Hidden Lotus Herbs is getting ready to move to our new #farm site and really ramp up our operations!
For some backstory,
I was the recipient of a fund from @coop to start a worker-owned #cooperative and decided to make it an herbal apothecary!
We've been operational for around six months and are now starting our regenerative agroecological farm and increasing the capacity of our free clinic.
However, the #renewableenergy systems we're building are more expensive than we budgeted for, and we could use some help getting the farm and clinic going financially.
We're really needing help from our community to make all this cool stuff happen!
If you can spare some $, please consider supporting our transition and future. If you can't, please share far and wide!
The #coffee is growing strong. It's been a struggle to keep these babies watered in this prolonged dry season, but there they are. 2024 is dedicated to getting them all in the ground across about six hectares.
They're growing fast, so getting the prep work done for their planting is the main focus.
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El #café está creciendo fuerte. Ha sido una lucha mantener a estos bebés regados en esta prolongada secia, pero ahí están. 2024 se dedica a plantarlos todos en unas seis hectáreas mas o menos.
Crecen rápido, así que lo más importante ahorita es preparar la tierra para recibirlas.
Everything is a learning curve, right? In the beginning of our #coffee planting journey, we fell into the trap of making the nursery with plastic nursery bags. There are so many issues with pests and weeds, it seemed like the most obvious solution.
But damn, that's a lot of plastic on an organic farm. And we couldn't always get the right sized bags to allow for optimal growth.
In his research, Michael re-discovered an even more traditional nursery technique - he's done it for smaller, annual plants, but never at this scale or for this kind of tree.
This is our second nursery, which consists of deep beds - they are lined with plastic, but we've avoided all those little bags. When the time comes for transplanting, the walls will be broken down and the plants carefully extracted one row at a time. The hope is to give them optimal conditions for growth and to prevent root damage upon transplant.
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Todo es una curva de aprendizaje, ¿verdad? Al principio, caímos en la trampa de hacer el vivero con bolsas de plástico. Hay tantos problemas con las plagas y las malas hierbas, que parecía la solución más obvia.
Pero eso es mucho plástico en una granja ecológica. Y no siempre conseguíamos bolsas del tamaño adecuado para permitir un crecimiento óptimo.
En su investigación, Michael redescubrió una técnica de vivero aún más tradicional: lo había hecho para plantas anuales más pequeñas, pero nunca a esta escala ni para este tipo de árbol.
Este es nuestro segundo vivero, que consiste en camas profundas; están forradas de plástico, pero hemos evitado todas esas bolsitas. Cuando llegue el momento del trasplante, se derribarán las paredes y se extraerán cuidadosamente las plantas, fila por fila. La esperanza es darles unas condiciones óptimas para su crecimiento y evitar daños en las raíces en el momento del trasplante.
Some things just don't biodegrade well here, and part of it is that we're still perfecting our composting workflow and making sure our heaps don't overdry and die in our arid environment. We're getting better all the time, and it's a learning process. But in the meantime, I've been doing a lot of research on biochar. Most of the USDA fact sheets only talk about using biochar from wood or agricultural "wastes" like cornstalks, straw, etc. However, I know for a fact that in much of South America it's common to burn animal bones, manure, and more.
So, talk to me about biochar! Do you use it? What do you burn? What have your results been? Do you combine it with other soil remediation tactics (compost, compost teas, etc.)?
The Sustainability Ambassadors Global Exchange (SAGE) Program is back!
We are thrilled to announce the SAGE PhD Fellows program! This 3-year program is intended to nurture future impact leaders in solution-based sustainability research projects co-created with communities and consortia members.
In collaboration with The Nordic Centre in India we are also launching the 2nd year of our Sustainability Ambassadors Global Exchange (SAGE) Senior Ambassadors Program!
This is a unique opportunity to activate bright and motivated minds to consider current issues in global sustainability, with India as the target.
The farmers, primarily from Punjab, have been steadfast in their determination to march towards Delhi, demanding a legal guarantee for the minimum support price (MSP) and other agricultural reforms
Get this: you can generate lignite (low-grade coal) in your garden?? Fast! IF you get the composting setup right.
The first half of the video is very detailed, nuts & bolts of soil and chemistry. The actual images of the site and how they did it starts at about 50min.
Soil science is the study of some of the most complex systems imaginable, and sadly still badly neglected-- especially considering how crucial it is to the foundations of our biosphere and survival. Much of this presentation is over my head, and it's tough for me to wade through all the "um, uh, uh"ing, but... wow!
I'll try to summarize:
There's a distinctive layer of black stuff under the soil of the Amazon, and people tend to assume it was built up from fires in years past (biochar is becoming a popular analogue), but researcher Scott Goode says it's created through much the same process that forms coal under peat bogs. That can take millions of years, but under the right conditions it can happen MUCH faster-- and all driven by biological action.
The idea here is you're trying to mimic the layers of soil activity under an old-growth forest, inside a trench 2' deep and 1.5' wide that's anaerobic at the bottom. Doing this in your own yard, Goode calls a "Climate Victory Garden". The trenches bracket your growbeds, and you don't stir or turn them-- you just have to keep filling them from the top, and once it gets going it's got quite an appetite.
Important note: while healthy soils can hold large amounts of carbon (80% of a forest's carbon is underground, only 20% is in the vegetation you can actually see), that carbon only stays put while the web of organisms using it stays healthy. Lignite on the other hand is a mineral that pretty much isn't going anywhere unless it catches on fire. This project demonstrates how to get BOTH the living system AND build long-term carbon storage at the same time.
One bit I really appreciate, about 1h16min in he is asked, "So what about the carbon market, what are they paying for?"
His reply starts with: "Really similar to the biofuels market, it's essentially a scam!"
We must think of everything as a cycle, and consider how to close the cycle. There should be no "waste" ideally.
Let me share an example:
Birds in the wild don't lay an egg a day for no reason. Some birds, like geese, might lay a few eggs during a specific season when the eggs are most likely to be fertilized (a specific mating season, if you will, usually the spring). Laying eggs requires energy and nutrients, and wild animals don't spare either of these without good reason in general. However, with chickens we took jungle fowl and selectively bred and selectively bred them until they became today's prolific layers: chickens that lay 2-300 eggs a year (an egg approximately every 25 hours with the exception of molting and winter when daylight hours are shorter). In exchange, we feed our captive bred friends differently: more, for one, and at different macronutrient proportions (higher protein and calcium supplementation are two examples).
This is excellent when it's a mutual, closed cycle. We get the extra eggs, and the chickens get to spend their lives pecking and scratching in the sunshine in a protected area. Originally, these chickens would have been fed agricultural or other "wastes", and this makes this a closed circuit. The chickens eat something that might otherwise need to be thrown away or directly composted, composting it more efficiently (well, kind of, chickens aren't ruminants and pass a lot of undigested food, but anyway) and providing a valuable source of nutrition for us in the process.
When, however, we order commercial feed rations in plastic bags this ceases to be a closed cycle. We are now creating waste in the form of plastic, energy loss from shipping, labor and resources expended to house and store this feed (in a store or warehouse) and so on.
The question, then, as we're creating this space and changing our lifestyles from "consumers" to zero-waste producers, is largely how to close all of our cycles. How do we use everything? How do we produce what we need? How can we truly never see a single thing as "waste"?
We aren't there yet, but this is absolutely vital to making positive ecological changes and to building a true ecosystem.
*Quick edit: ruminants also pass a lot of undigested food. Slightly more efficient than chickens, different diet still not perfect. Neither are we humans, but you get the point.
I've been quiet here, but I can explain...
Last year we were lucky to buy a piece of land and old manor house near our farm. The place you see in my pictures is not our land, we have a lease.
So we were planning to expand to the second location, which is about 20 minutes away, while retaining the original place. Over the past few years we invested a lot of of time and money there, but in the end things worked out differently.
One of the partners in the farm, whose land we were on, wanted to focus on other things so we decided it would be best to move the whole farm to the new location. On the one hand that means rebuilding all the basic infrastructure and a new market garden from scratch which means a lot of work and investment.
But on the other hand it'll be on our land and we can integrate all the lessons learned over the past 4 years, so that's exciting!
Overall I'm very excited but also tired as you might imagine. Moving a farm is a lot of work... And we're not even halfway done. Luckily we have the lease on the original location for at least another year so we can maintain production while resetting.
I'll try and document as much of the process here!
Rancho de la Libertad is most definitely going to be adding some goats to the land in the next year or so, but are also considering pigs (for food self-sufficiency, not land restoration, although their manure is compost, too!).
So, #Pigstodon (if there is such a thing), tell me your experience raising pigs! We'd love to hear from some real human beings what they liked or hated about raising them and if it was worth it!
From my email archives: ReWilding Magazine on regenerative agriculture using trees to mitigate drought and environmental damage in Karnataka, India:
"With the 1000 Trees Project, Solanki has seen even the staunchest skeptics come around. Farmers who were earlier not in favour of digging trenches now admit that water harvesting has transformed their land. They are cognizant that trees regulate the temperature of their farms and the moisture in their soils, and saplings don’t need to be watered as much or as often because there is less evaporative loss. They have also started mulching to conserve water."
This is what a #ChristmasTree in the wild looks like underground. All of those roots are storing #carbon.
The Earth’s soils contain about 2,500 gigatons of carbon—that’s more than three times the amount of carbon in the atmosphere and four times the amount stored in all living plants and animals.
The world's soils are the best #CarbonSink we have.
People sometimes come over and think it's weird that we have compost toilets. I personally find it weird that a significant percentage of the world's population excretes body wastes into ~a gallon of clean drinking water and flushes it 6-10 times a day, whilst a not insignificant portion of that same population is facing significant water shortages.
Alright dear ones, it's time to make a little announcement.
For anyone reading this without context, let me provide some:
My partner & I own Rancho de la Libertad: a regenerative agricultural project and spiritual & artistic sanctuary in the high desert. We host ceremony here, provide a landing space to travelers interested in what we're doing, I provide ritual tattooing to those who need it, and we're doing the slow work of regeneration of soil and moving to turn back the ecological desecration that's occurred here in the last 150 years since the settler & gold rushes.
But it's in trouble. We're poised to lose our primary income stream soon, and this means that we won't be able to carry the current mortgage on our house. We're looking at purchasing instead a plot of vacant land between 40 and 60 acres and living in tipis, completely off grid. This positions us actually better for a few different kinds of opportunities. We can expand our regeneration efforts, live more sustainably, eliminate our energy costs (currently a huge part of our monthly bills), provide more living spaces for less money for travelers & residents, and have animals that we don't have the space for here, like horses & cattle.
Losing Rancho de la Libertad wouldn't just be devastating for our family, but for the artists & wanderers that we routinely host here for ceremonies, stargazing events, tattooing rites, and more generally so that they have the space to escape the city and have physical space in which to create and rest.
With that being said, we don't want anything for nothing. I recently (as you all know) opened up a ko-fi store, and am going to be releasing an Etsy store in the next 24 hours as well. We will be using our collective creative skills to craft meaningful spiritual objects in an effort to try to begin an alternate revenue stream.
I additionally will be posting a goal on ko-fi to crowdfund land and get us started. If I've held space for you, provided a beneficial meditation, or if you've stopped by the ranch and you have 5 dollars to spare, please consider if we're worth some of your support.
I will still make a point to not turn this into just a sales channel: I don't aim to trade this beautiful community I've found for sales. Occasionally you'll see shop updates or discounts from me, but otherwise the rest of what I share will be the same.
And for fun, I've opened up a discount on my ko-fi shop from now until the Winter Solstice.
Welcome, winter! Welcome, crisp pink mornings and cerulean full-moon evenings by bonfires dug into the sand, burning away the year's resolutions and warming bare blue feet.
Welcome, winter! Welcome openness and all day outside, coming in red-nosed and panting.
High desert winters are harsh and yet somehow mild, with biting dry winds and freezing nights, but tolerable chilly days and not much snow. We're around 2000ft above sea level, so we don't have quite as harsh a season coming as those who are higher up in the valley.
The climate here is tricky: it's dry, with a moderate growing season, but the extremes of summer & winter make it a little tricky to choose crops & sustainable shade trees that can survive both the extreme heat and the severe cold. Many species that are touted as being "drought tolerant" and that are popular are unlikely to make it through the freezing nights and occasional frosts. Succulents and cacti are included in this: I've noticed that once the liquid in their pads freeze they're unlikely to survive. It'll be interesting to see how our agave, aloe, and nopales do this winter now that they've had a few months to establish themselves. I know that they're possible to grow, because there are many, many homes here that have enormous specimens of all three. So I'm optimistic, we'll just have to see how it goes.
Last year, wild things began to sprout in October, including a wild species of lily, wheat and other grasses, and a kind of daisy. This year, with significantly less rain, I haven't seen a single lily shoot or a single daisy flower, and the wheat that began to optimistically poke its head out after the single August storm has stayed brown. There's an urgency here, amplified in my mind by the tourist hype: off-roaders will be making noise and carving up topsoil for the next month or so en masse, and camper vans and Subarus have taken over nearby Joshua Tree, making the most of camping reservations they made last year and milder temperatures in the park for bouldering and hiking. Some visitors come with respect for the delicate altered ecosystem, many with the misconception that this land, if left alone, will itself save desert tortoises and chollas, and spring forth abundance. Some come with the misconception that this land is useless, and all it's good for is spewing gasoline and destroying native grasses with rubber tires.
This winter will be full of making plans as we weather the weather and the influx of visitors. We have a plan to try to buy some vacant land nearby to expand our regeneration efforts, and in the spring hope to (finally, we hoped to this year but weren't ready) introduce ruminants and poultry to help manage our existing property.
I recently watched a video of Cedar Springs Ranch in the high desert of Western Colorado, and the owner said something along the lines of us needing to become the animals that once managed this land. Settlers eliminated the bison & buffalo that trampled grasses, grazed & spread manure, and the beaver that once dammed streams and slowed down water. So we must be the bison, we must be the beaver. Through holistic management of livestock and thoughtful earthwork, we can coax life back here while maintaining the existing ecosystem.
So, anyways, this is a long, rambling update/rumination as the seasons change and my mind is full of considerations, possibility, and energy to work through cooler days.