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2021 – week 34Upside down = instead of announcing what we plan to do
(& most often find out we do not need to do), we relate what we really did
to healing our collective wound.
At Plukrijp, we offer spaces of transparency and solidarity.
The community allows people to encounter each other
in truth and so develop trust.
The updated list of vegetables & fruit that can be harvested this week is available on our website under the heading “Current Harvest” : https://plukrijp.be/en/op-dit-moment-te-oogsten
feel free to send your request to
This week @ Plukrijp
We did:
Received 9 new chicks from Hugo and introduced them to the family
Jos taught Anthony how to put windows on a door. Our new garage doors are now fitted with beautiful little colored windows.Took out a large part of the bean plants at Hei. We were only able to harvest 3 times this year, compared to 5 times last year. Because of wet weather, we had also to dry the beans we harvested. We scratched & rolled the area where they used to be. Then we made lines and seeded spinach, daikon, radish and turnips. Finally we compacted the lines with the heavy roller
We harvested tomatoes & cucumbers in the closed tunnels, lots of courgettes & cucumbers in de open tunnels and gherkins in the greenhouse.
We guided the tomato plants up. Growing tomatoes is a big challenge this year. We are forced to continually open and close the doors of the closed tunnels to prevent them from getting too cold or the humidity level too high.
Kept our young cauliflowers safe in the veranda. There, fewer slugs could reach them. We planted cauliflowers in the open tunnels twice.
We scratched in seeds in closed tunnel 4
We scratched for the second time the short raised beds at Hei where the berries used to be
Did some weeding in the food forest
Cut a lot of wood we received from Leon and we added it to the reserve for the winter at the back of the hangar
Did the preliminary work to refill the pots with fertilized peet we saved from last year. We will be mixing cubes of peet soil with the dried out content of the pots with the concrete mixer. A very efficient way of mixing stuff and it is our practice to create planting pots long time in advance so the structure can settle.
Dried a lot of flowers and herbs for aromatic feasts in winter
Interesting Movies & Documentaries
How to Understand & Change Culture
Looby Macnamara on Cultural Emergence
The Trad
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPWta7ZNFpc
Finding Meaning
The Gods Must Be Crazy (1980)
Movie Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=he5tigHk96I
For a good evening full of humor and laughter
Inspiring Links
The consequences of climate change on crops are a huge challenge this year. Too much water, large temperature differences over short periods of time. We have seen very promising crops disappear before our eyes. The slug tsunami made it difficult to start crops for fall / winter. Young plants get eaten up before they can even gain strength to grow. Apples fall from the trees too early. Hazelnuts are infested with small worms. I asked Frank to write a text describing his personal experiences on the subject. He made as usual a rich text including links. Do not hesitate to share with us the possible solutions that you have found.
Enjoy your reading!
As I have been reporting for at least 5 years now in the newsletters, there is no doubt that we humans have had a disturbing influence on the climate.
Plukrijp as a permaculture farm welcoming 1000’s of people yearly, feeding 100s year-round, demonstrating various basic techniques, had a lot of adapting to do in its design: no more clement spring weather, extremely high summer temperatures till 2021, absent winter cold/snow periods, an “extra” growing season in autumn when days are shortening, … Enormous challenges after a period of nearly 50 years of “humbly learning from nature” by Frank !
We stopped trying to grow onions&garlic&strawberries since they like humid clement spring weather. We saw the insect&bird&frog population dwindle. We could not make bees survive the nicotinoid poisoning by our neighbor “farmers”. “Harvesting” slugs became a daily, year-round occupation, …
Either too little or (2021) too much water made planning, dry farming and seed saving difficult to impossible. Why ? For nearly 12.000 years, after a 100 to 200.000 year period of ice-ages mixed with many cataclysms, we humans have been able to spread around the globe while finding myriad ways to feed ourselves. Our diverse humanoid ancestors hunters/gatherers survived extreme climatic challenges by moving around. Being less mobile, herds-men & (later) agriculturists settled mostly savannas and river/coastal planes. We grew in numbers where clement weather allowed us, we even settled in less propitious places like the North pole or deserts. Meanwhile, our “diet” has been reduced to wheat-rice-corn-soy by the violent destruction from industrial “agriculture” and world wide obsessive cheap transport. Those still eating “meat” have found out it tastes like what it is made from: feces.
We are now 7.5 billion, spread over the near-total surface of the earth. Since the 1850’s we have seen an exponential rise in pollution of any kind, accompanied by a near-exhaustion of all the resources we think we have the right to extract (MINE) from our mother earth. Look at the charts and know that these figures are all way too optimistic since all the factors combine in a feedback loop of ever a hotter, more extreme climate change :
https://www.google.com/search?channel=fs&client=ubuntu&q=ecological+footprint
Anyone ecologically criminal enough to still fly in an airplane can see for him/herself how ANY habitable part of the world has been FENCED IN, even to the mountain tops, especially all coastal areas. Crowding each other out, we have even lost the common sense to avoid flood areas. This makes us extremely vulnerable to ANY weather variation.
Look up (if they are not cooked) the numbers on what insurance companies (should but avoid) pay out in damages to property. An orchestrated panic about winter flu is now finishing off the last remnants of economy, pushing us into fear-of-ourselves and each other. Iit is heart-warming to see how (finally) local and socially integrated permaculture is seen by ever more people as the only way forward. Check out how our friend Richard Perkins is managing in Sweden:https://www.ridgedalepermaculture.com/
Let us come closer to each other in a healthy social dynamic. Step by step, 1 local initiative a time, we are offering solutions to the clearly impending mass suicide. Mutual support is the answer.
My friend Pablo Servigne gives us courage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrDumhOKqcg
Read his books !
https://www.amazon.com/How-Everything-Collapse-Pablo-Servigne/dp/150954139Xhttps://www.amazon.com/Mutual-Aid-Other-Law-Jungle/dp/1509547924
Like the bard sang: “any-one not busy being born is busy dying”. Check the lyrics !!!!!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CJHbfkROow
INTERNSHIP | Collective Emergence –
Permaculture & Us
https://www.permasens.org/event/emergence-collective-la-permaculture-nous/
We have decided to send two ambassadors of Plukrijp to this festival to inspire and be inspired. It is important that the different projects connect with each other to form the backdrop for the new civilization. We are convinced that the experience, the knowledge, the tools we have built here at Plukrijp over the last 14 years is worth sharing with those who are looking in the same direction as us. We are also candidates to receive new permacultural tools that we can then share with those who will pass through our beautiful place. Everything should be inter-personal and if possible mutual and not for personal glory!
Inspiring Books
The King who meditates
written by The Mother – extract of her book Words of Long Ago
The great and magnificent King ascended to the chamber of the Great Collection and, stopping at the threshold, exclaimed with intense emotion:“Away! Advance no further, thoughts of lust! Away! Advance no further, thoughts of bad will! Away! Advance no further, thoughts of hate!”
And entering the chamber, he sat upon a seat of gold. Then, having rejected all passion, all feeling contrary to righteousness, he attained the first dhama (strenght, majesty), a state of well-being and joy arising from solitude, a state of reflection ans seeking.
Setting aside reflection and seeking, he attained the second dhama, a state of well-being and joy arising from serenity, a state void of reflection and seeking, a state of quietude and elevation of mind.
Ceasing to delight in joy, he remained indifferent, conscious, self-controlled, and attained the third dhama, experiencing the inmost contentment proclaimed by the sages, saying, “One who, self-controlled, dwells in indifference, experiences an inner well-being”.
Setting aside this well-being, rejecting pain, dead to both joy and suffering, he attained the state of most pure and perfect self-mastery and serenity which constitute the fourth dhama.
Then the great and magnificent King left the chamber of the Great Collection and, entering the golden chamber, sat upon a seat of silver. He beheld the world in a thought of love and his love went forth to the four regions in turn; and then with his heart full of love, with a love growing without end or limit, he enfolded the vast world, in its entirety, to its very ends.
He beheld the world in a thought of pity and his pity went forth to the four regions in turn; and then with his heart full of pity, with a pity growing without end or limit, he enfolded the vast world, in its entirety, to its very ends.
He beheld the world in a thought of sympathy and his sympathy went for to the four regions in turn; and then with his heart full of sympathy, with a sympathy growing without end or limit, he enfolded the vast world, in its entirety, to its very ends.
He beheld the world in a thought of serenity and his serenity went forth to the four regions in turn; and then with his heart full of serenity, with a serenity growing without end or limit, he enfolded the vast world, in its entirety, to its very ends.
After much meditation and contemplation, he comes into direct contact with the great universal current of pure intellectual force, and thenceforth no knowledge can be veiled from him.
From that moment serenity mental peace – is his portion. In all beliefs, in all human knowledge, in all religious teachings, which sometimes appear so contradictory, he perceives the deep truth which nothing can now conceal from his eyes.
Even errors and ignorance no longer disturb him, for, as an unknown master says:
“He who walks in the Truth is not troubled by any error, for he knows that error is the first effort of life towards truth.”
But to attain this state of perfect serenity is to attain to the summit of thought.
Without hoping to reach that point at once, we can strive to acquire an individual thought that is both original and as equitable as possible. Thus we shall have become minds of some consequence, with the right to bring to society the precious contribution of their highest intuitions.
I have several times spoken to you this evening of thought as a living and active being. This calls for an explanation. At our next meeting, I shall give you what I might call the chemical or inner structure of thought, its composition, how it is formed, how it lives, acts and transforms.
And now allow me, before concluding, to express a wish. I would like us to make the resolution to raise ourselves each day, in all sincerity and goodwill, in an ardent aspiration towards the Sun of Truth, towards the Supreme Light, the source and intellectual life of the universe, so that it may pervade us entirely and illumine with its great brilliance our minds and hearts, all our thoughts and our actions.
The we shall acquire the right and the privilege of following the counsel of the great initiate of the past, who tells us:
“With you hearts overflowing with compassion, go forth into this world torn by pain, be instructors, and wherever the darkness of ignorance rules, there light a torch.”
Looby Macnamara, international thought leader and teacher, introduces Cultural Emergence, a framework and toolkit that enables us to design the world we want to live in. It activates healing and revolutionises our approach to creating life-sustaining and regenerative cultures.
Drawing upon the lineages of indigenous wisdom, permaculture design and systems thinking, Cultural Emergence is a profoundly effective toolkit for creating a new understanding of culture.
Wisdom
The true meaning of the value of the feminineThere is never the slightest separation between Shakti and her Host (i.e. Shiva); thus, because there can be no separation between a quality and that in which it inheres, the Power (Shakti) of the Supreme Being is itself Supreme .
In other words, Shakti is Shiva’s equal. Energy and Awareness ~ form and formlessness ~ all fluxing phenomena and the space which hosts those phenomena: Shakti and Shiva are inseparable interdependent expressions of each other. Each cannot exist without the other. They are ‘married’ to each other throughout all time and space.
Without Shakti, there would be nothing but formless potential, like empty space. Like the light of a lamp makes the objects in a room manifest to perception, the energy of Shakti gives form and definition to what would otherwise be formless. Since the formless open empty Ground of Being (i.e., Shiva) is impossible to grasp with the mind, we need to access it through the forms of energy which illuminate it and provide vectors into the direct experience of it.– Translation Vijnana Bhairava Tantra by C. Wallis
Inspiring Text
Real Forgiveness
Forgiveness/getting over being mad at ..… It is not easy to do.
Essentially you have to get mad in the presence of the person you are mad at, be present to your experience in your body while being mad, be specific and not abstract about what you are mad about, and stay in touch with the experience and the person and the conversation until you are not mad anymore.
If anyone has ever told you that you can forgive someone by just deciding to forgive them, that person was wrong.
If you believe you can forgive someone by just deciding to, you’re sadly mistaken and you have fooled yourself out of getting over your anger.
If you think you can forgive someone you are mad at by praying, thinking, writing letters and sending them, writing letters and not sending them, doing “therapy,” talking to someone else about it, “acting out” in a protective environment, beating pillows, shouting at other folks, becoming “spiritual” or “attaining enlightenment” or any of the other methods of avoidance of face-to-face forgiveness that millions of minds have derived as a way to avoid the work of forgiveness and the experience of forgiveness, you are likewise, like all of them, still delusional and still angry.
Get mad and get over it.
Forgive and go on and create.
To express anger fully, we must give up most of our constraints on it.
We must inhibit killing and physical violence.
But we must be willing to be angry rather than decent and fair, because angry, rather than decent and fair, is what we presently are.
After we are angry, we may be decent and fair, but we will never be authentically angry or authentically fair while we are struggling to be both at once.
Displaced anger is the problem of the age.
Everyone who experiments with telling the truth about anger at least finds out that people don’t die if you tell them you resent them for something they said or did.
In fact, more often than not, when people tell the truth about their feelings, relationships get better, even if the truth is about hatred.
One of the hallmarks of suppressed anger is helplessness. You can detect the language of helplessness in such phrases as: “I can’t”, “They made me”, “It’s no use”, “It doesn’t really matter” and “You just don’t understand”.
One morning we thought about the meaning of the word “anarchy”. Frank wrote down some key words on a piece of paper. The following poem was written by Johannes on the basis of these few words.
Equality. He spoke the word as if a wedding vow.
– Chimes of Freedom by Bob Dylan
Anarchy, a word meant to mean:
without a leader [1]
Authority, means to be seen,
to inspire, but no further [2]
Though through fear [3]
we might not be so keen,
when we hear
“Obey, for I am in power.”
If then you say “Listen to me, for it’s Tradition!” [4]
We nowadays see the workings of Deception, Illusion, Corruption, Infection…[5]
our Indignation is legitimate. We will manifest our Freedom “nation” ,
Like our Ancestors, no longer will we be your customers.
No more being dupes.
No more buying your feedback loops.
You’ll find us making our bowls of soup,
Creating our own positive feedback loops.
For all to see, a Global Shift in the Social Economy [6]
Through receiving the education held back from us,
Seeding the seeds passed down to us,
Finally recognizing the divine in us,
This is our liberating consens-us.
To finally sing the song of Quality over Quantity
Filled with melodies of Social Control [7] and Generosity,
No more beating to the drum of Mind Control and Scarcity.
Could this be the dawn of true psychotherapy?
Piercing the veil, straight to the essence,
Learning from Childhood,
Rising from Adolescence,
Could we finally know, Adulthood?
We are the seeds of tomorrow’s harvest.
[1] etymologically: without a beginning, a “first” man/woman
[2] many abuses are called authoritarianism
[3] if there is no equality and people in power abuse
[4] real tradition is not spoken
[5] presented as tradition/religion/science/propaganda and we feel&know it is a lie//compulsory mis-education)
[6] is coming=post-covid/post-capitalist
[7] TA social dynamics
Inspiring Music
Toots Thielemans & the Kenny Werner Quartet 2008 Middelheim/VRT
Toots Thielemans is an incredible Belgian jazz musician (born in Antwerp!). He died in 2016 at the age of 94. He continued to offer his music until he was 92 years old. The fact that he was in a wheelchair did not diminish his pleasure in sharing his talent with the world. A magnificent example for humanity!
All I Really Want to Do – Bob Dylan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIG3xgIZWZ8
Link to the lyrics: https://genius.com/Bob-dylan-all-i-really-want-to-do-lyrics
We listened to this music following a particularly deep sharing from one of the members of the group currently present at Plukrijp facing a personal challenge. Listen to the words carefully!
Inspiring Image
Image from IN-SHADOW – A Modern Odyssey
We are not separate individuals. We are always part of a lineage. If we want to know and understand ourselves better, it is important to look at our ancestors. If we want to take our responsibility to the generations to come, it is important to become the person of whom we could be proud of.
Humor (?)
I’m Climate Change And This Is My Quarantine #Glowup
I am—objectively—really hot now.
https://medium.com/slackjaw/im-climate-change-and-this-is-my-quarantine-glowup-a2f17c328c01
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Sowing and harvesting together
