Orientation 2009

Trouble viewing slides? Click here. After two months of extensive preparations, Fruit Tree Tour crew veterans and newcomers gathered in Hopland, CA to kick off the 2009 tour with a busy orientation schedule. Along with getting to know each other, learning about what to expect on a typical school day, trying out for various roles in the performance, and enjoying sumptuous vegan meals, there were also some projects with buses and support vehicles to finish up. Colton, a tour alumnus finished a magical transformation of the interior of the Jah Lioness Bus. Also two new support vehicles were converted to run on vegetable oil and joined tour, a pickup truck for hauling soil and a new utility truck for gathering vegetable oil with a triple filtration system, 35 gpm gathering pump and a 200 gallon crude veggie oil storage tank.
A big thank you to Brock and Sarah long time supporters who opened their home to us as the first gracious host home of 2009 along with their daughters Daya and Jah Lila. Some long awaited winter rains finally arrived which was fantastic for the Hopland area ecosystems but not so great when it was time to leave and we found that the buses had sunk into the patch of dirt where they were parked making taking off a muddy and slippery ordeal. Luckily we had the awesome power of the Dodge Cummins Turbo Diesel motor plus the driving skills of Leo Buc our alternative fuels expert and Hopland firefighter and Blair Philips the tour founder and bus driver extroidinaire. The support of the crew was also crucial, as an unofficial team building exercise unfolded with crew members gathering to push on the back of Jah Lioness while the Dodge pulled from the front. With all the buses miraculously unstuck we headed out to Isis Oasis, our next orientation location.
The Isis Oasis is a retreat center in Gyserville that also hosts a number of rare wild cats and exotic birds. After a tour of the white peacocks, ocelots, cervils, emus, and macaws, we got down to business hammering out the details of our performance and finishing the props with our beloved director Bridget Barsotti. We also delved deep into building curriculum for the expression session and drum group workshops. We are looking forward to going deeper into the tree-planting curriculum in preparation for our first community planting on Feb. 14th at the MA Center in San Ramon and our first school Feb 17th in Santa Cruz.

900 trees at the MA Center

Common Vision has been supporting the GreenFriends Tree Planting Project this winter in a reforestation project that has planted over 900 trees so far. This project integrates permaculture water catchment strategies that will help to water this forest through its life.



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Benefit Tour

Thank you to everyone who supported the recent series of Common VIision’s Benefit Concerts by volunteering, attending, and spreading the word! It was a fun and busy week with four concerts in four cities across Northern California. The events were attended by over 1000 people. The music ranged from world electronic to Country mystic jam rock! Artists included, Youssoupha Sidibe, Cheb I Sabbah, Lynx and Janover, Jah Levi, Freedom, Diane Patterson, Arjun and Guardians, The Human Revolution and Shakina. The events raised more than $14,000!

Thank you to Nutiva for your sponsorship of the Green Fest after party event and thank you for your continued support!

Also thank you to Zak Human for sharing his artistic genius in support of the project.
The fliers were beautiful!



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Planting a Food Forest

Common Vision is continuing to support Amma's GreenFriends in their reforestation efforts at the Bay Area's MA Center. This summer Common Vision helped to establish a huge water harvesting feature to help sustain the trees through the summer. (read about this water harvesting) During the Thanksgiving week over 200 adults and children helped to plant 700 native trees and shrubs. Each of the species was chosen for its edible berries or is nutrient building capacity. The planting are the backbone of what will likely be the largest permaculture food forest in Northern California.

The dense planting of ground-cover, nitrogen-fixing shrubs and trees, berry producing bushes, and nut- and fruit-producing trees is an attempt to mimic Nature's natural processes - except in fast forward. It would take Nature some hundred years to transition from grass land to forest. With a little observation of Nature's principles and processes, we expect to establish the foundations of a resilient forest eco-system within the decade. In addition to Native trees and shrubs, we will also be including some non-native human favorites like apples, pears, pomegranates, persimmons, and jujubes (Chinese dates).

If you would like to get involved in this project go to Green-Friends.org.

Catching the Rain, Growing a Forest

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Common Vision, recently orchestrated a momentous workshop at the MA Center in Castro Valley with international environmental organization GreenFriends. Geoff Lawton, considered by many to be the world’s best Permaculture Designer and Teacher, flew from Australia to teach this 3-day course titled “Permaculture and Reforestation: Harvesting Rainwater, Growing Food Forests, and Planting Ecosystems.” Over fifty course participants, including MA Center Residents and environmentalist from across California and Oregon, learned from Geoff how to harvest thousands of gallons of water in the landscape, design a resilient ecosystem, generate soil fertility, and produce food and timber in abundance.

The MA Center has almost 400 acres under its stewardship. Over 150 of these acres are treeless with a clay soil that has been compacted from at least a half century of intensive and insensitive cattle grazing practices. The compacted clay coupled with the lack of trees makes the ground very susceptible to slumps and slides in the rainy season. Yet, by the end of the summer the hillsides are crusted over with a think shell of dry, hardened clay. Deer, pigs, gophers, and voles graze and burrow for any food sources remaining at the end of the harsh, dry summer.

During the 3-day workshop, Geoff made clear that in order to grow trees on these hillsides we need to “fast-track” an ecological regeneration. While nature may take hundreds or thousands of year’s to recovery in this area, human beings can support the successive unfolding ecological processes and see recovery in less than a decade. First step, says Geoff, is water design. Without water there is no life. Before the cutting of trees and soil compaction by the cattle, this land was a living sponge that soaked rainfall into the ground. Currently the majority of rainfall tends runs fast along the surface into the valley and out to sea.

To help soak water into the landscape, Geoff led the group on an exercise to site, survey, and dig a massive ditch on contour (level no slope up or down) to catch rainwater running down the slopes, slow it down, spread it out, and soak it into the hillside. With the help of Rusty Davis and his excavator, the course dug over 500ft of this on-contour trench, known in permaculture as a swale. With each rain, even if it be moderate, the swale will sink over 10,000 gallons of water into the soil. This water slowly travels under the soil, and remains available throughout the summer for trees to drink and grow.

The MA Center is becoming a model of sustainable design for ecological regeneration and reforesting Bay Area hillsides. We are learning that through knowledge of how ecosystems evolve and a willingness to support nature’s processes, human beings can truly be a positive force in the environment. Common Vision looks forward to supporting the GreenFriends planting trees with diverse people from across the Bay Area and to inspire the larger community into compassionate action for Mother Nature.

Green-LA features Common Vision

Green LA is a non profit dedicated to unifying the environmental movement in Los Angeles. They strive to illuminate the vast spread of environmental organizations and projects at work in the city while promoting cooperation and broader grassroots participation. Green LA featured Common Vision in their five-minute trailer that is launching their project.

Permaculture/Reforestation at MA Center

The MA Center is the US headquarters for international humanitarian and spiritual leader Mata Amritanandamayi also known as Amma. The Permaculture and Reforestation course with Geoff Lawton this August will be designing this property and the laying the groundwork for a broad-acre reforestation project. The below information will introduce you to the design project in words, pictures, and interactive 3-D maps.

1. Download: Client Brief for the MA Center

2. View: Photos, the Topographical Map, and Google Earth Images of the MA Center with descriptions. In the Flickr slideshow interface, click the "i in circle" to reveal the information about each image. > Click here

3. If you are really ready to get to know the site, download these google earth places.
( Don't have Google Earth? Well, it's time. > Click here )
If you open these files with Google Earth than you can fly around them and get to know the lay of the land. This is a super powerful tool for Permaculture Design.

Download: All MACenter places in a .zip file
OR
Download them one at a time:
Property Boundaries
Topo Map
Design Area 1
Design Area 2
Cow's Pasture