The Past part 1: Kagel Canyon as Ground Zero

In November 2008, I moved to Sylmar California. For the past 10 years I had been living right in Hollywood dabbling in acting and music. The city life became wearisome. I had been raised mostly on a small family farm and was a nature boy at heart. I had to move because the building I was living in was bought out and slated for renovations. I had been jonesing to get out of the city but my rent was cheap and I was trying to save for...who knows what.

When I saw the log cabin advertised with a large front and backyard plus a year round stream going through the back, I couldn't believe my luck. It was a little more than I wanted to pay for rent, but as I scoured the rental ads for several weeks nervous I would lose it, I couldn't find anything even remotely as unique or suitable; within an appropriate economic range, that is.

It had only been a month since my revelation of "Livinghearth." I had a lot to learn. I moved in and really started to take stock of the grounds. It was going to be a difficult start. First, the soil in the front was hard compacted, nearly impervious to a shovel and full of pea gravel from what I am guessing are several construction jobs over the years (the area had been developed over 100 years ago.) The backyard on the other hand, was receded river bank with a sloping terrace. This soil started out compacted and hard and then abruptly turned into loose and very sandy. Sandy to the point that I could jam my had through a thin layer of crustiness and scoop up shallow handful of grey sand. On top of the whole matter, the area of the canyon I am living in is heavily shaded with oaks and sycamore trees well over 50 feet tall. Since it was November when I moved in, there was virtually no green, save the oak trees.

I stewed for weeks. I didn't even know where to begin. The yards hadn't been kept up for a while so I decided first I would just get all the leaves raked up, mulch them in the chipper and get a compost started. So this I did. It took a good 6-7 hours to get many piles together around the property. This at least afforded me a close look at the whole yard to see what was really going on underneath the heavy blanket of dead foliage and get the imagination geared up. As for the compost; I like to do things 'by the book' first and really understand the fundamentals so it may sound silly but nevertheless, I went and purchased a book on compost. I confess even this seemingly simple project came across a bit overwhelming in book form.

What was clearly obivious at first was that I had an abundance of carbon material. After a couple afternoons of mulching, I assigned an area in the yard as the compost pile and started adding all my kitchen scraps.

Clearly, this was going to take a while. In the meantime, I started ruminating on ideas.

Beginnings

Hello and Welcome. This is the short story. In October 2008, I had an epiphany: Create a place based on sustainable practices that would bring together the arts, sciences and the lay community together in one place. I would then share my fascination and passion for the plant world by inviting these participants to experiment with how to "make contact" with plants and share their experiences with each other and the rest of the world. If you haven't read the book "The Secret Life of Plants" I encourage you to pick it up and become delightfully amazed at how people from all walks have been intrigued, fascinated and called into relationship with plants of all kinds. This was the book that started my own curiosity with the unnoticed qualities inherent in plant life.

Soon after the idea of "Livinghearth" came to me, I shared it with a certain circle of friends who became excited. The researching leads started to trickle in. This is when I began to discover "permaculture" and some of the names and organizations pioneering the way into holistic, creative, intutive agriculture and awareness of plants. People like Bill Mollison, David Holmgren, Sepp Holzer, Penny Livingston, Masanobu Fukuoka and organizations such as Findhorn, Melliodora, Rengerative Design Institute..the list goes on. I didn't realize that I had stumbled upon a movement that had been steadily growing since the early 1970's.

At first I was overwhelmed. I thought, "Everyone is already doing it." But what I soon realized was that there were still multitudes of things to learn, specifically within the concept of a personal relationship with plants. To me, it's one of the natural progressions of the permaculture movement. It's not a big leap for most to understand that a re-focused attention on land, the lives of trees, and of plants can lead us to directly improve their quality of life through host of activities such as proper planting, timely addition of nutrients and planting certain plants together to support each other. A bigger leap would be understanding that simply one's presence and attention to a plant with the intention of actively loving it and thereby knowing it and be willing to understand it, can lead to a whole new dimension of how we understand and relate to the plant world, our food and the rest of the species of life on the planet, and that plants will respond back! I know it sounds a little wacky, but trust me..start with reading the book I mentioned, and come back and read some more. If nothing else, join me on this journey via this blog.