ECO OASIS
far more than a farm
NATURE + CULTURE > LIFEFORCE
What invention in this century would equal the industrial revolution of the last century? In my work as a social architect I see a great pull for everyone to get back to the land and nature. I see a far further exploration of her potential and our good fortune should we learn to play with her on a much grander scale. In my quest to find new footprints for us to make that uber connection with the earth I have finally come to the ecoOASIS. This is a multi-purpose landscape with a culturally diverse team on-board.
This is a parcel something like a football field …only its for a mixed family of a dozen or so people, with animals and special features that create a wide diversity of foods, beauty, and entertainment for those involved. Thomas Jefferson said America would eventually and ideally be a land of small farms. But an ecoOASIS is far more than a farm in the tradition sense. Remember that picture with everything boxed into plots with fences and all sorts of practical equipment about …hardly an oasis hardly beautiful and hardly playful.
The image thats a little extreme but very to the point, is the African sand dunes everywhere and in one spots where water can be had. There the palm trees cluster and sway and the promise of a rest, some company, and of course water is a major part of the play. And after all color, costumes, music, dancing and play is nearly the highest form of co-operation we can dream of.
The small but crafty homes here in the the oasis are snuggled into the landscape with beautiful viewplanes insured through the bush and into the distance. They are each separated visually and from all but the most emergency kinds of shouts and cries. There is a family cook house and that plus a large round table is the ticket to a continuing run of feedback about what needs doing and what kind of swarm is needed so everyone can participate in some larger task. Meetings per se are obsolete.
People self-select the kinds of more routine work they love and then team up to visit with others they haven't gotten to know so well. People in this model come and go as people on this modern day planet do. They don't have to all subscribe to one kind of belief system infect the variety is considered healthy and certainly more entertaining.
At Artesia the ecoOASIS I helped create we also have a relationship with a local restaurant and so contribute to the locavore scene where our food is eaten as close to where it is grown as possible. We are also mostly an agro-forest and pasture so once the trees are bearing much of the repetitive work is gone. At climax product- ion for our trees the yield is twice what we need to survive, but it takes awhile to get there. Our biomass created by the trees mostly provides a great deal of fresh oxygen to out neighborhood and windbreaks where necessary.
Our agro-forest is a seven layer tiered reality and the edges of these trees are lined with boxed bio-dynamic gardens. Tubers underground, veggies along the surface, beans in boxes with starts so the chickens can't feast on them, then low hanging fruit, flower trees, and finally firewood and timber at the top. We pass thru gracious corridors with these bio-islands to the side. Occasionally there will be a container for people to sit and play together. We believe that beauty and play are equally important with our food production.
The principles of arranging flowers apply to the edge of our agro forest stands. We end up with twenty seven smaller viewplanes this way while still having openings to the longer viewplanes at the edge of our little forest. Everyone's on beauty duty.
We all work outside in part time jobs. We all also work with the internet which is our real government. We believe that the web does 10 times the job government was supposed to do and the overhead isn't ridiculous. We have a farm-loft where we dry and bag our fruit during harvest and do a dozen other things there the rest of the year. Like party, meditate, have massages, do tai chi, paint, sculpt, meet in council, and the like. We have a shop where we fix our tools and also create crafts for sale outside the oasis. We have a steam bath house for rejuvenation and a small garage for scooters and bikes.
There are no hardened surfaces for roads. We occasionally gravel certain slopes to create traction. But the areas we drive on are perfect for pasture if we need to shift into that mode.
Occasional we have watering systems up to get things started but soon that is replaced with some more natural approach involving catchment. Solar, wind, and water are natural and local.
If I were to sum up I would say … we are building a natural oasis that allows for food, play, and beauty to constantly feed us physically, psychically, and emotionally.
This century is not going from this to that …it is going from here to everywhere where we can directly get all we need from life.
Jim Channon biologian
