Current location:	Around town
Current mood:	mischievous
Current music:	Pink Panther Theme
Entry tags:	guerilla gardening, missions, world without oil

Guerilla Gardening.
So I've been keeping up on the current state of affairs (fun!), and reading a lot of people's excellent posts regarding food-sufficiency. There's a lot of great purposeful advice from people with decades more experience gardening than me, so I won't bother duplicating any advice given therein. I'd like to add a few ideas though.

Food-sufficiency isn't just about our gas prices or commercial farming, topsoil usage and "food miles". Frankly there's no reason why, when gas prices go up, Agribiz can't make adjustments (they won't but they could.) I may go into a few ideas I have regarding that as well, later. For me, though, what food sufficiency is really about is Freedom.

Way back, when we were in the stone age, we were all responsible for our own food. Either we hunted, gathered or grew it, but we did it. We were responsible, and had control over, our sustenance. Then when we started to grow it all and store our excess, we had to worry about bandits (who were really hunter-gatherers who didn't understand the idea of "thats my plant"). We needed someone to guard the storehouse. From there it was only a short step to kings. All the food produced went to the stores, where it was guarded, and distributed back out to the farmers. We lost control of our sustenance, now we depended on the authority for our food. 

I'm being simplistic, but ask yourself this: would you work at your job if you didn't have to in order to eat? Yes, you need to work for food no matter what, but our corporate masters only want us to do labor for them, not labor for ourselves. All our effort goes into increasing their holdings, and our own holdings are mostly rented or mortgaged, and no matter how hard we work they never seem to grow. So now their system is crashing down around us, because it's built to depend on a non-renewable resource. They aren't going to take the steps needed to make this an easy transition, because the steps that need taking give too much power back to the people, and to them that's a worse disaster than running out of cheap energy. They'll use laws, social pressure, and a million other tactics to keep us divided, keep us from taking the steps we need to take to survive.

In a specific example, my neighborhood trustees have contacted my landlord about the garden in my front yard. They demanded in needed to be removed. Its "not in the character of the neighborhood" to have vegetables out front. We're in the middle of a oil crisis here, and they're worried about how my front lawn looks? When I moved in I got my Landlord written permission to do whatever I wanted in both front and back lawn, but now it's been revoked. I can only garden out back now. I have to remove several dozen plants before the harvest, from the sunniest spot on the property, and replace them with grass.  Similarly, my Mother recently got a letter from her city council saying she couldn't have a clothesline. Apparently it's only appropriate to dry your clothes via industrial driers.

Take a look around. People are Rioting in the streets. This morning I was late to work because the there was a gas riot along my bike path. My wife works at Walmart, and petty theft is up some 500% these last few weeks. Around the country cars are getting lit on fire, gas is being stolen, and what are the authorities doing? They're shutting down squatted gardens in LA. They're evicting people from their homes. Why are several areas of north st. louis being claimed by "eminent domain?" I can't figure that one out, but it doesn't seem good. The key to understanding it is that violence, and especially property destruction, doesn't threaten the status-quo as much as people becoming self-reliant. After all, destroying cars creates jobs in the auto industry. Stealing gas makes people buy more gas. You can misbehave so long as you maintain the consumer paradign.

But I want to reiterate, this isn't about the oil shock. Not specifically. it's about getting out of the system. Our system wants us to work for it, and not for ourselves. I want to work for myself. The first step to pulling myself out is to take control of my own necessities. The fact that this will help me surive the end of civilization is a side effect.

According to John Jeavons "how to grow more vegetables", the bare minimum it takes to grow a subsistence diet is 4000 square feet per person. My yard total has less than 2000, and now I can't use the best parts of it without getting evicted. So what am I doing?

I'm planting my food wherever I can.

I've dropped a few fruit trees around town, in public spaces I walk by daily. I dress them up with mulch and the like to make it look like the decorative ones the city puts in. So far noone has notices. I got some "volunteer" tomatoes that grow like wildfire at my mother's, and spread them around town. I hide seed potatoes in the carefully landscaped city flowerbeds. I've found where the wild onions grow and spread them. I blow dandelions in the wind, even though I'm not eating them yet. This is called "guerrilla gardening", and it's very civic minded. In some ways I reclaiming the Commons, making public land productive for the citizenry. Anyone who wants to can help themselves to the food when it's ready, I'm planting enough to accommodate.

My sister has gotten into this as well, apparently she's made it into a class project for her dissent class or something. I'm going to get a bunch of blueberry bushes when the nurseries get them back in stock. Oh, there's something of note I don't think anyone anticipated. Despite the hostility many places are showing towards food gardens, there's been a major run on seeds and plants at the local nurseries. I have to check back often to get what I want, because things go out of stock quickly. This makes getting my urban farming off the ground much more difficult.

Anyway, I've used the drop-spot map to note the locations of my fruit trees. Consider dropping off a little water if you are in my area and it's been dry, and come back later to have a snack. www.dropspots.org/find?q=63130. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to plant food-producing perrenials wherever you can get away with it. For best effect, go either by yourself in the middle of the night, or in a large group in broad daylight. This could be a lot of fun as a flash mob too. Tell me how it goes.

Also, do any of you know is you can grow mulberry bushes from cuttings? I know of a few great producers and I'd like to spread them around.