Today I met with Ruby of Wisefool Community Arts better known for putting on the Puppet Love Festival of Radical Puppetry in the bay area. Her puppetry always seems to involve food politics in some form or another. This past year she did a piece called "Buzz Buzz" about Colony Collapse disorder in bees.
I ventured over to her north oakland home to learn about her latest project Institute of Urban Homesteading. As food costs go up more and more because of oil, many of us locavores are relearning skills to grow and preserve our own food. Ruby was doing just that when one of her friends suggested she teach other people these skills.
For now, the institute is a one season experiment to see how it all works out. But Ruby is already getting inundated with people wanting to teach new classes and people signing up for her first class on beekeeping. i'd love to teach the chicken class but many others want that too. Isn't it great that we live in a city where multiple people want to teach chicken raising?
On a tour of her garden, I got to see all the wonderful fruit trees [apples and apricots], artichokes, rows and rows of garlic, strawberries, onions, hops, tomatoes, and soil waiting for a spring crop. One section is reserved for a friend teaching about medicinal herbs.
Our conversation kept returning to bees. I've begun to believe bees are the new chickens for 2008. I'm getting mine next month at a green gulch zen center bee workshop.
Ruby's been fermenting various types of honey for over a year now to make mead. Star Thistle being the most coveted. I was even lucky enough to go home with a jar of her honey.
So check out her new website and classes.
Institute for Urban Homesteading
http://www.sparkybeegirl.com/iuh.html
Wise Fool
http://www.zeitgeist.net/wfca/wisefool.htm
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