The Whimsical Garden Perusal

A home for Whimsical Gardens

2009-06-11T16:56:00.000-07:00

June 11, 2009

Home on the garden

to define simple objectives.

our place.

a wreck of a building, restorable workshop, a canning kitchen.

2 acres of rested land, streams, lots of trees,

wild turkeys

deer, dozens kinds of birds.

Baltimore Orioles, Cedar Wax Wings.

Abandoned fruit trees.

A dozen different crops we can simply tend,

restore, harvest and market without planting anything new.

Long silences in the Garden.

surrounded by abandoned fruit farms, old barns and houses.

we arrive with construction, trades and farming skills

seniors in gardening atmospheres.
"hortico-therapy" for fun and canning adventures.

granmas in the kitchen

First soil tests,

reading the vegetation,

the medicinal and cooking herbs,

the salveagable fruit trees,

planning raised beds,

high tunnel and mini greenhouse frames.
an old pickup truck.

One we can fix ourselves

to haul manure from the horse farms, old hay,

salveagable lumber from the falling apart buildings in the area.

Lands was once 85 % of Ontario's food

now subdivisions, strip malls, casinos, expressways,

mansions , golf courses

an unconscious species

so dysfunctional

the opportunity to be useful

a whimsical affair.
Mongrel Puppies back on the land.

****

in global brain internet attention deficit disorder
a simple dream of gardening
at odds with ruling paradigm of "real estate".
where to start?
the simply defined gardener
to unravel the personal questions

to stay sane and moderately rational
family realities in the unfolding world
the Gordian knot of language and action
redesigning the family wheels of togetherness
in age of rampant individualism
the conflict of values not acknowledged in politics.

the shock and awe
the dereliction of duty
in the lush farmland
the wanton destruction of pastoral realms.
memory of what was

measures and details the forensics of the slaughter

seeking a removed but passionate perspective

of experientially challenged professional class

in full dissonance

a species at odds

with the planet

a species with god gifted genetic genius pool

the SangReal unfolding.

Whimsical Gardening: with Intent

2009-04-14T21:21:00.000-07:00

Update:

The Tiny Farm objective :moments to pause, reflect on directions, the curve of this wave, this financial tsunami we're riding.

Here's a quote of the week to think on.

"So many forces are arrayed against a return to the previous "normal" that we will be lucky, in another eighteen months, to still find ourselves speaking English and celebrating Christmas. What's "out there" is a panorama of mutually reinforcing critical problems pertaining to how we live on this continent. Like the obesity, heart disease, and diabetes that plague the public, these problems are disorders of lifestyle habits and the only possible "cure" is a comprehensive revision of lifestyle."...
(from James Howard Kunstler, lecturer, author and research fellow to oil industry and economic issues...personal blog http://www.kunstler.com/ )

I'm hearing Monty Python skits.."say no more..say no more..!"

meanwhile, back on the ranch...do you occasionally feel like these horses in the Alberta Spring of 1922..?

Yep. It's been one of those. But, did grab moments to weigh critical path on the two acre "farm" in Beamsville, to preview circumstance, structure, ideas, objectives.. we draw upon the expertise of others with similar economic philosophy who are ahead of our personal wave..perhaps already on the beach.

..a rusty duffer building "critical path"..

hanging around the stables looking for a good mount,

an aging knight in rusty armour and dated weaponry.
getting back in shape for an axial moment

Earthly Crusades

critical paths for cities

consumed by economic waves,

piracy in financial markets

the suicidal tendencies of empires.
building food gardens.

Just gardens.
remain focussed on the objective

Objective: community scale , forest gardens, potager gardens: off the grid engineering
Asset: equipt, land, resources, skills
Engine: capital infusion-debenture; capital conversion-equity
Time scale: 1 year to design/build engine: the basic business structure
Economic Paradigm: business environment in real time perspective: an honest appraisal of common circumstance.

*********

Garth Turner’s reading of national "real estate" markets

in the existing economic environment: from his blog , http://www.greaterfool.ca/ April 11th, 2009 suggests that properties, orchards, vinyards, fields and dormant but salveagable buildings will be available if we want to take on the management of larger resources. The investment in small scale regional food factors is the key.

( from Garth Turner's words..)

"The implications are profound. It will take until 2014, at least, for the jobs lost in 2008 and 2009 to be returned or replaced. As I have said before, many Boomers will never work again. As a result:
* The housing market will not regain 2007 momentum again for at least a generation.
* Real estate valuations may stabilize, even increase a little due to cheap mortgage rates, but then resume a downward trend which will last for at least a year.
* After that, prices will flatline until buyer confidence rises with job prospects.
* Unprecedented government borrowing and spending to stop the recession from becoming depression will cause higher taxes, higher inflation and rising interest rates in the next decade – all of them negative for real estate.
* Some areas of the country are cooked. Those dependent on manufacturing industries which have vanished, for example, will be full of houses which will never again in our lifetime be worth what they were two years ago."

Garth turner may not know a thing about unfolding options in small scale regional food industries such as we are contemplating. He is focused on and advising individuals in "real estate home investment"..condos, subdivisions etc..the collapse of reason and a warning about clinging to fantasies. As such we think he is defining opportunity for an alternative approach. He is well worth following for eavesdropping on the national and sometimes international real estate market chatter. Take time to drop in on the comments from other readers that is as informative as the blog itself.

*****

And for the scope behind what is disturbing Garth Turner?

go to http://carolynbaker.net/site/content/view/1059/1/ the genetic gift of genius from the intermarriage of gods and men..drop in for dendrite challenge..recent April-09 item on the big picture of nations..

"Indeed, for all that the 1930s evoke national trauma, that decade was in fact a waiting room for national glory and wellbeing. World War Two ushered in American global ascendancy, the "Happy Days" of the 1950s and an unprecedented middle-class prosperity.
Today's disaster stage of American financialization - the bursting of the huge 25-year, almost $50 trillion debt bubble that helped underwrite the hijacking of the U.S. economy by a rabid financial sector -- won't be nearly so kind. It is already ushering in the reverse: a global realignment in which the United States loses the global economic leadership won in World War Two. The ignominy deserved by Wall Street after 1929-1933 is peanuts compared with the opprobrium the U.S. financial sector and its political and regulatory allies deserve this time."

*********************

or.. http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2008/12/humpty-dumpty-on-inflation.html summarizes the economic theory for lay mongrel country folk like myself trying to grasp the big picture.

*********************

and from one of the biggies in the money circles: Ilargi and Stoneleigh..

http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/2008/11/debt-rattle-november-29-2008-inflation.html

These are some of the "gurus" comenting from outside of the special interest circles that presently engineer our common circumstance. A must read for the wise investor or interested student like yours truly. They comment from the point of view of those international shell game players who draw on the energy of the slaves of empires for their perrier and yachts. The parts in bold are my emphasis.

" The easy availability of cheap credit has conveyed a considerable amount of price support - price support that will be progressively withdrawn as credit tightens. Prices will fall, but the collapse of credit will cause purchasing power to fall faster than price, leading to the apparent paradox of nominally cheaper goods being less affordable in the future than nominally more expensive goods are today. Moreover, there are likely to be substantial changes in relative prices between essentials and non-essentials. As a much larger percentage of a much smaller money supply will be chasing essentials such as food and energy, there will be relative price support for those items. In other words, while everything is becoming less affordable due to the collapse of purchasing power, essentials such a food and energy will be the least affordable of all, whatever the nominal price. People commonly speak of unaffordable prices as a result of inflation, but do not realize that deflation can have the same effect, only much more abruptly."

*********************

http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/fekete/2005/0307.html to show how long this circle of economists and analysts have been cautioning us about this financial ponzi scheme that has sucked the life out of our industrial age machine. ..with intent? Perhaps the real time symptoms of the truths behind Malthusian theory and the more recent (1970's) Club of Rome studies on the "Limits to Growth."

TSUNAMI IN THE BOND MARKET

by Antal E. Fekete,Professor Emeritus, Memorial University of NewfoundlandMarch 7, 2005
Summary for the busy executive

"The check-kiting scheme between the U.S. Treasury and the Fed, that has been going on quite openly for some 35 years, may have now been supplemented with another, this time between the Fed and the Bank of Japan, conducted in high secrecy. It involves the conspiratorial exchange of non-interest-bearing yen balances for interest-bearing Treasury debt in ever greater volume, over and above the need to finance the American trade deficit with Japan, huge as the latter may already be.

The purpose of the conspiracy is to forestall a run on the dollar by other central banks and foreign exchange speculators. If my assumption about the existence of this conspiracy is correct, then the end-game of the regime of irredeemable currencies will be stretched out by another decade or so. However, that decade will not be one of inflation most observers expect. It will be one of deflation and world-wide depression which hardly anybody expects."

********************

How do we work with this?

from http://slowsmile.hypocrisy.com/

"In at least a dozen recession-strapped communities throughout America, the US Dollar has been superceded by local "coupon" currencies,
denominated in $1, $5, $20 and $50 amounts to help assist in the flow of cash within these communities.
In an interesting article in USA Today, the local people can buy this currency - the way it works is that shoppers purchase this currency at a discount - say 95 cents for a dollar's worth - and spend the full value within their own communities without a problem. They can also cash in this new currency at their local community bank to reclaim its dollar value. These new local currencies have their own local names like BerkShares, Plenty and Cheers. "

***********************

We also face such things as pointed out in this article below from G20: A step closer to a new World Currency. If we don't have jobs within that G20 framework, the artifical currencies, we have to invent regional ones to ensure the movement of food and energy at the community level.

The G20 boys are not concerned with that. You and I have to be.

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, UK Telegraph

"A single clause in Point 19 of the communiqué issued by the G20 leaders amounts to revolution in the global financial order.
"We have agreed to support a general SDR allocation which will inject $250bn (£170bn) into the world economy and increase global liquidity," it said. SDRs are Special Drawing Rights, a synthetic paper currency issued by the International Monetary Fund that has lain dormant for half a century.
In effect, the G20 leaders have activated the IMF's power to create money and begin global "quantitative easing". In doing so, they are putting a de facto world currency into play. It is outside the control of any sovereign body. Conspiracy theorists will love it.
It has been a good summit for the IMF. Its fighting fund for crises is to be tripled overnight to $750bn. This is real money. "

**************************

To close: we focus on 'off-grid' food gardens as leading edge opportunity; marshall resources, steward cash, equity partnerships, "organic" cash crop engines; regional currencies for food gardens, food products and services.

from http://www.off-grid.net/2009/02/22/secrets-of-happiness/

"Our species is hitting the planet so hard because we have lost touch with its majesty. We have surrounded ourselves with ugliness and created a void in our hearts. Naturally, we try to fill that void, but we fill it with things that cause more damage. This is not a good cycle to be caught up in.
I don’t worry about the planet – the planet will be fine. Give it a few thousand years and it will come around. A few thousand years is nothing to a planet. It is humans that need to take stock. Not only are we threatening our own existence, we are not really enjoying ourselves in the process!
We are a part of this magnificent universe, and we deserve to dwell happily within it while we are here. We just need to learn to look for that happiness in the places where it actually lives."

(and to perhaps to create them..with and for others ? )

(WW1 CEF Horse Drawn Artillery Battery: washing the horses: 1915)

Omega seeds, may your canoe ply quiet waters.

regards from Mongrel Puppies

In Search of Community and Farm

2009-04-03T02:43:00.000-07:00

Farm Timeshares
WORKPOINTS for consideration
equity investment partnerships for market garden farming on a family scale.

if a small group, a family where to pool resources and buy something like this:

There's a larger reason than holiday escapes in all this.

Capital markets are confused. Real estate and farming are unstable. This is a good time for small circles, family and friends to pool resources, to invest in a family farm "condo" or "timeshare" with an agricultural objective. The agriculture can be simply to rest the land and turn it towards permaculture and natural forest gardening.

Farms are presently a bargain hunters paradise. I doubt this will last long. If the oil based economies, climate change, population, resource factors are not resolved, currency markets will collapse and the currency of the ruling systems become irrelevant. That is a self evident truth.

Why invest in small scale farming? It's basic Maslow's Hierarchy of needs: food, shelter and energy at community scale.

Examples from our searches of 2009:

- a Victorian Gothic 1870's fantasy mansion on 25 acres, oodles of barns, a large pond, can be found for the same price as an average house in Oakville or Burlington.

- a 100 acre country retreat with a large collection of restorable buildings can be had for the same price as a bungalow on Hamilton Mountain.

- a large Victorian brick home with caretakers 3 BR bungalow, 8 cabins, a community dining hall, shower building, barns, ponds, inground pool all on 100 acres of rolling hills for the same price as a house in Ancaster.

- we found ours, a tiny farm setting in the Niagara fruit belt perfect for family scale...for what we were paying for a downscale converted garage in Waterdown.

our backyard: abandoned orchards, two streams and wild areas full of critturs
***

The bottom line requires an empathy for gardening, a rational perspective on food as currency of land and buildings as "real" and perennial family estates.

***

The family farm should be a "hedge bet" against the cyclic nature of economies and empires.

If you are however a practical thinker and you can muster the time sharing investment resources from family and friends, look for a place that has substantial salvageable outbuildings, a large, character main house and at least 15 acres perhaps as much as 100 acres with ponds, streams and some bush. You do not want an "agribusiness" profile.

Take someone with construction and farming know how; professional experience may experientially challenged when it comes to farms. Education, Psychology, Systems Programming or Mechanical Engineering is an abstract when faced with assessing soil tilth and the viability of 150 year old hand-adzed trunnel jointed frames with rough sawn timber planking.

Gardening is a science . Much of that science is visceral, genetic and folklore based in earthwalking experience. Don't be intimidated by it..it is part of your soul. It grows on you and within you.

Gardening is a healing art.

We dream the garden and

the garden dreams us.

dormant farm buildings: a motley collection of historical but sad looking relics..

restorable to my eye but slated for destruction.

***
Where do you start?

some pointers:
-a financing platform begins with partners.

- bind land and buildings into a financial community.

- rebuild community through a business format

- the cash investment is the act of faith.

- the investors form a board of directors

who build critical path to secure the long term.
***
- working residents "lease" working and living spaces

pay rents towards the building investment "trust fund".

and provide the soil knowledge, how to seed, tend, harvest and preserve food.

the planning of building and business projects.

field management skills

labour, fussing and focused trades,

soil management, organic gardening and naturopathic animal husbandry sense.

The farm should have large libraries, study areas, high speed computer links to the outside world to protect it against the pathologies of cultural autism and social introversion. Keep the setting "metaphysically neutral" and simple: one blood, one spirit. Things will hold together and thrive for much longer.

****

addenda:
- build startup capital by selling "food credits" in 100.00 to 1,000.00 units redeemable in the season for which they are issued.

- thousand dollar units can be extended over two years.
- each setting will have variations determined by the footprint of existing buildings.
- long term wants simple self sustaining engineering.

- skilled guidance can build passive energy greenhouses, living water systems, composting toilets, off the grid engineering, masonry stoves for heating/baking and a host of other small details easily determined from networking.
- outbuildings can be restored for workshops, craft shops, food preparation and packing, dormitories, and guest houses for working visitors, camp outs and holidaying family folks using their credits towards recreational facilities and "bed and breakfast".
- have a "club house" offices, community library and community kitchen. A separate seniors residence with facilities for one or two seniors should also be considered.

****

- insist on a 100% equity financing objective. Farming can’t think clearly with the proverbial "Sword of Damocles" of a mortgage hanging over the family farm...particularly when all currency is under such severe stress. A simple manoeuvre during a currency collapse and you're working for a bank again.
- suggest a minimum startup with a half dozen $10,000.00 investors, i.e. no more seeding investors than bedrooms. $60,000.00 is sufficient for the average down payment and closing fees. Attracting sufficient capital to convert the asset to 100% equity should be everyone’s modest and realizable first year objective.

- investors buy bedrooms and use of the main house, or use investment credits to book space for visitors.

-a family owned private bed and breakfast arrangement.

- a hedge bet, a reserve base of operations for an extended family.

A family farm, whether it be friends, co-workers or family is a wiser investment than gold. At minimum you can grow your own food and sleep in a passive solar greenhouse under the moon.

Flamborough greenhouse, from our "homeless period" ..

with backup wood stove, a cot for those long winter frost watch nights.

Sometimes the full moon floating overhead.

(edit Mar 2010 of original April 3-2009: rdb)

Garden Club Farming

2009-03-27T18:53:00.000-07:00

Building community gardens: 2009

(dormant farm next door to where we've rented for May 2009.)

extracts from "Wilderness Garden Club" outlines: 1996
Garden Club farming is:
reconstructing Village

community farming

building from myth

in an historic moment.
*
We're Living
In An Arthurian Time
*
The evolution of community
building transitional systems,

in wartime economies,
is basic training

for unfolding campaigns.

***

When mulling global systems dynamics studies,

the 5 Club of Rome papers say, from 1972 and on,

and Meadows, Vaca, Stavrianos , Jacobs and countless other icons of the age,

a rational conclusion

leads to the exploration of intentional community,

more aptly the accidental community,

Findhorne and rural near-urban based "sustainable systems".

***

This evolved common dreams

of cities recreating Eden in "Garden Clubs".
is community seeking "Whimsical Garden",

an imperative for self sufficient cities.

The technology is available and evolution demands it.

perhaps we are looking for the Arthurian myth,

the preservation of the good parts of civilization

during the redefinition of "Empires."
*
evidence suggests that the task this generation faces

is nothing less than, in the words of the early Club of Rome studies,

that of " reshaping the international order",

and of Kenny Ausebel, "..restoring the earth."
We are all Dreaming the World.

We are each of us "social architects" in our presence.
Consequently, dreaming paths

in social instability are the substance of our reality.

The "garden club" blueprint

was spawned in that river of our personal dreams

and is the one factor in our lives that governs the present.
The more unstable and unpredictable the world becomes,

the more we seek grounding in gardens and communities

(our raised bed gardens on rented land 1999-2003)

This time is a "Bridge of Chaos"

on the other side is our wilderness urban garden,

a retirement career in practical real life situations.
***

( a farm we considered, Feb-09, in the Niagara Region)

common circumstance,

common potential,

collapsing real estate devlopment fantasies

the window of opportunity to act.

***

The minimum requirement for all individual physical or mental exploration is stable community.
It is only from stable communities, a home base, that civilization explores the sciences and arts, the mysteries which surround our outpost in the larger yet to be defined infinite dimensions of space.
If communities are not sustainable then neither is the larger context of nation states and hence the global civilization.
Regional micro-communities are necessary for trade objectives and the globalization of markets.
With existing technologies we can dome entire communities and redesign the suburban mall. We can guide ourselves towards self-sufficiency to underwrite the stability of the urban base. Long range objectives can be only be realized within that context of stability.

***

The purpose of civilization is not every man for himself. Regardless of the driving imperatives behind our economics, the pursuit of individual wealth at increasing cost to the planet, the growth and concentration of tribal material wealth in a shrinking percentage of the population of the earth is the essence of our difficulties.
We have been drawn into an addiction, an illusion that the future only holds promise if it includes a greater tangible wealth in control over "things", possessions and time.
It is not against the wildness, or nature, or luck that we should define our struggle so much as against those in our tribe who would have us serve the concept of personal wealth and personal visions over the larger welfare of our growing tribe, the Earth.

***

We’re all looking for something that will define a mental rock, a stable point in the world , a reference point in the universe, in which we define who or what we are. If we don’t have some little bit of that in us we are chaff in the evolutionary wind.

***

The "Warrior’s" visions and powers, binds him or her to the evolution of the generations.
The visions we seek from the mysterious and multi-dimensional Forces, however we personally define that side of our gifts, seed and guide the evolution of conscious life. This must balance the welfare of the women, the children and the elders in this Timeline. Otherwise the spiritual life has no measure for the real world.

***

A community binds the individual into the synergy of a combined effort.
The evolving "intentional" or perhaps more aptly, "accidental" community will redefine, rebuild a wheel that was dismantled by the industrial age. The demise of the dysfunctional is forcing the reconstruction of electronic age tribal formats and the reconsideration of social, political and economic factors in community.
The evolution of sustainable communities is inevitable. The political and metaphysical processes will evolve out of this. This movement will develop the self sufficient city on earth before we build it in space.
Given the quantum science of the times perhaps this is a hint of the evolving "...culturally unbiased metaphysical initiative that will unify the world." (Buckminster Fuller, Critical Path:).
We can hope.

***

The objective is environmental and social responsibility.
The "Gaian" phenomena will deal with the environment.
A "new order" will "evolve" from the bottom up producing a human archetype that few of us will understand from our current position in history. We will give birth to it but we are not likely to understand it.
This is both a "dark age" and an "Arthurian age" for the evolution of human consciousness that has been shaped and reshaped through the millennia.
We’re personally and actively involved in the building of saner, more responsible, holistic communities relevant to the larger concerns of the Earth.
A small but growing acknowledgement unfolds that we can blend the "Two Paths", the earth and the sky, and build a stable home base from which our descendants can explore the stars.

***

The community requires needs to be more agile, more responsive to survive the unfolding changes.
We build both the treasures and the labours of the generations which follow us onto the earth. We do this consciously or unconsciously.
Every action or inaction is social architecture moulding the future for our children and grandchildren.

***

A business man is a warrior chief presiding over a fort and protecting a village. The company represents the fort, the village centre or stronghold and the families which depend on the survival of the group effort are the villagers or the "shire"
A warrior chief should be aware of long range metaphysical factors that drive the tribal war dance as much as the collection of booty and SUV’s which fill the village parking lot.

***

Travelling the global village in the electronic age requires a mind capable of grasping the ancient as well as the modern.
We live in the age of quantum mechanics, the holographic universe and the physics of immortality as "... hyper-spatial beings casting a shadow into matter." (Terrence McKenna)
The evidence abounds of a multidimensional universe. We live in three dimensional Newtonian mechanics and struggle to define the miracle of life in a multi-dimensional context. Much of our argument fails in the cloistered reality of Newtonian thought.

***

It is not money that buys things. It is the conversion of human thought into actions that creates things. Money is a medium for human thought.
Currency is a reflection of human energy and acquires the potential for power over others.
Money has a metaphysical aspect. Someone dreams. Dreams become thought patterns, influence daily organized activity and therefore reality. It is therefore important to dream good dreams.
We can be both beasts of burden and creative dreamers.

***

The real "bottom line" is the well being of ALL of the tribe, every man woman and child in it.
This includes by extension every facet of human activity, especially that of the marketplace.

This is increasingly relevant to the long term success of any human venture however subtle or vividly apparent to the average investor.

***

That poetic historian Barbara Tuchman once compared this time to the first millenium, and the late 900 A.D.. We have a plethora of messiahs and visions of doom similar to that mystical time.
The visions and cautions enfolded in the "peak oil" debates, the sobre ruminations of the Club of Rome Studies and the fundamentalist rants demonstrate that we have a repetitive tick in the human archetype.
We tire of the wars and the common sense revolutionary guards of the planet. We dream of peace and good government.
The archetypal programming in the human psyche may produce the messianic age phenomenon for survival.
In the book "DUNE", Bene Gesserit witches plotted for a thousand years or more to produce the Kwisatz Hadderach, the prophesied one. "The sleeper must awaken." In this case an entire planet.

***

The "city state of mind"

We’re struggling to come out of the ocean and walk.
Given our capacity to resolve such complicated objectives as a space station we have the latent ability to resolve things which cloud the peace of the moment and the quiet progress towards the space age of tomorrow.
Nation states are restructuring around the context of a redefined "global" economy. Local action is defining the self sufficient space age electronic village within the city.
That new star in the sky, the worlds first space station hints at the direction. If we plan to build them in space why not build them here?

***

Before "StarTrek" we need "EarthTrek".
Urban complexes will inevitably redefine demands, lessen impact on the environment and stabilize social structures. The times demand it.
The evolution of the city state is not a detachment from the outer world but rather a sense of responsibility to the world.
The space age emphasizes the bond we have with environment and neighbour. We build the global objective re-building "Eden" and shooting for the stars for all of the earth’s children.
Things shot from the earth are from all of us.

***

2009 gardening year. After a decade of efforts now finally getting things defined and realized. .

a long hard learning curve. eager to be back working with the soil and plants again..healing the garden and perhaps more aptly, ourselves.

***

ronandjulie

disenfranchised mongrel puppies of the empires.

2009-03-11T22:04:00.000-07:00

Introduction to Whimsical Gardening Objectives

shape and substance.

spring grow tables:

450 assorted tomatoes; 400 assorted onions and leeks;

a hundred mixed peppers; and herbs. just getting started.
narrow the options. 7 acres and a barn? Or 67 Acre handyman special vintage buildings?

potential. options. decide: something with garden and greenhouse space .

(abandoned 1860 farm building cluster in Southern Ontario consisting of 3 outbuildings and a large barn constructed of hand adzed post and beam trunnel jointed frames with rough sawn plank sheeting up to 22" widths and layers of cosmetic siding. The large original house has been expanding, rather wandering outwards in eccentric, impulsive do it yourself additions since about 1860. A fun 5 year restoration project if ever we saw one.)

These Farm Investment Dreams

from the 1998 "PLACE OF 4STONES Inc."

background notes on farm "wilderness garden clubs"

- began with urban fantasies of "wilderness garden clubs" on an abandoned and derelict farms

- readjusted to reality

- objective morphed into "The Whimsical Garden Club " and "The Garden Club" with practical SPIN farming and raised bed gardens.

- that translated the "granma's kitchen in the country" whimsy into a community based farm investment project.

This process modified language but all been done before. Sometimes it works and sometimes it gets run over by the empire.

What the heck. It a lot more fun than golf and certainly more useful. The adventure awaits.

Abandoned farmhouse and outbuildings in the Niagara District.

We bring a combined 85 years as spear carriers in the pharoah's armies; farming, gardening, construction, investments, mortgages, systems management, international consulting and military-defence roles.
We want to build something perennial in unstable times; something with the wealth of common heritage and the evolving technology that sharply defines the substance of dreams.
In short, restore, build, preserve wildness, live in harmony with the environment, provide quiet sanctuary for labours, be self sustaining while building blueprints for social architecture.

**************

WHAT are we talking about?

Reconnecting to the soul of farming:
an unfolding farming archetype -

partners, families, groups and skilled duffers like ourselves :

- build "Garden Clubs"; suburban or near urban farms, restore the "Greenbelt" agricultural adjunct to the urban complex.
- construct community equity "Investment Clubs"; specifically food based currencies for farmland.
- restore farm buildings.
- build market gardens, four season farming, herbal farms; gardens within greenhouses; recreation, craft and work facilities; community halls, community canning programs, grain mills and masonry stove baking steering towards passive and active off the grid energy systems.
for starters....

**************

WHY would we want to do that?

a farming objective with partners family or groups can

- refocus and utilize the valuable skills of seniors.
- answer the need for wilderness and recreational spaces as well as food growing land
- extend to urban families a Grandmother’s kitchen in the country.
- assist the development of sustainable community systems.

and that's the basic underlying philosophy..the work that follows is in the details

*************

abandoned greenhouse complex in Hamilton, Ontario Region

*****************
We've discovered in this process that

the single family farm is an anachronism.

the job description now requires

community farming,

investing shareholder-directorships,

working residents

diverse life skills

such as:

legal and paralegal

business, accounting

medical, paramedical and health

construction, trades and engineering

communications, multimedia

farming, gardening

and more

The farm now requires:

Building a financial blueprint

in Community Investment

to shape the village green, the new paradigm

with critical path for objectives

management structure: a board of directors and project teams:

and "Shareholder" structures.

For example, we've worked in the past within a common mining industry financing tool, voting stock in $1,000.00 units for capitalization and a COMMON STOCK for internal currency such as $1.00 pv, $1,000,000.00 capitalization. The same formulas could be used for a food base currency, somewhat like community shared agriculture and working shareholders.

In a farming-gardening the shares can be earned or purchased in a " LET system" framework. Members build t "sweat equity", and salvage and barter contributes to the objective.
Labour time values can be assigned for "jobs" such as building, maintaining structures; board of directors time, etc.
Capital value can be assigned to transferred assets such as equipment, vehicles, building materials, new or salvage subject to approval by a board resolution.

In a "club" setting a small group of shareholders can restrict common share or non-voting stock ownership for individual members. However, to maintain a corporate democracy limit we would suggest one voting share per member.
The group would also restrict the transfer or sale of stock without the approval of the larger group and the board of directors to ensure investment is compatible with the long term objectives and precludes "takeover buyouts".
Provisions for individuals to liquidate their holdings in "The Club" if personal circumstance should require it. Provisions within a capital reserve fund for the buyback of voting class stock. Common shares tabled for purchase by existing or potential members or used as "currency" to purchase product from the farm. The common stock is also the accounting vehicle for the distribution of taxable profits.

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long term objectives in our situation are components and facilities for members such as:

- 80% of land holding eventually wild spaces.
- natural growth encouraged, wetlands, ponds, streams, eco forestry,
- food gardens: using raised beds, high tunnel SPIN farming, living water greenhouses
- sustainable companion gardening and permaculture with natural herbs, plants,
orchards, forest gardens, etc.
- residence apts. and/or cottages
- kitchen/main kitchen pantries for food preparation and preserving
- site Laundromat
- tea room facility in greenhouse complex
- greenhouse/pool/hottub: for those February winter glum days
- wood shop: fix and make workshops
- pottery shop
- sound studio
- vehicles and equipt. maintenance shop
- fine crafts shops
- office: computer centre, colour copiers, fax, satellite & Internet links
- retreat centre facilities: a one acre "retreat space"
- "Chapels" in the woods; "sweat lodge", "Kiva’s, and "Medicine" places:
- Library
- Community Hall

Environmental factors:

- sustainable communities and permaculture farming are necessary for the technological society. - the near urban farm project is an important component of that.

- the sustainable community, long term plans:

- Community heat, water, utilities, septic systems and garbage factors.
- Solar; passive and active systems for all buildings.
- Windmill pumps for water systems in pools and greenhouses.
- Wood backup heat, baking-masonry stoves with hot water systems.
- Forced air primary furnace; bio-diesel oil (or methane bio gas) for residences and workshops
- Rainwater collectors, cisterns, overflow for gardens, pools, ponds and greenhouses.
- Wells with water purification for cooking.
- Reforestation programs.
- Recycling site wastes, minimum 5 categories of metals, glass, plastic, paper, etc.
- Site shredders, chippers, mixers : wood ash, garden & kitchen waste, composting, soil mixing.
- Air conditioner: a straw bale construction ice house with solar fans.

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a simple objective. from the realms of the dysfunctional,

unfolding world realities, logical and practical

march-2009

rdb/jcm