Inspiration Farm: Cultivating Food & Creativity.

…a perfect fit for iCreate…next up: a brief update on the recent dehydration workshop from NMSU Extension hosted by Claunch-Pinto SWCD ~ plus information on the return of the popular monthly gardening workshops.

 

Published, Jan 21, 2013

"Changing times calls for changing lifestyles." says Brian Kerkvliet. "So we put more energy into the land? The more you get your fingers in the soil, the more endorphins rush through your head. You get excited by all of that." 

Using permaculture and biodynamic practices, Brian's family is endlessly experimenting and innovating to find what works. His wife Alexandra and daughter Rosalie introduce us to the goats, pigs, and cows who are essential players in their farm's web of life.

Indoor Grow Room

…winter is coming. Time to bring it indoors. Here's a video tour…

Indoor Grow Room Tour just for YOU! by Praxxus55712 Take a moment to join me upstairs in the tropical grow room for a fun and colorful update on some of the residents. Lemons, Pomegranates, Buttercrunch lettuce, Yukon Gold potatoes, Garden Huckleberries, Italian parsley and many more are waiting for you today. It's always a Good Day when you can join me in the grow room. :) Find me on Facebook for a fun, Family-friendly gardening page with hundreds of fun friendly gardeners who would love to meet you.

Another good #GARDENING #video

… for #Mountainair gardeners & growers from Praxxus55712: Autumn EZ composting Tips! Cool weather is here! Time to gather the remnants from my garden for compost to ensure next season's garden is a bumper crop. Tips for adding trace minerals from items in your yard. Info on high nitrogen, potassium and calcium sources. Join me for composting tips and advice. No worries about blight or salmonella in my compost. It's fun, EASY and much simpler than you may think. Today is a Good Day! More

November Peak Moment Newsletter

I've been posting occasional Peak Moment videos relevant to the iCreate mission, mostly sustainability. Who couldn't relate to "locally reliant living for challenging times"? Here's the November Newsletter. 

Watch for: Community Garden Report from Joan Embree, iCreate updates including but not limited to music outreach update (mostly pictures from Tomas Wolff); Christmas Land performances by Kay, Pegeen and Lenora, meeting rescheduling, overdue report from last meeting.

click to view complete newsletter online

November 2011 news

We're exercising our self-reliance muscles to build infrastructure in the winter encampment site for Little House, our RV home. We're dragging water pipes through the forested hillsides and building solar panel racks. Our work is accompanied by thrilling calls of circling red-shouldered hawks and curious cackling ravens.

This peaceful place and slower pace feels in stark contrast to the quickly moving events swirling around the Occupy Movement, as it draws attention to the egregious wrongdoings on Wall Street at the expense of the many. We valued Bill Moyers' look back to How Wall Street Occupied America, and Richard Heinberg's big picture Memo to the #Occupy Movement, in which he reminds: "Given the finite nature of our planet and its resources, the recent trend of global economic expansion was destined to end."

Legalize Local Investing. Sign a petition supporting HR 2930, which will legalize investment in small local businesses. It's advocated by Michael Shuman author of Local Dollars, Local Sense: How to Shift Your Money from Wall Street to Main Street and Achieve Real Prosperity, and Peak Moment episode 44: The Slow-Mart Revolution.

A Guitar Lesson

Via Stephen Downes' OLDaily, a very different part of my life from the #Mountainair NM community blogging part. #change11 and other #MOOC/s are experimental, innovative mind stretching online learning experiences. Worlds do intersect. Techies and Luddites find common cause. Serendipity and synergy happen upon us unawares. Only unawares and unanticipated. 

This fits the music outreach side of iCreate that tends to get short end of blogging... thereby recalling me not just back to music but other creative projects. Another experimental course, #CMC11, Creativity & Multicultural Communication comes to mind. 

                                                     Guitar Lesson 5

        Dean Shareski, Ideas and Thoughts, October 18, 2011

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Stephen comments, 

Dean Shareski and some of his students are trying to learn things and documenting the results. His guitar lessons are interesting, and I quite like his students' non-traditional learning:

• Cole...learning Japanese
• Nicole...learning crochet
• Hillary...learning meditation
• Edgar...learning Assassin's Creed
• Courtney...learning to draw

It's interesting that it doesn't matter what they are learning - by documenting their progress, they are not only improving their learning, they are - over time - learning how to learn. And I like what Shareski is doing, modelling the process, and not just talking about it.


[Tags: Project Based Learning, Online Learning, Ontologies]

#NMSU ACES Master Gardener Project

For the #Mountainair #CommunityGarden and local gardeners: nmsuaces just uploaded a video. I'm waiting on garden pictures from our master gardener but won't let that keep me from posting in the meantime. seed 2 need master gardener project More

Autumn Gardening

Praxxus55712 just uploaded a video: EZ Autumn Composting with Leaves! Autumn isn't the end of gardening season. The gardening adventure never end and never ceases to be FREE, educational and just plain FUN! Join me in the backyard for a fantastic day in the sunshine. I have a bag of leaves and a very cool idea on how to easily improve your garden soil. Leaf compost attracts worms like a super magnet. Worms in your garden will mean crazy good soil for your next growing season.  ps: How is your autumn going so far? Are the leaves turning or have they already fallen? More

Briefly Updated + Edible Education [video]

Meeting changes: 

• Today's Community Garden Workday and Fall Planning session at Mountain Arts on Broadway site has been postponed to October, but Joan E, Kristine and Addie will be at the garden around 10am to do some tidying up and planning extended beds. Volunteers and visitors, as ever, are welcome. Today might be a good day to drop by and ask questions.

• Due to the Shaffer Hotel closing Thursday (no more Packs Family at the helm), the iCreate board will meet at Lenora's.  Since the meeting is not being held in a public location, this one will not, as per usual policy, be open to the public. If you have questions about iCreate or wish to suggest items for the agenda, call Kay Stillion at 847-2301. Agenda items include: music outreach donations and thank you notes, new location for Mountainair classes; grant plans and deadlines, community garden and SEEDS project

Associated Links: I embed links just in case anyone reading is interested in following them. Today's links added to the video notice strike me as being of particular interest. The Edible Schoolyard is a lovely site, definitely worth a visit, and certainly related to SEEDS, the community outreach and sustainability components of the iCreate mission. Joan Embree will certainly be familiar with Chez Panisse and its foundation.

UCBerkeley 

Edible Education: The Politics of Food

Marion Nestle, PhD, MPH, Paulette Goddard Professor in Dept. of Nutrition at NYU 

Sponsored by The EDIBLE SCHOOLYARD PROJECT with support from Stephen Silberstein and the KNIGHT FOUNDATION FOR ENVIRONMENTAL JOURNALISM Live Stream and sponsored by BON APPETIT Management Company Instructors MICHAEL POLLAN and NIKKI HENDERSON (People's Grocery).... More

A Community Garden video

Given what that iCreate and local community garden updates can get thin on the ground and even I tire of emailing reminders, I am always happy to see notice from Yvonne Savio, Common Ground Garden Program Manager, UC Cooperative Extension. There's something in the mail from iCreate's 'burque pardner, to cover the rest of update obligations. So extra thanks Yvonne from this weary blogger for sharing and thanks to original sharer, LA County community gardener Melissa Hauck, who writes... 

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I'm a gardener at of one of the newest LA County Community Gardens here in Azusa which has just opened in April of this year.

Underdog Mural Program at Sierra High School, Azusa.

Elaine Stricklin, Art Teacher.

Rohit Kumar (of Local Blu & The Growing Home in Diamond Bar) interviewed local gardeners this past Sunday and made a short video of our own garden and gardeners which is the featured post on Local Blu right now. I thought other community gardeners would enjoy seeing what we've got growing on here in Azusa in such a short amount of time, and that we still have some plots available for rent. The video can be viewed online. Please visit the Azusa Community Garden webiste too. Thanks! Melissa Hauck

Video Break: orange seedlings, raised beds, post-petro man

Praxxus55712 just uploaded a video: Viewer Requested Updates! A couple of updates requested most by viewers along with a very easy to follow way to sprout an orange seed and get it growing fast.  For your viewing pleasure, Buddy will break dance and the lovely Datura will spill her pollen. A 600 year old guest makes a cameo appearance! You won't want to miss this episode! :) More Portable raised beds, compost tea and Pineapple flowers! Help Center | Email Options peakmoment just uploaded a video: Arrival of the Post-Petroleum Human Peak Moment 196: "Petroleum Man is dead. Infinite Growth Man is dead. Post Petroleum Human is alive," announced Michael C. Ruppert on May 22, 2011. Members of this emerging "species" know they must live in balance with the Earth, while remembering the lessons of industrial civilization. The star and subject of the documentary "Collapse", Mike founded CollapseNet.org in 2010 to empower people to connect and relocalize.More

Community Garden Notes

~ update on and wish list for the community garden and more. An iCreate post is past due, but I'm hoping waiting more of a report on the recent fundraising concert at Off-Center Arts, so I can give the performers their due after the fact.

In the meantime, however, there are community garden updates and resources to share: a neat video (embedded below) on "How To Recycle Household Items In The Garden"; next Torrance County Extension workshop; KGI (Kitchen Garden International) and Peak Moment TV ("locally reliant living for challenging times") newsletters; links to a few YouTube gardening and horticulture video channels. There are so many of them, that with a large screen monitor, we could run a regular gardening and permaculture film night - bring your own popcorn.

More videos on NMSU Extension's YouTube ACES channel and iTunes U, as well as The Dirt Doctor's channel


Community Garden Wish List

• growing containers. 
• good top soil
• compost or manure
• help setting up new garden
• source for bales of straw or oat hay for straw bale gardening

straw bale garden rows image from MRCOG

 Backyard Growers and Community Gardens page 

Bring donations and help to Mountainair Arts, East Broadway & South Ross on next garden workday ~ the last one was Saturday May 13 at 3pm, Time is subject to change with summer temperatures. Contact: Joan Embree, housemaven@comcast.net, 847-2324

Newsletters

• Peak Moment, May 2011
• Kitchen Garden May 2011

The next Claunch-Pinto SWCD sponsored Extension Workshop ~ eagerly anticipated ~ will be June 25,  on water harvesting, time and location TBA. More details when available, perhaps accompanied by links to relevant handouts and even a video or so on rain barrels and harvesting rain water.

How-To gardening video in English and Spanish

from the Common Ground Community Garden list, 

Master Gardener Millie Macen-Moore has produced some wonderful How-To gardening videos for beginning gardeners in English and Spanish from the Milagro Allegro Community Garden in Los Angeles community of Highland Park .

Milli Macen-Moore, a sustainable landscape expert, pours seeds for planting 

during "Organic Sundays," at Milagro Allegro Community Garden in Highland Park, 

Email directly from the site to join mailing list.

A Community Garden Ideal

More than a community garden, this sharing garden provides fresh produce for all who've contributed to it, with surplus going to the local food bank. 


Coordinators Chris Burns and Llyn Peabody note that with one large plot rather than separate plots, Alpine Sharing Garden enables more efficient food production - from watering to optimizing for pollinators. They share tips for getting started, garden planning, communicating with volunteers, garden practices like deep mulch, and especially the joy of giving without expecting a return. 


Thanks for supporting Peak Moment TV..

A Video Example of Music Outreach

Everyone knows what a garden is, but what is music outreach? That particular iCreate project seems less clearly understood and thus perhaps less valued by some than the community garden.

Show not tell: perhaps this video example will address this gap. World on Fire, a documentary made for a film class. is about an amazing music school, called the Sarah McLachlan Music Outreach Program (SMMO), for students from inner cities schools.