From Our Dear Friend The Milpa Farmer
- Details
- Published on Monday, 14 March 2016 10:45
- Written by editor
Weekly offerings and happenings of Ashevillage Institute, Sanctuary & friends.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Greetings,
Zev Friedman, permaculture designer and teacher with the Permaculture School, is offering this milpa farming series. If you want to learn how to grow staple foods on a village scale in a forest ecosystem, we think this would be worth your time....
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
What is a Milpa?
”Milpa” is the Nahuatl word for a sophisticated and ancient form of food, medicine and fiber production practiced in various forms by indigenous people throughout the Americas. Milpas provide a real example of truly sustainable agriculture that permaculture aims to create.
If you have heard of the mutually beneficial plantings of the Three Sisters of corn, beans and squash, the trio is a simplified form of milpa. Milpas can include not just three, but 12-20 annual plants, all grown symbiotically together. Traditionally these crops are grown in clearings rotated through a forest ecosystem over decades. Each of these clearings transforms into 'forest agriculture' after 7-15 years of annual production. This cycle enables maximum ecological diversity, sequesters carbon dioxide, creates topsoil, and provides resilient and autonomous food systems. The people who grow milpa eat an incredibly well-rounded cuisine of annual crops, forest and perennial crops, and animal foods that provide high quality and diverse nutrition.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Milpa Farming Series
...If you are interested in learning more, consider joining Zev in his summer educational series...
>> April-October, 2016
Seven Sessions over Seven Months = 11 days total
>> Location: Most of the sessions will be at Earthaven Ecovillage in the Hut Hamlet neighborhood. One or two sessions might be at a milpa in Asheville.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Session 1: April 9-10
Waking Up With The Spring - This first session includes 2 days to give you time to get into a big picture perspective on the whole growing season and class cycle, do several physical projects, and cover some in-depth material on the following topics: soil science; making & applying biochar; managing no-till winter cover crop transition into spring planting; intro to integrating animals into the milpa; starting hot-weather seeds such as tobacco & cotton; introduction to polyculture farming; planting by the moon & with the biodynamic calendar.
Session 2: April 30
The Bones - Winter cover crop cutting, contoured bed layout, soil shaping, biochar application, first hoeing.
Session 3: May 14
Seeds in the Ground - Planting corn, squash & hot weather crops, creating animal protection
Session 4: May 28-29
Water and Timing - Hilling corn, planting beans, second hoeing, animal protection, mulching, inoculating with king stropharia mushrooms
Session 5: July 3
Tending the Jungle - Tie up corn tipis, prune squash vines, train bean vines, animal protection, inoculate with huitlacoche
Session 6: Sept 24-25
Seeds Coming Home to the Hearth - Harvest, cover crop, assemble fall compost pile
Session 7: Oct 15-16
Tying Up The Netbag & Feasting With Fire - Process yields, seed selection & saving, cover crop, cook & eat feast together, closing ceremony!
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
>> Registration & Information >>
www.schoolofintegratedliving.org/milpa-farming-series
We hope you enjoy this series!
Happy Milpa Farming to you,
Green goodness from the Ashevillage Team
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Copyright ©2016 Ashevillage, all rights reserved.
Ashevillage Institute · 30 Westgate Parkway #358 · Asheville, NC 28806 · USA