Upcoming Event: October 8th | |
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Permaculture Design for Growing Local Food
Join us for a volunteer planting and talk at Morning View Food Forest, a 150-acre permaculture food forest with over 8,000 trees and perennial shrubs on the slope of South Mountain in Middletown Maryland!
Folks who attend will be planting native perennial plants with a focus on densified food systems that also benefit a wide range of wildlife. Please arrive and park by 9 am so you don’t miss the opening orientation.
After the planting, from 12-1 PM, the resident designer and soil ecologist Ben Friton will be giving a talk entitled Permaculture Design for Growing Local Food. This talk is part of a broader series entitled Redesigning our Communities for Life After Fossil Fuels, sponsored by Biodiversity for a Livable Climate in partnership with the Post Carbon Institute and several other local groups.
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Fall Activities & Tips for Enjoying the Season | |
Take a Walk Outside
Sounds easy, right? IT IS! But here’s the tricky part: Try to leave the electronic connections at home. It might be fun to have a cell phone for photos or plant/bird/insect identification apps, but try to focus on the beauty and intrigue around you, rather than text messages and to-do lists. No rushing. No goals. Just observe – maybe even find a place to sit and listen. There’s a symphony out there – frogs, insects, birds, squirrels, rustling leaves on breezy days – it’s magnificent.
If you live in a busy urban environment, perhaps find a park nearby to escape the noise of vehicles and machinery. If you’re in a less hectic suburban or rural area, you may find the symphony outside your door. But wherever you are, the sounds and sights of the natural world are guaranteed to bring joy. Fall is magical!
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Follow the Water
What’s the first thing most of us do when it rains? Cover up and run inside, right? Especially in heavy rains. But if you have a yard, rains are a golden opportunity to observe the movement of water on your property. There’s a practical side to this: It’s important to make sure that rain gutters aren’t causing water to pool around your house or eroding soil. It’s always a good idea to keep an eye out and redirect water flows away from the house and/or into water catchment devices. But beyond protecting the physical structure of your home, observing water flows can provide a wealth of information about your soils, optimal locations for various future plantings, and a wide range of future design ideas if you’re considering permaculture projects around your home.
An important principle in ecological water management is to “slow it down” and “spread it out” so it seeps gently into soils where it’s actually beneficial. And, if at all possible, plant trees and shrubs to circulate the water naturally and hold soils in place. Water flows are key elements in permaculture design, so if you’re interested in learning more, stay tuned for TRC classes that will be offered in 2023.
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Let Leaves and Twigs Carpet the Earth
Too often, we’re taught to look at old leaves on the ground as “messy” and to think of raking them up as a noble chore. But what if that’s all wrong? What if we’re actually making our planet LESS healthy by constantly “cleaning things up?” As it turns out, leaves and twigs are Nature’s blankets for the soil, Nature’s shelter for small creatures, and Nature’s food source for all the micro and macro-organisms in the soil. Instead of raking them up and putting them in bags to be carted away, grab a magnifying lens (and maybe some gloves) and be a kid again. Just explore the hidden gems that inhabit the spaces under leaves. Enjoy doing LESS work. Relax and know that those leaves are there for a reason and will disappear soon enough.
If they absolutely must be removed from a space around your home, create a compost pile with them. Food scraps and leaves make great companions and will ultimate provide a rich soil amendment for next year’s garden. If you feel called to do a bit of physical labor this fall, instead of raking leaves, how about planting more trees? Fall is the perfect time for that! Here’s a site with native trees and shrubs: Recommended Native Plants for Maryland | University of Maryland Extension (umd.edu)
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Welcoming New Team Members | | | | | |
