Earthbound Almanac

a thunderstorm rolling in. Yeah, we're doing pretty good. UM's gonna be glad for the rain, I guess, yeah, yeah, it'll be good. We're gonna talk a little bit first about Labilia Commons. So how did that project start? I know, I know something from the beginning of the pandemic, But had you all been working on this kind of stuff before? And yeah, I just wanted roasty a little bit of that. Yeah,

So it kind of started um last year during the pandemic. Basically, UM, basically at the beginning of the pandemic, we had UM just like a surge of interest in these like kind of mutual a groups UM and the largest of which that formed in New Orleans specifically, which some of us helped form, was called New Orleans Mutual Aid Group, which

was doing like food distribution. It kind of stemmed out of a project that was already um running like a food share, basically getting excess produce that was coming into the port and distributing it for free in front of

like one of the gentrifying grocery stores. Um. But within like I want to say, like a couple of weeks UM, there was such a surge of interest in doing that type of like volunteer or whatever where that there was like a ton of labor to make it happen, and that basically meant buying tons of produce eventually because the ports eventually shut down and there wasn't any produce coming from anywhere at the beginning of mimic and basically buying tons of produce from like Costco, and that labor meant

like waiting in lines for you know, wrapping around entire like massive like multi city block warehouse stores, um. And so that was basically doing like food distribution. So we took the opportunity to since there was so much labor happening, that we could go and start to adjust the question of like food production specifically and and try and do

that in interesting ways. UM. So, we felt like it was pretty important to start like experimenting and different forms of food production and like like ways of relating to food production. UM So, I mean this this first started with like a, um, we're basically just starting tons of seeds and delivering them all over the city, um, just driving around from We had like one centralized nursery that was run out of the warehouse, and that was a

ton of labor as a really time consuming. It was super centralized, and so we moved from that into a number of other projects. Um. Short shortly thereafter, we put together like a like a collaborative mushroom production group where we were um getting people who had been growing mushrooms and teaching folks and like doing skill shares to produce oyster mushrooms out of buckets. We started doing some like woodlock production of Chautaukis, which has like since expanded pretty dramatically.

Um And yeah, just like kind of like things that that draw people's interests like that, and and and think about like how you can grow food in an urban or peri urban scenario fairly interestingly and like with joy um. Also, um. You know after this, we we were reached out to by folks that were like, well, I want to grow herbs, and rather than specifically getting like a lot and covering it in different herbal medicines, we reached out had already

had folks reaching out to us. UM. So if someone came up with the idea of well, let's just all grow in like our backyard suns of herbs and let's find herbs that already grow abundantly around us to kind of collectively share the experience of harvesting and um and turning those into medicines. Um. And so now there's like

this Herb Commons group that the labor is distributed. It's distributed geographically, um, but there's these like meet ups where they're bulk herbs are given up, Yeah, given out just like in a canal space and um. Yeah, like there's skill shares happening there in and there's kind of some community being built around that. Um that that happens in

a very decentralized manner. Yeah, it's definitely very decentralized. There are working groups that are part of Lobelia Commons that I'm like not entirely sure what they're doing any given day or you know, what's going on. I'm involved in like a couple particular projects within it UM, and I think that it's really flexible for folks who are trying to get involved. They can kind of be involved at

whatever level they want. Like, um, if somebody doesn't want to go to a bunch of garden work days or a bunch of meetings or something, which you know have been a great way for us to like see each other and see our friends during the pandemic and stuff, is to get together for these work days outdoors or whatnot. But if somebody wants to just like do nothing but sprout plants at their own house and then somebody will come pick up those seedlings and and you know bring

them to one of our decentralized nursery spots, that's great. Um. That's one of the other kind of projects we have we call the decentralized nursery, And that's kind of like just something that people already do at a certain time of year. You know, gardeners will regularly start more plants than they need and then just kind of give them away to friends and neighbors and stuff. And we tried to just make it a little bit more of an

intentional thing. Um. And this was also kind of growing out of like at the very beginning of the pandemic, and we were actually doing seedling deliveries to people, which made sense of that time, but it was like very labor intensive. Um. So we kind of moved to this model of having just like free stands in front of

houses on street corners in different places. Um. You know, there's already like a bunch of free fridges around New Orleans and things like that, and so this is kind of like the free plant version of that, and it's

really easy for somebody to just set one up. Um. And then that kind of also allows us to like work on this other aspect of of decentralizing food production, because like that's definitely one of our goals, right is to like not have a tiny percentage of population be the only ones who know how to grow food and doing it under the control of a tiny number of

corporations that own all the land. And you know, obviously we're trying to get away from that food system, and so one of the ways we can think about doing that is finding ways to really decentralize some of the skills that are UM that are necessary. So for example, like if somebody's growing avocados for our nurseries, UM, the thing about growing an avocado from a pit actually is that, uh, that tree probably won't produce fruit. It actually needs to

be grafted. UM. So we can have people starting pits, and then we're also you know, sharing the knowledge of how to graph these things, UM because we kind of like see a future in which a lot more people um will need to be involved in food production. But also, like Mike was saying, like, we want this to be not like a job that it feels like people have, but this joyous kind of thing that's just a part

of everyday life. Yeah. One of the other things that I was I was interested in is you know, so so part of part of what I think the beginning of the Earth Performers Romanac is about is talking about how I guess people people have this tendency to sort of focus on climate change is just like the only

sort of climate thing that's happening. And you know, I mean there's obviously the yeah, there's there's a bunch of sort of stuff that is climate change, but isn't the weather that are sort of you know, things like the phosphor cycle, things like the nitrogen cycle that are breaking.

But simultaneously, I think it's it's also true that you know that that that kind of stuff, and this is also something that's that's talked about in there is is going to have a large impact both on sort of like even just what what kind of biomas exist in the in a very short term. And you know, another product of that is, you know, is that the sort

of increasing grade of storms. And I was wondering if you all could talk a bit about what happened after Ida and how both just sort of in the short term in the long term, that the sort of the increase of just hurricanes. And I hesitate to call natural disasters because you know that there's there's a whole thing about how these disasters are sort of manufactured in a lot of ways, but how how that's been affecting how y'all think are sort of thinking about and working with

these kind of mutual aid projects and food production. Yeah, so I think with IDA, it's kind of complicated because, um, you can almost look at it, look at it as like two different storms. Um, because what happened in New Orleans versus what happened and say like home or the river parishes. UM, these areas that are you know, generally south and west of New Orleans, UM are are are kind of like two different animals in some ways, Like well,

how up in New Orleans specifically relates to infrastructure. So like what you're saying, like the kind of quote unquote natural disasters thing, that's UM, you know, that's a pretty commonplace way of looking. I mean it's not a very radical UM conception that like these aren't natural disasters wherever the disasters is created. As soon as UM there was the attempt to create a colonial New Orleans in the

first place. UM. So this became honestly part of like national discourse as a result of Katrina and most famously because of the Army cord engineers failure UM teven five and UM. So what happened this year UM was with with Hurricane Ida was the one of the main transmission towers UM for the the energy Energy Corporation in New Worlds is called energy outside of the guilt South are familiar with. So the entergy tower fell into the Mississippi River.

You had that happening at the same time times that thousands of power lines fell down. The power lines are are are on poles and very prone to getting knocked down even just during the during any day of the week, UM, And so there wasn't actually really much flooding UM that was happening. It was it was primarily wind damage, so that the tower falls into the river, power lines down.

You had something like I believe fifty five barges in the Port of South Louisiana falling into their falling off their moorings and floating around just crashing into things, just crash, and like there's like several ferries that connect the east and west banks of the city. Um, those fell off

their moorings. So so like the physical infrastructure of the place and and how that relates to beyond New Orleans is New Orleans is located at the very um southern reach of the Mississippi Rivers Port of South Southern Louisiana, which is like a fifty five mile port I believe a fifty two um that processes like sixty percent of all U S grain going to exports. So it's like a massive, really really important piece of American capitalist infrastructure.

So that's when when those boats follow their mornings, it's not like oh this like whatever point like by you problem. It's a very serious imperial problem. UM. But so for for the average person living in New Orleans, UM, this looked like I think I think it ended up being for most people around a week and a half without power, which if anyone's lived even with air conditioning in New Orleans for a summer, um, it's it's extremely difficult to

live uh here during the summer. UM. It's that it's obviously not impossible when we have modern amenities, but when you're when you're without those, when you without the refrigerator, when throughout without the freezer, air conditioning, it's it's really really really hot, um, you know. Uh. So that's what was happening in New Orleans. There was some some damage to people's roots, there was some you know, fairly fairly

substantial damage to the structures. But what happened to the west, in cities like Laplace, UM, which is about thirty miles west of New Orleans, UM, that's where you started to see like very severe flooding, very severe um damage to structures, places like Homer Lafitte UM. Porchean, all these places that are closer to the coast, that's where you saw the

real heavy destruction. So a lot of people have been framing what's happened down the Bayou and in the river parishes as we would say, um as like those places Katrina, because it's the destruction was was so total in that way. Um, so the way that you relate to um that type of again quote unquote disaster is much is much different, whereas what happened in war lens Um is more of a continuation of what could be called like a series

of apocalypses that have been happening since colonization. I think that's a that's an interesting point also that that that I want to talk about a little bit about US grain exports because I think that that's another part of this whole food system question that is important on a scale that I don't think people understands, Like, you know,

it's just for fodent background for listeners. So when when all of the sort of giant like free trade agreements went into effect, um, you know, so so the free tradermn are like okay, you're you're not supposed to be able to like have government subsidies of of agricultural products. And there's there's a couple of carve outs that were put into this now almost all of them. There are exceptions, for there's a couple of like weird manufacturing stuff in

like Italy and Germany that have carve belts. And the other big one is that the US government is allowed to just do enormous levels of agricultural subsidies that no one else, like really in the world is allowed to like matched. I mean do like you know, you know if if if you try to have grand subsidies, right, it's like you know, the I M F will come after you, like you know, you're not allowed to do it. But then you know something that you have the US

producing all of this like this. I mean it it's it's not it's not really cheap, right, but it's it's you know, this enormously subsidized grain that nobody can actually

really compete with. And I think that's that's like an interesting I was wondering what, like how how how do you guys think about that in terms of you know, try trying to do decentralized I guess O your culture in a place that's to a large extent this sort of like conduit of grain to the rest of the world, but in a way that like also inhibits those places from actually you know, having their own kind of like

essentialist agriculture. UM. I mean I can speak a little bit about like what that kind of does to our context of like making it, Like especially when I see people in the kind of organic gardening farming world trying to go on this model of like, well, we're gonna make you know, regenerative agriculture profitable, and we're gonna make it somehow compete with conventional agriculture. UM. And I guess I just don't really think that that is feasible in

that in that terrain. Like you know, if if we're trying to compete on that same terrain and we're competing with these absurd subsidies, it definitely just the same problem that you see around the world where people aren't able to afford to grow their own thing because there's no way they can they can sell it as cheaply as

as us grain. UM. So I think it's more important to sort of like look at like there's there's a piece in the almanac actually that sort of gets into this this issue of like, well, are we really growing enough food in in this regenerative way, Like you know, we we don't even hardly grow that many grains or that many high calorie things. A lot of things are just focused on vegetables and things like that. And like,

I think that's a really important critique. And also I think that the way out of it isn't just gonna be us trying harder or something or um. Like the future I nvision for us, like really changing the food system kind of involves like really large scale expropriation of that land where the grain is being produced and of those huge machineries, those huge like satellite power or satellite directed you know, plows and tractors and whatnot that are

that are doing this stuff. Um. And so like when I'm trying to think about like the impact that a food project is having or like a food this project, I don't try to think like we're trying to replace

uh agro business on its own terms. I think like we're trying to be an ally or an aid to any kind of antagonistic sort of social movement that actually is going to create the conditions where like we can all get together and start to actually address these problems, UM without being hindered by you know, things like private property. So I guess that that that that's a good point

to to jump into the Almanac from. I think, yeah, do do you want to just introduce the project a little bit and then we can talk about some of the stuff in it that I thought was really interesting. Yeah. So the Almanac kind of came out of like a little bit of a like partially is like a joke. You know, we're like everyone gets the UM the almanac and kind of you know, it doesn't really relate too much to UM like most of us what we would

be growing UM. So it posited something like different, you know, something that that does kind of grapple with some of the questions of you know, growing food and kind of the conditions we live in. Maybe you can speak kind of yeah, I can even just I'll actually just read the back of it because I think it speaks to it pretty well. This is a farmer's almanac for the end of the world. Growing food used to be a lot more straightforward when you plant your okra at the

same time every year like your grandpa did. Now we've got to be ready for anything. Late spring freezes, freak heat waves that bring plants out of dormancy to early fire season longer every year, the polar vortex. And if that wasn't enough, we've also got to contend with the fallout from breakages in the global supply chain. When millions of gallons of milk get poured down the drain and mountains of potatoes are left to rock. It's a world

that calls for a new kind of farmers almanac. Today's crisis has roots in the earliest moments of land theft against Native people's, a process that has continued alongside hundreds of years of slavery and colonization. The way forward out of this mess will mean grappling with the crimes of the past, as well as charting a new course guided by Black and Indigenous knowledge, creative experimentation and food production,

and paying attention across generational and species devides. So I mean, what one like very concrete example of like how this farmer's on the neck is different than what you might see just from the standard almanac. Is um, you know, we we don't have like oh it's it's May, it's time to plant corn or whatever, because I mean, first of all, that that was never that useful as for a publication that's meant to be used across this vast continent.

You know, it's going to be different everywhere, um, where you're going to plant things at which time um. But also like those standard resources that we would go to like for here, for the Southeast for example, or wherever. Like if you're looking at something that was made a few decades, know, it's not going to actually be accurate or it's going to give you undo certainty about where

the seasons line up and things like that. So you know, instead of telling people exactly when to plant their seeds, we have a chart that has the actual German Nation temperatures of like all the major annual vegetables that people would want to grow. Um. And then we also have like the monthly notes from this local farm in New Orleans, so you know, located in this area, you can you can also get a really precise view of like, oh, they were planning this, then they were harvesting this. Then. Yeah.

I think that we hope to make something that was you know, our our original focus was something that was specific to New Orleans in the region, um, you know, in the Gulf South and the Southeast generally, because we are so aware of the you know, the differences or what have you between growing through here and growing food

in Ohio or something or whatever. And we all get these sames seats you know, out of Walmart or Lows or whatever, and try and grow the exact same plants all over the place to trying to um hone in on some of that local perspective. UM with me withally in terms of like getting some like folk tradition, getting some um, you know, anecdotal evidence about you know, things that worked with things that people are trying. UM. And

but I think that that was that was fairly successful. UM. I think I think aside that we weren't really expecting as much was just the amount of national and even international UM kind of grasp that it had. UM. I think a lot of people like could could use something

like this in their area. UM. And it's fostered some really interesting connections for people that are experimenting in New York, for people that are are growing things or thinking about maybe UM food systems and how they relate to prisons in California or UM even you know as far away

as Brazil. UM. It's kind of began to foster a connection between Labelia Commons and a group called the Bogus, which translates roughly to like the web of People's UM in Brazil, so called Brazil UM, where it's kind of like experimental agroecology project that's very specific UM specifically focused on UM, you know, sovereignty, land stewardship, kind of following a little bit in the tradition of the Landless Workers movement.

If anyone's familiar with mst UM, it's kind of following in that tradition a bit UM, but is heavily stewarded by Black and Indigenous knowledges. Yeah, so I was something I think of a like a kind of pleasant surprise

out of it. Yeah, I thought that was that was really interesting way of looking at it, because I feel like there's this tendency in the US, you know when when when when we talk about sort of our relationship to the land, which which is something that comes up a lot in in the sort of essays that are are in the all NEC is about you know, like there there there's there's a piece that I related to a lot, which is about someone from Guam trying to

sort of deal with like I mean particularly like legacies or Japanese imperialism and being driven from their home and it was like, oh, hey, look like this this is yeah, you know, is this is this is someone who experienced which when Japan went west, and I was like, oh, yeah, my family had this basically very similar thing when they

went east. And you know, but but there's there's I think, yeah, and I think it's very smartly you get you get to a point very quickly where you're trying to grapple with you know, how do how do you build connections to land? But then also how how does that work in a context in you know, in a context that's basically defined by southern colonialism and defined by by this

by this occupation. And I think looking at the MSc, looking at a lot of stuff happened in Latin America, I mean there there's very similar to what you guys were talking about. In Brazil. There there was a huge movement like this that was indigenous land recormation sort of agrocology in in Columbia for example too in the nineties, and they they run into this problem of you know, there's there's a civil war going on in Columbia and they a lot of them getting murdered by sort of

state paramilitary is in the army. But I I think it's it's a it's a really interesting way of of looking at what what does what does Lambak actually look like? And how how you deal with interacting with Latin And also, yeah, the lance workers in particular, they use a lot of methods, but you know they actually do just take a like an enormous amount of land like back from the state

and sort of back from corporate things. So I'm interested in how you all started talking to a lot of these a lot of the Brazilian groups and how that sort of like that that perspective is shaped the way that like this, this this whole sort of project turned out. Um. So we were specifically to the dis Pobos um some previous connections that some of us had in Brazil had when talking about what we were doing and just kind of keeping up an exchange of um you know, just

like kind of updates from from the Gulf. When they would exchange send updates from things going on down there. They kind of drew the connection for us and put us towards them, And I reached out to day dis Pobos and was like, hey, we're you know, we're doing this thing, and I, you know, and inspired by what you're doing personally, and UM, you know, I I'd be curious to see what what, what kind of relationship whatever

we can foster, And they took it. UM. You know, also with with some inspirations, seeing that this very clear connection in terms of relationship with land historically, UM, this possession historically between the two continents across the Caribbean. UM. The implementation on a wide scale of plantation, monoculture UM.

It that was fueled entirely by slavery and genocide. UM. And and I think that having that kind of like shared common history, I think gives us a good bedrock to, like, UM exchange notes about where we are now, kind of multiplied by the fact that the way that UM, yeah, so called emancipation happened here versus in Brazil radically different UM.

The UM like the for instance, the existence of PET or the Workers Party in Brazil being such a force after the dictatorship, and having that like strong populist movement UM that was you know, rooted a very traditional left UM that that fueled MST. Well, you don't have anything like that here. You know that that happens at the same time that here, actually the workers movement in the US was was kind of getting defeated, I mean the

up in the seventies. So with respect to like um land back specifically, UM, you know, I don't know if you I don't know if you will see it in the same forms. I doubt at least obviously would totally be there cheering it on, and and I'm happy to see it. UM, But I think it looks a lot

more like during the uprising last year. You saw in Chicago, for instance, UM, the when the when, like the trains were being expropriated as they were moving, taking goods out of these box cars, UM, and just expropriating tons of goods, taking you know, taking good that would normally be going you know, just commodities normally going to court, just cut off in the middle of line, or you know, UM, these these these these kind of like more um ah.

I don't want to say small scale, but UM focus more on like infrastructural choke points rather than necessarily UM like having thousands of people swarming uh. You know, a massive industrial agriculture UM set up in Kansas or something, you know, Yeah, Yeah, I think it's great to imagine that. I think I really love sharing the history of MST with people in America who have never heard it before, because I think it's a great way to kind of expand the imaginary of like what is possible, like what

kind of actions are actually at our disposal? Like and it truly is not, you know, look exactly like that. And I think it's also really important for us to like not forget a lot of the similar histories here,

like UM. Part of the inspiration for the Almanac or what kind of drove us to to make it was some of us were doing a reading group of this book called Freedom Farmers that's about kind of like various uh um black projects in the South for food autonomy after slavery, and a lot of it is about Fannie Lew Hammer and um freedom Farms, and you know, we we're definitely inspired for some of the little bilia things by um Fannie leh Hammer's pig bank, which was a

really cool thing where they just like started with a bunch of pigs and if you were in the community, like you get you get your pigs from you get a couple of piglets from the pig bank, and then the interest on that is a couple of years later you got to give them a couple of pigs because you're producing your own pigs, and so the pig bank

is like self sustaining. UM. And another thing from that book that was inspiring to us was UM reading about George Washington Carver's public education projects out of Tuskegee University that were, um, just really inspiring in terms of like he was doing all of his own kind of independent research about soils and pests and all these different crops and everything, and creating these farm bulletins that were then being distributed to black farmers throughout the region to kind of,

you know, share better practices, and a lot of the stuff was like agro ecology before people had that word. Like he was very far ahead of his time in terms of understanding soil dynamics and and passed and things like that. UM. So yeah, we we definitely try to try to lift up all that history as much as possible. Yeah,

I guess when we were you. The thing I thought was very interesting that you alluded to briefly in this was, Yeah, because there's there's a session of this is talking about food in prisons, And I wonder if you could talk about that part a little bit more, because that's a connection that I that I really don't think it's drawn very often. Oh here, let me flip to the piece, right, I mean one of the things that it's kind of

hard to describe. I do love the visual that that we have for this piece, but yeah, I mean it's just like the it's a striking image, you know, it's got like, um in the center, there's a picture of a really high density chicken operation and there's somebody wearing sort of like a full tibex suit suit and just

walking through this like massive herd of chickens. And then that's superimposed over this just like really nasty looking close up photo of a prison food training and just like the canned veggies and the everything, And like, I mean, I don't I've been to jail a number of times and the food is always terrible. It's always one of the things that you talk about or you can bond over or whatever. It's just how bad the food is.

But I think people who haven't experienced that don't really think about just how much systematic like starvation is going on and the nutrition is going on where it's like the only way you could possibly survive in these places is spending a bunch of extra money on commissary to get stuff that also isn't healthy, but at least you can get more calories and stuff. Um. And like I think that that there's like a lot of parallels between kind of the structure of prisons and the structure of

our of our food system. UM. I mean one example that I used to talk about this is like the banana plantation um where like the you know, we have an entire variety of banana that's like basically stanct or it's it can't be grown commercially anymore because the banana industry, you know, functions by putting like warehousing these banas together and these like super tight plantation formations, you know, which really only makes sense if you're just trying to maximize

your profits and get as much out of a a small space as possible. But what it does is is the exact same thing that happens in prisons during COVID or with any kind of uh, you know, pathogen like tuberculosis or whatever. Um. You know, it it's like the trees are so close together that the fungus spread so rapidly, and then they're also like pumping all these things into to fight that, and they're actually breeding super funguses all

the time. And at some point the banana that we eat now is going to also stop existing because of this. UM And I guess I don't know if I can draw anything deeper out of those similarities than the fact that there's this like overriding logic of capitalism that is just like has no respect for these beings, like whether it is a person or a anatory, like it's all

just commodities and things to be warehouse. UM. Yeah, I think UM to add on that, I mean this, this is the piece in there which is called the Struggle for Good Food across Walls. UM. I think it does a nice job of talking about how like, um, you know, if we're talking about quote unquote food food justice or what have you, like, UM Like, how can we talk about that on the outside of all forgetting about just

the most deplorable um food conditions on the entire continent. UM. And I think that that it's it's really good at that. I think I would really like to see in the next year all the ways that UM the imaginaries of of inmates kind of go in in like attack that UM the like the logic of of prison food being

completely deplorable. Like you know, you have all these forms of creativity of like making tortillas and stuff and like doing wild things with like stuff that's in the commissary, you know, contraband kind of ways of of making kind

of life a little bit more livable in there. And and if anyone has UM spent time in jail or prison, or or kept up a relationship with someone on the inside or what have you, UM, everyone has a story about a way of UM making making food more UM interesting and joyful, and and like there becomes whole cultures

around them. One of the things that we're starting to do in one of the farm spaces we work with outside of the city is is um through pre existing relationships with inmates in Angola State Penitentiary in Louisiana, which, for those that don't know, UM was a plantation civil War happens two years after the civil War, it becomes

a Louisiana scap potentiary. It's still a plantation. It's you know, uh this many times descendants of the same enslaved folks who were on that plantation prior um and you know it's a it's a guard on a horseback riding around

while those um folks pulling cotton, um. And so so, through some of these relationships with some of these inmates who are like kind of uh clandestine organizers, UM, we're starting to come up with ways to like grow food collaboratively with folks that are behind walls and and find ways to get food to either their family or maybe sell and get that into their commissary. Kind of just like trying to um spitball ideas about like different ways

of producing food despite people's in cars ration. Yeah, that that seems that seems like a really I guess we're you can really says a necessary way for for this sort of food politics to go if it's going to actually deal with sort of both the land conditions and the conditions of just you know the fact that we haven't in that there's still just an enormous slave population to us. And I think that kind of resistance in creativity, I think is how Yeah, y'all, are y'all are on

the right track with with pushing it that way? Yeah, that this is this is sort of a bleik note to end on I think, but I don't know. I think it's yeah, it's a it's a it's a hopeful one too, and where can people find but basically all of Youl's work. And then also you talked a little bit about trying to get submissions for and everything, So can you talk a little bit about how that how

that's gonna work. Yeah, Um, so we're we're it's it's kind of been on hold a little bit because we've been like very active after Ida and you know, trying to make sure our people are all good and supporting UM in various places, UM kind of doing like different workshops and stuff. And and because that our focus isn't just on food production, it's also like neighborhood survival or whatever.

So we've been um working with an old UM neighbor of one of ours, who UM you know, she's already been kind of doing this mutual aid stuff you know by any other name for decades, you know, letting people stay in their house, UM, feeding people. UM. She's like kind of like a block MoMA and she's really one of the last um black homeowners in her neighborhood. So we're really trying to like help her achieve some autonomy.

One way that we've been putting it is UM when all the airbnbs like lose their power because they're still reliant on the colonial world, Well, miss Elfie I could still have her lights on because she's going to be

totally autonomous from the system. So UM, I think that that link is on our Instagram page if you click on the like UM the link or whatever, there's a go fund me that UM is UH where we've been putting a lot of our effort and really working with her on UM and then also like growing growing a garden like adjacent to her so that their people in that community are are food as as food autonomous as UM as we can get we can we can put

it in the show notes. Yeah, and the the handle for both Twitter and Instagram is at Lobilia Commons and the Almanac. You can find links to the Almanac pdf on through either of those UM if you want to just read it for free. And then UM there's also companies for sale on emergent Goods dot com and for UM submissions. I mean, yeah, like I said, we've been really behind on this just because of all this stuff. But for submissions. We're really um looking for folks um

to contribute throw us a pit um. I think if you've seen the first one or I've listened to this, you probably get something of an idea of what we're looking for um. And we're happy to like talk to people about, like, you know, different ideas and bear with us if we're a little slower to respawn because we're you know, kind of still waist deep right now. But yes, submission for deadlines is the end of October UM and you can email ideas or pitches or whatever to Lobelia

Commons at proton mail dot com. And lastly, the project that I'm most focused on is the front Yard Orchard Initiative, where basically we just propagate as many fruit trees as cheaply as possible, things that are really easy for us to grow from cuttings like figs, s, mulberries, things they're easy to grow from seed, like papaya, maringa, pecan um.

And we basically just have some nice flaw yars that we put up and we advertise a bit on social media and also just kind of go door to door in neighborhoods where we already have gardens or connections and offer to give free fruit trees out to people, and we're also happy to plant them for people and then kind of offer a consultation on how to take care

of it or whatever. And also if folks want to hear some of the pieces from the Earthbound Farmers Almanac read by some of the authors and then some interviews with those authors, you can check out this podcast called Partisan Gardens that did a really good episode that's kind of like an audio exploration of the Almanac. Cool. Yeah, people, people definitely definitely go read the Almanac. Is it's it's it's a it's a really good it's a really good piece of work. Um. Yeah, thank thank you too so

much for joining us. Yeah, thank you for Robert Evans here. And I wanted to ask for your help. There is a Portland area woman RUPI to mem She's an Arabic interpreter and a Palestinian liberation activist and she is trying to save her home at the moment. She's got to go fund me. If you go to save Ruba's house, are you be a on go fund bank, you'll find it Save Ruby's house on go fund Me. You've got a few bucks. She could really use it again. Save Ruba's house. Are you be a at go fund me? Thanks?

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