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we ask chickens to help; we ask chickens to harm.

The chickens I raise in my backyard are useful and helpful beings. They till the soil, eat the weeds, lay eggs, fertilize the soil which, because of a chicken-tractor coop, will serve as next summer's vegetable bed. They are part of a small system.

We also implicate chickens in large-scale systems, a very different design. They try to go about their lives in either system. Yet the manure that so richly feeds my small garden is violent if it is plentiful, such as the manure that moves from factory farms on the Maryland's Eastern Shore to the Chesapeake Bay's ecosystem.

water moves among trees & swales

Jesus Leon Santos, indigenous farmer of Nochixtlan, Oaxaca, practices Mixteca farming practices to revitalize devastated land. After Spanish colonization, the land was overgrazed and poisoned with large amounts of chemical fertilizer. In addition, farmers growing corn in the region lost their market to the export agriculture of US corn made possible via NAFTA.

Santos began working with a group of local Mixtec farmers--CEDI-CAM--in the 1980s to plant trees that were local to the region, such as ocote pines, which could hold the rich soil in place and filter water. The CEDI-CAM farmers also dig hundreds of miles of contoured ditches, also described as swales in permaculture, which retain water for crops. They are drawing from indigenous farming methods, and promoting an indigenous diet.

"The indigenous people have so much to share with this planet," Santos said. "We must not let the corporations take these resources because this is the legacy for all people, not just a few."

source: Indian Country Today

design is seeing our choices

Permaculture designs interrelatedness. How might we make thoughtful design choices to nourish each other and reduce harm? How might this thinking, of systems and choices and design, inform my artistic practice?