Inner City Farmer

While my garden dies a slow and painful death, it’s nice to know that some vegetable-producing plants in Austin are doing well. Earlier in the week, a member of the Austin Permaculture listserv I belong to spotted “several tomato and pepper plants growing among the perennials at the foot of the pedestrian bridge [that spans Lady Bird Lake] on the northwest side.” There was immediate speculation as to the origins of the plants.

One member thought they were part of a demonstration garden for the Green Corn Project, a local nonprofit whose mission is “to educate and assist Central Texans in growing organic food gardens.” This seems likely—on the website they do mention having a garden on Lady Bird Lake.

But the revolutionary in me loved the speculation that it might have been planted by a guerrilla gardener. If you’re not familiar with this movement, guerrilla gardening entails planting vegetation on abandoned or unoccupied tracts of land generally under cover of night. The more brazen do it right in the middle of the day. The goals of these stealth plantings are as varied as the personalities of those performing them. Some do it to grow crops they might one day eat. Some do it to beautify a scarred piece of land. Many are making a statement about land ownership, questioning its legitimacy.

In America the movement has a long, if not glorious, history dating as far back as the first decade of the 19th Century when John “Appleseed” Chapman started planting apple orchards all across the Midwest. The modern origins of the movement have been traced to Liz Christy and her Green Guerrilla group, who in 1973 transformed a neglected lot in the Bowery Houston area of New York into a beautiful garden.

I find it telling that one of the greatest acts of subversion one can commit nowadays is planting some seeds on someone else’s land. If you’re brave enough to do it and keep it up despite public pressure not to, you just might become as famous as Richard Reynolds. I applaud all those who are willing to try.

Observing our collective reaction to rising gas prices, it’s clear to me how we got into this mess in the first place. Are humans incapable of looking any further ahead than tomorrow? Do we only care about ourselves? Are we the dumbest, most short-sighted animals on the planet? I hate to say it, but, “Yes, YES, YES.”

First, there was that whole gas-tax holiday gambit championed by old man McCain and Hillary Clinton. Two days ago, McCain jumped on the idea of overturning the 26-year-old ban on offshore drilling in this country, a glaring reversal from his previous position on the matter. A day later, Bush chimed in that he thought it was a good idea, which is all the evidence you need to know that it isn’t. I’m not even going to mention all the environmental damage such a move would cause. Nor am I going to harp on our infantile desire to keep things just the way they are (“I’m going to be driving this Suburban when I’m 95!”) when nature constantly shows us that everything is in flux. No, this plan doesn’t even make sense economically. A 2004 study by the Energy Information Administration found that drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would trim the price of gas by a mere 3.5 cents a gallon by 2027.

Another option I keep hearing about is using biofuels to run our cars. A bunch of companies (one is Sapphire Green in San Diego, another is Valcent Products in El Paso) are trying to convert certain strains of algae into fuel. This is fairly exciting in that algae doesn’t need fresh water to grow, and the carbon dioxide it needs to grow might possibly offset all the carbon dioxide it releases when used as fuel. But it still seems like a stop-gap measure when what we desperately need is a paradigm shift, an entirely new way of thinking as we enter a new era in our history.

As thrilling as using algae as fuel might be to some, I still don’t understand why we love our cars so much. What good have they done for our culture? They’re expensive, dangerous, and socially isolating. Sure, they’re an ideal spot to fool around with the opposite sex when you’re a teenager, but beyond that they’re just rapidly depreciating death traps. I still think we’d be better off in the long run just ditching them and fully embracing public transportation. To help people in Austin make that choice, Capital Metro is offering “Xtreme Transit Makeovers,” specific advice about which routes to take for commuting and other trips, as well as handing out free seven-day bus passes from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. today at 100 Congress Ave.

A big part of this journey I’m on is about eliminating the idea of waste. Waste is a human construct. In nature nothing ever gets wasted. In fact, the thing we humans view as prototypical waste, feces, is one of the most valuable resources in nature. If I had to pinpoint the day the train we’re all on ran off the tracks, it would be the day we came up with the idea for disposable products: plastic sporks, batteries, styrofoam cups, diapers, razors, and toothbrushes. From a marketing and sales aspect this is genius, but looked at from any other angle this is just plain stupid.

I recently discovered a viable alternative to tossing old sponges in the trash can. It’s called the EcoSponge (there are many others of this ilk; this just happens to be the one I’ve tried), and it does just what it purports to do: last. It’s made out of a durable fabric, something called viscose, so that it won’t fall apart like the average kitchen sponge. Even better, you can wash it. If hand washing a sponge seems redundant to you, you can also throw it in your washing machine. Sure, it costs five bucks, but like so many other “green” investments (photovoltaics, tankless water heaters, metal roofs) it will more than pay for itself over the course of its lifetime. It’s this type of thinking we need to start using when tapping into our power as consumers.

The many problems created by our throwaway society have been well documented by William McDonough and Michael Braungart in their book Cradle to Cradle, and they even offered a solution, designing products that can be fully reabsorbed by nature. I’m not sure if the EcoSponge quite meets that standard, but if it lasts a year or two and prevents me from throwing twenty or thirty sponges into the trash I will have to count it as a success. Only time will tell.

On Friday, Jen, creator of the Rutabaga blog (one of several blogs I’ve recently discovered and enjoy, the others being Garden Girl and Trailer Park Girl), made a comment noting the distinction between self-reliance and self-sufficiency. In case you missed it here’s what she had to say: “Self-reliance is exactly that. Relying on your skills, wits, knowledge, and savvy to get by, even when that includes banding together with other people. While self-sufficiency implies providing for every one of your needs with your very own two hands. Which is damn near impossible, if not isolating.”

Up to this point I have been all about self-sufficiency, but in my original vision of this urban farm project I was hoping to adopt something that more closely resembled self-reliance. This was my plan: while relying on some of the precepts of permaculture to turn my land into a self-sustaining forest that would feed me and my son in perpetuity, I would at the same time be expanding the habitable space on the lot using my skills at natural building. I aspire to build another house on the back side of the lot using straw bales or cob (I believe in urban infill; this land can certainly house more people), but because I’ve never built a house before I knew I needed to take it slow and practice making smaller buildings.

So I built the gazebo all by myself. Doing this I learned how to make footers and a (really basic) roof. The end result looks a little Gilligan’s Island-ish, but it’s functional. It works. It keep the rain off my earth oven and cob bench. It also gave me enough confidence working with cob that I could instruct others how to do it.

The next project I hope to embark upon is building a toolshed out of cob. It will vaguely resemble the gazebo, but it will be much larger and will have a “real” roof on it. To ensure that the reality matches my vision, I know that I’m going to have to recruit some outside help. To make that much cob, I’m going to need many extra hands, and to design and build a roof that will ensure rain never touches my tools I’m going to need the assistance of an experienced carpenter.

But, laughably, before I can even start building the toolshed I need to finish the Garage Project. After replacing its crappy old door with a cob wall, I am now trying to integrate the room into the house proper, which means I need to talk to an electrician and a plumber. These are skills I simply don’t have. And yet I’m not just going to get on the phone and call 1-800-P-L-U-M-B-E-R-S-B-U-T-T. I’m hoping to use either the Austin Time Exchange Network or Skillshare Austin, two organizations that champion the exchange of labor for labor instead of for money, to recruit some help. Or perhaps someone reading this will know someone in Austin who might be able to assist me in exchange for….?

People are always asking where I get the clay that I use to make cob.

The answer: From a pit I dug in my backyard.

The cost: Free.

The long-term goal: To transform the pit into a pond, complete with a “creek” circling my oak tree and, ideally, some fish and ducks to inhabit it.