Growing Power!

So, your humble scribe and cohorts (my brother Paul, and partner Michelle) returned early this week from a sweet little trip to Milwaukee to visit a glorious place known as Growing Power. This place is incredible, and wonderfully inspiring.

This is me with Will Allen, the founder, and Mark, my friend Suzi's husband who happened to be there all the way from Richmond, Virginia (they are farmers, too!). Will is a giant. A giant with a mission: to change the food system in America, which he believes is broken.

We learned so many things over the weekend: How to build greenhouses (Paul is a whiz), how to beekeep (Michelle can't wait), how to grow culinary mushrooms (this will be one of the first things we do!), how to use PV panels for solar energy, how to build aquaponic systems (where fish poop feeds your plants, all organic plus you get to harvest fresh fish!), and how to grow in a greenhouse year round.

Now, we just need to get on our land and do it.

There is so much to do, so much to learn, and everything costs so much. We've figured out that we must build a fence before we build our yurt home. Then comes all the rest of it. We are very behind our original (completely unrealistic) schedule. But then, that is really no surprise. What we are trying to do is hugely involved and will take a lot of time to mature.

We are up to our ears in work, which is wonderful, and Austin has now received more rain than we got all year in 2011. So, fingers crossed, mouth smiling, we sally forth...