Inheriting a greenhouse, coldframe, swaled garden beds, perennial gardens and the planting of food forest trees along a corridor into campus from former student projects onsite,these students will model green living as an education option.
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This fall, five UMaine students will practice sustainable living as part of their education in a permaculture homestead at the south edge of campus .
Tags: education, food, GreenHouse, orono, permaculture, Still Water, sustainability, University of Maine
Internship 1:
Orono Transitional Landscape Internship
Live-in, low rent permaculture. $300/week rent
May 31-Aug 31
Contact: William Giordano on first class.
Faculty sponsor: Prof. Joline Blais
Orono Transitional Landscape Internship
Live-in, low rent permaculture. $300/week rent
May 31-Aug 31
Contact: William Giordano on first class.
Faculty sponsor: Prof. Joline Blais
This internship is a living/learning opportunity that focuses on training and experience. Live and work in your own garden in Orono, and assist in the development of a home-scale edible landscape, in exchange for reduced rent. food harvest and permaculture training in a shared household.
The home, on the south edge of campus, is a transitional edible landscape and includes fruit/berries/nuts, medicinal herbs, kitchen herbs, annual and perennial vegetables, a greenhouse, cold frames and an ebible plant/tree nursery. Interest for summer interns could include engaging any of these areas. Opportunities for permaculture design training and certification available via summer projects/classes. Internships involve 1 day per week in the garden and grounds.
- Live on site for $300/month, and work 8-10 hours/week.
- Laundry/dishwasher on-site. eat-in kitchen, dining room, finished basement, 2 bathrooms.
- 3 Rooms available. 1/8 mile from campus and 1/2 mile from downtown Orono.
- Mature highbush blueberries in July/August
- Pick salad greens from outside the front door daily
- Learn/assist in caring for edible tree crops (plums, pears, apples, butternuts, hazelnuts etc)
- Learn/assist in growing herbal medicines
- Make far less trips to the grocery store
- Help establish a lively evening bonfire/music scene for summer fun
- Connect with Lucerne Lakeside permaculture side for exchanges, swimming, boating, camping
Seeking:
- Garden skills of any kind, or willingness to learn quickly
- Ability to make clear observations and record findings
- Research skills for connecting available models to actual gardens
- Ability to work well on team and on own
- Holistic/Systems thinking an asset, seeing patterns and whole picture as well as local details
- Design & digital skills helpful for documenting (photography, video, web skills)
Internship 2:
Native/PermaCulture
Lakeside forest permaculture
One day/week, $50/week stipend
May 31-Aug 31
Contact/Faculty sponsor: Prof. Joline Blais
This internship is for a Native American student interested in learning more about your own culture’s gardening methods and permaculture gardening and how to weave the two together. The Internship will involve one day gardening in Dedham, Maine (4-5 hours in the garden, 1-2 hours on the lake–swimming, canoeing, etc), as well as researching your own garden traditions and finding out how to integrate the two together. When Europeans came to this continent they often clear cut forest and planted their own crops. This form of gardening is about making peace in the plant kingdom–learning about polycultures that integrate European and Native types of edible and medicinal plants.
You will also learn about local native plants, especially weeds (which are highly nutritious and healing to earth and body), mushroom, insects, local fauna, medicine and ceremony. The intent is for you to act as an ambassador between cultures, brining the best from both worlds across the cultural divide and into the earth where we all are related. We will document and catalogue this research using digital photography, video, and web skills, as well as writing about our experiences. Our goal is to create enough interest to apply for grants for future funding for ongoing research. Must be motivated, hard-working, enjoy outdoors, enjoy talking to elders, and willing to learn and integrate skills in digital culture, permaculture and Native Culture. Child care possible for young parents interested in this opportunity.
- Lucern, Maine, on the edge of Phillips lake
- One day/week, $50/day
Seeking:
- Eagerness to conduct research in field and in culture
- Keen observation skills of natural and cultural phenomena
- Interest in digital skills
- Connect with LongGreenHouse site in Orono for more urban permaculture options
Fall 2010-Spring 2011 Internships
Fall internships will pick up on the work of both internships, and involve students in UMaine degree/for credit courses. All Students living at LongGreenHouse are required to link at least one of their courses with LongGreenHouse work, whether as a capstone project, a course research project, or an independent study project.
As the final speaker in the panel discussion “Re-Imagining Globalism: Maine in the World’s Economy” at Bates College on Jan. 25, 2008, Peter Riggs, Executive Director of the Forum on Democracy and Trade, concluded his talk on climate change and international relations with a call for a new kind of creativity:
“Probably the most exciting part of looking ahead to what is a climate-constrained world, is the opportunity of new art forms to emerge. If cinema was the artform of the twentieth century, I submit to you that the artform of the twenty-first century is going to be–and it’s performance art by the way–restoration ecology.”
The talk was featured in Maine Public Radio’s “Speaking in Maine” series; mp3 and podcast available.
For reference, here’s a longer transcription of Riggs concluding remarks.
“Finally, since we are in a liberal arts school, I think probably the most exciting part of looking ahead to what is a climate-constrained world, is the opportunity of new art forms to emerge. If cinema was the art form of the twentieth century, I submit to you that the art form of the twenty-first century is going to be–and it’s performance art by the way–restoration ecology. Because we’re going to get really good at understanding how to rebuild ecosystems on their timescale and their timeframes, and that interrogative process of what ecosystems need to flourish, particularly in a time of atmospheric change, will teach us a lot. And I personally look forward to more engagement on the art and science of restoration ecology, because I really think that’s the future.”
Tags: economics, GreenHouse, Maine, Still Water, sustainability, Wassookeag
Archimedes was wrong: the tool most people use to move the earth is the mattock. Although often overshadowed by its big brother, the pickaxe, the mattock works on a human rather than industrial scale.
You find pickaxes in diamond mines and labor camps, where burley men with short lifespans heave them to gouge precious bits out of the earth and feed multinational corporations. You find mattocks in backyards, where everyday gardeners and homeschooled kids sculpt the soil into strawberry pyramids, herb spirals, and swales that catch rainfall and regenerate life.
Garden overrun with Himalayan balsam? Pry that sucker out with the pointy end. Want to aerate the topsoil without tilling? Stab it with those three prongs on the other end. Nail sticking out of your porch? Hammer it back in with the metal collar on the side. (Admit it, mattock owners, you know you’ve done it.)
In Future Scenarios: How Communities Can Adapt to Peak Oil and Climate Change, permaculture guru David Holmgren argues that ecological solutions on the energetic and geographic scale of corporations and nations (“brown tech”) are doomed to devolve to lifeboat scenarios, when their mining of energy to feed themselves rather than people crashes the ecosystems upon which these hierarchies depend. Simpler solutions at the village and township scale offer our best shot at making it to the 22nd century, because larger farm machines fail not only energetically, but psycho-socially. The carrying capacity of the earth is directly linked to the caring capacity of the beings that tend it.
The “earth stewards” of Holgrem’s ideal future would be well served to find a blacksmith with enough iron ore to make them a collection of mattocks. A mattock is a tool not only for moving the earth, but for moving the human heart closer to it.
Tags: GreenHouse, sustainability, Wassookeag
Join facilitator Bill Giordano
at LongGreenHouse
Wed, May 27, 3:30 pm
5 Chapel Road, Orono
Sheet-mulch gardening is a no-till method for making raised beds. Abundant organic materials such as grass cippings, animal bedding, leaves, manure, newspaper, cardboard, mulching hay, straw and more can be layered on top of earth rather than yearly tilling. All materials break down and become nutrients for the soil food web. Sheet-mulched beds maximize soil health and minimize watering, mineral leaching weeding, and human input for years to come!
Come get your hands in the soil and your heart closer to the earth!
During the month of May, we’ll be planting a dozens of fruit trees, hundreds of berry plants, flowers and annuals at LongGreenHouse and sneaking onto university grounds, along the Food Corridor. Main gardeners will include Bill Giordano, Joline Blais, Isis Bell, and gkisedtanamoogk, with help from 3-yr old Ellie.
If you help us plant, you will earn funds in our local currency, which you can then spend on our eventual harvest. More important, you will be helping us seed a food forest that will spread through the campus, ensuring local food security, and you will be learning some permaculture techniques, like sheet mulching, guild building, and berry pyramid building.
Some key dates are below:
Main Tree planting: May 2-7
Kiwi & Berry Shrubs: May 11 & 16
Strawberry Pyramid: May 19 or 21
Other fruit Trees: Last two weeks of May.
For more info, contact Bill or Joline
You weren’t meant to have a Job
“I was in Africa last year and saw a lot of animals in the wild that I’d only seen in zoos before. It was remarkable how different they seemed. Particularly lions. Lions in the wild seem about ten times more alive. They’re like different animals. And seeing those guys on their scavenger hunt was like seeing lions in a zoo after spending several years watching them in the wild…
What’s so unnatural about working for a big company? The root of the problem is that humans weren’t meant to work in such large groups.”
Wassookeag will be gathering all our supplies for a local food fest: chicken eggs from Cheryl, Duck eggs from Kai & Ryan, pancake mix from scratch by Amanda, and maple syrup from the silver maple in the back yard!
Come celebrate the onset of spring (rain is good!)
Bring fruits, or beverage if you like.
US out of Vermont (and Maine)!
Over half of the 50 states now have active secession movements. Vermont leads the way to establish local government that rules by consent of the people. Says Vermont guru Naylor, “My own favorite fantasy would be for Vermont to join Maine, New Hampshire, and the four Atlantic provinces of Canada to create a new nation I would call New Acadia.”
We weren’t meant to be wage/slaves
“there are more slaves today than at any point in history. Although a precise census is impossible, as most masters keep their slaves hidden, baseline estimates from United Nations and other international researchers range from 12 million to 27 million slaves worldwide.”
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