Food Resiliency

It is becoming difficult to ignore and dismiss what is going on in the world. The challenges that we are facing are affecting everyone. Climate change is shifting weather patterns into more extreme swings. Crop failures and damage are becoming more frequent around the world. Unrest and political upheaval is affecting almost everyone. Supply chains are fraying.

It is becoming more and more important to build resiliency into your daily and yearly planning. One of the most important places to start is food resiliency.

Here are some tips to get you started.

1) Know the growing cycle in your area. In most places, it is a year. Plan your resiliency around that cycle. If you have to source food locally, You need to know the cycle and plan accordingly.

2) Know your minimal nutritional needs for your family. How much rice, pasta, flour, vegetables, etc does it take to feed your family on a weekly basis. Here’s how: Record what you are currently eating of each item. Not what you throw out, but what you eat. Do the best that you can with this for both home and away. Do this for a couple of weeks. This will give you a good handle on what you are doing now.

3) Record this on a ledger or spreadsheet. Go through this to the best of your ability and translate this to basic ingredients. If you buy ready made meals, what would it take to make this. What would it take in basic ingredients like rice, pasta, beans, vegetables, flour, sugar, meat, to create meals for your family. Do the best that you can to get an idea.

4) If you were going to cook from basic ingredients, how much would that be for the growing cycle in your area. Do you really need to eat that much? Most of eat more than we really need.

5) Create an inventory system that works for you so that you are tracking what you have and need to stock up on. Decide how much of each item you need to have on hand. As someone that has grown and preserved my own food, I can tell you that this is not as difficult as it seems once you get into the mindset.

6) Develop a pantry space to store your stock that allows for easy rotation of stock. You want to eat the oldest first so that things don’t go out of date and go bad. This should be a large enough space to allow for ample storage of the basic needs.

7) Create a balanced plan to stock up on the basics. Stock up slowly and adjust your plans as you go. Buy one or two extra items every time you go shopping and slowly build up your safety net.

The second part of food resiliency is to have some basic seeds on had whether you garden or not. If you have space, try a small garden. If you don’t have space, try growing some herbs or greens in a pot.

I am pulling together the resources and information to help people get started here in this newsletter and on my other platforms.

I am putting together plant profiles for small spaces. At this time, they are available at The Phoenix’s Nest. Click the button below to subscribe and get your PDF downloads.

The Meditation Garden - A Design for Contemplation

For better or worse, my spiritual practice is my own. My thoughts and considerations for this garden are my own and based on my research, experimentation, and experience in both the practical and spiritual aspects of the garden as a home gardener, and a market gardener. This meditation garden gets its inspiration from the Medicine Wheel and the wisdom and outlook of some of the spiritual teachers in my life. One of those teachers is Jamie Sams. Although I never had the pleasure of meeting her, her writings have influenced my life.

At the time of this writing, this particular garden exists in my mind and on paper, where it will live until I find the place whose spirit and energy harmonize with the garden. I share this concept here as a potential design to make a garden both a peaceful place and a practical space to spend time.

The main paths in this garden plan are set up as spokes on a Medicine Wheel with the hub being a central gathering place. The gardens and paths are set up in a clockwise orientation in this garden with the path following the garden and a ring garden surrounding the whole. The garden in my mind’s eye is roughly one acre (slightly smaller than a football field) but the basic idea can be used at any scale from a table top garden to as big as you have resources to manage. So let’s start with some of the basics.

A meditative garden is designed to be contemplative, low stress, and to encourage and support your peace and spiritual growth. Please design your garden to put you into the state that you are seeking. The plants that I would put in my garden are practical as well as calming.

A meditation garden should use sustainable and ecologically friendly gardening techniques. Avoid harsh and dangerous chemicals. Use companion planting, and grid or square foot gardening techniques for dense planting. (I have used a section of cattle panel for a spacing guide. This works very well if you have a lot of ground to cover.) Encourage beneficial insects and discourage damaging organisms with timing, planting techniques, and choice of plants. Feed the soil with mulch, compost, and other organic matter. Basic permaculture techniques are an excellent guide.

A good fence and perimeter planting is helpful. There are a number of techniques that discourage problems caused by 4 legged and 2 legged “visitors”. Many types of fencing and plantings can be both beautiful, useful, and attractive.

It is your garden. Do what works for you. If it isn’t working, change it.

Here are some resources that I have found useful:

The Complete Book of Gardening, editor Michael Wright, 1978. This is hard to find, but it is the reference that I go to first.

All New Square foot Gardening, Mel Barthalomew, Quarto Publishing Group, 2006

Back to Basics, Robert Dolezal, Reader’s Digest, 1981

Any book by Eliot Coleman.

Rodale Institute Publications

To support my efforts in this publication and the plant profiles, you can leave me a tip by clicking on the button. I invite you to take this journey with me this year.

First Path

As I walk the first path and exist in the space of the first garden, I contemplate the lessons of relating harmoniously with the environment. Every life and place has rhythm, seasons, and interactions. Every plant, animal, stone, breeze, and drop of water speaks a language of its own knowledge and wisdom. It our job to learn the truth.

Meditations and lessons:

The interactions with the first garden is an exercise in observing the cycles of life. What is living, growing, dying, blooming, fading? How are the parts of the environment interacting to create the web of life in this space? What is the breeze telling you? The clouds? The rustle of the plants? The life around you? The cycle of growth in the plants?

When you interact with this space, how does it feel, smell, sound? What creatures do you see, hear, feel? What is the soil like?

How do you fit into this web of life? How do you nurture the web of life? How do you protect and respect the flow of energy?

The theme of the first garden is about learning to communicate with the spirits of place. It is a special skill to be able to slow down enough to hear the messages that the space is trying to give you. So, sit in the space and pay close attention to what all of your senses are telling you. Hear all of the voices in the symphony. Touch, Feel, Hear. Learning the languages of nature is the first step in living in harmony.

Here are a few plants that you might find are aligned with this concept: Blueberry, Uva Ursi, Honesty, Butterfly Weed, Cloth of Gold, Water Cress, Hawthorn, Gooseberry

And for a little bit more

Events

February 2 - Ground Hog Day

February 12 - Abraham Lincoln’s Birthday

February 13 - Full Moon

February 14 - Valentine’s Day

February 15 - Susan B Anthony Day

February 17 - President’s Day

February 26 - Carnival Day

February 27 - New Moon, Next Newsletter Published

Blueberry

Ah, blueberries! My first experience with this little powerhouse was when I was 11 or 12. I was with my family on a back country canoeing trip when a few days in, we found them. Short little bushes practically growing out of the rocks and covered with dark blue berries. We feasted on fresh blueberries that night and the next morning. Wild blueberries are a wonderful, healthy burst of flavor that can’t be matched by anything you find in the grocery.

The low bush blueberry is one of 35 or more species of shrubby perennials that thrive mostly in North America. There are closely related species found around the world. They first appeared in the rocky debris left behind as the glaciers retreated in the lakes region of the northern U.S. and southern Canada 10,000 years ago. These little blue berries have been a staple in the Native American diet ever since. They were one of the fruits that were dried and used in pemmican, a winter food for the native Americans in the eastern woodlands.

These little gems are a powerhouse of nutrients and health promoting compounds. They are high in vitamins C, K, and E. They are a good source of iron, manganese, and phosphorus. They are rich in flavonoids and other compounds that promote tissue regeneration and reduce inflammation. Adding blueberries to the diet is a good way to prevent heart disease, cognitive decline, and chronic diseases. Blueberries support healthy metabolism, a healthy nervous system, a healthy cardio-vascular system, and a healthy digestive system.

Are blueberries easy to grow or hard to grow? That depends. They are fussy. They require a soil acidity of ph 4 to 5. They need a well drained, organic soil that stays evenly moist but not soggy. they need full sun. When you give them the right conditions, blueberries reward you with a beautiful harvest. If they don’t like the conditions, they pout. The best way for most people to give blueberries the conditions that they crave is by growing them in a pot. Low bush blueberries are ideal for growing in large containers and raised beds where you can tailor fit the soil conditions that they like.

For an article on the energetic properties of blueberries, check out this article on my website;

To get your PDF copy of the complete plant profile for blueberries, click on the button to go to the Phoenix’s Nest.

For a recipe that works beautifully with blueberries, check out this on my Buy Me a Coffee page.

The Medicine Wheel

The Native American Medicine Wheel, or Sacred Hoop,is one form of the sacred circles that are found all over the world. The oldest of these were formed prior to 4000 BC and many are still being maintained today. While they are scattered around the North American continent, the most famous is in the Bighorn National Forest in Wyoming.

While the specific meanings and rituals centered around the Medicine Wheel vary from tradition to tradition, there are some generally accepted meanings. The Medicine Wheel reflects a way of looking at the world that emphasizes connection and flow. It is a symbol of the cycle of life and evolutionary growth. All life, all energy, all beings are interconnected and it is only in the balanced circular flow that life on Earth thrives. It also represents the alignment of all aspects of our being, the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual.

The Medicine Wheel can be constructed in the landscape, as a symbolic artwork, or as mental construct. No matter how it s constructed, whether it is complex or simple, the Medicine Wheel marks a sacred space for prayer, contemplation, and ceremony.

When the Medicine Wheel is constructed on the landscape, it often consists of 12 stones around the perimeter, a stone in the center and pathways stones from the center to the perimeter. There are 5 main points of special significance. The cardinal directions of East, South, West, and North. There are the main stones on the perimeter. The center is the fifth point. According to most traditions, the circle is entered from the East and traversed clockwise. Each point has its own life lessons and significance.

For a longer article on the Medicine Wheel, check out the article at Manitu Okahas Studio. There you will find a brief description of the directions.

Or for more information, check out these resources:

ictinc.ca

oktalakota.sto.org

uwsuper.edu

Medicine Cards by Jamie Sams

13 Indigenous Grandmothers by Jamie Sams

And I'm Not The Only One

Here are a couple of places to find more information.

For this edition, the references and recommended resources are listed in each section.

Some one I'm following:

While Jamie Sams is no longer with us, she was an insightful Native American spiritual teacher. You can find her teachings in a number of books including 13 Indigenous Grandmothers, Medicine Cards, and Sacred Path. She wrote a number of other books as well and any of them would give insight into a holistic way of being.