GROW BIOINTENSIVE

life is a classroom.

so this month i have been swept up (mostly by accident and pure dumb luck) into a three week course on the GROW BIOINTENSIVE Method - a method of sustainable farming/growing designed by Ecology Action (check out the link, it's really amazing).

a Californian, Jennifer, is teaching us: a select few students from each year at my school, a few outsiders from other organizations/people interested in sustainable farming, and me. Jennifer has been really helpful/generous in sharing information with me about sustainable gardening; she gave me a awesome book called How To Grow More Vegetables and today she gave me another booklet called The Sustainable Vegetable Garden, (which is a guide to starting your first veggie plot) after she found out i am interested in trying to start feeding myself by garden in college! i am also enjoying the fact that we only speak in Spanish, which is great.

the big book How To Grow... is fascinating and full of knowledge:

"...Gandhi observed that '...to forget how to dig the earth and tend the soil is to forget ourselves.' ...Voltaire ... 'The whole world is a garden and what a wonderful place this would be, if only each of us took care of our part of the Garden!' Each of us is needed. Building a truly sustainable agriculture is an essential part of building sustainable communities. As we build soils, we also build a culture made up of healthy living and effective farming, as well as enduring communities."

that's, in a nutshell, Ecology Action's basic mission - to have everyone working sustainably... and they have a lot of information on how to do it! anyone can really. =] they have a ton of literature so all their current knowledge is at your fingertips.

i'm so thrilled to have all this to learn, and i look forward to becoming more involved with the organization when i get back to the states.

for now i'm just gobbling up all i can, listening and watching and doing and smiling and trying to share it with everyone i know!

i think anyone who's interested in growing their own food should check the book out - it's got super-detailed how-tos and everything.. it's fabulous. the best part is they are very efficiency conscious in time/money/land + water use/everything!

so that's my infomercial for today.

i'll post more pictures this weekend! =]