ECO-Tours only purchases trees and dirt to plant them in...

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Recovery Park Farms

There is a plan and a movement in Detroit that will be transforming a small part of the city into one of the largest urban farms in America. Eco-Tours has offered to teach their lead people and a core group of their employees. This project envisions transforming a large urban parcel, 60 acres, into a food production, and distribution center as well as a community resource for the urban Renaissance of one of our nation's most blighted cities.

ECO-Tours has reached out to Recovery Park Farms and plans to present our biochar classes for them before planting begins in the Spring. If you would like to sponsor a class, let us know and we can make arrangements.

Sunday, November 22, 2015

11-22-33-44

I'm never very amazed or stunned when numerology is mentioned. Numbers are a language that, I believe, we should all speak. Just as we have all practiced math well enough that we have mastered concrete operations to solve problems that we encounter, there are more esoteric and ethereal relationships, numbers to one another and numbers to earthly creatures. The way a snail grows, for instance traces an algebraic spiral growth, as does the fractile nature that is the heart of natural architecture, structure and growth. Today, me computer designates the date 11-22 an when I came to this blog site and checked in, the records said that my blog has been visited 3,344 times. If each visitor to my blog shared it with with, 1,2,3 or four people, my worldwide reach has been multiplied many times over. One of my previous posts, perhaps at The Otherfishwrap, was about trining the triple Goddess, Maiden, Mother,Crone, that sort of growth is exonential, but there is a beauty to the ascending scale of basic addition as well. It is significant that growth has been on my mind more than usual. That is enough to get me to thinking.
A maxim that we have all become familiar with states that slow and steady wins the race and some of that energy/reality manifests in the natural progression 1-2-3-4, however, the doubled nature of the sequence has another relationship to energies that we recognize as dyads.  Paired objects relate to one another as well as their surroundings and that reflects an energy unique to itself. I have written on this before. the nature of the relationship between an author and their reader is a dyad. Reflection on numbers can lead us to other, more durable relationships between and amongst ourselves. Occasionally, that which we learn from these relationships can be part of healing or growing our future self in profound ways. Several friends recently thanked me for a facebook post reminding people that millions are thousands of thousands and that Billions are each a thousand millions. The news seems to delight in telling us about massive numbers, but they almost count on a large number of people just glazing over large sums. Hearing all that numbers can teach us is part of why I write. Pardon me for using numbers and words together, but I'm just using them as a tool, or actors on a stage, to write about a larger topic.

In old way thinking, I went door-to-door, to get the word out about ecological issues. I was a fund-raiser for Citizens for a Better Environment (CBE). When I began working there, we funded research and science about environmental concerns and published our work in the environmental Review, a quarterly publication that let members know about important ecological threats and what could be done about them. I was able to contact about 20-25K people per year. Less than half of those people even wanted to listen, but at least they saw us out on the streets saying the name of our organization. It has taken me two-and-a-half years to reach 3,344 visits, as many as I used to reach in about two moons. I have seen a growth in interest, but it is spread worldwide, rather than just being in my region as well, so the spread of information, as my readers tell others about the blog grows readership as well. Unlike the Environmental Review, these posts last in the digital landscape virtually forever and relatively small paper magazines typically got recycled. I would like to think that the recycling of these words, ideas and concepts will continue to go a long way to guiding our culture to a more sustainable approach to living one, or better yet in cahoots with this finite planet.

I have reminded my readers that have not grown up in intact native communities and cultures that the representation of "four directions", the supposed Native American spiritual Icon is only part of the picture. The true nature of their world view contains at least "six" directions. There is the Sun/Moon energy that comes in from above and the Mother Earth energy rising through us as well. The closest approximation of this that I have found in other readings that I have done is the mercabic principles of old. We exist in a structured, yet swirling fractile, a vortex of these six directions/energetic principles and when enlightenment or grace permeate us, or flow through our bodies, we resonate with nearly the clarity of a bell.
 Now, we switch the gears...
This is a picture, made with a scanning electron microscope of bamboo char. It is nearly 100% pure carbon.

When char begins to be transformed into biochar, first it is hydrated and nutrified. When done organically and thoughtfully, bacteria, fungi and many microscopic creatures begin to readily inhabit these surfaces. One amoeba divides into two, one bacterium can reproduce in less than a day. In relatively short order, thriving communities of organisms that enhance soil health and boost plant health as well colonize and inhabit these microscopic pores.

 The stories that I tell about abundance and building soils, while fixing carbon for long periods of time, may be the most important information on the planet right now, but the fact that virtually no money will be made on the transformation of waste carbon to soil, assures that you will not see a commercial on the tee vee or advertising in magazines about it. All who change to restorative agriculture will experience easier lives at less cost. This is just one more reason that the oligarchs want this ancient technology kept quiet. I have even read high budget "research reports" that said terrible things about char and emphasized that in their estimation it was nearly worse than useless. The study, to anyone who knows about char was flawed from the start. They used the raw char, instead of a finished biochar.

The water holding capacity of carbon structures in biochar holds about six times the weight of the material in water. The microbes who inhabit the surfaces are capable of holding even more.
Fourteen acres of surface area in a single hand full, char can support complex microscopic food webs. Olive wood.  

When I walked door to door, most of my message was kept within a sphere of influence that did not extend much beyond Northeast Wisconsin. Today the spores of my awareness and the state of the art ecological research that I do can be spread worldwide with a few keystrokes. Thorough the magic of our minds, and the language of mathematics, we can see old-way thinking swirling in and around one of the large cavities, (my city) now I can spread the word like a mist over areas far beyond the picture plane. Each one, teach one and we can transform at an ever-increasing exponential rate!

Even progressions increasing, at similar rates to the decreasing frequency of prime numbers is possible.
Sweet gum char can be seen as a sponge for water and life.
I am available to teach classes on how to make this amazing material and utilize it in restorative agriculture. My costs are $250 U.S. plus travel, per 3 hour class, or week long intensives can be held for $2K U.S. plus travel.

Please spread the word and let others know that this material can easily double agricultural production, "fertilize" soils for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, and help to offset climate change, desertification and prevent flooding. We can reach millions if each one teaches one and we take the time to grow the message.

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Please Share

One of my heroes has always been Joseph Beuys This fall, ECO-tours of Wisconsin will be planting seven thousand acorns in Fonferek Glen County Park, in the headwaters of the East River Watershed. This area in turn feeds the Fox River near the mouth and Green Bay, Lake Michigan and points east including Lake Huron, the St. Clair River, Lake St. Clair, Detroit River, Lake Erie, Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence Seaway downstream to the Atlantic Ocean. Rather than planting each one in relationship to stellae, as Joseph Beuys did, ours will just be planted in an appropriate soil and microclimate that favors oaks.

We ask that people who read this, appreciate our work and wish for it to continue help fund us either by sending donations to our ECO-Tours of Wisconsin Inc. Paypal account: tnsaladino42@hotmail.com
or by snail mail to 1445 Porlier street, Green Bay, WI 54301 U.S.A. We are a small local not-for profit, and the work we do has worldwide implications, as we offer classes in making and using biochar, reforestation, habitat restoration, composting and water conservation measures.

Joseph Beuys has helped re-define our relationship to the planet, Eco-Tours continues to do the same.