "the intentional adulteration of food with cheaper ingredients for economic gain," with particular emphasis on the industry at large. The first perpetrator that comes to mind is Kashi, who were praised for a long era of providing quality food products to a large array of people… until groups like The Non-GMO Project and other third-party testers grew. Eventually, it had been discovered that many of their ingredients (including every bit of soy) did not meet the qualitative standards they marketed themselves with. Back to Nature maintained a soft voice through their questionable ingredients shift as well, but there is a trend in business where brands (in this case independently owned naturally oriented producers like Annies’, Garden of Life, Burt’s Bees, etc.) sell themselves to corporate conglomerates (Kraft, Procter & Gamble, etc.) or their secondary entities. Economic virtue, again, allows for detoxifying legislature that creates loopholes to change contents without documented responsibility to provide transparency. Many restaurants and organizations allow for such habits as well, in the case of occasionally buying from farms for showcase dinners or public events but rescinding that support during general operation when budgetary concerns become priority.

    The Food and Drug Administration only inspects 2% of the food that enters it’s ports. Not only is food safety treated as a low priority, but they also admit that standards in place make preventing crimes with regulation nearly impossible because of how much potential there is to create it. While many state, county and city run governments have individualized collections of ordinance or authority, the federal level can still govern all. When corruption is a genetic trait there, it has a horribly natural ability to transfer into state, county or city based businesses and/or organizations. Greenwashing holds a prominent responsibility for the plateauing of small farm growth and steady decrease of existing average farms’ income by allowing the misappropriation of honest, conceptual and definitive language. Now, because that language has been manipulated into something massively obtuse, many scholars agree that applying a disciplined dietary shift can reduce the average household’s food-related climate footprint than attempting to achieve the complexity of “buying local".

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Reka Spor: Identification & Initiation of Intent

Þursastafir

    We come from squalor with good intentions.  Our given paths were not meant to sustain themselves and The End was easier to visualize than The Future, thus we fled to The Hedge in an effort to explore both realms.  Among The Day, we learned to raise organic crops & cultivate healthy composts in small urban gardens, forage for wild foods & adapt our palates to them, balance nutrient intakes to best energize ourselves for the labor & activity we came to engage and provide for ourselves with a minimal need for currency-based consumption using that labor & activity.  Upon Nightfall, we contemplated the means to apply safe travel & leave no traces, honed multiple crafts into tools & toys to better protect & entertain us along that road and wondered what success might be like somewhere along it.  We became aware of the concept of Non-Dualism and now attempt a dance between physical & mental states to empower our thoughts & deeds that may seek unity & justice.

     We have had fortune with guidance & confidence by using the Elder Fuþark to interpret concepts like coincidence, luck and fortune.  However, to explore the foundation of behavior that define the popularly believed origins of those things presented very direct parables of destroying nature for vanity, sport, title & class.  Abruptly opposed to such ideas, our studies with The Runes also began to unify with Their Reflections.  Parallels with Kabbalah began finding us and we were pierced by the concept of Sitra Achre, where They of The Other Side inspire an inverted view of the runic structure within a numerological context and provide methodology for totemic visualizations. During this practical shift, we would discover & devote ourselves to Thursatru, a neo-pagan alignment with the perspective of adversarial characters among pre-christian Celtic & Norse folklore. Eventually, we came to practice & create a veneration of primitive spirituality based around The Essence of Nature, Forms It has been seen & known to have taken and The Ekstasis by which we experience thru Their Presence.  We would soon also be found by Kali-Ma while developing yogic rituals, Tezcatlipoca while practicing self-defense, Phur Pa while using & caring for tools and Kehlen while learning herbalism & wildcraft.  We are able to See & Commune with our Family when we can perceive Them as They Are within living constructs of this reality's physical world and we make a priority of our work to honor & respect that Lineage.

    "Reka Spor" means to follow tracks.  The Ancestry we identify with is Feral, Virile, Alive & Among us and our devotion is grounded in how we observe & bond with Them.  There are many acts by which we explore that piety, but several are large foundational stones to how we project our spirituality into the worlds we consciously engage.

    Blota refers to an act of Worship, from a simple awareness of Hamingja & Galdr in it's honor to fully coordinated ritual ceremonies.  Theophagy is a practice where one aligns themselves with a spiritual essence by consuming aspects relative to that essence.  As agricultural journeyfolk, our first step into a farm or garden begins the effort to raise foods that become richly bioactive with relationships to our Lineage and allows us to worship as long as we can continue our work to feed ourselves.

    Muna refers to memory, more specifically A or The Remembrance, which we understand as a cause of impact triggering a memory.  Gnosticism believes in the dissolution of ego to free the id for transition between realms/worlds/verses, allowing a perception of experiencing or working among any moment in any time or place within them.  As animists, we contemplate from Their perspective & history before our own and can imbue our work with an intention for the health & well-being of Their World in search of the luck & fortune to have It be remembered first.

    Banii refers to The Bringer of Death; That which brings or has brought about an End.   Hedgecraft collects the very expanse of norse cosmology within Itself and thrives with contribution while providing majestically extensive means to create it.  As anarcho-primitivists, we seek to define our own culture, belief & unity around an opportunity for anyone to make possible Their own future that ends as much on Their own terms as can be made for with limited residual impact on the world behind Them.

  

    BMB: Worship, In Remembrance, The Bringer of Death.

    Perhaps if we focus on how we are most likely to end, we have an opportunity to create a more enjoyable path toward it. 

    Traveling along The Left Hand Path is publicly controversial as many stops & routes along the way are in direct conflict with ideas presented by orthodox religion, federated governments & popular commerce, who forcibly suggest cartoonish villainy among any idea contrary to theirs and shift their work to secular advances of suppressing opposition.  BMB does not consent to generalized projections of intention based on our travels, physical & astral, our work, physical & esoteric, or our appearance, actual & perceived.  Our Lineage is full of wonder and They are more important than any federation or government, so we are often thrilled to discuss practical ideas & methods to speak & work with Them to better connect the identity we might share Together in a place where They can run as free as we would see ourselves.

    We hereby make ourselves available for discussion, consultation & service.  Details for all those potentials are imminent.

    Our mental faculties are in good order.  Only Emptiness can be filled with divinity.

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