Cascadia Seed Guild

This is part of the Watershed map of the Cascadia Bioregion in the Pacific Northwest of the North American continent, what we are looking at on this are rivers, the full map can be purchased here.

Recently, there was a tour through the Cascadia Bioregion by the #RegenerateCascadia tour featuring Joe Brewer, this lasted for 30 days. Most of the recordings of events for this tour can be found here.

This is Joe Brewer during his final presentation for now.

The Tour visited, in order. The Columbia River Gorge; Eugene/Dexter; Portland; Olympia; Vashon; Seattle; Whidbey Island; Port Townsend; Victoria/Vancouver Island; Gabriola Island; Bellingham/Whatcom; Skagit and San Juan Islands.

It became evident during the tour that creating the Cascadia Seed Guild made good sense. There are already several seed-saving-exchange initiatives in this region, and we shall list some of these in the next section.

Existing Seed-Saving-Exchange Initiatives

Salish Seed Guild: “We advance our mission through a regional Salish Sea network of seed-saving gardeners – farmers & advocates, through organizing & attending regional seed swaps supporting open exchange of seeds, through workshops and educational demonstrations at public events, and by researching, building and acquiring appropriate-scale seed processing equipment and storage facilities.”

Rhythm Seed Farm: “All of our seeds are grown organically, cleaned, and packed by hand at our urban farm in Portland, OR. Our varieties are selected for their performance in urban micro-farm environments in the greater Portland area. For every pack we sell, we donate another. Check out our partners or our story to learn more.

Incredible Edible Eugene: Most food is eaten in towns and cities (urban environments) yet most food is grown outside towns and cities, sometimes thousands of miles away. Our mission statement is “To create/grow local, nutritionally dense food and food products to reduce fossil fuel use in the food system; overall.”

IEProjects – Expanding Practices – Widely

IEProjects has grown from our work with #permaculture in the South Willamette Valley in Oregon.

At the height of the Industrial Revolution in the UK, cotton weaving in the Northern areas of the UK was very prevalent. What many did not realize is that much of that cotton was coming from slave labour in the United States on plantations. Once British Workers became aware of this they decided to protest and in some ways, this and the US Civil War detrimentally impacted cotton weaving in England’s Northwest Counties and Towns. Todmorden in Northern England was one such town.

As the “benefits” of the Industrial revolution began to fade, the benefits being the enrichment of a relatively few; many of the towns began to experience a decrease in jobs and detrimental impacts on their economies.

As a result, a group of Todmorden town residents came together in 2007 to discuss, create and grow Incredible Edible Todmorden. “Incredible Edible Todmorden is a food-growing scheme that started in 2007 in Todmorden, West Yorkshire, UK. The project aims to bring people together through actions around local food and community allotments, helping to change behaviour towards the environment and build a kinder and more resilient world.”

This actually spawned a worldwide movement which then inspired us first to create Incredible Edible Eugene. During its evolution we carried out many practical projects which are detailed, individually, in this blog. We now want to offer the complete Incredible Edible system, we were inspired to create, as an open-source project which anyone or any group can recreate. Anyone can follow our full document, which is located here.

For those, who do not possess the needed in-house technical capabilities, we are working on a tariff which will involve as much barter and trading as possible, we will share details on this, soon.

Wonderland Farms – Farmstand Project

We were fortunate enough to be around at the very beginning and emergence of Wonderland Farm, 5 years ago in 2018, it is located right next to Fern Ridge Reservoir in Eugene, OR. After many years as a horse farm, the ground was fairly barren and compacted; things are very different now.

This is how things look as of 2023, this is the view from the West side of the farmhouse where the main farm gardens are located. What we are seeing here is a fairly dense patch of Willow, planted by Tyler, which is a truly wonderful to grow, having so many beneficial uses, including medicinal ones.

It is in these farm gardens, that Alexandra (Tyler’s partner) will create the Farmstand growing project. The four Pullets (recently added) will not only provide eggs but also fertilizer for the farm.

The very beginning and site of the new gardens, pretty exciting really.

Update August 23, 2023

These are current photographs of the food growing’s in the bare soils pictured above; please bear in mind that this is in just over 3 months of growing from bare soils!

Corn and peas growing in the foreground.

Cantaloupe and more corn here.

Watermelons, some of which are pretty rare.

Corn and Spaghetti Squash.

PermaDAO

The latest project in our ongoing evolution of #Permaculture; permadao. The last three letters of permadao are D A O. Here is a definition of a DAO. “A decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), sometimes called a decentralized autonomous corporation (DAC), is an organization constructed by rules encoded as a computer program that is often transparent, controlled by the organization’s members and not influenced by a central government.”

For years now, I have believed that #Permaculture would benefit from a global and impartial organization of some kind. As our World becomes ever more fractionalized via “Fractional Reserve Banking” and its destructive consequences, enriching a few whilst impoverishing so many. There is a need for viable alternatives and returning to a gold-standard is not one, I am not devaluing gold, however for ongoing value exchange person to person on a regular basis, it is impractical and can be easily stolen.

#Permaculture is in every country on Earth, it is benign and seeks to at least preserve lands from further destruction and at best to improve them; to regenerate them. However, local currencies and rules can undermine these aims, for instance, where a national government wants to exploit natural resources for profit at the expense of the environment. By impeding the flow of currencies to individuals or organizations governments can wield immense power over those individuals or organizations. We saw this in full evidence via what the Canadian government and GoFundMe did to protesting truck drivers. It matters not which side you are on, the main point is that any funds you have can be seized or frozen. #Permaculture often seems like a threat to those who wield unscrupulous power, yet in truth #Permaculture holds the key to building a better world for all. It is important that we became as self-sufficient as we can and develop benign independence and interdependence.

These are early days for PermaDAO and if you have an interest to join us, please do. We already have our own internal currency for value exchange and there are details on the underlying technology stack, here.

Trevor’s Urban Permaculture – Eugene OR

Here are some photographs from our February 19, 2023 Meet-Up where we planted Willow and created 3 Hugelkulture Raised

Beds.

Three Sisters 2023

We actually are growing Three Sisters (beans-corn-squash) in three locations this year; Trevor’s Farm is one such location. Here are a few photographs from August 2023.

Three of many squashes growing here; these are Winter squash, so called because stored correctly they will last through Winter and into Spring. In addition, each squash will typically yield 100 to 150 seeds making squash an incredible, ongoing food resource.

Katy’s Eugene Urban Permaculture Centre

Hugelkulture as a Three Sisters mound.

The “Three Sisters” is in essence a form of companion-planting evolved on the American continent by indigenous tribes. Planting beans, corn and squash in mounds so that when they grow, the beans can climb up the corn (as a support) and the large squash leaves shade the soils and provide cover.

Early-on, here we utilized an existing cattle panel and we can see beans and squash emerging from seeds.

All plants came from seeds hand-planted into the ground and in fact, the beans and corn are very rare indigenous seeds which we are growing-out to return seeds and preserve the line. We have the beans growing in two locations.

A sideways view as the corn first emerges.

Everybody is looking happy 🙂 in 2022 (see left and below 🙂 🙂

Here we can still see the hugelkulture mound. We used the soil on-hand and added compost which again was on-site.

The status on August 20, 2022 we are seeing “fruit” on the Beans, Corn and Squash.

Three Sisters 2023, very happy beans 🙂

Parker Learning Gardens, Eugene OR.

Let (PLG) describe their offering and goals in their own words…”Our Demonstration Gardens are designed to support educational efforts by 1) involving audiences directly in the planning and development of the gardens; 2) involving audiences directly in the gardens’ planting, maintenance, and harvest; and 3) using the gardens during workshops and classes to provide audiences with hands-on experience. We currently provide 12 themed Demonstration Gardens (1.25 acres in total) to facilitate 1) effective garden-based education; 2) opportunities for meaningful volunteer service; and 3) the development of partnerships. More information can be found here.

PLG Farm-stand

Incredible Edible Eugene is proud to partner with Parker Learning Gardens (PLG) on both seed initiatives and the growing and propagation of willow. This is their recently opened farm-stand which is open dawn-till-dusk offering various kinds of farm-produce.

Biochar Kiln

One of the trainings that PLG offers is the creation of biochar and incredibly beneficial material for so many things, including soil amendment. This a great article showing the many uses of biochar.

Incredible Edible Eugene

Incredible Edible Eugene

Of all things to forget in the projects we have worked on; we forgot about ourselves. Our overall mission can be summed up as “To build a network of “think globally, act locally” permaculture practitioners big enough to truly rival the nation’s current food supply gatekeepers with the goal of improving our overall food system.”

May 2022 – The Seed Collection

The image above shows our “seeding” seed bank/collection; there are 728 different varieties and well over 100,000 seeds total. We manage our grow-outs via our Permaledger system.

Log in guest, p-word !kL82xTug&

Oregon Willow Works, Eugene, OR

Harvested Willow Stored Ready For Garden Construction.

Our main thrust with Incredible Edible Eugene is to bring back food growing to urban areas using permaculture methods. This will necessitate the use of composters, supports, trellises, raised beds etc. Instead of using plastic constructs imported from China, etc, we are encouraging the use of natural materials, such as willow. We teamed up with Oregon Willow Works to help illustrate how versatile and benign willow is for gardens.

A Willow Raised Bed With Arches. This One Is Living Giving Us More Willow To Transplant.

Eugene Backyard Farmer – Eugene, OR

If ever a business name was descriptive; this is it. As someone said, not long ago; most food is eaten in towns and cities yet is mostly grown elsewhere. Eugene Backyard Farmer is virtually a one-stop-shop for all things Foodscaping; turning lawns-ornamentals into food-ornamentals.

Seed Exchange Action

Our current collaborations with Eugene Backyard Farmer revolves around seeds and willow-work.

Willow Made Composters.

These are digesters/composters, basically woven from Willow, grown locally; we are creating this update on June 10th, 2023. When these composters were created we were still facing challenges growing our own Willow and sourcing it, generally and we want to acknowledge the unrelenting efforts of Andrew B “Monty” Moore. Monty started the whole upsurge in interest in Willow here in the South Willamette Valley, in Oregon in the USA. In this year (2023) Monty spearheaded the planting of almost 12,000 Willows in and around Eugene which will form an incredible legacy for many future generations. As we face ongoing pressures from both Forest Fires and the sad loss of many Ash trees due to the Emerald Ash Borer Willow is a key species.

In May 2023 we started our permanent Seed Exchange in Eugene Oregon, at Eugene Backyard Farmer. This is a key part of our Incredible Edible systems, more news soon on this.