Please see our updated blog at

LongGreenHouse.org  or

Wassookeag.org

From Rogers Farm newslatter:
Tuesday we received a group of intelligent, thoughtful, and incredibly enjoyable kids from Wassookeag home school’s summer program, led by food guild member Debby Bell-Smith and Joline Blais. These lovely kids spent a short afternoon walking the fields with us and learning exactly what a farmer spends the day doing.

They looked at the growing techniques used, admired the baby bell peppers, saw the massive amount of weeds, and even learned how very different, despite their similar look above ground, the potato and tomato plants are.

But what most impressed us was their knowledge coming in! They could identify our major pests, the Colorado potato beetle and cucumber beetle, and had a zeal for learning that was really amazing!

Upward Bound students at UMaine joined us at LongGreenHouse through July to re-connect to the Earth via permaculture gardening. “Someone needs to cut the lawn,” they muttered upon arriving. But before leaving they learned about wild strawberries, dynamic accumulator weeds, and sacred spirals that just don’t work on conventionally mowed lawns.

They also helped to plant and trellis the 4-season green house with tomatoes, basil, cucumbers, eggplant, and peppers, while sharing stories of food customs in their families and communities. Some turned over the compost pile and dug out fresh, fertile compost for planting, while others planted comfrey, garlic, and beans beneath the two apple trees to produce a mutual aid society of plants we call a “guild”.

And in discussions with gkisedtanamoogk and Miigam’agan, they learned about the ceremonial and sacred connection to the Earth practiced among members of the Wabanaki Longhouse, and that this practice is vigorous and alive among the Wabanaki all over Maine and the Maritimes.

Most importantly, they were invited to join the growing family of LongGreenHouse and Wassokeag as new relations in this locally

Wassookeag launched their Summer permaculture & craft program today, which will run through the summer on Tuesdays 10-3 pm.

Wassookeag children will maintain the summer gardens, the greenhouse, and also engage in crafts that teach kiving and learning skills.

Session 4
Thurs May 8, 3:30-5:30 pm
LongGreenHouse, 5 Chapel Rd

Apple Tree guilds. sheet mulching orchards & fruit trees & shrubs

Bring garden gloves, notebook, potluck food, questions and suggestions.

We’ll come up with some plant guilds for LongGreenHouse and for your own gardens.

Members of LongGreenHouse will participate in UMaine’s Earth Day Eco-Charette Organized by Emily Markides and Richard Graves. Also, New Media students from my classes will be attending and contributing to the communication aspects of getting this green dorm vision off the ground (and into the ground–in gardens)!

Featured speakers include Jim Merkel, Author of Radical Simplicity  as well as Emily Markides, Richard Graves. Teams of over a hundred students will help design a green retrofit of York Village dorm, gardens, greenhouse, water cycling, food corridors, and dynamic communities based on green living as a project as well as curriculum.

LomgGreenHouse will offer support, as well as forming one apex of the “green triangle” growing at the south edge of campus, and is currently working with Scott Wilkerson of Stormwater management at UMaine to produce a “living machine” curriculum/project directing stormwater through a rootzone, pond and clean water stream from university run off.

Session 3
Thurs April 17, 3:30-5:30 pm
LongGreenHouse, 5 Chapel Rd

Plant Guilds, and Companion Planting

Bring garden gloves, notebook, potluck food, questions and suggestions.

We’ll come up with some plant guilds for LongGreenHouse and for your own gardens.

Session 2:

Thurs April 3, 3:30-5:30 pm
LongGreenHouse, 5 Chapel Rd

Plant Guilds, and Companion Planting, Apple tree pruning or Coldframe seeding

Bring garden gloves, notebook, potluck food, questions and suggestions.

We’ll come up with some plant guilds for LongGreenHouse and for your own gardens.

This week’s Potluck will be held Tues (instead of Thursday) to accommodate special guests Craig Dietrich and Vanessa Vobis, whose works in Intermedia are changing the terms of art-making and programming.

Join us for:

Beyond Copyright and Copyleft
4-6pm
5 Chapel Road
Potluck at LongGreenHouse
Craig Dietrich talks about the Mukurtu Archive he helped to design for the Warumungu people of Australia and the balance it strikes between providing access while preserving cultural norms of privacy and sacred knowledge. The demo of this innovative software serves as a point of departure for a conversation about the connections between indigenous and electronic networks, as well as the role of local determination in an age of global politics.

Other participants include elders from the Penobscot, Mi’kmaq, and Wampanoag communities and New Media faculty and students.

LongGreenHouse launches its Spring Permaculture Series with a Seed Sowing Workshop Thursday, March 20.

Wassookeag children, UMaine students and community members will sow seeds and prepare a Four-Season unheated greenhouse, built by the Fall 07 Permaculture students, for spring planting.

We will also prepare and seed the cold frame, and indoor flats. During this time we’ll review some basic permaculture gardening tips and techniques including:

-plant guilds, patches, cold frames & swales
-pollinators & pest control
-soil block making & potting soil mixes
-sheet mulching, manuring & compost teas

We also hope to be viewing Vasia Markides’ new film, “Hidden in the Sand” which screened at Space Other Gallery
in Boston’s South End, on Friday, March 7th, 2008.

Workshops will be held roughly every two weeks through the spring semester: Mar 20, Ap 3, Ap 17, May 8.