Gearing up for propagation

Hey Classmates,

Hope you’re all enjoying yourselves this beautiful day and gearing up to do something really awesome. This morning at 9am you could join Goddess, Wendy Johnson in Point Reyes at the Dance Palace for a class on propagation. Abundant insight from Wendy, Henry, Steve and John on grafting. It feels like the we are enwrapped in endless food production, possibilities. After two weeks of grafting and over 100 trees, we can now whip and tongue like we’re experts! It’s real easy to envision the IVC F&G farm a few years down the road, brimming with bounty of apples and pears. It’s inspiring how hard working and eager to learn our class is! Despite what seems like an era of dominion over us, it is the amazing strides we make each day to simply do right, which gives us hope. Just as Wendy said in class

A Zen mind is a beginner’s mind. A Beginner’s mind is where all kinds of possibilities exist.

I read a really inspiring excerpt from “A little book on Love” by, Jacob Needleman,

“There is another half of love . There is another have of human nature and there is another half to intimate human relations. The other half is the love that helps another search for truth. What is really the missing element in our experience of love?”

Spencer gave a beautiful presentation on soil. He professed that the soil is the matrix of life which exist underground, kept in balance just as the food chain above. Functioning on a basis of mutualism and symbiosis. The bacteria in our soil, which keeps us healthy is just as important, every organism and microbe makes up the living net, matter cycles and energy flows.

• Be read the chapter on soil and compost in Golden Gate Gardening. Pam Pierce is speaking at the Dance Palace on March 20^th in the same series of classes Wendy is involved with this week. For homework complete the handout, Soil Assessment and read chapter 6 on propagation in GGG.

• I hope that some of you may have had a chance to check out the Food and Farming Veterans Fair on Friday, connecting veterans with agricultural jobs. For more information and future events go to: www.farmvetco.org

• Maggie and Luke mentioned John Wick and Peggy Rathmann of the Marin Carbon Project will be holding a workshop, Sunday, March 14 from 2:30-4:30 at the Commonweal in Bolinas.

• For more information on Carbon Seqeustration in Marin go to: http://www.marincarbonproject.org/steering-committee.php
• http://www.marincarbonproject.org/steering-committee.php

There were also some books recommended for us to look at:

• Teaming With Microbes: A Gardener’s Guide to the Soil Food Web, Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis
• Seed to Seed, Suzanne Ashworth
• Botany for Gardeners, Brian Capon