I saw on Twitter that Ashley Colby, our
lovely guest this week from Rizoma Field School, is organsing to prevent the cutting of hundreds of beautiful trees lining the road near her home.
It seems like it's going well, and I'm so curious to know how one can organise their neighbours, and communicate effectively to the powers-that-be!
I recently had a similar issue, though so small in comparison. I was planning to cut a bunch of grasses by the road on my property to feed to my rabbits, as well as save some to harvest the seeds. I was going to shuffle around the neighbourhood to harvest the seeds from a bunch of different roadside grasses, actually, so I could make a mix, and plant it for fodder. But the very day before I was planning to harvest, they were all mowed down! On my own property! Using my own tax money! Without my knowledge or permission! I was devastated, but mostly because of a recent "trauma" where the abandoned blueberry field that borders my property was unceremoniously mowed to the ground for apparently no reason. That was one I couldn't control, because it's not my property. But this one I felt like I should be able to do something about it. I found myself wondering how I could convince my neighbours that it was a stupid waste of our taxes to pay somebody to drive around and mow down all the beautiful long grasses by the sides of all the roads, and organise them to petition against it. Unfortunately, there are a lot of lawn-mowers around here, and I'm still stuck on how to convince my neighbours that they don't need 2 acres of bare, treeless, mowed, non-native grass. But I'm new here. I have time!
So how have you reached your neighbours, and organised for the better of the land? Is it easy? What challenges have you faced?