Blogs - The Resilience Hub

December 6 Winter Celebration and Silent Auction

November 18, 2019 by Kate Wallace Leave a Comment

Join us on December 6 at Root Wild Kombuchery from 6:30 – 9:00 pm to celebrate another year of permaculture design courses, workshops, and permablitzes!

Highlights include a photo booth and silent action with some great stuff from our friends and neighbors around the state. Proceeds from the silent auction will benefit another year of Resilience Hub programs. We’ll release a list of auction items before the event, so stay tuned.

We’ll have music and activities as well as small bites to snack on – if you’d like to bring something to share, please do! Root Wild kombucha and beer will be available to purchase. Kids are welcome!

Join in the fun — stop in for a few minutes or stay the whole time. We will be telling stories from the past year and sharing the goals we have set for the year to come. We hope to see you there!

Fedco Trees Group Order is BACK!

October 27, 2019 by Kate Wallace Leave a Comment

*The parking crew gets ready for the onslaught of people at the 2019 Tree Sale. Skip the crowds and join our group order!*

It’s hard to think spring when the snow hasn’t even started to fly, but it’s that time of year again! We’re excited to bring back the Resilience Hub’s Fedco Tree group order. Their website has been up and taking orders for a couple of weeks now.

Why participate this time around? Get a discount, order great stuff, have your plants delivered to Portland (you won’t have to drive 90 minutes north and back to get your order!), and support the work of permaculture education here in Maine.

Here are the details:

For all inquiries regarding orders, email kate@resiliencehub.org.
You can use the paper Fedco Trees catalog if you have one or the online catalog to put together your wish list. Order early, as popular items tend to sell out.
Log into Fedco Trees using your email address and follow the directions given here. When you review your order prior to checking out, click the “Part of a Group” button as your shipping option. Then go to “Checkout Securely” and type in our group order number: 49808.
You will not pay on the Fedco site, but you will click here to send your total amount to The Resilience Hub. We collect the money and make one big payment to Fedco in order to qualify for the discount.
You need to place your order with Fedco and make your payment to us by the ORDER DEADLINE OF JANUARY 17, 2020.
PIckup up your order in Portland at the end of April. Depending on how much of a discount we receive, we will process a refund* back to you via PayPal.

We will be organizing 2 or 3 members with trucks to drive up and get all our stuff on Friday May 1. Your order will be available for pickup in Portland on the afternoon of May 1 and over the course of the following Saturday and Sunday (May 2 and 3). More details about the specific location and time for pickup will be shared closer to the date.

We will also be available to help out with any order problems or shortages after the fact.

Here’s to more perennial food in the landscape!

* Depending on the size of our order, Fedco will issue a discount of between 10% and 20%. Then sales tax will be added back in, we will put a bit of money toward fuel for the volunteers who drive to Fedco and bring the order back down to Portland, and a bit of money toward a stipend for the order coordinator. You will likely get at least 10% back, support the Hub and contribute to a reduced number of vehicles driving up and back for pickup!

Mushrooms and Squirrels and Sunflowers

September 29, 2019 by Myke Johnson Leave a Comment

A few fun surprises this week in the garden. Way back in May, I had inoculated the wood chips near the fruit trees with Wine Cap mushroom spores that were an impulse purchase at the Fedco Tree Sale. Then nothing happened all summer, so I figured maybe it wasn’t moist enough and didn’t take. But this week suddenly, beautiful big mushrooms started sprouting with a reddish tint to their caps. Being cautious, I checked the package again, and also researched Wine Caps on the internet–I was relieved to discover there are no poisonous look-alikes.

Since then we’ve had fresh mushrooms in our eggs and in a batch of spaghetti sauce. The mushrooms keep popping up all over the orchard. They should come back again each year now. What a marvelous thing to get food right from the ground!

Speaking of food from the ground, the squirrel was excited to discover that one of our volunteer sunflowers had seeds on it. Just like she would do on our bird feeder in the winter, she hung upside down to get to the meaty morsels.

Were they really there? Later, I checked for myself. Certainly enough for a little snack. I think this is the same squirrel that decided she should build a nest this week under our solar panels, in a spot behind a cross board that supports our deck roof. Not good! (Squirrels can chew the wiring and mess up the solar panel system, we discovered.) Each morning and evening Margy or I would climb on a ladder to pull out small branches and leaves and grass to undo what she had built. We’ve got a plan to prune off some branches on our ornamental crabapple that form a super-highway from the materials to the roof.

But one day, while I was on the ladder pulling out stuff, she came running down the gutter and stopped short when she saw me. I said to her, “You can’t build a nest here! This is our house. Go find a nice tree.”

I don’t know if it was my stern suggestion, or the pile of “stolen” nesting material that was scattered on the deck beneath the ladder, or sheer discouragement from all her work being undone each day, but the last two days she has not replenished her spot. (We’re still going to prune the tree though!) Maybe the sunflower seeds were a little something to sweeten the agreement. We try to find a balance with our plant and animal neighbors in this place. Giving and receiving in gratitude.

[This post first appeared at my blog Finding Our Way Home: A Spiritual Journey into Earth Community.]

Weeds: Common Ragweed

September 25, 2019 by Melissa Smith Leave a Comment

This is the ninth in a series of blogs, shared with permission, about weeds in the garden. Each blog will discuss a common and specific weed found in Maine, its history, uses, what story it tells about the soil it grows in, and how to get rid of it. The original blogs, along with other gardening related blogs, can be found here.

This ugly little plant is what is actually responsible for your allergies – not that beautiful yellow flowered goldenrod you often attribute it to. Other names for ragweed include ambrosia, horseweed, asthma plant, bursages and burrobrushes, American wormwood, bitterweed, blackweed, carrot weed, hay fever weed, Roman wormwood, short ragweed, stammerwort, stickweed, tassel weed.

Common ragweed (Ambrosia artemisiifolia) is an annual that can produce 60,000 seeds a plant, and ragweed pollen is responsible for about half of all pollen related allergies in the US. It is also the first plant in my list that is actually native to North America! Common ragweed is considered an invasive, and in Queensland it is prohibited to be given away, sold or released without permission.

Although most of us want nothing to do with the plant, ragweed may have its uses. In the past it has been used to relieve nausea, fever, as a laxative, to soothe skin rashes and even as an antiseptic. There is a whole body of homeopathic research on the “like treats like” principle – where ragweed pollen is used to reduce allergy symptoms. The seeds, which are edible, pack an impressive amount of crude protein and fat, and each plant produces as much oil as a soybean plant. It is also a bioaccumulator for lead, which makes it useful in soil remediation.

What does it mean?

In general, ragweed prefers full sun, with disturbed and poorly aerated soil, with few competitors, is tolerant of dry soil and likes places where there is not much available potassium for existing plants. Pfeiffer supposes that a lack of copper in the soil might be part of why it creates such an allergy problem with its pollen.

One effective method of control is to slash or mow the plants, or to pull them, before they set seed but when they are fully mature. A variety of herbicides have been effective in killing ragweed, however in the United States, ragweed is becoming glyphosate resistant. Another method of control is the use of insects, two of which: stem-galling moth and the ragweed leaf beetle might help reduce the prevalence the weed. Finally, overcrowding is considered very effective as a method of eliminating ragweed in a couple of growing seasons.

Want to learn more?

If you would like to learn more about weeds, why they grow, and what that means about your garden, consider the following texts:

Weeds and Why they Grow, by Jay L. McCaman

Weeds and What They Tell Us, by Ehrenfried E. Pfeiffer

The Resilience Hub and Midcoast Permaculture Design Graduate 20th PDC Cohort

September 13, 2019 by Kate Wallace Leave a Comment

*PDC students learning to build a swale at the Maine Heritage Orchard at MOFGA*

The Resilience Hub and Midcoast Permaculture Design graduated its 20th cohort this summer from the internationally recognized Permaculture Design Course. Participants met five times over four months at the MOFGA fairgrounds in Unity. In that time we visited multiple permaculture sites, and learned hands-on techniques like plant propagation, sheet mulching, scything, and water-harvesting earthworks. We did a deep dive into the permaculture design process, which culminated in a three-day, start-to-finish, small-group design of our sample client’s 5-acre site in Morrill. It was an exciting weekend, stressful at times, but each group finished the project with multiple beautiful hand-drawn maps and a written report. Congratulations to the 2019 Unity PDC grads!

Ripe mulberries on a site tour!
Plant propagation

Winter Celebration and Silent Auction

Dates for the 2020 PDC will be announced very soon! To learn more, check out maine-pdc.com.