GO BOX Gardening Project’s 10th Anniversary!

This year is the 10th anniversary of the GO BOX Gardening Project! (Yes, we’ve changed our name.) We have learned a lot over the last decade. Some insights have been very surprising and go against permaculture’s current wisdom. I would like to share some of these insights for your consideration.

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It’s harvest time for the stone fruits at the GO BOX Gardening Project! These plums will soon be ready for eating. MMMmmm!

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These dark plums are fantastic dried. They will be ready for harvest in a few weeks.

So how much does a permaculture garden or forest garden cost? Not as much as you might think. The GO BOX Gardening Project had an initial cost of under $1000 for the base trees and shrubs. We also had to get a formal landscaping plan and have a consultation with a local arborist, which costed more than the plants. However, most people wouldn’t have to contend with this cost. In the spring of each year we spend about $100 on bedding plants and seeds for annuals. This cost does not include any livestock or feed which adds to the cost of a permaculture garden but greatly increases the nutrient density of the food output. So, over the ten years of operation, the plant portion of the permaculture garden has cost us a total of $2000 not including the tribute to the bureaucrats.

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This pear tree is an example of a tree that is unhappy where we placed it. Even though it doesn’t provide good fruit, the tree provides shade and privacy for the house, two very welcome services.

During the first five years, the permaculture garden produced little. Since then, the permaculture garden has produced a bounty of fresh food far beyond the use of our household. Every year now we over produce raspberries, cherries, plums and apples. We even have a FREE u-pick for the community to help utilize this bounty. During migration, the birds stop and refuel at the garden too.

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The GO BOX Gardening Project has been doing a FREE u-pick for a number of years now. It’s becoming a yearly tradition!

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Raspberries are a favorite for the FREE u-pickers. We have LOTS every year. It’s our best harvest.

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The red currents are a favorite for the jam makers at the FREE u-pick.

The annual garden and hoop houses produce an excessive amount of lettuce, kale, herbs, Chinese greens, cucumbers, tomatoes and numerous summer and winter squashes. We also use an indoor growing unit for winter microgreens, sprouts and for starting bedding plants. With a permaculture garden you can forget about the 100 mile diet and eat the 100 meter or 100 foot diet!

Even though we started with a formal plan with professional advice the permaculture garden just evolved over time through trial and error… mostly through error. Many of the original plants died that first year. We had to rethink the whole concept. The land could only grow what the land could grow. So we brought in organic material from wherever we could find it. We used chickens over this organic material for a number of years to increase the soil fertility. For three years we just built soil before anything would really grow. Building soil was a lot of work!

Then things really started to happen. The sickly trees and shrubs came alive and started to thrive. We learned to spend even less money on plants by doing our own propagation and allowing volunteer trees to grow wherever they happened to sprout. We realized we weren’t the planners of this garden. We’re just the human help! The garden grew itself once we realized that we were really soil life farmers, not permaculturalists! The garden taught us not the other way around!

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A few years ago, we planted a number of standard fruit trees which have done extremely well compared to the original dwarf stock fruit trees.

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Our dwarf apples trees haven’t done well due to pest problems. Yes, we could do something about that but we are experimenting Mark Shepard’s STUN method!

“STUN stands for: steer, total, utter neglect. Of all the different ways to care for a plant, STUN is the simplest. Since nothing is done to the plant, around the plant, or applied to the soil, it is also the least expensive method of plant care.”
Restoration Agriculture: Real World Permaculture for Farmers by Mark Shapard

So, a permaculture garden doesn’t need to cost much. You can start a permaculture garden for a few hundred dollars and some sweat equity. Our garden has been a really great experience and has saved our household an uncountable amount of money that we would have otherwise spent on seasonal, organic foods. My only regret is that I didn’t plant more nut trees and less fruit trees as suggested by permaculture radical, Mark Shepard. The biggest surprise was learning to let go of the planning process and let the garden take the lead. The garden became our teacher. All that was required from us was to be good students and humbly listen to it.

“Aside from the obvious cost and labor savings when you don’t hand weed, hoe, cultivate or mow around trees, one of the most significant benefits of using STUN is the discovery of superior genetics. Think about it. If you plant 100 trees and ignore them, the only ones that survive did so because they had some sort of competitive advantage.”

Attached is the original landscaping plan drawn up for the city in 2006. The actual garden evolved to look nothing like the plan. We gave up on the recommended xeriscaping when we discovered that when this policy is properly implemented the results are a heating up of the ground which kills soil microflora and increases the ambient air temperature in an already hot city. In our opinion, xeriscaping is not a good policy for a hot city that has basically unlimited access to river water and is not experiencing a drought or likely to experience a drought in the near future. Also, xeriscaping requires weeding to look good which means increased herbicide use (bad) or expensive human labor (bad).

I NEVER thought I would say this, but a mowed grass lawn is starting to look like a much better option to me… and I can eat the dandelions!

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This is the original landscaping plan drawn up for the city in 2006. The actual garden evolved to look nothing like the plan. If you’re interested, come for a visit someday!

“It is interesting that all the literature you can read and all the workshops you can attend are all telling you what to do, rather than not do. In addition, they only address two fundamental questions: “How do I keep this thing alive that wants to die? and “How do I kill this thing that wants to live?” This is entirely backwards! If some trees of mine want to die, I say, “Good riddance!” I don’t have the time and I’m not interested in spending the money on inputs to keep it on life support. I’m interested in discovering the genetics that are precocious, pest and disease resistant, and thrive in a regime of STUN.”

GO BOX Storage FREE U-PICK

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The GO BOX Permaculture Project has had a bumper crop of raspberries!

It’s time for the GO BOX Storage FREE U-PICK!

PLEASE check into the office first and we will show you where to pick. We have TONS of cherries, some currants, and TONS of raspberries. We are located at 2853 Bowers Pl, Kamloops.

The FREE U-PICK is open from 9am to noon on Monday to Friday, July 11-15th, 2016. PLEASE come ONLY during these times. Thanks.

To find GO BOX Storage see this Google Map.

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We also have lots of cherries to share!

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And there’s still some currents and gooseberries available!

FREE U-PICK at GO BOX Storage

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This is best raspberry crop we’ve had in the eight years we have been in Kamloops! The berries are huge!

GO BOX Storage is having a FREE u-pick for raspberries, sour cherries and red currents! The FREE u-pick will be for the week of July 21-25, 2014. Come and join us for a day of GLEANING WITHOUT GOVERNMENT.

It’s easy to get involved with the FREE u-pick:

  1. Like GO BOX Storage and the GO BOX Permaculture Project on Facebook.
  2. If you have already done so, get a friend to like us on Facebook. Bring your friend to the u-pick. It’s always more fun to u-pick with friends!
  3. Call before coming at 250.374.4646. The u-pick is open Monday to Friday, 8am-5pm. We need to know when you are coming to avoid the u-pick being picked-out for the day.

If your wondering what GLEANING WITHOUT GOVERNMENT money is all about please see: Why does society need to pay $45,000 to glean FREE fruit?

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Sour cherries are packed with anthocyanins which naturally decreases inflammation.

Here’s more about the health benefits of sour cherries.

Why does society need to pay $45,000 to glean FREE fruit?

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Fruit is falling all over Kamloops. It’s so sad to see all the fruit going to waste. But things could get more wasteful. The State could get involved!

I have been reading a essay called What is Seen and What is Not Seen by Frederic Bastiat. Bastiat says: “There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effects that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.” He goes on to say: “the bad economist pursues a small present good that will be followed by a great evil to come, while the good economist pursues a great good to come, at the risk of a small present evil.”

So what does that have to do with $45,000 in public money for FREE fruit? Actually, quite a bit since there is a new gleaning project coming to Kamloops called the Gleaning Abundance Project. Using Bastiat’s method, I would like to show how this government gleaning project is wrongheaded.

Even though I completely support local food and local food security, both of these goals may be undermined by this government sponsored gleaning project. Bastiat would take an issue like this and say: “Let us accustom ourselves, then, not to judge things solely by what is seen, but rather by what is not seen.”

Here is what is seen:

  1. The happy homeowner has their yard clean for free of unwanted fruit.
  2. The happy volunteer gets free fruit for their volunteer labor.
  3. The happy volunteer gets free training in fruit picking.
  4. A few happy community organizations get free fruit.
  5. One happy Gleaning Project Manager gets a part-time job.

Here is what is unseen:

  1. The unhappy taxpayers pay for clean yards, free training, and fruit for other people. The unhappy taxpayers do not get clean yards, free fruit, or training for himself or herself.
  2. The unhappy taxpayers pay an unknown amount in tax. The government bureaucracy gets an unknowable amount from the unhappy taxpayers before the bureaucracy gives back a fraction of the money as a $45,000 grant for gleaning.
  3. We will never know what the taxpayers would have done with the money that went for taxation. If the tax money had not been collected by the government in the first place, the taxpayers would have spent the money on a multitude of voluntary transactions. Maybe the taxpayers would have bought food from a local farmer with the money. We will never know what the taxpayers would have done with the money if it hadn’t been liberated by the government for taxation.
  4. Local farmers may find their sales of fruit reduced. Farmers have a hard time competing against government subsidized “free fruit” flooding the market, picked with volunteer labor.
  5. What’s the true cost per pound of that government subsidized fruit? We will never know because government funded boondoggles never have to justify their costs. I can’t tell you the cost, but I can guarantee it won’t be FREE.

I’m all for local food. Reducing and eliminating waste is a personal goal of mine, but I don’t approve of using public money for such a cause. If the gleaning was done without public money and by volunteers, I would have nothing against the program. I would fully support the cause.

The government shouldn’t be spending public money on gleaning fruit. Leave it to the citizens of the community to organize themselves to collect the fruit, if they want to. Part of learning how to be self-sufficient is gaining skills by doing-it-yourself, not by having some government functionary doing all the thinking and organizing. Getting to know your neighbors is like developing an informal mutual aid society. Local food security comes from regular people building relationships with neighbors and changing the way they operate their household, not from a government functionary.

Leave government funding for public safety, honest courts, and protecting private property. Government needs to focus on these basic needs and leave more money in the pockets of taxpayers. By doing so, real needs of citizens will be fulfilled by the marketplace through voluntary transactions rather than wasting the productivity of citizens on government boondoggles.

In closing Bastiat states: “If you wish to create a government office, prove its usefulness.” I for one, am not convinced that gleaning fruit with government money is useful.

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Leave the tax money in the pockets of citizens. The State has no business gleaning fruit on private property. Let citizens solve the bountiful fruit problem themselves. This citizen is offering “FREE TREE TREATS” to anyone that passes by and it won’t cost the taxpayer $45,000!

“Let us never forget that, in fact, the state has no resources of its own. It has nothing, it possesses nothing that it does not take from the workers. When, then, it meddles in everything, it substitutes the deplorable and costly activity of its own agents for private activity.”
Property and Law by Frederic Bastiat

Winter Farmer’s Market in Kamloops: Photo Essay

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Here is Andy Balogh founder and president of Visions Farmers Market Society. He runs Dandy Meats which produces certified organic beef, pork and chicken.

Time: 10:00am to 2:30pm
When: Five Saturdays from November 17 to December 15, 2012
Where: Sahali Centre Mall

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Are you looking for some Kamloops honey for a sweet Christmas gift?

Kamloops now has a Winter Farmer’s Market. If you are a vendor and would like to join the market please contact Visions Farmers Market Society and Andy Balogh at 250.577.3810 for more information. Their guidelines for vendors are: “You make it. You bake it. You grow it.”

Here are just a few images of the first winter market at Sahahi Centre Mall. I hope to see you there next Saturday.

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Here is Sun Rivers Organics with their wonderful heritage potatoes, squash, and garlic. They have a large variety of heirloom squash.

If you are wondering what is so special about heirloom varieties, please read Harvest Bounty: Seed Saving. Ask Ed or Daniela Basile of Sun Rivers Organics about why seed saving is so important. Be prepared for next year’s Seedy Saturday by saving all your own seed.

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Paula and Mendel Rubinson of Silver Springs Organic have a large selection of winter storage vegetables. They still have cabbages for making sauerkraut?or kim chi.

If you have never made fermented foods before but would like to give it a try, please see Harvest Bounty and Traditional Fermentation: Photo Essay.

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Here is Erik?s Sausage and Meats. As you can see there are samples so you can try each type of sausage before purchasing.

If you have ever wanted to try making your own sausages, please see Fresh Homemade Sausage. After making your own sausages you really appreciate the effort that goes into sausage making.

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If your larder is full for the winter, maybe you are interested in herbal cosmetics and healing creams. Riversong Agriharmonics has an assortment of soaps, bath bombs, creams and cosmetics.

Small batch herbal apothecary products can make wonderful Christmas gifts. Usually, these products are produced with care from the highest quality materials, but always ask questions. If you are on a budget and would like to make your own homemade cosmetics and cleaners please see Healthy Household: Staying Clean Safely.

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There are many other producers at the Winter Farmer's Market. If you are looking for unique Christmas gifts, you will find an assortment of herbal apothecary products, handcrafted artisan woolen items, decorated sugar cookies, and award winning Precious Preserves.