Moonriver Lodge, Sigar Highlands
FOR OUR CHILDREN'S CHILDRENArchive for Sustainability
Highly Underestimated Vegetable
It is quite rare to find an edible phyto food-on-the-table which is of high food value, edible from its tubers, stems, buds and leaves needs comparatively little care while growing, matures quickly, high food productivity per square feet space, easy to store, and have a quite palatable taste. This description fits the sweet potato or the Fun Shee Yip (Cantonese).
Do not underestimate the ‘cheapy’ sweet potato leaves (after all many farmers discard them after harvesting the tubers).
Why is it good?
- Generates a nice smoothie or greens juice for your alkalization needs.
- This versatile veggie is cheap and easy to grow. Just stick in the stalks anywhere in your garden and it will grow.
- A humble but rich food which should deserve the respect from those who understand and require the need for raw phyto greens to complement their daily health.
- Can cure Age-Related Macular Degeneration (AMD)
(where the retina becomes loose and degenerate at the center, occuring especially in the elderly and can lead to blindness)
- The sweet potato leaves are rich in Vitamin A (ideal for skin care!), fiber, and micro nutrients.
- They’re healthy for the blood. If your blood lacks redness, or if you have low-blood pressure, make sweet potato leaves a regular salad side dish.
- If you often lack sleep, eat them often.
- They’re also so good for remedying constipation.
- The leaves of sweet potato are ideal to help weight lost.
Overall, people in Asia with weak bodies and ill health are encouraged to often eat this herbal veggie. It improves health in many ways.
For further reading, go to sources:
http://www.mycoalkonics.com/solutions/diet/diet-main.html
http://theslowcook.blogspot.com
Generation To Generation
In a house which becomes a home,
one hands down and another takes up
the heritage of mind and heart,
laughter and tears, musings and deeds.
Love, like a carefully loaded ship,
crosses the gulf between the generations.
Therefore, we do not neglect the ceremonies
of our passage: when we wed, when we die,
and when we are blessed with a child;
When we depart and when we return;
When we plant and when we harvest.
Let us bring up our children. It is not
the place of some official to hand to them
their heritage.
If others impart to our children our knowledge
and ideals, they will lose all of us that is
wordless and full of wonder.
Let us build memories in our children,
lest they drag out joyless lives,
lest they allow treasures to be lost because
they have not been given the keys.
We live, not by things, but by the meanings
of things. It is needful to transmit the passwords
from generation to generation.
by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Blog contributed by Dr. Khoo
Roses and grapes; chili, four beans and banana root
Although Permaculture is based on scientific principles and research, it also draws on traditional and indigenous folk wisdom.
Mollison: Well, if I go to an old Greek lady sitting in a vineyard and ask, “Why have you planted roses among your grapes?” she will say to me, “Because the rose is the doctor of the grape. If you don’t plant roses, the grapes get ill.” That doesn’t do me a lot of good. But if I can find out that the rose exudes a certain root chemical that is taken up by the grape root which in turn repels the white fly (which is the scientific way of saying the same thing), then I have something very useful.
Traditional knowledge is always of that nature. I know a Filipino man who always plants a chili and four beans in the same hole as the banana root. I asked him, “Why do you plant a chili with the banana?” And he said, “Don’t you know that you must always plant these things together.” Well, I worked out that the beans fix the nitrogen and the chili prevents beetles from attacking the banana root. And that works very well.
(Source: Extracted from an interview adapted from the radio series Insight & Outlook, hosted by Scott London)
Seed of Life
The merbau (Instsia Palembanica) seedling has sprouted life. The merbau is a heavy hardwood with high growth potential and one of Malaysia’s popular timber. It is slow growing, a large tree with a dark colour. Its fruit is in the form of a woody pod.
Extinction
When you work on sustainability, you’ve got to confront extinction. The end of human life. All human lives. Your kids. Your kids’ kids. Your kids’ kids’ kids ad infinitum. You’ve got to be able to visualise it. You’ve got to mourn it. The tremendous loss. The emptiness. The absolute silence. No more laughter, no more tears, no more babies crying. No more mothers and fathers crying, for when a child passes from water- or air- or food- borne diseases and pesticides. You’ll be able to see all the possible paths leading to this day of pure human vacuum. The last leaf of human voice. A futile protest. Fluttering…trailing off… ’but… but….’ Maybe there is wind. Maybe there is no wind. And you begin to unwind it all back to today. And you think of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and you think of “One Hundred Years of Solitude”. And you just stop, frozen, because the last ice age was just 10,000 years ago. And you mouth a cold breath to yourself: how long more? And your heart starts to pound. And you look at the clock on the postcolonial mantelpiece of your mind. And your hands start to move on their own. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. You stoop and you start to do work. You pick up the litter around you. And you start cleaning house. And you understand that your act of mindful work and every single act of house-keeping you do, goes toward sustaining life. Very specifically, human life. And you understand that by your every act you are sustaining all that is so beautiful about us. The babies, our youngs! The songs, the dances, the twinkle in our twirls with the stars and even the quarrels. Even the quarrels. And all the strife. We can overcome our differences. We can bear the pain. We can, because if we don’t, we lose everything. All of us. EVERYTHING. Including pain. And that end zone, there is no pain. There is nothing. And that deadly silence where we no longer exist – is NOT peace. Peace is a state where you reach when you exist to co-exist with another being - joyfully and fruitfully. At this end zone of degradation, there won’t be peace because it is the result of abandonment and neglect. You can’t claim peace if you’ve discarded it, a long long long time before.
“Tick-tock,” says the forest mosquito.
Poet-Artist EarthKeeper Ranger PEK
