Growing Wild

Every movement has some kind of visual identity. Every. Single. One. Now, those identities often evolve after the politics, but that’s not a rule.

Solarpunk was created as a way to directly oppose the grim, late stage capitalistic future we’ve been sold my cyberpunk for decades.

People saw this aesthetic and were able to look within it to see real change and action that could be made to get there.

Aesthetics give people something to identify with. But more importantly in this instance, they give us a collective vision to move towards.

Yes Solarpunk was an aesthetic, but no one said it ever had to stay that way. It is simultaneously our foundation and what we’re striving for.

Everyone should read Emergent Strategy by Adrienne Maree Brown

So the zucchini that I was trying to nurse along after removing squash borers from the plant's stem and blocking the fruit off after being nibbled ended up rotting its inner chamber. So no viable seeds though it almost made it.

However! Hope is not lost.

There is another.

And it's as long as and bigger around than my whole arm. Crossing fingers that nothing messes with it and it makes it to ripeness.

Looks like I'm going to have to break out the hoops and insect netting a little sooner than I was hoping, but the replacement zucchini plants (different variety) are growing very well. Only minor nibbles from pillbugs. This 100F heat wave is supposed to break Monday now (it was originally forecast for today but got extended), so I'm hoping to put it off until then.

Another dozen carrots harvested. I think that makes 5 or 6 dozen now? There's probably 3 dozen left, so I should be able to pull the rest right on time to transplant the Chinese broccoli into that bed. With its own insect netting row cover because:

The cabbage moths have attacked the kale while I wasn't paying attention. Just when I said that I was surprised that it was still doing good. Ah, well. The kale is for the chickens anyway so they'll get a bit more protein than planned...

The whole-ass broken peach tree I found in the green waste dumpster a few months back and splinted the break is doing great where I transplanted it. Has a full set of leaves at the crown and some leaves on the lower branches. I think the true test will be if the crown survives the winter.

The two mimosa saplings I started from seed and transplanted to either side of the peach tree are also doing well. I still have a third sapling still in a pot because I don't know where to put it. Thinking maybe in the spot where the azalea died? Ugh. Have to decide soon so it has time to establish.

The raised bed along the rear privacy fence is becoming jungle-like with cosmos and cannas and chartreuse sweet potato vine and blackberry canes. I love it. I think I have my preferred planting group for that spot now, though might try adding some ginger into the mix next year.

Bonus flower:

did you see they made jane prentiss from the magnus archives real

Okay, first you have to have a source of red ripe jalapeños.

If you can't buy them, you'll have to grow them. Or get given them by someone else who grew them if you're lucky.

Then you have to have either a smoker or a charcoal grill. I had a charcoal grill. Theoretically. Meaning when I went to move it out from where it's stored I found that the bottom was rusting out and the legs were falling off. But! I thought I could make it work one last time...

So I covered the bottom with slings of heavy-duty aluminum foil, made sure the legs were propped optimally, and doused the ground underneath with several buckets of water. We've had sufficient rain that all but the top inch of soil/woodchips are still very wet. I kept a bucket full of water nearby just in case.

Used the charcoal chimney to start about a dozen briquettes—just enough to support about a handful of cherry wood chips that had been soaking in water overnight. Waited until the briquettes were ashy grey and dumped them onto the bottom grate near the front.

And arranged the jalapeños on the highest cooking grate opposite the briquettes—you want them to smoke, not cook. Or at least as much as possible.

Handful of wet cherry wood chips on top of the briquettes. Wait until they begin to smoke, then close the lid.

The top vent is only open a sliver because with the foil slings the lid doesn't fit very well anyway. If you have an actual intact grill then you'll probably want to open it a bit more.

Then go do garden tasks or whatever that keep you in range of the grill so you can monitor for smoke and be sure nothing is on fire (or your janky grill collapses). In roughly 20-30 minutes, when you can't see smoke anymore, you're going to open the lid and throw another handful of soaked cherry wood chips onto the briquettes. Repeat until the desired amount of smoking has occurred. You may need to add a few more briquettes midway through. The source I looked this method up on recommended smoking for 3 hours, so that's what I did. I think it would have been fine after 2 hours though.

You can see a few of the ones closest to the heat got a bit charred after 3 hours, but that's fine. I then transferred them to my dehydrator and let it run overnight to turn them crispy instead of leathery.

My house smelled fantastic. Smoky and sweet and spicy—like barbecue sauce without the sticky.

I then removed the stems/caps (next time I'll do this before smoking...just twist them off without breaking open the pepper) and the seeds because I'm a spice-weenie.

The chickens loved the seeds. Then I ran the smoked, dried ripe jalapeños through a spice grinder. Which, since mine is old and sucks, means I also passed the results through a wire mesh strainer.

And here's the result! A bit more than half a cup of ground chipotle powder (here in a recycled minced garlic jar). This should last me quite a while (spice-weenie).

The bottom bowl is the chipotle powder, but the top is powdered red ripe poblanos. It's normally called Ancho powder but I'm not sure if that's only when the green immature poblanos are used?

Austria Fined Him and Threatened Him With Prison — His 'Weeds' Built a Mountain Paradise

In 1962, a nineteen-year-old farmer inherited a struggling mountainside farm in Austria's coldest agricultural region. Over the next three decades, government inspectors fined him repeatedly, threatened him with prison, and told him his methods were impossible.

Today, that same farm is studied by universities around the world.

This video explores the extraordinary story of Sepp Holzer and Krameterhof, one of the most influential regenerative agriculture and permaculture projects ever created. Located high in Austria's Salzburg Alps, where temperatures regularly fall below minus thirty degrees Celsius, the farm challenged conventional agricultural science by producing fruit, vegetables, and thriving ecosystems where experts said only spruce forests could survive.

Rather than following government manuals, Holzer observed natural processes. He used pigs to naturally seal ponds, created microclimates with rocks and water, built hugelkultur systems from buried wood, and developed a landscape that now includes more than seventy ponds, thirty thousand fruit trees, and one of Europe's most famous examples of ecological farming.

We break down the science behind this transformation: microclimate engineering, water retention landscapes, permaculture design, natural pond construction, soil regeneration, and how observation often outperformed conventional agricultural rules.

The fines and legal battles that made Holzer Austria's most fined farmer

The creation of more than seventy naturally sealed ponds

The transformation of a debt-ridden alpine farm into a globally recognized ecological model

Over fifty years of data show a peak in PFAS (also known as "forever chemicals") content in seabird eggs in the 90s, followed by a decrease as regulations went into effect. The most recent findings show a 70% decrease of most common PFAS.

We are making genuine progress! Producers are dramatically altering how much they use PFAS and how much gets released in effluent, but also there's a lot better understanding of how to remove PFAS from the environment!

Changes in this part of the brain were previously used to previously used to argue that women are the ideal primary caretakers of children in all cases. And apparently, it’s false. The reason they found these changes in women was that women were already the primary caretaker in almost all cases, not because there’s something inherent to women that makes them better parents.