Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Liz <liz@allslash.org>]

At 08:30 PM 1/10/2008, you wrote:

> We're also in an unincorporated area - less red tape. I confess we're
> looking for ways to network with more people who see the writing on the
> wall, and mostly coming up empty. We attend local events with some
> connection to gardening and such and try to strike up conversations, such
> as the thing at the Gourd Society.

I've been doing the same kind of thing, and finding a range of 
reactions from total agreement to total denial. But I'm most 
concerned about two things--banding together in my immediate area to 
help each other, both in terms of sharing and for defense, and also 
just to check up on each other. After a bad cold snap, will we know 
for sure that all the families have come through it, etc.  And to 
share not just goods, but knowledge and skills. There isn't much 
about working with fiber that I don't know, but I don't have much 
experience with animals, for example.

Most of the long established folk here do garden, though for many 
it's not much more than a couple of rows of tomatoes and beans, and I 
suspect most of the seeds are hybrids, helped along with generous 
amounts of synthetic fertilizer and chemical pest control. But the 
knowledge is there. And many of the Hispanic immigrant families keep 
chickens and grow tomatillos and peppers from seed they have saved. 
They may be the largest single group of people with self-sufficiency 
skills in the area, which may indeed be ironic when/if TSHTF and some 
of their most vocal enemies may have to learn from them.

Liz in SW VA
http://life-as-a-spectator-sport.com