A little case for growing food in community (and doing with less money)

We all know wage-slavery is consuming the planet and as a result increasing amounts of land are being cleared and mined and militarised, and yet we continue on thinking someone else will fix the predicament.

Money materialises into plumes of aggregating waste, making life unbearable for many. Money must grow, it must keep taking. How much of your economy is dependent on money?

All we really need is a bicycle, access to land to grow food, simple shelter, loving community and the will to take responsibility for our actions. Is that really so difficult to achieve? 

Everything other than a clear-eyed relationship with food and energy resources, and the culture and care that comes from such activity, is excessive, fraudulent and destructive. Everything else is insane.

Accepting a life of neoliberal wage-slavery is accepting a life of permanent planetary war. The dots that join our lives to this scenario are few in number. Are we going to own this paradigm and enact change or keep pretending?

What will it take for you to become a regenerator of the flowering earth again, like our ancestors before us? What will it take for you to hear the songs of the earth again?

At what point will you say ENOUGH! I will not support this paradigm, and start living so more life can be lived after you?

Lessen your dependance on money and you will start reclaiming accountability from neoliberal hypertechnocivility and help grow again the flowering earth. It takes one to inspire another. There is no preaching to the converted. There is only action or inaction.

Fighting for the world's biospheres begins by changing our economy. In just seven years our household has decreased our dependancy on the monetary economy by 60%. Getting rid of our cars and growing our own food has been a big part of this.

Wishing you greater permapoesis into the new year. A very merry solstice to you.

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Reclaiming education as ecological knowledges

A number of us have been working on developing the fifth community food garden, the Daylesford Secondary College Food Forest, since June this year. Yesterday we signed an agreement with the school to begin work on it in 2013.

Drawing: Patrick Jones (click for bigger)

You can read more about the project here. 

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A Victorian country town says no to abusers

Much respect to this incredible community.

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After Blake

The story of Daylesford Community Food Gardeners first nine months demonstrating how a guerilla action at one garden developed into three community gardens throughout the town.

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We went to the garden of love

Community gardeners, poets and readers met at the new community garden Rea Lands Park today to share poems and food in the sunshine.

Some of the poems were musical.

Some political and intense.

And some a little difficult to swallow but were appreciated as part of this creative commons.

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Talking the local

My friend Fe grills me on my thoughts about food, relocalisation, democracy, the commons and community gardens.



A video by Fiona Porter, camera and editing by Anthony Petrucci, music by Souls on Board.

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Greenwash #20 in Trouble - Post Carbon Food Systems (authorised and unauthorised)

I concentrated this month's Greenwash article on one specific chapter found in the very brilliant Post Carbon Reader anthology. The chapter is called Growing Community Food Systems and is written by US artist-farmer Erika Allen. Click on the image below, then click again to read in high definition.

You can buy a copy from HRN, or read free chapters online.

In news closer to home, last weekend a group of about 40 locals were involved in taking over a disused council plot and did what we've been asking permission for over many years – develop a community garden. Whereas I see some relevance in working with local government to plan against ecological and energetic crises, I don't believe we should wait around for any level of government to drive behaviour change.

When the current CEO at our local council took up her position I made a time to meet with her and raise my chief concerns in the shire – public transport, privatised bottled water and community food gardens. She agreed with me on public transport (and to give credit, there has been a little work done in this area, although she herself drives solo transit from St Kilda to Daylesford for work everyday); and she was interested in the bottled water argument (although nothing more has been done to curb this polluting, exploitative industry very specific to our shire - read more here); however she totally dismissed the community garden issue with the rationale that people in this region have enough space in their own backyards to grow whatever food they wish. This meeting was three years ago.

But to be realistic, change generally comes from a 'hacker' (in the broadest, McKenzie Wark, sense) or activist class, who aim to inspire a wider, bottom-up, grassroots movement to take direct action. By contrast, the bureaucratic class renders itself static through its own red tape. Politicians play between the bureaucracy and the hackers.

In our case this latest action is involved with developing another chapter in our local community food system. The shire council can either get behind us, ignore it and hope it goes away, or become adversarial. We'll see. Here's the wee video I made to document the first stage of this unauthorised community food project.

This garden (beside the Daylesford Public Library) acts as a continuation of a range of community food systems that have been developing in the area for many years. Such systems include a permaculture garden next door (behind the library) and my own public artwork comprising of 19 fuji apples (in front of the library), which were both planted in 1999 and are well used and tended by the community and wild bird population alike.

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Fabricating a forest of food

We have been asked to participate in an ecologies show at the MCA in Sydney which will open later in the year, and have been steadily working towards our proposed food forest since last December. We are getting closer to finalising a site. You can read a first post for the project here.

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