Blog Topic: Sustainability
For our sustainability project we have inoculated a variety of mushrooms in a few different types of substrates (substrates being the medium of which the mushrooms are grown on). We inoculated several oak logs that were cut down this past summer with shitake mushrooms, and one pine log with phoenix oyster. To do that our mentor Malaika ordered some plug spawn online (which are one inch dowels that have been colonized with mycelium. We then drilled holes in the logs, and plugged the holes with the dowels. After all the logs were plugged with the spawn, we covered the plugged holes and ends of the logs with beeswax to contain moisture. The logs should start fruiting anywhere between 6-18 months, and will continue to fruit for up to six years.
Since we love mushrooms and wanted to eat the ones we grow, we decided to grow some in bags also. Growing in bags doesn’t take as long to produce mushrooms. We did this by getting used coffee grounds from a café in Grass Valley, and saving the sawdust from when we drilled the oak logs. We inoculated pearl oyster mushrooms in coffee grounds, and shitake mushrooms in a mixture of coffee grounds and the sawdust. Unfortunately the mycelium is taking a while to spread throughout the bags, so we probably wont see them when they’re done growing.
Then, when preparing for the forest garden, a few trees were cut down. We decided to inoculate the stumps so mushrooms could be a part of the permaculture project. We had to girdle the stumps first to kill the tree because they have natural fungicides that can inhibit mushroom growth, and you have to wait until those fungicides go away. Then we drilled holes and inoculated the plug spawn. In the oak stump we inoculated more shitake, in the pine we inoculated turkey tail, in the honey locust we inoculated maitake (hen of the woods).
Having mushrooms grow here at Woolman will contribute to a more sustainable existence. Our kitchen will rely less on outside sources for mushrooms, and everyone here will benefit from their health benefits.
Here are some pictures of the logs, stumps, and bags we inoculated.
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As a group, we have faced many challenges, predicaments, and changes in our plan for our Sustainability Project. Through the many stages of our project, we have come together as a group and found a project and goal that is both feasible, productive, and sustainable: A new chicken coop that will provide a space that could house enough chickens to sustain the needs of The Woolman Semester. This includes the initial blueprint of the chicken coop design and a list of materials needed and their prices.
One problem we faced was the short lifespan of these creatures, and how a meat-free school could dispose of chickens who no longer lay eggs.
We searched for chickens that are hardy, well-tempered, and used mainly for egg-laying purposes. Our top choice was the Rhode Island Red Chicken. This breed stands out particularly because of its egg-laying abilities. It is also extremely hardy in all seasons, but especially winter.
The basic design for our chicken coop is a small wooden building and an area for the chickens to move about and forage. The outside area is surrounded by chicken wire to protect the chickens from predators. The chicken coop will be locked with a hook at nighttime to keep the chickens safe when there are no humans watching them.
There are two kinds of chicken coop floors we considered: a solid metal floor with metal sides and a floor made of chicken wire with hay regularly put in. Both keep out digging predators such as foxes. A solid metal floor offers more protection and durability than a simple wire floor. However, the wire floor offers more opportunity for the chickens to scavenge and is simpler to acquire and install.
There will also be a chicken wire fence around the area in which the chickens roam during the day to deter predators.
Unfortunately, chickens have many predators living in the Nevada County area. The most common are foxes, raccoons, mountain lions, hawks, and chupacabras. Foxes have been a big obstacle for Woolman chicken owners in the past. Foxes can dig like dogs and climb like cats, so keeping them away from a chicken coop is extremely difficult.
Though we have faced many obstacles, we have completed our design for a chicken coop. We hope that future Woolman students will continue our work and help to build a more sustainable community here at Woolman.
Of all the conclusions to all the lectures delivered by the illustrious and mischievous Jacob Holzberg-Pill in his Environmental Science class at the Woolman Semester, the most memorable was this: “We must map this land to understand it, steward it, and make Woolman truly sustainable.” The subject at hand? Agroforestry and the ways in which indigenous peoples managed the land to make it most productive for humans. Agroforestry is highly complex; the wrong technique can have disastrous effects, the right technique can save an entire species.
At the beginning of the project, I had lofty goals: map ALL of the trails, mark the property boundaries, find the student build “Ithaca,” and make trail markers. However my greatest personal goal was to become more familiar with the seemingly massive woods that lend Woolman much of its beauty and mystique. With these goals, my friend and companion Brylie and I set off on our great adventure. We spent countless hours walking the trails, often mapping them multiple times due to unreliable technology or personal error. Many trials marked our heroic journey. We bushwacked through fields of poison oak, debated the importance of trails outside the Woolman parcel, avoided taciturn neighbors, and tangled with somewhat cumbersome technology. In one extreme instance we bushwacked out to the southeast corner of a large Woolman parcel to mark the boundary and began our return hike in the cover of darkness. Brylie slipped and dropped our tracking device, leaving us with only a compass and our intuition to navigate back to campus. Thankfully our forestry skills were proficient enough for the task, and we managed to return (mostly) unharmed.
To what extent did we accomplish our goals? We managed to map many of the major trails, marked several important corners of the Woolman parcel, and found Ithaca, but we decided that creating trail markers was not the most important part of the project. I believe that the raw data we collected was the greatest accomplishment of the project because it will be so useful to future projects involving the Woolman forest. The rough map produced with the data is only a pre-cursor to future student maps that will be more accurate and detailed thanks to the experience we garnered. Brylie will be able to more efficiently train students interested in the GIS (Geographic Information System) Project, and those students will have fewer initial hurdles to leap. Eventually they will not need to worry about things such as marking the property boundaries, they will be able to focus on things like species succession. The GIS project will become more than just a pipe dream of a few curious Woolmanites, it will become the backbone of agroforestry and sustainability here at the Woolman Semester.
To create benches that where lighter, sturdier, and more mobile; the goal of our sustainability project. We faced a problem that has been seen over time, how do you create a quality product for the lowest cost as well as doing it quickly? Doug and Cece helped us refine our design for the benches. Thenwe gathered wood that we thought we could use, including what we could scavenge from the old benches. Next Lucy, our math girl, added up all the number of pieces we would need and their dimensions. We then started working on first dismantling the benches and cutting the pieces we would need. Then we put them together. It seems simple enough, but it wasn’t all that easy. In our design we made the legs of the benches into squares with a longer board made of plywood on the bottom so that it acted like a snowshoe and wouldn’t sink into the mud. We added triangle pieces of plywood and screwed them to the legs so that they were sturdier. The braces coming from the legs act as a support to more evenly distribute the weight. We ran into a few bumps along the way. Mostly we dealt with technical difficulties like being unable to get the saw to work and dead batteries. But with the help of Doug and Cece we were able to get back on track. If we could have done one thing different we would have planned more thoroughly. It would have made the whole process go a lot more smoothly. That’s is the advise we would give to future students, plan more than you ever have in your life. Leave space for mess-ups. Make time for getting lost. Getting stuck doesn’t have to be the end of the world, so long as you left space in which it’s ok to get stuck. Here at Woolman we are encouraged to get stuck and to get confused beyond belief. We definitely had our mess-ups but the end result turned out just the way it was supposed to.
Knowing that our beloved Dorothy, has been wanting a flower bed for a long time, we decided to take it up on ourselves to create it. When we came up with the concept of creating flower beds, we decided we wanted to make our campus even more beautiful and to increase the flow of pollinators for the orchard on our campus.
We started out this project thinking it would just be as easy as planting some flowers, but we realized we had a few hiccups along the way.
We realized that there are a lot of deer that live around the campus. Therefore, we had to research on ways to deter the deer from eating and destroying our plants. In addition, we wanted to make sure our plants would survive the winter so we did some research on mulching and cold frames. Furthermore, another important aspect of planning where to put our flower beds, was taking into consideration of how much light they would receive for their success.
The last problem we encountered was increasing and keeping the population on the campus. We wanted to make sure that they would be visible to the visitors and residents of the Woolman campus. Our original thought was to place them on the south facing side of the admissions office. The area that we planned to put our flower beds was not agreed upon by the head of school. Although we were not able to go with our original plan, we were able to find two additional spaces to put our flower beds. The first place where the flowers are located is surrounding the bird bath. The second place would be in front of the office doors.
Although we had a lot of obstacles we were able to overcome and successfully create beds you see today...
~Special THANKS to: Jacob, Malaika, Grace, Sandy Cumen, and Kristen!!! (thanks for ALL of your help...couldn't have done it without yawl!!!) =)
THIS WAS OUR SECOND TO LAST WORKING DAY! :( CHLOE AND ILANA GETTING IT DONE! HIWOT AND HER PERFECT SMILE! ILANA PLANTING A BULB! ( Ahhh... the sight of progress... ) OUR AWESOME BIRDBATH WITH THE ILLUMINATING SUN! OUR AWESOME COLD FRAME! (YAY! ITS WORKING!!!) THAT WAS OUR FINAL DAY WORKING...FLOWER POWER FOR LIFE YO!!! =)
Dear Woolman friends and family,
For my sustainability project, I am constructing a creative print-media journal about the power of place at Woolman, focusing on the sustainability of storytelling. I will implement a “Letters to the Land” living history program for Woolman. Through this program, I am asking students, semester alumni, John Woolman School alumni, interns, faculty, community members and more-- to write a letter documenting their experiences at Woolman, specifically focusing on preserving their memories for the future. I am hoping for these letters to be a biannual tradition that will document the rich and diverse culture of this place.
In your letter, please reflect on the time that you have spent here and what it has meant to you. I encourage you to do this by recalling a specific experience, conversation, or revelation that occured during your time at Woolman. Through this experience, further discuss your current and developing relationships with this place. It is important to be authentic in your responses, as the purpose of this project is to record both the struggles and triumphs that inevitably take place at Woolman- honesty will make this project more powerful!
You may either print your letter (using Arial font, Size 12) or write out your letter in a thoughtful and readable manner (for instance, writing your letter on stationary would be awesome- but not on a crumpled piece of paper!) Letters should be about two paragraphs to one page in length (although longer is totally fine). Please begin your letter “Dear Woolman.” After that, you have complete artistic control! If writing a letter does not see like the right format for you, other options include providing a picture, collage, poem, drawing, or any other artistic format your heart desires. If you have any questions, please email Emily (Global Issues and Peace Studies teacher) at emilyz@woolman.org.
Other things you might want to think about while writing:
- Your relationship and connection to the land and people at Woolman
- What you imagine for Woolman's future- hopes and fears etc.
- What you would like future semesters to know about Woolman and/or experience during the semester.
Thanks SO much!
Annelise Hildebrandt
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Photos taken during Permaculture class. Sammi, Graeme, William, and Doug plant Oak seeds.
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After the first month at Woolman, it has become quite apparent that the classes are designed around the tenets of interdisciplinary education. Every new idea in one subject seems to build upon an idea taught in a separate class. This enriches the learning experience and prevents students from receiving only small portions of information rather than the big picture.
In Peace Studies and Global Issues, we often discuss human rights. A vital part of guaranteeing rights to individuals is making sure that the use of resources by our population does not favor one group over another or prevent future generations from having a high quality of life. This is the same idea that is put forth in my Permaculture class: “People Care, Earth Care, Fair Share.” Peace Studies and Global Issues seem to be more focused on People Care and Fair Share, while Environmental Science gives much more attention to Earth Care, but also involves the investigation of the quality of our food, which is more related to People Care.
Much of Environmental Science has thus far involved the examination and demonization of conventional agriculture through the examination of texts like The Omnivore's Dilemma and essays by Eliot Coleman. By itself, this class would be a very unhelpful and depressing course. Permaculture is the class that really ties all the others together, so I'm a bit disappointed that it is an elective rather than a part of Environmental Science. An important connection I have made between Permaculture and Environmental Science is that the former requires observation of the methods of nature in order to imitate those methods, while the latter stresses the teaching of observational skills. Also, while Permaculture advocates People Care, it does not provide advice that could help build caring communities, which is where Peace Studies, Global Issues, and Nonviolent Communication come into play. These classes provide advice and techniques on building stable, peaceful, “power-with” relationships and aiding those in need.
Ultimately, one subject fills in where another seems to be lacking. This interdisciplinary education quilt has many different parts, but all seem to stick to the pattern of justice, peace, and sustainability.
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This week the Woolman Semester visited various food production companies and farms in order to gain more knowledge on how our food is made. The part of this trip which influenced me most was when we visited the Jelly Belly jelly bean factory.
Before we started the tour, we took a group picture with a giant, plush, anthropomorphic jelly bean. My roommate and I jokingly kissed the cheeks of the jelly bean for one photo. I didn't even think about how unsettling it was that I was putting my lips next to a mascot for the idea that processed sugar and cornstarch is okay.
As the tour began, I happily breathed in puffs of sugar and crowded next to the other tour members to watch a tiny TV screen showing a pear peeling away to reveal a pear flavored jelly bean. The implication was that the jelly bean was whole and pure, tasting just like a pear. (They even said at one point during the tour that every Jelly Belly jelly bean tastes "exactly like you think it would".) The screen then showed us a video telling the history of Jelly Belly, weaving a charming family tale. I didn't even stop to think about how this quaint little family was now producing modified cornstarch in multiple factories across the nation. We then moved on the elevated ramp to the next station and viewed the factory in motion, the workers looking like ants below us. At the time, nothing seemed wrong with watching these little white ants pile sugar, corn syrup and flavoring into various machines which pushed and pulled and turned them until they popped out as jelly beans. Some of the ants even smiled at us as we walked by. The tour guide nonchalantly mentioned that all jelly beans which were dropped on the factory floor were donated to local farmers who fed them to their pigs. The entire process seemed satisfying, pure, and safe from the beginning to our free samples at the end.
After leaving the factory, I started to leave the fantasy world which was displayed to me by the tour guide. I started wondering what exactly this "flavoring" was made of and how exactly these machines pushed and pulled this sugar, corn syrup, and the ever mysterious "flavoring" into the right shape every time. Rapidly the charming fairytale of wholesome jelly beans fell apart.
It becomes very easy as a society to accept this story of quaint families, happy little white ants, and dollops of sugar cased in flavoring. We pretend that the things we like are the things that are good. As uncomfortable as it is, we must delve deeper into where our food comes from, how it is made, and how every being which comes into contact with it is affected. Are the workers paid fairly? Does this quaint little family realize that they hold an almost-monopoly? Are the pigs who are fed jelly beans negatively affected by them? I don't know, because I was willing to accept the pleasant fantasies of the tour. However, I plan to learn more about it here at Woolman, and I hope that you will join me in finding out more than the cover story on where our food comes from.