Peace begins with me. Peace begins with you.

Peace begins with me. Peace begins with you. Peace begins with non-violent communication. Peace begins with self love. Peace begins in the home. Peace can be cultivated, on this point all religions agree. Peace is an attitude. Peace is a vibration and if the quantum physicists are correct, when we vibrate with peace more peace will come. Peace begins with me. Peace begins with you. We've witnessed and experienced the opposite of peace for far too long. Peace begins with me. Peace begins with you. Be peace and your home, community, and world will follow suit. I am intelligent enough to be peaceful. You are intelligent enough to be peaceful. There is no way to peace. Peace is the way. Be peace. For my sake. For your sake. For your children's sake. Be peace.

Peace comes when we embrace it. It stays away when we embrace war, militarism, and foster mentalities of US versus Them. Peace demands disarmament of our nations, of our homes, or our hearts. Peace demands recognition that all humanity is equal and that every human being is sacred. Peace demands that we stand up and say with clarity, ENOUGH! Peace demands economic fairness, ecological sanity, and recognition that all spiritual paths are valid. Peace demands that all human beings needs be met regardless of profitability.Peace begins with me. Peace begins with you. Be peace.

Peace begins with stillness. Quiet your surroundings. Quiet your mind. Peace begins in my heart. Peace begins in your heart. The desire for peace is innate within me. The desire for peace is innate within you. Peace recognizes the folly of war. Peace recognizes the folly of forced conversion to a creed, religion, or dogma. Peace recognizes the inherent good within us all. Peace recognizes that all people are deserving of non—violation of their person regardless of nationality, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion or lack thereof. Peace recognizes that there are many paths to the common human goals of wanting a life filled with meaning, happiness, and fulfillment. Peace recognizes that all people deserve to live their lives free of fear, repression, or coercion. Peace recognizes the wonderful diversity that is represented in humanity world-wide. Peace recognizes the seeds of beauty, kindness, mutuality, and joy that every child on Earth is born with.

Peace recognizes the wisdom in the expression, “whatever you sow you will reap.” Plant your garden with love, kindness, affection, gentleness and watch peace bloom. My life is that garden. Your life is that garden. Peace begins with me. Peace begins with you. We must all start somewhere. Start here. Start now. Peace begins with me. Peace begins with you. Greet your neighbor with peace. Your neighbor is humanity. Your neighbor may have different skin color than you, different beliefs than you, or a different language than you. Revel in that. Take joy in that. Greet them with peace. Peace begins with me. Peace begins with you. Peace begins now. The desire for peace is universal. Be peace. Here. Now. I am intelligent enough to create peace. You are intelligent enough to be peace. Be peace in this moment. Practice peace and it becomes second nature.

Be peace and watch the world around you change. In your home be peace. In your community be peace. In our thoughts be peace. In your actions be peace. Peace begins with me. Peace begins with you. Be peace.

A Chicken’s Tale: How to Eat Well on a Budget

I love to eat good food. Gone are the days when I just shoved any old thing into my pie hole. Fast “food” is definitely out. It may seem cheap when looking at the monetary cost to purchase it. In holistic terms however it is anything but. All those burgers, fries, and cherry pies are filled with chemicals, have next to no nutritional value and often contain poisonous genetically modified organisms. The conditions the animals are kept in are appalling as is the waste inherent in the factory “farms” and all the packaging for the “meal”. One may save a few pennies by stopping at the local drive thru today and then pay a much higher price later when the doctor bills come due. There is a more healthful way to go about things than eating processed foods.

Recently, I purchased a whole organic chicken from the co-op we are members if in New Haven. The chicken was approximately 4 pounds and cost around $24. I can almost hear the air being sucked out of the room by anyone reading this and the accompanying exclamations of shock and horror at that impossibly high priced bird! When all was said and done however that one bird provided us with a dozen meals. That’s right 12 meals were made with that one chicken as well as a full quart of chicken broth, which will be turned into yet more meals. When looked at from that perspective, a $24 chicken makes a lot more sense than a Big Mac from McDevil’s or a bucket of “chicken” from Colonel Buzzard. We ate for several days because I used the entire chicken.

I like to use a crock pot to cook a whole chicken. As the bird cooks slowly it becomes tender and delicious. I baked two large organic yams in the oven (which provided starch for five of the12 meals in and of themselves) and added some organic broccoli to the crock pot near the end of the cooking time to round things out. When we had eaten all the legs, thighs, breasts and wings over the course of six meals, I took the crock out of the fridge to begin separating the rest of the meat from the bones. There is a surprising amount of meat left in the crock pot when cooking a chicken this way. It takes a little patience to separate the meat-seeing that big pile of chicken showed that it is well worth it though. Along with the meat, I piled up the bones on a cloth to boil for broth. The tiny bits of meat I missed or couldn’t get off the bones just enriched the broth. There is also the chicken fat that had congealed in the fridge which I used for the next recipe.

Organic rice is really inexpensive and nutritious. I combined two cups of rice with the chicken fat and all the meat I had separated to make a big pot chicken and rice with curry spices. There was plenty of chicken mixed in with the rice and the fat helped to make it really rich. It was if I say so myself delicious. The meals of chicken and rice (6 in total) were made even more delicious with the addition of some Swamp Yankee Killah hot sauce made in small batches by a friend of mine named Jason Morse here in New Haven. It added a spicy kick to our meals as well as adding to the local economy because I buy it direct from Jason. It always feels good to me to support local artisans!

Today I will make a root vegetable soup with the quart of chicken broth that remains from the chicken. I imagine that will feed us for a number of days both well and inexpensively using almost all organic ingredients. The most expensive ingredient was of course the chicken. When it all adds up though making over a dozen meals in this way is surely cheaper and infinitely more healthful than buying a dozen “value meals” at a purveyor of poison like Burger King.

For more info on Swamp Yankee hot sauce please visit the facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Swamp-Yankee-Products/290389740985099?ref=ts&fref=ts

Paying it Forward--Permaculture style

Recently I was interviewed for a permaculture themed podcast by one of my former students, Scott Mann. Since taking the Permaculture Design Course in Lancaster, PA Scott has himself gone on to get certified in teaching permaculture and is doing some good things in the Harrisburg, PA area including the aforementioned blog and being involved in the local food movement there. One of his reasons for interviewing me was to ask about a project I've had percolating in my head since about a minute after I took my own design course. The idea is called The Permaculture Paid Forward Project.

The idea was born out of the ethics of permaculture which I first learned at the Eco-village Training Center at The Farm in Summertown, TN. Those ethics are Earth Care, People Care, and Fair Share of resources. Learning those ethics taught me that we as humans can live sustainably, beautifully on the Earth by taking care of the natural world and ensuring that ALL people have their basic needs met (which is a far cry from what we see today with billions living well below poverty level). The project is predicated upon people sharing their surplus time, money, talent, or other resources to spread the ideas, techniques, and benefits of permaculture.

The inspiration for the project came from a couple of different sources. In 2007, I discovered a program from the non-profit Heifer International where people can donate money for the purchase of livestock ranging from bees and bunnies to goats, cattle, water buffalo or even a camel. The livestock will then be given to a poor family in an impoverished area of the world. The animals are bred and the offspring are then given to another family in their area thus ensuring that the benefit is multiplied.

The Hollywood film entitled Pay it Forward also came to mind when thinking about the project. In that film, a small boy designs a way to change the world by paying acts of kindness or debts forward to three people instead of paying things back. In one scene a man who had heard of the idea gives his car away to a complete stranger in order to pay something forward. Imagine a world where kindness was multiplied by a factor of three!

More recently in a documentary from the BBC I heard of an Ethiopian farmer who had been taught perennial agriculture based on agroforestry as a response to the problems of drought and over grazing that plagued his area. The food forest was so successful and life transforming that the farmer then went on to teach 300 other people in the area the techniques thus transforming the local ecology, restoring it to more balance, and helping many people in the process.


My goals for Permaculture Paid Forward are big and far reaching. I want to train as many people in permaculture as possible, provide right livelihood for permaculturists who receive training and share the vision, and I'd love to see permaculture sites spring up around the world as a result of permaculture designers taking the knowledge to everywhere it is needed. Participants in the project would then be tasked with paying it forward in an equally meaningful way. There is more about the project in the interview.

Here is the link to the podcast with Scott Mann. It comes out garbled at times due to us doing the interview over the phone. Most of it is audible. Cut and paste the link. I've still yet to figure out the formatting.


www.thepermaculturepodcast.com/2012/interview-dillon-cruz/


I also encourage you to check out Heifer International. It's a great way to give a gift to someone for the holiday of your choice.

www.heifer.org/

Food is medicine part 3: Genetic Scientist call GMOs unsafe

In a previous entry I spoke of the need for people to eat organic foods as a way of being more healthy and to protect themselves from genetically modified foods (GMO). As a follow up on that post I wanted to link an article that I found today about evidence from genetic scientist who confirm (yet again) that GMO foods are unsafe for you, for farmers, and are completely ecologically unsound.

You may recall that I mentioned that almost all of the major commodity crops--corn, soy beans, wheat, rice, canola, and potatoes-- are GMO. The only way to be sure that that the foods you are buying are safe and GMO free is to buy organic. If it comes in a package, like crackers, chips, pasta, canola oil etc, and says it's "All Natural" you can guarantee that it is GMO. Again, buy organic and you will know. "All Natural"is a marketing ploy to get you to pay more money for fancy packaging.

The article is very telling in my opinion as it is written by experts. These experts are not on the payroll of Monsanto or any other "biotech" company either. One of them returned over $600,000 in research funds at one time, so clearly their research is motivated by truth rather than pocketing cash.


Cut and paste the link to your browser. I keep having trouble with making it a click-able link.

http://earthopensource.org/index.php/news/60-why-genetically-engineered-food-is-dangerous-new-report-by-genetic-engineers

Myths that need to be busted, dispelled, and otherwise put to bed. Part 1

There are a lot of things that can get me riled up and persistent myth making by those who wrongly assume they have the power is one of the biggies. We hear about or read about these myths from the political arena (especially during the election cycles) and from the news media be it print, television, or internet. Too often, we're being sold a bunch of snake oil from slick looking hucksters in suits and a lot of people are buying. For that reason I'd like to dispel some of the myths that get me worked up the most. For this post, I'll start with myths about the price of gasoline.

I had a conversation with a mechanic who was working on our 1993 pick up recently about the price of gas. He said something to the effect that "gas is too expensive" and "could be cheaper" if someone would do something about it. The myth that gas is expensive in the U.S. is pure fiction. A lot of people seem to be unaware that we are now in the midst of a phenomena called peak oil. That basically means that all the easy to get oil has already been taken out of the ground, refined, and used up whether as gasoline, agricultural chemicals, or the myriad other uses for oil based products. Now the oil coming out of the ground is getting harder to come by and companies are going into increasingly sensitive areas to find and extract it, such as pristine rain forests in South America or deep water drilling in the world's ocean. We all saw how terribly wrong that can go with the still horrifically damaged Gulf of Mexico. Corporations and politicians are allowing the natural capital of the world to be used up for the sake of an increasingly arbitrary concept called money. This behavior is similar to heroin junkies shooting up into the veins of their genitals because those are the only veins they have left that are not track marked into oblivion.

Coupled with the ignorance about the reality of peak oil is the false belief that we as Americans have some sort of right to cheaper gasoline. Those with this view fail to comprehend that our gas is already incredibly cheap compared to many areas of the developed world. From 1997-1999 I lived in England. While there I worked at the gas station on a military base that housed American service personnel and civilian contractors. Our gas on base was sold only to those American personnel for about $1.35/gallon. British citizens filling up in London, York, Sheffield, Glasgow Cardiff or any other town were paying about $5.00 a gallon at that time. These days in England it's over $7.00 a gallon and in France I read recently it's somewhere in the neighborhood of $8.00 or more. Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute speaks of a report published over a decade ago that said the true societal costs for using fossil fuels should make gas over $10.00 per gallon due to the enormous subsidies and tax breaks governments give oil and gas companies, the ecological damage done in obtaining them, and the health implications from breathing air that is toxic due to automobile and other emissions. With that in mind, our current $3.50 per gallon gas is ludicrously cheap. Considering that those aforementioned companies are raking in record breaking profits, I'm surprised that people are being so passive about it all.

A final myth surrounding this issue is the belief that the current resident of the White House is to blame or can take credit for the price of gas. This is pure nonsense irrespective of whether the puppet at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is a republican or a democrat. The President of the United States has beggar all to do with it, unless he (or eventually she) finally makes it politically palatable to raise taxes on fuel prices or chooses to end subsidies to the likes of Shell, Exxon Mobil, BP et al. The president also does not set the supply and can do nothing about the ever increasing demand for gas and oil from emerging economies such as China and India. In those countries with their teeming BILLIONS of people, they have decided that passenger cars are the way forward (someone should tell them about peak oil too).

To sum up, gas in the U.S. is cheap all things considered. What makes it feel expensive when we fill up at the pump is the number of outlandishly large vehicles we drive and the ridiculously low miles per gallon ratings on almost every vehicle on American roads (25 m.p.g. is NOT good gas mileage, nor is 50 for that matter). The fact that Americans drive so much for any and every reason and use public transit, bike, walk so little is also a factor. The 'go speed racer go' type speeds of drivers all over the place adds up monetarily as well. The faster one drives, the more often one needs to fill the tank. Sooner or later all of this will change because the reality of peak oil and increased demand for oil will make it happen. Hopefully, Americans and the rest of the world that is wedded to their cars will get the memo quickly. If not things could turn out much harder than they need to be. Knowing the truth about oil is a good place to start.

Some links for further exploration:

Peak Oil author Richard Heinberg (copy and paste to your browser)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybRz91eimTg


Driving tips to save on gas
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/drivehabits.shtml

Food is Medicine part two: The Meat We Eat.

When animals are raised properly and harvested humanely the meat, dairy and eggs are healthier for us to eat. It really is that simple. In the U.S. these days this is far from the norm despite the idyllic pictures on the packaging at your geographically local grocery store. Drive through the great plains states and you will eventually come across a feed lot where thousands and thousands of cattle are standing on hard packed bare earth. The stench from all that manure is over-powering. The same is true for the chicken and pork "farms" one finds all over the country. A large metal building jam packed with "units" of poultry or pork is a biological hazard for those "units" as well as the living beings in the surrounding area. Proponents of such factory farm set-ups love to talk about how "efficient" these facilities are. What they are really talking about is only a tiny, monetary profit piece of the puzzle. They are efficient only in that someone makes a lot of money of off them (usually a corporate entity such as Tyson, Cargill, ADM, or Monsanto)and that they produce a lot of poisonous products.

What they fail to consider, either through willful obtuseness, malfeasance, or ignorance is the big picture. Part of that big picutre is this, animals raised in confinement get sick. A lot. With all those animals crowded into small, unnatural spaces the animals require vast amounts of antibiotics just to survive. Fecal matter piles up harboring huge amounts of pathogens. Bacteria, like all life forms, adapt to their environment. Some of them become immune to the drugs, survive, replicate, and then continue to sicken animals (be they chickens, pigs, cattle, or farmed salmon)and sometimes people. Who benefits from this type of scenario? Certainly not the animals or the people who choose to eat them. Perhaps the drug manufacturers...

Confinement animal feeding operations (cafos) are notoriously awful in terms of animal well being. The critters in those places are often sullen, scared, sick, and "over worked". Cattle evolved to eat grass rather than grain. Sure they may love the taste of corn ( which is mostly GMO poison) but it actually makes them sick. Despite this fact, it is fed to them to speed weight gain. Dairy cattle, in addition to grains, are often pumped full of growth hormones to make them produce unnaturally large quantities of milk. Back in the mid-90s as a young herdsman on a dairy farm, I myself shot cows up with Monsanto's bovine recombinant growth hormone. The effects were dramatic and due to my ignorance I thought it was great at that time. I failed to connect the dots however. One, the animals live much shorter lives because their bodies simply are not made to produce like that (similarly with egg producing chickens who are housed and fed in ways in cafos that make them crank out more eggs than is natural). Secondly, I never considered what happens to the hormones. When a dairy cow is given antibiotics she must be milked into a tank that gets dumped so the antibiotics stay out of the public's milk. If the antibiotics are going into the milk, surely the hormones are as well. What type of repercussions does that have on human health? What about all the stress hormones that must end up in the meat, milk and eggs from scared, stressed out animals? Surely that has an impact on the people who eat them. Mahatma Gandhi is quoted as saying, "We can judge the heart of a man by how he treats his animals." The system that has produced cafos has hardened the hearts of Americans often unwittingly.

Here in Lancaster County it is possible to find traditionally smoked meats. The smoking process preserves the meat so that it is healthful and nutritious as well as delicious. One of my favorites is apple wood smoked bologna. One taste of that and people would shun Oscar Meyer products forever. Have you ever considered what is in all that lunch meat, bacon, and ham you're eating? Chances are almost 100% that it contains poisonous chemicals sodium nitrate, sodium nitrite, and/or sodium erythorbate. Sodium nitrite aka nitrate is a known carcinogen. It is used to keep meat looking fresh and red. When the FDa tried to ban its use in the 70s the meat industry cried foul and the government caved thus putting profits over health once again. The sodium erythorbate has been linked to a host of problems including anemia, fatigue, dizziness, light-headedness, and digestive disorders. The only people who benefit from this practice are corporate types and perhaps their political allies. None of these chemical poisons can be put into organic meats.

From a strictly culinary and tasty deliciousness stand point cafo produced "products" (I find it impossible to call them foods) are left in the dust by meat, milk, and eggs produced on actual farms where animal welfare is taken into account. Industry best standards on cafos for chicken production for instance allow for the cutting off of beaks and crowding the birds into tiny cages. Anyone who has ever seen a chicken will know that this is inhumane and unnatural for a bird who lives to scratch the Earth and peck it nearly non-stop throughout the day. A free range chicken is a happy chicken. Happy chickens produce more healthful eggs. Crack open a farm fresh free range chicken egg and pour it into a bowl. Next crack open an egg from the local grocery store that probably costs $.99/dozen. You will instantly see the difference. The cafo egg purchased "cheaply" will be a pale, wan imitation of its free range cousin. The free range egg yolk will be a deeply colored orangish-yellow and will be thicker and more nutrient dense. The same holds true for grass fed beef. Studies show that grass fed beef is higher in nutrition than feed lot fed beef. Sure the retail price is more. Just look at that as preventive maintenance costs figured in and remember that raising livestock is hard work and EXPENSIVE. As farmer/activist/author Joel Salatin has said, "If you think organic food is expensive, have you priced cancer lately?" Buying direct from the farmer ensures that he/she is getting a fair price for all the hard work it takes to produce rather than padding some agri-corp's CEO's bonus packet.

Factory farms pollute the air with toxic smells and pollute the water with unreal amounts of chemically laced manure which destroys watersheds and aquatic life. They can only remain profitable if people continue to buy their poisons and lies. We have the power to change policy by refusing to buy the cafo meats. We have the power to redirect funds from agri-business subsidies to ecological restoration projects and helping family organic farms to get established. Refuse to participate. Demand change from your elected officials. Start at the local level. Demand that cafos in your area be taxed so highly that they cannot operate. Give tax breaks to family farms. Raise some backyard chickens. If you choose to eat meat, eat less of it. Drink raw organic milk. Find a farmer's market. Get to know where your food is coming from. You're health depends on it. The health of your planet depends on it.


For more information on these issues I recommend Barbara Kingsolver's excellent book entitled Animal, Vegetable Miracle: A Year of Food Life. I've also heard great things about Michale Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma The films Food Inc and Fastfood Nation are both illuminating as well.

To find locally produced organic foods check out the following websites:
EatWild http://www.eatwild.com/products/
Sunstain Lane http://www.sustainlane.com/
Slow Food USA http://www.slowfoodusa.org/

Food is medicine. Part One

The stories about America's obesity problem are all over the place these days. Recently a BBC article I posted to my Facebook page quoted research saying that 2/3 of Americans are medically obese. 2/3!!! That's an epidemic of ridiculous proportions. It highlights the fact that human beings truly are what we eat. Unfortunately, many Americans are unwittingly filling their bellies with poison and are becoming sick as a very predictable result. Garbage in, garbage out as the saying goes. Permaculture to me is often about education and changing hearts and minds without guilt, shame, or blame. Most of us have grown up in a truly flawed system through an accident of birth. There is no shame in that. We can however make the choice to refuse to participate in perpetuating the flaws of the system thereby creating a new system that actually serves life rather than profits. One of the "low hanging fruits" we can pick in refusing to participate is the food we choose to buy.

Monsanto, ADM, Cargill et al would have us believe that the planet can only be fed through chemical and bio-engineered agriculture. The Rodale Institute in Pennsylvania has proven that to be false with a multi-decade study. Their study proves organic production out performs and out yields chemical agriculture in the long term while also regenerating soil and withstanding the vagaries of weather better than chemical agriculture. Still,it is the stated goal of Monsanto to control the food supply from seed to plate. The flaw in that system is this-it's all about profit and control. I'll control my own food intake thank you very much! Farmers throughout the US and Canada are being duped into growing GMO "foodstuffs" by promises of higher yields in the short term. These "frankenfoods" then end up in the local grocery store without any labeling to let shoppers know that what they are buying is as unnatural as teats on a bull. Most of the world requires labeling of GMO ingredients. Why? Because a coalition of scientist in the European Union have called for a complete moratorium on GMO foods due to research that has been done showing that they are UNSAFE either to grow or eat. 90% of Vermont's voters recently voted to enforce GMO labeling for GMO tainted foods sold in Vermont. Monsanto threatened to sue the state. Why are they so scared of having their products labeled if they are truly safe?

German researchers recently found glyophosphate (trade name Roundup) in the urine of urban dwellers in Germany. The eco-cide gets sprayed on "weeds" and then leaches into the soil and finds its way into the water supply. Would anyone drink Roundup laced water on purpose? I doubt it. Roundup kills almost every plant it touches. It is very potent to say the least. Monsanto has genetically modified commodity crops, notably potatoes to be "resistant" to Roundup. Are we to believe that a potato liberally doused with Roundup is actually safe to eat? How are we to know if the potatoes we buy are GMO if they are not labeled as such? A good rule of thumb is to only buy organic. Organically produced foods by law have to be GMO free. The major commodity crops, corn, rice, wheat, potatoes, and soybeans are almost if not all GMO unless they are organic. If you and your family are looking for a good place to start buying organic, I encourage you to start there. Consumers drive demand. Nearly everyone eats corn, rice, potatoes, wheat, and soybeans. Demand organic, buy organic, and let the Monsanto house of cards crumble.

Corn production in the US is killing people plain and simple. The US Farm Bill provides enormous subsidies to corn growers to give them an enormous and unfair competitive advantage over farmers in other countries. All those subsidies encourage over production. It also encourages the production of High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS). This sicky sweet liquid is now found in everything from soda to crackers and loaves of bread. Medical research shows that HFCS is a poison to the body causing obesity, diabetes, liver problems, tooth decay, and even dementia. The furor over HFCS has gotten so loud that the producers of this poison product have started a PR campaign of Orwellian proportions in order to keep their market share and to keep the uninformed in the dark. Commercials on TV and the internet are proclaiming that it's "all natural" and "comes from wholesome corn" so how could it be unhealthy? Lots of completely natural things are down right deadly. Corn refiners are now labeling it as "corn sugar" or using other names for it on their products in attempt to keep producing and selling it. Until the government caves in to science, we as food shoppers will have to drive the market. Stop buying it. This is definitely low hanging fruit. Stop drinking soda, read labels in the grocery store on processed products. Again, that corn syrup is GMO as well as hyper sweet poison. You deserve better, your family deserves better than to be poisoned simply by going to the store. Buy organic.

The very best way to ensure that the food you are buying and eating is truly healthful, delicious, and ultimately medicine is to buy local and organic whenever possible. Demanding locally grown, organic products will ensure that farmers in YOUR backyard are not poisoning your local water supply, that they are growing soil rather than destroying it (this is so incredibly important for humanity) and that they are growing for a local economy rather than a global economy. All of this will enhance the quality of life for you, your family, and the entire community where you live. If we can get much of our food form local sources then it will mitigate the effects of having to ship food over vast distances. People in New Zealand deserve to eat their own apples and lamb products. Some food stuffs will still be shipped in. Every thing we do will help though. Buying local often means going to a farmer's market rather than a grocery store. It is truly wonderful to meet your farmer or to have a conversation with a market vendor who is selling local goods. The money stays in the community rather than going to some corporate account somewhere else. The benefits are many and far reaching.

It takes discipline to change habits and starting to buy organic food is a new habit many could take on. Clearly something needs to be done as evidenced by the amount of illness to people and ecosystems being caused by the current flawed system of food production. This goes beyond health and quality of life. It is a moral issue as well. We must refuse to participate in the poisoning of the planet and its inhabitants---human and non-human. We hold the power. Buy organic and ensure it's local whenever possible.

Until next time, be well and love your Mother Earth.

There is Royalty in Your Yard

The dandelion is so named because its flowers were thought to resemble the teeth of a lion. Like the King of the Jungle, the dandelion should be considered royalty due to its many amazing attributes. Rather than lionizing it for those wonderful traits, somehow this amazing plant gets demonized by lawn care chemical companies in their sadly successful quest to sell America on the idea of a hyper-fertilized, mono-cropped, and often toxic sward of green lawn. All those chemicals not only kill the gorgeous dandelions, they poison the groundwater, run off in storms thus ending up in local waterways and possibly the drinking water, and are potentially poisoning people in their own back yards. Perhaps gaining some knowledge about the wonders of the dandelion will change the hearts and habits of those who read this.

As a permaculture designer, I strive to create design elements that stack functions so that as many elements as possible perform multiple “tasks” or provide multiple yields. This maxim to stack functions is perfectly embodied by the aforementioned dandelions. These yellow beauties are tap-rooted meaning that they send down a long thick root, deep into the soil. The tap root helps to break up compacted soil as it grows downward which in turn helps to oxygenate the soil. Where there is oxygen, there is life and more life in the soil is always a good thing. The tap root also draws up mineral nutrients from deep down bringing them closer to the surface where they can utilized by other plants in the vicinity. For this reason they are known as dynamic accumulators. And finally, the root can be made into a medicinal beverage which acts as a diuretic to flush toxins out of the body. That’s three functions and I have only touched on the root!

The entire plant is more than just edible, it’s one of the most nutritious things one could hope to eat due to all those nutrients brought up from the soil below. The greens are delicious both raw (I like mine mixed in with other salad greens) and cooked. Because they are bitter many people like to steam or sauté them. In Pennsylvania, it is common to cook them with bacon fat drizzled over the top, which is of course delicious. The flowers too, can be eaten raw, though the tastiest way I have eaten them was batter fried as flower fritters. YUM! Eaten raw, they have a slight sweetness which is pleasantly floral. The human body needs a lot of different plant based foods to be healthy. Incorporating dandelion greens into the diet is a great way to diversify one’s food intake and if one is smart, they can be harvested for free without a trip to the store!

The multi-functionality of the dandelion continues to march even after all of the above attributes have been put forth. We need pollinators in order to survive. Bees, wasps, moths, butterflies, and even some flies pollinate different flowers. With all those wonderful bugs needing something to pollinate it behooves us to have a veritable smorgasbord of flowering plants on offer. Once again the bright yellow, sweetly scented dandelion steps up for duty. Watch a yard full of dandelions in bloom and you will see the action happening as bees buzz merrily around collecting the pollen and flying away to their respective hives. It is a good idea to be thankful for both the pollinators and the flowers they fly to including the powerful dandelions.
Aesthetic beauty is certainly considered a yield gained in a permaculture design and once again dandelions are there to provide it with their bright yellow flowers. They are more than just visually appealing. I love to pick them and take a long, slow sniff of the fragrance which to me smells heavenly. One simply cannot put a price on something so powerful and thankfully it is free for the taking if we allow them to grow. And finally, what could be more beautiful than a warm spring or summer evening in the garden or on a small patch of lawn with a child who with joyous wonder blows the seeds of a dandelion into the air and watches as they float on the currents of the breeze to start life anew for more amazing dandelions. Does life get better than that?

Let me summarize the wonders of the dandelion thusly. They are enormously useful for a variety of reasons including soil health, personal health, pollinator health, and are beautiful to boot. With these all of these traits in mind, it seems criminal, insane, or both to poison such a wonderfully useful plant. Would you like to save some money? Let the dandelions grow. Would you like to have clean water to drink? Let the dandelions grow. Would you like to take care of your body temple? Let the dandelions grow. Would you like to foster bio-diversity? Let the dandelions grow. Would you like to attract beneficial pollinators to your garden? Let the dandelions grow. Would you like to create moments of magic with your family? Let the dandelions grow. Would you like to leave the world a better place than you found it? Let the dandelions grow. Let them grow, let them grow, let them grow!