Roberto pokachinni

Most of the problems around toxicity could be addressed if the char was not used as agricultural biochar, but used for carbon and resource offset.  What I mean is that if all wood substances, including stuff that had toxic glues on it, were charred and then the resulting char was used to replace sand in concrete, there would be multiple wins:  less waste in the landfill, less finite resource extraction and processing, and less carbon loss over time.  Sure it would be a bit of a toxic air quality burn potentially, but the wins could be well worth the small loss there, especially as it is a short-term part of the equation, and much of it could probably be scrubbed out.  The char processor could also heat water or do other functions such as charge batteries for power tools in the disaster zone.

I do have hopes that I can replicate some of these systems on my own property.  Many of the plants that are present in the plots that were studied are also native to this region, and some of them grow on my property already.  I am hopeful, also to be a part of an indigenous food resurgence in a local valley that I am trying to help protect.  More about that will no doubt be shared if it transpires.  

That is awesome!

Thanks for your encouragement.

Please update us

I will update this thread if I find any additional information or if something relevant comes up in my networking.

Hi all.

I've been pretty busy as of late but have been on the computer a bunch in the last week trying to do some networking to protect a local old-growth valley in my area, The Raush , the largest unprotected watershed North of the Stein Valley in the greater Fraser River watershed.  

One thing that came to me recently through my networking was this incredible interactive map put together by Conservation North, a small local volunteer-run ecosystem advocacy group out of Prince George.

The map takes a bit to load as you zoom in and zoom out, so be patient, and I've even had the thing crash on me a few times with apologies from Firefox, but still, if you are from jB.C. and are interested to see the extent of industrial exploitation on this province's forests (And You Might Be Shocked to See It-I was, and I thought I had a pretty good idea-so be warned), then this is a pretty good tool.  And I just wanted to say that this was an amazing thing for this group to pull off on their spare time with some grant money and donations.

At any rate here it is: SEEING RED MAP

I've heard it said that the sort of environment that I live in does not support the concept of food forests.  Certainly, a vegan diet would have been unlikely in pre-colonial times at latitude 53, but what if I was to tell you that indigenous people at latitude 54 in my hometown area of Terrace, B.C. not only had food forests near their village sites but that some of these places have remained resilient self-replicating systems after a century of abandonment?  Unheard of, you say?  After all, the forest would simply eat up any garden space in no time and the Indigenous peoples of this region were not horticulturalists but were hunter-gatherers, relying extensively on Salmon runs and wild berry patches.  Sure they tended the berry patches and occasionally rejuvenated them with selective burning, but practice horticulture?  Yes; while it is true that hunting and gathering based on salmon and berries were the mainstay staple food resources, what is also true is the recent discovery and study of certain sites that not only show that horticulture was being practiced, but that such work was highly skilled, increasing harvest yields and creating guilds not found in nature. Here is a quick article done for The Tyee  

The Brief from Simon Fraser University

The Study from SFU published in Ecology and Society

Hi Angelo,

If you are interested to come up to Canada for a change of scenery then consider coming and checking out my 40 acres against the Rockies and facing the Caribou's.  I'll be building a tiny house and starting on a shop space this year on my property (I might even finish the shop if I have enough help.  I have a ton of inherited tools that need space, but I don't yet have a forge and we have a lot of similar interests: wilderness living, stone age tech, survival instruction, indigenous culture, healing work.

My goal on the land is to have a large garden and orchard, a passive house, a place with a sauna heating a greenhouse with fire-heated hot tubs for herbal baths to sort of spa it up, with cold plunges into ponds outside the sauna.  This might be a bit of a money maker if it was done right.  The shop design will be simple but expandable, with a dirt floor to start with but with rebar coming out of the foundation pads of the posts to eventually tie into a full water heated floor, eventually, as funds accumulate.  I have 25 acres of trees with a lot of dead pine that I am trying to utilize before it rots or causes or burns in a forest fire.  I have a small sawmill (owned collectively with others) that could be used to create building materials, and a tractor with some useful pto attachments, there are both a good on-site 4/X4 truck and a good highway 4X4, and plenty of other tools and infrastructure ideas that could be utilized by others (yourself) for the purpose of establishing a solid base in a beautiful location.  

The problem right now is Covid has pretty much closed the border for casual travelers.  But if you have interest in coming up sometime, anytime really, and sharing skills and food and helping to build stuff, then feel free to fire me a message me.  I'm 51, but look at least a decade younger due to an active outdoor lifestyle I figure.  

Good luck in your search

I received this from the local small environmental group that I'm a part of, The Fraser Headwaters Alliance, which is mentioned in This Article from The Narwhal, through Roy Howard, the founding father of the organization being interviewed.   Several local watersheds. including the one which is directly behind the mountains in my front yard view, are also mentioned.  Included in the article is the interactive map created by some folks in Prince George, the closest large center to my location.

A real eye-opening and little known look into the reality of what we have lost and what little there is to try to protect for the future.  Sad.  I do have some hope that we can get some policy in place to protect these last few remaining stands.  

Jocelyn actually posted about this 4 years ago in a lichen thread:  here's the link to her post: Jocelyn permie post Here's the article in the Atlantic that she linked to in her post:   https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/07/how-a-guy-from-a-montana-trailer-park-upturned-150-years-of-biology/491702/

Well, folks, it's taken me a while to jump back into permies as I have been super full of a bunch of other things, but when I read this exciting article I thought I really need to share it.   Even though this is a 2016 article I had never heard of it, and I really love lichens so this is pretty cool to me in a super lichen nerdy kind of way!   Interestingly for me, also, the findings were spurred on by the preliminary work of the somewhat local to me, world-renowned, master lichenologist Trevor Goward and were discovered by one of his proteges who is local to the Permies base in Montana.  

So the gist of the article is that rather than just having a fungal and algal symbiosis, as science had previously determined and which formed the definition of this large group of ancient species, it was recently discovered by Toby Spribille and John McCutcheon of the University of Montana that variation from the typical duo is due to the additional involvement forming a trinity by a type of yeast (hence the three sisters-which I shamelessly threw into the title for the sake of permies click bate! --Ha! ).  This explained Goward's work that showed two types of lichen that had different DNA genetic expressions (one poisonous and the other edible), despite having the same genetic DNA structure between the Fungi and Algal partners.  The first link will be the article done online with CBC, and the second to the study published in Science.  Peace, Wild thangs, and the continuous unfolding and expansion of understanding ~ Roberto.

CBC Article

Study published in SCIENCE

With the election of a new majority government, and yet to be announced Cabinet ministers, there is a further need to urge the staff of the Ministry of Forests to set the stage for our new minister to implement the recommendations of the Old Growth Review Panel.

The following is a clip from the letter-writing tool that Stand.earth has used in this new campaign.  Please, if you have interest in the subject of this thread, I urge you to create a letter, using these talking points as inspiration, and then insert it into their tool to send it as an email to ministry staff.  ...and following that is the link to the stand.earth email tool.

KEY POINTS FOR YOUR LETTER:

   Less than 1% of forests in B.C. have large, old growth trees still standing
   Most of these old growth forests in B.C. are still open to logging
   The new majority government campaigned on an election promise to implement all 14 of the old growth review panel recommendations, which you received in April
   The most urgent recommendation was to ban the logging of at-risk old growth forests within 6 months
   50,000+ people have signed a petition to end logging in at-risk old growth forests across B.C.
   While we are waiting for cabinet to be announced, Ministry staff should prepare a detailed plan for the next Minister of Forests to take necessary action
   Your Ministry already has the necessary information to recommend key areas for immediate logging deferrals
   The government’s announcement of logging deferrals for 350,000 hectares of land in September only included 3,800 hectares of at-risk old growth forests: these types of misleading announcements erode public trust in your work
   You must ensure that the Ministry is equipped to work with, and support, Indigenous Nations on long-term protection plans
   Will you please respond with confirmation that you have received this email and advise the new Minister of Forests accordingly?

[size=18]SEND YOUR EMAIL HERE[/size]

I've even tried those sites where you go through a multi-page personality test to try and match people who are compatible, but they just don't have a category for "I'm a borderline-autistic plant-obsessed science-geek and a Christian, who identifies as a wood elf."

 I can relate to being slightly similarly uncategorizable through such mechanisms.  I sympathize.  

Back to the subject of this thread:

Minds are not like other minds.  They evolve from singular origins and are affected by individual experiences.  

"Like-minded" has to mean that the person thinks (or agrees with the thinking) along the same lines as what is detailed in your own profile.  This does not mean that they think in all ways, always like you, but that they share your thinking about how you expressed your paradigm, or how you view the external paradigm as expressed in your profile.  

Anything that expects something beyond that way of understanding the phrase has to be laziness, in my way of thinking.

The nature of this thread's subject is the reason why my own dating profile (when I spend enough energy to care about such things)  has always been an essay.  ...but also why I get people both complimenting me on the details and extensive nature of it and also on my lack of hits from like-minded people, as there are so few anarchist, gnostic, yogic, permaculturalist bushfreak communitarians out there.