Flood Damages Quail Springs Permaculture Farm. You Can Help.

This post came to me from Quail Springs in Cuyama, California today. Please read and help in whatever way you can. 

Hello Friends of Quail Springs,

 

We wanted to share with all of you that we've just come through two days of major flooding that have altered the face of Quail Springs.  First of all, we are SO GRATEFUL THAT NO ONE WAS HURT OR LOST.  This is a huge blessing for which we are all thankful.  

 

Beginning on Friday, October 1st, we had a storm that dropped a little over 2" of rain in about an hour that caused extreme channel flooding that ripped out our lower gabion, silted up our larger swales and caused damage to about 10% of the garden. We wish that this was the extent of the damage yet mother nature had another story to share with us.

 

On Saturday, October 2nd, at about 12:30pm, a second and much more ominous thunder storm descended on our valley down from Iwihinmu (Mt. Pinos) beginning with a huge hail storm followed by torrential rains and heavy winds.  The lighting and thunder stood right over us for what seemed like a lifetime yet was just a few minutes.  In just a half an hour, over 3 inches of rain fell directly on Quail Springs and much more in the canyons that feed the main canyon. Little rivers began to flow down the secondary and tertiary canyons, and then it happened.  

 

A wall of water we could have never imagined in our wildest dreams and ruminations made its own thunder as it careened down the canyon.  This wall of water tore at trees, ripped out our largest gabions and breached the walls of our incised stream and created a rushing river that spanned at some points over 1,000 feet across the canyon.  It was a sight to behold and an event that made your heart nearly stand still.

 

There was nothing could stand up to this deluge. Even large cottonwood trees were ripped out and hurled down canyon.  Everything in its wake was destroyed.  This included our entire garden, half of our new food forest, our pond is gone, all of our water harvesting structures that fed the sweet Quail Springs waters to our entire operation, our well was badly damaged, all of our irrigation systems have been buried, much of our fencing buried or washed away, chicken tractors gone, a trailer now lives down canyon several hundred yards, our settling tanks torn apart, and many tools and countless other parts of our infrastructure are missing or buried.  Amazingly, our buildings fared rather well other than some flooding in the main barn that was quickly cleaned up.  For this we are also grateful.  

 

All in all we estimate over $40,000 in damage was done and countless hours that were accumulated into years of work.  

 

As the water receded, we were stunned and humbled to see the damage and feel in our hearts the loss that had just occurred.  Nearly six years of our work building soil and laying infrastructure was washed away in minutes. Once we realized everyone was safe, we shared tears and a bit of laughter.  We are having to remember that we are working on a 200 year plan and that these events will help us redesign and rebuild in a way that is more appropriate for the vagaries of this ancient spring canyon and the place we call home.  

 

Over the next weeks, we will be working to rebuild the water systems and preparing for the upcoming Permaculture Design Course (which is nearly full).

We will undoubtedly ask for help once we settle on a game plan and will put a call out for volunteers.  

 

We will especially need assistance financially and would appreciate any donation you might be able to make to help us with the huge task of rebuilding and remaking the systems that are the very essence of our work out here.  

Tax-deductible donations may be made by check or online. 

Checks can made out to “Quail Springs” and mailed to: Quail Springs, 35070 Highway 33, Maricopa, CA 93252. 

Online donations can be made securely via Donate Now. 

 

Thank you for any assistance you’re able to give, and for your thoughts and wishes.

These are pictures I took at Quail Springs last Spring.  You can read about my visit to this permaculture farm.
The blog post includes a podcast.

Here is my letter to the Quail Springs Community:  

Susan and I came in from the fields of our fall harvesting and read the message that Quail Springs had sustained this major setback - or should I say - adjustment to it's 200 year plan.  

We were shocked and saddened to learn that so much work could be erased in such a short time.  And we were glad to read that no one was lost or hurt in the storms. Yes we are sad as I'm sure you are too. And we are reminded ourselves of the nature of working in nature. And perhaps more seriously, the changing nature of our world.

In my visit to your farm I was taken by your vision of sustainable living and your commitment to learning from traditional ways of being in harmony with the earth.  I have often thought of you as Susan and I worked our way into farming the land we share here in Prince Edward Island, Canada this summer.  Just this week,  I thought of you as we harvested our fall crops and joined our farming neighbors for a harvest meal. I thought that we and many people like us are new pioneers.  And like the pioneers of the past we are faced with many challenges and events in nature that our "settled" friends do not realize.

Climate events all over the world this year are telling us that this is not the earth our elders knew. Things are happening that are beyond our shared experience. I believe that our role as pioneers on this new earth will require us to learn how to cope with things that no living human has ever seen.  Even as we embrace the wisdom of our elders, we must blaze the trail ahead for those who follow us into a changing and unknown world.

My hope is that even as you experience loss and disappointment, that new understanding and insight will be yours in the days and months ahead. I hope that these events will write new knowledge into the journal of Quail Springs so that your losses become a harvest of new learning and development for all the pioneers who share your journey.    

Sincerely and with hope,

John Quimby
Susan Frazier
Dunn Creek Farm                    

Quail Springs - Building An Oasis

 CLICK - HEAR TODAY'S PODCAST

According to Merriam Webster:
Oa-sis

1 : a fertile or green area in an arid region (as a desert)
2 : something that provides refuge, relief, or pleasant contrast

You can easily imagine why ancient people in arid lands would know how to find water. What it might be hard to understand if you live in a place where abundant water falls from the sky or clean water flows from a pipe is the effect and wonder of abundant water on a dry land.  It changes the desert from ashen sea to a fertile island of life. And that's why ancient people cultivated these life sustaining places. An increasing number of people are becoming aware that the world needs places of refuge, relief and a pleasant contrast from the relentless momentum of our Titanic civilization. 

The podcast this week will tell you some of their story and the photos and text will give you some idea of what the Quail Springs project looks like.  But it wasn't until I looked up the definition of oasis that I remembered co-founder Warren Brush telling how the first few years of the project on the ground has been "farming water". That's when I understood the links between past and present and that one person's wasteland can become another person's cultivated place of refuge.

When my friend Lorna came to visit Santa Barbara (and help us pack) she said, "No wonder you get so excited by all the water in PEI."  Indeed.  In much of the world, abundant clean water is an unimaginable luxury.  But a project like Quail Springs demonstrates how a community of people can work together to manage scarce resources and create abundance.

Meals are prepared in an open kitchen in a common area.  The meal we were served (in early April) primarily included whole food from the farm.  It was simple and delicious.

The common room features a bright corner for children and their friends to play and talk.  The building is a converted metal hay barn. Walls are now straw bale and earth - semi finished at this point.  A finished interior is shown in another picture below.  Using natural materials controls cost and eliminates harmful chemicals from the living space.                 

More than just a pond...this pool is a valuable asset.  It collects and holds water from the springs, feeds a newly re-establishing wetland habitat, waters the farm gardens and livestock and holds water in the ground.

Further upstream you see what limited rainfall and years of over-grazing / poor land use looks like. Lot's of erosion, a collapse of the native riparian environment and a stream that floods and then goes dry.  The farm is working on ways to slow runoff and to allow water to move laterally into the soil to create a water "bank" that supports re-growth of the stream habitat.  In the long term, this kind of planning could actually change the micro-climate of this small canyon.      

Using natural earth, stone and local materials, residents have created homes that are simple to live in.  By design this home is easy to heat in the winter and relatively cool in the summer and features "built in's" for shelves and seating in this finished interior.  

The exterior of this home now being built shows straw bale and cobb construction, the mix of traditional earth and modern structural materials, the mountings for solar panels on the roof and the simple means for collecting rain water from the eave-troughs to water a small garden behind the house.

Pastured poultry starts with pasture.  Planting grasses begins the process of creating fertile topsoil in dry sand.  Grass nurtures chickens which manure the grass which grows more chickens and deeper soil. 

Brenton uses mud and straw to build the wall of a new chicken coop.  Inexpensive, easy to add on to and sufficient for securing his charges, this coop will also help moderate extremes of heat and cold.

For more be sure to listen to the podcast.  Special thanks to Kolmi and Warren for allowing me to visit and share this story.  And thanks to my favorite shepherd, Lorna McMaster, for playing her banjo in the "audio shop" at Dunn Creek Farm.

CLICK - HEAR TODAY'S PODCAST 

Fear is a Learned Behaviour and other Lessons From Earth

It is Spring at the farm.

This is my second Spring of 2010. The first was in California, where rain stops falling in March or April and the sky is clear almost every day. That means outdoor living is well under way and the under dressed (or undressed) can streak out of the house, cross the breezeway and dash into the garage for that pair of pants (or underpants) that never quite made it from the laundry into the house.        

Here, in PEI, in Mid May, spring meant settling into bed last night, and then realizing that I hadn't put on the space heater in the greenhouse and the forecast was calling for a low of 2 (about  34F).  I seriously considered nodding off to sleep anyway...then realized this was not an option. I have invested in planting the hundreds of seeds in flats that are just now sprouting with this year's harvest.  They are particularly sensitive to cold now - and I was afraid that letting nature take it's course would be crippling to our plans and our investment in time, money and labor. What to do?

I got up, went downstairs and put on a sweatshirt, a hat and a pair of rubber boots and sprinted out the door.
If you had been driving by Dunn Creek Farm at about midnight last night, you would have seen this farmer sprinting up the yard in his tighty whities to flip the switch on the heater and then dash back to the house.
Mission accomplished and this years crops saved!

Yesterday I hitched up my ugly old 3 sod trailing plow and tilled new ground between the peach trees in our little orchard.  I have a history with that plow that includes a spooky horse trying to flip it over onto me and some pretty ugly plowing when I didn't know what I was doing.  Call it a general lack of operator ability. I was pretty frustrated and afraid I'd never measure up. That awkward experience comes up each time I hitch up the plow.    

Yesterday I lined up my plow, set the points and laid out some lovely rows of nice turned earth which will
be planted with dried baking beans and potatoes for this fall and winter.  The plow was flawless and this plowman knew how to hitch the plow at the proper angles and set the points for turning the sods together
into the center of the row.  Thanks to my neighbor, Glen, who patiently gave me my first instructions a few years ago and by paying attention at the Dundas Plowing Match for the last few Summers, I knew what I was after. And I congratulated myself for this basic graduation.

I'll never forget my first try at plowing with Glen. After looking at my field and then at my plow he said, "That's a tough contract".  A few days later he said, "I talked to a few of the lads in the neighborhood and they said you did not too bad a job for your first time plowing".  Glen is now about 80 years old now and a lifelong bachelor farmer.  I'm so lucky to have had elders like Glen in this community offer their help and a lifetime of experience.

Warren Brush at Quail Springs said, "A community is a place where each person is needed." I like that.
But I'm still trying to figure out how I can be needed in our community.  I know I need my neighbors, like Glen. And Nancy, who took my seed orders and planted early starts for me in her greenhouse and my neighbors who continue to offer me their welcome home and suppers at their houses.  Like my friends who come to weed asparagus and visit while we work.   

A Change is going to come even as the world outside argues and frets.

Many people say,
"We can't change what's wrong". 
"We can't choose what is best for us".
"Government is cporrupted"
"Business can't be trusted"

Fear is a learned behaviour and it has become a crippling force. We are afraid to be wrong, afraid to make change, afraid of failure, afraid to be cold, afraid to be ridiculed, afraid to be alone and afraid of being hungry.

But I've learned that our friends will come forward and teach me.  They will cheer our success.  I will choose to be cold to save our seedlings and our neighbors will put a hot, home cooked meal in front of me. Being wrong teaches me more than being right. When you're right you don't need anybody.  When you're wrong you need your friends.

In the past 10 years I've learned to fear less and do more. And I realize now that I have less to fear  from the people around me than I do from the big anonymous world that wants everything I have - in exchange for my life.             
  
And I'm so much more impatient now with those who say, "No we can't".

Organic Farming From Hell

I'm in a bit of what I call "Blog Clog" at the moment. I have too much material and not enough time to do it justice. So I'm breaking it into smaller pieces and sharing bite size morsels easier for me to produce and for you to consume.  I know the pictures take time to load on a dial up.  I hope you'll find them worth the wait and do click on them for larger views.

On April 11th, I visited Quail Springs permaculture project at the edge of the Cuyama Valley in eastern Ventura County.  I'll publish a portfolio of pictures and podcasts for you ASAP and share the good news about building sustainable community in a semi arid region.  In the meantime I've got to share some scenery from the trip and some bad news about organic farming run-amok in an out of the way corner of the county.

You Can't Get There From Here

There is no such thing as driving a straight line from the grassy foothills and coastal plain where I live to the semi arid high desert of the inland part of the county.  The road runs south and the east through coastal mountians...

    

I drove south on US Highway 101, to California 150 East to Ojai and then on to California Highway 33.

The route winds through gentrified (and eternally cosmic) Ojai and then runs north.  The road runs through tunnels blasted through solid rock (a depression era road project) into Wheeler Gorge.

I snapped these pictures on an overcast Sunday morning where coastal fog was meeting overcast skies and a Pacific Storm on the way in from the north.

The hills were in bloom with spring wildflowers and shrubs like the pale blue ceanothus.  I get a little goofy about this stuff but I've spent a lot of time on hiking trails in the mountains.

I had to stop the car several times to snap photos of our wild lupines, growing out the side of bare dirt hills and chaparral at about 2500 feet. It seems so improbable and I wanted to share this picture with my PEI friends, for whom the big friendly and colorful lupine is a summer visitor and even a sometime pest.

It's Spring and the Topsoil is in the Air!

Life is both more fragile and more committed the further east you go from here.  On the other side of the next mountain range or two you arrive in the Mojave Desert which stretches all the way to the Colorado River and beyond into Arizona.  Here in the Cuyama River Valley, years of farming, cattle grazing and irrigation in this semi arid region (figure less than 12 inches of annual rain fall) has taken their toll.  And that leads to the title of this post.  In the picture above the roadside flowers pop out of a backdrop of soil blowing in the wind. 

This is the view from the highway of land tilled for spring planting. The ground is very sandy and there is hardly any kind of organic matter in it.  Low moisture/dry air makes breaking down organic cover or natural soil building take too long for these farmers. So they essentially plant in the dust and irrigate using energy to pump water up from the fossil riverbed beneath valley floor.  Overdrafitng this water supply could eventually end all farming in the valley.

Farming here is being done on leased ground and much of the production here is now certified organic.  Lot's of those cute little "baby" carrots (which aren't really baby carrots) come from here.  And lot's of them carry the USDA organic label.

This picture really tells the whole story of Organic Farming From Hell.  The wind is blowing at about 40 mph. The top soil is literally blowing away and there is no cover visible for miles. The foreground shows tilled soil that looks sterile.  And the middle distance shows overhead irrigation using fossil energy to pump water into the wind just about an hour before at least half an inch of rain began to fall.  Now I can't say for sure that this field is certified organic, but the point is that a lot of the fields here are and they all look identical.  They may be organic but they are certainly not sustainable.  Calling conventional ag by any other name doesn't make it better for the land. 

I won't mention the name of the largest ag company that's currently leasing and farming the majority of this area.  I'm thinking they wouldn't appreciate me showing you how they operate. I'm just pointing to this real world example to let you know that organic is not the ending point it's the beginning point. We have much more work to do to make our agriculture and by extension our communities, sustainable places to live.

Pathways to Relocalization

Michael Pollan's book, "The Omnivore's Dilemma" features Joel Salatin and Polyface Farms. Joel is an example for those of us interested in sustainable agriculture, healthy land and healthful food.

The Orella Ranch and Quail Springs Permaculture Farm are hosting this program in the Carbon Economy Series called, "Pathways to Localization". I'll be attending this workshop with an eye toward our operation of Dunn Creek Farm.

What interests me most going into this is Mr. Salatin's work as a modern "grass farmer". For those who may not understand this term, it is a method of farming which uses naturally growing pasture in rotation with other crops to raise grazing animals on grass - instead of grain feeding or relying on processed food in a stall or on a feed lot. Our farming forbearers in PEI knew all about this kind of operation.

This is a comprehensive, two day training. I'll be interested in taking away practical information that will help us manage livestock and pasture rotations on our mixed farm.

You might want to read this article Joel wrote, "Everything I Want to do Is Illegal".