Thaw

When we tell people that this was our first midwestern winter they assure us, "They're not usually this cold/bad/long." It was a long winter.

Until very recently (today, yesterday) it continued to feel like winter despite the passing of the spring equinox. There was evidence of the coming warmth: most of the snow was melting, the maple tree out back had tight clusters of buds on its branches, there were more birds singing, and most of the ice fishing shacks disappeared from the Fox River.

Now the maple tree has larger buds, the river is thawed, there are more birds calling, and this evening I saw in our neighbor's yard some irises are poking out sharply under leave litter. The ground is soft with melting snow. It is an odd expectant time. The longer days help lighten our hearts. As do the rising temperatures.

The lingering piles of plowed snow. I kick at them to break up the ice and help them melt faster.

Tsyunhehkwa

Last week I got to join a group of Wisconsin gardeners, land stewards, and others to tour Tsyunhehkwa, the organic farm, commercial cannery, and natural retail store of the Oneida Nation. It is an impressive operation. I'll plan to return in the fall for their annual White Corn Harvest and Husking Bee. In addition to traditional white flint corn and cash crops, the farm includes herds of Black Angus cattle, buffalo, and an apple orchard that sells to two local retailers and holds pick-your-own hours.

In addition to the thrill of seeing buffalo (in the distance) and getting out in the winter landscape, it was great to get to meet some of the people on the tour. Among them Abby, an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer who heads up several Community Gardens with the Brown County UW-Extension Office and Gretchen and Jazz of Milwaukee's Victory Garden Initiative. Hooray for northeastern Wisconsin land stewardship and women who get things done with land and communities!

In these days when the cold feels relentless and the darkness long it is uplifting to see programs like Tsyunhehkwa and to get to meet people such as Abby, Gretchen and Jazz. It's the promise of warmer weather and future growth. 

Program manager Jeff Metoxen talks to the group about the farm.

Landless Gentry

Several months ago I received an interview request from Willi Paul, new mythologist, permaculturist, and other  -ists that I'll let you define after checking out his work. It is a) exciting when people I don't know directly learn about and express interest in this project and b) great to have smart people ask challenging questions about this work. One of the things Mr. Paul asked was, and I paraphrase, "What about Land Scouts who don't have a garden?"

Our garden-- before things started freezing.

Yes, indeed, what about that? You can read my answer here (as well as the rest of the interview), but the short answer is: you have the land wherever you are and wherever you are is your land. As more and more of us become urban dwellers, the odds are that we won't have access to the acreage or even the square footage of the generations prior. And many of us are renters, perhaps unable to plant perennials. What we have is the bustling, breathing, pulsing, system-dense cities and towns in which we live. And if we're lucky we might have a patch of full sun (6 hours+) in which we can grow some plants in containers. Or not.

The point of being a Land Scout is to get to know your land. It is not necessary to cultivate a huge and beautiful garden. It is necessary only to go out and start looking and seeing. This is a good thing for me to remember as a) we have a one-year lease on an apartment and b) it is the beginning of our first winter in Wisconsin. I have a new opportunity to go out, look, and see. After a year through the seasons I hope to know this land better-- to have met the genius loci-- and to go forth from there.

She who keeps us walking daily. And a little snow.

Begin Again

I've been feeling bad about not posting here for so long. By way of explanation for that absence: we moved to Wisconsin and now I'm Land Scouting here. More on that later. For now in the spirit of new beginnings, the value of amateur naturalism, seeing familiar land anew, and a nod to the Catholic institution where I now teach, here is a poem by Mary Oliver.

Praying

It doesn't have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don't try
to make them elaborate, this isn't
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

Workshopped!

Thanks to everyone who came out to the Nashville Folk + Free Skool workshop on vermicompost and bins. Please be in touch as your bins progress and your worms (hopefully) multiply.

Thanks also to the Nashville Folk + Free Skool for their work in town. They are a great resource for the city and I look forward to seeing the project blossom. If you haven't taken one of their courses, I recommend signing up. Useful skills + fine people = a good time. The Folk + Free Skool is also a good resources for those wanting to bone up on their teaching skills. Check out their offerings and think about classes you could teach.

If you live in a mid-sized to large(ish) city chances are there's a Folk + Free Skool equivalent around. And if there's not, think about starting one. I recently stumbled upon the Trade School model and think it's one I'd like to try. Other inspiring DIY skill-based event models include Wendy Treymane's Swap-O-Rama-Rama and Peter Mui's Fixit Clinics (video below). Nashville's also lucky to have the member-based Fort Houston, which provides "creative, innovative, and technological resources for those who wish to teach & those who seek to learn." Hooray for doing-it-yourself, learning new skills, and the creative community. Amen.

Kindred Folk

Shortly after we moved to Nashville a friend sent me a link to the Nashville Folk + Free Skool and asked, "Have you seen these guys?" No, I hadn't but-- hallelujah-DIY-y'all-- what a great organization to find in a new city!

If you're not familiar with the Free Skool idea, here's my brief summary: it is a decentralized approach to education that encourages all levels and types of teaching and learning. Often held in a non-traditional location (i.e. not in an established school) and often free. The free skool model looks to its community for teachers and works to make learning accessible. The Nashville Folk + Free Skool is under the guidance of co-directors, Jenn Jameson (a folklorist) and Marie Campbell (a Divinity School student at Vanderbilt). They're smart, organized, and plugged in to a lot of great projects and people in Nashville. Check out their spring schedule here.

In fact, if you live in or around Nashville, please make plans to join me for the Free Skool workshop I'm teaching on making your own vermicompost bin, Sunday, April 28th, from 2-5 pm at the Alice Cobb Garden at the Scarritt Bennett Center. (Park in Lot B off of 18th Ave.) The workshop is free, but if you'd like to make and take home a bin to use you'll need to bring your own clean five-gallon bucket and lid or an opaque rubbermaid tub and lid. If you're getting a rubbermaid tub, go for around 14+ gallons of space. If you bring a five-gallon bucket it should not previously have stored anything toxic (like paint, fertilizer, motor oil, etc.). Please email me here: katie at urbanlandscouts.com to let me know you're coming and if you plan to make a bin.

Hope to see some of you Nashvillians out to make a bin. I'll provide the worms. Happy spring!

Repetition

In my drawing class I tell my students, "Draw every day. Draw every day." In Graphic Design we talk about the importance of the iterative process: making thumbnails, sketches, and generating multiple versions of an idea in order to refine it. If there were a Land Scouting 101 class (and wouldn't that be nice?) I would tell my students: Get outside. Look at the sky and look at the ground. Every day.

The sky and the ground are where you can see the transition from winter to spring. In my ideal world, I get outside every day, look up, look down, walk for at least 20 minutes, and THEN draw. In lieu of that world, phones in our cameras are great for jotting down the things emerging, the lines formed, and the colors changing. In that spirit, here are just a few photos from my new location.

Not from Nashville, but very genius loci -- from TIME Magazine coverage on artist documenting cultural rituals involing animals. (?)