hypercities

MAPS hypercities

Free access to interactive historical maps and overlays attached to location-based narratives & info collections. It's a project in the works based out of UCLA. So cool. I used to work at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology where my job was to scan historical photos and maps, pressing buttons. I think it'd be great to attach those documents to something like HyperCities to show progressions and interactions between natural history and land use over time. Hm.

Week 3

ANALOGIES Ecological Horticulture:Social Processes

pruning:tree as revising:budget

bacteria:soil as resident:neighborhood

surface area:cation exchange as human exposure:social interaction

Into week three. I'm constantly struck by how analogous concepts specific to ecological horticulture can be to non-plant-related situations. I get the feeling that ecological horticulture is a pretty poem about life. Maybe because I'm personally trying to organize my thoughts about the 'larger picture' and my purpose in the context of what I know. Maybe because, like gravity, these processes have a way of ruling our lives. Most likely it's because I live on a farm and I love it!

Here's a list of some skills I've been practicing (so that I don't forget): HOW TO construct & turn a 5' x 5' x 4' compost pile/initiate a bee hive/side fork, single dig, and double dig, to prepare French intensive raised beds/select and plant raspberry & blackberry stock/deal with yellow bushy dwarf virus/transplant cut flowers/select, plant, and shape apple trees/transplant peppers/choose mechanical tillage implements/select cover crop mixes/manually incorporate cover crops/make sauerkraut.

I've also been working on some sketching that I'd like to ramp up. I'll post some pictures of all of the above as soon as I stop being lazy.

Week 1

I've just completed my first week as an apprentice at the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems (CASFS).

Some highlights: Orin Martin, spade and fork preparation and bonding time, professional team building exercises, learning about pruning apple trees, string band sing-along, bike ride through Santa Cruz, barn dance at Pie Ranch, and THE FOOD IS AMAZING HERE i.e. medjool dates stuffed with chevre, pistachio, and almond alongside freshly picked strawberries, served as a snack during a break from building a 5' tall compost pile named Lady Elaine Fairchild, after the creepy puppet from Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, what the heck. And so much more I can't remember right now.