M Ljin

What a wonderful old thread to stumble upon! I will have to listen to these podcasts. It shows us that the old way of caring for life, of being gentle in how we garden, is not something new or abnormal, but... ancient, and completely natural, and not only that but these ways are--tenuously--still alive in living memory.

I think that people always knew that the most important thing was to care for life, not to have everything controlled or in straight rows, up until "civilization" happened. It seems to me that people who are concerned with being a being in the world, with the ordinary sustenance of life--as all of our ancestors did at one point--knew that it makes more sense to meet Nature halfway rather than to expend so much extra energy on trying to control and dominate the situation.

I grow oxeye daisy in my garden as a perennial vegetable, and they are a mild, surprisingly sweet (almost like a mild stevia) green. They are also evergreen so stay fresh even during the coldest months, as long as snow is not covering the ground. I don't know what people are talking about when they mention how strongly flavored they are, and everyone around here I know says they are mild and sweet too--I suppose it could be climate or ecotype?

Where induſtry and perſeverance are joined to an upright intention, I believe, it will ſeldom be found that we have much cauſe to be diſpleaſed with the world. Succeſs, in a great degree, depends upon ourſelves ; and honeſty and exertion will, I am convinced, generally lead us to all that we ought reaſonably to hope for.

-John Graham (1764-1841), Vermont lawyer

What are publishing standards and why do we need them?

paul wheaton wrote:Some sites on the internet will publish anything that anybody submits. This is not one of those sites. . . When I talk on these forums, I am trying to nurture a style of communication that I think is good for a forum. . . a safe place for gentle souls to talk about homesteading and permaculture. . . In order to have that place, we need a strong defense against the spammers, the haters, the icky people, the trolls, the corporate trolls, the "hate in the name of love" people, etc.

That defense starts with our publishing standards.

Be nice. The rule here is simple, be nice. But what does that mean? Basically, it means being polite and respectful of others and their opinions. It means not assuming others are less than perfect because they have different ideas or do things differently.

Leave room for others' ideas and opinions. The art of disagreeing is all about the wording.
   Not nice: "You're wrong!"
   Nice: "I have a different idea about that."
   
   Not nice: "That's a stupid idea."
   Nice: "I didn't have much luck with that."

   Not nice: "Nobody does that!"
   Nice: "Interesting idea. Another possibility might be . . ."

Respect for copyright. Copyrighted material used without the original author or maker's permission is deleted. This includes links to free copies of pirated material that is protected by copyright.

Free speech and Censorship.  People sometimes think they should be able to say anything they want. They can, just not on Permies. If it violates our publishing standards, it gets deleted. Because this is a privately owned site, Permies has the right of censorship. The owner of the site, Paul Wheaton, is the one who gets to decide, and he's the one who developed our publishing standards. Our goal is to keep Permies as a positive place for constructive conversation about permaculture and homesteading.

Politics, religion, marijuana, GMOs, pesticides (and other toxic gick), justice, social justice, climate change, and other hot button subjects.  Sometimes, things like politics and spirituality are relevant to various aspects of permaculture. Or maybe someone wants to ask a question about their neighbor's use of herbicides. The problem is that people tend to have strong opinions on these topics. The discussion easily becomes divisive and argumentative, and people get defensive  and sometimes hostile. Plus, controversial topics attract trolls. The Permies solution for this is Cider Press.

Cider Press. The Cider Press is a restricted category of forums for Permies members who understand our publishing standards and know how to be nice. The requirements to post in Cider Press is to have apples and PIE (You can learn more about apples here, and about PIE here.)

The same publishing standards apply to Cider Press, with the added feature that staff can award apple cores. Apple cores means you lose apples! You can read more about apple cores and how to avoid them here.

Spammy promotions. We appreciate people who have permaculture and homesteading products, books, videos, websites, blogs, workshops, etc. to share. However, we have a spam detection system in place that will flag posts that are written in a spammy style. You can read how to promote your stuff without being labeled as a spammer, here.

Moderation issues. Sometimes, people are unhappy because we enforce our publishing standards. The place to talk about moderation, staff, or bot performance is in our tinkering with this site forum. Questions, comments or complaints about bots, staff, or moderation anywhere else on Permies will be deleted.

Probation posts. If a post is really good except for some small thing that isn't up to our publishing standards, the post is put on probation. A semi-automated PM is sent from staff explaining the problem and requesting that the post be edited to conform to our publishing standards.

That is lovely!

I was thinking now about how in some parts of the world such as China, traditional houses tend to surround courtyards. I wonder if this sort of design could surround a small food forest and protect it from wind?

My guess is that parts of Scotland could have tall, impressive forests that give shelter, given the mild, wet climate, if a forest could get established. I heard that they did have extensive pine forests but these were destroyed by human activities. I always like to see Scots pine trees that were planted and went wild; they are a cheerful, beautiful tree, and rare enough here too!

I agree with Morfydd too: there are random processes but the further out you look, the less random they seem. An enormous amount of random apparently random events, in an interconnected world, eventually results in some form of orderedness.

A video which came to mind. I don't think it explains the assertion too well, but is thought provoking. I try to work with and allow for randomness as much as possible.

As for destiny and fate--isn't that where randomness comes in? In the cracks between the knowable, it's possible that something is at work influencing things. I suppose the one word we have right now for that is "magic". Getting too far down into that realm of unknowing can lead to a special sort of madness, which unfortunately is something I've experienced. But when we allow for both worlds, our experience of reality deepens significantly.

As for alterations of reality, I also always thought that must be an exaggeration. Last year I felt a craving to eat wild (tall blue) lettuce now and then, and in a way something about the cool, fragrant, bitter taste seems rather soothing to feelings of being harrowed and worn thin. Definitely not anything of the "getting high on lettuce" variety that a friend warned me about after mentioning that it was a good vegetable, though! I think that some people expect that as an "opium substitute" it must somehow be like opium.

All this makes me think maybe it is specific for certain kinds of pain and not others. Something interesting about Matthew Wood's Book of Herbal Wisdom is how specific it gets into the mental and physical signs of which herb to use and one of these for lettuce is feeling like a cornered animal--in other words harrowed, fearful, worn thin. Sometimes these don't manifest as actual emotions but just lie as undercurrents to our situation. I think there is so much interconnection between mind and body though. Our emotions often show us what we can't know logically, and listening to our intuition can help us better understand our health from inside as a lived experience, rather than from outside as mediated by the imprecise concepts offered by language and culture.

Today the river was frozen in places. In one place a dam of ice had formed, and there was a waterfall. The river ice seems to me more interesting: all the different sorts of crystals, gigantic ice slabs, etc. that are forming. There is also "anchor ice" which I didn't know could happen, but is apparently very bad for the aquatic insect life. There were stones suspended within it. It was so strange, but I'm sure these sort of things happened all the time back in the day!

It is snowing here, but not a lot.

A lot!

Most of them are wild multiflora roses, with a few that look like some kind of native rose that were planted, though they are a wild variety. The multifloras pop up in garden beds, they climb up trees, make enormous bushes... I love the scent of them in summer when they bloom, though, and they provide lots of food for chickadees and nibbles for a human. The native roses have fleshier hips that are more substantial but not as sweet as the multifloras.