text and photos by Nance Klehm

painting by Adam Grossi

Six years ago, I had my first loud and explicit communication from a plant. It was a pine tree that called to me—an 800-year-old pine in Ireland. It was encompassed in a buttery halo, rhythmically puffing pollen smoke signals from its multitude of male flowers. Its fecundity pulled me to it. I put my hand on its deeply flaked bark and it held me. I could not move my hand and didn’t want to. It poured itself into me, filling me like a river. “Oh, I see,” I told it silently. The strength of its flow made me start to cry.

Learning to listen to trees led me to hear other plants as well. And talking back to them. I found that some plants pulse, while others stream: their flows are different frequencies, strengths and textures depending on the plant’s species, its health and its age. Plants are networked batteries; trees are pneumatic tubes and portals.

Recently I asked a few people to sit with a plant that they’ve been “noticing.” The people I asked are sensitive people, but not experienced with plant communication. This is what they shared with me…

NICOLE
Nicole showed up on her bike with her plant and a sawed off shovel nestled in her bicycle basket. We met in a park on the north side of Chicago that was close to her house.

“It was amazing how much the plant shed on the bike ride here, like it was losing what it didn’t need on the move,” she said.

We spent some time looking for a sunny out-of-the-way spot to plant her plant. Eventually we came across an area between the fence for a swimming pool and a small grove of pines. Under one of the pines was a mattress and a blanket, in its branches a pair of pants hanging to dry.

“Six weeks ago I was in ceremony with a community of people brought together by Oscar Miro-Quesada,” she said. “He was doing this ceremony called ‘Sacred Space/Urban Grace’ in five cities. Five of us were asked to bring plants to this ceremony. We were to bring a tree, fruit, or native to this region. We made a pledge to plant our plants in a public park or public space. These plants of ours were in ceremony all weekend. We charged the energetic matrix of the plants to symbolize the greening of the city and the restoration of the Earth. It was a tremendous healing.

“I picked a compass plant, which is a native prairie plant that orients its leaves in the cardinal direction of North and South. I put this particular compass plant on my mesa, which is like an altar. I sat cross-legged, with the plant between my legs. I put my left hand at the base of the plant as a prayer, asking my guides to talk to the plant’s guides and that they talk amongst each other and to translate to me anything needed. I held the intention to listen to the plants.”

Nicole started digging a hole for the compass plant when the cops pulled up. She approached them smiling, slowly wiping her hands of dirt on the side of her pants. She explained to them that she was just planting a plant and no, that it wasn’t marijuana. She smiled a lot and talked slowly. The cops smiled amusedly and drove off over the lawn. She resumed her story.

“I had my eyes closed and I felt a pulse. It wasn’t mine, it was a round energy field. This field changed. Sometimes it was close, sometimes fluttery like eyelashes batting.

“I didn’t get any messages in a language I understood, but I did get another sensation of a connection being made and suddenly I was quickly enveloped. The plant held me. That seemed groovy. That seemed really nice. That was a good feeling.”

She blessed the compass plant with a rattle, summer solstice water, Florida water and tobacco, then put it in the ground with worm castings and more solstice water, placing four stones around its base. We scraped globs of sap from the pine tree to burn at a later time, and left.

LINDA
I met Linda at Cabrini Green, a notoriously doomed experiment low-income housing project in busy downtown Chicago. Linda indicated a large community of plants growing through the chain link fence as “her” plant, horseweed.

“I work near here, near a dandelion and white clover park,” she said. “I walk by here at lunch time to get out of the office and spend time with these plants. I saw it everywhere and I got curious. It smells sweet. It seemed not poisonous, so I ate it. it doesn’t taste too bad: pepper with a little mint, like candy with a grassy underneath. I associate light blues and purples with it.

“I found a patch of it and pulled one out and put it in a jar, thinking I’d get to know it more at home. One day I was absentmindedly stroking it, vibing it. It has these little 1/8-inch white flowers, and it’s kinda prickly. It’s a bushy cattail, pet-like. I realized it was sucking on me. Like it was sucking out my bone matter. It is a powerful plant. It’s probably not a good plant of you have arthritis…

“Another time I was sitting in my car with a leaf trying to get something from it and it started pressing on my Mount of Apollo, which is in the palm of the hand. It means ‘Art’ and ‘Beauty’—which I need a lot of both right now.”

We followed the chain link fence around the corner and she took me to a second fenced-off lot with a field dominated by thousands of five-foot-tall horseweed swaying in the breeze.

“Look how beautiful it is,” she said. “No one is interfering with it. I’m kind of jealous of it.’

A week later, I got this e-mail from Linda:

“This morning I went to the ‘garden of wild delights’ to check on the primrose pods and what I found was sickening. Every bit of it had been ripped away. All of the evening primrose and goldenrod—everything along the fence line—gone. The fields of amaranth and mallow mowed down. Remember how I said I loved it because it was a place nobody fucked with? At lunch I got a closer look at the damage. The sparrows were freaking out. They sounded so distressed. A bunny sidled up to me and craned his neck up at me. Bunnies need briar patches! This city needs an exorcism. Maybe that’s why I’m so angry.”

I replied:

“How ridiculous to ‘clear’ this land before the winter. Seed source is so important to birds and animals in the fall and nothing is gained by mowing them down now. Besides. the plants have already dropped a lot of their seed, which means the developers will have to mow again come springtime.”

Linda again:

“I know! They’re right there on the verge! Apparently, the property of whatever developer owns that land doesn’t extend back into ‘Feather Duster Fields,’ as I’ve dubbed it, so my plant is doing fine. I went back today and found a few evening primrose inside the fence close enough to reach in, so I gathered some seeds and scattered some.

“I guess it bugs me because the gamma-lineic acid in the seeds is being researched for possible anti-tumor and specifically, anti-breast cancer properties. I think such a beautiful, valuable plant loaded with immature seed pods should be treated with a little more respect. My mom died of breast cancer, my dad’s sister and two of my sisters are breast cancer survivors…and incidentally, I looked up the significance of the Mount of Apollo in acupressure: it corresponds to the lungs and breasts. I’m going to scatter that seed everywhere. And you can eat the whole delicious plant!”

MICHAEL
I met Michael at his home, a lofted industrial building behind a mega hardware store chain. Michael started with lighting tea lights, pouring me a glass of wine and a glass of water. He served a cheese plate with wild Armenian cucumbers, breadsticks and five kinds of cheese. He plunked his plant, a bamboo, on the top of a road atlas open to ‘Illinois’ and started talking.

“This is my plant: Fargesia rufa. It is a relatively new cultivar also called ‘Green Panda,’ which it really does look when it’s mature. It tops out at six feet. It is grown in Oregon but well here also. Cow, my cat, likes it too.

“I brought it into my bed to takes notes every morning.

“So I don’t know what you were expecting, but this is my experience: this plant says ‘hi’. It opens up upon looking at it further. There is a tremendous amount of growth. It’s a family tree—this one comes and stops, this one comes up and branches further. I stressed it by design. I pushed it to see what it would do and tell me if he could do it. He browned out. He got pissed—I had flushed him out. This bamboo has suffered a huge vitamin loss and I will need to put it on a program.

“A friend of mine sat with the plant and felt embraced. She works with kids in identifying with their bodies. to express themselves healthily. Maybe she should work with this plant with the kids…

“My personal experience: I gave attention to this bamboo and it inspired me in my absence from it. It was a facilitator—I mean, an instigator. It helped me ground myself into who I am. It told me that my experience is my responsibility.’

Cow climbed into the bamboo, climbed out and circled around it, leaning into it.

“It’s true that it shifted my thinking, but I can’t say this is the miracle plant. You can play with it.”

Michael holds a tea light under the stems to show them to me.

“I’m thinking about children and alienation from nature now. Nature will be there to deliver. It’s there. It’s welcoming. It’s opening. People should stop watching TV or playing video games. They should stop watching porno and start watching bamboo.

“I was paying attention to a plant—it’s not a modern urge. It’s a simple, profound thing that comes from nature. It’s a trickle, a dissemination… It’s not weird. It’s practical.’

===================

Nicole Garneau was born in Chicago and has lived in the city for 20 years. She works at making art, performances, and ceremonies from a politically radical point of view that somehow embodies a world in which she wants to live. She makes work in multiple communities of people both locally and nationally. She loves to cook, embroider, speak Russian, and practice healing.

Linda Moran is endlessly fascinated by neuroscience and she has elf breath.

Michael Loran Hansel is an urban landscape designer in Chicago who enjoys the particularity of plants and their environmental possibilities.

From a piece by Eric Smillie in Good Magazine:

In an undisclosed storage area in Chicago, Nance Klehm has a hidden stockpile of human excrement. When the 1,500-gallon stash finishes its two-year composting cycle next summer, it will be soil as rich as any you could buy at the store—a gardener’s black gold. If it’s discovered by the authorities before then, it’ll be deemed hazardous and removed. The hoard belongs to Humble Pile Chicago, a conspiracy of 22 people Klehm has rallied to help.

Credit her childhood on a farm in northwest Illinois: Klehm is a self-made food and soil consultant who thinks we need to close the nutrient loop when it comes to a sustainable source of fertilizer. “It’s hard to find safe soil for planting in the city,” she says. “Most of what you get is stripped from someplace else; we’re stealing it from one place and trying to enrich another with it. It’s nuts.”

She decided years ago to collect more than kitchen scraps, and built herself a dry toilet to catch her “humanure.” “My bucket is front and center in the bathroom at this point, while my flushie is just a book stand,” she says. She started Chicago’s Humble Pile to increase her yield. Participants had simple orders: Do your business in buckets, cover with sawdust, and fill large garbage cans for Klehm to cart away (while avoiding landlords).

For Nicole Garneau, 39, a performance artist and teacher, taking part was easy. “I could do it without ever leaving the comfort of my home,” she says. When her full barrel was ready for pickup, she’d boldly leave it out in front of her co-op building with a sign that read, “Nicole’s shit, do not open.” No one did.

She’s now eagerly awaiting the return of her portion of the pile, which she plans to nonchalantly fold into her co-op’s box garden. By then it will bear no evidence of her dastardly deed—it will look, in fact, like any old humble pile of soil.

To join the Chicago Humble Pile, visit http://spontaneousvegetation.net/humble-pile/

Nance Klehm says:
No need to mince words on this one, the answer is totally ‘yes.’ There is no such thing as too many ‘love apples’! Unless you have loads, the gift outweighs your total energy out: $20 of canning jars plus two hours or less of your time (or even much less if you have a friend helping), plus some good music to chop and simmer to = the best sauce, tomato juice, salsa, whatever. Your tomatoes will speak to you for all the dead of winter…

Comments or questions regarding this post should be posted in the “Comments” section below

Nance Klehm website: spontaneousvegetation.net

A bushel of sawdust and a low-tech composting toilet used for compost collection.

Your Crap, Our Compost: Squat and the earth shall grow
.
By Sisi Tang
In These Times

Poop. 


A generally fecal-phobic society reacts to the thought with a mix of snickering interest and fearful aversion, all dispatched in a single flush. But Nance Klehm, 43-year-old urban forager and grower, transforms human excrement into nutritious soil one bucket at a time. 


Klehm’s Humble Pile, a local do-it-yourself human waste composting project, introduces a backyard alternative to the machine-churning, power-draining waste-processing facilities tucked away in remote locations. 


“I’m not treating it chemically. I trust microorganisms to do it for me,” Klehm says. 


In early 2008, Klehm sent letters and humorous surveys to households in six Chicago neighborhoods, calling on potential participants to help “transform waste into fertility, pollution into resource, and isolation into connection.”

With no need for “Compost 101” instruction, complex machinery, electricity or water, Humble Pile asked its 22 volunteer “nutrient loopers” to opt for dry buckets with snap-on toilet seats when nature calls. 


To the surprise of Lora Lode, whose household participates in Humble Pile, her two teenage children Kira and Charlie were the most eager to take part in the minimalist procedure. The family of four made room for a bucket in the bathroom and for storage drums on the back porch of their Logan Square apartment. “I was interested in this as an experiment,” says Lode, who works with artists to combine art, activism and environmental concerns. Her 19-year-old son Charlie is not put off. “I just think that if I didn’t have a house, this is what I would do,” he says.

In place of the routine flush, Klehm supplies the “nutrient loopers” with sawdust to cover stools after each deposit, both to dispel odor and to facilitate composting.

In the summer of 2008, Klehm personally collected the feces from the Lodes and other households and composted the material in 32-gallon drums, stored at a secret location outside the city so as to avoid prosecution for violating ordinances on waste disposal and storage. 
”As an ecologist, I don’t expect law to keep up with me—it’s more important to get this done,” Klehm says.


Nature doesn’t seem to heed law either: Shit happens, and then goes through a two-year-long natural composting process that burps out nitrate-rich soil that smells like wet basement. The soil will cycle back into Chicago gardens, which include a 5,000-square-foot greenhouse at a homeless shelter and several additional gardens scattered throughout the city. 


“I’m just interested in people understanding that their body is producing soil all the time,” Klehm says, “and there’s no reason not to return it back to earth.”

According to Klehm, the locally produced Humble Pile compost is as nutrient-rich as sludge “fertilizer” from municipal sewage plants. “Good soil is so hard to have in the city. I’m concerned about the state of our soil—they’re affecting our health, they’re depleted, or they’re contaminated or poisonous,” Klehm says. 


Deemed a fertilizer by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the controversial sludge is a concoction of everything that goes down the drain—a heavy-metal laden medley of industrial, pharmaceutical and human waste. (In an attempt at linguistic detoxification, the EPA renamed sewage sludge “biosolids.”)


Klehm’s composting method has another home: an abandoned World War II-era U.S. airbase. In the salt flats along the Nevada and Utah border, Klehm and other artists and researchers of the autonomous living system Clean Livin’ use urine-diverting dry toilets and a combination of composting and dehydration to process their waste for later agricultural use. 


Long before Humble Pile, the waste-to-fertilizer process was discovered inadvertently by our nomadic ancestors, who flung waste onto piles that eventually became fertile soil. Later, the Sumerians and Romans hired delivery boys to carry feces in “honey wagons” to nearby fields for fertilization. The Chinese even commoditized “night soil” from wealthier households as a valuable good—the feces of the rich being more abundant in nutrients due to their better diets. 


But now, just as the Western commode is making its widespread debut in China, Klehm is showing at least two U.S. communities that there may be a better option than the water-hungry modern flush toilet. Producing soil and fertilizer locally helps conserve energy and water, and whereas the composition of municipal sewage sludge is to a large extent a mystery, what goes into Klehm’s buckets are participants’ own work. What’s more, Klehm ensures that her DIY fertilizer is safe by testing it for E. coli bacteria.

For Klehm, Humble Pile is not a novelty. “I’ve been doing this for four years,” she says. “Other people think it’s crazy. I just accept it as a way of life.” 

September 13, Lincoln Park, Chicago – meet at nature museum
October 11, Jackson Park, Chicago – meet at osaka garden tea house (this is a potluck – please bring something simple and wild to share)
3-5pm rain or shine
$10-$20 donation
Nance’s website: spontaneousvegetation.net

Here’s some pics and text about the August 11, 2009 Philly forage by Jennifer Kates on Flickr at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alligatorateher/sets/72157621993729204/

And here’s some sweet pics by Evan T. Wells from the Philly forage:

The resulting salad, with Nance’s thyme, vitex, wild grape and honey dressing…

Above: Nance Klehm during an urban forage last year in Los Angeles. Photo: Suzie Lectenberg

The public is invited to join us for a two-hour urban forage in Fishtown with Arthur Magazine “Weedeater” columnist/ecologist/artist NANCE KLEHM.

We will walk and explore the plants along the way—both intentionally planted and ones that have simply arrived, the cultivated and the wild, the choice and the weeds—keeping an eye out for those with medicinal and/or culinary uses, and telling some of their stories.

Find out about the riches that are literally underfoot—the so-called weeds and other plants, trees and bushes whose leafs, blades, branches and/or roots may be safely prepared in homemade elixirs, infusions, decoctions, energetics, pestos, pates, dips, spreads, salves, tinctures, infused oils, flower essences, vinegars and wines.

Bring paper and pen for note-taking/drawing. Discreet photography and video recording is cool.

We will meet at 2037 Frankford Avenue, Philadelphia, 19125

Day-of-forage tickets are available for $10 cash, per person, as space permits. Young kids are FREE. We had a couple very late cancellations, so there’s still room for 8-10 more people. The group maxes out at 30.

FURTHER INFORMATION:
Nance Klehm’s “Weedeater” columns for Arthur Magazine:
http://www.arthurmag.com/contributors/weedeater-by-nance-klehm/

Photos and video from Nance Klehm’s urban forage last May in Chicago:
http://backyardharvester.com/blog/2009/05/foraging-wild-food-in-douglas-park.htm

Nance Klehm’s website:
http://spontaneousvegetation.net/

A podcast by American Public Media on Nance Klehm’s 2008 urban forage in Los Angeles:

BUILD A HOME FOR BATS!
nance klehm

Q: Mosquitoes are attacking me. What should I do?

To start, two simple lists –

What Attracts Mosquitoes:
- dark clothing and dark foliage
- lactic acid and sweat (from your exercising or a very balmy evening)
- flowery or fruity fragrances
- CO2 (uh oh)
- moist places in general

What Drives Them Away, or at least stops them from finding you:
- smoke
- light clothing
- clean, aseptic fragrances/essential oils such as: clove, geranium, cinnamon, rosemary, lemongrass, cedar and the infamous citronella
- bats!

Little brown bats are the most common bat in temperate North America. I see them darting overhead at dusk in most city parks in most cities. Consider building a bat house or three in your neighborhood! For plans and more info, check out Bat Conservation International at batcon.org

Let’s consider the bat and the mosquito together:

mama little brown bat
life span 33 years
1-2 offspring/year
50-60 days gestation, 1 month to flyer

mama ‘any type’ mosquito
life span 2 weeks
400/eggs/laying x ?layings/year
1 week egg to flyer

Why not sic mama insectivore on mama nectar-bloodsucker? A nursing little brown bat not only literally flies around with her baby on her nipple, she knocks out 4,500 mosquitoes and other teeny insects in a single evening of hunting. Non-nursing others take care of around a third of that. Which is not peanuts—that’s a lot of bugs.

There are 150 species of mosquitoes in the US, which means as small and short-lived as they are, they also are fairly unavoidable. These bugs can’t regulate their own body heat, so most of them function best when temps are in the 80s, they get sluggish when it dips to the low 60s, and when it is under 50 degrees… Poof! They disappear.

Both male and female mosquitoes are primarily nectar feeders (just like fairies) but a female needs blood for protein to develop her eggs. She hunts for your human scent and co2 emission, lands, pierces your skin with her mouthparts and injects her saliva containing this amazing non-clotting chemical in it so she can drink deeply. Then, once satisfied, she detaches and lays her blood-fortified eggs in moist places—gutters, birdbaths, puddles, ponds, ditches, plant trays, coffee cups left outside, etc. The eggs hatch into squiggling larvae, pass quickly through the pupae stage and become adult flying mosquitoes on the hunt in just about one week. So getting rid of standing water after rainfall, no matter how little, thwarts these quick-cycling bugaroos.

Clothing is an easy thing to fix, and as long as you’re in your own backyard or stoop, so is burning something in a bowl that not only produces some smoke but also a nice scent for you that they dislike. Pick something that is slow-burning—garden sage is a great one. You can get bags of dried sage cheaply from a middle eastern store. If you’re on the move and don’t have anything to burn, you can light a cigarette (a lit cigarette does help and you don’t even have to smoke it). You can also try parsley juice or, if you don’t mind smelling like a salad, you can use parsley juice mixed with vinegar. Even better, if you have the forethought to plan, make yourself a Mosquito Bane salve like so:

Put an inch or two of water in a sauce pan and place a glass jar into it. Pour a half cup of olive oil into the jar and a put in a walnut-sized piece of beeswax. Melt over medium heat. When all is one liquid, pull it off the stove. In the small jar add 15-30 drops of one or more (don’t stink out your friends) of the above essential oils and then immediately pour the wax-oil mixture over it. Set it aside to solidify and there you go: Mosquito Bane salve. (Note: you can always reheat your salve into a liquid to adjust its consistency to your taste—add a touch more oil for increased spreadability, a smidge more wax for more solid salve.)

Perhaps you’ve already been bitten picking those berries** and you’re itching like a hmmhmmhmm. Sorry about that! You are one of the many unlucky ones among us who are sensitive to the female mosquitoes’ saliva, and your skin is having a histamine reaction. Unless you are hyper-sensitive, there are a couple of things to do instead of popping an over-the-counter drug.

One: Pluck a plantain leaf in your mouth and chew it quickly. Plantain (Plantago major or Plantago lanceolata) is a ‘find it everywhere’ weed friend. When you have a nice cud, spit it out and apply it directly on the bite. Leave it for a few minutes. You should feel an instant cooling and soothing. If you have a lot of bites, give your teeth and mouth a break and toss a bunch of plantain leaves in a blender with a bit of water until it is a paste and then use this. You can keep this paste in a jar in the fridge for a week before you might have to compost it.

Two: Vinegar on the skin will knock down inflammation and irritation. Vinegar’s acidity regulates your skin’s pH and helps dead skin cells unglue themselves from your living skin. A few cups in a bath or a direct splash on your skin with vinegar should unruffle your feathers.

By the way, I just took a bath in three gallons of failed elderberry wine. When I say failed, it was neither drinkable nor even what I would deem ready for my still. I am not sure it was even something I would use to pickle with, but I decided to use all of it in this afternoon’s bath. And while I couldn’t bucket this bathwater onto my plants after I finished using it, what it did for my beach sunburn and itchy burned scalp was a wonder.

** Serviceberries, mulberries, strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, cherries, currants, gooseberries… they are all right out there, right now. Go get ‘em!

Comments or questions regarding this column should be posted in the “Comments” section below

Nance Klehm website: spontaneousvegetation.net

(you can imagine the why-for. this is the how-to.)

procure roughly one quart of raw milk if possible from any healthy lactating animal. if you don’t have connection to an animal, grocery store vitamin d whole milk (unfortunately homogenized and pasteurized) will do. it’ll need to do. you will need no more than a quart’s worth as a larger amount will make the process less comfortable.

you will also need to have a spoonful of room temperature yogurt saved from your last batch or some beautiful homemade yogurt from a wonderful armenian/egyptian/iraqi/greek/bulgarian/etc. grocer or neighbor. this is essential.

one half hour or so before going to bed, pour the milk into a saucepan and heat it gently and slowly, stirring all the while until it reaches 110 degrees. you do not want it forming a skin.

pull the pan off the heat and gently and slowly cool the milk to 90 degrees by just allowing it to lose heat.

drop your spoonful of room temperature yogurt into a jar and pour in the warm milk. screw on the lid and shake the jar once. wrap the jar tightly into a soft wool sweater and climb into bed alone or with animal or human companion. tuck jar against your skin. keep it as close as possible. hug or snuggle the jar: body heat is what allows the culture to educate the milk to become yogurt. bacteria colonize in the constant heat of your body/ies.

come morning, you should have a quart of human-incubated yogurt.

PUBLIC URBANFORAGE walk

meet at Douglas Park Field House entrance

$10-$20 donation/person (young kids are free!)

nettlesting@yahoo.com

MAY DAY! : “LEANING IN” TO OURSELVES, OUR WASTE AND OUR OTHERS
by Nance Klehm

Last week, in response to the swine flu outbreak, Mexico City managed to close its shop doors and empty its streets of 20 million folks. That’s darkly impressive, but consider this: Mexico City, which once was an island, and whose main environmental pressure has been flooding, has also advised its residents to do frequent hand washing—a simple task made difficult because one of the main fresh water pipelines shut down before the outbreak, affecting a quarter of the city’s population. This is not the first drastic water rationing for this populace, nor will it be the last.

With a high level of street culture where informal interactions are inexhaustible and richly layered—in my deepest belly, I xoxox Mexico City even though I usually come out bruised after a prolonged stay—I can’t help but ask how are we “lean in” when social distancing becomes policy, however temporary.

In Egypt, pigs are not only a food source for the non-Muslim population, they are the “clean up crew,” an integral part of the solid waste disposal system in major cities. In Cairo, pigs are mostly handled by the Zabaleen (Arabic for “garbage people”). The Zabaleen (pictured above) are landless farmers and pig breeders, Coptic Christians who migrated to the city 50 years ago from northern Egypt and became the unpaid grassroots garbage collectors of the city. The 60,000 or so Zabaleen make their living absorbing and sorting Cairo’s waste. Raw materials such as steel, glass, plastic, etc. are resold and other materials are repaired, reused or burned as fuel. Their low-tech, metabolic system means that 80-90% of what they collect is reused, recycled or otherwise returned to the economy.

The Zabaleen keep pigs in apartment courtyards, where they are fed food and other waste. The pigs’ waste is used for fertilizer. Pigs also are used for food.

At the start of this year, Egypt hired foreign multinational contractors to manage Cairo’s waste stream, replacing the Zabaleen and existing systems. The result has been higher disposal fees and a much lower recovery/recycling rate of materials.

Why would a country hire a transnational at a high cost when they have for decades had a highly effective grassroots labor of an indigeonous group do it voluntarily?

To make matters even worse for the Zabaleen, Egyptian goverment officials have responded to swine flu hysteria by ordering the slaughter of the nation’s 300,000 pigs…

In light of all this panic around a possible “pandemic,” my seed-saving pal Damon recently reminded me of an herbal anti-viral elixir, the historic anti-plague remedy called “Four Thieves Vinegar.” The story of this remedy, distilled from many versions, goes like this: In France, during the bubonic plague of the early 1600s, poor mountain folk were hired as gravediggers to dig mass burial pits. Thieves made busy looting homes of dead families. It was a few individuals from both of these groups who had the herbal knowledge of anti-virals, putting them to use in warding off the deadly virus. It is said that a few surviving thieves who were captured for their crimes were released when they shared the elixir’s recipie with the authorities.

HOW TO MAKE “FOUR THIEVES VINEGAR”

Using a quart jar or larger vessel, gather equal parts of dried or fresh thyme, peppermint, rosemary, sage, and lavender, a teeny bit of clove if you’ve got it, and, if you’re a believer in the stinking rose, add some garlic. Pour enough of your homemade fruit scrap or cider vinegar to just cover the herbal material. Put a lid on tight and keep the vinegar some place you pass every day, like near your coffee maker or bed, so you can shake or stir it once or more a day. Do this for as many days as you can. Six weeks is the optimal tincturing time. Strain liquid from the plant material and drink a teaspoon several times daily; wipe down skin and surfaces with it for disinfection; or do both as you feel necessary.

DEALING WITH VIRUSES

Viruses do not contain the enzymes that are needed to live, so they need to have host cells. Those could be in a plant, or an animal or even a bacteria. Without a host, viruses die.

Many of the plants in this remedy are anti-virals – others are also anti-bacterial and/or anti-fungal – I’ve included a full list of easily forageable and cultivatable anti-viral and flu foe plants below.

I’ve taught you how to make fruit scrap vinegar (“Breaking it Down” Weedeater column in Arthur No. 32) and Molly Frances has talked about the uses of apple cider vinegar in Arthur. If you have some of that around then use this as a base. If not , make some so you always have some on hand. Vinegar is so healthy and antiseptic, not to mention delicious, it behooves you to always have some around.

As per my conviction, I only include plants that are easily forageable, cultivated or available in any neighborhood store, urban or rural. This is a decent list but not an inclusive list. I encourage you to do more research around anti-virals and the listed plants.

ANTI-VIRALS

Aloe Vera—Wound healer extraordinaire that is also anti-bacterial, anti-inflammatory and when the juice is drunk, helps repair digestive track and soothes ulcers. Always have this plant or a leaf on hand.

Eucalyptus—You lucky Californians! The oil from this common weedy tree is also anti-bacterial and anti-fungal. It breaks up and expels mucous, relieves congestion and cools fevers.

Garlic—The ubiquitous garlic is antiseptic, anti-bacterial, anti-parasitic, anti-fungal, immune-stimulating and anti-protozoan. Growing garlic is easy… try it!

Ginger —Yummy and fairly easy to find, ginger is anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, diaphoretic, anti-spasmodic, circulatory stimulant, anti-arthritic, anti-inflammatory and more. Can also be used in baths to warm the body and promote sweating.

Hen of the Woods – Forageable mushrooms -Yummy!

Lemon—Again this is a ‘forageable’ for the Californians… Lemon helps fight infections and stimulates immune system

Shiitakes – Easy to grow indoors. Investigate this!

Thyme—Chases mucus from the body. Thyme is antiseptic, antibiotic and anti-microbial.

Wildflower Honey – In its original undiluted state, there is no shelf lfve for honey. If you don’t keep bees, or know someone who does, work on either of these relationships this season. Honey is anti-biotic and anti-inflammatory; it’s an immune stimulant; it’s anti-carcinogenic, a laxative, a cell regenerator, and it’s anti-fungal… etc.!

FLU FOES

Clove— Anti-bacterial, anti-septic, anti-microbial, bactericidal. Useful for infectious diseases and respiratory infections. This is something you pick up off a grocery shelf. Invaluable painkiller. I have used this on tooth and gun aches with huge relief.

Common Sage—wonderful for throat and upper respiratory infections.

Hyssop—This is most delicious as a tea. It relieves congestion, cough, sore throats and the constant beautiful blooms makes bees deliriously happy.

Juniper—Anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, antiseptic. Useful for upper respiratory infections, urinary tract infections, candida, salmonella, e. coli… Good to burn tby our dry toilets… Forageable.

Oregano—This common culinary herb is an anti-infectious agent and an immune stimulant. Who knew? Easy to grow too.

Peppermint—Fights infections, relieves congestion, clears sinuses – yum-yum and so easy to grow.

Rosemary—Anti-fungal, anti-bacterial, anti-parasitic. Also for respiratory infections. I love to bathe with this plant. The steaming of this plant also helps relieve migraines. Forageable for you west coasters.

Walnut –A bitter as heck blood cleanser, anti-inflammatory an anti-parasitic. Forageable.

Western Red Cedar – Binds wounds, helps on clearing lungs, diarrhea and an antifungal. Forageable.

Wormwood—Here is my friend Artemesia again, though not the common weedy one. It’s her cultivated cousin of yore…. Wormwood is anti-malarial, anti-bacterial, anti-fungal and anti-inflammatory. In public gardens and therefore forageable with discretion.

Originally published in Arthur Magazine No. 29/May 2008

MELLOW YELLOWS

I first tasted dandelion wine when I bought a bottle of it at a folksy gift shop in the Amana Colonies (yes, Amana of the appliance fame). The Amana Colonies is an Amish community dating back to 1854. It was settled by the communally living German pietists then known as The Community of True Inspiration, or The Ebenezer Society. Their tenets included avoiding military service and refusal to take an oath. The Amanas are nestled in the middle of what is now a sea of genetically modified corn and soybeans known as the Midwest, more specifically Iowa.

I had wanted something to drink at my campsite that evening. When I opened the bottle, I anticipated something more magic than what met my tongue. It was cloying yellow syrupy stuff, which resembled soft drink concentrate. I poured it out next to my tent, returning it to the earth where she could compost it. I was sure that I’d never get close to it again.

That was fifteen years ago, and now I have been drinking dandelion wine for about two years. The new stuff is stuff I’ve made myself from dandelion blossoms gathered in Chicago. I’m happy to say that it is divine. I am sure now that the colonists actually keep the good stuff in their private cabinets.

Upon mentioning “dandelion wine”, Ray Bradbury usually comes to mind. However, after I heard a radio interview with him a few years back when he passionately made a case to colonize the moon so we can ditch this trashed planet and survive as a race, I got confused. Enough said.

So the point is, I am going to tell you how to make dandelion wine. I encourage you to do this because dandelions pop up everywhere and every place. They are nearly ubiquitous pioneers in our landscapes of disturbed and deprived soils. Consumed, they are a magnificent digestive, aiding the heath and cleansing of the kidneys and liver. Amongst vitamins A, B, C and D, they have a huge amount of potassium.

As a beyond-perfect diuretic, dandelion has so much potassium that when you digest the plant, no matter how much fluid you lose, your body actually experiences a net gain of the nutrient. In other words, folks – dandelion wine is one alcohol that actually helps your liver and kidneys! Generous, sweet, overlooked dandelion…

When you notice lawns and parks spotting yellow, it’s time to gather. The general rule of thumb is to collect one gallon of flowers for each gallon of wine you want to make.

Enjoy your wandering. People will think you quaintly eccentric for foraging blossoms on your hands and knees. Note: collect blossoms (without the stem) that have just opened and are out of the path of insecticides and pesticides.

So here’s how I make dandelion wine…

I pour one gallon boiling water over one gallon dandelion flowers in a large bowl. When the blossoms rise (wait about twenty-four to forty-eight hours), I strain the yellow liquid out, squeezing the remaining liquid out of the flowers, into a larger ceramic or glass bowl. I compost the spent flowers (thanks dandelion!).

Then I add juice and zest from four lemons and four oranges, and four pounds of sugar (4-4-4 = E.Z.). Okay, now here’s what I think is the best part: I float a piece of stale bread, sprinkled with bread yeast, in the mixture. This technique is used in Appalachian and some European recipes.

Then I toss a dishtowel over it so the mixture can both breathe and the crud floating around my house stays out. I continue stirring the wine several times a day until it stops fermenting. This takes about two weeks or so.

When I am certain it has stopped “working”, I strain, bottle and cork it up and bid it farewell until months later. In fact I wait until the winter solstice, when I can revisit that sunny spring day by drinking it in.

Transition: as such an effective diuretic, dandelion is also know in French as “pis-en-lit” or “pee-in-the-bed”. Which brings me to YELLOW LIQUID #2 … that’s right, pee!

Pee is 95% water and 5% salts and minerals. When it comes out of the body, it’s sterile. Admittedly, I haven’t drunk my first whizz as part of my yogic practice, however, I habitually save my pee to potentize my compost as well as for making a nitrogen-rich fertilizer for my plants. Our bodies are nutrient factories – let’s value our post-consumption products and offer them back to the Mother.

We humans pee on average a bit more than a quart a day, at a dilution rate of 1:5 (the recipe). Each one of us are producing more than two gallons of free plant fertilizer a day. Or around 750 gallons a year – which is enough fertilizer to grow 75% of an individual’s food needs for that year.

Did you know that most of the algae blooms – whether in the Los Angeles river, the shore of the Great Lakes, the mouth of the Mississippi and many other waterways – are largely due to agricultural run-off of nitrogen fertilizers applied to our corn-fed nation’s farmlands?

Peeing directly into your compost pile is great. So is collecting it in a jar or a bucket and dumping it into the pile later. Not composting? Then just dilute it fresh (remember the recipe again, 1:5) with some water and use it directly on plants or let it oxidize and turn into a nitrate (i.e. leaving it out until it gets nice and dark) and then apply it undiluted. Not only is this something that has been done for ages around the world, it is still being done. Most people are just hush hush about it.

Why are our municipalities cleaning water so we can flush our toilets with it? The separation of the solid and liquid body waste is an extensive and costly process for the water treatment plant and we pay that cost twice by flushing it all away. We have urine blindness…

Before I sign off, I want to put a bug in your ear – this terrific yellow liquid that our own bodies produce can also produce gunpowder. But maybe I’ll approach that topic in other column – or maybe you’ll just have to do the research yourself.

Nance Klehm is a radical ecologist, system designer, urban forager, teacher, artist and mad scientist of the living. She has worked in Australia, England, Scandinavia, the Caribbean and various places in the United States and Mexico. She is a promoter of direct participatory experiences.

URBANFORAGE: WEEDS as Foods. WEEDS as Medicine.

A Series of in-depth URBANFORAGE classes
In this series we will meet and learn from 25+ common weeds as well as many local trees and wild perennials. We will cover techniques that include: elixirs, infusions, decoctions, energetics, pickling, pestos, pates, dips, spreads, salves, tinctures, infused oils, flower essences, drying, vinegars and wine.

May 16 – class 1 – SPRING & SUMMER TONICS
Hot and cold infusions, roasted root coffees, herbal energetics, drying and storing herbs

May 23 – class 2 – HERBAL BEVERAGES
Vinegar, wine, elixirs

May 30 class 3 – HERBS AS FOODS
Pickles, pates, dips, spreads and sprinkles

June 13 class 4 – HERBAL SKIN CARE
Infused oils, salves, creams, linaments, compresses

June 20 class 5 – TINCTURES & ESSENCES
Medicinal tinctures, glycerites and flower essences

PRICING:
$65/single class
$60/class if 3 or more taken
$275 for entire series ($55/class)

class price includes: light meal, tastings and handouts

- Registration is required 1 week before each class without exception.
- Classes are intentionally kept small to facilitate learning. Maximum/class=10 participants.
- All classes held at 2446 South Sawyer Avenue – Little Village, Chicago.

more info/registration: nettlesting@yahoo.com

Public URBANFORAGE walks
Sundays 3-5pm (rain or shine!)
$10-$20 donation/person (young kids are free!)

May 10 – meet at Douglas Park Fieldhouse entrance
June 07 – meet at Gold Dome building entrance at Garfield Park
July 12 – location TBA
Aug 02 – location TBA
Sep 13 – location TBA
Oct 11 – location TBA

more info/registration: nettlesting@yahoo.com

LIVING KITCHEN: localizing the palate in the landscape

Are you looking for a different taste? Do you like to cook with others? Are you wondering what to do with your cabbage/apples/dandelions? Are you curious about foraging for wild plants?

Living kitchen is a series of informal cooking workshops that hopes to reorganize our connection to land, ourselves and our communities through the processing and sharing of local and regional foods. In these workshops we use foods that are locally cultivated, as well as foraged in order to foster exploration of our environs and with our relationship with what’s growing around us.

Living Kitchen is about direct experience with what’s living and growing around us, new tastes, simple food-making processes, and sharing with others.

Events

Chicken Ballotine! – with Bruce Fields
Sunday, May 3rd, 2009 – 5-8pm
Cost $60
If you supply your own bird, deduct $12, stuffing $3.
Maximum of 5 participants register by may 01.
Register with: nettlesting@yahoo.com

This classic technique is the perfect way to turn a chicken into an elegant meal. You’ll learn how to remove all the bones while leaving the skin intact, allowing you to serve a boneless, stuffed roast chicken. That’s the kind of copy that belongs in Good Housekeeping mag. How about It’s just Cool. Jacques Pepin/Old School cool.

In another sense this is a way to take this animal seriously, to make the most of it.

You’ll spend an hour deboning, stuffing, and rolling your own chicken. We’ll store it in the refrigerator, ready for you to take home and pop in the oven. After everyone is finished, we’ll sit down to a casual meal featuring a slice or two of ballotine, prepared earlier in the day by our team of elves.

This workshop includes:
- 1 – 4# roasting chicken from Whole Foods
- Mushroom, onion, spinach stuffing
- Use of kitchen tools
- A copy of the recipe from Pepin’s Techniques
- Casual meal
- BYOB (?)

Bruce Fields: After working as a prep cook in a fine dining restaurant 30 years ago, I’ve since learned about cooking by eating. Living in a culture that is confused about food–non-stop buzz over the latest food fads side by side with massive increases in diet related disease, I’ve found the only way out is to cook for myself. To that end, Jacques Pepin’s Techniques is a great resource. Other unrelated skills/interests: House builder, rooftop gardener, drawing, dogs…………

How to Make a Sub-Irrigated Planter (SIP) with Heidi Hough
Wednesday, May 20, 2009 – 1 pm
Cost $50
Wicker Park close to Blue Line
Register with: nettlesting@yahoo.com

Join Chicago’s Green Roof Growers and LA’s Homegrown Evolution for a fun class on how to make a sub-irrigated planter (SIP) out of two buckets. As a bonus, meet Homegrown Evolution blogger and author Erik Knutzen, who will be co-teaching the class and signing copies of his book The Urban Homestead.

Bring some gloves and learn how to make and plant your own SIP. Leave with everything you need for a summer of fresh heirloom tomatoes–all you add is about 6 hours of good sun per day in your yard, balcony, or roof and enough water to keep the reservoir full.

No weeding, no mulching, no worries.

You’ll go home with:
–Plant-ready two-bucket sub-irrigated planter (SIP).
–Enough potting mix, organic fertilizer, and powdered lime to plant your tomato.
–An organic heirloom tomato plant, from the Green Roof Growers seed-starting group
–Comprehensive understanding of how SIPs work and how to plant yours once you get home.

View one, do one, teach one!
Then share your skills with others who want to grow high-quality organic food wherever there’s sun.

Heidi Hough, writer and editor, is a lifelong in-the-ground organic gardener who one year found her growing area in full shade. Sub-irrigated planters (SIPs) made it possible for her to continue growing extraordinary amounts of fresh organic produce on her roof. She’s committed to sharing the knowledge of how to grow your own food anywhere you have sun–back porch, balcony, roof–or even the vacant lot next door.

HOMESTEADING 101 with Erik Knutzen
Thursday, May 21, 2009 – 7-9pm
Cost $7-10 (sliding scale)
Experimental Station 6100 South Blackstone, Chicago
Register with: nettlesting@yahoo.com

Erik will lead an informal presentation on Urban Homesteading in Los Angeles – focusing on his and his wife’s homegrown systems of adventurous experimentation of chickens, growing, greywater, brewing and more – some successful, some not so much!

Copies of his book The Urban Homestead will be for sale.

Erik Knutzen, along with his wife Kelly Coyne is the co-author of The Urban Homestead, a hands-on guide that covers everything from growing food, raising chickens to navigating city streets on a bicycle. Erik writes about urban sustainability issues for magazines and blogs at homegrownevolution.com

“International food sovereignty and deep democracy activist VANDANA SHIVA [ref'd in Nance Klehm's recent column: see here] shares her views on the current planetary situation in an event presented by the International Forum on Globalization (IFG), KPFA Radio 94.1 FM, and Navdanya International.”

Not sure of location. Maybe Sept 2008? Video courtesy Ecological Options Network

She’s introduced by JERRY MANDER, founder of author of the IFG and author of the (sadly) still essential Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television (1978) and In the Absence of the Sacred: The Failure of Technology and the Survival of the Indian Nations (1992). Here’s some recent Jerry Mander commentary…

WEEDEATER
by Nance Klehm for arthurmag.com (”homegrown counterculture”)

In early February at THE SEED ARCHIVE’S “Seedy Sunday” event in Chicago, 70 people came by to pick up and learn about seeds.

It was a bit of a pile-up.

Four gallons of homemade, homegrown (last season) posole was never slurped so fast. Experienced growers shared their seeds and carefully picked through the collection, taking the most rare and unusual. The inexperienced came empty-handed and stuffed their pockets. As my friend Erik said: “Wait until they have 200 radishes to harvest and have to figure out what to do with them.”

Particularly exciting arrivals to the SEED ARCHIVE were blue lotus, mandrake and white alpine strawberries.

A public-access seed archive relies on its PUBLIC, which to me means a broad, diffuse network of folks growing seeds out and bringing them back. Completing this cycle is essential to not just the seed’s continued life but the vitality of the archive as a community resource.

Seeds require care and discipline. Many seeds can only be stored for a short period of time. Potatoes need to be grown out every year to remain viable. Lettuce seeds last only a year or two before they reach the end of their shelf-life. We can’t just stuff seed away and we can’t just grow things out willy-nilly.

Taking an informal poll here (in case any of you wish to respond, you are invited to): Why were people taking so much seed—far too much to grow and use?

The latter question came to mind as Vandana Shiva stepped up to a podium of a packed auditorium in Chicago a few days later. Here’s a picture…

Shiva comes from a farming, conservation and teaching family and as an environmental activist has a PhD in quantum physics. She is a GRANDMOTHER WARRIOR fighting Monsanto and the other four transnational corporations that control our global food supply—pushing GMO’s, toxic pesticides and herbicides affecting our seed and therefore farmers and their families, rural communities and ecosystems of plants and animals, soil quality and even us urban consumers. She uses an old form of resistance—inspiring a dedicated (read: strategized) and devoted (read heart-solid) group of people, mostly women to put their bodies on the line. Besides writing over 15 books, she has brought down the likes of Monsanto and Cargill on seeds and Coca-Cola on water rights. Shiva travels the globe extensively inserting toothpicks between our eyelids so we can see what the heck is going on. And like the toothpicks, it ain’t comfortable.

Four years ago I had the privilege of serving her on her week’s teaching residency in England. She was puffy, her breathing heavy, full of congestion. She was so unhealthy that it made me question the ability of a human, any human to hold such a large public identity and still remain whole and vital.

She looked better in Chicago, speaking about the Chipko movement of the early ’70s, an organized resistance to the destruction of forests in India. Village women organized the Chipko. It was thousands of women hugging trees that stopped the destruction, and popularized the action and use of ‘treehugging’ around the world. Chipko’s position was simple: forests support food, fuel and fodder, and stabilize soil and water. In other words, forests are integral to subsistence. That is: Ecology = Economy.

Press coverage of the Chipko movement:

Vandana Shiva also spoke about the great Bengal famine of the mid-1940s, when hundreds of thousands of Indians died due to the maldistribution of rice. Finally, women armed with broomsticks confronted the British East Indian Company to demand a lessened “tribute” of their rice crop so they could actually feed their families. Their message being: Let us keep more of the rice we grow or kill us now. Women and broomsticks, mind you. Witchy farmers, but not witches.

Shiva always talks up the idea of SEED SOVEREIGNTY. She started an organization called NAVDANYA whose mission is to protect nature and people’s rights to knowledge, biodiversity, water and food. Navdanya works with almost half a million farmers and urban people to establish and maintain 34 seed banks throughout India. These seed banks hold 2000 rice varieties, numerous grains, pulses and greens – some of them drought resistant, some salt water tolerant. They hold and share the crops that for thousands of years have been selected and cultivated and saved and passed on from generation to generation.

THE IDES OF MARCH
In today’s world, toxic land increases, but nutrition does not. Since we are what we eat, it’s time to start planting and cultivating and foraging our lands. But we need to know how to do that before we start stockpiling seed. When two separate attendees to the SEED ARCHIVE’s early February ‘Seedy Sunday’ event proudly reported sowing every single seed they brought home immediately after the event, my smile cracked. Too early, folks! You gotta wait til after the last frost of the season before you plant.

Check out the USDA ZONE HARDINESS map and find out roughly what zone you are in to know when your frost-free growing season begins.

So roughly….
March 15-30 Zone 8 (SF, Seattle, Gainsville)
April 1-15 Zone 7 (Oklahoma City, Little Rock)
April 15-30 Zone 6 (St. Louis, NewYork)
May 1-15 Zone 5 (Chicago)
May 15-30 Zone 4 (Kansas, Nebraska)
June 1-15 Zone 3 (Upper Midwest/Upper Great Plains)

On the back of many seed packages you will read ‘sow 6 weeks before frost ends’ etc. Knowing this plus where you are on the thawing continuum, you will know when it’s time to sow your seeds outside or inside in your egg cartons and soup cans.

Right now in zone 5 (Chicago) the soil is workable, ready for certain cool season sowing. I’ve planted: peas, potatoes, kale and daikon radishes. I don’t cultivate lettuce or spinach as I prefer wild greens, but it is time to plant these too. Inside I have already sown: tomatoes, chilis, eggplant, basil, lemongrass and a huge bunch of other oddball medicinals and edibles. My horseradish that anchors my center garden and the hops off the back alley is out of the ground a few inches!

No need to wait, though: food is already here no matter how much frost you’re met with in the morning. Plenty of weeds are hurtling through the soil and unfurling: dandelion, dock, ramps, garlic mustard and ground ivy are already big enough to nibble on and in a week or so, I can start delicately picking my dear friend nettles.

SEED SKEEBALL
- Mix half compost with half clay-y soil or river clay. Use the local soil you have around you. You are reseeding locally, after all.

- The seed ball has to stick together, but don’t make it too dense: the rain needs to penetrate the soil ball and the roots need both the structure and the air space to grow into their location. Use more clay or compost until you get a good mix.

- Moisten the mix so it is quite wet. Mix in 1/2 teaspoon of seed per quart of soil. (If you are metrically oriented, use 2-3 ml of seeds per liter of soil.) More seeds is not better, as too many seeds will crowd each other out.

- Roll a palm-sized ball of soil. set aside to dry. (You will need to distribute the seed balls fairly soon as water + seed = germination! I suggest doing this within 2-3 days after you make them.)

- Bowl, place or lob seed balls into areas for greening and future foraging opportunities.

Questions for Nance:
editor@arthurmag.com

Nance Klehm website:
spontaneousvegetation.net

Above: Enlil, the Sumerian god of the Winds of the Cosmos

Seeding the hidden dimension with AN ACRE OF POPPIES
by Nance Klehm
for arthurmag.com

Come on then, what are you waiting for?
Nothing. Let’s hurry.
Yes, let’s run!
Come on! Come on! Hurry! Hurry!
Oh look!
You can see it there. It’s wonderful.
Oh…Oh… What’s happening? What is it? I can’t run anymore. I’m so sleepy.
Here, give us your hands and we’ll pull you along.
Oh no, please, I just have to rest for a moment.
You can’t rest now, we’re almost there.

The hidden dimension of a public sphere is the sphere of the imagination. How we locate disorder and remedy it is how we imagine our body and mind. Disease and healing exist largely within our own perception. Individually. Collectively.

Poppies are a successful weed. They pollinate by the wind and drop their seed easily. 4000-year-old large seed heads have been found in the graves of stone age lake dwellers. The most ancient testimony of the poppy is on a small white clay tablet written in cuneiform found in the ancient spiritual center of the Sumerians – Nippur. Nippur held the shrine to Enlil, the god of the Winds of the Cosmos. It was in Mesopotamia, the land cradled between the Tigris and Euphrates and the birthplace of agriculture, less than 100 miles from Baghdad.

Iraq’s seed bank used to be located in the town of Abu Ghraib. After the 2003 American invasion, the Abu Ghraib facility was emptied of its seed-filled glass containers. Iraqi seed bank employees had sent a “black box” of seeds to Syria prior to the invasion. That box contains samples of 200 varieties of 28 of the country’s most important crop plants. This is what is left of Mesopotamian agriculture. These seeds are held in a freezer now, maybe grown out by some scientists, and not circulated. A tragic irony.

I have been gathering, sowing and collecting poppies during the last 15 years. From their frosty green lettuce-y foliage, fuzzy buds emerge and open to four crinkly silky petals, with black or white flares and olive to purple-black dusty pollen. Some are cool pink, but most are salmon colored.

HOW TO SOW AN ACRE OF POPPIES (right) NOW

(I mean NOW. February 28th through the first half of March. Get out there. Poppy seeds need the cold of late winter to wake up to germination.)

1. Find a spot of open ground that the sun will shine down upon.

2. Scratch the soil lightly loosening the entire surface no deeper than the depth of kitten claws.

3. Sprinkle some seeds—just a few, each seed needs space to grow.

4. Don’t cover them. The loosened soil has small rills and furrows that the seeds will settle in.

5. Walk away and let the next moisture event, be it rain or snow, settle the soil and seed. Find another sunny spot and repeat until done.

Don’t hesitate. Sow your part of that scattered acre NOW.

Swap seeds and enjoy a bowl of organic vegan posole! (BYOB)

THE SEED ARCHIVE
2446 south sawyer avenue (little village, chicago)
sunday, feb 15th 3-7pm

3-5pm SWAP n’ STORE
please bring seeds that are healthy, viable, open-pollinated, and true to variety. if you have no seeds come anyway and learn about sowing, growing and saving seeds!

6-7pm WORKSHOP
we will cover seed starting techniques, timing of sowing, issues of cross-pollination, seed collection and storage of seeds.
________________________________________

SEEDS ARE ALIVE
a seed’s potential is only released through the cycle of sowing and saving. to keep future generations of heirloom and wild seed in the hands of the public we need to plant them and pass them on.

The SEED ARCHIVE is housed in chicago. it is a public archive of healthy seeds collected from many places and people. seed is loaned for free to those who are committed to growing them, enjoying them and returning some of the next generation of seed back to store at the seed archive.



Dear Nance:
It’s butt-ass cold outside. What can I do *right now*, inside my home, to move our home and lives closer to an appropriate way of being a human on this planet?
-Anonymous Northerner

Dear Nance:
The holidays are over, it’s the New Year, and I don’t know what I’m doing with my life. I think I may be approaching a full-blown Spiritual Emergency. How can I calm down without going on pharmaceuticals?
–Increasingly Nervous Nelly, Jamaica Plains, New York

Nance Klehm says:

Sounds like both of you are talking about feeling potentiality – the first of you feels you’re at the base of a big hill. The other of you is feeling that you are at the top of that hill looking out and figuring out which way to roll down.

I could suggest to start composting your own crap, write someone an ink and paper letter, get to know the trees on the way to work, sing your personal aria while riding your bike, cook a meal with a neighbor, give your lap to a cat… And those are all great things to do, but I actually have further questions for you both.

Do you ask yourself this question on a sunny day in June? How are you relating to your socio-biological environment? What is your conscious intent? What do you consider “human”?

To ‘know that’ is not necessarily to ‘know how’ which is another way of saying that a good theoretician can be a poor practitioner. Practice proceeds from the theory of it. Heck, what are you doing right now to connect to the larger picture you are a part of?

So you have the option to jump now, scroll down to a simple answer or read on for a story about someone I recently met. (Hoobaby! So many choices!)

I had spent the train ride home with my eyes closed planning my 100 FOLKS CRYING IN PUBLIC action (stay tuned, details later) after I was forcibly told to “calm down” by a security officer in a public building. I had been on the pay phone for over 40 minutes talking to one taciturn civil servant after another. I kept getting disconnected and having to wander around the milling public asking if anyone could break my singles for change to begin again. I wanted to scream and the effort to hold it back was immense so I had started crying. When I ignored him, he summoned two other guards and they stood by at arm length just in case anything escalated as I continued on my phone calls. Was it really so interesting or spectacular that you had to call your friends to watch? How many years are we away from a police state? Would it take three men to successfully restrain a frustrated woman? Maybe.

ANNOUNCEMENT: Emotional displays in public spaces can be seen as cause for alarm by authorities.

Now back to the story… I left the train station and hit the icy sidewalk. A scrapper with a mother lode of over-sized, odd-shaped metal bits all stuffed and tied onto a shopping cart clattered up the middle of the street. He looked young, small, his non-pulling arm was swinging clockwork crazy propelling him forward. Hope flew from my chest. I yelled, ‘Right on!’ and he turned and grinned at me and kept going. I started jogging in the slush to keep pace with him.

On the other side of the underpass, he hit a hill. He was straining, his free arm windmilling, his body low to the ground. I stopped dead and the other me asked me, “What the hell are you doing, Nance?!” and I stumbled over the waist high wedge of dirty snow, joined him at the center line and started pushing that cart. At the next stoplight, I moved to the front, imagining myself as the second horse. That’s when I realized that he was a she. “My name is Nini and I want to tell you, this ain’t no dog-eat-dog world,” she said. “People think it is, but it ain’t.” Then the light changed. The cart was heavy and we were breathing the cold air in deeply. Cars from both directions honked and swerved past. A perpetually sour neighbor of mine sped passed, her face screwed tight. “That’s my neighbor” I said. And Nini and I laughed.

I left Nini off at 25th street. She had three blocks to the scrapyard. She was going to make it there before it closed.

And if you haven’t figured it out already, my answer is: Get on the ground and join hands and hearts with the brave.

Questions for Nance:
editor@arthurmag.com

Nance Klehm website:
spontaneousvegetation.net

Dear Nance:
I’m having trouble sleeping. What do you recommend?

Nance Klehm says:
Waking, dreaming and deep sleep are three states of consciousness that reflect the process of death and rebirth. When you dream, your life-force leaves your body and plays on the astral plane. Impressions gathered in your waking life get revealed and you experience happy/unhappy states. This information is then brought back into your sleeping body to integrate and then hopefully percolate up as intelligence into your conscious wakeful body as intelligence. Simply stated, deep sleep is key in the integration of intelligence gathered while dreaming.

Deep sleep occurs at the origin of the heart, inhibitors to deep sleep are:

- wrongly digested food
- conflicting impressions and associations
- poor diet
- unhealthy use of the senses
- unsupportive relationships

Obvious, right? But well worth the naming.

Start by looking at what you eat, patterns of thought especially in the last few hours before you go to sleep, folks you interact with during the day. In general, what you introduce into your mind-body-spirit is probably what is at the bottom of this. As Hippocrates said: “It’s more important to know what kind of patient has a disease than what kind of disease a patient has.”

In other words, What is the first thought form your mind grabs in the morning when it surfaces from the fluff?

The deeper mind/deeper heart is reflected in the life-force/waking self. You need to help the deeper mind complete its circuits so your life-force is free to flow.

I’m a fan of growing and foraging my own plants, but given that plants are dormant in temperate climates in January, you will probably be supporting an herbal shop instead. However, all of the plants I recommend are easily grown during the growing season without too much effort and January is a good month to plan those guerrilla plantings and fire escape gardens in SPRING!

These plants are naturally relaxing – some quite doping. They are listed in rough order from mild to strong:

lemon balm (tea)
chamomile (tea, flower essence)
rosemary (food, scent, tea)
lavender (food, scent, tea)
catnip (tea)
passion flower (tea, tincture)
skullcap (tincture)
california poppy (tincture)
hops (tincture)
valerian (tincture)

General blood tonics are good to integrate too – oats, nettles, and one of my best friends – dandelion!

But before you run off to mainline a bunch of teas and tinctures, I need you to ask yourself again: What is the nature of your hamster wheeling?

Stressed? Use oats and lavender
Anxious? skullcap and valerian
Depressed? lavender and passion flower
Insomnia? california poppy, hops and valerian
Hyperactivity? red clover, oats and dandelion

So try this for a week: eat well, interact with more supportive people than not, connect to the generous and abundant, and before you lay your head down, set your intention to integrate what you gain from the astral plane, lay back and breathe into your deep play mind.

Questions for Nance:
editor@arthurmag.com

Nance Klehm website:
spontaneousvegetation.net

Charismatic mega-fauna are really taking it on the chin these days. They look great on posters and t-shirts, but don’t let them walk untethered through town!

I was quite upset when, in April, a mountain lion showed up in Chicago, and was shot seven times by the police. I too have always felt a bit conspicuous and unwieldy in the city.

This cougar traveled hundreds of miles to get to Chicago. Perhaps it knocked out a few slow squirrels or stray cats when it touched on the interminable sprawl of Chicago, or Milwaukee, or even Rockford, Illinois, but there were no human attacks. Of course, there could have been—but there wasn’t.

Last year, also in Chicago, a coyote showed up in the refrigerated beverage section of a downtown sandwich shop. After 45 minutes, and after several people-customers took pictures of it with their cell phones, animal control showed up. The coyote was given an overnight stay at a suburban wildlife rehabilitation center and released—probably back into the suburbs.
Most people around here are asking why these animals show up in huge metropolises. I think a better question to ask is this: Don’t you ever feel like one of these animals?

Mountain lions are both protectors and nurturers. They are loners and independent types. They stand for something quite formidable. Heck, they’re lions! It doesn’t seem like city folk are ready to live with such animals. Most have fear rather than respect for them. Lots of fear. Some reasonable. Some not so much.

So, if you feel like you’re a big cat in the big city, how do you protect yourself from being shot?
Perhaps it would be better to adapt the strategy of a weed.

Weeds are plants that were once valued and cultivated but now have escaped cultivation. Some have been further domesticated into a more mild form now recognized as food. For instance, our lettuces are domesticated variations of wild lettuce.

Weeds are really good at hiding in the open. Their secrets are kept close in their invisibility. Their numbers are always spreading.

Be a weed:
thrive no matter where you are
make your own food and oxygen
make soils better for the next inhabitants
send out a gazillion seeds
reincarnate frequently in unexpected places

I want to introduce you to mugwort—Ms. Artemesia vulgaris. She is widespread in the United States. Mugwort pops up in both our urban and rural settings. She is downright plentiful and ready for you to use. (Note: if pregnant, please do not use this herb. Read more about it first.)

Artemis, the Queen of the Beasts, was a wild one. She was an extreme hunter and friend of forest beasts. Artemis found mugwort and delivered it to the centaur. Forever after, it has carried her name.

I recommend you look for Artemesia vulgaris. And when you find her, gently trim a piece and dry it, then simply burn it in a saucer and inhale the smoke. This plant is a protector from evil as well as an aide to communication with the plant world.

Native Americans, Asians, and Europeans have used this plant medicinally and as a healthful culinary herb for hundreds of years. In Europe it was used as the main bittering flavor for ales until cultivated hops took over. My friend, Tree, just shared some of his herby mugwort ale with me while we munched on some homemade cheese. Sweet. Mugwort is used in moxibustion. In acupuncture, this is the smoking punk they hover over your acupuncture points. It draws blood to the skin’s surface and unblocks your body’s meridian points of stuck energies.

Fresh or dried mugwort also repels insects, cleanses your blood of toxins, promotes sweating, and reduces tension. Lastly, you should know it has some of the same properties of its mysterious cousin of a different species (any guesses?).

Mugwort is also used for lucid dreaming. Cut a spring and put it under your pillow or tuck a sprig into your pocket for protection. Burn some before you settle into an evening outside. Smoke some before you go foraging or before you lie down in a meadow for a nap.

Maybe it is time we invite these charismatic mega-fauna and not-so-charismatic weeds to the table. Set a place for them. I am not talking about putting them on the menu at some upscale restaurant so we can create a demand. I am simply proposing we let them walk through town. They can take up shelter under our porches or feed off the extra bunnies.

Speaking of weeds, please do serve them up, drink them, smoke them, learn about them and love them. Find an overarching but examined respect for them. You should, because the mega-fauna and weeds are already here or on their way.

While riding my bicycle by the train line recently, I saw the ghost image of the big cat out of the corner of my eye. It emerged from the alley and then ducked back in. In other words, the cat’s spirit hasn’t left.

Nance Klehm is a radical ecologist, system designer, urban forager, teacher, artist and mad scientist of the living. She has worked in Australia, England, Scandinavia, the Caribbean and various places in the United States and Mexico. She is a promoter of direct participatory experiences.

Breaking It Down: Bacteria, Digestion and Old-Time Kitchen Folk Magic

There are three fundamentals that guide this time of descent into northern-hemisphere darkness. The winter season is one of decline and decomposition, activity below ground and general shadowiness. The fundamentals that guide us are:

Everything comes into this world hungry.
Everything wants to be digested.
Everything flows towards soil.

Everything comes into this world hungry.
Bacteria are the living structure assisting all life forms including ourselves. They are the primary alchemists transforming structures of life into other structures. Bacteria shall from hereon be known as ‘beasties.’

All matter is constantly, biochemically altering as enzymes already present in an organism break down from within, and microorganisms, namely beasties (but sometimes fungi too) settle in to eat and excrete, transforming a pear on your counter, a pile of leaves on the sidewalk, or an animal corpse into a lovely pile of biological goo or soil on the spot where the pear/leaves/corpse formerly rested. It is the end of the line in one way, but the beginning of another too. In other words, the snake eats her own tail. It’s nature’s nature.

Beasties make milk into cheese, fruit juice into vinegar and wine, vegetables into pickles, beans into miso. Fermentation is basically making a habitat in which beneficial bacteria and/or fungi can set up shop, eat and excrete until they run out of their food source, or you deem it time to stop them because the wine or cheese or pickles are ready. Shoot, without these beasties it would be difficult to throw a party.

Everything wants to be digested.
Demonstration No. 1: Take a slightly bruised fruit, or peelings of fruit (not a gorgeous piece of fruit—save that for eating) and place it in a glass jar. Add sugar. Screw on the top and shake it a bit. The mixture needs to breathe, so remove the lid and place a rag over the jar and secure it with a rubber band around the ring of the jar. Place in a dark, room-temperature space so the beasties can eat in peace. After ten days, taste the mixture. If you like it, strain out the fruit and put in the fridge, which will slow the fermentation process.

You have just made unfiltered pro-biotic fruit-scrap vinegar.

Securing and processing food for storage used to consist of simple, sometimes labor-intensive, but entirely petrochemical-free processes: slow evaporation, smoking, fermenting, and preserving in oil/vinegar/honey/salt/alcohol or in-the-ground storage. These low-techie but completely safe methods were used extensively until the mid 19th century, when kitchen folk magic was displaced by pasteurization, the process that fueled modern germ theory. This paradigm shift saved lives, but it also contributed to our general fear of soil, our bodies and our bodies’ waste. And pasteurization, with its requisite application of high heat, kills the good beasties that help keep our raw food safe and healthy. We gotta keep our internal gardens of beasties thriving! Eat… Excrete… Eat… Excrete…

Demonstration No. 2: Chop veggies, wild greens, roots, or whatever you want to pickle. Make a brine with non-chlorinated water and sea salt. Brine should be nearly saturated with salt, just like ocean water. Toss the denser material (i.e. roots, garlic cloves) into the brine and and swirl it around a bit. Drain the veggies but save the brine. Mix the pre-brined veggies and less dense material (i.e. greens). Pack a glass jar with your mix and pour the brine over it, submerging all material. Work out trapped bubbles with a stick. Now fill a small bag with extra brine and use as a water bladder: that is, place the brine-filled bag on top of the vegetable material to submerge it under the brine in the jar. Leave the jar open for at least three days to allow the beasties to eat. Taste, then let the beasties continue to eat for a stronger flavor, or if it’s ready, put the jar in a cool place like that 38-degree box called a refrigerator and slow their process down.

Since August Wilhem von Hoffman discovered formaldehyde in 1867, it’s remained the choice of human embalmers. Formaldehyde put an end to something called the “Exploding Casket Syndrome” that was afflicting Union troops during the long, hot train ride back to their families in the North. Formaldehyde is a far cry from the older embalmers’ choices of spices/salt/herbs for human pickling. As bodies decompose (because the bacteria does get into those caskets eventually), formaldehyde leaks into the groundwater and you can guess the rest. Lucky for Europeans that the EU last year banned its use. Good to know that embalming is not required by law in the United States. There’s no need to rob food from the living beasties.

Everything flows towards soil.

SEED TIME
Out there, out of doors, it’s between leaf and root time. It’s seed time. In autumn, plants put their efforts into reproducing themselves via seeds, both bare and covered with delicious flesh. Right now it’s time to collect these offspring—juicy apples and pears for cider, seeds to grow next year’s harvest with, and nuts and berries to make healing infusions from.

Here are some seeds to collect before winter settles in:

amaranth seeds
burdock burs
hackberry berries
juniper berries
kentucky coffeetree seeds
lamb’s quarters seeds
rose hips
queen anne’s lace
yellow dock seeds
sumac berries
hawthorn haws
aronia berries
hazelnuts
walnuts
grapes
pawpaws
persimmons
elderberries
pears and apples (for cider…)

Each of these seeds has practical medicinal uses, which you can research on your own. But if you want the full-on benefit from the plants you decide to put in your body, you have to allow the plants to help you.

Long infusions, which are like concentrates, are an easy way to allow plants to do their work on you. You don’t need to use bagged herbal tea or other plant materials from a store to make an infusion. Nor do you have to buy it in bulk. Instead, you can forage, gathering plants that grow wild in our cities.

When you collect from a plant, do it on a dry day. Try to find more than a few and collect from them in a way that won’t damage them. Don’t rip or tear; instead, make clean pinches or cuts with a knife, your fingers or some pruning shears. Take only a few leaves/seeds/fruits—no more than 10% of any individual plant—as it is important that the plant you are collecting from is allowed to thrive and regenerate itself, even if it is considered a ‘weed.’ Plants are generous by nature with what they have to offer. When you are done, thank the plant. Maybe give it a drink from your water bottle. Because that plant is going to help set your liver or blood or mental attitude right. And that is pretty generous of it.

HOT & COLD
When you return home, dry the plant material in paper bags. Drying medicinal weeds is all about allowing air to circulate around the leaves and protecting them from light. Paper bags are perfect for this as they will not trap moisture. Don’t put too much material in any single bag—remember, the air has to be allowed to circulate. I like hanging them upside down in small bundles in my dark and dry pantry, but that’s just me.

When you’re ready to make an infusion, grab a healthy (no pun intended) handful of dried herb and put it in a quart glass jar. Glass is a must—it is stable and neutral. Now pour hot water over it all, until full, and screw on the lid. You use a lid so the volatile oils stay in the brew instead of being released into the air. Of course, that aroma can be enjoyable and part of healing, and will have your home or office smelling terrific.

Let it brew for at least 30 minutes to as long as several hours. You will need to do some research here. Some plant materials have chemical compounds and minerals that require a longer steeping time to get them to release into water. Roots and bark are two examples of this, but certain leaves fit this bill too.

Also, some plants require cold water instead of hot water. Seeds and fruits, for example, require cold water. I also usually steep these longer, often setting my jar up the night before, having a nice sleep while my infusion makes itself and then waking the next day to drink it at room temperature or warming it up with a low flame (stay away from that microwave, yuck!) or even drinking it iced.

WHERE DID I PUT THAT NUT?
Two years ago I was driving across country and stopped at a Piggly Wiggly to pick up some snacks for the road. I grabbed some yogurt, some chocolate and I was looking for nuts. And I couldn’t find them. I found the stock guy and asked him, ‘Hey, where can I find the nuts?’ and he replied, ‘Peanuts or Donuts?’ I paused waiting for some faint uncontrollable twitching or the slow crack of a grin. His face was blank. He was waiting for me to answer him. Stunned, I thanked him and left the store.

Who am I kidding? This happened on the northwest side of Chicago. People in Kentucky know what nuts are and where they keep them.

SQUIRREL IT AWAY
Every animal forages and every one of them aids in dispersing plants’ seeds. Scratching the soil, knocking into them, eating them and pooping them out, carrying them stuck on their fur or muddy paws or webbed feet across long distances, animals inadvertently—or as is the case with a few animals, intentionally—plant them elsewhere. We humans have been carrying seeds around for thousands of years as we’ve wandered around and set up camp in different places. Wind, jetstreams, rivers and oceans help spread seeds widely too. That’s why there are so many weeds.

Squirrels forage, endlessly, their squirrel energy seeming to vibrate just below that of insects. But what seems like erratic, twitchy behavior to us is probably just the squirrel reading the environment with their bodies faster, or perhaps more honestly, than we can.

Squirrels are great collectors but rotten archivists. They find and carry around acorns, walnuts, hazelnuts, tucking them into the earth. They do it quickly, furiously sussing out a place then scratching, fuddling and putting a nut in place and patting down the soil again in less than a minute. Later in winter, when they get the nibbles, they may not be able to find every last nut they sequestered. But that doesn’t matter. What’s lost by one squirrel is found by another. Or, if never found, the nut springs up as a tree seedling, which grows into a tree that the squirrel can nest in and chatter from…and which, in turn, will produce nuts for future haphazard storage, snacks or, again, future trees.

So, if you can, find a nut tree or shrub and gently pick off a nut. Chestnuts, buckeyes, oaks and walnuts are common in parks and on streets in urban areas. Select one to act as a temporary talisman and carry it in your pocket like a battery. Travel or walk around with it for a day, just to feel its potential. Keep it in there until you are ready to release it into the earth.
Know that when you release it, you are activating it. You are ensuring a future store of nuts, providing shade and squirrel habitat, growing material to construct a ship from, and starting that forest that we all miss in our hearts…

Got nut, in pocket
Got a walnut and I’m going to use it
Intention I feel inventive
Gonna make you, make you, make you notice

E-Z CIDER
You’ve probably heard a story about someone’s apple juice bottle exploding. That’s a sure sign the yeasties have settled in and set up shop. Well, making cider is actually as easy at that: all you have to do find some decent fruit or juice to start with, and the yeasties, feeding on the nice fruit juice sugar, will do the rest.

If you can’t get your hands on enough apples or pears from city streets or backyards, pick some up at the farmers’ market and juice them, or just buy already pressed cider without preservatives (as we don’t want to preserve anything—we want it to transform itself.) Allow the bottled juice to sit out on a table, uncapped, and breathe. Cover the bottle neck with a wash cloth. Sip periodically to taste and ascertain where those yeasts are in their work. You’ll know it’s ready when it tastes good to you. Depending on the temperature of your abode, you will have something mild and nice within 5-7 days.

Once you get what you like, drink it up. (You can toss the sediment in your compost pile or use it in a soup—it’s free B vitamins.) You can put the juice in the fridge to slow the fermentation process down, or in the freezer to stop it altogether. You can wake the yeasts up again by bringing them to room temperature. And don’t worry—if you do happen to let the yeasties work overtime, your cider will become something else you can use: vinegar. Now you can make some pickles…

“We’re not talking gardens or dumpster diving. This is a discussion of the riches that grow in our highway medians, city planters, backyards and rail lines. Expert forager, Nance Klehm, sheds light on the city’s bounty, from medicinal plants to tasty greens. Getting to know the foraging landscape takes some time and energy, but gives back in complex flavors and a better appreciation of plants…”