theGreenBackpack

Banana leaf sheet mulch!

2011-12-16T21:39:00.001-10:00

Photo: Banana leaf sheet mulch deployed in raised bed garden. Hana, Maui.

Banana leaves have many uses in the Islands (and in all traditional cultures where banana plants grow), though here's one you may not yet have considered: a natural, locally & readily available, biodegradable weed barrier for sheet mulching.

In urban and suburban Honolulu, cardboard is a readily available waste product that can easily be upcycled as a biodegradable weed barrier for sheet mulch gardenbeds and paths, though in remote Hana there is nowhere near the amount of waste cardboard available for us permaculturists!

There is, however, and abundance of banana plants (which love the chocolatey-volcanic soils and moisture), and therefore an abundance of banana leaves...

...which brings us to the point of this post:

Appropriate Design.
(an excerpt from Rick Coleman's essay 'The Role of Permaculture in Sustainable Aid')

If you are going to introduce a new technology / technique / tool, these are some things to consider:

Can you use materials that are inexpnsive or free, that are easily accessible and safe?

Will it have a tangible positive effect on the community (as well as the aid organization)?

Most importantly is it able to be repeated (if you build a grand-darble-dooble-funky and leave it, can anyone build a new one?)..

How can the technology be integrated to solve other problems or be connected to other elements (in the system) and therefore become more productive?

... which, of course, now leaves us with the question:

What else could we use banana leaves for?

While we ponder that one, here's another example of a locally appropriate material being deployed for use in a sheet mulch garden being built in the drylands of Mexico:

Banana leaf sheet mulch!

2011-12-16T21:36:00.001-10:00

Photo: Banana leaf sheet mulch deployed in raised bed garden. Hana, Maui.

There is, however, and abundance of banana plants (which love the chocolatey-volcanic soils and moisture), and therefore an abundance of banana leaves...

...which brings us to the point of this post:

Appropriate Design.
(an excerpt from Rick Coleman's essay 'The Role of Permaculture in Sustainable Aid')

If you are going to introduce a new technology / technique / tool, these are some things to consider:

Can you use materials that are inexpnsive or free, that are easily accessible and safe?

Will it have a tangible positive effect on the community (as well as the aid organization)?

Most importantly is it able to be repeated (if you build a grand-darble-dooble-funky and leave it, can anyone build a new one?)..

How can the technology be integrated to solve other problems or be connected to other elements (in the system) and therefore become more productive?

... which, of course, now leaves us with the question:

What else could we use banana leaves for?

While we ponder that one, here's another example of a locally appropriate material being deployed for use in a sheet mulch garden being built in the drylands of Mexico:

Solar Dryer extends harvest and creates microenterprise opportunity

2011-12-13T17:18:00.001-10:00

Elyse Peterson is an experienced food scientist in the dairy, seafood, meat, and soft drink industries, Elyse served two terms in the Peace Corps helping promote sustainable food security solutions. As part of her work in the Peace Corps, she helped to develop a Solar Food Dryer which became the catalyst for a community-based food security and economic development project in in Antigua.

We talked to Elyse about this technology, which is highly appropriate for many tropical areas, and may have application into other climate zones:

Photo: Mangoes drying in the sun.

TBG: How does Solar Food Drying work?
Solar drying is a low cost method of drying food. It is important to understand moisture in food and the properties of the air around us.

All food contains moisture which comes in three forms: liquid, solid & gas. This moisture is what microorganisms need to live and thrive, so in order to stop microorganism growth you may reduce this moisture to a safe level to preserve and extend the shelf-life of your harvest.

The design of the Solar Dryer harnesses the power of the sun's rays to raise temperatures within the unit to between 110 - 130 degrees Farenheit.

This heat lowers relative humidity while increasing absolute humidity, so that the air inside the unit attempts to reach the absolute humidity of the climate outside the unit by taking moisture from the food.

Coupled with proper air circulation, this is what makes the solar dryer work.

Photo: Solar dryer built with locally available materials in Antigua, 2007.

TGB: What kind of Solar Dryer Designs have you developed?

There are three basic designs of solar dryers that you may follow when building your own solar dryer: direct absorption, indirect heating, and mixed mode. In this project a direct absorption solar dryer was designed because it was found to be the most sustainable for Hawaii’s needs.

In these designs the food is placed inside a cabinet or “hot box” which allows the rays of the sun to heat up food and air around it. A compartment with a transparent roof and insulated walls is used, but if designed properly all the walls can be transparent. These may also use reflectors at the bottom of the compartment to increase light (metal or foil).

Ventilation holes are required to promote proper air circulation. Indirect heating dryers dry the food with heated air collected by a “solar panel”. The food is placed in an insulated heating chamber with proper air circulation.

These models are effective but cost a lot of money. Mixed Mode dryers are a combination of the other two designs. Food is heated directly by the sun but additional heat is collected with the “solar panel”. These can cost about $1300EC to build, effective but expensive.

Businesses attempting to expand and produce higher quality products should look into building one of these models (for the purposes of this project and the situation in Hawaii the direct absorption model is the best fit). When constructing your dryer be sure to follow the design carefully, because the angles achieved are vital for efficient processing.

Photo: Mangoes selected for drying are peeled and cut.

TGB: How do we select produce to dry?
When selecting food to process in the solar dryer it is important to remember that drying will not improve the quality of the produce. Only produce that you would consume fresh should be dried.

Produce with cuts, bruises, or other evidence of contamination should not be used. Select fruit that is ripe yet firm. Using over-ripe fruit can cause the final product to come out brown and sticky. Ripeness is about 2/3 ripe.

Photo: Mango is prepared for dehydration in the Solar Dryer.

TGB: How do we prepare produce for drying?
Produce shall be soaked in a bleach solution to remove microbial contamination (1 tsp bleach in 1 gallon water). Peel fruits and cut into appropriate sized pieces. The smaller the size piece the faster the drying time. As the size of the piece increases the time for drying grows exponentially.

Example: A slice or piece two times larger with take four times longer to dry. Experiment with your dryer to see what size piece is the best.

TGB: Doesn't that mean we will be eating bleach?

There are alternative methods for sanitation, but bleach is the most available and inexpensive. One must remember that bleach is highly volatile. It evaporates into the air, so there is essentially no bleach on the product by the time we eat it. This is a standard practice in the food industry that many of us don't know about but owe our safety to.

Photo: Uncle Clay's House of Pure Aloha utilizes the Solar Dryer.

TGB: Does it work in the rain? How long does it take?
No. The dryer should only be used on days with consistent powerful sun as to reduce the time required for drying. Depending on the results you may find it necessary to rotate the trays throughout the day so every tray gets equal amounts of direct sun exposure.

Drying should take about 12 hours of full sun power (possibly one day with good sun). Optimal temperature for solid drying is 110-120°F but 130°F will be the most effective temperature. Putting a thermometer in the dryer during processing is a safe way of monitoring the efficiency of your dryer.

Keep a close eye on the produce towards the end of drying because drying happens at a faster rate just before it’s reached 10% moisture. To test for doneness you should see that vegetables at about 10% moisture will be brittle and easily can be broken apart.

Fruits should be soft and chewy, but test the moisture content to verify 5-8% moisture (refer to Principles of Solar Drying). There are a few quality issues that need to be considered when solar drying produce.

________________________________________________

For more information and detailed instructions on how to build your own Solar Food Dryerin Hawaii, download the Solar Dryer Manual here:

solar-dryer-manual-hawaii.pdf Download this file

Food Security and Food Culture

2011-12-06T01:00:00.001-10:00

Photo: Mongolians work new potato fields in Zavkhan Province (2010), and are learning to grow vegetables because changing weather patterns are rendering ancient grazing patterns obsolete.

“Food security has been defined as ...access by all people at all times to sufficient food for an active and healthy life.

Food security includes at a minimum: the ready availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods, and an assured ability to acquire food in socially acceptable ways (without resorting to emergency food supplies, scavenging, stealing and other coping strategies for example).”

[(Online), Dieticians Association of Australia, www.daa.asn.au (2006.)]

Food Culture refers to how we experience our food – from field to plate – and how it impacts our health, happiness, and sense of community.

Perhaps the best way to explain the impact of food culture upon our wellness is to think of the way you feel, hear, smell, taste, and see another culture when you experience it through their cooking; so much of our cultural values are expressed in the way we grow, prepare, and share food. Indeed, most of our major holidays and celebrations are centered around the experience of sharing a meal.

Food culture and food security are closely linked: threats to one affect, and are affected by the other.

A society which marginalizes the importance of celebrating and enjoying its food, also marginalizes the importance and richness of the living systems which support and create food.

The ‘fast food culture’ of modern society has distanced most of us from this richness of experience, with sobering results. The Slow Food movement was spawned out of a response to the globalization of food production, and promotes sustainable food production by small local businesses to preserve and celebrate local and traditional food cultures.

A society which celebrates the importance and richness of its food culture, creates resilient, happy communities: there is much data to indicate that average reported happiness is consistently lower in countries with a pervasive fast food culture [such as the USA] than in countries such as Cuba, which embrace and celebrate a locally produced, organic food system.

When a community is unable to provide for its own food needs, individuals are disempowered, despair sets in, and food aid must be imported. The community must be rebuilt with the knowledge and practical skills to produce enough of their own food to meet their needs, or a cycle of dependence can develop.

Agricultural yields are arguably at higher levels than ever in recorded history, yet in our world today, 1 out of 7 people will fall sleep tonight without access to enough food to lead an active and healthy life.

A solid understanding of food culture and food security issues are important to a wellness practitioner because it will equip you with a foundation to act on a local scale, and know that you are improving the wellness of humanity on a global scale with your contribution.

"Stupidity is an attempt to iron out all differences, and not to use them or value them creatively."

- Bill Mollison -

The long-term impacts of the modern conventional food system, which has only been in existence for the last 40 years or so, are only now starting to become more apparent. Obesity levels and diet-related disease are at epidemic levels in the developed world, regional economies are being drained of their livelihoods by big agribusiness, while social and environmental impacts are being reported on by filmmakers, journalists, bloggers and other activists all over the world.

Once we understand the limitations and challenges created by the conventional food system, we can begin to identify opportunities to flourish within, while operating from outside the system: first, by producing enough of our own food to meet our survival needs, then to generate sufficient surplus to share in our local communities.

It is here than we can access markets most efficiently, here that we can develop our most loyal customers, and it is here that the economic activities of our enterprise will make the most difference, because money will be cycled around local suppliers, distributors, and sellers to ehance and strengthen our community.

Photo: PermablitzHI, a vibrant community of people who share common needs and goals.

‘Market’ does not mean ‘places where we can sell crap’ to a permaculturist. Instead, we view ‘markets’ as a vibrant community of people [think of your local farmer’s market], who share common needs that we can help to meet.

When we can identify and meet these needs responsibly, ethically, and sustainably then we are rewarded with surplus cashflows to reinvest into our people, our enterprises, and our community.

For example, we can look for local heritage varieties of crops that have adapted to growing conditions in the area, and develop a niche demand for varieties that are unavailable on supermarket shelves because they may not be suitable for long-term transportation or storage.

Or, we can look for high-value crops that can be integrated into our polycultures, increasing the biodiversity and resilience of our system, while increasing the diversity and resilience of our economic yield.

Photo: Hana Farms, an example of a Regenerative Enterprise, cycles economic energy back into the community it serves.

Only when when our enterprise is able to competently serve the needs of our local community, should we look to developing our system to generate further surplus. We expand our operations and systems organically, by careful observation, continuous improvement, and constant adaptation to changing long-term trends; and always, always conduct ourselves with respect to the ethics of permaculture, which underpin all of our work.

It is vitally important that we look at what our land offers us, rather than impose our will upon the land. For example, deciding arbitrarily that ‘I want to grow chamomile’ because there may be a market for it would not be in alignment with the permaculture ethic of Earth Care, while paying our employees less than a living wage would violate our ethical principle of People Care.

Finally, hoarding all of our profits and not re-investing surplus back into our local communities not only serves to isolate ourselves from our basic need to connect meaningfully with other human beings around us, it would not honour the third ethical principal of permaculture: Resource Share.

______________________________________
by Matthew Lynch
'Essays on Permaculture and Wellness'

Permablitz comes to Hawaii: parking lot is transformed into edible landscape

2011-09-23T14:57:00.001-10:00

PermablitzHI#1:

PermablitzHI is a grassroots movement restoring Hawaii's food security one backyard at a time.

Before.

Photo: Backyard paring lot behind Sweet Home Waimanalo Cafe.

After.

Photo: In one day, the parking lot is transformed into an edible landscape.

Hawaii's first Permablitz transformed the parking lot behind Sweet Home Waimanalo cafe into an edible landscape featuring a mandala kitchen garden, banana circle, living fence, worm farm, and an experimental sweet potato stack (for starters):

See the full gallery on Posterous

Plans for a mini-fruit-orchard, shipping-pallet-seating-area, and other goodies are in the works.

Permablitzes are entirely volunteer-based, and are based on permaculture design principles, reciprocity (the more you give the more you gain), and sharing resources.

Stay tuned to the PermablitzHI website for PermablitzHI #s 2, 3, and 4, coming soon.

To keep informed of upcoming blitzes and workshops, join in the Join Hawaii's Edible Garden Revolution by clicking here.

Special thanks to:

Island Foodscaping, Sweet Home Waimanalo, Sustain Hawaii, Yogarden, Kaleo, Mikey and da Mililani Crew, Chop Chop Media, and our team of volunteer blitzers for your creativity, collaboration, and contributions. Let the Edible Garden Revolution begin!

PERMABLITZ comes to Hawaii on 09.17.11

2011-09-15T11:23:00.001-10:00

Permablitz (noun): “Blitz”, from the german for lightening, means a focused application of energy. A permablitz is when that energy is focused on installing part of a permaculture system. “Perma” is short for permaculture, which is a design system for sustainable living and land use. As a comprehensive design system, permaculture includes much more than organic food gardening. Growing at least some of our food where we live, however, has always been a central emphasis within the broader picture of permaculture.

Technically, a Permablitz is an informal gathering involving a day on which a group of people come together to achieve the following:

Create or add to edible gardens where someone lives.
Share skills related to permaculture and sustainable living.
Build community networks.
Have fun!

As an example, if you come along to someone’s house, plant a lettuce, learn about worm farming, meet some people, and have a few laughs, it may be accurate for you to say you’ve been at a permablitz. You may have already been to some in the past without knowing it!

The Permablitz story

Permablitzes began in 2006, when a collaboration between Permaculture designer 'Sourdough' Dan Palmer & friends, and a South American community group in Melbourne, Australia's, became a revolution of edible garden landscapes quietly appearing in backyards all over the suburbs. Check out Asha Bee's article and Katherine Kizilos' excellent article for The Age newspaper for the full story.

As of mid-2011, over 100 permablitzes have been held in and around Melbourne and throughout Australia, and have even spread overseas to California, Calgary, Montreal, Istanbul, Uganda, and now Hawaii.

PERMABLITZ-HI #1 is scheduled for Saturday September 17th, at Sweet Home Waimanalo (SHW) cafe. Matt will be teaching a hands-on weekend 'Introduction to Permaculture' class September 10-11, and PERMABLITZ-HI #1 will give participants a chance to utilize and share their new skills & knowledge by transforming the parking lot behind SHW into a functional, productive, and beautiful edible landscape. Drop us a line if you'd like to participate!

Stay tuned, and subscribe to the PERMABLITZ-HI mailing list for more details.

Step 1. Before.

Photo: The back of Sweet Home Waimanalo (SHW)cafe today. Bo-ring.

Step 2. Design.

Photo: Permaculture design for SHWcafe, featuring mandala kitchen gardens, functional banana circle, mini-orchard, worm farm and chicken-dome-tractors.

Step 3. Blitz!

Photo: Permaculture design for SHWcafe, featuring mandala kitchen gardens, functional banana circle, mini-orchard, worm farm and chicken-dome-tractors.

Join Hawaii's Edible Garden Revolution today by clicking here, and help us restore Hawaii's food security - one backyard at a time.

PERMABLITZ comes to Hawaii on 09.17.11

2011-09-14T09:44:00.001-10:00

Technically, a Permablitz is an informal gathering involving a day on which a group of people come together to achieve the following:

Create or add to edible gardens where someone lives.
Share skills related to permaculture and sustainable living.
Build community networks.
Have fun!

The Permablitz story

Stay tuned, and subscribe to the PERMABLITZ-HI mailing list for more details.

Step 1. Before.

Photo: The back of Sweet Home Waimanalo (SHW)cafe today. Bo-ring.

Step 2. Design.

Photo: Permaculture design for SHWcafe, featuring mandala kitchen gardens, functional banana circle, mini-orchard, worm farm and chicken-dome-tractors.

Step 3. Blitz!

Photo: Permaculture design for SHWcafe, featuring mandala kitchen gardens, functional banana circle, mini-orchard, worm farm and chicken-dome-tractors.

Join Hawaii's Edible Garden Revolution today by clicking here, and help us restore Hawaii's food security - one backyard at a time.

Banana Circles on Maui

2011-08-21T14:21:00.001-10:00

http://posterous.com/posts/edit/66266779#settings

Photo: Banana circle: functional and beautiful.

We stumbled across these simple banana circles at Laulima Farm in Kipahulu, on the road past Hana in the shadow of Haleakala (which I highly recommend checking out if you should ever find yourself wandering the magical road to Hana...).

It's a very simple design which can increase the tidiness, production & functionality of banana plants; by planting in a circle around a shallow pit filled with mulch, you can 'march' the bananas around the perimeter of the circle as the root corms send up new baby shoots. Sweet potato and other moisture-loving species like comfrey and mint can also be planted around the rim to increase yield and diversity in a concentrated area. Cacao was observed here, growing in the shade created between two banana circles.

Bananas are a very hungry plant, and will benefit from the extra concentration of nutrients the central mulch pit provides. Kitchen scraps from Laulima Farm's roadside stand were being dumped into this circle, and as you can see the plants were only too happy to take up all that excess nutrient and turn it into copious quantities of bananas.

The system can also work well for harvesting & processing greywater - turning greywater into bananas - so long as you are careful to esure that harsh chemical cleaning agents are avoided.

Rick Coleman of Southern Cross Permaculture Institute used banana pits in Central America, where subsistence farmers who were walking 2 hours each way to access their mountain grow plots had no toilet system, resulting in unhealthy (nasty!) runoff to the villages below.

Banana circles were dug upslope of their mountainside plots and filled with rocks & organic waste matter. These shallow versions of a pit latrine systems were an effective alternative to the practice of just going where and whenever the need arose, since typically only one or two people per day were using each banana pit.

In this simple example of Cycling Energy [Mollison] / Produce No Waste [Holmgren], a potentially toxic waste product is converted into a valuable nutrient source for an additional crop by asking the simple question:

How can the waste products of one element in your system become an input for another?

Back to Laulima Farms, and there are 0 food miles here, because bananas are planted in such abundance throughout the property that they practically give them away. (As an aside, their banana bread is OFF-THE-HOOK (amazing), spelt flour is used more to bind the banana mash that is used to make the 'bread'. We muched on a couple slices while we waited for the customers ahead of us in line to blend their own smoothies...)

Photo: Human-powered smoothies!

Photo: Nitrogen-fixing Peanut grass and hardy Mint used as a wonderfully attractive groundcover.

Photo: Food planted everywhere, as far as the eye can see at Laulima Farms.

Photo: Bamboo circle used to great effect as private seating area..

Photo: Bamboo construction used in Laulima's roadside stand.

theGreenBackpack in Hawaii

2011-08-02T17:54:00.001-10:00

Photo: Oahu, 'The Gathering Place'.

Its been a long & winding road, spanning from a small cluster of islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, to the island-continent with one coast in the Pacific and the other in the Indian Ocean (Australia), across 'The Ditch' (Tasman Sea) to our Polynesian neighbors in Aoteroa (New Zealand), then to the European hinterlands of the North Sea (Hamburg, Germany), and finally back again to our island home: Oahu.

Also known as 'The Gathering Place', Oahu is home to Honolulu (capital city of the Islands), plus some 800,000-odd residents (out of the total state population of around 1.3 million)… Hawaii plays host to some 8 million or so visitors from North America alone each year, and while it really is as good as you have imagined it to be here (sun, sand, surf ….and so much Aloha spirit), just like your community, we face some serious issues which must be dealt with:

Photo (by Seattle Times): Empty shelves in a Hawaii supermarket during a recent tsunami warning.
Food Insecure. Hawaii imports between 80 - 95% of its food, which is actually quite ridiculous when you think of the fertile soils and ideal, year-round growing conditions we have. If the shipping lanes were blocked for any reason, best estimates project that there would be only around two weeks' worth of food here to sustain the population. Anytime there is a hurricane warning, what do you think is the first thing to disappear off supermarket shelves? You guessed it: Toilet paper. On a bright note, you can now find farmer's markets selling fresh local produce somewhere on every day of the week.
Photo (by mtnbiker808): An oil tanker delivers its payload off the shores of Kapolei, Oahu.
Energy Dependent. The numbers for energy security are similar to the numbers for food security: as much as 95% of our energy is produced from imported coal or oil… if you've ever sailed off the Ewa coastal plains when the oil tankers are offloading (twice weekly), you know how fragile those hoses which pipe our fuel to the refineries in Campbell Industrial Park (draped precariously off the side of massive tankers bobbing up & down in choppy seas) are. The State of Hawaii is working towards reversing those numbers, with a goal of powering the islands by 80% renewable energy by 2050.

While those are two issues tGB will be directly involved in addressing during the coming years, they are definitely not the only ones.. there are also issues of Homelessness, Elder Care Crisis, Growth vs. Sanity (a.k.a. Honolulu's Mass Transit System), Watershed Management, Invasive Species and Ecosystem Conservation challenges to be reckoned with.

Hawaii is a paradise precariously balancing conflicting pressures on our natural resources - just like our planet.

My wife have spent the last few months relocating our lives to this tropical island paradise, reconnecting with family and friends, and working through the myriad of details which come with starting over from scratch in a new place to build a life together (like getting married on the summer solstice!).

Along the way, we've stumbled into some pretty amazing projects that we'll be sharing about with you in the coming months. There are rumors that theGreenBackpack crew may be off again later this year to work in Vanuatu, and perhaps other areas of the Asia-Pacific region...

…and of course, we can't wait to get back to Mongolia to continue our work there (and maybe even plant some seeds for more regenerative projects) - though not until next summer please (an Island Boy can only take so much -30C temperatures!!).

Meanwhile, I look forward to enjoying the rest of the summer here getting my hands dirty in some new projects, and then spending the winter in a place where anything below 15C is a two-blanket night…

In so many ways, Hawaii is like a miniature R&D testing lab for Planet Earth, a microcosm for many of the common challenges and issues faced by communities around the globe. We look forward to diving into working towards solutions that can be shared, adapted & applied; perhaps to your local region.

Stay tuned for more permacultural adventures in moving beyond sustainability, and make sure you subscribe by clicking here if you want to make sure you don't miss any of it. We'll be posting consistently rather than frequently, because 1) we can't even keep up with all the stuff that crowds our InBox either, 2) there's just too much awesome to be done out in the real world, and 3) we don't want to make anyone too jealous about living in Hawaii. ...I jest! (sort of..)

Regeneratively,
-Matt Lynch & friends-
aka 'theGreenBackpack'

Greens in April, in Mongolia...?

2011-05-10T04:20:00.001-10:00

Photo: Raddishes have been harvested since early April in the GERES' Passive solar greenhouse R&D site in Ulaanbaatar.

From GERES' Community of Practice website, by Anne Randall:

The '“Food Security and Innovative Farming Approaches for Mongolia” Project (2010-2013, funded by the European Union) is led by a consortium of two French NGOs: Secours Catholique and GERES, who are working closely to support Mongolian NGO Caritas Mongolia.

The objective is to develop more efficient and diversified ways to grow vegetables at household level, in order to reduce the food insecurity which affects the most vulnerable families (1,000 families in Ulaanbaatar and in Gobi-Altai province).

Activities are intended to develop, implement and diffuse passive solar greenhouses (180 family and community greenhouses and 75 nurseries), improved techniques of soil and water management and bioclimatic cellars. GERES is bringing its technical expertise to the local partner during the first research and development phase on these 3 techniques.

In Autumn 2010, a Research and Display Center was built in the middle of the peri-urban “yurt areas” [['ger districts' - TGB Editorial]] of Ulaanbaatar. The Research carried out in the center aims at testing:

The thermal performance of different designs of passive solar greenhouses.
Potential optimizations for solar greenhouses (ex: hotbeds for early seedlings, thermal storage in water tanks).
Improved soil and water management practices (ex: rainwater harvesting, windbreaks).

Photo: Ulaanbaatar peri-urban Research & Development site for passive solar greenhouse design.

At the same time, GERES has developed a new low-cost passive solar greenhouse design for peri-urban areas of Ulaanbaatar (see picture). The greenhouse size is relatively small (8,8 m*4,4m) compared to “usual rural solar greenhouses” diffused in Asia. The constraints (in terms of suitable space available) are high: the standard size of the plot is small (700m2), with a large amount of available area often already occupied by other structures. Each plot is fenced with a 2 meters wood barrier and the orientation of the plot may not be suitable.

The size has thus been adapted to fit the families’ site constraints while insuring a sufficient vegetable production meeting their needs.

Passive Solar Greenhouses represent a new technology in Mongolia and have aroused a big interest from Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and Governmental Agencies, since the project's beginning. This shows promise for this resource’s development in the country.

In this early spring 2011, greenhouses began their first full growing season. Thermal and agronomic performances tested since last autumn are revealing first results that meet our expectations.

Research greenhouses can be used from late February to early December (we have to keep in mind that atmospheric pollution in Ulaanbaatar reduces winter solar radiations).

Photo: April 27, 2011. Inside the Ulaanbaatar research greenhouse.

Family greenhouses can be used from mid-March for direct hardy vegetables seedling (radish, lettuce, turnip, spinach) and beginning of April for sensitive vegetables/fruits transplantation (tomatoes, cucumber, sweet pepper). At this date, greenhouses generally used in Ulaanbaatar (tunnel-type greenhouse) are frozen and usually start to be used from mid-May. Spring is a critical period regarding food security; thanks to these greenhouses, Ulaanbaatar families will be able to consume fresh and nutritive vegetables starting from April.

Thermal performance inside Ulaanbaatar greenhouse from Mar 17 - 20, 2011.

Some thermal data: At mid-March, during cold nights (minimum -20°C), the research greenhouse allows to gain 20°C and the family greenhouse allows to increase the temperature by 15°C.

Prospects: Thermal results will allow us to compare the different designs performances and suggest relevant optimizations. The main objective for 2011 as regards to agronomic experimentations is to suggest a new schedule for farmers, which will be adapted to this longer cultivation season, in order to make a better use of the opportunity offered by the passive solar greenhouses.

Photo: Anne Randall inspects this season's early crops.

____________________________________________

For more information about the “Food Security and Innovative Farming Approaches for Mongolia” Project, contact:

Anne RANDALL

Agronomist/Technical Adviser Mongolia - Country Representative

GERES - Group for the Environment, Renewable Energy and Solidarity

Sukhbaatar District, 6th khoroo,

University street 11/1, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

P.O.Box-1353, Ulaanbaatar-13 Mongolia

Tel: (976)98105052

Mobile: (976)98080928

a.randall@geres.eu - www.geres.eu

Making fuel briquettes from waste materials

2011-05-06T00:00:00.001-10:00

We came across this innovative little piece of appropriate technology developed by Beaverton Rotary during our research prior to the consultancy trip this March which is has been used successfully in other developing nations to start microenterprises:

The device uses a car tire jack to compress locally available organic waste material (such as rice or coffee husks, shredded paper, dried grass or leaves, etc) into a high-density, slower-and-cleaner-burning fuel briquettes.

This could be adapted to Mongolian conditions, although adjustments would need to be made:

Briquettes can only be made during warmer months, when rivers are flowing and the briquettes can dry out.
Water squeezed from the press during the manufacturing process should be caught and used on crops, as this water will contain 'pulp' organic matter that will break down and help build soils.
Suitable organic matter needs to be found: paper waste is plentiful in urban areas, and once trees and/or crop systems are established, the plants may drop enough organic waste matter to be used for briquettes.

Populus laurifoila grow prolifically on the floodplain we crossed en route to Altaitsudz soum.

Once again, we can see how valuable tree-cropping systems can be for creating food security and economic opportunity. Appropriately selected species of trees can provide:

Renewable sources of winter fuels (coppiced woodlots).
Emergency animal fodder (Ulmus and some Salix species).
Human nutrition (fruit & nut trees).
Construction materials (Larch and Spruce).
Bimoass (all of the above species + more), which can be used to protect & build soils (mulches, green manures & biochar) and create an additional fuel supply through biogas (fermentation process).

For more information about the Peterson Press, download this information brochure:

How_to_Make_Fuel_Briquettes_-_web.pdf Download this file

SEAL Project awarded 6 hectares for Permacultural development

2011-04-14T09:25:00.001-10:00

Tilyeubyek 'Bek' Yeltai, Food Security Director for ADRA-Mongolia, confirmed today that the local governments of Ulgii City and Bugat soum in Bayan Ulgii province have awarded two 3-hectare land parcels to the SEAL Project for development into permacultural demonstration and education sites.

"We are working on designs for the parcels now," said Bek. "The land parcels are barren and rocky, but the soil underneath looks rich and moist; they are close to the river, and sheltered by the nearby hills."

The list of 146 useful plant species suitable for growing in Bayan Ulgii's climatic conditions compiled Dr Beket's research team over the last few years will be a valuable resource to support the design for this new development in the SEAL Project.

Establishing large-scale demonstration sites give Project staff another location to conduct trainings, and a place to test experimental designs and techniques (such as plant guilds, worm farm designs, and mycellium innoculation of soils) for their effectiveness before implementing new ideas into the field (where an ineffective design could cause a family to go hungry).

The SEAL Project team will document development of the sites with photography and video (coming soon), to show how quickly a bare patch of land can be brought into production through permaculture and regenerative design.

We'll keep you posted!

Photo: View of Ulgii City, from the base of the surrounding hills.

Useful plants of Mongolia: Crowdsourced!

2011-04-13T02:46:00.001-10:00

Resource Alert: Scroll down to the end of this post for a downloadable pdf of 'Useful Plants of Monoglia: A Permacultural Perspective'.

You are invited, dear reader, to participate in an open-source, collaborative project to help conduct detailed research on extreme-cold tolerant plant species which have potential for a wide variety of application in cold climates from Mongolia to Canada.

Dr Beket (the hero of our 'Reforesting the Barrens of Bayan Ulgii' story) and his research team have spent the last few years researching and compiling a list of 146 plant species (mostly tree crops) that can survive (and even thrive) the extreme, sub -40C winters (and 30C summers) of Bayan Ulgii province.

Photo: 'Dictionary of Useful Mongol Plants'

We found the above book 'A Dictionary of Useful Mongol Plants', (Ministry of Nature & Environment and Mongolian State University, 2001) in the ADRA-Mongolia offices during the project consultancy, and used plants listed in this book + selected species from Dr Beket's report to begin the work of compiling a list of our own:

'Useful Plants of Mongolia: A Permacultural Perspective': in which the scientific Latin names are cross-reference with common English names of plant species, while the plants characteristics, funcitions, and possible uses are listed.

Our hope is to create a catalogued database that designers can use to identify suitable plant species for use in their systems - but we need your help.

If you are knowledgeable, or simply want to increase your knowledge of cold-tolerant plant species, and have access to a good internet connection, than you can help to build this database. Choose 10 or more plants from the list below, then download the list we have started compiling (click the 'download' link at the end of this post) to see what information we are compiling, and start your researching & learning!

Email us at theGreenBackpack [at] gmail [dot] com, with 'MONGOL PLANT DATABASE' in your subject line, and we'll send you an Excel spreadsheet template that you can use to compile your own research. Don't forget to record the sources of your information, and in return your contribution will be recorded in the published plant list document as it continues to grow and evolve... you can become a Sustainable Overseas Aid & Development Worker (and contribute to the development of Permaculture and Regenerative design in Mongolia) from the comfort of your living room (or favourite local cafe!).

We can change the World, with our own two hands (and a decent internet connection)... one small step at a time.

Useful_Plant_Species_of_Mongolia-_A_Permacultural_Perspective.pdf Download this file

Useful Plants of Mongolia: A Permacultural Perspective', (The Asia-Pacific Center for Regenerative Design, and you, 2011)

Dr Beket's (et al) list of potentially usefully plant species suitable for Bayan Ulgii province:

Abies sibirica.Ldb
Piciea obovata.Ldb
Pinus silvestris. L
Pinus pumla./Pall/ Rge
Pinus sibirica/Rupr/ Maur
Larix sibirica.Ldb
Jiniperus sibirica Burgsd
Jiniperus Sadina.L
Jiniperus pseuda sadina
Jiniperus daurica.Pall
Epedra guisetina.Rge
Epedra glausa.Rge
Epedra monsperma./CA.M/
Epedra Prezewalscii.Stapf
Epedra sinica. Stapf
Barbaris sibirica.Pall
Spriaea salicifoli.L
Spriaea aguilegefolia.Pall
Spriaea hypericifolia. L
Spriaea media.Shmidt
Spriaea sericea. Turcz
Spriaea flexuosa. Fisch
Spriaea alpina Pall
Spriaea pubescens.Turcz
Cotaneaster melanocapa
Cotaneaster iniflora Bige
Cotaneaster mongolica Posark
Malus pallasina Juz
Sorbus sibirica Hedl
Cratalgus Sanuinea Pall
Cratalgus dauriva pedinculata. Pall
Amugdalus pedinculata Pall
Amugdalus mongolica maxim
Armenica sibiroca dam
Padus asiatecus kom
Roza albertii Rge
Rosa daurica rall
Rosa kokanica Rge
Rosa okyacantha MB
Rosa Acieularus Linde
Rosa laxa Retz
Ribes nigrum.L
Ribes Altissimum Turcz
Ribes rubrum L
Ribes atropurpureum C.A.M
Ribes diacantha pall
Ribes graveolens Bge
Ribes pulchellum Turst
Ribes nispidulum Pojark
Ribes procumbens pall
Ribes Pausiflorum Turz
Ribes Fragrans pall
Grossularia acicularis /smith/ spash
Cargana arbazescens.Lam
Cargana misrophylla pall
Cargana pygmala/ L/ DS
Cargana Leucophloea Rojark
Cargana jubata /Pall/ Poir
Cargana stenophulla Rajark
Cargana bangea LDB
Cargana sinosa /L / DS
Cargana brachypoda Pojark
Cargana Korshinskii kom
Hippophea rhamnoides L
Eleagnus moorcrftii walli
Cornus alba L
Sambucus sibirica Nakai
Lonicera altaica Pall
Lonicera Microphulla Will
Lonicera hispida Pall
Rhododendron aureim
Rhododendron adamsii Rend
Rhododendron Parbifolium Adams
Rhododendron dauricum L
Rhododendron Ledebaurii
Haloxyon omniodendron
Calligonum mongolicum Turcz
Atraphaxis frutescen L Eversm
Atraphaxis pungens Jaub
Atraphaxis Virgata /Rg/ krassn
Atraphaxis compasta hdb
Tamarix ramosissina Lgb
Tamarix gracifis Willd
Tamarix elongota Ldb
Tamarix karelinii Bge
Tamarix laxa Wiild
Myricaria alopecuroidec. Schrenk
Myricaria daurica /Wiild/ Ehrenk
Myricaria longifolia /Wiild / Ehrenb
Ulmus pumila. L
Ulmus masgosara.Hanse
Ulmus propingua.Koidr
Salix jentanra.L
Salix arbuscula.L
Salix berberifolia. Pall
salix caspica. Pall
Salix dasycloos.Viim
Salix rorida.Loksch
Salix tenuifolia.Tucz
Salix microstachya.Tucz
Salix caprea.L
Salix /calsia vill/ glauca.L
Salix dahurica./Tucz/
Salix fumosa.Tucz Lakch
Salix pyrolifolia.Ldb
Salix chlorostachya.Tucz
Salix hastata.L
Salix kochiana.Trautv
Salix myrsinites.L
Salix mongolica. Siuz
Salix nummularia.Anderss
Salix vestita.Pursch
Salix reticulata.L
Salix sibirica. Pall
Salix caesia.Vill
Salix livida6 Whlbg
Salix xerophila.Floder
Salix divaricata. Pall
Salix rosmarinofolia.L
Salix turczaninovii.Laksch
Salix torulosa.Trautv
Salix myrtilloides.L
Salix ovolifolia.Trautv
Salix viminalis.L
Populus tremula.L
Populus suaveolens.Ficsh
Populus lauripolia.Ldb
Populus diversifolia. Schrenk
Populus pilosa.Pehder
Populus densa. Kom
Vaccinium myrtillus.L
Vaccinium vitis idaea.L
Vaccinaceae uliginosum.L
Betula hippolytii.Sukacz
Betula gmelinii.Bde
Betula rotundifoolia.Spach
Betula fruticosa. Pall
Betula mandshurica/Rge/ Nakai
Betula microphulla.Bge
Betula platyphylla.Sukacz
Betula humilis Sukrank
Betula Rezniczenkoona
Betula Tauschii./Rge/ Koidz
Betula exilis. Sukacz
Alnus glutipes.Larm
Alnus fruticosa / Rupr/ Ldb

Useful plants of Mongolia: Crowdsourced!

2011-04-13T02:43:00.001-10:00

Resource Alert: Scroll down to the end of this post for a downloadable pdf of 'Useful Plants of Monoglia: A Permacultural Perspective'.

Photo: 'Dictionary of Useful Mongol Plants'

'Useful Plants of Mongolia: A Permacultural Perspective': in which the scientific Latin names are cross-reference with common English names of plant species, while the plants characteristics, funcitions, and possible uses are listed.

Our hope is to create a catalogued database that designers can use to identify suitable plant species for use in their systems - but we need your help.

We can change the World, with our own two hands (and a decent internet connection)... one small step at a time.

Useful_Plant_Species_of_Mongolia-_A_Permacultural_Perspective.pdf Download this file

Useful Plants of Mongolia: A Permacultural Perspective', (The Asia-Pacific Center for Regenerative Design, and you, 2011)

Dr Beket's (et al) list of potentially usefully plant species suitable for Bayan Ulgii province:

Abies sibirica.Ldb
Piciea obovata.Ldb
Pinus silvestris. L
Pinus pumla./Pall/ Rge
Pinus sibirica/Rupr/ Maur
Larix sibirica.Ldb
Jiniperus sibirica Burgsd
Jiniperus Sadina.L
Jiniperus pseuda sadina
Jiniperus daurica.Pall
Epedra guisetina.Rge
Epedra glausa.Rge
Epedra monsperma./CA.M/
Epedra Prezewalscii.Stapf
Epedra sinica. Stapf
Barbaris sibirica.Pall
Spriaea salicifoli.L
Spriaea aguilegefolia.Pall
Spriaea hypericifolia. L
Spriaea media.Shmidt
Spriaea sericea. Turcz
Spriaea flexuosa. Fisch
Spriaea alpina Pall
Spriaea pubescens.Turcz
Cotaneaster melanocapa
Cotaneaster iniflora Bige
Cotaneaster mongolica Posark
Malus pallasina Juz
Sorbus sibirica Hedl
Cratalgus Sanuinea Pall
Cratalgus dauriva pedinculata. Pall
Amugdalus pedinculata Pall
Amugdalus mongolica maxim
Armenica sibiroca dam
Padus asiatecus kom
Roza albertii Rge
Rosa daurica rall
Rosa kokanica Rge
Rosa okyacantha MB
Rosa Acieularus Linde
Rosa laxa Retz
Ribes nigrum.L
Ribes Altissimum Turcz
Ribes rubrum L
Ribes atropurpureum C.A.M
Ribes diacantha pall
Ribes graveolens Bge
Ribes pulchellum Turst
Ribes nispidulum Pojark
Ribes procumbens pall
Ribes Pausiflorum Turz
Ribes Fragrans pall
Grossularia acicularis /smith/ spash
Cargana arbazescens.Lam
Cargana misrophylla pall
Cargana pygmala/ L/ DS
Cargana Leucophloea Rojark
Cargana jubata /Pall/ Poir
Cargana stenophulla Rajark
Cargana bangea LDB
Cargana sinosa /L / DS
Cargana brachypoda Pojark
Cargana Korshinskii kom
Hippophea rhamnoides L
Eleagnus moorcrftii walli
Cornus alba L
Sambucus sibirica Nakai
Lonicera altaica Pall
Lonicera Microphulla Will
Lonicera hispida Pall
Rhododendron aureim
Rhododendron adamsii Rend
Rhododendron Parbifolium Adams
Rhododendron dauricum L
Rhododendron Ledebaurii
Haloxyon omniodendron
Calligonum mongolicum Turcz
Atraphaxis frutescen L Eversm
Atraphaxis pungens Jaub
Atraphaxis Virgata /Rg/ krassn
Atraphaxis compasta hdb
Tamarix ramosissina Lgb
Tamarix gracifis Willd
Tamarix elongota Ldb
Tamarix karelinii Bge
Tamarix laxa Wiild
Myricaria alopecuroidec. Schrenk
Myricaria daurica /Wiild/ Ehrenk
Myricaria longifolia /Wiild / Ehrenb
Ulmus pumila. L
Ulmus masgosara.Hanse
Ulmus propingua.Koidr
Salix jentanra.L
Salix arbuscula.L
Salix berberifolia. Pall
salix caspica. Pall
Salix dasycloos.Viim
Salix rorida.Loksch
Salix tenuifolia.Tucz
Salix microstachya.Tucz
Salix caprea.L
Salix /calsia vill/ glauca.L
Salix dahurica./Tucz/
Salix fumosa.Tucz Lakch
Salix pyrolifolia.Ldb
Salix chlorostachya.Tucz
Salix hastata.L
Salix kochiana.Trautv
Salix myrsinites.L
Salix mongolica. Siuz
Salix nummularia.Anderss
Salix vestita.Pursch
Salix reticulata.L
Salix sibirica. Pall
Salix caesia.Vill
Salix livida6 Whlbg
Salix xerophila.Floder
Salix divaricata. Pall
Salix rosmarinofolia.L
Salix turczaninovii.Laksch
Salix torulosa.Trautv
Salix myrtilloides.L
Salix ovolifolia.Trautv
Salix viminalis.L
Populus tremula.L
Populus suaveolens.Ficsh
Populus lauripolia.Ldb
Populus diversifolia. Schrenk
Populus pilosa.Pehder
Populus densa. Kom
Vaccinium myrtillus.L
Vaccinium vitis idaea.L
Vaccinaceae uliginosum.L
Betula hippolytii.Sukacz
Betula gmelinii.Bde
Betula rotundifoolia.Spach
Betula fruticosa. Pall
Betula mandshurica/Rge/ Nakai
Betula microphulla.Bge
Betula platyphylla.Sukacz
Betula humilis Sukrank
Betula Rezniczenkoona
Betula Tauschii./Rge/ Koidz
Betula exilis. Sukacz
Alnus glutipes.Larm
Alnus fruticosa / Rupr/ Ldb

Minus 10C, cloudy, blustery, hellah dusty (Day 13)

2011-04-11T05:33:00.001-10:00

Remember The Lorax.

When there are no trees, who is guarding our soils(i)?

See the full gallery on Posterous

Photo: View outside the office window this morning as a duststorm swallowed pedestrians walking by.

___________________________

(i) 'Trees: Guardians of the Earth', by Bill Mollison (1988)

Minus 10C, cloudy, blustery, hellah dusty (Day 13)

2011-04-11T05:26:00.001-10:00

Remember The Lorax.

When there are no trees, who is guarding our soils(i)?

See the full gallery on Posterous

Photo: View outside the office window this morning as a duststorm swallowed pedestrians walking by.

___________________________

(i) 'Trees: Guardians of the Earth', by Bill Mollison (1988)

Permaculture project in Mongolia provides low-energy solutions —on Transition Voice.com

2011-04-05T23:23:00.001-10:00

via transitionvoice.com

We sent Transition Voice a postcard from Mongolia, and they decided to publish it!

Compost Heaps and Observation Logs (Day 07)

2011-04-05T07:21:00.001-10:00

Photo: Building a compost heap.

This afternoon Bek put the group through a compost-heap-building practicum (to get their hands dirty, the blood flowing, and create an experiential learning opportunity which they will replicate when working, in turn, with their students) at the experimental veggie plot he installed in his parents' family compound (in true permacultural-style, a multifunctional activity with multiple benefits - students will simultaneously be providing the labour to prepare the growbeds for this season's plantings).

Photo: Observation Log.

Before students depart the classroom, they create their own Daily Observation Log, in which their observations of the land around them will be recorded; an essential tool for any sustenance gardener, and even more essential for anyone serious about growing enough to bring their surplus to market. Again, this exercise has multiple functions:

To create a journal for students to record their observations during the course (and long after we have departed).
To create another review mechanism / assessment criteria for Instructors to use.
Teach-the-teachers how to empower their future students with the same simple tool.

When used dilligently, an Observation Log can greatly accelerate the grower's effectiveness and crop yields(i), aiding the user to discover nature's patterns expressed in the landscape around them, to see for relationships between plant species growing together (native localized planting guilds), and to read how natural forces have shaped the land so that each walk outside becomes a mental exercise in designing solutions for capturing, storing, and harnessing water, siting potential agricultural plots, and creating a cycle of constant learning from what nature has to teach.

The biggest obstacle standing in the way of using the Observation Log effectively as a tool?

It must be used consistently in order for it to work.

Simple, no?

_________________________________________

(i) Elliot Coleman, 'The Winter Harvest Handbook: Year Round Vegetable Production Using Deep Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses'

Kazakh Food Culture v2.0 (Day 16)

2011-04-04T09:32:00.001-10:00

Photo: Typical Kazakh restaurant meal; a typcial home-cooked meal would look more like a boiled & butchered sheep carcass...

Mongol-Kazakh food culture is predominantly dairy and meat-based, although Kazakh culture uses more vegetables, mostly in the form of pickled condiments. Each meal we have eaten has been based around meat (boiled, fried, in meatballs, dumplings, off the bone, in sausages) and a starch (potatoes, turnips, wheatflour noodles, imported rice), with some sort of shredded pickled vegetable salad (carrots, cabbage, capsicum, onions).

While a vast knowledge of preparing & preserving meat and dairy products exists, there is relatively little knowledge (beyond storing root crops in actively heated cellars) about preparing & preserving vegetables.

Photo: Cultural evolution: men typically do not prepare meals for the family.

A class lecture was given about the microbiology of our foods, main pathonogenic (E.Coli, Salmonella, and C. Botulisus) & beneficial microbes (Lactobacilus, and Saccharomyces), and the lifecycles and microscopic processes of succession which take place within our foods. Once a theoretical foundation was laid, a practical class was held to demonstrate food safety procedures, proper bottling technique, and how to initiate a lactobaccilic ferment.

Tomato chutney was made with tomatoes, onions, and salt, then bottled in sterilized jars collected & re-used from the course kitchen. A lactobaccilic ferment was initiated using a basic sauerkraut recipie of salt, water, and cabbage (the same basic process is used to make kimchee, pickles, tsukemono, and many other traditional foods from many cultures). The sauerkraut was taken home by a student to ferment over the next few weeks, to bring back and share with her classmates when complete.

These simple techniques could be used to extend the season's harvest through the cold winter months, boost nutrition (through lactobaccilic ferment), and create value-added food products which can be packaged and sold to local markets (niche markets could be created based on a family's secret recipie). If a family was able to produce sufficient surplus vegetable produce, and effectively preserve them to last the winters, they could feasibly meet all of their dietary needs by trading their food products for their meat & dairy product needs.

As the Mongol-Kazakhs of Bayan Ulgii develop their own new & unique recipies for preparing & preserving their vegetable crops, adapting to changing climatic & cultural conditions, we will be witnessing the evolution of an ancient food culture before our very eyes:

See the full gallery on Posterous

Photos: Masterchef Janibek prepares (and shows off) a bottled tomato chutney.

Lessons learned from Investment bankers and Brazillian billionaires (Day 23)

2011-04-04T05:15:00.001-10:00

Photo: (L to R) - Tilyeubek Ye (ADRA-Mongolia), Matthew Lynch (The Asia-Pacific Center for Regenerative Design), and Dorgsurren 'Doc' Khoo (ADRA-Mongolia), at sunrise on the Barrens of Bayan Ulgii.

One of the first lessons I opened up our class on Regenerative Business was this: Never trust an Investment Banker.

I may have to retract that statement and make an exception; good Investment Bankers, ones with functional consciences even, do exist (and, I might add, could be worth their weight in gold).

Thanks to my beautiful new Kazakh fox hat (a gift from the graduating class of Bayan Ulgii's inaugural Permaculture Design Training course), and a strange twist of fate, I find myself sitting next to half of Mongolia's Mexican population on the plane to Beijing, a casually dressed, elegant young man by the name of Oscar Mendoza, who also happens to be the COO of Mongolia's first boutique investment bank: Frontier Securities (Frontier assisted with the first IPO of a Monoglian-owned mining company, possibly creating Monoglia's first member of the Forbes 400 List and paving the way for other Mongolian companies to follow suit).

Apparently, there's no better icebreaker than a big fluffy hat which looks like an animal has wrapped itself around your head, because Oscar is impressed with the spectacle of my attempts to stuff the oversized furball into the overhead compartment above his seat, and we strike up a very interesting, and diverse conversation ranging from mining, agriculture, NBA All-Star weekend, the foreign investment climate in Mongolia, our respective homelands, Robert Kiyosaki, our current projects, Bank of -Evil- America, former Bank of America employees we know who are now involved in charitable work to atone for their time spent working for Bank of America, sustainable economic development, the amazing potential of the human mind, tsu-te-tse, and oh yes (I told you it was a diverse conversation): Regenerative Business.

Photo: Oscar Mendoza, half the current Mexican population of Mongolia and Co-COO of Frontier Securities.

I'll spare you the details of our rather schizophrenic conversation (which I can assure you, made perfect sense to the both of us, and was highly entertaining, even if only to ourselves), and share a quick story that Oscar told me about one of his billionaire acquaintances:

Our conversation stumbled onto the topic of Robert Kiyosaki's definition of an asset: something which feeds you. Oscar Mendoza, (who must be at least somewhat financially savvy to have landed a job which requires him to work on deals containing so many zeroes the numbers sound nonsensical, almost Suess-ical), Co-COO of Mongolia's first and finest boutique(i) Investment Banking firm, commented: By the way I agree with Kiyosaki, even though every bank will probably tell you otherwise.

He went on to tell me about his billionaire acquaintance, a very wealthy and ambitious, self-made Brazillian man who runs one of the world's largest Oil and Natural Gas companies (OGX). This man makes no secret of his desire to become the world's wealthiest man, and in the course of his dealings one evening, Oscar took it upon himself to suggest to gentleman that it might be quite a task to knock of the Mexican gentleman who sits above him on the Forbes 400, a billionaire who made his fortune in Telecom - he would be pretty difficult to knock off because his business model basically requires him to do little more than sit back and collect his revenues, now that the money has already been spent on building the infrastructure which runs everything.

In comparison, the Oil Business requires huge amounts of money to research & discover a viable oil field, then even more money to develop & tap the field to create productive wells, and more money to extract, refine & deliver the final products.

The Brazillian billionaire smiled, leaned in a little closer and said I'll tell you my little secret:

When I want something to happen, every night before I go to bed, I spend 30 minutes in my thinking room, where I think in detail about exactly how everything will look when it's done. They said I couldn't build the largest shipping port in Brazil; but I did. They think I'm superstitious and crazy, and can't believe that it could possibly be so simple. They say I can't be the richest man in the world; we'll see. But I tell you this: my simple little secret, it works.

So there you go. Maybe it really is that simple: Think, and grow rich.

To think is to create.

Thoughts are things.

Mind over matter.

We get what we focus on.

However you want to phrase it; think I'll give it a try. ...I'll let you know how it works out.

But McBean was quite wrong. I’m quite happy to say.
That the Sneetches got really quite smart on that day.
The day they decided that Sneetches are Sneetches.
And no kind of Sneetch is the best on the beaches.
That day, all the Sneetches forgot about stars and whether
They had one, or not, upon thars.
- From Dr Suess' 'The Sneetches' -

Oh, and in case you were wondering... the man he was telling me about, the Brazillian billionaire?

His name is Eike Batista.

Look him up - maybe you can even try out his little secret for yourself.

__________________________________________

(i) Unlike the big boys (Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merril Lynch and the like), employees of most boutique investment banking firms live and work in the communities they serve, and therefore have an additional layer of accountability which simply isn't present with the big boys; when you live and work in a community, relationships are at stake, and you are physically present to deal the consequences of your actions, for better or worse, face-to-face.

Mongolian Permaculture: What's next? (Day 22)

2011-03-27T04:47:00.001-10:00

Theme song of the day: 'Just Breathe' by Eddie Vedder. His lyrics just couldn't say this any better.

Photo: graduating class of Dec 2009 PDC at SCPI

It's been about 15 months since I stumbled across permaculture at Rick and Naomi Coleman's Permaculture Design Course at the Southern Cross Permaculture Institute in Leongatha (Victoria, Australia).

I had run out of money, moved back home with my parents in Melbourne, and, in search of what was next for me in the adventure that is my life, I had applied for a position studying Landscape Architecture at RMIT University in Melbourne. There was no way of knowing on day one of my PDC that in just over a year, I would have been to Mongolia twice, covering an area from the Gobi Desert in the south to Zavkhan province in the northwest, to the Kazakh stronghold of Bayan Ulgii in the far west; and working on projects making a positive contribution to Mongolian communities all along the way... life is strange, and unpredictable, and beautiful.

Photo: Bek 'The Mongolian Maniac' wrestles with Dave 'The Ghost' Gibb at Wilson's Prom during our PDC rest day.

The new humble Monoglian friend I made on that course turned out to be the Food Security Director of an international NGO, and the small pact we made over the campfire one evening (to visit each other's homelands) is growing into an international collaboration of knowledge & resources that could help vastly different cultures connect, and learn from each other.

It's Bek's turn to visit my homeland since I am 2-0 in the visit tally right now, but first he has his work cut out for him with establishing a strong foundational year for the SEAL Project, and the other permaculture-based projects he is implementing throughout Mongolia (permaculture has been integrated into all of ADRA-Mongolia's Food Security initiatives).

600 integrated root cellars, and 600 passive solar greenhouses equipped with 600 drip-irrigation systems will be built for carefully selected beneficiaries throughout Bayan Ulgii province in the next year, as part of a 4-year plan to strengthen local food security and stimulate the local economy (with microenterprises and Self-Help microfinance groups) by seeding the community with these permaculture demonstration sites and future permaculture teachers.

Photo: 'Bolhadt', Project beneficiary living in Sagsay soum. He is married, has 2 young children, has an existing root cellar installed under his house, is already farming his own worms, and has some experience growing potatoes and turnips.

Beneficiaries are screened not for their level of needs (this would be applicable to an 'aid' or 'relief' effort), but rather for their character, motivation, and potential to become future community leaders once equipped with the tools, knowledge, and opportunity to create positive, regenerative change in their own lives. Checks and balances (such as monitoring gender-ratios and potential conflicts-of-interest) are designed into the selection process to maximize the project's potential for success.

Like all projects and organizations, the quality of results created is entirely dependent upon the quality and character of the people driving it, and based on my experience of the eleven ADRA staff devoted to this project, and the leadership & vision of Bek, Doc, and Michelle Abel (Programs Director) from ADRA-Mongolia's head offices in UB, integrity levels are high and the project is off to a very good start.

One heartfelt conversation I had with project staff in the closing days of the course revolved around my personal experience of how many friends came forward to support me emotionally, practically, and even financially while I watched the small fortune I made during my twenties be taken away; when the money was gone, all that was left was the people I had touched - and I was humbled to find out how many that is, and how rich I truly am.

The SEAL Project staff have a similar opportunity, in that the work they are being paid to do over the next four years will touch many lives and forge many relationships that would be challenging to create outside of this context; if project staff focus on taking care of their people the best way they know how, than each one of them will be richer than they can imagine by the time the project ends - and we are talking about true wealth: the wealth of rich and supportive relationships, not the transient & deceptive wealth of money.

Photo: Bastama School Gardens project.

Dr. Beket's Bastama School Gardens project has the potential to impact an additional 500 students and families, while Guliya's large-scale fruit & vegetable production plot could also impact countless more. In this way, we plant the seeds of permaculture design with 13 students, and watch it grow to help over 1,100 families move towards a sustainable & regenerative future.

As for me? Well, I couldn't have done any of this work if not for the foundation laid by the many permaculturists who have gone before me, especially the work done by Rick Coleman and Kat Lavers during the 2010 Mongolian Permaculture project; had it not been for that experience and learning curve, I would not have a strong enough baseline of knowledge & experience to be effective here, and in fact it would have been irresponsible to send me in lieu of a more experienced instructor.

Photo: Rick and Kat, Mongolian Permaculture 2010

I was able to be effective in Mongolian conditions, and adapt the lessons I learned last year to Mongol-Kazakh culture, only because of the time, money and effort dedicated towards skilling up, and learning from others who were so willing to share with & teach me. Now I have a stronger baseline to operate from when working in Sustainable Aid and Overseas Development, but there are knowledge & experience gaps (especially in creating and cultivating my own productive & functional crop systems) that I need to fill.

Bill Mollison said it best in the Global Gardener series:

'Once you've set up your home, so that you can leave it for 2 or 3 months and it just gets better, so that you are free to travel, then you can go and teach other people.'

- Bill Mollison -

So that's what is next for me: return to Hawaii, marry the woman I love, put some roots down, and start growing some veggies.

Come visit if you are in the area.

Photo: Wind & Light ride in Hawaii.

Photo: HOME.

Eaglehunters of Bayan Ulgii (Day 15 )

2011-03-24T09:02:00.002-10:00

The famed Kazakh Eaglehunters of Bayan Ulgii, proudly bought to you by Back-To-Bek-Travel - for all your Bayan Ulgii Adventure Travel needs.
All photos are Copyright of Jan Schultz 2010, and appear courtesy of Backtobektravel.com with permission from Aynabek Khavduali.

Photo: Herder on the steppe with Altai Mountains in the distance.

Photo: Hooded hunter.

Photo: Hunter & hunter.

Photo: They start 'em young.

Photo: Not-as-young Eaglehunter.

Photo: Hunting grounds.

Photo: In action.

Photo: The hunt.

Photo: The drop.

Photo: Closing in..

Photo: Got 'em.

Photo: Golden eagle and ovod.

Photo: All in a day's work.

Permaculture and Passive solar greenhouses in Ulaanbaatar (Day 21)

2011-03-23T10:27:00.001-10:00

Note: All photos on this post are Copyright Pierre Thiriet 2010 and appear with permission of Pierre Thiriet.

Met with Anne Randall today, Agronomist/Technical Advisor at the French NGO Group for the Environment, Renewable Energy and Solidarity (GERES - pronounced 'jheh-rehz', not 'Gee-reez' - it's French after all!) to compare notes and share information between projects.

It's one of the simplest, most important things an NGO can do - share information with other NGOs working in the same area - so that learning curves can be accelerated (mistakes don't have to be made twice if shared), and projects can grow to flourish and complement each other. Based upon our meeting today and the information shared from both sides, the potential for this to occur between the GERES and ADRA projects is significant.

Photo: GERES Research & Development Center in Ulaanbaatar.

GERES are the good folks that brought us the Passive Solar Greenhouse design in Ladakh which have achieved year-round vegetable production down to minus 25C at approximately 3,000 meters above sea level (and which we modeled during the Permaculture Design Training for the classes on passive solar greenhouse design).

Anne picked up on theGreenBackpack doing further research for her current project, which is to develop & implement a passive solar greenhouse design which can achieve year-round production in Mongolian conditions (illustrating, by the way, another permaculture principle: Multifunction, in which this daily log also functions as an informational resource, a networking tool, and a historical record for future volunteers and aid/development workers to build upon in Mongolia).

Since operating in Mongolian conditions from only August of last year, GERES has already achieved a 3-seasons greenhouse design, using a double-layered, concrete block / brick clad walls insulated with polystyrene (floor must be insulated too), single-sheet polyurethane plastic sheeting (imported from Korea, expected 2-year lifespan), a reflective 'solar blanket' type insulative layer for nighttime, and specially calculated steep-angled 'glass' (plastic) wall to maximize solar gain for Mongolia's latitude.

Photo: GERES 3-Season Greenhouse in Ulaanbaatar.

We shared and discussed challenges, mistakes, and lessons learned about our respective projects, and spent the next two hours brainstorming possible solutions for achieving year-round production within the greenhouse in Monoglian conditions. Here's a quick list of some of the solutions we came up with:

Build coldframes within greenhouses to create an even warmer microclimate within the coldframe.
Use repurposed waste plastic bottles as inexpensive, readily available and durable cloches within the greenhouse to protect seedlings.
Explore plastic bottle wall construction options for 'glass' wall to create 'double-glazing' effect with air tapped inside bottles.
Re-using plastic bottles could help keep plastic out of waste stream (and prevent them from being burnt as winter fuel).
Improved ger stove design will decrease pressure on fuel requirements and the family budget.
Build root cellar under ger/house to maximize heating/cooling efficiency and security (root cellar must be dug deep enough to perform effectively).
Household heating system could potentially be extended to heat root cellar and/or greenhouse.
Establish windbreak/suntrap behind north wall using fast-growing Populus laurifolia (Laurel-leafed poplar) + Caragana (Siberian peashrub) species (keeping harsh Mongolian winds off greenhouse could help increase heat retention).
Organic matter dropped from living windbreak can then be used to build soils within the greenhouse and hasha.
Organic matter dropped from living windbreak can be used as cover material for pit latrines, for potential future use as 'humanure' (not currently culturally appropriate) .
Build hot compost heaps (using dungs (such as chicken or goat) which are not used for fuel) inside the greenhouse to add heat biologically and relieve potential conflicts on precious 'fuel'-dungs.
Chickens could be a valuable addition to a small-scale-intensive, passive solar greenhouse system, conditioning and building soil during winter season in a 3 or 4-season greenhouse, providing nutritionally and financially valuable eggs from March - October, plus meat and/or more chickens when needed.
Drip-irrigation systems maximize water efficiency and increase thermal mass within greenhouse.
Human urine from households can be diluted into drip-irrigation system to be used as a free and safe liquid fertilizer (provided all members of household are healthy).
Raised beds within greenhouse make management and harvesting easier; line paths with dark rocks to increase thermal mass.
Use planting guilds to maximize production from small-scale-intensively farmed space.
Plant potatoes in stacks to maximize production and create more space for other crops.
Cucumbers, squash, and other climbing/rambling crops can be trained up walls or across roofs to maximize growing space for other crops.
Alfalpha, oats, or a native 'green manure' species (such as vetch) can be planted around hasha perimeter to help build soils within hasha walls (and provide backup animal fodder).
Local varieties of seabuckthorn and currants can be planted within windbreak of hasha walls to boost family nutrition.
Research cold-climate species native to comparable climates to maximize productivity (eg Lonicera caerulea edulis, or Blue honeysuckle is a highly nutritious, climbing berry native to Siberia that will tolerate minus 40C and produce down to minus 7C).
Low-grade animal furs not suitable for commercial use may be a locally and readily available insulative material for floor that will break down and build soil over time.
Coal ash may be a locally and readily available insulative material that could be substituted for polystyrene within the walls, though further research into how safe this material is must be conducted before being implemented.

Ideas were flying so fast & furious that I am sure there are a few things I've missed; the point is that when like minds collaborate towards a common goal,

1 + 1 can = 3.

In other words:

None of us
Is as smart
As ALL of us.

Best wishes to Anne and the rest of the team at GERES-Mongolia, we hope to continue to support and collaborate with them towards achieving their project goal of building 180 passive solar greenhouse for family beneficiaries throughout Mongolia over the next two years.

A bientôt!

Photo: Inside GERES' research greenhouse.

List of useful web resources from Anne Randall (merci beaucoup!) to help you with your passive solar greenhouse design:

*Sunchart: University of Oregon, Sunchart Program - http://solardat.uoregon.edu/SunChartProgram.html
*To find easily the longitude and latitude of a point: http://itouchmap.com/latlong.html
*To find the declination of a location: http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/geomagmodels/Declination.jsp
*Good source of general info on solar greenhouses: http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/solar-gh.html

Altaitsudz soum: Large-scale fruit & vegetable production plot (Day 20)

2011-03-19T07:13:00.001-10:00

Altaitsudz means 'Golden' ('altai') 'Cup' ('tsudz'), and as we descend from the rocky grey hillsides into the basin below, the reason for its name becomes obvious.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Photo: Entering Altaitsudz foodbowl.

Around 60km away from, and 300m below Ulgii City's average elevation (1,600m above sea level), it is considerably warmer here during the summer (so much so that mosquitoes can be a problem), providing better growing conditions (provided you can withstand the mosquito hordes), and as such is a veggie food bowl for the province ('agricultural' usually means livestock production in Mongolia).

The riverflats are thick with skeletal white trees (Populus laurifolia (Laurel-leafed Poplar), and varieties of Salix (Willow)), and the gently sloping river plains around are carpeted with golden winter grasses, and dotted with hardy red Caragana shrubs(i). Bactrian camels, horse, and cattle browse the autumn-coloured palette nonchalantly, and closer to the soum, irrigation channels criss-cross the landscape around growing plots.

Our mission today: to visit the large-scale vegetable growing plot owned by retired Gold-Medalist-Mongol-Kazakh boxing star Beket (who must be somehow related to Dr. Beket, though I was unable to find out how), who is a friend of Guliya (our student from World Vision).

The plot is approximately 5,000 square meters, and is nestled against the edge of a basin about 45 minutes' drive from Altaitsudz soum (which, in turn, is about an hour-and-a-half from Ulgii City) - seemingly in the middle of nowhere (I might have mentioned that distance is relative to Monoglians).

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Photos: The plot.

The tightly wound slate-post-and-wire fence (slate posts! ...I winced as I remembered how expensive the slate floors in my old bathroom was... this slate was likely harvested from the surrounding hills, where it flakes off in large slabs) surrounding the plot announces the abundance of the owner's resources, which we confirm when we are shown to two artesian wells (dug 18 meters down to reach the water table), a greenhouse built upon concrete foundations, and later, a dam built 5 km away to divert a small river 2.5 km closer to the plot (made from old car frames, rubble, and sandbags).

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Photos: Very expensive water harvesting.

250 seabuckthorn trees have been planted along the northwestern section, the innermost of which bore their first fruit last season. A small experimental plot of oats and alfalpha sit next to the seabuckthorn plantation, with carrot and melon plots above that.

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Photos: Seabuckthorn orchard.

'What', he asks, 'does the guy from Australia suggest we do to improve?'

Photo: Me and the (very) Big Guy

It takes a few moments to thaw my brain enough to formulate an answer, and I rub my nose with my frozen fingers to see if it is still on my face (it went numb shortly after arriving). Well, I chatter, we might start by getting some of this wind off your crops. It might help.

If distance is relative in Mongolia, than 'wind-chill-factor' is something locals notice only when a gale-force blizzard kicks up: 'Bit windy out today, tzaaaa...!?'

We noticed this last year in The Gobi, when we -asked- howled through the wind 'DO YOU FIND THE WIND TO BE A PROBLEM?', to be met with indifferent shrugs through the stinging sandblast we were copping. Like fish who do not realize they are in the water (until taken out of it), it so often is with locals in their enviornment (wherever in the world you may be); because they live in these conditions every day, the obvious can go overlooked.

And this, perhaps, is where an outsider's perspective can add value.

But only if his brain thaws out in time.

Photo: (L to R: Bek, Beket, Dr Beket, Doc, and Matt.)

_________________________
(i) a hardy, nitrogen-fixing pioneer species occurring throughout the region in various incarnations, from ground cover to large hedging tree-shrub.

Inaugural Permaculture Design Training Class of Bayan Ulgii (Day 19)

2011-03-17T23:47:00.001-10:00

Congratulations to the graduating class of Bayan Ulgii's Inaugural Permaculture Design Training Course! Special thanks to major sponsors The Canadian Foodgrains Bank and ADRA-Canada for making this project possible:

Photo: Bayan Ulgii Permaculture Design Training class photo (L to R (seated): Tilyeubek, Guliya, Dr Beket, Mereut, Makhabbat. (standing): Janargul, Janat, Doc, Ardakh, Bek, Matt, Janibek, Altangerrel, Bakhitgul.)

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Slideshow: Students accept their certificates and share 'What's next' for each of them.

Photo: ADRA-Mongolia's SEAL Project staff are possibly the best-dressed permaculturists anywhere...