Don't Call Me Green!

There seems to be quite a buzz these days about Green Businesses. But what is a green business… one that has a recycling center for plastic bottles, or uses toilet paper with recycled content? Yeah, right! Businesses that claim to be green in this way are said to be “green-washing,” and it is so pervasive that the word “green” has very little meaning. So, maybe we can come up with a term that is more fitting.

It seems that for businesses whose sole goal is to turn a profit, it is very difficult to green up because many of the social and environmental costs are externalized, that is, they are not held accountable for. Truly sustainable businesses use triple-bottom-line accounting, where they see positive social and environmental effects as important as earning a profit. In fact, all three must exist to make the business truly sustainable. This idea is graphically represented in the diagram below.




The triple bottom line
This diagram is very similar to a graphical representation of the ethics of Permaculture. In the diagram below, the green represents the ethic “Care of Earth” which correlates to “Environmental Stewardship” in the previous diagram. The red is “Care of People” which correlates to “Social Progress.” The blue is the ethic of “Fair Share” or “Return Excess to the System” which correlates to “Economic Growth.”



Permaculture Ethics
Some people took this idea one step further. If one who starts a businesses solely for profit is an entrepreneur, someone who starts a business to benefit the environment is an eco-preneur, one who starts a business to benefit humanity is a social entrepreneur, then one who seeks to do all three is a sustainopreneur. I can’t say I really like the word, but I really like the concept that you need to have a balance of all three for it to be sustainable.

But why stop there? A business that is sustainable is one that is neutral on the earth. However, a regenerative business finds ways to renew, restore, and revitalize natural earth systems, thereby increasing its ability to provide for human needs. It is truly about care of the earth and care of people, as a means of making a profit.

So, who is an entrepreneur? An entrepreneur is “someone who creates value by offering a product or service, by carving out a niche in a market that does not currently exist.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainopreneurship ) Sounds like a Permaculturist observing the nature of a forest garden and choosing a species that offers the exact product or service that will balance the system. The article also states that entrepreneurs view problems as possibilities, obstacles as opportunities, and resistance as a resource. So entrepreneurs are seeking to solve the same challenges in business as Permaculturists are solving in natural systems or communities.

As I seek to grow and develop my new business, I don’t want to be called green. I’m going to set my sights higher than that. You call call me a “regenerative entrepreneur, and if you can call yourself that as well, I’d love to hear from you!

Financial Permaculture

I've spent the last four days at a conference focused on Financial Permaculture.  "What is Financial Permaculture?" you might ask.  Well, that was one of the things we tried to define.  In my own words, it is integrating the concepts of both finance and permaculture in order to make finance more green and permaculture more effective.  The financial guru in our corner is Catherine Austin Fitts, a former insider who saw what was wrong and tried to fix it, and in doing so realized that it was meant to be that way.  All of the poverty, death, and destruction on this earth is a result of the centralization of the financial system.  The rich continue to get richer at the expense of the earth and all the rest of its inhabitants.  Using Permaculture, we have developed methods and tools to heal the earth and re-forest the deserts, but we will never succeed if we cannot heal the financial system.  

Permaculture teaches us to solve problems creatively and strategize.  We realize that to combat centralization we must decentralize.  We must take back every county, every city, every town, and make them serve the inhabitants of those places.  To do that we must know who the players are in our financial ecosystem.  Where are the pools and flows of money in our community?  Most communities are like a leaky bucket.  Money comes in and goes straight back out again.  If people start shopping locally, the money circulates like a fountain.  

Another important aspect is banking.  For each dollar you keep in the bank, it can lend out $10.  If you keep your money in a national bank such as Bank of America, your money is used to fund projects such as coal power plants in Chile and Pebble Mine.  If you keep your money in a local bank, your money is used to fund projects that increase the health and wealth of your community.

The third thing that everyone can do to increase the wealth of their community is to vote.  Not just for the person they think will win, but for the person who has integrity and is truly looking out for the long-term health of the community.  Get involved in local politics and find out who these people are.  We need leaders that are not just looking out for their friends.

The economics of growing my own food

I will not kid myself that all the hours I spend tending my garden provide me with a lot of economic return.  I do it mostly because I enjoy the challenge and the fruits of my labors.  The tomatoes I grow myself taste ever so much sweeter than the ones from the store, even more so because I have tended so many tomato plants that have yielded not one ripe tomato.  But every year my garden gets better, more efficient as I learn.  

But besides the pure pleasure and enjoyment I am getting out of my garden, sometimes I wonder what is the monetary value of my work.  This was acutely brought to my attention last Sunday when Matt and I bought four cabbages (because the moose had eaten all of ours) and some pickling cucumbers (because we aren't very good at growing them yet) at a farm stand out in Palmer.  I love supporting our local farmers, but I almost choked when Matt handed over $27.  I felt completely inadequate as the provider of our vegetables.  So, I have started to pay more attention to what I'm eating and putting away for the winter.  

I packaged up just over 5 pounds of blanched kale (from my mother's garden because the moose ate ours.)  It took me about 5 minutes to harvest and 25 minutes to wash, blanch, package, label, and freeze it.   That is not taking into account the time it took to plant and tend the kale, which is a more complicated calculation.  A bunch of organic kale from Freddies is, what, $2.50?  So, if a bunch of kale is about a pound ( I should check these numbers) then I froze the equivalent of about $12.50.  If we pretend that it took about another half-hour of tending for those five bunches of kale, then the hourly rate would be about $12.50.  Not stellar, but it is something.  And the carbon footprint of the kale is much smaller than the stuff that comes from Cali in the dead of winter.  

Perhaps the raspberries will be more economical.  I spent about 15 minutes collecting about a pint of raspberries today.  

A Site Visit

Following up on a seed that was planted over a year ago, a small scouting party goes to explore a possible site for a Permaculture Design Certification course for next summer.  I am the pilot of the trusty new Volvo.  Sharon, fellow Permaculture Designer is my copilot, and in the back are our spiritual guide Liz and her daughter, Raquel, the animal tamer.  The weather is beautiful as we drive out to the valley, past the state fair where families are lined up with strollers to get in and the ferris wheel turns endlessly.  We turn onto a smaller farm road, and drive just past our destination.  As we turn around we see a sign on a mailbox... "The obstacle is the path."  

As we pull into the driveway of Yoga in the Valley, tranquility engulfs us.  A picture-perfect farm house, flowers everywhere, the snow peas beckoning us from the garden, "come eat me!"  We meet our hostess Tammy who is a bundle of light and energy and has a contagious laugh.  She shows us the yoga studio where we can hold the classes.  It is not huge, but peaceful.  We walk around the site, through the hayfield, by the creek, through the woods.  There is so much to talk about... where people can camp, what their hopes for the property are, which mushrooms are edible.  

I am floored by the beauty of all this raw land.  How lucky their three daughters were to grow up with all of this.  It is no accident that they all decided to study environmental science and education.  Tammy and her husband Mike are at a turning point, they are sending their youngest off to college and need to figure out what to do with all this property and their big house.  They are thinking of making it into an eco-village.  The big house could be the common house, and many smaller homes could be built around it, with thriving gardens and a community aspect.

A permaculture design on this property would be ideal.  Drawing people into the project and possibly even having work parties to implement some aspects of the design.  Mike and Tammy don't know that much about Permaculture yet, but it as if we have all been sent there to help them achieve these dreams.  We arrive on their doorstep with the right information just at the time that they need it.  And they provide us with the space to help others feed their hunger for knowledge.  Some might say, "the obstacle is the path."  In Permaculture we say, "the problem is the solution."

Marriage

Ok, ok, so I kind of skipped over a very important event in my life that happened almost two months ago: I got married to the love of my life, Matt.  

The wedding was more beautiful than I ever could have imagined.  We were married on the beach by our good friends, Margi and Scott, with our parents standing in support behind us.  The sun was beaming down on us as a black rain cloud threatened, making the backdrop of the tall mountains across the fjord even more dramatic.  Our friends KB and Emily sang the song "All You Need is Love" by the Beatles.  Matt's mother read a poem.  Matt and I exchanged vows and rings and a kiss.  The rain blessed our marriage as we ate elk kabobs under the tent.  The amazing food was generously prepared by our friend Sarah entirely from scratch.  We cut the cake, lemon-raspberry, with real frosting, and had a champagne toast, and then the band played.  We danced, sang, played games, laughed, and hugged, surrounded by all the people most important to us in life.  All the stress and work of putting together this event was gone, we were married and we were happy.

I can't tell you exactly how it is different, but I love being married.  It is somehow comforting to know that we will be together no matter what.  Other people now know the strength of our commitment to each other as well.  Every time I look at my ring, I think about the symbolism of the circle, and I know that Matt and I are in for an amazing ride.  

Moose Battles

It's after midnight and Matt and I are cuddled up on the couch when we hear a flowerpot crash to the ground.  I jump up and run to the window and there is a huge cow moose in the middle of my garden with a big leaf of kale in its mouth.  I run outside and I'm yelling at her, but she doesn't want to leave... there are too many tasty treats in the garden.  I pick up some wood chips from the path and throw them at her, but instead of scaring here away, it looks like she wants to charge me.  Matt comes out and the two of us convince her to move on.  But she runs around the house and comes back into the garden behind the house!  She really wants our goods!  I put a ladder across the back to keep her from going in that way, and pull out the fencing we had up over the winter to keep them away from the fruit trees.  Matt is trying to help me but he is quite sleepy and the whole thing is starting to feel a bit like a bad dream.  

The moose seems to be gone, so we go off to bed.  I toss and turn, thinking about my precious vegetables and all the hard work we have put into them.  Just after we drift off to sleep, we are woken up by a loud CRASH... the ladder in the back, the moose had returned!  She is scared off  by the crash and she runs off, so I go out and put the ladder back up.  I see that she has eaten all the cabbage in the back, unfenced garden.  What was I thinking, planting it there?  We just have not seen any moose this year or last, and we are letting our guard down.  

I go back to bed but I sleep with one ear open, listening for any sound of the moose returning.  In the morning we get up and with sleepy, disbelieving eyes, we see that she got through our shoddy late-night fence.  She had a gourmet late-night buffet of beet greens, chard, kale, cabbage, broccoli, lettuce, and even young birch leaves.  I wimper and Matt hugs me.  I pick up the tiny young beets she so carelessly left on the ground.  I right the garlic she trampled on her way to the cabbage.  What about our sauerkraut we were so looking forward to making this year?  What will Matt eat for breakfast?  I feel sick to my stomach.  How could we let this happen?  

Only in Alaska do we have to deal with the world's largest herbivore.  One that can wipe out an entire garden in a late-night snack.  It takes an eight foot high fence, minimum to keep these guys out.  And it has to be strong, as we found out.  We did discover what moose don't like to eat, however.  Mustard greens, tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, squash plants, herbs, and parsnips.  And we were very lucky she didn't find the fruit trees.  Today, construction of the fence continues, and this time, she is not getting through!  

the garden lifestyle

You can't procrastinate in a garden.  Especially not an Alaskan garden.  A long, leisurely summer compressed into three months, accelerated by the long days and moderate temperatures.  You can practically see the grapevines climbing, the strawberries ripening, the zucchini popping out of nowhere.  The life-cycle of the seed popping from the earth, blossoming, rushing to set seeds before winter gets here.  Like the maddening tick-tock of the clock, the garden grows and grows.  Weed today because tomorrow it will be out of control.  Miss the spinach at its prime in the morning and by the afternoon it has bolted.  Seeds won't grow if they aren't planted.  You said you meant to pick the strawberries?  Too late!  The birds beat you to it!

Like all of the best things in life, a daily dose of gardening keeps me and the garden healthy.  Eating, drinking, exercising, journaling cannot be crammed into one day of the week.  They all have to be a part of my lifestyle.  It is a great way to live, connected to the rhythms of the earth and the cycles of the seasons.  I begin and end each day with a walk through the garden, checking on the progress of everything.  I harvest what is ready, pull some weeds and make notes of longer projects that need to be done.  I eat from the garden, I read about the garden, I even dream about the garden.  And tomorrow I'll do it all again.