Modeling Community Kitchens at the Building Resilient Communities (N. California Permaculture) Convergence

Transition to Permaculture: Building Resilient Communities is the convergence of two convergences: the annual Northern California Permaculture Convergence and the Northern California Regional Transition Network Conference--and it is happening October 11th-13th at the Solar Living Institute in Hopland, CA.  The convergence will be bringing together permaculturists, community organizers, and all kinds of excited people to take part in discussions, classes, dialogues, workshops, and other facilitated experiences to inspire further action in a movement for community resilience. 

This year, the Village Commons will be in the very center of the convergence space and will host an open community kitchen alongside a stage, tea lounge, communal space, and bioregional meet ups.
The community kitchen will be a free and accessible space where everyone converging over the three days of the conference can bring their produce, dried goods, spices, oils, and other items to prepare and cook into wonderful, nutritious meals to keep nourished through the weekend.  How you choose to use the kitchen is up to you: you may fry up some veggies and a couple eggs for yourself, or you may get together with others, share ingredients, and cook up a large meal to share with many. 

Through this community kitchen we hope not only to share a space in which all can meet their own needs through their own hands and stay happy and healthy throughout the conference, but also seek to demonstrate a piece of infrastructure that is currently missing from most of our cities and many of our social environments, urban and otherwise: open and accessible common-space kitchens. 

Today, about 1 in 6 Americans receive food stamps to assist them in purchasing food.  Many of these people, and many of those who do not depend on food stamps, often have no place to cook for themselves.  This leads to an all too frequent influence to purchase foods that are easy to eat without cooking or preparation, which at poverty level are often potato chips, pre-cooked and preserved sandwiches, and other "junk foods" rather than the raw and nutrient-rich dried fruits and nuts that can be purchased at the higher priced end.  Through access to kitchens and being able to cook one's own meals or prepare meals with others, people may very well be empowered to cook with whole foods, bring greater nutrition to themselves, and feel able to purchase higher quality foods and eat less junk.

At the Village Commons of the Building Resilient Communities Convergence this October 2013 we seek to demonstrate such a model community kitchen.

www.TransitionToPermaculture.org

Permaculture Design Site Analysis and Assessment Open Skill Share & Work Day

Permaculture Design Site Analysis and Assessment Open Skill Share & Work Day
Thursday, September 12th Sun Up to Sun Down (All Day)
Oakland Roots School of Urban Sustainability
923 Martin Luther King Jr. Way & 10th Street, Oakland, CA
(4 blocks west of 12th Street BART)
RSVP for phone number: e-mail RootsRhizing@gmail.com

I will be doing a permaculture design site analysis and assessment for the urban lot that is being transformed into the Oakland Roots School of Urban Sustainability.  I will be there sun up to sun down to watch and record the movement of the sun, and the resulting moving sun and shade patterns on the land.  People are welcome any time of the day.  The more present you are the more I am able to share with you.  We will also be hauling water from a nearby spigot to fill a water cistern.  To read about what a full site analysis and assessment entails, visit http://risingrootsdesign.blogspot.com/p/permaculture-information.html

ROOTS Calendar

SF East Bay Area Permaculture Events, Workshops, and Garden Work Days 

Saturday, September 7 - Urban Gardens and Heavy Metal: Getting the Lead Out
10am - 12pm @ Ecology Center in Berkeley; 2530 San Pablo Ave., Berkeley, CA

Saturday, September 7 - Project Nuevo Mundo - Central American Permaculture Project Network
3pm - midnight @ PLACE for Sustainable Living; 1121 64th Street, Oakland, CA

Saturday, September 7 - Water Harvesting - A Rehydration Solution
10am - 3pm @ Permaculture Skills Center; 2185 Highway 116 S., Sebastopol, CA

Sunday, September 8 - Dervishes' Permaculture Homestead Monthly WorkPlay Day
11am - 7pm @ Pinole, CA (message for address: 707-357-1410

Every Sunday work days at gardens around the east bay
Park Garden Work Day 12pm - dark @ Park and Cleveland Street, Oakland, CA (east of the lake)
Strong Roots Community Garden 1 - 4pm @ Sacramento and Woolsey, Berkeley, CA
Chestnut Community Garden 2 - 7 pm @ 34th and Chestnut, Oakland, CA

Monday, September 9 - Berkeley Crop Swap - gift and/or receive plants, seeds, food, and more
6:30 pm @ Ohlone Park, Berkeley, CA

Monday, September 9 - East Bay Permaculture Guild meeting
7pm @ PLACE for Sustainable Living; 1121 64th Street, Oakland, CA

Wednesday, September 11 - Vandana Shiva speaks with Gopal of Movement Generation
7pm @ 2150 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA

Thursday, September 12 - Remediating Arsenic in Soil at the Santa-Fe Right-Of-Way
10am - 12pm @ Derby St. and Acton St., Berkeley, CA

Saturday, September 14 - Memorial Park Edible Landscape Garden work party
10am - 12 pm @ Portland Avenue and Carmel, Albany, CA

Saturday, September 14 - Willow Street Garden celebration with food, music, and speakers
4pm @ 9th and Willow, Oakland, CA

Sunday, September 15 - Worm Composting with Urban Worm
2pm - 3pm @ Urban Adamah; 1050 Parker St.; Berkeley, CA

Sunday, September 15 - Water - Thinking Like a Desert presented by Transition Albany
2 - 4:30pm @ Albany Library Edith Stone Room; 1247 Marin Ave., Albany, CA

Thursday, September 26 - Fishbone and Lead: Remediation Strategies for Urban Soils
7pm - 9pm @ Ecology Center in Berkeley; 2530 San Pablo Ave., Berkeley, CA

Sunday, September 28 - Freeing Land for Food: Urban Greening Projects and Gentrification
11am - 1pm @ Phat Beets Produce; 942 Stanford Ave., Oakland, CA

POSTPONED UNTIL OCTOBER 19th
Sunday, September 28 - Place-Making Block Party
@ PLACE for Sustainable Living, 1121 64th Street, Oakland, CA

Sunday, September 29 - Your Gut - Key To Your Health presented by Transition Albany Health Group
2 - 4:30pm @ Albany Library Edith Stone Room; 1247 Marin Ave., Albany, CA

If you want an event added to this calendar please e-mail RootsRhizing@gmail.com

Transforming Spaces workshop at Symbiosis Gathering 2013

Ryan Rising of Rising Roots Design will be facilitating a workshop, storytelling, and dialogue at Symbiosis Gathering 2013 (www.SymbiosisGathering.com) of Transforming Spaces: implementing permaculture through direct action.  Symbiosis Gathering takes place September 19th through 23d in Oakdale, CA and will be hosting a permaculture intensive, Elementary Alchemy, before the gathering September 14th through 18th. 

Transforming Spaces workshop

This workshop will explore how we can act directly to change the world in which we live and transition our created environments, urban and otherwise, to be in greater balance with the earth's natural ecosystems. We will start with a story telling of direct actions over the past two years that have gone outside the realm of what is necessarily legal to create permaculture in the world around us; transitioning from systems based on resource importation and relationships of domination and capital to systems that embody symbiosis, mutual aid, and horizontal structures. From liberating busy city streets to allow the human movement of dance, to emancipating the earth below our feet for growing food, this conversation will explore the many ways in which we can create environments that foster community, ecology, and vitality.

Come hear stories from the occupy farm, renegade festivals, the struggle to save neighborhood gardens, and politically-active tent cities, and share some of your own. We will talk about future plans for a regional Village Building Convergence and the creation of greenhouses, plant nurseries, urban farms, and accessible kitchens in each and every square mile of the places we inhabit. Join in a dialogue around how each of us can create permaculture where you live, whether by creating a guerrilla garden in an abandoned lot near your home, or facilitating a skills and assets mapping of your whole town to connect people in a gift economy of food, medicine, and other needs and services. What can you think of outside the bounds of the current paradigms of hierarchy and capital? What is it you want to create? Come learn how to imagine, organize, and act together!

Some Notes from the August Meeting of the East Bay Permaculture Guild

Some Notes from the August Meeting of the East Bay Permaculture Guild

August 12th 7pm @ PLACE for Sustainable Living in Oakland, CA

BOOKS

-Vegetable Gardener's Guide to Permaculture 

--Christopher Shein 

PROJECTS

-PLACE for Sustainable Living in North Oakland is facilitating a place making project on the intersection where PLACE is located.  Look for their block party coming up on September 28th.  There will be a street mural painting and place building projects!

-In the Basque Country near Spain, visitor Ortzi Akizu Gardoki is co-creating a EcoPark called Ekogunea Ecopark.  Find more at ekogunea.net

-East Bay Co-Housing facilitator Raines Cohen just got back from 5 weeks touring European eco-villages; report backs and pictures to come

-Brennan will be facilitating earth bench and other natural building projects in San Francisco and needs volunteers; get in touch with him through www.earthbench.org to learn and volunteer on upcoming cobb, clay, straw, and plaster work projects 

EVENTS

-September? 6th, 7th, and 8th - ranch and farm-scale water development including springs, floating island, wetlands, etc. through David Cody

-Roberto Perez permaculture talks 

-Eric Toensmeir workshop coming up by Living Mandala

-Toby Hemenway teaching a course with Daly Acts in Petaluma 

--scholarships and work trades available 

---DalyActs.org 

---Toby Hemenway author of Gaia's Garden

NOTES ON PRESENTATION - REPORT BACK FROM ERIC TOENSMEIR WORKSHOP

-presenter has been working with Daly Acts 

--Daly Acts installed food forests at Petaluma City Hall; installed perennial polyculture; will be harvesting first Kiwi vines this year

-transforming problems into solutions

--lawns into gardens

---lawns waste water, resources (soil, space) 

---gardens create food, connections, diversity 

-mentioned Trathen's greywater system 

-MORE FOOD FORESTS INTO OUR URBAN SYSTEMS

--Occidental Arts and Ecology Center is far away 

---27 people took food forest workshop there 

---feeling of being grounded and safer there 

-a food forest is a garden modeled after a forest ecology 

-AGROFORESTRY 

--Eric Toensmeir is working with a corporation who is sequestering carbon, growing chestnuts, and coppicing them 

--Land Institute pioneering perennial food crops in Kansas 

-(lawns are the largest irrigated crop in the US!, second is corn)

--Sunflowers

--Wheat Germ

--Wheat Grass 

--Sorghum 

---perennializing these four crops

--we need nuts, fats, oils for a balanced diet 

-Eric Olson's permaculture skills center 

--sunflowers from Chevron action came from here

---organized by Urban Tilth 

COPPICING

-Black Locust is coppiced on a 6 year cycle

-looking for the diameter of pole you need for your use

--such as for tool handles, structure poles, etc. 

-indigenous practice (Tending the Wild?) 

WEBSITES

-Perennial Solutions: perennialsolutions.org 

--Eric Toensmeir has a website of plant guilds 

--"All Nitrogen Fixers are not Created Equal": article by Eric Toensmeir 

-Apios Institute: ApiosInstitute.org

-Plants For A Future: pfaf.org 

PLACE MAKING 

-BAY AREA PLACE MAKING WEBSITE is in the works!

-Placemaking Facilitation

--Ask the people in the neighborhood:

---What's the issue?

---What's the root problem of that issue?

---What's the basic solutions?

---How is that solution developed/embodied?

---What are the effects of solving that issue?

More Upcoming Workshops!

Earth Day SF @ Civic Center

Rising Roots will be hosting a workshop space within the Permaculture and DIY area of the event.

A Mobile Ecology Center and Permaculture Design Lab will host workshops throughout the day including Transforming Space: Permaculture and Direct Action.

Earth Day SF is a free event on April 20th at Civic Center Plaza in San Francisco


Join us again for Whole Earth Festival @ UC Davis quad, CA; May 10th through 12th, 2013

Whole Earth Festival:   http://wef.ucdavis.edu

Saturday, May 11th, 12 - 1 pm Transforming Space: Permaculture and Direct Action

Saturday, May 11th, 3 - 4 pm Drum Along with Thunderground Collective

Sunday, May 12th, 3 - 4 pm Permaculture Design Lab

Join Ryan Rising of Rising Roots Design at Lucidity Festival for the Mobile Ecology Center and Permaculture Design Lab, as well as a facilitated discussion on Transforming Space: Permaculture and Direct Action.

http://lucidityfestival.com/workshops/ryan-rising/

Scheduled Workshops

• Mobile Ecology Center & Permaculture Design Lab
  Day: Friday, Saturday, Sunday | Duration: 3 min. | Location: Family Garden

  The Mobile Ecology Center is a space that can be created anywhere at anytime and consists of blankets and tapestries and snacks; a full library of books on ecology, permaculture, organic gardening, and holistic arts and sciences, and a seed library of hundreds of species of organic and heirloom seeds. The Permaculture Design Lab allows you to put what you learn from the discussions, workshops, and books into practice and offers an array of tools, drawing boards, paper, pencils, rulers, & stencils. Draw a design for your imagined garden, select edible, medicinal, and other useful species, analyze how the elements will move through your landscape, and take your plan home to create space. A certified permaculture designer will be on hand to guide you through the process and answer questions.

• Transforming Space: Permaculture and Direct Action
  Day: Sunday | Duration: 60 min. | Location: Family Garden

  Transforming Space: Permaculture and Direct Action will be a discussion about transforming urban space. From liberating busy city streets to allow the human movement of dance, to emancipating the earth below our feet for growing food, this conversation will explore the many ways in which we can create environments that foster community, ecology, and vitality, right in the concrete jungle. Come here stories from the occupy farm, renegade festivals, the struggle to save neighborhood gardens, and politically-active tent cities, and share some of your own. We'll talk about future plans for a regional Village Building Convergence and the creation of greenhouses, plant nurseries, urban farms, and accessible kitchens in each and every square mile of the places we inhabit."

Workshop Locations

• Family Workshops

Lucidity Festival will be held at Live Oak Campground in Santa Barbara, April 12-14, 2013

http://lucidityfestival.com