Cultivating Community

tl;dr: We're forming a local conservancy with the goals of preserving our neighbourhood's natural and historic environment, and, hopefully, as a tool to help us build a community with some resilience against climate change and post-carbon energy descent. Yay (maybe).

Self-sufficiency is not a loner's game. It would be impossible for a single family to live completely self-sufficiently; at the very least self-sufficient living is a village-scale affair, and, even then, many niceties of modern life will elude even the most dedicated and hard working bunch of souls. Stuff like MRI scanners, space telescopes, quality reference libraries and large-scale semiconductor integrated circuits. Meanwhile, we can approach a reasonable level of self-sufficiency only if we work together with like-minded neighbours. (Reality dictates, though, that many of my neighbours are unlikely to be all that like minded, especially in a neighbourhood like ours. Anybody who chooses to live outside the fringes of urban life is, by definition, likely to be a bit iconoclastic; strong-minded and opinionated. And get the hell off my pasture.)

Over the past few years we've seen a number of changes in the regulatory climate that surrounds us. Mostly we don't like those changes. Some of us fear them in some degree, and generally it just rubs us the wrong way that the authorities won't just leave us alone to get on with our slightly hermit-like lives. From being outside of any municipal boundaries, and thus "deprived" of all services like piped (but fluoridated and metered) water, garbage collection and libraries, but free of property taxes, we have, against our will, been incorporated into the local municipal boundaries. So now we get to pay rates and use the library gratis. We still don't get garbage collection, and we (thankfully!) still don't have to buy municipal water or sewerage connections.

Another big change has been the promulgation of the Garden Route National Park as an enclosing super-entity managing many of the pre-existing National Parks in the region. I believe it is considered a world-first, since the super-park encompasses towns, industrial areas, shopping districts and commercial farms agri-factories, along with traditional nature-reserves. I think that nobody is sure how this is going to work, but it's a noble experiment. The close-to-home effect was to see the management of the indigenous forest transferred to SANParks – the national nature-reserve authority. All this means that both the national provincial governments, as well as local Municipal government want to "manage" us and design Structure Plans around us in mysterious, undefined and largely unwelcome ways.

For a long time we were able to stick our heads in the sand, pretending that life carries on as it did before, but the bitter truth is that the wider world has chosen to take some notice of us. Time to respond, to organise in a common cause.

We have decided to form a local conservancy: the Bibbey's Hoek Historical and Nature Conservancy (or some such name, if and when we ever get around to agreeing on it).

Several weeks ago we organised a community meeting to gauge the appetite for forming a conservancy. We held it on a Sunday evening so that the maximum number of people would be able to attend without excuses like work obligations. The weather played foul, and we ended up with a fairly small turnout – only about eight properties represented out of the thirty in the neighbourhood. Consensus was that we lacked a broad enough representation to take any decision likely to impact the entire neighbourhood, so we decided to try again.

Now, things move at Bibbey's Hoek speed here... next year is just as good as next week. Newcomers to the area are frequently frustrated at the relaxed¹ attitude we have to time and calendar, accusing us of allowing our brains to become infested with Outeniqua Rust. Consequently our plans for another meeting were a little bit overtaken when SANParks management requested a community meeting (held a couple of weeks ago). Our neighbourhood and its rich history is inextricably entangled in a relationship with the forest. Indeed, our properties were carved out of the very forest itself back in the mid-1800's; some older maps even show the forest boundary as enclosing our smallholdings. It seems reasonable that SANParks management and scientists regard the area as an important buffer zone between the natural forest they manage² and the adjoining larger farms and urban areas.

All this culminated in (yet another!) meeting last evening where we were given an interesting talk by a chap from Cape Nature ‒ the provincial environmental department ‒ on conservancies. Rather than arrange yet another meeting, we went ahead and formed a Steering Committee, tasked with drawing up a constitution for the conservancy and generally getting the ball rolling. Actually, there's not a whole lot for us to do: I had already drawn up a draft constitution, so all we really need to do now is give everybody a chance to discuss and change it to suit some consensus view, and then we can go ahead and appoint an Executive Committee and register the conservancy with Cape Nature (which gives it the status of a legal entity). Then we can get on with trying to implement whatever nature and historical conservation projects we choose. Clearing alien vegetation from water-courses and dealing with some very aggressive and destructive Baboons seem to be the highest priorities.

I have been pushing for us to also include climate-change and energy-descent adaptation as an explicit goal for the conservancy, and, so far, there seems to be reasonably broad acceptance that this would be a good thing ‒ including vigorous nods from the SANParks and Cape Nature people. Quite a large proportion of Bibbey's Hoek's residents are permaculturally minded, and quite conscious of these issues, so it hasn't really been a hard sell.

So: an interesting (and long overdue) step along the path of self-sufficiency. Having to deal with otherwise-minded neighbours and government authorities... not so much fun. But necessary.

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[1] No, "comatose" is probably closer to the truth.

[2] I have some uncertainties over the notion of "managing" wild areas and just what that might mean, but that's a discussion for another day...

Tamarillos

Tamarillo (a.k.a. Tree Tomato or Solanum betaceum) always do well for us. They're largely disease-free, and pests don't seem to like them much, either. Well, except for a Baboon, once...

The only problem they suffer from is wind. The branches are very brittle, and have a tendency to break in strong winds. Or when occupied by a Baboon. Or when heavily laden with ripe fruit, as they are right now. On the other hand they seem pretty much immune to the predations of birds and stinging insects thanks to their tough skins.

For some time I have been contemplating growing up a bunch of them to plant as avenue crops further downslope from the veggie garden. This would give us a low-energy-input harvest, and put more of our (sorely under-utilised) land to better use. Low maintenance harvests seem more and more important to me the older I get!

I would like to alternate the Tamarillo rows with Granadillas (which also grow spectacularly well in our soil and climate) and perhaps grain avenues between the rows in Winter. Or possibly interplant the Tamarillos and Granadillas in the same rows! After all, the Tamarillos are much taller, whilst the Grandillas would shade out weeds and grass from the base, and the wire supports needed for Granadillas might help to stabilise the Tamarillos against wind.

The only trouble with this fantasy is that Tree Tomatoes are a relatively unknown crop in SA, and I'm dubious about the idea of producing something that requires me to first educate the market. History shows that the first-mover in such markets almost never makes a success story; that usually belongs to the second comer who enters the already-educated market...

Tamarillos are really easy to propogate. Just sow seed saved from really, really ripe fruit into seed-trays, pricking out into pots or tubes when they reach a size where they're easily handled. I've even had plants self-seed and grow successfully. Transplant into their permanent homes can be as soon as they 15 or 20cm tall. They're not what I would call Long Lived plants, so (like Granadillas/Passion Fruit) I would probably embark on a 3- to 5-year rotation scheme, planting only 1/3 to 1/5 of the total cropping area each year.

We have two different strains of Tamarillo, one being shorter, but I don't see any real advantage to the shorter strain. They don't seem to have been any better at handling wind or fruit loads. I'll probably have to consider planting a wind-break to try and protect them a little.

We use them to make Chutneys and Jams, which are turning out to be really popular barter items at the local weekly swap-meet, since the two of us really cannot consume the fruits of even a single tree. I also munch a whole lot of the fresh fruits while working in the garden, but it hardly makes much of a dent in the crop.

Perhaps I need to buy a Tractor to help with all the work I have in mind... certainly there's much more than I could possibly tackle by hand. I'd probably only hang onto one for a year or two while I carry out all the transformations I'd love to make before selling it on, so I don't view it as a huge money-sink. Hmmmm...

Mushroom Culture Step 2

Shiitake mycelium in a culture
jar, cloned from a mushroom.

Our Mushroom-growing experiment progresses well, if a little slower than expected. In the first step we cloned some Shiitake cells into several Malt-nutrified agar vessels. Not unexpectedly, given the crude nature of our lab setup, some of those became infected with other, unwanted organisms and had to be tossed out. There remained two jars of clean, healthy mycelium - the "root" structure of fungi. The next stage in growing Mushrooms is to bulk these up into much larger volumes.

This is their story.

On the Nature of Research Gardening

Days are beginning to draw in; night comes a little too early, and Summer's really over. Winter crops – onions, garlic, cabbage tribe and a few other odds and ends – are coming up in seed trays, and I've finally made a start on clearing and composting the (ex-)Tomato beds.

Somewhere sleeting through the Universe for æons, minding its own tiny business, comes an Idea Particle...

A couple of years ago I stopped treating Chillis1 as Annuals, although that's how most people grow them. "After all," I thought, "they're true Perennials, and since we don't get any frost here, why am I ripping them out fo the ground each Autumn, and starting new plants every Spring?" Sure enough, it works brilliantly. It means I get Chillis as much as six weeks earlier than new-season plants, and its well worth it, even though the fruit gets a bit smaller each season, and the plants produce somewhat less. One Jalapeño bush is reaching the end of its third season, and still prolific enough to be worth hanging onto. So now I have Chillis on a 3-year rotation, but...

Still not satisfied. I generally sow Chillis in September, placing the seed-trays atop a warm compost heap. Chillis like a bit of bottom heat to get going, but I have on occasion cooked the seeds with my over-enthusiastic hot compost. With September sowing (I've tried August, but its a bit too early for them) I generally start harvesting around the end of January or mid-Feb. What would happen, though if I sow Chillis now -- in April!

In theory the weather is still warm enough for them to germinate and put in a bit of growth before they shut down for Winter in about mid-June. Without frost they should be fine until the weather warms up (and plants can tell these things much, much better than we!) Then they should get off to a flying start and be fruiting by early December, but with all the advantage of being "new-season" plants.

So we'll see... Remind me to report back in October or November (unless some other disaster strikes.) Today I planted a couple of dozen each of Jalapeño, Habanero, Serrano and Cherry Peppers -- all favourites of mine.

Parting Shot

One shot good quality Vodka, well chilled in the freezer.
One Serrano pepper, quartered lengthwise, but not all-the-way.

Drop the Serrano into the Vodka. Leave alone for 3 to 5 minutes if you can. Sip.

But slowly!

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[1] I know that lots of people spell it "Chile" or some other baroque monstrosity, but I can't get the hang of that.