Adventures in urban farming.

It appears to me that humans often strive to demonstrate their superiority over nature, attempting to conquer or shame it. After reading the enlightening book "Braiding Sweet Grass," I gained a better understanding of why Western European settlers viewed nature with disdain compared to indigenous people.

ln the development of my apiary, I have I been strongly influenced by a Japanese I man named Masanobu Fukuoka. He wrote two beautiful and important books called The One Straw Revolution atd The Natural Way of Farming.

To most of us who were keeping bees twenty and thirty years ago—as either a hobby or a livelihood- two of the chief attractions were the opportunity to work closely with the world of nature, and the seemingly miraculous qualities of the bees themselves. Only slightly less miraculous were the bee products themselves.

Ollas are unglazed clay pots used for irrigation and date back thousands of years. Where they originated is debated, but said to have originated in either China or North Africa.

Im not entirely sure where the initial spark came from but I just could not get the idea of keeping bees out of my mind. I read every book I could and decide to give it a go.

As of late I have been thinking more and more about low tech solutions. So much of our modern world is based off of energy usage of some sort. Specifically electrical or fossil fuels. As I read more and more it seems clear that getting rid of horses for tractors was a huge misstep in agriculture and helped create the cycle of destroying our soil with fertilizer and pesticides.