Peter Finch loves to garden.

There are dozens of people just like you, staring at a screen, right now, wondering if this could really possibly happen, and I am here to tell you YES!!  IT CAN!!  RUN TO YOUR WINDOWS OPEN THEM AND STICK YOUR HEAD OUT AND YELL "I'M MAD AS HELL AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANY MORE!!!  WHO WANTS TO GARDEN!!!??"*

APRIL FOOLS DAY NEWSLETTER PALM SUNDAY 2012

The Garden is the ideal classroom.

It's also the ideal way to defrag our fragmenting society:

Last year we hosted a gardening fundraiser.  17 people helped, and over 100 came through, and now around 50 are receiving an email, thinking "oh, I remember those hippies."

THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR REMINDING US THAT PEOPLE REALLY DO CARE.

(each team is grouped according to the 3 Sisters Planting Logic:
 Support (corn), Nutrients(beans), Protection(squash)

1. Writing The Guide To Maximum Intention Gardening (Pamphlet Version)

Jon Mears was the teacher and director of content.

Mike Hulter was the researcher and compiler and author.

Jeff Pickerill was the enabler and the encourager and the editor.

                      2. Fairbanks Gardens

Cory Roby was the teacher, telling us all how to run and do what and such.

Mike Hulter was the student, doing most of the digging, and all of the research.

and Ben Raymond was the enabler, having his name on the lease and inviting us.

                       3. Karstens Gardens

Jeff Pickerill was the teacher, planning out and researching new techniques.

CJ Kelly was the student, also bringing 

Josh as the toddler mascot all gardens are required to host.

and Karsten Mueller is the enabler, owning the land and letting us use it.

                       4.Soft Lunch

Tyler and Ricki brought plants

Karen brought seeds

Mary's Heirlooms sent us seeds

The Hulters let us use their kitchen

Nick Tovik (Norton Canning Pickle Company) catered

Jeff Pickerill worked a 12 hour day with me 

and bought a $60 bottle of champagne.

Jacob Savage brought out his whole jamming coalition 

of electric jazz reggae funk souls.

Colt Hayhurst and Frank Buchannan played a Gypsy Jazz set

Quinn the Drummer (someone send this to him.  Matt?)  

Matt Young on his National Guitar, 

Chad "The Beard" of McFinley's Jam Coalition 

Tyler James of the Kryptonite Jamming Coalition, 

And Tony and Tiffany for driving out from Berkeley to play a set, 

And Conor for driving out to give a 12 hour business consultation meeting the night before, and Megan Aufdermauer for making us take ourselves seriously by doing an anthropology study on us, and the dozens and dozens who came by, and the dozen or so that signed up, and the dozen or so who stuck around long enough to sign up just so we'd have another one, and on and on and on.  

                       5.Mearshire

Jon Mears and Ulu Mears and Eli Mears have invited me to learn in a 5 week immersion internship on Mini Farming.  I have accepted the challenge and am undergoing the whatnot involved as we speak.

There are too many people involved.  I mean, not enough people involved.  hmmm...  send me feedback.  And if you have no feedback, than forward this to someone who might.

DesignScienceIndustries@hotmail.com

 SOFT LUNCH ONE  :::: OVERVIEW

On February 26^th we threw a fundraiser in Felton, CA.  We managed to raise $225, over 100 people showed up, and over 20 people signed up for various levels of participation offering space to garden, skills, and plain old energy.  We had an amazing time and served free spaghetti, displayed informational posters, and had over a dozen musicians come through and play.  The day started with 8 or so local acoustic musicians who took turns switching up and regrouping, and ended with a 2 hour set from Jakob and his Savages, a 5 piece electric jazz reggae ensemble featuring members of Sketchy Business and King Kracken.  If the “Welcome to Felton” sign is accurate, we pulled in 2% of Felton’s populous. 

SOFT LUNCH KIT

Once Upon a Time I wrote a pamphlet called 

The Guide to Maximum Intention Gardening.

It was such an interesting research project that many friends became involved in the development of it.

If you're here for pictures scroll down.  This intro is kind of in depth and boring.

After two months of working on the Guide, growing it to thirty pages and than editing it down to four, we ended up planting a garden, almost automatically.  Our group of friends was hungry for a community project and a shared space that would encourage community gatherings and such.  

The first garden was Fairbanks Garden, and it involved Benjamin Raymond and Shea Gallagher inviting us to utilize their fallow land.  Jeff Pickerill and Michael Hulter (me) were the team that made the guide, Benjamin and Shea were the Support System for us, by giving us  the space and encouragement we needed to see the first application of our concept.
Cory Roby and CJ Kelly were the ones who showed up with knowledge and enthusiasm.  Cory brought knowledge on how to literally take spade to soil, and CJ brought her son Joshua to plant the first seed.  

Within 3 days of deciding to do Fairbanks gardens we had gathered a six person team with a variety of capacities and qualities.  Simply by expressing our intention, we became the nucleus of a micro-community movement.  Through the Fairbanks experience our faith in humanity was renewed and paired with a functionalist approach to Team Building.  

Through writing the guide I became fixated on the ancient American Indian Three Sister Method of planting Corn in the center, beans in a ring around it, and squash in a ring around the beans.  Each plant plays a crucial role in fixing nutrients, providing support, reducing evaporation, shooting roots out versus down versus root balling, and on and on and on.

The three sisters method is representative of a truly functional group, and so we applied it to the actual garden teams.

1. Ben and Shae act as the corn, enabling us to plant a garden in their yard, supporting the project, and giving us a space to develop.  

2.Cory and Jeff acted as the beans, fixing nutrients in the soil and finding the extent of our options within the framework of what was available.

and

3. Michael and CJ acted as the Squash, doing much simpler tasks such as soil maintenance and general ground cover type work.  

We now know how to put together a gardening team.  What is next?  Getting money for the garden and ensuring its regular use.  To approach this goal we threw a fundraiser in Felton, CA. 

Felton has a population of 5,000 so when 100 people came out to see what we were doing, that meant we had pulled in 2% of the town.  17 people came out and helped, excited to be part of a project that held community as its central ideal.  Community is literally human companion planting,

thus Maximum Intention Gardening and the 3 Sisters Method are expressions of this central ideal.

Support System  :        Corn      : The Draw. The Hook. Why People Come  : Food & Music (Enabler)

Climber/Nutrient Fixer : Bean   : Good Reason for Going                   : Informational Posters(Teacher)

Crawler/Ground Cover: Squash  :Why The Soft Lunch is Good : Community Resource Networking 

NOW, YOU TOO CAN THROW A SOFT LUNCH!!!  

ALL YOU NEED IS...

1. Giant Poster Print out of the Guide and YOUR Press Kit.  

Not mine.  That's the Press Kit for the Guide, so if you don't have a Press Kit or the capacity to make one as cool as mine, use it.  It's informative and pretty.  That's all we're going for.  But the goal is to prompt innovation, so your embodiment is your branch.  You should be marketing yourself and establishing your own niche in your local community.  

3 Acoustic Guitars (substitute any applicable instruments.)

Music is the most crucial aspect of all.  The act of playing together is the literal demonstration of what a community is.  I compiled the Red Porch Song Book as the 12 most universally playable bonfire songs I've found.  "All of Me" is a bit harder, but it's a personal favorite.  These songs are the common ground that communities can meet on.  Once the music is playing they'll relax enough to enter the community garden.  Once they're inside they'll smell the... 

1 Bucket of Spaghetti

Sharing food is crucial.  Family dinner is a powerful experience, and the town barbecue is a diluted form of that, so the inner city community garden will be in pursuit of these things and may not relay them as quickly as it occurs in a rural setting, but these experiences are what we are most lacking here and now, and in order to reverse these things, we simply need to display posters, play music, serve food, and put out

1 Bucket for Donations

(seeds, doller bills, their name in the Bi-Product Book)

AND HERE IS THE SONG BOOK.  LEARN THESE CHEESY HAPPY SONGS AND SING THEM WITH STRANGERS.  SEE WHAT HAPPENS, I DARE YOU.

PRESS KIT

PRINTABLE PAMPHLET :

THE NECESSITY OF RE-INTRODUCTIONS

Blogs post backwards.  If you write your intro first, it will be the last thing people see.  Hence, blogs prompt a constant re-evaluation of self and direction.  This constant re-evaluation than prompts a constant awareness and movement towards simplicity.  All this has to do with gardening somehow, I'm sure of it.

We (I) took a blog, (designscienceindustries.blogspot.com) and wrote a synopsis.  Something about learning from nature.  From this extreme vagueness came the conclusion that if nature is the best teacher, than the garden is the best education format.  This is my personal angle on the garden project, but the true goal is to just make as many gardens as possible, and give each caretaker the freedom to take it in their own unique direction.