Fireweed Universe--Day 1

The Space

After a 75 mile ride to my grandparents' house to see visiting family, we (ironically) loaded my bicycle and panniers into my parents' car to be dropped off at a farm in Detroit.

We arrived, past derelict houses with weeds chest high.  It was pretty easy to find, what with the chickens in the street, the many congregation of interesting bodies outside, and the bicycle collective painted brightly.  My host is Mars (interestingly the same day that we landed on Mars; must be a sign!    Now my goal will be to find a host named Venus, one named Jupiter...).

I can't wait to do a bit of bicycling around Detroit.  It is clearly in a really rough state; if this many people are openly squatting on one block for two years and counting, and two-story houses are being sold for $1,000, then I can only imagine. 

WWOOFing

This is not exactly the structured WWOOF experience, which I knew going into it. One needs to be a self-starter, or at least in the period in which I arrived: the man running the show is pulled in every direction, the next is completely burned out, and the vast majority are used to taking without giving. This all can change, of course, but leading in a way that empowers others to take on responsibility is one of the most difficult tasks in the world.  This morning, I decided an easy task to begin without knowing anyone or the system would be to clear the garden of weeds. And I did! There is one other enthusiastic guy who has only been here a month (not yet jaded) and just finished a permaculture class (thus new fuel for enthusiasm). Then there are four lovely WWOOFers  (a band from NYC, no less, traveling to Seattle) and they helped us weed all day! It was a full summer's worth of Hulk-sized weeds overtaking a giant garden, but company makes any work enjoyable. It is rewarding to be able to use my past farming and permaculture knowledge to lead projects today on day one; tomorrow it looks like I will lead us in building raised beds in a green house that was recently constructed.

We have a giant compost pile, great for the 300 lbs of weeds we gathered today, in the lot behind our house. Conveniently for all of the people who have taken over abandoned houses on this block, the block behind us is COMPLETELY empty! Thus, their backyard space becomes ours. I helped myself to a little walking tour of the abandoned house behind ours today. It is a strange feeling to see the house that someone entirely left behind. The nuance of the basement, from the floor tile to the wallpaper, told me that I would have gotten along weill with the previous inhabitants. It was just like any other house that anyone else grew up in with stories in its walls...now with trees growing in the place of its long gone window frames, holes in the sides of the house to the outside, and empty cigarette packets of looters and squatters. It really makes the motto "location, location, location!" seem real in an entirely more profound way. The same home on Long Island one year ago would have been sold for $400,000 and here, it was entirely abandoned and is now rotting away.