“I’m increasing biodiversity by practicing this kind of gardening”
Archive for the 'food' Category
Permaculture at its finest. A living swimming pool stacks the functions of rainwater catchment, water filtration, food production, wetlands reclamation, wild animal habitat formation, energy capture in the form of heat from the sun, and the most important function of all: fun.
“David Pagan Butler introduces natural swimming pools: beautiful swimming ponds that require no chemicals, just plants and a simple solar powered filter pump to clean the water.”
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Gooood Morning SuperForest!
I often write about the mind and its power over the body. I also often write about how our cultural conditioning determines every aspect of what we call our minds. Our values, our likes and dislikes, our preferences, all are based in where and when we were raised.
This plasticity of the mind is something that I think about a lot, sort of like a toaster thinking about toasters toasting, I guess. How to use this plasticity to my advantage is my main focus.
Case in point: fermented cod liver fish oil.
Melissa was doing some research into tooth decay and found a number of websites that advocated using a combination of fermented cod liver fish oil and butter oil to help teeth stay healthy. Now, why this butter/oil combination works is beyond me, but that it could work is interesting. Basically, if I believe that it could work, then it could work indeed.
The problem is this: the stuff tastes wretched. Fermented cod liver oil tastes exactly like it sounds like it would taste; like fish guts that have been left out to get stinky. Melissa bought a little bottle of it and we decided to eat the recommended quarter teaspoon. Blech. Not wanting to have our teeth fall out, and believing in the curative power of the stuff, I decided to play a little game with my and Melissa’s minds. I would craft and introduce an idea into the both of us that would counter act and redirect the “get nauseated” impulse that arose in me whenever we tasted the fish oil.
One night, before our fish oil, I said to Melissa something to the effect of:
“Hey, you know why I love this fish oil?”
“Why?” Melissa said.
“Because it always reminds me of that time we spent with the Eskimos up in Alaska. Do you remember that?”
Melissa and I have never been to Alaska, nor have we ever hung with Eskimos. Melissa quickly and amusedly pointed that out.
“No, no, you remember! We went to Alaska and we lived with the Eskimos and we had so much fun! We ate seal blubber and cod liver oil and all that raw reindeer meat. Oh man, wasn’t it delicious? Every time I eat this cod liver oil it reminds me of that trip.”
Melissa and I were smiling at each other. The basic idea was this: my feelings toward the taste of cod liver oil were totally conditioned. The taste of cod liver oil is neutral. How I felt about it was everything, and how I felt about it was entirely up to me. Since I had been conditioned to believe that cod liver oil tastes revolting, I decided to create a fake memory that would redirect the nausea into a feeling of nostalgia and satisfaction. I didn’t hate the tastes of cod liver oil, I loved it! It reminded me of a great time I once had with a person I loved.
Now, that this memory I created never happened and that fact was inescapable had nothing to do with the effects it had on my mind. My mind, plastic and flexible and re-writable piece of wonderment that it is, happily accepted the new procedure for what to do when encountering cod liver oil. Instead of not enjoying it, I chose to enjoy it, and as a result I did.
When I eat cod liver oil now, it brings to mind three things: the memory of creating the memory and sharing it with Melissa (happy!), the fake memory of the trip to Alaska and the enjoyment of exciting Eskimo cuisine complete with bizarre made up details that I have filled in myself (happy!), and the idea that my reactions to everything I encounter are entirely up to me, once I recognize that my reactions are open to being set and reset ad nauseum ad infinitum (triple happy!)
Think about the power implicit in this. What could you do with your life if you realized that literally everything you thought or felt could be rewritten, and redirected into whatever experiential alley you chose?
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Case study two: Love the Police.
Whenever I am driving, and I see a cop, a part of me freezes. Gets nervous. Perhaps it’s because I’m from Los Angeles originally and the sight of a cop while driving means getting pulled over and getting a ticket. My conditioned reaction to seeing the police was to have my peace upset. Realizing this unhelpful pattern was dominating my behavior I set out to change it.
Starting several months ago, whenever I was driving and saw a cop, I would wave or give them the shaka. Instead of simply ignoring the police while inwardly freezing up a bit, I forced myself to be gregarious.
“Ah ha! A policeman in a squad car! My friendly friend! My helpful friendly officer friend. The police are here to help.” this was the sort of thinking that I forced myself to engage in while smiling and waving at the police. That they never waved back made no difference at all.
For a while, I would be driving, see a cop, freeze up inside, remember my pattern interrupting idea, and force myself to wave. It felt unnatural. It felt phony. It felt forced and stupid. But I kept at it, and yesterday a miracle happened.
I was driving, I saw a policeman in a squad car coming toward me, and I felt a rush of gratitude and happiness. I waved at the passing policeman and continued on my way. The reconditioning had worked!
“Fake it ’til you make it” is a popular phrase in the world of mind study. Feeling sad? Force your face into a grin and watch as the happy parts of your brain fire and soon you feel happy. Force yourself to laugh and eventually you’ll be laughing for real. Force yourself to reconsider and redirect your feelings towards the police from fear to joy and watch as the police begin to trigger joy feelings in you.
I did the same thing with tailgaters! When people tailgate me now, I pretend that they are my friends and their car has broken down and I am towing them. Instead of feeling frustrated when people drive on my tail, now I feel a bit sad when they pass me.
Training, puppies, training. I have treated my own mind like it was a new dog and I am astounded to see that it is quite capable of forgetting old patterns and replacing them with new ones that I like better and serve me more. I can teach my mind new tricks and the end result is that I am happier.
Every single facet of my reality is up to me to control. Every single thing. How nuts is that? Even more nuts is that I am not some sort of special case. We all have this gift. Most of us will not realize it or utilize it because we are never told that it exists, and we are never taught how to utilize it. You have the same power of mind that I myself have. You can take any external stimuli and train your mind to react to it in any way you see fit.
Our culture conditions us to feel and think certain ways about the world, but once we realize that this is so, we can examine and change any pieces of conditioning that we feel no longer serve our peace and happiness.
Got an unhappy past? Change the story to one of your triumph over adversity, with all your former enemies and tormentors recast as zen masters and teachers. Change the story in your mind and observe that your body will respond accordingly. That statement may strike you as offensive and elitist, but that’s your choice isn’t it? My words are neutral. You decide how to feel about them.
The conditioned separated ones will be upset by this information, and the flexible united ones will use this trick to make their entire existence one of joy and peace. Which side would you like to be on?
The search for enlightenment boils down to this: enlightenment is inside you, in the form of a chosen set of responses to the outside world. If Buddha would just smile and enjoy a nice long sit in a thorn bush, then you and I can train ourselves to enjoy the same thing. We can tell ourselves that the thorns that pierce our flesh are actually loving kisses, or the tickling of butterflies. Or we can tell ourselves that we love the feeling of thorns in our flesh, that it reminds us of wonderful, happy things.
We can choose anything and everything to enjoy, especially the things that our culture has told us to feel negatively towards: sickness, death, poor people, rich people, women, men, other ethnicities, other people’s sexual preferences, religion, the military. We can enjoy or loathe these things at our convenience. But to loath them, indeed, to loath anything, without understanding the mechanics behind why you feel that way, is a waste of a good mind. Your mind has better things to do.
We can use any trick we like to remake the world, but it always starts with remaking ourselves.
Love,
Jackson
p.s. Here’s an earlier SF post about how I taught myself to pee on command.
Full seven acre proposal to be built over the next few years.
My awesome friend Evan sent me this lovely link!
A seven-acre plot of land in the city’s Beacon Hill neighborhood will be planted with hundreds of different kinds of edibles: walnut and chestnut trees; blueberry and raspberry bushes; fruit trees, including apples and pears; exotics like pineapple, yuzu citrus, guava, persimmons, honeyberries, and lingonberries; herbs; and more. All will be available for public plucking to anyone who wanders into the city’s first food forest.
What a great use of permaculture! The article goes on to say:
What started as a group project for a permaculture design course ended up as a textbook example of community outreach gone right.
For more information you can also read this article and of course, visit the Beacon Food Forest Website!
Also, I found this movie through their website! Yay plants! Plant power!
A comment from Jackson on my last post, regarding creating sacred spaces in everyday life:
This is fantastic, Drake! The question I ask myself is: How big can I make my sacred space?
Can it be bigger than a room? Could it be the whole house? Could it be the whole street? Could it be the planet itself? Could I stretch out really far and contain the entirety of the Universe within my sacred space?If I did that, I would reside within my sacred space forever.
A reply, in three parts:
I. IMAGINATION EXPERIMENTS
You are in your backyard, an open winter’s plain, with a camera in hand, and a spindly birch stands alone before you. A sparrow flies to a far branch and begins to tweet, and you turn your head to the stimuli. The angle of vision shifts. Light and shadow form a new composition. “Snap” goes the shutter.
It’s the high summer. You are lying in bed, looking out the window to the same tree. Feeling hot, you switch on the fan above you. You look again at the cedar, now full and green. Coolness on your face brings your attention back to the fan. You look up, and follow one blade’s spin, slowing its orbit with your concentration.
That fall, standing in line at the grocery store, you are a bit bored. You need to get home, and the fluorescent lights give you a headache. Your jaw tightens. The cashier is taking too long, and the little kids up anew spots ahead are getting annoying.
Or, rather, you catch yourself growing annoyed, blink well, and exhale. You breathe down into your soles, let your arches rest, and feel the ground beneath your toes. Frustration melts into relaxation, and the environment shifts: the lights illuminate, the cashier is thorough, and the children’s whimsy delightful.
Light and shadow recompose. The blade slows.
A smile alights on the corners of your mouth.
II. PHENOMENOLOGICAL CONFESSIONAL
When I was a boy, I played lots of video games. I remember, in my early illiteracy, begging my sister to read to me the text of RPGs. As with many of my ilk, the screen, I think, shaped the way that I relate to myself.
I remember standing in front of the bathroom mirror, one of those places of childhood epiphany, and touching my face, thinking, “this is my body, this is the one I get.” I had, through the analogy of SEGA, thought of my body as something I was “playing,” the character given for this life.
Using myself as an example, I tend to identify with the witnessing screen of my consciousness, rather than this body, as me. And, contrarily, I tend to see others as their bodies; it takes consideration to realize that in this other collection of parts lives a consciousness, with a history of breakups and best friends and ice cream preferences. Unexamined, I harbor a frayed mind/body dualism: I am only my mind, they are only their bodies.
Descartes would suggest that this consciousness and this body are running parallel to one another, and do not intersect. This seems silly, as this mind and this body are constantly interacting. When I hit my head on something, consciousness knows it too.
Going back to childhood, the screen conditioned me into a mediated identity. There was the subject, consciousness, and the object, the body, which have a mysterious degree of separation. We often talk of “having” a body, but rarely of “being” a body. Perhaps this is a reason that so many, including myself, tend to neglect, or even harm, our bodies, which are somehow so far away. But it is in the body that the consciousness is in the world. Rather than being mutually exclusive, mind and body are mutually inclusive.
Our bodies are constantly communicating with us. “Listen to your body, listen to your body.” But what is it saying, and how do I listen? Most obvious is “HUNGRY” and “SLEEPY!” but what are the less obvious elements, the tension in the shoulders, the pull in the hamstrings, saying to us?
A teacher once told me that all body tension is emotional. And with meditation and yoga my incredulity had eroded. It seems that it is a sensitivity to these feelings that is needed to udnrstand them. It is a though my body is a class of students, and each part wants to be called on to say what happened over the weekend. That tension, or that peace, radiates in consciousness, and out into our surroundings. The mind is manifest in the body, the body manifest in the mind.
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Relationship is everywhere, and everywhere we are shown ourselves. The other reveals us … The whole always throws the parts into relationship, polishing the mirrors. What we see happening in the external drama we can be sure is part of ourselves. It is said that a cow walked across the entire city of Baghdad and saw only some hay that had fallen off a wagon. Likewise, some people travel all around the world and report back that everyone tried to cheat them.
Coleman Barks’s commentary, The Essential Rumi.
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III. CONSCIOUSNESS AND ENVIRONMENT
When first laying eyes on the Himalayas, or Monet’s <em> Water Lillies </em>>, one may emit a soft “ah,” a soft vocalization of placid awe. This awe extinguishes anxiety, and the conscious mind rests on the beauty it beholds. Correspondingly, the body relaxes and releases. For a moment, the “I” and its projected barriers are gone, and consciousness is unseparated from its environment. The lover dissolves into the beloved, and this is, to me, the essence of sacred experience.
What is important to keep in mind is that consciousness does not exist somewhere else; the phenomena we experience through our senses are not behind a screen, the mind is not mediated. The state of consciousness is reflected in the body’s posture and movement, the tension of muscles and joints, in the tone of voice, in the feeling communicated by physical touch. As well, the state of consciousness frames, or perhaps even defines, what one takes away from a particular location.
Christianity and Buddhism agree that the body is a temple. The body exudes its consciousness, and if one makes safe refuge within one’s body, the way that the druid feels in Stonehenge, or the francophile in Montmartre, the sacred space of the mind expands, and the peace of that consciousness acts as a temple blessing to all those that interact with it.
Last summer in Dharamsala I received a teaching from the Dalai Lama, and walking from his throne to his car, he turned to his right and, for the briefest of moments, His Holiness connected eyes with me, and I froze in elation; all my ideas my ideas fell down, and he turned back to his path, and I cooed and clapped in a fit of Lama-induced love-hysterics.
What is the well-spring of said swoon? How is it that His Holiness radiates radical peace, through the medium of air into me? I do not know, but I sense that in that lustrous mind of his is a calm ocean, and that serenity of consciousness is manifest in the body.
In loving, we train ourselves to love more. In perceiving the beauty of the world, we make ourselves more vulnerable to seeing the beauty that is inside us. By stepping into the quiet beauty within consciousness, and gain an appreciation for this foundation of living, we in turn open our aesthetic aperture. In the calm abiding of sensing beauty in the “screen” of consciousness, one begins to appreciate the beauty of the body. This threefold sensitivity to beauty, at the seat of consciousness, as part of the body, and within space, creates a sustainable, positive, psychological ecology, transcendent of “everywhere.”
A SuperForest.
Love,
Drake
Will Allen: The Urban Farmer from Spark Project on Vimeo.
“Eating good food and bringing people together. People forget about all their differences. Food is the one thing that binds us together…”
-Will Allen
Bill Moyers: You write in “The Mythic Image” about the center of transformation, the idea of a sacred place where the temporal walls may dissolve to reveal a wonder. What does it mean to have a scared place?
Joseph Campbell: This is an absolute necessity for anybody today. You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen.
It does seem that kindness is the door to happiness, and we would do well to remember that kindness is a graceful affection to another — as well as to one’s self. To provide a still place and time for simply existing — whether it be with a book, a piece of music, or a craft — is one of the most nourishing services we can do for ourselves. And, indeed, this allows us to relieve stress, and thus be of greater service to others.
I think of my own meditation practice. Sitting on the cushion, I rest my weight on my seat, and I feel the slow pull of tension from my groin to my knees. I balance on the cushion, equal parts peaceful and precarious. As my breathe fills my stomach, and my monkey mind begins to rest, the tension in my hips releases, quiet as a silent ripple’s song. I give the tightness to the ground. With stalactite certainty, my knees drip down to the earth. The mono- of my balancing act becomes tri-, and the base of support becomes solid. Relaxed and alert, I am, without doing, meditating.
In this way, the clumsy can become coordinated. Or, in my case, at least more so.
Was it market urgency that drove away the space of the sacred? In sacred acts, It is not even patience that takes place, for patience regards some event in the future. When the sabbath is created in our lives we allow ourselves to simply exist, to be with gentle care. It is in this way that pouring a cup of tea becomes ritual, and in the heaving half-circle steps after a long run that one is deeply alive. Sanskrit, as always, provides an apt term: shamatha, meaning calm abiding, loosely focused, the way the gardener lovingly trims the plant, or the artists brushes paint across the canvas. This is, I think, what we call grace.
There is a tenderness within us that I take to be the seat of the soul. The cup filled by the muse. Within this inside-quiet lies inspiration and possiblity beyond anything yet known; indeed, it is from the unknown inside that the new is created. We venture into uninterpreted space, and, with courage and faith and trust, are able to share our findings: in art, in conversation, in love. This, then, is the beautiful forge of creativity, shamatha awareness transforming the inner to outer.
The only thing holding us back is us. Every barrier, every border, is our own. If we are to grow, we must take full responsibilty for our prejudices: Every “I can’t” is an atrophied “I don’t.” We must face the fear at the bottom of the learning curve. We must not yield to our doubts, if we are to yield to our dreams.
Projects are daunting. They daunt; they are experts at it. The “can’t” chorus sings siren song, but the “can” camp swells with each daily drop in the bucket. The year is young. Plenty of buckets to choose from. So What is your sacred shamatha vessel, and how will you gracefully fill it?
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Number one: Figure out what you want. Do this by asking yourself A LOT of questions and listening to the answers that are returned to you. Beginning with, “What do I want?” I’ve found that simply being on the land helps me to quiet my mind. Sometimes by just sitting, other times by weeding the garden or walking silently, listening to what’s happening in my head. Then, when I receive an answer, for example, “I want to build a chicken coop,” I think about what I want that coop to look like. What are my reasons for wanting chickens? To feed my family? To feed the community? To sell? How many chickens do I have energy, money and food to raise? How much space do I have to dedicate to chickens? What materials are available to build a coop? Would I rather have a chicken tractor so I can utilize my birds for garden preparation and fertilization? Any question that I can think of, that seems important for my initial coop design, I have to remember to ask it, and listen to what comes in response.
Then, using free or cheap, found, recycled, donated, used, materials, I build Prototype A Chicken Coop. No need for expert skills, I cobble together a rudimentary first coop, get some chickens, put them in it, and see what happens. Does the cat get in and eat two of my ladies? Is it so good I don’t need to make any adjustments at all? Would I rather it have wheels for easier relocation? I observe and make adjustments. There are no mistakes, just experimenting, creating, having fun, learning and forward movement. I use prototyping for nearly all of my projects. It allows me to obverse and make decisions based on real events rather than trying to predict what will happen in the future. Here is a fantastic article SuperForester Jackson just found on Prototyping.
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Next, Land needs people. Either paid help or work/trade/live-in help. Development can rarely be done alone AND happy and quickly and cheaply. So observe the land while asking for, meeting with and inviting your specifically chosen team to come join you to live on the land. Let the grass (if there is any) grow long and tall. Observe the paths that the people create in the un-mowed grass. Plant where the people Don’t walk. Allow them to create your map for you. Trust them. You’ve chosen these people for specific reasons like, you like them, they are skilled and valuable to you and your project. Treat them as such.
I’ve now co-created land projects twice, once on two acres, currently on nine, and (fingers crossed) moving on to five. With each project, the team of people was the most integral first step after: Do Nothing. Wait. Observe. Document (photo, video, write.) If you feel you can do this alone AND cheap, you’re likely mistaken. If you’re still interested in the monetary/employment, drive to work to buy this car, buy this car to drive to work system and you’ve got a lot of money and are willing to spend it, hire some awesome peeps to help you. I’ve used the live-in, work/trade, low or no rent method for both projects and have found it to be most fulfilling for the land, the people and our collective sanity.
Figure out where you’re going to set up each camp. When you allow each team member/family their own camping spot with room to ripple out towards each other and the common areas, you will be able to observe that wherever you place a human, the land around them will get cleared and cleaned and loved from the inside out, effortlessly. Again, trust your people. Don’t micromanage. With a common goal, that one you figured out you wanted in step one, the vision will come to fruition if you communicate with and trust your people.
Water: Wells can be ideal, but take time and money. So set up some rain catchment. You can use a simple tarp/55 gallon plastic barrel system that you can run through either a natural, plant, sand, charcoal filter or a Berkey or Britta system. Also, Is there a nearby fresh spring or a stream running on the land that you can utilize?
Poop: We call our method The Tree Machine. Dig a hole about 3-4 feet deep and 2-3 feet wide. Build a simple wooden box with a toilet hole and hinged cover, and place it over hole in ground. Squat on box and poop in hole. Place dirt or, preferably dry wood chips over each poo until hole is nearly full. Remove box, fill in remaining part of hole, let sit for two weeks. Plant fruit tree over it. Repeat.
Those are the basics I’ve used for the initial phase of land projects.
Aloha!
(image via earthbagbuilding.com)
Good Mooooorning SuperForesters!
Let’s start an eco village here on the island on Kauai. Let’s come together, pool our resources, solidify an intention, and build the bugger.
Let’s find a nice piece of land here on the island, and there is much land to choose from. Let’s buy that piece of land, and camp out on it. If it has buildings we live in them, if not, we camp. We look at the land. We look at where we camped. We see the relationship between where we chose to camp, and the place where we should begin building suitable housing. Then we begin building it.
To begin, we need housing. Here in the tropics, buildings are mostly constructed of wood, which is much like building something out of popsicles in the desert. Wood, once cut down starts to degrade. If it gets wet, it degrades even faster. Bugs and mushrooms and microbes and molds, all love to eat wet wood. Building out of wood is no good. If you want to build to last in the tropics your choices are stone, or plastic.
(image via parsarts.com)
Here enters the work of architect Nader Khalili, a man who won a prize from NASA to design the lightest and most robust dwellings for use on the moon. His idea: ship long, uncut lengths of sandbag material, fill them with moon rocks, coil them up like a coil pot, and move in. Easy and fast to build, nice looking, strong, earthquake (moonquake) proof, even lava proof, for lava flows right around it, Khalili’s Emergency Dome is the perfect choice for regenerative living in tropics. Here we have plenty of earth, we have concrete to stabilize it, and we can use this model to prototype an even bigger, more robust living situation in the future. Cool in the summer, warm in the winter, open, non-toxic, friendly dwellings. Cheap too! And bugs cannot eat eco domes.
Let’s build a community based on unity and oneness as a model. What that means exactly I’m still learning, but love is a big part of it, and personal responsibility another. A SuperForest in 3D, if you will.
I base much of my ideas on two books, the Permaculture Designer’s Manual and A Course in Miracles.
The PDM says that the yield of the system is theoretically limitless, depending entirely on the creativity of the designer. Which is another way of saying that human ingenuity cannot be contained and can stack functions atop each other forever, always improving, always reducing waste and energy.
ACIM says that perception is entirely my choice. That a state of Heaven on Earth is my choice. That nothing real can be threatened and that nothing unreal exists. This book has brought me much peace of mind, much stillness, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.
A Course in Miracles says that the only choice I ever have to make is whether to live in Heaven or live in hell.
If that is so, then let us build a heaven together. Where we can heal and teach healing. That is my heart’s desire and fondest wish.
The next step is to ask yourself if you’d like to live in community, and whether or not you think that community would like to live with you. That’s a very important question. After that we get in touch via this site or facebook. With enough of us interested a discussion can take place. Discussions lead to further discussions which often lead to action. I would like to outcome of the discussions and action to be the purchase of a piece of land here on Kauai, with funds in reserve to start a media lab and document the process of creation as it unfolds.
Let’s do this thang!
Love to All,
Jackson
Photo Credit: Britta and Rebecca on Flickr
SuperForester Jenni recently sent me a few posts to share with SuperForesters everywhere, so without further ado….read on! ~SFH
Dear SuperForest!
I was so excited to discover this new Kickstarter campaign for Windowfarms! The campaign just recently ended but you can check it out right here.
I love that they exceeded their goal by so much! It is amazing that everyday people are committed to investing in green technology like this!
But wait… what is Kickstarter? What are Windowfarms?!?
If you’re new to this I’ll explain a little. As it turns out, Windowfarms have been featured on SuperForest a number of times: here, here, and here! In short, Windowfarms are vertical, indoor growing solutions that give even those with no yard or land the ability to grow at least some of their own food. They even have an online community site! And….. a TED Talk!
Our very own SuperForester Jackson is featured at 4:40! What a lovely, small, world we have here!
Happy Growing!
Jenni
Part One – The Build Up:
A meeting was held on the land to discuss the water situation. The land’s irrigation system has been working sporadically, and it was time to bring everyone onto the same page. After we’d discussed the water, the conversation turned to Thanksgiving. We all agreed that to have it on the land would be excellent, but the lack of a working oven would be a hindrance to the baking of pies and the roasting of turkeys. How to proceed without an oven?
What about an imu? An imu (pronounced ee-moo) is a Hawaiian earthen cooking technique, where a pit is dug and a fire is built. Nestled within the flames sit many pounds of carefully selected lava rocks, chosen for their many holes, which prevent the build up of pressure and their subsequent explosion. The fire heats the rocks, which fall to the bottom of the pit, and atop them go layers of banana stalks, fresh leaves, and then the food, which is then covered by more leaves, wet blankets, a tarp, which is finally covered in the loose dirt. Why don’t we just build and imu and imu the turkeys? Easier said than done, but it was agreed. We had one day to build, stock, and set fire to the imu.
Now, I had been on hand assisting on two other imu-building occasions, and I had seen an imu work and an imu not work. The one that worked yielded some incredibly delicious food, perfectly cooked, lightly smoky tasting, and falling from the bone tender. The imu that didn’t work yielded many pounds of pig sushi. Ewwwwwww. So I understood that the relationship of central importance in a successful imu is the relationship between the hot and the cold. The dance between the hot rocks and the cold stalks that provide the steam and the leaves that protect the food, and the dance between the food and the hot leaves that envelop it. We needed very hot rocks, and we needed the food to be close to them, but not too close. The search for rocks and wood was on.
If only one could just go and grab a truckload of ordinary lava rocks for ones imu, life would be so simple. But imu rocks are special. Imu rocks are what happens when lava gets frothed-up full of air, and then cools rapidly, resulting in a soufflé-like puff of a rock. Still heavy and rock-like, but now filled with air cavities, imu rocks will heat up and radiate like the volcanic basalt Kauai is made out of, but will not explode, and to ignore this fact and use regular rocks in ones imu was to invite potential explosion, injury, and trauma. The problem is that 90 percent of Kauai’s rocks are not suitable imu rocks. That leaves ten percent that are the right consistency, and of that ten percent, fully half will be no good, because the little pockets invite air and water, which speeds the decay of suitable imu rocks, and it wouldn’t do to build an imu with crumbly rocks.
I walked the bed of our stream, up and down, back and forth, searching for decent rocks and finding very few. Luckilly, we had all pitched in on the gathering of rocks, and I knew that we already had on hand maybe forty pounds that the kids and Sprouts had gathered earlier in the day. I figured to build our imu we would need approximately a hundred pounds of rocks, so I only needed to find sixty or so pounds. That still meant finding the rocks, filling my arms, hiking up the river, up the hillside to the wheelbarrow, unloading the rocks, and then repeating the process. You can see why Hawaiian families cherish and zealously protect their imu rocks, passing them down generation to generation. Gathering these little buggers represents a serious outlay of energies.
I found another forty pounds of rocks by the river, another twenty pounds scattered around the land, and still felt like we were short. By this time I was tired and hungry, so Melissa and I took a trip to a friend’s house nearby, and when we arrived there, I remembered that he had on hand a great pile of imu-quality rocks! This wonderful soul gladly provided us with eight big stones, another fifty pounds of rocky perfection. Our imu was within our grasp.
We arrived back home to find that Sprouts and Zander had done a first class job digging the imu pit. We had decided earlier that since it was Thanksgiving and the food and sharing of food was to take center stage that we would literally dig the imu right in the center of the stage in our earthen amphitheater. Sprouts and Z had done their job well and a roughly four by four foot hole was dug. To get the rocks to the stage to unload, I got the rare and wonderful pleasure of driving my truck through a thick stand of bananas and tall grass. The bananas were diseased and had to come out, but the grass was strong and maybe seven feet tall, with stalks as thick as your thumb. The day before, Sprouts and I had been laboriously hacking our way through the growth with machetes, and so it was a real thrill to apply some Japanese muscle in the form of my loyal Toyota truck to plowing a new road into the staging area.
The rocks were unloaded, and now we had a large pile of perfect stones, patiently awaiting the flames that would heat them. Earlier in the month Melissa had come across a team of men working at felling and trimming a large stand of casuarina trees. The casuarina, or ironwood, is a hardy pine that has been cultivated here on Kauai since the 1800′s when the blanco invaders found that it was an excellent windbreak, grew well in sandy and salty soil, helped prevent erosion, and burned hotter than satan’s flamethrower. The arborists had left behind stacks of fresh cut ironwood, free for the taking. Melissa grabbed a truckload full, and we stacked the logs in the sun, where they cured for a month. Ideally they would have cured longer, but they would go. I mean, you can set metal on fire if you get it hot enough. Alan had grabbed a trailer load of pallets, which are still miraculously free and can be found all over the island. Between the cut rounds of ironwood and the beautifully cured wood of the pallets, we had plenty of fuel to heat our stones.
The building of our first imu began thusly, with a flurry of cooperative preparation. By the time night was falling I found myself alone, prepping the fire. In the bottom of the pit I laid seven of the ironwood logs to act as a base and provide air flow. On top of these logs I built a tall cone of cardboard and dry palm fronds, stuffing the gaps with newspaper. By the time I got to this stage, the peeps had gotten wind that the imu was going and so there were many of us pitching in to build the structure that would be set on fire. The pallets were either smashed with a sledgehammer, or pried apart with my halligan bar, or both. Around the central cone of cardboard went a teepee of pallet wood, and around the pallet wood we leaned the ironwood logs. In every puka, or hole left open in the structure, an imu rock was stuffed. We then had a large ziggurat of wood, paper, and rocks sitting half in the pit. Sticking my arm deep inside this soon-to-be inferno, I lit the newspapers at the core and stepped back. Bright orange flame, indicative of a correct oxygen-to-fuel-to-heat ratio flickered to life, and in less than a minute, the pile was entirely aflame.
Now we had a waiting game on our hands. We had to let the fire burn down to coals to properly heat the rocks. But how long would this take? It was now about nine o’clock at night. Let’s come back in two hours, said I. We all agreed to meet back up in two hours to put the food in the oven. I walked up the hill to the house that Melissa and I share, where we watched a documentary. Well, I watched the documentary. Melissa fell promptly asleep. Two hours later I walked down the hill to see that the fire was still burning strong, nowhere near a glowing bed of coals. It would take another hour at least. This message was dispersed and back up the hill I went to try to snooze for an hour. An hour and a half later, I stumbled back down the hill to see that we were getting close to being ready to assemble the food and leaves. The only problem: I was alone. To properly build the imu meant that the food had to be prepared, ti and banana plants cut and assembled, blankets soaked, tarp put in place, and then dirt shoveled on top. It was a lot of work left to do, it was now past midnight, and I was tired. I’d been going strong all day. Oh well, I thought. Maybe next year.
I sat under the stars watching the fire burn down, and a car pulled up. It was Jesse and Jessica returning from a late night grocery store run! As we three stood together to survey the fire, none other than Sprouts walked up! He had spent the last hour and a half defrosting and seasoning the turkeys. I had been sleeping and then thinking slightly bitter thoughts, and Sprouts had been awake, working his little red butt off. I was inwardly ashamed at my selfishness. But now I had the chance to make all right, for we had an imu to assemble! As the last of the flames burnt down, Sprouts and I finished the preparation of the turkeys. Jesse and Jessica gathered banana and ti leaves. I ran into the dark night with my machete and harvested a few fat breadfruit from our trees. The milky white sap of the breadfruit ran like tears of joy at being included in the feast. The stars were shining. The weather was perfect. No moon, but no rain either, and warm lovely breezes to comfort and support the spirit.
Jesse used a long handled metal shovel to level out the now glowing dull red imu rocks along the bottom of the imu pit. I used a machete to slice banana stalks into rounds and then quartered each round length-wise. The banana plant is really a giant underground rhizome, and what we think of as banana trees are just its stalks and flowers. To keep its stalks rigid, the banana rhizome pumps them full of water, and it is the water in these stalks that we would use to cook our food. On top of the sizzling hot rocks went the long strips of dripping wet quartered banana stalk, and steam immediately began hissing up into the night air. On top of the stalks went banana leaves in a nest shape to make a nice cooking platform. Into this nest, we tucked our food: two huge turkeys seasoned with sea salt, curry powder, rosemary, onions, garlic, and coconut oil. Next to, on top, and around the turkeys went the five breadfruit, whole heads of garlic, whole onions, sweet potatoes, yams, red and russet potatoes, and beets. On top of the food we carefully laid ti leaves, then banana leaves. On top of the leaves went the blankets. Melissa and I had two Mexican blankets that we donated to the imu endeavor, and these I soaked in the shower Jesse had built near the green house. Jesse, Jessica, Sprouts, and I each grabbed a corner of the first blanket, and we said a word or two of thanks for this incredible opportunity. Then we lay the blanket down to further trap the hot steam within. Then the second blanket went atop the first. Over both blankets we laid a folded white tarp. Then with hands and shovels, the four of us covered the tarp with dirt; first the edges, and then the center. Saint Turkocious had been laid to rest in their underground sarcophagus.
The food was in the ground. We had done it. We now had twelve hours to kill while the food was gently steamed. At roughly two thirty in the morning we all sat, cheerily exhausted, in Jesse and Jessica’s camp, smoking victory bowls, and sipping victory beer. Goodnights were said, and we all toddled off to our respective bedding. Before going to bed, I jumped in Jesse’s shower to rinse the sweat and smoke off of my tired self. To walk, clean, cool, and naked, up a grassy hill in the starlight, with an underground oven full of food behind you, and the knowledge that you’d helped assemble it, is a sweet feeling. My head was full of goodness as I lay it down on the pillow next to Melissa’s sleeping form. And then, guess what? Neither of us could sleep. We were both wide awake at three AM, giggling and perky. Curses.
Part Two – The Eat Down:
I woke up when Melissa got up, around daybreak, to feed the chickens. But then I promptly went back to sleep. Around ten AM I got back up, made coffee, and began thinking seriously about getting back in bed. I was groggy, a little sore, and not entirely sure I wasn’t dreaming. The night before had been a strange one, rest-wise. Melissa and I usually go to bed when it gets dark, around 8:30 in the Winter time. To have been up, then down, then up, then down, then back up for two hours of concentrated effort, then wide awake in bed, then asleep, was a recipe for confusion. What day was it? When did yesterday end and today begin? I had missed the demarkation line. Luckily, I had the help of my good friends caffeine and THC to help steady the good ship JacksonSauce. I smoked, sipped coffee, puttered, and lazed until about well past noon. Bliss.
Finally, it was two thirty PM. The imu had been imu-ing for twelve straight hours. The food was either cooked or we had a problem on our hands. There entered a period of great discussion as messages were relayed back and forth from the imu pit, where I stood hungrily waiting to open the oven, and the kitchen, where Cathy and her girls were cooking up their own morsels. Consensus was split. I wanted to open the oven, and eat now, in anticipation of the other food being ready in an hour or so, and others wanted to wait to open the oven so that all the food could be eaten together. My reasoning was that if the food in the imu wasn’t cooked, then to wait would be folly, because if it was indeed underdone, we needed to know about it ASAP. If the food in the imu was done, however, we could eat some of it, and save the rest for when the remainder of the food had cooked, meaning we’d get to eat twice. Win win, thought I. In the end, the decision was reached to wait until six o clock to open the oven, so that everything could be eaten together. Dismayed, I set to trudging up the hill, with visions of a quick Jackson and Melissa dash to get fish tacos in my head. But then a miracle occurred! Suddenly and without warning, opinions suddenly experienced a full reversal.
It was decided that the imu would indeed be opened, and the food within used as human fuel to finish the cooking process, and we would all eat again at six-ish. Victory!
We gathered around the imu, where Jesse and I had already scraped away the top dirt, and removed the tarp and blankets. The top dirt covering the imu had been very, very, hot; a good sign. Together, using tongs, sticks, and quick fingers, we all peeled back the leaves covering the food to find…
Heaven.
Steamy, fragrant heaven.
There! A sweet potato! Hiding in a corner! Grab it! Eat it! How did it taste? Perfect. Phew! Relief. But how were the turkeys? When Zander and I had attempted to perform a coordinated grab on turkey one, him tonging the neck area and I tonging the rear cavity, with the intention of lifting the entire bird onto a waiting platter, something wonderful happened. As we both lifted upwards, the turkey’s breasts and wings had fallen completely off! The meat was falling off of the bone. Cooked perfectly. Better than perfectly. I had never before experienced a turkey tasting this good. It was hot, moist, salty, spicy, smoky, and much of it “accidentally” fell into my mouth on its way to the table. We used tongs and fingers to unload the contents of the imu onto a ti leaf covered folding table, first the vegetables, and then the turkeys.
This was no pork sushi, my friends, this was turkey perfection! The hot rocks had super-heated the airless cavity in which the food had sat, cooked it, and then cooled it just so, allowing us to gratefully retrieve it. The imu had worked flawlessly. The Hawaiians knew what they were doing. The ancient ways were wise ones and were perfectly suited to our needs. Thank you, ancient wisdom, and thank you to the many minds it took to accumulate and pass on that wisdom.
We unloaded the feast onto the table, and many hands tore into it. Potatoes were eaten. Garlic cloves were squeezed out of their skins into awaiting mouths. Onions were peeled and slurped into smiling faces. But the main event were the turkeys. The perfectly perfect turkeys. White meat steaming. Dark meat smoky and snappy. Each bite a plunge into an ocean of turkey.
The fact that so many people had worked so hard to pull the meal off was not lost on me, and it made the taste that much sweeter, the calories that much more rewarding. I had made my first ever batch of pickles a few days before, using cucumbers picked by Sprouts, grown here on the land by so many people, in gardens created and tended by so many others, using ingredients created and assembled by still countless other folks. These, and every other item on the table was the same. Each morsel represented so much love and care and attention. Beyond slow food, this was ancient food. Going back to the sunlight that had grown the trees that heated the rocks, and then the creation of the very rocks themselves, five million years in the past. Many hands had worked very hard to allow this moment be born.
So much effort resulted in so much deliciousness! I ate myself silly, then showered again and went up to my house to change into evening clothes. I wanted to be warm. I wanted nothing more than to eat until I passed out in the long grass, and sleep the night away. We had an hour to pass before dinner proper would occur. Now in long pants and a sweatshirt, I gathered up my necessaries: peace parsley, pipe, lighter, water bottle, fresh beer. I walked down the hill, refreshed, renewed, and ready to eat again soon.
Down in the amphitheater, my ohana was waiting. I plonked alongside my possessions into the grass and was surrounded by my friends. Musical instruments appeared, and an inter-galactic jam began. The food waited on the nearby table, covered to keep it warm and protect it from the flies. We smoked, drank sips of cool beer, played music, and laughed. There was a turkey and victory induced giddiness in the air. We had done it! We had gone without Babylonion cooking methods right back to the roots. An earthen oven. Hot stones. How much more roots can one get besides just eating the bloody fresh bird? We had challenged ourselves and won. Deliciousness was our reward.
The rest of the food came out from the kitchen and joined us. We all stood and held hands in a circle around the food. There were perhaps twenty five of us? Thirty? It was hard to tell. I was turkey-drunk and my vision was rose-colored and fuzzy. I was surrounded by many children, happy parents, those of us still childless, and knowingly smiling dogs. I said a few words of thanks, for the people assembled, for all the work that went into the creation of the food and the moment, for the land that sustains and contains us, and gives a frame to our efforts. Alan said a prayer of thanks. Angela thanked Jesus and prayed that we would one day own the land, and then she too blessed the food.
We began our dinner proper then, using ti leaves and huge collard greens for plates. Alan and I rekindled the fire in the imu pit, and used it to dispose of the steamed banana and ti leaves, plus the bones from turkey one, so that the dogs wouldn’t eat ALL of them, and to keep the flies and bugs away. The fire snapped and cracked merrily and people sat down in little grassy nests, eating and laughing together. Many trips were then made from grassy nest to table to re-fill leaf plates, and then back into the snug nests to eat, and eat, and eat.
I must be honest; I had been well prepared mentally to do without. To suffer a bit of longing for food stuffs I’d appreciated during Thanksgivings-past. I was prepared, oh my friends, to eat hippy food. Cold lentil wraps. Tempeh logs. Sprout salad. And then to bed. I was prepared for this. Secretly, in the dark reminiscent tunnels of my heart, I longed for white fluffy dinner rolls. Ham, sweet ham. Lagoons of sweet cranberry sauce. I was happily prepared to go without any of these luxuries and simply enjoy whatever foods happened that day. I would simply treat Thanksgiving as though it was any other day, and be thankful that I was being fed at all.
But, genie-like, everything my heart had hoped for was there! Jessica made the lagoon of cranberry sauce I so desired. Kelly Joe made a gloriously sweet ham and sweet corn dish, and the white fluffy rolls I would have never told anyone I wanted were there in a basket, nestled next to miniature croissants. Did I mention dessert? We had pumpkin pie, we had pecan pie, we had cakes, we had fresh whipped cream, we had raw, vegan chocolate pudding. We had everything I had secretly wanted and SO MUCH MORE. The Universe had read the lines written on my soul and had provided all the ingredients for a nostalgia-filled feast.
The sun began to set. Bella Dottie, the new farm puppy, lay asleep on Melissa’s sarong; whimpering sleepily and happily, her little belly distended with food. Our visitors began to pack up in preparation for leaving. Leaf plates, bones, napkins, and flotsam disappeared into the fire, and the land was clean again. The remaining food was consolidated, carried back to the kitchen in a wheelbarrow, and there prepped for storage. Melissa and Kelly Joe did the dishes. Alan and I sat at the picnic table and concentrated on breathing.
It was far and above the most memorable and rewarding Thanksgiving I have ever experienced. Was it because this was the first time that I had ever seriously cooked a Thanksgiving meal? In the past I had simply shown up at the appointed time, held hands with my family, and then dived in to whatever foods had been assembled. At this Thanksgiving meal, every item of food on the table told me a story about the person that brought it and the process by which it had come to be. There was a knowing involved in this meal that made being thankful for it easy, obligatory even. Was this Thanksgiving different because Melissa and I were hosting it? We had found this land, and opened it up to the other families. In a way all were there because of us. And further, we were there because of the largesse of the land owner, whose faith and trust in us had allowed everything to assemble. And the fact that I was able to engage with the land owner was thanks to my parents and their faith in me.
My thoughts drifted back through time, thinking of all of the strange little events that had lead me to the land known as One Love Gardens. I thought of Zero One, and Jesse, and the then upsetting idea of shutting down that chapter of my life. I thought gratefully how none of this could have began unless that chapter had ended. I thought of my parents and my family and my old friends and life in New York and Los Angeles. How different was this life, yet how similar. The delightful contrast between my old life and my current one was one facet of my gratitude and glee.
I think that in the end, to clumsily try to put feelings into words, and thus remove them twice from reality, it was the gestalt of all of it together that pleased me so much. The knowledge that I came from a wonderful past, and was in a wonderful present. The knowledge that if I had to, I could make a very effective oven out of sticks, stones, dirt, and leaves. The knowledge that I was surrounded by bright, capable, generous people, who also came from wondrous pasts and who also shared in the appreciation of the present. I have no idea what the future holds, but if the present is any indicator, the future will be one of delicious togetherness, full of great food, relaxed good will, unhurried meals, no trash, and a great deal of reliance on ones skills and ones friends and neighbors.
For we all worked hard to make Thanksgiving the great day that it was. No one person could be thought of as the prime mover for the cornucopia of deliciousness that the day represented. We all gladly bore the responsibility for perfection, from the oldest human to the youngest puppy. From the oldest lava rock, to the freshest new ti leaf.
I have more to be thankful for than words can ever convey. I am so in love with life. Thank you for reading this, and sharing the experience with me. If these words do not tell the story in as much detail as you’d like, stay tuned to see it all on an up-coming episode of CoconutLand.
Love from Kauai.
-Jackson
p.s. A large leak in the irrigation was located and capped. Water service is back at fully awesome. Thank you’s to Sumi and Eitaro for their vigilance.
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