Little Artshram

“Education is the proper way to promote compassion and tolerance in society. Compassion and peace of mind bring a sense of confidence that reduce stress and anxiety, whereas anger and hatred come from frustration and undermine our sense of trust. Because of ignorance, many of our problems are our own creation. Education, however, is the instrument that increases our ability to employ our own intelligence.”
~taken from epic messages by the Dali Lama

And, we agree!

Won’t you join Little Artshram, as we help sponsor the first of the 2012-2013 Continual University Series by welcoming Kevin M. O’Connor, aka KMO, and Olga Kuchukov to Traverse City…

Monday, November 19th 7:00 -9:00 pm
O’k Studio in the Alley, 514 Second St., Traverse City,
Michigan

KMO and Olga live and work in Brooklyn/NYC. They come to TC by way of the VAL
Sustainability Conference held in Grand Rapids, Nov 16-18th http://sustainabilityconference.org/

Well before Hurricane Sandy recent collision on the eastern US shoreline, sweeping through parts of NYC, KMO and Olga were individually and collectively, working towards community level understanding, practice, and raising of consciousness about our service to and life on planet earth.

KMO will share thoughts about the competing imperatives in urban design going monolithic, hard, and high-tech— versus distributed, permeable, and appropriate. Both focused on designing for disaster and designing to feed people and intelligently manage inputs and outputs (i.e. food/fuel and waste products).

KMO is the host and producer of the long-running C-Realm Podcast. He apprenticed under an organic market gardener, lived at the Ecovillage Training Center on the Farm in Summertown, TN and published over 300 interviews with people who are crafting a resilient future. http://c-realm.com/kmo/

Olga Kuchukov is a licensed massage therapist, woman of the world, girl about town, artist, polyglot, information junkie, procrastinator who is dazzled by the crepuscule, daily.

We kindly ask you to contribute to the “Continual Cause”….Suggested Donation, $10, NO one turned away for lack of funds. All funds raised will help offset the costs of KMO and Olga’s Michigan trip.

Continual University is a community gathering place, organized to provide re-connection to what we’d like to kindly and gently impose as a higher education, concerned with how to live wisely and well. Our goal is to challenge, provoke and inspire you to think deeply about the issues that matter most, and to provide a space for you to share your thoughts, ideas and experiences with other curious, open-minded individuals.

Join Little Artshram and O’k CSA and become a sponsor of this series!
More Info: penny.ok.art@gmail.com
231-922-2014

We are having a Dia de Los Muertos and Harvest Gathering, celebrating eight years of growing and learning in community and in a garden! 

AND, we invite you to join us…

We are celebrating CREATIVITY, THANKFUL POSSIBILITY & GENEROSITY. This gathering is a sincere expression of our thanks to the Earth for providing us with space and place to grow food for ourselves and our community, and for our longtime partnership at the Community Gardens on the old State Hospital Farm in Traverse City.

Saturday, November 3rd, 5-7-ish pm                                                                              (Barns Park Community Garden meeting from 4-5 pm)
510 Second St. & 514 Second St. in the Alley
Traverse City, MI 49684

Parking Info:  Please park vehicles in the Alley in between Second and Randolph St. Or, on Randolph Street. Look for and follow sunflower signs, marigolds and luminaries.  Bikes welcome to park behind or near the party site.

What to bring: A dish to share (Mexican food welcome!) and items for the GIVEAWAY your table service, lawn chairs, drums and musical instruments, and dress COLORFULLY & VIBRANTLY to celebrate life! ALSO, dress warmly for a fire-pit circle, remembering this party is taking place near the 45th parallel rather than the equator!

A traditional part of the Dia de los Muertos celebration is to honor our ancestors. As we celebrate the end of the garden growing cycle we also celebrate those who have farmed and garden on the land we share, those who passed on before us. Bring photos, poems, stories or mementos of your dearly departed or ancestor for our community and garden “offrenda” and our drumming circle.

More on the GIVEAWAY!
Let’s give to each other! Bring your own tote or hand crafted bag to fill full of shared plants, seeds, preserved food, dried herbs, and fresh harvest to extend our growing season a little bit more, or, to save for next year’s gardens! The GIVEAWAY is meant to be a celebration of creativity, thankful possibility and generosity!

Whether you have a grocery tote or a hand-made fiber arts bag, bring it to add to the collection and fill! If you have preserved, dried or fresh food to share, bring it along. If you have creativity, moxie, and a sense of community–come be a part of this amazing evening of creativity and generosity!

You may also bring an extra bag to fill-up for a family in need, which will be delivered to the Women’s Resource Center’s Yellow House and the Fresh Food Partnership.

Would you like to contribute to this community celebration?  We would welcome donations of tea candles for our luminaries; Musicians and singers to lead the drumming  and lend your voice to the fire-circle; Folks to help set up before hand (2-4pm) the ofrenda display, hang directional signs and decorate;  a couple of people to be pot-luck greeters and organize the feast table as folks arrive; a couple of people to help organize the GIVEAWAY table; and after we are done feasting, celebrating, singing, dancing a group to help tidy up.

info@littleartshram.org
www.littleartshram.org
Little Artshram’s NEW number: 231-715-3105

Learning the ways of Forest Gardening and Soil Fertility….October 18th, 6-7:30 pm, @ O’k Studio in the Alley, 514 Second St., Traverse City, Michigan

As we continue to learn the magnificent ways of garden farming we work to become natural farmers! Through natural gardening and farming we have an opportunity to learn SO very much from the teacher that is our Northern Michigan temperate climate forests.

What is a Forest Garden? Gardening like the forest, is not gardening in a forest—but gardening like a forest.  In this way we are of the mind and practice to take a lawn and turn it into a forest ecosystem—and have great fun becoming ecologists as we do.

Planting a forest garden means becoming a forest mimic. The forest as design metaphor, shows us how to create a consciously designed ecosystem with perennial guilds and polycultures of multipurpose plants, patched together to make our “forest garden mimic”.  The plants, trees and shrubs in a forest garden, have a 3 – 3,000+ year life spans, with a diversity of MANY species in each patch.

Edible forest gardening is the art and science of putting plants together in woodland-like patterns that forge mutually beneficial relationships, creating a garden ecosystem that is more than the sum of its parts.

This presentation will both highlight edible forest garden project designs that have been on the drawing board and now in the beginning stages of implementation in Traverse City at three garden-farm sites and also at the REALeyes project site near Cedar Lake;

AND share an enthusiastic sharing of Levi Meeuwenberg from the REALeyes project’s:   “… pretty mind-exploding Edible Forest Garden Design course by Dave Jacke in Tennessee at “The Farm” that went way beyond just landscape design…. downloading as much as he can of what he learned those 10 days!”

How do we encourage edible ecosystems to emerge?

Come and join in to find out!

This presentation will be followed up with a continued learning opportunity through a Gardening Like a Forest Series, this winter. The series will focus on Step-by-Step training in ecological design and planning in the ways in which a forest garden can embody emergent system properties….HOW to see them and HOW to create them….This will be a combination of lecture/discussion and hands-on study, utilizing four urban/suburban garden-farm and forest garden sites. Schedule of bi-weekly series with work parties beginning in November 2012–through March 2013.

MEET AT: O’k Studio, 514 Second St. in the Alley, Traverse City, MI 49684 Parking behind the Chiropractor’s and also on Randolph St. in front of Salon Verve.

Contact: Penny 231-922-2014

October 11th, (Thursday) 6-7:30 pm – “Worm Culture, Manure and Compost”, meet at DIGs Garden, 510 Second St., Traverse City, MI 49684

SPECIAL DEAL for those in attendance and who RSVP an indoor & O’k Worm Bin for $15.00….Red Wigglers included! RSVP: Penny 231-922-2014

Learn along with us!

We are sharing permaculture skills and techniques through short lectures and info-sharing, presentations, as well as, hands-on opportunities focused on feeding our soil and the processes of building fertility.

Through practical steps you can participate alongside of a dynamic group of folks learning the ways of:

~Setting up urban/suburban composting systems, both outdoors and indoors
~Identifying on-site resources in your backyard, nearby woodlot, urban neighborhoods or along alleyways;
~How-to become a worm-farmer and contribute to the underground economy;
~What “NO-WASTE” really means;
~Basic permaculture design principles and skills as applied to creating perennial and annual food producing forest gardens
~and, How-to more deeply understand the cycles of growth from two levels of observation—both with the aid of science and technical know-how, and also from your basic human senses and practical experience.

October 11th, (Thursday) 6-7:30 pm – “Worm Culture, Manure and Compost”, meet at DIGs Garden, 510 Second St., Traverse City, MI 49684 Contact: Penny 231-922-2014

We hope you will devote a bit of your time, this glorious fall season to becoming a well informed garden farmer and fertility specialist!

The Fall Garden Farming workshops are FREE! with a suggested donation of $10 to cover costs of workshop handouts, announcements and minimal organizational fees.

THANK YOU, for helping to keep permaculture educational events happening in the Traverse City area.

RSVP: penny.ok.art@gmail.com

231-922-2014

THIS SATURDAY, Join us on a Traverse City/NW Michigan Permaculture design adventure through the REALeyes project just outside of TC, near Cedar Lake…

Sept. 29th (Saturday) 2 pm – Building Swales with Woodchips for Food Forest and Garden – Work Party @ REALeyes project site : 9775 E. Cherry Bend Rd. Traverse City, MI 49684 Contact: Levi @ 231-FORE ninetyNine-26 FIFTY eight

Info sharing to read, learn, do…..

A Miracle of Mulch: From Rocky Mountains to Rich Soil by Jerome Osentowski; http://permacultureactivist.net/articles/Rocky%20Mtn%20Worm%20Farm%2076.pdf

Why dig swales?  To direct water across our forest garden site, and slow it’s determined flow down a bit…..more here:
How to Dig Swales:  http://www.wikihow.com/Dig-Swales

Next up in the Fall Garden Farming Series:

October 11th, (Thursday) 6-7:30 pm – “Worm Culture, Manure and Compost”, meet at DIGs Garden, 510 Second St., Traverse City, MI 49684 Contact: Penny 231-nineTOEtoe-TOEooh14

The Fall Garden-Farming Series, is both an information sharing AND hands-on learning experience, contributing to the community wide efforts of an Urban Farming Collective in Traverse City, Michigan. We are a group or “guild” of learners and growers and invite folks to consider joining us, or to add on and begin their own guild of growers.

Join in on workshop and work parties, at garden-farms in Traverse City, in the Central, Bohemia and Slabtown neighborhoods, AND, as we begin an exciting, new permaculture homestead–the REALeyes site project near Cedar Lake.

In this 3 month series, you will learn permaculture skills and techniques through short lectures and info-sharing, presentations, as well as, hands-on opportunities focused on feeding our soil and the processes of building fertility. Through practical steps you can participate alongside of a dynamic group of folks learning the ways of:

~Setting up urban/suburban composting systems, both outdoors and indoors
~Identifying on-site resources in your backyard, nearby woodlot, urban neighborhoods or along alleyways;
~How-to become a worm-farmer and contribute to the underground economy;
~What “NO-WASTE” really means;
~Basic permaculture design principles and skills as applied to creating perennial and annual food producing forest gardens
~and, How-to more deeply understand the cycles of growth from two levels of observation—both with the aid of science and technical know-how, and also from your basic human senses and practical experience.

The Fall Garden Farming workshops are FREE! with a suggested donation of $10 to cover costs of workshop handouts, announcements and minimal organizational fees.

THANK YOU, for helping to keep permaculture educational events happening in the Traverse City area.

Contact:
penny.ok.art@gmail.com