Camille has put a lot of work, love, and intention into this garden next to our front door. It is now mostly pollinator friendly perennials – Sweet William, Miniature Dahlias, Echinaceas, Butterfly Weed, Milkweed, Gladiolus, Purple Tradescantia, and some remnant Mondo Grass.

We wandered out after dinner to have a look at what was happening in our little slice of the world.

A wheel bug nymph and carpenter bee checking each other out.

Echinaceas are great! So many colors, so dependable on their spring return. Each one is like a firework caught in time.

Retirement is great! I highly recommend it. Unless you’re a bee.

I love harvesting them – pawing through the soil, uncovering each new spud with anticipation – kind of like scratch-off lottery tickets, only better tasting! I love the fact that they store well – often “discovering” some in our pantry when we’re looking for a quick, comforting meal. I also love their ability to generate an enormous return on a relatively meager investment. Average potato yield is 10 times the amount you planted! For me, potatoes embody the concept of getting more than you bargained for out of humble beginnings.

We are fortunate here in Chatham to have a number of hidden gems in our little town, testaments to the inspired foresight of those who believed in the significant future benefits of community based investments. Chatham Marketplace, the General Store Café, “The Plant” at Lorax Lane, Angelina’s Kitchen and more are testament to the beneficial effect that local businesses can have on the quality of our lives.

Finding opportunities to invest your time, money, or patronage in current or future community “gems” will often pay off in ways you may not have imagined. Making new connections with the people, food, and businesses our community has to offer enriches your life, and the life of our community. Making it a habit of frequenting these local institutions is like brushing the soil off another mound of potatoes. You often reveal more benefit than you bargained for.

Now, back to harvesting potatoes!

“Guantánamo” was the name I chose for the 250 square foot garden I created in front of our house at Oilseed Community where we spent the first two years after moving to North Carolina in 2007. There were three underlying reasons for the choice.

The first was due to my profound disappointment in my country’s choice to incarcerate and torture human beings without due process of law. I understood that some of the inmates at the prison in Cuba were criminals, but that does not demand a rescinding of legal and human rights – concepts previously supported by the United States of America.

The second reason was  due to the name my friend Lyle chose for his garden some years back. Lyle’s garden is named “Cuba”, a name chosen by the inspiration he gained by learning about how the island nation of Cuba responded to the abrupt ending of their petroleum addiction after the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991. Cuba reacted to the loss of its Soviet supply line by instituting land reform, and encouraging farmers and agronomists to retool Cuban agricultural production to methods that did not require petroleum inputs, for fuel, fertilizers, or pesticides. This amazing story can be learned though a documentary produced by The Community Solution  entitled “The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil”

In North Carolina, if you want to take more food off your garden than the deer do, you need to fence your garden in, giving it the look of a place more suited toward the incarceration of edibles than the nurturing of them. Lyle’s garden, surrounded by it’s eight-foot high fence, provided him and his family a space to produce their own food, without the need for fossil fuel inputs. My first exposure to gardens with tall fences was at Lyles’ when he provided Camille and me a room for a couple of nights on an exploratory visit we made to the area in April 2007. Needless to say, I was captivated by the concept.

The third reason for my name selection was due to the influence of a master kumu hula, Hokulani Holt-Padilla, who I had the pleasure of working with back in 2000- 2001 while working with the Kaho’olawe Island Reserve Commission. One of the many pieces of wisdom I gained from Hoku was that place names are important. She helped me understand that place names are part of what defines the spirit of a place, and its people.

Guantánamo was the name originally bestowed upon the southeastern area of the island by its original human inhabitants, the Taino. Columbus landed at the bay in 1494, promptly changed the name to Puerto Grande, and started the systematic decimation of the indigenous population.

When I told one of my Oilseed neighbors that I was considering naming  the garden Guantánamo, their response was “Oh, don’t say that word!” For them, you see, that word represented the unjust incarceration and torture of human beings, and was something not very pleasant.

So there you have it. My little fortified garden was, from that point forward, known as Guantánamo. I wanted people (at least a few) to associate the name with a place of life, beauty, and sustenance rather than a collection of incarcerated and tortured humans. I was hopeful that our new president would stand by his campaign promise to close down the “detention camp” at Guantánamo Bay in his first few months in office. Since he didn’t, I did, with Lyle’s help. We moved the containers, with food growing in them to their new home next to my new garden, christened “The Sunken Gardens of Moncure”, since it is housed in an abandoned swimming pool.

That story will need to be told, in its own space in its own time, and will likely be titled “A Moveable Feast.”

…”Hayseed”.

There I said it.

Many of us “Oilseeders”  have been musing lately about the past (and future) of Oilseed Community. The original order with the cosmic waiter, as I understand it, was for our small community of three houses to demonstrate the feasibility of growing an oilseed crop as an accoutrement to country living rather than another golf course.

And so a crop was planted near the pink cinder-block house, over on the other side of the 83 acres. Matt, Lyle, and Kim (among others I’m sure), planted an acre of canola after tilling the pasture grasses under. Unfortunately, this trial helped support the notion that a single tilling of pasture grasses won’t keep the aggressive ones from coming back and choking out your canola. And so it was….

Then, without really knowing how it might relate to the initial goal set forth, that of coaxing an energy crop out of the red North Carolina clay, Greg contracts with a local hay farmer to come and bale about 75 acres of pasture grass, because as we learned above, that’s what grows well here. Oilseed has a hay crop taken off, dozens of 950 pound bales that provides part of the biomass required to produce beef and milk here in Chatham.

And a year passes by. And another hay crop comes ready for baling, and again Oilseed provides biofuel for Chatham cows and goats.  And this is why I’ve been thinking lately that Oilseed should change its name to Haybale. Clearly, growing hay has been a winner for our community – very little work on our part – and tons of hay roll off the line every year.

But now, a newcomer is emerging on the Oilseed scene, pushing its way up in the red clay, liberally amended with Amanda’s worm castings. This year I followed my first wheat crop with a crop of soybeans in two varieties.

So with an oilseed crop coming along this summer, that  puts the current iteration of our community’s name at Hayseed. And I for one, think it fits.

We have a school, a doctor, and a pharmacy. If someone needs hospital care, they take the panga to Big Corn and then a small plane to Bluefields. When we are in need of law enforcement, the local businessmen ask for some police officers.

In response to several incidents, the police have been making their presence known on the island. They have begun making rounds and routinely show up at the Casa Iguana gate for cold Cokes and ice water.

Now, this is the part I love: when the police arrest someone, they put them on a boat and take them off the island. How cool is that? And if those people return, they get hauled off again! In fact, one person in particular has been removed at least three times since the beginning of the year.

In addition to removing some of the human trash, a beach clean up was organized and completed today. Thirty island citizens swept the beach, picking up plastic and raking seaweed for as far as we could see from Casa Iguana. They removed the plastic garbage first, burying it in holes every 40 feet or so. They then raked all the seaweed into a long berm at the water’s edge. This effort was conducted with the help of Mr. Winnie and Mr. Rory, two of the islands main businessmen.

HOORAY!

We went 20 days without significant time off.

In terms of “Learning Curve”, we figured it was like a sprint up a rope……

…or sipping from a fire hose.

Grant, a Civil War buff, certainly knows that a crucial battle lost (or won!) can turn the tide of a war. (BTW, I’ve learned that Tallahassee (his hometown) was the only southern capital not taken by the Union army.)

So we were “Granted” the last two nights off and they were just the ticket. A little writing, a little relaxing, a little reading, what more could we need?

Well, a little Eddie Izzard was also a good thing.

Then today, we went for a snorkel, out in front of Iguana. (We had only been in the water for about 7 minutes prior to today.)

We collected pictures and words that were meaningful to us for a couple of months and then assembled them onto poster boards. We did this individually, and didn’t share the results until they were both completed.

Here they are, side by side.  First Bob’s and then Camille’s –

Both clearly have some common themes – Adventure, Nature, Food, Animals, and Love.

This wasn’t too surprising since we had been discussing exit strategies for a while prior to the storyboard exercise. The amazing thing is how much of what we visualized over 7 years ago has come to pass.

Maybe more on that later.

And now, we’re headed towards another Caribbean adventure in Nicaragua.

Imagine That!

Here’s a picture of Liz basking on the kitchen counter. Eddie spends his time riding around in the car.

Who among us could deny the miraculous powers of creative vizualization? Anyone?

Plastic Farm Animals has apparently been moving towards Casa Iguana for some time. Plastic Island Animals?