Ananda Harvest: How it all Began

The Ananda Harvest from Aubrey Hardwick on Vimeo.

Jean Pain’s Compost-Based Energy System

Jean Pain (1930 – 1981) was a French innovator who developed a compost based bioenergy system that produced 100% of his energy needs. He heated water to 60 degrees celsius at a rate of 4 litres a minute which he used for washing and heating. He also distilled enough methane to run an electricity generator, cooking elements, and power his truck. This method of creating usable energy from composting materials has come to be known as Jean Pain Composting, or the Jean Pain Method.

Some videos of the method:

Ananda Harvest Summit Video

Click on the link below. It is a video of our first weekend at the ashram. We escaped the concrete jungle and enjoyed the pleasures of nature, water and the silence at the ashram, but most importantly we shared and learned more about permaculture.

Ananda Harvest Summit from Seema Shah on Vimeo.

Please note that I did not capture the educational sessions that were taking place during the weekend. I can share with you the relaxing and beautiful moments from the weekend with my first time video editing skillz off of iMovie.

Alsomitra Vine Seed Gliders!

Wow. Once again file under “severe nature magic”. This BBC video link is a must-watch.

I sadly wasn’t able to find much more information in English about this amazing vine, but a Google Translation of the Spanish Wikipedia page seems to indicate that it is a type of cucumber in the Cucurbitaceae family and thus related to melons, gourds and, well, other cucumbers.

The seeds, which are produced by a football-sized pod, can glide hundreds of metres across the forest. That ensures that the seeds fall far from their parent, giving the next generation of vines a head start. A BBC team team captured the film of the gliding seeds for the natural history series Life.

Eliot Coleman Presents the Story of the Winter Harvest

Found on Chelseagreen.com:

In this video, Eliot Coleman, author of the recently released The Winter Harvest Handbook: Year-Round Vegetable Production Using Deep Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses, presents the story of the winter harvest. He speaks about how he came to become the nation’s leading four-season farmer and the shock of the industrial establishment when his all-organic cold-weather growing methods proved to be not only possible—but more productive than “traditional” (chemical) methods.

HOME

HOME, the latest work by Yann Arthus-Bertrand, is an amazing visual feast recommended to all fans of Planet Earth, David Attenborough and other natural-world-exploring documentaries and documentary filmmakers. It is available to watch in its entirety for free on YouTube.

Garlic…

Now is fairly close to the time (a little late by my estimates) that people plant garlic in our area. My father and I have been doing a little research on the subject.

Growing Garlic with Tom Ashley – Part 1 of 17
Garlic Propagation with Daniel Botkin

This a nice series and an interesting video from two farmers up in Massachusetts. Tom Ashley from Dancing Bear Farm and Daniel Botkin from Laughing Dog Farm. In the latter segment Daniel sows a large amount of garlic, fast, by planting the whole bulb, then separating and transplanting it come spring time. Pretty awesome technique for for speed and I get the feeling there might be some other intelligence that nature has bestowed upon this method.

I sent Daniel an email inquiring about the particulars:

Hi Matt,

No it’s still prone to those things… however, you can quickly seed out
hundreds of cloves and have them ready for early spring separation and
transplant. When the ground is freezing up, I revert to this method just to
up my total # garlic planted. They all need mulch and a bit o luck, whether
separated or not. Happy planting/eating.

Daniel

> Does planting garlic in whole undivided bulbs help the garlic resist the
> potential perils (heaving, not enough time to establish roots, etc…) of
> late planting in colder weather (as compared to sowing cloves individually
> in the same conditions)?
>
> Thanks a bunch,
> Matt

For those wanting to delve further, here’s a nice article about growing garlic in Minnesota.

http://www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/cropsystems/DC7317.html

I figure it could be especially pertinent. People growing in Minnesota are planting in what might be an even colder/tougher environment. Any tips they have might ensure a healthy hardy garlic crop. I’m almost positive we’ll be going with a Hardneck variety. Johnny’s Seeds says German Extra-Hardy is the beezneez.

AH Lesson 1 with Farmer Dave

For those of you who are more visual learners, here’s the first of many video tutorials to come. Below is part 1 of how to take down a tree (think of it as forest weeding)

… footage of the falling tree to come!

Ananda Lesson 1 from Jerri Chou on Vimeo.

Hydroponic Lettuce

Though certainly not the most energy-efficient model I’ve ever seen, this Discovery Channel how-to on growing commercial lettuce using a hydroponic technique is quite interesting, and for me at least was the source of a few nice ideas!

Greening the Desert

This is the video that first got me interested in the potential of advanced Permaculture, and I doubt that I am alone in that respect! It shows a technique of combining guilded planting and intelligent water harvesting to essentially reverse desertification, making such lands productive for growing food. The experiment was done in Jordan, just off the dead sea, and is pretty remarkable. As I understand, it is still there, and still producing without much additional human interaction.

Highly recommended viewing for everyone.