Ancient Wisdom, Modern Solutions (Part 3): Dancing with Ntoto, Earth Changes

It is mid-summer and scorching heat, devastating wild fires, and storms are again threatening the conventional farming ways, and threatening a rise in grain cost yet again, and unfortunately the whole world is heavily dependent on conventionally farmed food for basic sustenance.  Our Ancestral Wisdom knew better than to create monocultures and to restrict the diet to a handful of crops (corn, soybeans, wheat and rice).  However, even though the failures are recorded in history (ex. Irish Potato Famine) it seems that the days of convenience stores and mega super markets have lulled us into a denial and a complacency, and banished even a discussion of this critical situation to the fringes of human conversation.  


However, evolution takes place at the fringes, those edges where diversity of ecology creates micro-climates and micro-conditions that allows different and new ways of living to emerge.  One of our Elders used to say "The Majority is not always Right!"  In this case the majority is utterly rooted in the narrow minded way of living that has been set out by those who are only interested in profit and power, and by a entity who is only interested in power over, gluttonous consumption of life, and which thrives on the destruction and disempowerment of life; a entity who is "trying to play god".  


In addition to the moronic agricultural practices that have been developed, there is other threatening practices of mining, including the mining of radioactive substances that should never have been taken out of our Mother Earth.  The day these radioactive substances began to be removed and refined from the Earth was the day a Spirit was set loose that cannot be controlled by human beings.  This Spirit that was contained by Mother Earth, now has the power and ability to poison all of humanity.  Indigenous People here in this continent are constantly fighting this evil.  See the blog post below concerning the uranium mining out west and the Indigenous People's battle against it.
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2012/05/halt-uranium-mine-that-will-poison.html


We have to remember that we were "driven off" our many Lands, through outright conquest and genocide, through kidnapping and slavery, through economic manipulation, and through promises of a "better life" (meaning an "easier, softer way" life, which is also an empty life).   We have to confront the myopic mentality that considers gardening and farming to be lowly "professions", and consider that we have been forcibly taken away from our Mother, or we have been tricked away from our Mother, or we have been seduced away from our Mother, and we have forgotten how to live in harmony with all our Sisters and Brothers of Life, the birds, insects, bacteria, fungi, plants, animals, and fish.  We have misplaced the ability to find food and medicines for ourselves in the forests and meadows and by the rivers.  


However, that Ancient Wisdom is flowing right under the surface and on the fringes and edges where it was never forgotten.  Worldwide (especially now with the internet) there is an abundance of sharing that is going on concerning the many ways that we can reconcile with Mother Earth and once again live in harmony and abundance with her and honor and work with her natural rhythms, rather than wage this ongoing war against her with the pesticides, herbicides, and endless plowing and sawing.  People everywhere are bringing back diversity and common sense into gardens and farms and homes and are producing with Mother Earth and her whole Family (our whole Family), the best, most nutritious, most life sustaining foods in abundance, in conditions which also sustain wildlife, birds, insects and micro-organisms. 


In parts 1 and 2 of this article we shared the progression of our garden, and now it is shown in its height of growth.  At this point the cycle subtly shifts and we begin to see the browns and yellows of autumn creep in and the cycle of Great Harvest begins.  In the Fall, when everything begins to die back with the shorter day lengths and cooler nights we have the time of greatest harvest, but here we are having the time of Greatest Green which of course still gives us a very full harvest.

What now is termed "permaculture" but what we know as Indigenous Gardening Techniques utilizes a diversity of plant life that forms various layers within the Garden, like a micro forest.  Small plants are shaded by big ones, vines climb up tall plants, all the plants require different nutrients so do not deplete any one nutrient and the root systems are just as diverse from light surface roots to deep tap roots accessing all levels of the soil below and bringing various nutrients up into the leaves that will later be eaten or composted to create new top soil.  The insects that eat certain crops are confused by the diversity, and the beneficial insects and birds are attracted by the diversity.  Micro climates are created to allow things to grow that would not thrive in a monoculture at this time of year, such as lettuces which do not like the heat.  In the photo above our daughter picks herbs for cooking.  She also gets the opportunity to learn from the garden's diversity and because she is young, learning the various plants and their uses comes much more easily to her!

As Taino -Paleros we have also come to appreciate the diversity of plant life and their corresponding "root life" for use within our bilongos and medicines.  We strive to study the whole plant to understand the "part" of it that we generally use (the palo or the leaf or what have you).    Above we have a basket of heirloom tomatoes that we have harvested, around them are chives, oregano, thyme, a sunflower stalk, nasturtiums (yellow flowers and leaves that we eat in salads), and a red hibiscus flower.  You need to know what the plants really look like to know what you are harvesting in this garden!  

Chives above surrounded by oregano, a well harvested chard plant, and a plantain plant that most consider a "weed".  For a number of years we did a lot of "weeding" and could never keep up with it.  Then a moment of understanding came and we stopped considering them "weeds" and simply planted our beds very fully restricting the space the "weeds" could occupy and transforming the weeds into the medicinal plants they truly are.  Plantain is a great remedy for bee stings among other uses.  Now we rarely weed any more, we just plant and harvest.  Once in a while we weed and throw the weeds down as a mulch right where we pull them out.  We share this for those who resist gardening due to the requirement of weeding.  We did have to come to terms with our expectations of how a garden should look, and break the shackles of the image of neat rows of veggies and flowers.  We essentially let Mother Earth take the lead and simply plant our "requests" right within her ecosystem, instead of forcing a fake and devolved system on to her.

Tomatoes ripening.  These tomatoes will continue to fruit until the frosts come.  We will gather all the green tomatoes left on the vine right before the first frost and let them ripen inside over the next month and eat them also as fried green tomatoes!

Huge sunflowers grow at a tremendous rate pulling nutrients out of the Earth.  They grow so fast because they have a special relationship with the Sun.  They "follow" the sun to be able to gather more energy from the rays. When they are pollinated the drop their heads bowing down so that their seeds are protected from too much solar radiation!  What a magnificent design and example of respect for the Sun!  Sunflowers are Indigenous to this continent and provide us and the birds with edible seeds, as well as providing a trellis for beans or other vines, and flower heads (which are actually 1000-2000 single flowers clustered together) which light up the garden and are also favored by the Misterio!  We love them and plant them everywhere.  The seeds are also a herbicide which is why under bird feeders nothing grows! 

Winter squash (developed by Mother Earth and the Indigenous Ancestors of this continent) sends its vines in all directions.  Its huge leaves shade out any competitors and it quickly grows in the raised beds that we created.  

This is another crop that we grow everywhere.  We take the seeds and put them in wherever there is space because we know that in the Fall when they are ready for harvest that we will be able to eat them all through the winter!  We specifically grow winter squash that are not your common supermarket variety, we chose heirloom and Indigenous varieties which have the best flavor.  No Palero needs reminding of the uses of the winter squash or pumpkin in working with the Nkisi and Mpungos!!!

Again with the squash, "weeds" are really not an issue since they quickly come to dominate the area they are growing in.  

Our Potatoes are now ready to harvest as we need them (see future blog post).  The Earth will store them perfectly until we need them up until hard frosts in late Fall.  Again, Potatoes are the result of the genius of the Ancestral Elders of this Continent!!!

And Tomatoes as well- developed by our Indigenous Ancestors!!!  The little violet in the bottom right corner is also edible in salads.

Here rhubarb sticks out between tomato plants, we continue to be able to eat its stalks in pies and sauces.

Our daughter harvesting.  

Beautiful basil!

Horse radish with a datura "weed" behind it and arugula.

Our squash spills wildly over our wall, already forming small fruits that will grow into big squash!

What an architect and garden designer Mother Earth is!

We took the posts that had supported the cold frame lids and put a wire fence on them to support green beans.

Bush beans (dry beans) are growing within the diversity.  In the past when we had grown beans in rows, every year insects would come and destroy them, eat them completely, leaving a barren stalk.  This year we put them in with all other plants and they are lush with perfect leaves, not a bite in sight.  This truly shows the benefits of polycultures.  We look forward to a great bean harvest.

A view of our garden, the various layers are visible, what you cannot experience in the photo is the sounds and scents of the garden, the movements of the birds, butterflies and bees, the aromas of the various plants and the tastes of them.  This you have to imagine.  There are a multitude of insects both in the air and soil that are actively "working" with us in this garden!  We do not garden alone, we have our whole "Family" of Life gardening with us, including the Bakulu who inspire and bring forth ideas and understandings for the garden.  Our own Ancestors and the Ancestors that lived upon this Land all bring their contribution from the wealth of knowledge they gathered in their lives.


At the time of Great Harvest we will gather from all the various plants to awaken an Agricultural Nkisi to further empower our Gardens!

Wild Ageratum (native) will burst into a purple blossom providing an important late season blossom for the butterflies.  

Harvesting black raspberries.  These prickly vines give us easy picking for nutrient rich berries.  

Although we also grow red and yellow raspberries, these are easier to grow and more nutritious.

These ended up in black raspberry crumble with homemade maple whipped cream.

Our chickens with their protective rooster, Papo.  He graciously gives them the best food from his own beak and chases away threats.  

Our chicken eggs are the best!!!

Scrambled eggs in the making.

Having a diversity of crops encourages us to create meals that are very unusual and extremely rich in vegetables (and therefore nutrients).  We eat far more than the "recommended suggested daily servings" of vegetables.  

Here all these vegetables are going into one meal.  They include salad greens (lettuce, chard, arugula, nasturtium leaf), greens for stir fry scrambled eggs (rainbow chard, beet greens, turnip greens, a garlic, and roots for the stir fry scrambled eggs (turnips, beets and parsnip).

The greens not only taste great but they all have different strengths in terms of nutrients, and the various textures and colors are a joy to look at.

Our daughter's favorite salad is Tomato, Basil and Mozzarella.  Here we have purple basil as well as green.  Color, taste, texture, smell- we have become too used to the market varieties which are selected only for their ease of growing, harvesting and transporting and storing and not for their taste.  Home grown produce is a totally different product than its supermarket imposter.  When we can give the Misterios offerings that we ourselves have grown, it means so much more because the offerings themselves hold more vitality and our sweat and love is embodied by them.   

The garlic harvest!  This year our garlic is better than ever with our new raised beds.  Wow!  We have garlic for the whole year, for eating, for replanting for next year and for trabajos!

Our wonderful goat herd.  Here our daughter is the "goat whisperer" who does a great job in taming the goats.  They are all easily handled and the females will be no problem to milk.  We are building our goat herd.  We have two varieties of African goats, the Pygmy and the Boer.  Both are meat goats, however the Boers are much bigger.

This is our Boer billy, Nkongo, who is still a baby but growing fast.  

This is our Pygmy billy "Chife" who is already full grown and whose is the father of the kids that we are expecting this year.  

In front is our Milking goat we added to the herd.  She is a Alpine, and still a baby.  We will breed her to Nkongo to produce goats that can be milkers and meat goats.  Behind her is Nana, our pygmy nanny who is our daughter's goat.  She is expecting kids and we will milk her and use the billy kids for personal consumption and Misterio.  We also have two Boer nannies that we will breed primarily for meat.  As Paleros it is always good for us to learn about the various goats and their behaviors so that we can gain a greater appreciation of what the Mystery receives.  

Our goat herd is let loose from time to time but must be carefully monitored because they will devastate the garden and trees.  We have another nanny goat that we are adding to our herd once she is old enough to leave her mother.  She is a Kiko Boer cross.  The Kiko is a breed of feral goat from (Aotearoa) New Zealand.  They have a resistance to parasites and since parasites are a health issue for goats, this resistance is very good for our goat herd.

Our new compost corner for our chickens.  This allows us to contain our chickens when we feel predators are around.  Here we have problems with hawk kills, not so much at this time with foxes or raccoons.  We are finding the balance between free ranging our chickens and having a place to contain them and give them kitchen scraps so that the predators do not pick them off one by one.  

One of our hens has gone broody and we are considering letting her sit on the eggs to hatch them.  To a great extent broodiness has been bred out of chickens and most chickens are hatched in incubators.  When we have a chicken that is truly broody she becomes very valuable to us.  We will be building a separate broody hen house so we can have a place for our broody hens to be undisturbed.  Since our goal is sustainability, we do not want to rely on incubators or purchased chicks, ideally we want several broody hens who will raise their chicks naturally.  

As Paleros it is a blessing to see the various breeds of chickens and get to know which are more in tune with their natural instincts and which have had the instincts bred out of them and become extremely dumbed down.  We are seeking intelligent chickens because we want to consume intelligent eggs and meat and we want to use intelligent gallos for the Misterio.  

At the risk of being repetitive, we continue to share our way of living with our Mother Earth and our Misterios and Ancestors within our Spiritual Practices.  For us, all of life is within the space of the Munanso or Bohio, meaning that we approach the Spirit in a holistic way and do not keep the Spirit as a part time aspect of our lives.  We have taken our Tratos seriously and have followed the Ancestral Spirits in transforming our lives, and we continue to transform and radically change our lives as we learn and discover.  Through a long and difficult process we have come to learn that we do not need to chain our Misterios down.  Chaining comes from the process of colonialism which has brought us nothing but tears and poverty and menticize.  We have learned not to enslave our Misterios because we are not slave masters of our Misterios.  We are the Children of Mother Earth and we work hand in hand, with love and willingness with her and our Ancestors and the many Ancestors of our Munanso and Bohio to continue the process of Reconciliation and Thriving with Mother Earth.

Ancient Wisdom, Modern Solutions! (TWO)

As Paleros, we give offerings to "Death" that we may have abundant and thriving "Life".  In the previous article:  

Ancient Wisdom, Modern Solutions!

Ancient Wisdom, Modern Solutions

we saw the garden in its "death and decay" phase.  The raised beds were in the process of composting with all the little micro-organisms and fungi breaking down the organic matter of leaves, straw, manures and plants that we had layered to make the beds.  In this post we can see the garden in the fullness of its vibrant expression of life and we can see clearly how Death gives Rise to Life in a cycle that continues to resonate through the ages.  As Summer progresses to Fall we enter the season of full Harvest right before the time of "death" during the Winter.  However Harvest occurs year round, from harvesting Roots in the Winter to harvesting greens all Spring, and many vegetables all summer.  

We have seen amazing results with our raised composted beds, the plants have grown very quickly and are very large.  Above you can see the garlic, we have about 300 heads of garlic growing, which will be harvested mid-summer.   However we also eat young spring garlic and we eat the garlic scapes (where the garlic is forming seed heads).  The garlic will stay fresh all year and provide culinary garlic and garlic that can be used for both Medicinal and Spiritual purposes.  

Potatoes growing before their flowering stage.  We mound the soil and straw up around them to allow their tubers (potatoes) to grow more abundantly.  Potatoes also will store for months, providing food throughout the winter.  In between the beds white clover is planted, the white clover creates a beneficial pathway, a place for water to seep into and is good for the honey bees.  White clover grows only about 8" tall so it does not require mowing.  

Leeks are growing here, they were planted last fall, and overwintered.  We are allowing some of them to go to seed in order to collect the leek seeds for replanting.  

Using locust poles cut from the Land itself, we are creating trellises for beans, peas, hops, raspberries, cucumbers, tomatoes and other plants that require something to support them or something to vine around.  These locust poles are not treated with any chemicals and will last decades without decaying.  

Here various vegetables are growing, including parsnips, turnips, beets, lettuces, chard and radishes.  We eat all parts of the plants including the beet greens and turnip greens.  Next to them are asparagus plants (which provide an early spring vegetable).  

While many people like to put their vegetables in the middle of a totally sunny field or yard, we prefer to put our garden where we get at least partial shade during the day as many vegetables can tolerate partial shade easily and still produce abundant harvest.  Our emphasis is on reforesting the Land to a great extent, while still having productive gardens, including forest gardens.

Here the potatoes plants are small and have just had the soil and straw mounded up around their stems, this allows more potatoes to develop and the loose mixture of soil and straw allow the potatoes to expand easily.

We are also using the posts to hang bird feeders, although in the overall garden design we are providing lots of plants specifically for the birds, such as sand cherries and other berry bushes.  We have also provided abundant habitat for the birds to live in along the edge of the forest, as the edge of the forest supports far more diversity than either a field or center of the forest.  We are also creating orchard plantings using a fruit tree surrounded by berries and herbs.  Our first ones are figs surrounded by blueberries and currants, and clusters of sand cherries and Nankin cherries.  Birds are beneficial to the garden since many prey upon insects that eat the plants, they also distribute seeds naturally and increase the diversity and fertility of the whole Land.  We also love to see the various birds and study their behaviors as this gives us insight into their spiritual powers.

In the back ground the roof of some of the Munansos can be seen.  This garden is close to the Munanso and also provides plants that we use in the Munansos and offerings for the Misterios.

This photo shows the beds and how they follow the contour of the hill they are on.  This allows them to capture the water from the hill, store it in the beds and release it to the plants as the plants need it, instead of the water just running down the hill eroding the hillside.  The clover between the beds helps stabilize the soil and adds nitrogen from the air to the soil.  Mother Earth does not like to be naked, and bare soil (although popular in many conventional gardens and vegetable gardens) is not something we want to see in our garden.  So we plant every little bit of soil we see, imitating Mother Earth, or we let her grow her "weeds" in the soil and study how we can use these weeds for food or medicine.

These beds here are design to be filled with perennial herbs and vegetables.  Here we have Monarda (bee balm) on the right (big green plant) which can be used for tea, and also attracts bees and butterflies which are beneficial.  Next to it is horse radish, rhubarb, lovage (osha) which can also be used as a perennial form of celery, and in front of monarda is oregano.  In the front bed are rosemary, lavender, and multiple kinds of basil.  In between the perennial vegetables we have planted annual vegetables, including chard, lettuces, collards, tomatoes, nasturtiums, kale, and broccoli.  This way there is no empty space in the garden and the diversity of the plants trick the insects who usually like to eat the annual vegetables.  

Here our rooster is looking for the hens.  The chickens do a lot of scratching in the garden and we do have an area that we fenced to keep them out, however they do less damage than expected as they are more interested in scratching for bugs rather than eating the plants, however they do scratch up a plant from time to time so we protect seedlings if we feel they are at risk.  Behind the rooster Sunchokes are growing, they have a flower like a small sunflower and give us edible roots that can be eaten raw or cooked.  These roots can be dug up all winter.

This photo shows the potatoes flowering.  When the potatoes flower the baby potatoes are starting to form underground, they are not ready for harvesting until the potato plant begins to die.  

Here the lovage, rhubarb, horse radish and monarda can be seen.  Rhubarb is a potent medicine and the stems are edible, used to make great sauces, pies and jams.

We put a bird bath in the garden for the birds to bathe in and drink from.  Next to it grows chard, chives, collards, and other vegetables.  This is a very attractive edible garden that would be appropriate for almost any yard.  Below is a close up of the oregano and in front of the front stones is culvers root, a native medicinal plant.  These stones are also from this area, they were "rescued" from a building project where they were going to be buried.  We use them to retain our whole front bed.  They give a beautiful expression to the Spirit of the Garden.  

We always focus on the Spirit of the Garden and the Land when planting.  To many farms and garden are very linear, weeds are seen as "the enemy" and gallons of water are needed for the crops to grow.  We are utilizing Ancient Indigenous Principles (now used in the system of gardening and farming called "permaculture") to mimic Mother Earth's natural growing patterns.  In truth it is more than imitating her patterns, we follow her lead and become her "apprentice" in cultivating our Gardens.  In this way the garden is a lush, diverse space which is about abundant fertility and not about hours of drudgery.  However the success is all in the initial soil creation which is all about taking death, forming it into elongated "conucos" and allowing the process of decay to take place, so that all this beautiful and nutritious and health supporting "Life" can be expressed!  This comes naturally to a Palero!