Laughing Dog News:

Summer 2019 Classes at Laughing DogSummer 2019 Classes at Laughing Dog
Three exciting upcoming workshops on Goats, Mushrooms and Guerrilla Gardening
posted Wed, Jun 19, 2019

"Taming Kids Civilizes Humanity...""Taming Kids Civilizes Humanity..."
The power of touch reveals itself doubly relevant for the "feral" farmer who discovers his last, great calling nurturing “kids” and tending a herd of wooly milk meisters...
posted Mon, Apr 16, 2018

"Guerrilla Gardening Tactics for the Backyard Gardener"
Upcoming workshop at Laughing Dog Farm, March 4th, 1:00-4:00 PM
posted Tue, Feb 06, 2018

New Video on
Taming the new crop of kids requires a community effort...
posted Wed, Feb 24, 2016

Laughing Dog Profiled in Country Folks magazine...
2015 goat birthing dramas the subject of recent piece...
posted Thu, Apr 09, 2015

New Life Bursting in Tunnels Despite Long, Cold Winter
posted Tue, Mar 24, 2015

Six Farming “Truths” Re-visited
posted Fri, Mar 01, 2013

“Good Night Irene”, Sandy, etc…
Extreme weather challenges small farmers (and large)...
posted Fri, Feb 01, 2013

Teaching Food Literacy
Permaculture and Backyard Farming
posted Mon, Feb 01, 2010

2009 in Review
"So long, 2009...", An Annual Retrospective...
posted Fri, Jan 01, 2010

Go to Laughing Dog News...

Daniel Botkin
farm manager

398 Main Road
Gill, MA 01354

857-754-1614


Dog Shrine Pages

"Guerrilla Gardening Tactics for the Backyard Gardener"

Upcoming workshop at Laughing Dog Farm, March 4th, 1:00-4:00 PM

Four season farming at Laughing Dog Farm...

Facebook Event for "Guerrilla Gardening" workshop, March 4th...

There’s always something incredibly primal and deep about growing and gathering food to feed one’s family, neighborhood or community. Whether you are a subsistence-level peasant, or a privileged backyard warrior; whether with a precision plow, carving long rows of geometrically perfect crops, or in a permaculture-inspired, mixed "food forest" motif, we growers (and our children) carry a unique, life-long passion for food, soil, plants, animals, hand labor and for feeding other people.

I’ve always loved gardening, horticulture and fresh food, but I started farming “for real” in ‘99 (after a 20+ years teaching and counseling) when I thought the world might end, or at least change drastically due to the “Y2K” computer glitch. But the computers did fine in 2000, so we laughed off the patronizing post mortems, sold our generators, and assumed we’d merely been a bit alarmist... However, just twenty months later, the world DID change forever with the horrific 9/11 attacks. All the fretting and preparing we’d done -- the goats, the barn, the greenhouse and seeds, suddenly seemed relevant, again. And I never looked back.

Without a clear business plan or end game, I've farmed a beautiful, five acre, hilltop plot, with my wife and various itinerant volunteers, interns, helpers, and the like. Over the years we’ve filled every square foot with neatly terraced beds, heirloom vegetables, plus fruit and nut trees, flowers, herbs, perennials, passive solar greenhouses, and a small herd of delightful dairy goats.

And we’ve evolved a unique style of micro-farming inspired significantly by the principles and practices of “low-end” permaculture, which we sometimes call, “guerrilla gardening”. Permaculture embodies the practice of regenerative land stewardship that works to mimic, support, and complement Nature. Whereas conventional farming pits us in a mighty contest between Man and the elements, a guerrilla gardening outlook offers a more intuitive, opportunistic and "zen"-like approach based on encouraging, copying and utilizing the pre-existing patterns and "habits" of Nature, (habits like composting, recycling and "natural” soil building...) and upon a series of informed interventions and creative improvisations, ongoing experimentation, keen observation, tireless repetition... and significant luck!

I first heard about "guerrilla gardening" in the form of “seed bombs”, which some nervy UK activists took to heaving onto median strips and churchyards in the 80’s, having apparently been denied permission to plant “legitimate” gardens on public fairways, etc. Such "seed balls" consist of viable seeds cemented in mud and tossed, like “life-giving” grenades, into likely habitats. Intended as an “insurgent” tactic to “green the common” with (edible, ornamental or otherwise) timed-release “volunteers”, this radical approach captures the imagination, but it’s overall efficacy is uncertain.

But “guerrilla gardening” is much more than just “seed bombs” or opportunistic food growing. It also challenges us to completely “reframe” the moment to moment vagaries, anomalies, “accidents”, super storms and other random twists of fate, both in AND out of the garden. We’ve come to realize that, in farming as in life, no matter how much you know, or plan or organize on the ground level, there’s ALWAYS going to be unexpected detours, dilemmas, mitigating circumstances, and yes, failures, a plenty…

Guerrilla gardening thus teaches us that success and failure are not personal and that God does not hate the small farmer. To farm this way means unsentimentally accepting reality on its own terms, knowing that Nature invariably gets the last word. Hence, we must be both planful AND flexible, skilled AND detached; to risk big, AND to shift gears on the fly making "lemonade", after midnight!

Farming on the fringe” means starting right where we are... not in Lowes, not in Home Depot, not in a fantasy land, where we wished, or wanted, or had hoped to be... It means always looking out for the simpler, smarter, cheaper and more graceful way, even if it's not as lucrative, sexy, or takes much longer. And there ALWAYS is one! Because we are surrounded by legions of powerful "allies", “guides”, and other benevolent forces, everywhere, whether in a vast desert, a degraded farm, or a toxic, city lot. “The key is to begin to recognize, encourage and “harness” these “regenerative” forces, no matter how small, slow, or insignificant they may seem. In this way, powerful alliances are set in motion, deserts are greened, and we begin to break free from knee-jerk orthodoxy and the devastating addiction to fossil fuel…

Two recurring, bedrock principles of permaculture are the radical recycling of “waste”, and the ongoing spreading of organic material to keep the soil covered. Hence, guerrilla gardeners are endlessly hunting and gathering rotted hay, bagged leaves, wood chips, and spent barn bedding to “top dress” their soil, layer after layer, season upon season. Covering your soil with “sheet mulch” sequesters carbon and builds long-term fertility through ongoing biological activity by microbes, worms and fungal mycelium. You don’t even need to know any soil science, or even be present in order to reap the enormous benefits of this insurgency of volunteers. Their miraculous work keeps accruing, quietly, incrementally, whether you’re working, sleeping, making bread, marching for social justice, or watching cat videos.

Guerrilla gardeners are, invariably, also rampant propagators, using aggressive timing and all manner of low-tech protection schemes to germinate and sustain diverse “libraries” of cold-hardy plants around the calendar, for nibbling, over-wintering, and/or transplanting later on. All types of plants, actually, can be “kick-started” through hand propagation and proprietary cultivation in greenhouse conditions. Even typically direct-seeded crops like corn, beans and squash can be effectively seeded, en masse, then hand separated and transplanted at the “perfect” moment into the field. Ambitious seed saving allows us guerrilla gardeners greater liberties to risk planting boldly, “against the calendar”.

Farming, at any scale or style has the built-in quality of requiring its practitioners’ steady and unceasing engagement, no matter one’s mood, health, or daily caprice. This enforced diligence can be a profoundly steadying hand in a borderline world. Even if we ARE meaningless, random dust, floating in a vast, unredeemable Universe… the goats still need daily milking, the hoophouses still need endless venting, and the crops always will need picking, processing (and eating!) For over two decades, our little farm has reliably offered us a calming, grounding, raison d’etre, eclipsing the daily drumbeat of calamity, the dread of terrorism, the disgust for gridlock politics, and that ever creeping ennui.

When I was a young man, I wanted to get the girl, score the winning goal, heal global conflict, and smash capitalism. Now at 60, I'm grateful to: not have cancer, to survive the winter, and to find my reading glasses. As a lifelong athlete facing down Father Time and the downside of the organism, I’ve been exploring more the permaculture of minimalism. Come to find out, there is actually quite a lot you can accomplish... by doing LESS! In the end we might come to realize that we humans are not always so vitally important that we must be forever touching everything, messing around, and trying to take control (and credit) for what's mostly just Nature manifesting herself. It's an important and humbling lesson, not necessarily limited to aging bodies “farming on the fringe”...

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Laughing Dog Farm -- Danny Botkin, farm manager, 398 Main Road, Gill, MA 01354 -- 857-754-1614