PHOTOS!!!

Please enjoy our annotated photo album

First stop, picking some kumquats in one of CRMPI's legendary Climate Battery Greenhouses in Basalt, CO.

That's a big pepper.

Utilizing permaculture design by having worm composting in the pathways of the climate battery greenhouse.

                                      

A cow from the dairy at Sustainable Settings in Carbondale, CO.

CRMPI had a few surprises in store for us as we found 5-year-old pepper plants (yes, peppers are actually perennials) and key limes that turn orange when ripe (yes, limes get orange when fully ripe) in Basalt, CO.

 

Dang what a beautiful drive through Telluride, CO.

 

Check it out, Casey's in four states at once: NM, AZ, UT, and CO!

 

We got to wake up to this view of the sunrise coming over the Grand Canyon, AZ.

 

A beautiful desert hike accompanied by our healer friend Wayah and her dog Kaia in Phoenix, AZ.

 

Taking the 10 West to LA!

 

Took a quick pit stop at a sweet palm oasis in the Fringe-Toed Lizard preserve near Joshua Tree National Park, CA.

 

Goats n critters at Quail Spirings Permaculture in Ventura County, CA

 

Baby goats and Brenton, our guide for the day at Quail Springs.

 

Lounging on a bonafide, cob-made, rocket mass heater heated bench inside a yurt. This place was an artistic inspiration for cob builders.

 

Top o the watershed above Quail Springs.  

 

Driving through Ventura County, we stumbled upon an organic field.  It looked dry, crumbly, and dead.  Yes, we know organic is "better" than nothing, but it is a hard truth to swallow that organic does not equate to Earth friendly.  If you wish to know more, give us a shout. 

 

Chillen on the coast line of sunny Santa Barbara, CA.

 

Up a couple thousand feet above that coastline to watch the sun set over miles of the Central Coast at Gibraltar Rock, CA

 

So majestic!

 

Bus Collective!, working on a garden dig-in in South Los Angeles, CA

 

Educating the future with the Ron Finley project at the Coliseum, S Los Angeles, CA.

 

Home is where the bus is.

 

Yup, he's standing up in there Venice Beach, CA.

 

A lone Colorado turtle yearning for the ocean. 

 

Yes, this scene is in the middle of suburbia. Rishi has turned this typical home into a semi-tropical food forest titled The Growing Home in Diamond Bar, CA

  

We worked for the day building a system of berms and swales that will serve as a water catchment system, planting bed for papayas, and quail feeding ground. So integrated!

  

"To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves." Well said Mahatma Gandhi

 

Yes, the sign does say "Tree Collards." Those are not your average collard greens.

 

Rishi is in the process of implementing a wetland system that will use cattails to filter grey water from the kitchen sink to be returned to the garden.

 

Bet you've never seen a kale tree before.

 

In addition to The Growing Home, Rishi is managing a 1/2 acre farm. The system pictured above uses soil filled bags with plants growing in them as a retaining wall for the berm.

 

We're back!!! Thank you sign for welcoming us back to colorful Colorado.

Day 16, 17 and 18: Back on the Road and Gettin' Clean

Heyo, final adios coming through the fingers of Casey...

(BTW we have written all of these together, so if you thought that it was one or the other, nope.  We switched off who was typing each post; with one typing and the other offering grammatical and theatrical additions to the works.)

 

So the adventures of Synchronicity and The Bus Collective were coming to an end.  On day 16 we got to have a slow morning where we helped design a garden for the awesome folks out there in West LA.  This garden will be fed by the greywater coming from their laundry system.  In doing some research on detergents that can be used, I found that there is not much on the market that is healthy for the environment.  This leads to the conclusion that if you don’t make it yourself, you don’t really know.  This has been a theme for the whole trip.

We rounded up a few of the best oranges we have ever had (out of their backyard), said bye to all our new friends, and hit the road. 

Our plan was to make the drive back efficient, yet comfortable.  With that in mind we stopped, first, only a few hours east of LA in a sleepy little town called Apple Valley.  Colton has history here as his aunt and grandparents call this high desert home.   They are a group of adventurers, showing me a side of Colton I hadn’t really appreciated just yet. (This new found side also includes baby pics of Colton, so cute!)

We cruised through the rest of California, and then the lit up valley that holds the sprawling conglomerate called Las Vegas, with a very nice pace.  Happily, we were able to make it to Arizona and found a peaceful place to catch some healthy zzz’s.  This makes it our second time of this trip sleeping off the side of the highway in Arizona. 

 

Day 17, the next morning, had us trekking on through the human-less terrain known as eastern Utah.  What a gem this area is and I recommend to all you Coloradans to get your camping boots on and check out this wide-open playground. 

We took a brief stop in the far reaches of Eastern Colorado in a land known as The Trail Through Time.  As one graffiti artist had written on a sign post, “This place has dinosaurs (bones), hiking trails, scenery, and time traveling. The spot has got it all.”  We couldn’t agree more.

 

On day 18, we awoke at CRMPI for a quick pit stop (this was our landing destination the previous night).  It was a lot muddier (and warmer) than the time before, but our buddies John and Dave were still moving along bringing CRMPI into the next phase of its evolution by re-furbishing the current climate battery systems and introducing new ideas of automation and efficiency.  These guys are exploring a different avenue of permaculture by integrating ecologically centered practices with smart technology (such as open-source Arduinos), and are even pondering going into the business of designing fully automated green houses.

We finished our adventure up at CRMPI by getting a few fruit trees (woot! woot!) that Colton so generously wants to put up at the Red Feather Educational Site.  I am excited to one day eat from an apricot, a mulberry, a plum, a pear, and a black apricot which is a cross of a plum and an apricot. Food=Exciting!!

Anyhoo, we’re back in Denver area and we’re sad to sign off..... psych! We got one more blog post coming.  This weekend we are attending a BioNutrient Food Growing Workshop, and we would be happy to share our findings with you.  We also want to add some photos to the blog to give you some visual aid to our adventures.  So, stay tuned, we have more coming your way...

Thanks for the welcome back,
CColorado

PS Shower time!

Day 13, 14, and 15: Checkin’ the LA Scene and Livin’ the Permaculture Dream

This is your man C Piddy (Colton) rocking the keys.

Day 13 was filled with, well, not much. We took advantage of the down time to sleep in, chill with the bus collective, and make fun of the Super Bowl. We ironically spent a large part of the day bashing on the mass consumerism, mindless entertainment, and horrible food associated with this American holiday, and then subsequently watched the Super Bowl. However, we did break tradition and ate healthfully with artisan vegan pizzas, homemade salsa, and vegan chili.

 

Day 14 brought another day of rest and relaxation. I can’t speak for Casey, but I know that I felt physically sick from being in the city, so we took this opportunity to escape to Venice beach! We joined the bus collective for a day of building sand tunnels, twirling sand in our beards, and burying people alive (I was legitimately buried standing up; quite an impressive feat). The Venice Skate Park and boardwalk provided us with entertainment as well; quite a relaxing day at the beach. We even got a free souvenir, as we’ll be finding sand all over our bodies and in our gear for weeks to come.

 

On day 15, Casey and I had quite a novel experience. We parted ways. Casey’s neck has been hurting him throughout the trip, and today we were going to do some manual labor so he wisely opted to rest his neck. I teamed up with the rest of the bus collective to check out a site called The Growing Home and we offered our strong young backs for the day. We had come across this permaculture gem doing a simple search for Permaculture in LA, and it seemed pretty darn impressive from the website. We gave them a call and they said they would have some stuff to work on if we came on over.

We arrived at the address and for a second couldn’t tell if we were actually in the right place. The neighborhood couldn’t have been any more suburban, but you could tell that this house was set apart from the neighboring dwellings. We entered the backyard and the magic began to sink in; I don’t think I’ve ever seen a suburban home with so much green-ness. This typical home had been transformed into a veritable food forest with rich and beautiful soil through the use of sheet-mulching and terracing. They were growing various annuals and herbs, but the stars of the show were the several dozen varieties of trees. On this small plot you can find fig, papaya, “sweet lemon” (tastes like a lemon but isn’t sour), orange, tangerine, banana, cherimoya (if you haven’t tried it, put it on your bucket list; it tastes like cotton candy), pomegranate, autumn berry, curry leaf, kaffir lime, almond, mango, apple, guava, mulberry, jujube, and numerous other trees. A couple of the other stars were perennialized collard and broccoli trees. Yes, I said trees. These monsters were 8 feet tall and resembled something out of Dr. Seuss. He even had the components of the food forest labeled with painted signs, which you don’t get with too many of these types of operations.

The magic of this system, though, was the integration of different aspects of the house to make a true ecosystem. He had chickens and rabbits in the same cage, which provide meat, eggs, and fertilizer. There was an outdoor shower so that shower water could be reused, the greywater from the laundry was directed out to the garden, and he was even developing a micro-wetland system with cattails that he could put his kitchen sink water through. The cattails would clean out the water for later reuse in the garden. The Growing Home is a stunning example of how much food can be grown in a sustainable way on a typical suburban plot of land, and Rishi, the manager/expert on hand, shares his knowledge with others in the community through various workshops and classes hosted at the property. http://thegrowinghome.net/

That day, we were able to help out in the construction of an integrated system in the front yard to accomplish fertilization, water catchment, and quail feeding. We cleared an area, dug out a couple swales (or trenches), and then constructed berms (or raised mounds) by piling the soil on top of old logs, branches, and various organic matter. Rishi got permission to direct rainwater from the neighbor’s roof into the swales, which will soak in and water the raised beds (in which he will be planting papaya trees). The swales will also be used to plant ground cover that can serve as food for quails, as he has a “quail tractor” that can be pulled through the swales to provide the quails with food. This will provide the quails with food, but will also provide fertility to the soil that can feed the fruit trees! So much integration!

Thanks for listening to us geek out about permaculture. I thought it was pretty neat.

 

Casey and I reunited back at Synchronicity, the intentional living community that was kind enough to let us park in front of their place and join them for group meals. It was great connecting with this group of community-oriented individuals whilst making new friends. Speaking of friends, Casey invited his old buddy Nick (an LA resident) over to share about his life living on a bus. This bus comes around the corner, OPEN sign blaring, flat black paint gleaming, couch perched on the roof, purple lights lighting the ground below, and piano nestled on board in order to offer the perfect artists' safe haven. Theallnightdiner.com is a showcase for street musicians and other talent to come perform and talk about their experiences in a decked out school bus. Check it out, it truly is a novel idea and we wish him success.

Moving on to the home stretch,

C’s get degrees

Day 11 and 12: Cali Coast is Where We Now Dwell

 

Hello, everybody, Casey on the ones and twos and ... all the way to twenty-six (letters that is).

So we returned to Santa Barbara.  I am mostly from Alaska, but my Freudian years (age 1-6) were spent in this cornucopia of sunshine, as well as later teenage years attending Santa Barbara City College.  It was a treat to re-kindle that flame that I have with the ocean.  There is just something so... lovely about the beach, playing in the tide pools and feeling the massaging effects of the gentle sand.  I’ll get sappy about that another time.  She is amazing.

We actually went to SBCC to harvest some fruits from their ‘public’ garden.  Despite our findings that most things are not quite ripe or that we just missed their harvest, we did run into an old friend, Daniel, who has been working with soil and compost teas for the past few years.  He, along with other faculty, reduced water consumption by 70% on the campus lawns by implementing compost tea.  Compost (teas, extracts, raw food) is a critical element in restoration, maintenance, and development of land for agricultural purposes.  You, me, all humans would be dead shells if it wasn’t for probiotics.  The microbiology of the soil acts the same on the earth body and compost is how you grow them.

The night was topped off up atop Gibraltar Rock (say that aloud four times fast) in the foothills of Santa Barbara.  Our host guide for the day was the thoughtful Hannah who found a mild hike for us to stare over the ocean into the sunset.  Oh, Santa Barbara, you are too perfect.

Day 12 had us on our way to LA.  Los Angeles is a land of everything, and we were excited to hear there was a gardening movement beginning as well.  We first met up with the Bus Collective (all you FoCollians might know about them) at a garden dig-in being put on by LA Green Grounds.  They are connecting an eager-to-garden populace with yard spaces eager to be planted.  This emulates what our backyard mom n pop The Growing Project is doing in Fort Collins.  The home we arrived at had a front yard about 10 by 20ft that was being turned from a weed patch into a sweet garden space.  The new movement of gardening has inspired so many people down here that at least 30 people were in attendance for this pond of a garden.  So, it was time to put plan B in effect.

After limited contact, we got ahold of Ron Finley.  The star of his very own TED Talk and an inspiration for many in the local community.  When I got in touch with him on the phone it went,

“Hey this is Casey with Colton, we are on our permaculture road trip just seeing if you needed any help as we just got to LA.”

“Yeah, I’m at the colis... (something I can’t understand).”

“Um..... do you need two sets of hands for anything?”

“Yeah, we can find something for you to do.”

“Ok, where you at? What’s the address?”

“ I’m at the coliseum. I dunno the address. Figueroa and something... It’s the coliseum.”

“Okay, we’ll see you soon.”

That was the whole conversation.  So, we have no idea what any of that really means, but we’re on our way to the place the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, where the 1984 Olympics were held, to do something with a Ron Finley.

We arrive (again with no clue) to find a festival happening. Okay. Then, we realize the festival is called the Mindful Living Fest. Okay, that is cool, but where is this Ron guy and does he have anything to do with this fest?  Finally, we get word that he IS a part of the event and he is over near a main stage and we don’t have to pay for parking since we’re a part of the Ron Finley crew. Okay, starting to sound pretty good.

We get over to his area to find five gardens beds and a bunch of volunteers.  We’re pretty excited as we’re told our “job” is to teach kids how plant veggies and to tutor adults on how to build gardens!!  Like whaaat? To add to it, we were just about the only volunteers who have any experience so we were the resident experts teaching everyone.  What!!  To top it off, the coliseum is in south central LA, so this area needs this kind of education ASAP.  Wow, what a blessing and opportunity to teach, hands-on, about the magic of growing your own food.  We connected with many of the other volunteers as we later found out pretty much no one knew anyone else so we fit right in.  There was much appreciation by the community, Ron, and the other volunteers for our efforts.  It was truly beyond what we were hoping for.  We send gratitude and blessings to those involved with the project and inspiration to those hundreds that we were able to send off with a plant.

Afterward we met up with the bus collective (thebuscollective.com), which you can read their blog to see what their game plan entails, to stay the night.  We got some feelers out to make these last few days a continuation of the adventure.  Stay tight.

C is for Carbon