About an hour and a half drive from San Christobal into the rural hills of Chiapas, I visited a permaculture farm called Ha O Mek Ka (translation: Alpha to Omega), in a town called Tzajala . The farm, founded and run by Sylviane, a permaculturist originally from France now married to a native of Chiapas, was started in the 1980s, years before the Zapatista revolution. Because of the time invested, Sylviane's foreign origin no longer casts her as an outsider, and fore

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At the southern end of Waterfront Park in Corvallis, beyond the skate park, a small shaded grassy area provides bicyclers and pedestrians with a place to rest. The park is oddly shaped, its east and south boundaries created by the confluence of the

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My second blog, Northern Baja and the Mexican Revolution, offered a brief history of the Mexican revolution of 1910, lead by Emiliano Zapata in support of agrarian reform and indigenous rights. Journeying to the southern-most state of Mexico, Chiapas, revealed a side of Mexico where the Zapatista movement is still very much alive.

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I've put up a site for social networking for permies. It's not intended to compete with this site, but to complement it. Check it out: http://www.plantworking.com

As a teenager, I read Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, which sparked my interest in my own family’s experience with the Dust Bowl. I heard from my parents that my grandfather came to California during the Great Depression, but I never heard any details about the experience directly from him. I caught my grandfather one evening after Thanksgiving dinner and asked him about Oklahoma.

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Take the challenge!!! These are the final take home exam essay questions for the Spring 2010 Permaculture Design and Theory class at OSU (intro non-certificate class):

1) Beaver State Permaculture has recently been given a very large sum of money to distribute as grants to students. You can apply for up to 5 million dollars to create your ideal Permaculture system in any climate on Earth. Please explain where you would choose to go, what the major design strategies of that climate are, and how… Continue

Don't miss it! Blooming now(making it easy to find)...with all the rain we've been having you can still transplant a few to your garden.

http://dzonoquaswhistle.blogspot.com/2010/06/wild-columbineor-bengay-of-woods.html

The native Indiam Plum is a great addition to my forest garden. More here...

http://dzonoquaswhistle.blogspot.com/2010/05/indian-plumosoberry.html