The revolution will involve fermented cabbage
A conversation with Gavin Mounsey
Yes, it’s true. You are not hallucinating. Your favorite blog-series, “Edward asks his friends and acquaintances questions”, has returned.
Today’s interview is with Gavin Mounsey, curator of Recipes for Reciprocity. Gavin is a gardener, seed saver, food fermenter, stone mason, mushroom cultivator, forager, herbalist, survivalist, permaculture designer, author, and lifelong apprentice to nature.
Let’s begin!
Gavin, your blog “Recipes for Reciprocity” is a lovely oasis floating in the vast cesspool we call the Internet. But why do you insist on writing about the joys of making sauerkraut, instead of patiently explaining why we should unconditionally support our benevolent and caring governments? It seems to me that your preoccupation with fermented cabbage is covertly seditious.
Firstly, thank you very much for the kind words about my blog.
Maintaining my island oasis in the turbulent ocean of garbage social engineering Alphabet Corp algorithms , Statist AI troll bots, government sock puppets, fear propaganda, menticided pop culture addicts, Stockholm syndromed savior seekers and Pfizer commercials is not always easy, so I am glad that some people can find a little reprieve on its shores from time to time.
Regarding my seditious sauerkraut educational endeavours, I like to empower everyday people all over the planet to take back control of their health and their access to food and I find that low tech (nutrient dense) preserves (which include things like fermented cabbage) serves both those functions beautifully. That is why I spent a significant amount of time experimenting with fine tuning such techniques and broadening their potential via incorporating non-conventional ingredients and sharing my results.
Being able to take seasonal vegetable (fruit and herb) abundances (whether they are grown in one’s garden, foraged from the forest/field or purchased) and not only preserve them (using low tech tools) but also increase their nutritional value and flavour through a process like lacto-fermentation liberates an individual from the infantilizing role of being a “consumer” while simultaneously increasing one’s health sovereignty.
Therefore you are correct when you describe the act of making sauerkraut as something that subverts and undermines the authority of statist governance systems. For each time we take steps to severe our ties to depending on centralized (government subsidized, toxic chemical laced and highly processed) food supply infrastructure by growing, gathering and/or locally purchasing some of our own fresh food and preserving it we are boycotting big brother and big brother’s friends in big Ag and big pharma. Whether one describes that as covert or overt sedition is a matter of perspective but it is certainly represents a radical and rebellious act in today’s world of hyperconsolidated corporate domination of the food supply, national governments and ‘health care’ systems.
Each jar of sauerkraut one makes with homegrown produce represents an action that effectively avoids the taxation often associated with buying food from corporate food sources (where there are typically 5-7 tax paying middlemen from processing plants/factories to warehouse storage, to distribution shipping companies, regional super market storage facilities and then retail grocery stores in-between you and the farmer who grew the food) and it also represents an action that maintains your health without the need for the products of big pharma.
Thus, one could certainly describe the act of growing cabbages and making sauerkraut as seditious. Or to put it in the words of prolific food fermenter and author Sandor Kats:
To ferment your own food is to lodge an eloquent protest – of the senses – against the homogenization of flavors and food experiences now rolling like a great, undifferentiated lawn across the globe. It is also a declaration of independence from an economy that would much prefer we remain passive consumers of its standardized commodities, rather than creators of unique products expressive of ourselves and of the places where we live.
As for why I am not known for patiently explaining why we should unconditionally support our loving and caring governments on my blog nor in my physical publications, to put it simply I see all forms of national governments as they exist today as inherently immoral, parasitic, ecologically degenerative and nothing more than a sad puppet show run by misanthropic oligarchs. This is true whether we are talking about a so-called “democracy” (not that such a thing exists today) or if we are talking about a national government run by any other “ism” or ideology that is being applied in top down governance systems today. Voting is like begging your local mafia lieutenant to re-direct some of his boss’s money (which he stole from you and everyone else in your neighbourhood at gun point) towards improving your life and community. The mafia doesn’t give a shit about your quality of life and will only direct money towards your community if it serves their own goals or for superficial PR optics.
Even if you find yourself a sympathetic mafia lieutenant that gets ideas in his head about directing some of the money he and his fellow thugs stole from you towards some ultraistic ends, once his boss finds out that lieutenant will be swiftly encouraged to fall back in line or face demotion. Those few brave mafia lieutenants who refuse to comply, stop towing the company line and want to go and be a hero (JFK anyone?) will quickly discover how a racketeering operation ensures cooperation within its ranks.
There are some techno-optimist people that are really excited about blockchain and fancy telecommunications technology who think if we super digitalize and quadruple encrypt voting and make it so much more convenient for everyone to do on their smart phones that voting fraud and corruption can be abolished and “true representative democracy” can reign supreme once and for all. To all these well meaning computer loving statism enthusiasts I say, your system of governance is still inherently immoral as it involves using the threat of violence to coerce the few who are not willing to participate in that system to pay taxes. I have no interest in the so-called “services” offered by the “social contract” in your wonderful truly representative democratic nation state. I want to give my energy to improving and increasing the resilience of my local community, not your hyper centralized one size fits all infrastructure.
Thus, all involuntary governance is degenerative, immoral and will be resisted by those of us who have no need or want to be ruled over by the will of the majority and told how to spend our time/energy (money) and how we should live our lives.
Speaking of sedition, you wrote in a recent article that “involuntary governance structures” and “permaculture design ethics” don't mix well. What are “permaculture design ethics” and why do these ethics hate Liberal Democracy (Freedom)?
Permaculture design ethics are a set of guiding principles that designers use to assess whether or not what they are helping to create or maintain is aligned with three moral imperatives.
These three ethical imperatives include: “people care”, “Earth care” and “future care”.
I’ll share the description of each of these from my book below.
The Design Ethics of Permaculture:
When we are creating a permaculture garden every choice and design aspect must align with each of the three guiding ethical principles shown above. If you are interested in using Permaculture Design to improve your life and the world around you I would invite you to see that this same methodology can (and should) be applied to everything else in our lives (from how we gather our energy, to how we build our homes, to how we deal with others in our community and even to how we structure our economy and entire society).
Earth Care: The Earth provides us with everything we need to live a life of peace, fulfillment and abundance. Each time we make a choice we must consider how this impacts the Earth (which includes her soils, her waters, her atmosphere and all the non-human beings that call this planet home). If we make a conscious effort to find a way to care for and give back to the living planet that sustains us all in our day to day life, we engage in the sacred act of Reciprocity (ensuring that the cycle of gifts she offers us can continue). Earth care also involves protecting intact ecosystems from being “developed” (destroyed) in the name of what some (sustainable development enthusiasts) euphemistically refer to as “progress” (pillaging ecosystems for profit).
Unlike the WHO’s “One Health” treaties and UN’s “sustainable” development goals (and other similar greenwashed globalist propaganda), the permaculture design ethic of “Earth Care” calls for increasing the impact we have on the ecosystems we are a part of, not minimizing the impact we have on them. Unlike the anti-human greenwashed globalist propaganda, Earth Care does not involve programing people to become misanthropic and see themselves (and their fellow humans) as some kind of disease or imposition with regards to our impact on the biosphere (telling them to lessen their impact and ‘leave no trace’ avoiding interacting with wilderness areas and forests). Rather, Earth Care invites us to see from the more ancient perspective of our ancestors who lived in close relationship with the land to unlock our potential to intentionally have a huge impact on the land (which is positive). Earth care invites us to see that we were given many gifts as humans which can serve to increase biodiversity, beauty, resilience and abundance within the ecosystems we live.
People Care: We are all part of one family. People care acknowledges this innate truth and acts accordingly. Kindness, Compassion, Cooperation, and helping lift each other up (whether that be in families, neighborhoods, communities or with complete strangers) is all part of people care. As we remember that innately kind and loving part of ourselves that we were all born with and begin to allow the natural human characteristics of compassion, tolerance and kindness to guide our actions we increase the resilience of our communities and family of humanity as a whole. Helping those in need, offering our patience and kindness to seemingly ‘difficult’ people (who need love the most), taking time to teach the children to connect with nature, these are just some of the expressions of people care that can help heal households, strengthen communities and serve to regenerate and reconnect our family of humanity as a whole so we can all share a bright and abundant future together. The Permaculture ethic of People care is not an excuse to embrace hubristic, degenerative and ego based anthropocentric perspectives and priorities, rather it reminds us that humans are conscious beings, worthy of being cherished, nurtured onto their highest potential and respected for all their infinite diversity, just as the other non-human beings on this planet are.
Future Care: Caring for the future can be expressed in many ways. It involves, preserving, regenerating, saving, sharing, donating, ensuring we do not take more than we need and refusing to contribute our energy to destructive and degenerative institutions. It also involves actively involving ourselves in the sacred act of reciprocity with the living planet that sustains us all. This can be building soil, helping native pollinators thrive, healing our local water cycle, encouraging remediation of soils damaged by human activities and more. We are the architects of what will become our shared future and what our great grand children’s future will look like. No matter how seemingly small the action, each one we choose sends out a ripple effect and begins to solidify the path we will walk to our shared future. Like the Iroquois (or Haudenosaunee) a group of peoples indigenous to the regions now called Canada and the United States, who taught their children to consider how each of their actions would effect the next seven generations… we must consider how the choices we make will effect those who call this land home after we are gone. That is if we wish to avoid the mistakes of the past and chart a course to a brighter, more equitable, peaceful and abundantly shared future.
Much of the essence of future care ethic can be understood in proverbs such as the one which says “A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit”.
In stark contrast to perspectives/belief systems such as transhumanism, the WHO’s “ONE Health” treaties and the “sustainable development goals” of the UN that are focused on giving energy towards a future that involves futile attempts at the total domination and quantification of nature and the human mind (involving an obsessive focus on reductionism, materialism and an irrational fear of death), Permaculture’s Future Care design ethic instead invites us to embrace the innate gifts of the human body and mind, using those gifts to remember the more ancient perspective that sees humans as humble stewards of nature, capable of learning much from our elder species and that we each came here with gifts that can have a huge positive impact on this world to leave it a little bit more beautiful than it was when we got here for those that will call this place home after we are gone.
I feel it is important to point out that much of permaculture design methodology (and certainly the ethics) have much more ancient roots than Bill Mollison, David Holmgren, Geoff Lawton or any of the other contributors since then. Many of the techniques and perspectives that make up permaculture design are in fact echoes of the advanced food cultivation, ecosystem management, regenerative agroforestry, hydrological cycle management, animal husbandry and social/ethical value systems of indigenous peoples from multiple continents.
“Liberal democracy” (if there ever was or could be such a thing) even in its most ideal format is (as I explained in gory detail in my article) is a system that involves the majority of a group of people telling the minority “we know what is best for you and we know better than you do how you should be spending your money, so give us some of your money or else we will take it by force and if you resist we will send armed thugs to collect, for your own good of course”.
Even if we are talking about some hypothetical unusually benevolent and well educated majority that really does know better than some hypothetical nasty, selfish and ignorant minority, threatening them to do as you say and taking their money at gun point is still morally wrong.
“Freedom” therefore would only and can only be perceived by a certain ratio of the population in a democracy (even in its most ideal fairy tale unrealistically fine tuned format) and thus it always results in (at the very least) a minority having to pay the price for the “freedom” of the majority with their slavery and subservience to a system that imposed its will upon them through the threat of violence. People have been so conditioned into a sort of Stockholm syndrome when it comes to government (especially in so-called “democratic” nations) where (through brainwashing and indoctrination processes lasting well over a decade, using mandated textbooks in public “schools”) in combination with a blitzkrieg of propaganda disseminated through state sponsored mass media and operation mockingbird type Hollywood Psyops, they become cheerleaders and defenders of their own oppressors and abusers. Always making excuses why we need the abusive system and telling people we should not just give up on our relationship with it because “this time will be different and big brother promised he won’t be so abusive in the future”.
Look, if people want to line up and vote on who will rule over them, I wish them all the best with that, I am just not okay with those people declaring that because they want to be ruled over and told what to do and how to spend their money, that I should have to dedicate my time and energy to their goals. I just want to be left alone to plant my seeds, create some food forests, make my local community resilient and leave this little patch of earth a little bit more diverse and abundant than it was when I got here.
Freedom is not a consolatory prize that can be given to us to reward our obedience and capitulation to a system of violent coercion. It is not something that can be granted or provided to you by some government that wrote some thing on a piece of paper. Freedom is your birthright, and you either live it and embody it, or you allow yourself to be put in a mental cage by statists and other abusive institutions or individuals. My ancestors bloodlines are traced back to a people described in today’s terms as The Gaels. “Saoirse” is Irish Gaelic word for “Freedom”. Saoirse is an ancient concept that comes from the original Brehon laws of the Druidic (and eventually Celtic) world before the time of Christ. In the times when that word was created, my ancient ancestors lived without a centralized state, without prisons and without police.
Saoirse means many things to different people. For some it means freedom to think, express and freedom to learn, for others it’s the freedom of imagination and the freedom of the spirit. And for some it also means freedom to set up parallel societies.
This is one of the reasons that I included glimpses into two historical cultural cross sections of ancient cultures that existed without a centralized state and police/prison system in my essay as I feel that we can glean wisdom from stateless societies that existed for centuries to millennia in how to design more ethical, equitable, honest, Regenerative and practical ways to organize community, encourage amicable/respectful behaviour in humans and collaborate to leave this world a little bit more free and beautiful than it was when we got here after we are gone.
With all that being said, I want to emphasize that I think that placing any culture, group of people or individual on some pedestal as pure is unhealthy. I feel we should be vigilant to make sure we are not romanticizing their past nor romanticizing the potential of their worldviews to provide solutions to the present challenges we face.
I would also like to highlight the fact that psychopathy, greed and other anti-social traits are not unique to modern western culture. Unpleasant, selfish (and even sometimes ecologically degenerative) characteristics can be observed (overtly) in the traditions of specific isolated indigenous peoples (some of them were slave trading warlords and others may have respected the forest but were somewhat materialistic coveting ornate possessions).
Other indigenous peoples refused to trade with people that enslaved others and wanted nothing to do with money (as was the case with some of the people (as was the case with some of the people that are described in the this essay, who called the Eastern Woodlands, where I now live, home). Thus, I feel that while no culture is perfect, and some may have lived in a way that expressed more compassion, ethical social structures and holistic thinking than others, one thing is certain, and that is that these starkly contrasted cultures offer us helpful sign posts as we attempt to navigate and forge a path towards a more honest, equitable, kind, abundant and regenerative future.
So, just to be clear, no, I am not saying we should live in mud huts, engage in tribal warfare and/or do animal sacrifice ceremonies (or what ever red herring hypothetical that high tech civilization loving people might throw at me who would accuse me of peddling the “noble savage myth” or something). I acknowledge conflicts and rituals that existed in the Druidic ways and between the various indigenous tribes of what is now called North America. However, I would suggest that we should keep in mind that demonization and dehumanization of the perceived “enemy” or targeted “sub-human class” of an empire is a time tested psychological warfare technique that has been employed in both real time conflicts and retrospectively as “victors write the history books”.
Each one of us can seek to tap into the deep well of place based knowledge that was gathered and honed over centuries to millennia by those who lived close to the land and to the forest before we moved to where we are today. For some of us finding the way into that ancient wellspring of knowledge may require some excavation as centuries or even millennia may have passed since those who lived close with the land and who had reverence for and who gathered the knowledge of the medicine and food plants of that bio region lived there. For me that involves revitalizing Food Forest Design and Polyculture Gardening Techniques which were used here in the Eastern Woodlands centuries ago but it may look different for each of us based on what trees, plants, fungi, climate and topography exist where we live. While I was doing research for my recently published article on working with Birch Trees (in the context of permaculture design and Regenerative Agroforestry) I came across an immense diversity of place based knowledge for how to interact with birch trees rooted in indigenous cultures from modern day Canada, to Scotland/Ireland (my ancestors homeland) all the way to Russia. Each indigenous group had their own unique way to interact with Birch trees in a way that both benefits the forest ecology and offers, medicine, food, tools, art and shelter to humans. For instance, the Evenki people (that once lived in the vast regions of Siberia between Lake Baikal and the Amur River.) used birch for crafts, winter food and created waterproof structures that somewhat resembled what most would think of as a "TeePee" except they were made of Birch Bark.
As stated above no culture was or is perfect so while you embark upon this path of learning with humility also take an honest look at what aspects and ways the ancient people who called the land home where you live are things that no longer serve us and/or should be let go of and allowed to remain as a lesson from the ancestors but not a path which should be walked again. All of our ancient ancestors have place based wisdom to share, knowledge of medicine plants/fungi and all of our ancient ancestors also engaged in some activities and behaviours that are not beneficial and should be left in the past, it is up to each of us to use our own intuition, discernment, research, pattern recognition and critical thinking capacities to distinguish what aspects of ancient cultures should be accepted as gifts only in the form of a lesson/cautionary tale and those aspects that should be accepted as a gift in the form of something that we should strive to breath new life into, revive and build upon to build resilience-and reciprocity in our lives and relationships as well as reverence, humility, practical knowledge and universally applicable wisdom in our perspectives and ethoses.
Permaculture design also involves stacking functions and turning problems into solutions and seeking to research how the ancient people who called the land home where we now live can serve a great many functions. It firstly can hopefully help us get a head start in building our ecological and botanical literacy by tapping into the lists of plants and fungi those people had already studied and experimented with that grow in a particular bioregion and it also invites us to combine humility with discernment to look at ways in which our modern knowledge and techniques could build on and potentiate those more ancient ways if possible. As stated above, another function of this learning process is identifying aspects of how ancient cultures lived that should be released and not revived in present day.
Additionally as that process of learning about ancient and humble ways invites us to unlearn many calcified ego based and often one dimensional or fallacious common modern world views, inviting us to become connected deeply to the place we call home. When we develop a reciprocal relationship to the place where we live and begin to see the earth as our ancient ancestors did, (as our Mother, whom is deserving of respect and whom we should be of service to and give back to for what we take) this allows us to embark on our own unique path to gather place based wisdom. The path to become connected to place with a reciprocal relationship, reverence and humility is the path to embrace indigeneity ourselves (regardless of our skin color).
You’ve encouraged your readers to start a garden in 2024. What would you say to someone who has never grown anything in his entire life and is convinced he will man-slaughter any plant he comes in contact with? I’m asking for a friend.
Yes my friend 2024 is upon us, the future is now. CBDCs, digital ID/social credit gulags, bank account freezing Nazi collaborators in the Canadian Government , lab grown cancer cell cultured Bill Gates “meat”, bug burgers, Transgenic gene spliced mass produced store bought vegetables, Elon Musk brain chips, Skynet is expanding and A.I. Worshipping transhumanist menticided statists are plentiful in countries all over the world.
Planting a garden is the first step to becoming immune to the digital slavery and financial concentration camp system being built slowly but surely for you and me.
It also means beginning to become immune to the attacks on our health and our bodies through all the toxin filled processed food being peddled by corporations in grocery stores and creepy genetically modified and lab grown shit the plutocrats are trying to push on us through their “sustainable development” agenda.
So what would I say to this hypothetical person that has never grown anything in his entire life and is worried he will manslaughter any plant he comes into contact with?
Firstly, I would tell this hypothetical person that it all begins with the soil. If you build good living soil, that solid foundation for your garden will make it a lot harder to kill your plants.
Secondly, research heirloom varieties that have been selectively bred (using natural open pollination methods) over many generations to be resilient for growing in your local climate conditions and varieties which are capable of self sowing. I sourced out Red Russian Kale for this reason and now that I have established a patch of it in one of my raised beds and allowed it to go to seed, it grows back every year without me having to plant it, it survives drought and minus 25 Celsius winters and I doubt I could kill all the plants even if I tried to (as thy just keep growing back from the seeds that were deposited by last year’s plants).
Thirdly, those who are serious about setting up a resilient, low maintenance high yielding food cultivation system should first begin to develop their eco literacy (botanical literacy) through taking time to explore in the forest or wilderness places in their bioregion. They should closely observe the plants and fungi that grow there. Observe the insects and animals that dwell there, notice which plants grow together and begin to learn which ones can provide medicine, food, building materials and tools. This is how ancient societies developed the foundation of knowledge required to design food forests that became self perpetuating food production systems that have persisted for centuries or even millennia (even now that their original care takers are long gone). Once you start to develop your pattern recognition aptitude through observing how an intact ecosystem functions it becomes easier to emulate the resilience, positive feedback loops and symbiosis that is ubiquitous in the forest in one’s garden designs.
Forests do not need to be irrigated, fertilized or tilled by humans and yet they produce profound abundance in food, medicine, soil and microclimates for humans (and non-human beings). That same resilience and self sustaining attribute which can be observed in a forest can be achieved in the garden through careful observation, experimentation , learning from failures and building on ancient wisdom.
Now this brings be back to the first thing I mentioned which is the importance of good living soil.
Nature offers us wisdom in how we can build excellent fertile soil which retains rain water to make plants drought tolerant, allows for drainage so plants don’t drown in heavy rain and provides diverse nutrients to maintain plant health (so you do not have to buy fertilizer or worry about adding too much or not enough plant food). One of the methods I like to use for building deep living soil in my garden beds which emulates how nature builds soil in the forest is called Hügelkultur:
Hügelkultur (diagram shown above) roughly translated into “hill culture”: this method consists of creating raised garden beds by covering rotting wood with compost and soil, and then planting into them. If you think about it, it’s really just re-creating the effects of forest floor decomposition—but helping accelerate it in one’s own garden space. I like to use variations of this (such as an ‘inverted Hügelkultur’ or ‘dead wood swale’ for building deep and fertile soils beneath new raised beds I am building).
Also, we all kill some plants (and other beings) by accident or as part of a learning process, so do not sweat it if that happens. I had plenty of opportunities to learn from such experiences along my path when I started gardening. The important thing is to not give up and to learn from our mistakes so we can carry the benefit of such experiences forward with us (and hopefully share that knowledge we gain with others as well).
Who knows, maybe planting a garden will inspire others to give their head a shake and stop building their own prison (through their dependence on corporations for all their food) and eating poison-laced garbage and you can break through the brainwashing to get more people on board with resisting the plutocrats in your local community. Given how mindlessly addicted so many are to convenience and high tech quick fix solutions it may seem like a tall order, but you might be surprised how a garden gets neighbours talking, sharing heirloom seeds, meals and ideas.
It is a great starting point to create pockets of decentralized resistance to oligarchic / statist tyranny as growing your own medicine and veggies may appear harmless, but in a parasitic global plutocracy it represents a decisive action that severs the tentacles of tyranny in a critically important aspect of our lives (how we access food and medicine). Thus, it is a radical and revolutionary act that appears benign to the hubristic philanthropaths and demociders, serving as a sort of covert sedition in a world governed by parasites that want us dependent, gardening to grow or own food and medicine is like a hammer wrapped in velvet that knee caps big pharma’s plans to poison us slowly through dependence on their system for health care and also strikes the spine of the digital gulag system, breaking its back so it can no longer have any strength to influence our lives through controlling our access to food/medicine.
For those black-pilled in the audience that would say “why bother planting a garden when government thugs or random degenerates are just going to eventually show up and pillage it?”
What is your suggested alternative? Casting your vote into the slave suggestion box (democracy) and hoping someone else will solve all our problems for us and make the decision to grow food you can trust for you ? An epic rebellion where you hunt down all the "bad guys" and make them pay and then everything magically becomes better? Stockpiling weapons and canned food and hiding out in your bunker with a bunch of silver?
None of those sound very enjoyable to me and none of them are actions that help contribute towards co-creating a future I want to live in and give to future generations.
However, just for the sake of argument, lets say hypothetically the worst case scenario happens (total overt totalitarian technocracy involving out in the open democide of dissidents). Even if that were to come to pass my choice to use my time to cultivate a regenerative garden and help others to as well would be the same… because for me in that hypothetical situation the question becomes “How do I want to spend the time I have left on this Earth?”
Do I want to spend the time I have been gifted to hide out, scurry around working to gather cryptocurrency, precious metals and/or cash to try and buy food while on the run or wield the weapons of man in violence?
Or do I want to embody faith in that which the Creator of all things gave us and plant the seeds of hope, love and abundance by working with my hands in the rich Earth?
Therefore, I see creating regenerative gardens and food forests as a viable, honorable and practical path forward in these uncertain times. We can forge alliances with the more than human world through planting food forests and regenerative gardens all over, and in doing so provide not only for ourselves, but countless future generations in the process.
These “Food Forests” become permanent gardens that require very little (if any) work to keep alive and producing once they are established. These systems contain a wide spectrum of species suitable for harvesting food, medicine, building material and other important resources. Thus, these food cultivation systems allow us to give to future generations yet unborn.
I will share links to a few examples below so you can see what I am talking about:
http://www.daviesand.com/Papers/Tree_Crops/Indian_Agroforestry/index.html
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-is-permaculture-food-forests
https://returntonow.net/2018/08/01/the-amazon-is-a-man-made-food-forest-researchers-discover/
https://www.sdvforest.com/agroforestry/the-fascinating-story-of-human-made-forests
https://canadianfeedthechildren.ca/what/food-security-projects/indigenous-food-forests/
https://www.sdvforest.com/agroforestry/the-fascinating-story-of-human-mad
Dissertation on food forests titled “Architects of Abundance: Indigenous Food Systems and the Excavation of Hidden History” by Dr. Lyla June.
Now just to cover all our Black Pilled bases here, I will share another anecdote from a conversation I had on this topic which may provide an argument of more substance to the atheists in the crowd.
After posting that on a Corbett Report thread, my friend who goes by the screen name “Fawlty Towers” shows up and says:
OK Gavin I’ll take you up on this. I’ll play devil’s advocate. My response is not to discourage your enthusiasm to till the soil and harvest your labour of love. Let’s say the sh*t hits the fan metaphorically. The world is in the chaos you describe above.
People are literally scrambling to find money to put food on their table. Do you think your neighbours would hesitate for one minute to pilfer your garden to feed themselves rather than go starving? How long do you think your garden would last then?
Here is part of my response:
Firstly I present some food for thought in the context of community..
What survives collapse? What survives crisis? Community. What ever you give and contribute into your community and you generate that goodwill, and you generate those structures of taking care of each other and reciprocal (gift) relationships… that is an investment. That is a savings account that fires cannot burn and thieves cannot steal.
The best investment you can make is generosity, for only thing that cannot be taken from you is that which you give.
The above quote is from this video:
The thing about growing a garden and saving seed is that heirloom seeds are living beings and you always have more than enough for your own needs. Thus, the act of saving seed compels you to share your seeds and excess harvests with neighbors, developing symbiotic relationships and good will within that community which you live.
Now I could get into the reasons why even if we are talking about a hypothetical situation with mobs of callous, raging, thieving and pilfering neighbors, the choice to garden is still worth it purely due to number 24 on my list, but that would not address any people in the crowd that have more pragmatic (and perhaps self interested) atheistic concerns and priorities, so instead I will elaborate on how there are practical/pragmatic reasons why knowledge and skills related to food cultivation is more valuable than food stores, cryptocurrency, silver or cash (as they are accessible and applicable in and and all situations and cannot be taken from you.
So, here we are visualizing a post apocalyptic mad max type situation in which everyone has decided to behave like rabid selfish primates and they are stealing and thieving from their neighbor’s gardens (as silly as this is, some people think that is what human nature is when people get desperate as they have been watching lots of Hollywood psyops, so lets explore that hypothetical).
Even if the mobs of ravenous garden raiders stole all my crops from the garden, broke into my home and held me at gun point while they stole my pickled and freeze dried food stores I still have heirloom seeds which, after they leave, I could use both as emergency food and/or plant for a fast harvest microgreens garden.
Lets say they are super industrious and relatively intellectually well educated garden raiding and burglarizing thieves, and they steal all my heirloom seeds from in my house as well.
What then?
Well, first of all, people who are stealing from others, rather than cultivating and foraging for food in the first place are unlikely to be capable of recognizing the value of heirloom seeds, nor would they be likely to want to cultivate them, but lets say we are talking about some really unusually viscous and selfish thieves (that also have a green thumb). Okay, they took my seeds from in the house, but that still leaves the seeds I have outside in my living Soil Seed Bank.
That is the thing about permaculture design and regenerative gardening, along with saving seed inside, I also encourage the natural self-seeding processes that are part of the life cycle of my favorite and most nutritious crops (which means if you remove something from my garden, the sunlight will shine down on the mulch and compost layer, awakening an array of dormant seeds that always exist there). In a number of days I would have abundant microgreens to eat without any work. In a few weeks, I could have significant harvests to eat (also without any work).
Beyond the food security of my living soil seed bank (which is immune to thievery, well, unless the thieves arrived with an excavator to also steal my soil ) as stated above, I retain the knowledge and skills I have acquired through my choice to garden (knowledge and skills which are accessible and applicable in any and all situations, whether for planting another garden, or for plant identification and foraging outside the garden).
Now this brings me to something I brought up in reason # 𝟏𝟎 from my 24 reasons to start a garden in 2024 relating to the ubiquitous lack of plant identification skills and knowledge in most people in modern day urban industrialized western society.
We live in a time where most children in Canada and the US are capable of identifying over 1000 corporate logos, yet they can only identify less then 10 plant species.
I suspect that same lack of basic botanical awareness and plant literacy is equally reflected in the urbanized adult populations.
Part of my comment above was pertaining to food forest design.
If one was blessed to have enough space where they could begin to create a food forest one would essentially be creating a food production system that is camouflaged to most every day people in the western world. In a society where people can identify more corporate logos than they can plant species, a forest filled with a multi-layered food production system that seamlessly emulates a mature forest would be unrecognizable and essentially invisible to the mobs of lazy/desperate thieves and pilferers (that have a poverty of plant knowledge).
Thus, beyond all the factors that I mentioned above that make the choice to grow a regenerative garden in one’s yard a wise choice (regardless of outside circumstances) food forests, in and of themselves are resistant to thievery, due to the widespread poverty of eco-literacy in the modern western world.
Let’s say this same friend mentioned in the previous question is looking for a book to read that will help him to shed his consumerist ways and become a self-empowered Producer. Do you have a book recommendation?
Well I won’t claim that my book is the best book for helping someone to begin “shedding his consumeristic ways” to become a self empowered producer but it offers a solid place to start.
For those interested in buying a physical copy of my book you can do so here.
People can get 25% off Recipes For Reciprocity : The Regenerative Way From Seed To Table using this link and the discount code: outgrow the system.
In Recipes for reciprocity I offer tips and empowering material for both those who are setting up their very first garden and tips for those who are veteran gardeners looking to hone their productivity, expand their garden, trouble shoot or just want to explore some fun and tasty ways to enjoy and preserve their garden harvests in the kitchen and the pantry/cellar.
Aside from my own small literary contribution to the vast and growing field of permaculture design and Regenerative gardening I offer a range of other book suggestions in a Substack post.
I put together that list of books for those looking for alternative perspectives or those seeking to explore more specialized paths of knowledge (which were beyond the scope of what I can fit into a single book) but that can be applied and built out from the foundation that my book provides for taking Regenerative gardening and food forest design to the next level.
What are you working on these days? Any big plans/projects on the horizon?
I am working on getting a community food forest going where we live in southern Ontario right now. There is an organic farm on the outskirts of town where the owners were kind enough to let me use some of their land to start setting up the community food forest. I will be creating a trial (scalable) mini-food forest and inviting others to take part in the planting, tending, harvesting, soil building and seed saving.
Guided by the saying “you can count the seeds in a single apple, but you can’t count the apples in a single apple seed”, I will incorporate Paw Paw trees, Butternut trees, Tulip trees, White Pine, Blueberries, Goji berries and a wide range of nitrogen fixing and medicinal herbs for the ground level. After the trees get bigger we will add some layers vertically by growing things like grape vines and kiwi vines up the trunks and plant shade tolerant rhizomes like wild Canadian wild ginger, ramps and wild garlic under the trees. We will also eventually incorporate gourmet mushroom cultivation into the mix by using hard wood log sections to grow mushrooms such as Shiitake under the shade of the white pine trees.
I am also currently doing research, experimentation and writing which will be compiled into my next book. The book is going to be focusing on Food Forest design with a particular focus on medicine plants/fungi, and how to use them to heal, prevent disease and be resilient as individuals and communities.
I will cover tree species that many would not typically think of with regards to Food Forest Design (some of which I have already written about, such as Pine, Spruce, Fir, and Larch) as well as others such as Gingko, Oak, Birch, Maple and Tulip Trees.
I will also explore food and medicine plants which often grow abundantly in the wild (aka “weeds”) which can easily be propagated and encouraged to set up shop as valuable understory and/or effective ‘edge effect’ members of a Food Forest design (many of which have a long history of use by the Indigenous people’s of Turtle Island, such as Elderberry, Echinacea, Yarrow, Stinging Nettle, Staghorn Sumac and Cattails.
I hope to offer this information so people can feed and heal themselves while also providing habitat for other beings, building soil and leaving behind something beautiful and abundant for those who will call this Earth home after we are gone.
I have started posting the material that will be distilled down and formatted into that book as a series on Substack titled “Stacking Functions in the Garden, Food Forest and Medicine Cabinet : The Regenerative Way From Seed To Apothecary”.
All Annual Paid Subscriptions and Founding Member Paid Subscriptions to My Substack Newsletter will receive one digital copy of Stacking Functions in the Garden, Food Forest and Medicine Cabinet : The Regenerative Way From Seed To Apothecary at the time of its completion (along with the other paid subscription perks described in this post).
Thank you, Gavin!
Don’t forget to read and reread Edward Slavsquat’s previous interviews:
Moscow vs. Davos? Let's ask Russian alt media (Anna Rudneva)
“Russian medicine is controlled by the WHO” (Dr. Alina Lushavina)
The fall from liberalism to global technocracy (Iurie Roșca)
“Peace” has become a dirty word in closely watched Czechia (Cecílie Jílková)
How’s life in rural Russia? We asked an expat villager (Ekaterina the village-dweller)
Russia’s neoliberal elites are thriving (Karine Bechet-Golovko)
Thank you for reading Edward Slavsquat. Have a nice day.
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Excellent stuff Riley!
Sauer-anarchists UNITE! ;)
While on the topic "Fermented food as medicine" - for anyone interested, I published a stack on sauerkraut and its wondrous powers on 1 Jan (my homepage- under most popular).
Cheers
Excellent and educational interview!!! I've never heard about food forests before.
I make sauerkraut from locally produced cabbage every year. It's nice to think of it as act of rebellion against Big Brother :)