next: and the idea

in answer to a question and the more general looming uncertainty, today there came to me an interesting idea.  a something to do.  i still think its no good to think too far into what's next but its nice to address the issue when it arises.  the immediate next is to go to a yoga center on molokai.  this seems almost finalized now.  things work differently in hawaii a bit.  and with working on farms.  its not so business like.  there are no business hours and so forth and thank goodness for that.  so i'll be here at my dear rancho for another two weeks or so and then will hit the roads for about a week or so.  camp in the national parks and hitch around the island.  

now then to the bigger next.  the mainland one.  i need to make some money.  but more critically i need to be engaged in a lifestyle as vibrant as the one i'm in right now.  i need to be at the edge of what i know.  this is where i am the happiest.  so how to do this in the state i've lived in my whole life?  here's the idea, and i'm hesitant to put it up here because its pretty significant to the next few years of my life.  but i'm going to put it here because i need feedback and also because i'm excited about it.  

the idea:::

i am convicted of the imperative sensibility in producing significant amounts of your own food.  i won't restate the case for pursuing a sustainable lifestyle.  luckily i think it makes pretty blatant sense in the context of the contemporary affairs of the world.  there are a few directions i could go in with this conviction.  

i could go to grad school and study spiritual ecology and be in an anthropology department in a city, and i would write about the relationship between organic farming and spirituality.  the various ways that the deep appreciation of the earth lends to certain practices of cultivation which lend back into certain spiritual discourses.  

all that business doesn't really appeal to me.  i'd rather live it than write about it, or live it and write about it.  i don't know what i'll have on the other side of grad school that i need and can really use and could not go and get a few years down the road anyway.  so the work i need to do right now, the work that constantly keeps me at the edge of what i know, is gardening.  particularly permaculture.  

i was reading a book on permaculture thats been sitting on a shelf in the cottage for months.  all of a sudden i was really excited and inspired.  it all makes very practical sense...  so here's the idea:

my grandparents live on 40 acres of land in southeast ohio.  its beautiful rolling hayfields mostly and some wooded hills and valleys.  i am considering the possibility of getting a permaculture system started there.  it would mean living with them and planting trees all summer, expanding the garden, getting some major composting going, perhaps build a chicken coop and a greenhouse.  i have  a lot to learn about the system.  a lot.  but it makes sense to me, i've lived in a well developed permaculture system for nigh on three months now.  

here's a few of the general concepts or ethics of permaculture:  

+Cultivate the smallest possible land area.  Plan for small-scale, energy efficient intensive systems rather than large extensive ones. 

+Be diverse, polyculture.  It provides stability and helps to be read for change.

+Think about long term.  Plan for sustainability. 

its a really beautiful system that blends an ideology with a daily ethic very seamlessly.  the simplest element of permaculture design, is to plant in zones with the highest intensity of use closest to the house and then systems that need less or little energy in the zones further out.  so zone one, the zone closest to the house has vegetable and herb gardens.  zone two would have some kind of animal pen (probably chickens in our case) near enough to the garden that you can use it to mulch and fertilize easily.  might also have a green house in zone 2.  and a significant fruit and nut orchard.  very potentially corn in ohio.  in hawaii, its papayas, mangos, macadamia nuts and avacados.  could also do oats or beans.  blackberries perhaps.  then beyond that in zone three, would be the place for apple trees and such. 

i have so much to learn before i can consider this a legitimate venture.  but, i can learn it.  and i can do this kind of work.  farms make a lot of sense to me.  and they also make me very happy and content.  

heres some other issues that need to be kept in mind.  sorry, i guess i'm kind of hooked on this blogging ritual and it gives me some space to think through things.  

first issue:  its a really huge flipping deal to get a farm started!  huge. and i will run into a million things i've never even thought of let alone experienced or learned about.  but it will none of it be more than i can handle.  and i know many wonderful people in columbus that can give me advice and practical connections.  eric, the manager of the last farm i worked at is an invaluable resource in this fashion.  

second issue:  i have no real idea what the condition of the soil is like down there.  i don't think its too bad, probably a lot of clay and its been planted in hay for years and years.  i don't know that much about how things grow there.  i know grandma fertilized with manure in her garden and grew some pretty fantastic stuff.  a manure connection shouldn't be too hard to find in caldwell, ohio.   i would hopefully be able to plow and put manure down in the late spring and get a cover crop planted in zone two.  then be able to get that tilled and another cover planted before winter. that would be all that could be done in zone 2 before winter.  significant number of trees could be planted in zone three.  its just a matter of figuring out what would produce best and be best to have around.  all of this means studying and learning intensely at each stage.  

third issue: money.

fourth issue:  i don't want to create a situation that stresses my grandparents.  this will be done as a joyful investment in the land that they have already invested in and i want them to be able to celebrate it as such.  i don't want them to feel like that have to be working on things all the time.  but this is the beauty of permaculture.  there is not extensive manual labor involved.  the design is very deliberate and intentional and getting it put in place will be good work but it doesn't take a lot of hours out in the field to keep up with it.  the most care is in the garden, but gramma loves to work in the garden anyways.  and i will be there all summer.  we could have a very substantial garden.  working in the gardens here makes me realize how much i could get done working with my gramma.  she's a machine in the garden.  and grandad loves to do work on the tractor.  i think it would be a delight for them to have an even more deliberate setup.  so grandad could disk the fields in zone 2 instead of mowing the lawn around the house.  but they are both getting older and this only works if i know that i can dedicate a few years to this.  during the growing season, i will be in ohio, working on the farm then getting things ready for winter.  then i can travel and do whatever i want, probably come back to hawaii and keep doing what i'm doing.  and things will weather the winter and i'll come back in time to take starts out of the greenhouse and into the ground.  (i don't know who will plant the starts.  maybe aunt debbie).  so ultimately this issue is taken care of if i can accept that this will be my lifestyle for the next four years.  i think i can do that and plus it'd be a good thing to do up until 2012.  just in case.  

fifth issue:  living with my grandparents.  would this drive me mad?  first of all they are getting older and its a bit hard for me to be around them lately because is see them as not quite as sharp as they used to be.  and this bothers me and breaks my heart.  but it would be completely different if i were staying with them for five months.  it would not be the typical, concentrated attention of a three day visit.  and, i would have a car that could get me to columbus in 2 hours.  this is hardly being cut off from the world.  its taken me two hours just to hitchhike to the store and buy granola here in maui.  i find that i thrive with some measure of solitude.  but this would hardly be solitude. the social reality of caldwell ohio has always fascinated me.  its what got me in to folklore.  the most important paper of my academic career was about my gramma telling stories about becoming a part of the community there.  

that's about all the issues there are with it.  or as many as i can think to name here.  this has been helpful for me.  if you made it all the way to here then thank you and please let me know what you think of this.  it strikes me as a really wonderful idea and a very fortunate that i want to and can do this and that my grandparents have the land.  and all of this.  ok.

your thoughts please.  everyone.  columbus friends, mother, brother, former lover, blogger buddies.  from what you each and all know about me, how does this proposed venture strike you?  i suppose maybe this is a decision big enough to be kept to myself and mulled over.  but i have an idea like this everyday that just gets buried away underneath other thoughts.  so i'm going to grab this one and make it public so that i have to think it all the way through.

thanks.  to everyone who reads my blog.  it presents a space for doing this.  a space for articulating stuff that i would otherwise just bounce around in my head and never let enter reality.