makeanewbeginning:

“Out of 16 Coast Salish languages — only 5-6 have are still “alive” and have fluent speakers. The rest are extinct and/or fairly dead. And the remaining 5-6 languages have all have less then 20 fluent speakers… with most having less then 6 fluent speakers.

The consequences of colonialism are really apparent when we look at the state of Indigenous languages.”

- Khelsilem Rivers

It’s Not a Fairytale: Seattle to Build Nation’s First Food Forest

Forget meadows. Seattle’s food forest will be filled with edible plants, and everything from pears to herbs will be free for the taking.

Seattle’s vision of an urban food oasis is going forward. A seven-acre plot of land in the city’s Beacon Hill neighborhood will be planted with hundreds of different kinds of edibles: walnut and chestnut trees; blueberry and raspberry bushes; fruit trees, including apples and pears; exotics like pineapple, yuzu citrus, guava, persimmons, honeyberries, and lingonberries; herbs; and more. All will be available for public plucking to anyone who wanders into the city’s first food forest.

“This is totally innovative, and has never been done before in a public park,” Margarett Harrison, lead landscape architect for the Beacon Food Forest project, tells TakePart. Harrison is working on construction and permit drawings now and expects to break ground this summer.

The concept of a food forest certainly pushes the envelope on urban agriculture and is grounded in the concept of permaculture, which means it will be perennial and self-sustaining, like a forest is in the wild. Not only is this forest Seattle’s first large-scale permaculture project, but it’s also believed to be the first of its kind in the nation.

“The concept means we consider the soils, companion plants, insects, bugs—everything will be mutually beneficial to each other,” says Harrison.

That the plan came together at all is remarkable on its own. What started as a group project for a permaculture design course ended up as a textbook example of community outreach gone right.

Seattle’s vision of an urban food oasis is going forward. A seven-acre plot of land in the city’s Beacon Hill neighborhood will be planted with hundreds of different kinds of edibles: walnut and chestnut trees; blueberry and raspberry bushes; fruit trees, including apples and pears; exotics like pineapple, yuzu citrus, guava, persimmons, honeyberries, and lingonberries; herbs; and more. All will be available for public plucking to anyone who wanders into the city’s first food forest.

“This is totally innovative, and has never been done before in a public park,” Margarett Harrison, lead landscape architect for the Beacon Food Forest project, tells TakePart. Harrison is working on construction and permit drawings now and expects to break ground this summer.

The concept of a food forest certainly pushes the envelope on urban agriculture and is grounded in the concept of permaculture, which means it will be perennial and self-sustaining, like a forest is in the wild. Not only is this forest Seattle’s first large-scale permaculture project, but it’s also believed to be the first of its kind in the nation.

“The concept means we consider the soils, companion plants, insects, bugs—everything will be mutually beneficial to each other,” says Harrison.

That the plan came together at all is remarkable on its own. What started as a group project for a permaculture design course ended up as a textbook example of community outreach gone right.

“Friends of the Food Forest undertook heroic outreach efforts to secure neighborhood support. The team mailed over 6,000 postcards in five different languages, tabled at events and fairs, and posted fliers,” writes Robert Mellinger for Crosscut.

Neighborhood input was so valued by the organizers, they even used translators to help Chinese residents have a voice in the planning.

So just who gets to harvest all that low-hanging fruit when the time comes?

“Anyone and everyone,” says Harrison. “There was major discussion about it. People worried, ‘What if someone comes and takes all the blueberries?’ That could very well happen, but maybe someone needed those blueberries. We look at it this way—if we have none at the end of blueberry season, then it means we’re successful.”

Here is a link to Beacon Food Forest’s website!

Rubbing Stone, Washington

Photograph by Fritz Hoffmann, National Geographic

Looking as if it fell from the sky, a 40-ton erratic stands on the Colville Indian Reservation in Washington State. Such boulders are sometimes called rubbing stones because bison scratched up against them.

What Made This a Photo of the Day
The brilliantly starry sky makes a perfect backdrop for this ancient rock, reenforcing the sense of timelessness. It feels as if the boulder itself were as old as the cosmos above it. —Alexa Keefe, Photo of the Day editor

memoriastoica:

Seattle monorail and the Medical Dental building.

1 of 2

Circa 1962.

memoriastoica:

Seattle monorail and the Medical Dental building.

2 of 2

Circa 1962.

ofalunatic:

From inside the Point Robinson Lighthouse, WA…

ihaveliftoff:

Jet Ski Fun! by shesnuckinfuts on Flickr.

atangcalledwu:

Palouse Falls by The Fishbone on Flickr.

ghostof:

Monumental Mountain by Dave Hoefler on Flickr.