Author Archives: Parker

Seed Saving Principles

November 5, 2008 – 6:18 am

The mission of the Foundation of Sustainable Living is the education and research about, and practice of, living sustainably both technically and socially.  We propose to invest skill sets and knowledge in individuals, and to promulgate such knowledge via the internet, multimedia publications, workshops, and a speaker’s bureau.

However, without access and control over the germ plasma of appropriate, reproducible food, fiber, fuel, and medicinal plants nothing else we do will matter.  Non-Hybridized seed saving, production, distribution and the ability to grow our own plant derived needs is the base line of the entire agrarian part of what FOSL proposes. Control of our own plant needs is the only possible basis for long term regional localization of food production – the non-negotiable heart of the survival of the human race.

Quote from the Zend-Avesta

“He who sows the ground with care and diligence acquires a greater stock of religious merit than he could gain by the repetition of ten thousand prayers.”

Some of the other areas defining the importance of seed saving include:

  • If there is an interruption in the distribution system, we may no longer have access to sources of seed that we take for granted now.  We need to start accumulating seed NOW for the crops we will need in the future for food, fuel, fiber, and medicine. Local growing and saving seed as a routine practice is the highest priority for sustainable living so that local communities have broad enough genetic diversity in the future to deal with the changes in climate and/economies that are coming.
  • Food security is being independent of corporate seed sellers by growing our own seed, and preserving diversity in the face of adversity:  global warming will cause imbalances in pest/predator relationships, and diseases and pests will have new ranges, potentially challenging or even wiping out common commercial varieties.
  • The nature of the globalization process and the perceived economics imperatives practiced by the increasingly larger Corporations are expressed by those who control seed worldwide as no interest in preserving regional varieties. If we are to survive in the future it is incumbent on local growers to preserve and increase biodiversity by using plants’ natural sexual reproduction, rather than cloning or breeding hybrids that will be infertile or will not grow true.
  • Developing varieties that are well adapted to the climates and soils of each particular region by repeatedly selecting vigorous seed over several years has a 12,000 year history and is the highest expression of man’s backbreaking work and genius.
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WHAT DO YOU WANT IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD?

November 3, 2008 – 10:10 am

In my community, whether a village or neighborhood, I would like to be able to help my neighbors work together toward sustainability. If I can chose or help make a community it would, I hope, be a community that sees its duty to change the way we live and work together, to build the courage to make the changes required so that our children have a safe comfortable future.

In community, I would work with my neighbors to be as self-sufficient as localizing production of our basic needs can make us.  I would like to help to shorten the distribution web for what our community needs and produces, and trade with other locals for as much as possible. In my community we would make a unified effort would be directed to help all of us live and work together to break free of working for the unfriendly Corporations and Governments so we can be with our children, our neighbors, fellow sustainable workers, and friends more.

In the place I would like live, those with experience would mentor those without particular knowledge, older folks passing on to younger folks what they know, those with knowledge and skills teaching those who want too know. I think the best community, for me, would teach the children in place and make children part of each person’s day as they help by working in the community part of each day.

I would like to learn what I don’t know from those who do, until I pass.  In my community I would like to see respect for, and study of, the genius and work from those who went before us, employment of the best of today’s knowledge and skills, and discernment of the best of what is coming – all bent to an intelligent creativity for truly living sustainably.

In my neighborhood would I like to see those with a more “wealth” share what they can and choose to by sponsoring those with energy and skills for living sustainably.  While I want time and space for privacy, I would like to see my community more closely involved with one another – less divided in time and space to their “own” private estates.  My preference for my neighborhood would be to work to create community space; more shared space and facilities and less private redundancy – common assets directed toward common need to shift to living sustainably.

In my neighborhood I would like to see retirees helping to build a community with facilities and jobs for those who would help them to live useful, productive, dignified lives. In community I would hope that those with energy and skills will help those who may not need help now, but will.

It seems to me that there should be ways to make a smaller footprint, less impact on nature by a community sharing many things based on a shared commons: large gardens, orchards, small animal husbandry, water systems, local power production, a motor pool, and repair and/or mini-production shops and facilities.  I want my community, by working together, to teach the young what they will need for tomorrow, leave an improved bio-diversity, a cleaner environment, and larger productive commons to those coming after us.

I would like to live in a community where folks are glad to see me and one another, happy to help one another and help with common work and needs so all can become agents of, and participants in sustainability. The world is changing, and it seems to me that we will all have to live with less things material, so, why not work together to be richer in non-material things, and in our relationships, in our communities?

FOSL is purchasing a parcel of land that can be our first suburban campus with a central commons area in the unincorporated area of Cleone just North of Fort Bragg, CA.  There are other properties available in the neighborhood.

If you are looking for a place to retire, co-house, live more slowly/satisfactorily, raise your children, design and form community, to learn, and to share the coming time of transition with like-minded folks, please contact us.  We need people, teachers, farmers, gardeners, skills, craft persons, old knowledge, young energy, sustainable businesses, more aligned neighbors, and financial support to expand the start we have made – come and help us, yourselves, and those coming after us.  To learn more watch this video clip.

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