by Lori Loranger
Reliable access to locally produced food is essential to our food security, better for our health, and better for the environment. Building a strong local food system will also empower, educate, and revitalize our rural community. Gorge Winds Community Grocery is incorporated as a consumer-owned grocery store and operated for community benefit. We are organized to serve the interests of our owners and community, not to make a profit. Proceeds are used to keep the co-op in the business of making healthy food available locally. Since we own it, we can operate according to our own ideals: inclusion, consensus-based decision making, transparency, collaboration, social responsibility, and caring for others. Add Comment Native, Nonnative, or Mosaic? 09/28/2011
 by Kim Antieau
I recently went back to school for a year to get a graduate certificate in sustainable food systems and permaculture design at Antioch University in Seattle. One of the most valuable lessons I learned during this year was to question my assumptions about pretty much everything, especially my assumptions about environmental work. I've been an activist since I was a child on the playground trying to keep boys from smashing killdeer eggs in their nests on the ground on the playground that had once been a farmer's field. Before it was a farmer's field, it most likely had been a meadow or a forest. Two Herbal Workshops Coming 09/23/2011
 Join us for Two Herbal Workshops with Wise-woman Herbalist Joey Olson Saturday, November 5, 12-4:00 Winter Formula Tincture Workshop: We'll make tinctures to prepare and protect us during the winter months. If the weather is good, those who can will harvest some Oregon grape. We'll make tinctures to take home, using only kitchen utensils, kitchen math, and lots of wise-woman wisdom. We'll also learn the ancient art of vinegar tincturing for medicine and food. A high mineral vinegar tincture and a volcanic vinegar tincture for colds will be made in class. Location: A private residence in Home Valley. Details will be provided once you register. $17 Sunday, November 20, 12-3:00 Sweet medicine: We will make a powerful herbal cough syrup and learn about the medicinal action of each herb. Location: TBD. $17 These will be hands-on workshops. You'll poke fingers into concoctions and slow down to the speed of plants. You will take home recipes and herbal products made in class and you'll get a liberal dose of basic herbology. Students need to bring any herb book they own, cup, spoon, small sharp knife, and kerchief. Each class costs $17.00. Class size is limited to 15. Email Kim at kim@kimantieau.com to register. Because Joey needs to get supplies for the workshop ahead of time, you will need to register by OCTOBER 17. Sustainability Salon Summary 09/16/2011
Our first Skamania Permaculture Guild Sustainability Salon was a great success, with fifteen people attending despite our kerfuffle over the meeting space. We talked about our vision for a sustainable resilient community and about our various strengths.
I won't transcribe verbatim the notes that Mario took. (If anyone wants a copy of them, email me and I'll send them to you.) Instead I will give you a general idea of our discussion. I hope that those of you who attended will add anything I've missed in the comments at the end of this post.  by Joanna Grammon
Skamania County is well suited for a 'growth industry' that also qualifies as alternative agriculture, yet takes little acreage. Exotic mushroom growing is established and quite lucrative elsewhere in the U.S. and in Japan, where it began. My mushroom-growing odyssey began in 1987, when I attended a conference in Roosevelt, Ore., on tourism and alternative agriculture. I wrote a story for the Pioneer on the conference and a Hood River County company, Logro. Beginnings 09/02/2011
Skamania Permaculture Guild has begun! It started with a clarion call: Let's figure out how to make our community more self-sufficient. What's working now, and what more can we do? At our first meeting, people came to talk about new energy sources, our new food co-op, how to garden "smarter, not harder," and how to thrive rather than just survive during these transition times. After the meeting, I sent out notes to about 100 people, and I got responses from 50 of those people! Wow. I was astonished and heartened. It appears that NOW is the time. So now how do we continue? We're still at the beginnings—that sticky chaotic time where we figure out how to get together, how to be together, and how to do the work and have the fun! The next thing up is a Sustainability Salon. Salons have a rich and colorful history, which I won't go into here, but their main focus was the exchange of ideas between a group of people. Our salon will focus on our vision for a sustainable resilient community. As I said in the letter I sent out, "Think daring, creative, visionary, funny, happy, ecstatic, ordinary, extraordinary, impossible, possible!" This is the challenge I send out to you all: Show up for our first sustainability salon on September 14. Engage. Have fun. Laugh. Be a visionary. That's where it all starts. (By the way, even though it's called Skamania Permaculture Guild, we welcome everyone, especially any of our neighbors in any other part of the gorge.) Bring a treat from your garden. Bring a poem to read. Bring a joke to tell. Bring your own sweet (or curmudgeonly) selves! Pass it on. Bring a folding chair please! Skamania Permaculture Guild's First Sustainability Salon Wednesday, September 14, 2011, 6:30-8:00 p.m. email me for the address & directions: kim@kimantieau.com For those interested, we'll have a potluck at 5:30 before the salon. Bring a dish to share if you can. We'll have a pot of something. I'm looking forward to seeing you! Kim |
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