Going on vacation!

I just wanted to say, I will be going on vacation until the 23rd. I hope to be updating while I am gone, but I can't predict that yet. I will be in Key West, splashing around in the Gulf of Mexico and thinking about what's next in my world, seeing that I am now unemployed.  I am so touched and moved and happy that there has been so much interest surrounding this blog- it has inspired me to take it to the next level, which I plan on doing when I get back. it will be more radical recipes, guerilla and urban gardening, beekeeping, and other sundry adventures in occupying one's self- and then some. You'll see. I'm talkin' Next Level stuff.

See you on the flip!

Xoxo

Ashley Dane

Gardening is Gangsta! Resistance is Fertile, suckas!

I freakin' love the whole process of gardening. From taking the little seeds and nurturing them as they sprout- I love to watch the little baby seedlings grow. I become very fond of them- I kind of love them, truth be told. I think they know it, too. So when they are finally old enough to be planted in the tower, its like a Bar or Bat Mitvah. So exciting that they are old enough to live on their own!




my little babies!

Here are those babies three weeks ago- just a gleam in my eye

Even cooler is when its harvest time, and you are able to make salads and smoothies with the harvest. I have harvested three times now, and its amazing to know you grew what you are eating. This novelty, I know, is lost on old school garden growers. But for me, having been citified for so many years, I lost the relationship with growing food. I thought it was impossible, given that I live in an apartment. And above all, I wasn't interested- as everyone who has read my blogs knows, until recently I wasn't about to eat anything green.

I am invigorated by the movement when it comes to food- from the revolutionary stance, such as I take, to the nutrition freaks, to the vegans who love animals, to those who are concerned for the environment and buy local for that reason (I am one of those, too)- its a full on movement, and its exciting as hell. Like Jamie Oliver, raising so much Cain that McDonalds is going to stop using the ammonia in the McNuggets (they still will be total crap, but better than before), to documentaries about the farming industry revealing the truth about what the FDA is doing to small farmers, to local merchants trying to simply sell raw foods, or raw milk, and the people who want to buy those items (Farmageddon- click here to see movie), to all the facebook postings about Monsanto, and the revived interest in farmer's markets, urban beekeeping and gardening...its amazing! Its...GANGSTA!

Gardening is Gangsta- I told you!

Gardening is GANGSTA- especially when you do it urban style, either in an aeroponic garden tower, or guerilla gangster style- planting food bearing plants in public spaces). Eating healthy is gangsta- just check out THUG KITCHEN ("eat like you give a fuck").  I personally love when there is a saucy dose of irreverence, like PUNK ROCK HOMESTEADING ("Resistance is Fertile"). These earth friendly, body loving practices all comes from the past, but this is the future, its necessary, and its radical, revolutionary, and a movement worth joining.



Thug Kitchen is totally gangsta- love those punx!

If you think you can't grow your own fruit and vegetables because you live in an urban setting- you're wrong. Check out Garden Towers- they have a pretty sweet payment plan.

 If you think you can't afford to eat locally or organic- I am doing it, and I raise a family of two teenage girls and 5 animals on one small income, smashed into a two bedroom apartment, and I'm doing it. Trust me, its not as expensive as you think.

I am gonna eat that arugula tomorrow

If you think you can't live without your certain processed foods- go back and read my first blog and keep reading until you catch up to this one- I am you. You are me.  I'm on day 4 of no coca cola- the longest I have gone in 34 years without a Coke. I know how hard it is, but I also know what it feels like once you do it. Its like...discovering you were a slave and freeing yourself. Nothing bad about that. You deserve to experience it for yourself.

If you have any other resistance- look at it. The human Ego was designed to resist anything that is truly and deeply good- for you, for your life, and for the planet. The Ego is like a disease. It would prefer you be a robot to your programming, a puppet to your tastebuds and a slave to your insecurities, than to question any part of your life and habits. THATS EXACTLY WHY YOU SHOULD DO IT. Don't be a robot, or a puppet, or a slave. Question yourself. Then Occupy Yourself. Start here, start now, start small, but by all means. start. You will be in good company. And you might, like me, love it. And you might even be, like me,  a GANGSTA. Yeeeoooow!

OCCUPY YOURSELF!


Love, Ashley Dane

Palm Oil, Super Sizing, and Kanye West, Oh My!!

Okay, this won't look like much to anyone else, but remember that I am learning to use Aeroponic Garden Towers for urban gardening. When I ordered the seedlings, I didn't pay any attention to how they were marked, so to be honest, I wasn't entirely sure what I was growing. I was waiting until it burst open with vegetables, and then I'd know. Yesterday a new friend, who is a nutritionist, came over and pointed out that two of the mystery plants were kale. Kale!!! And ready to harvest! I also had an impressive bunch of chives, too, but they aren't pictured.

So....yay! One small step in the right direction! My baby seedlings are about a week away from planting into the second garden tower- I am hoping to get the swing of it in the next few months so I can help teach others how to do it. I think it will be amazing to help people who live in apartment buildings learn to grow their own vegetables, in spite of the lack of soil. So cool!

Could Kanye West grow Kale like this?

Here is the second picture my sweet friend Becca took- she told me to look as excited as I was- personally I think I look a little psychotic, but make no mistake, that is sheer enthusiasm. And then...I made a big fat kale/strawberry/almond/banana/coconut milk smoothie with it.

Yay organic home grown kale!

My nutritionist friend dropped some science on me about, errrrrr, well nutrition of course, and she always leaves me feeling like the world of food is a great and amazing mystery- not unlike my recently harvested kale. She is like a food Yoda. She says things like- "smokers need to eat more vitamin C than non smokers, so when given a choice between strawberries or bananas, they should always pick bananas." Or, 'adding lemon juice to dark leafy green liberates the nutrients', or "an actual serving of a bagel is 1/4 of a bagel. Not the whole bagel. 1/4. Same with red meat. A serving is 3 oz. Americans eat 12 or more ounce steaks. And we wonder why obesity is what it is." When she explained to me how insulin in the blood works, and how it responds to stuff like pasta, that its this whole tricky thing that goes on inside creating spikes in insulin, more than the body can use, so the insulin is just hanging out in the blood, telling you that you are hungry, even if you are completely full, you will often still feel hungry." Such cool information! I plan on picking her brain and sharing what I find in there with YOU.

Yoda is cute, but my Food Yoda is waaaaay cuter

I really liked this bit of info. It points to the different sides of the fence we all make in regards to food. Its such a personal matter, which is why changing your way of eating is, in my opinion, such a revolutionary act. Some do it for weight, some do it for health, some do it not to hurt animals, some do it to stop supporting the food corporations, hence a socio/political stance. Some unexamined eaters will eat for comfort, out of boredom, for the high, because of a disordered relationship to food, they supersize it because they can, they eat it because its there.  For those who eat healthy out of concerns for weight, I just want to say- the last two times I was at the Farmer's Market, I did not see one single obese person there. Not one. Everyone was, dare I say it, easy on the eyes. They looked fit and healthy and content in their skin.

Here is an angle we don't hear about much, in the face of Monsanto and GMOs. Palm oil production. Have you heard of this?  I hadn't. Apparently palm oil is now in pretty much everything. And this palm oil is harvested in places like Indonesia, where the climate is perfect for it. In order to grow it, they are destroying rain forests at an alarming rate, threatening many species of animals- not the least of which is the orangutan of Sumatra's rain forests.

Read more about palm oil, deforestation and the plight of orangutans HERE

Learn more about what food to avoid that contains palm oil HERE.

Suffice it to say, its many of the same foods you might already be avoiding if you are trying not to eat GMOs. If you aren't there yet, here is another good reason to start being very conscious about your eating habits- these little babies below are one of the species that is being endangered so the food corporations can give the world snacks. SNACKS.

This whole radical shift in the way I am living my life when it comes to my eating habits continues to surprise me. Its so much more than it seems, on the surface. "Its just food, what's the big deal," I used to think, and many still do. But our food is everything. Its the one thing we ALL have to do, eat. Its the one thing that will determine the state of our health. Those who control it have us by the short and curlies and we as a culture are not even aware. Did you know that it benefits insurance companies to keep Americans fat? They can charge you higher rates if your BMI is over a certain percent. Do you think they might be very happy, in fact very encouraging, of the whole Super Sizing food portions?  This isn't conspiracy theorizing. This is an actual conspiracy, and the joke is on us all.

This very reason is why this is a radical thing to do. This is why its revolutionary. If we don't buy or eat their food, then we are, individually, free from their toxic influence. If enough people do it, we start to shift the mantle of power. They need our money to succeed in a capitalist society. Its our money- lets not use it to support those who want to make us fat and dumb, to feed us poison and destroy the earth and its critters. Every cent you spend on processed foods, non locally grown produce, fast food, etc- is money you are giving the McDeath Corporations to poison your children and kill your world. Have you ever seen the movie Wall-E? I'm just sayin'.

Okay, so perhaps I am waxing a little dramatic, but its not far from the truth. Give it some thought. I am here to tell you that if I can do this, you can too. I am here to tell you it IS affordable, it IS fun, there are so many amazing new things to try that you don't even know of yet (check out my Radical Recipes on this blog! New recipes every week.) Its sexy. It changes the way you look at everything. It feels liberating. You feel...awake.  It feels good! In ways you can't possibly understand until you cross over.  And if you aren't ready yet- I ain't mad at ya. You can do your part in other ways. Like share the crap out of this blog!!!!

I will leave my ranting and raving for the day with my favorite song of the week... Kanye West, Black Skinhead. He has redeemed himself, if you ask me.

Xoxo,

Ashley Dane

Can You Survive in a Post Apocalyptic World?

Lately when I am driving, or lying in bed before I fall asleep, I have been thinking about the End Times. Yep, the oft referred to end of days, when humans finally cannibalize themselves to the point of complete destruction.

Don't be skeered. I am not fanatic about it. What I wonder is how I would fare in a survival setting, and how useful would I be to others. This is not really surprising to me, as I recently went through a spate of post apocalyptic movies- 28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later, Legend, Children of Men, World War Z, and of course, Walking Dead. Most of these focus on zombies- but as I have said in other blog posts- the zombie apocalypse is already upon us. What happens when the zombies destroy the fabric of society in their mindless consuming? (To wit, a great quote from Judith Froemming-A true zombie is nothing more than an unconscious being apathetically and lifelessly lumbering across the planet buying and consuming everything in its path, unsatisfied, unfulfilled, anxious and unstill.”)

Zombie Attack Survival Kit- a must have

The zombies have me very nervous. They are everywhere on parade, all over the internet and facebook. They really have no thought at all about anything except what to consume next, or what entertainment is available next. But all of this could culminate in a bad scene for all of us, and I wonder about that. First- I wonder if there are enough people who are conscious and aware to stop the madness. I wonder if we are doing enough, or if there is enough we can do. I will continue to do the best I can, and just maybe I will start preparing.


So I got a survival book. And it got me thinking about all kinds of stuff I didn't need to start thinking about. Why? Well, it shakes me up, for one. Like the section of the book about survival dentistry. When I think about survival, I always picture myself smashing zombies in the face, or building a fire, or getting supplies from a heavily looted grocery store, armed to the teeth. That one chapter put the reality of it in perspective. Its not a movie. If it happened, there are skills we don't have the first idea about. Dentistry? Setting bones? Surviving in a desert with no readily available clean water sources? Not nearly as fun as zombie killing.

But this new movement I have been privy to, with people learning to garden and create beehives, and even those who have acquired chickens (seriously, there is an urban chicken movement- and it makes sense- fresh eggs? Why not?) in urban environs will fare better than those who have not been learning to get back to simpler ways. If society were to quickly revert to having no power and no water, then these simple skills are going to come in very handy. So, in a very real way, one can both prepare for, and help prevent, an apocalypse. If more of us did these things, and we got more people to grow food, buy local, keep beehives,  drive less, recycle, look into sustainable ways of living- if we were able to tip the scales, we could help prevent a possible catastrophic future. And if it came anyway- we would be in a good position to survive it.

Urban homesteading is on the rise

So sure, there are things like having stores of canned food and water, that's never a bad idea- and first aid kits, and survivalist books, and all of that. I recommend preparedness on any level, for any thing.  But when it comes down to it, people have been living off the earth naturally for millennia. Its the most radical thing you can do right now, in this day and age- to look at all that you consume- from food and entertainment, to ideas and thoughts- all of it could be re-evaluated and re-prioritized. I say start with food, and let the rest come. Food is by far one of the hardest to change, but once you make that commitment to eating foods with no GMOs, shopping local so the foods are not shipped to you grocery store by plane and trucks- thereby wasting precious fossil fuels, giving your body nutrient dense superfoods so you stay healthy (and not just for the sake of health, per say, but because a healthy body is a BIG fuck you to the system- they make a ton of money of our being sick, tired, stressed), avoiding processed food, growing what you can, perhaps having a beehive to help our dying bees and so you can have fresh honey, definitely avoiding all fast food restaurants, and being a good example to others by talking about it and walking the walk you are talking about- if you just start here, with one of those things, it will grow all on its own. The rest will fall into place, in its own time and its own way. It will not feel like a sacrifice, but a gift. You will feel like a light bulb that has never been turned on before now, and finally you have found your purpose.

 I would like to not have to run through abandoned streets with a bad ass cross bow on my back, scavenging for what I can not grow on my own, or practice survival dentistry on my loved ones and learn to filter my pee to water a garden, but if we don't start somewhere, do something, and now, this may be the case.  The time is now. Don't hit the snooze button. OCCUPY YOURSELF!

Urban Gardening

Right about the time I realized I needed to change the way I was looking at, and living, my life, I was lucky enough to have two unused garden towers in my proximity that I could learn to use. At my work, my boss had purchased two of them, but no one had championed the cause. It was perfect synchronicity. How many people living in cities don't have the option of growing their food, due to lack of soil or space? Plenty, I bet. Me included.

I also have the good fortune of having someone show me how to get these things started. There are so many ways to talk oneself out of doing something- "I don't know how", or "Maybe next week," or "I can't afford it," or "It won't work." The universe in all its goodness eliminated all such conversations from my head. If I can learn how to do these things, I can teach others. Its amazing to me that the most radical thing any of us can do is to get back to nature as much as possible- and there is nothing more natural than growing your own food.

So my friend who came to help also takes care of the garden towers at Step Up on Second, which is an organization which helps the homeless in Los Angeles. They have a small café where they serve hotdogs and hamburgers, and the homeless people on the program work the café and learn how to have a job. There are many aspects to this organization, and they are doing amazing work. One aspect is the garden towers on the roof- I think he said there were 25 of them, and they grow food that they can use to help feed the homeless people who come through while they teach them how to be self sustaining.  Here is a picture below- pretty amazing. By the way- you can make monthly payments for a garden tower, and they payments are reasonable.

Garden Towers at Step Up on Vine

My friend and I first started to create the seedlings. I got seed packets of peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, arugula. We put rock wool into plastic trays with individual growing bins- you do this so the roots don't grow into each other. Then you put 4 or 5 seeds in each one, and cover with a nutrient rich covering. Its important to mark what you planted- we did it with coffee stirrers with the name of the vegetable and the date on the back. Then you soak the seed beds, but be careful not to disturb the seeds.

The start of an urban garden



If you were not going to use a tower and were going to go guerilla gardening (which I implore you to do) then you would do the same thing but you could use potting soil which is already fortified with nutrients. In guerilla urban gardening, you would plant vegetables or other edibles in public spaces, or in front of your apartment building, on medians, on the courthouse lawn, parks, etc. Nothing at all wrong with doing this!  once your seedlings are good and strong, plant them where they will be able to get water- any public landscaping will have sprinkler systems.

So in about two weeks, we will have little seedlings. Every day I need to lightly water the seedlings and not leave too much water in the bottom tray- or they roots will grow down towards the water, and we'd rather encourage the plants to grow towards the sun.

Once they are seedlings, we transfer them to the garden towers. The towers only need to be filled with water and the nutrient solution and then you basically leave them alone and let them grow. You need to have access to an outlet as they need to plug in for the water to pump up through to each little basket. My first plants I put in my garden tower are growing- some died. White flies got to many of them. If you have white flies, a water and dish soap solution sprayed onto the leaves makes them go away.


Here is my vision- I want to teach people how to create urban gardens and beehives. Bees have a higher rate of survival in cities, and you can have your own source of honey. The gardens can give you certain vegetables and fruit- I am staying away from things like lettuce or herbs right now and focusing on things like tomatoes and peppers and cucumbers- its easy enough to get salad stuff from the farmer's market. I would like to help people understand the importance of buying from their local farmer's markets- its fresh, generally organic, and has not taken a lot of fossil fuels to send on trucks and airplanes from distant countries to your grocery store chain. I know we can't grow everything, and we can't buy everything at the farmer's market- but we can do a lot, and its a great start.

When I go to the farmer's market, I look at the people there and am so happy to be among like minded people. Its revolutionary. Buying local instead of at the supermarkets takes money out of the hands of those who seek to control the world's food sources.  There is much more at the farmer's market than produce- there is bread, meat, fish, eggs- you can get a lot of your shopping done there. the more you buy there, the more you are telling the GMO food corporations like Monsanto and Syngenta to fuck the fuck off.

OCCUPY YOURSELF!!!