DRAWDOWN 100 Solutions for Reversing Climate Change - Climate Reality Leadership and 24 hours of Education 2019

 
In March of 2019 I read this now to be classic summary of how to face climate reality and work together to deal with the new realities in the 21st Century. Looking back on my environmental educator journey and the formation of Faribault Area Committee for Environmental Quality in the early 1970's after the first "Earth Day" in April 1970, when I spoke at the U of M about how dumb our country was to use defoliants in Viet Nam...and how they were keeping military secrets..Then too, it was often about oil and the illusion of control of resources over compassion for people and ecosystems.

 Talking to Grade School kids around 1971 in my home town of Faribault Minnesota, McKinley Grade School talking about air pollution with a prop of a gas mask.  Photo in the Faribault Daily News--Also in the early 1970's, I began the research about family history when my grandpa, Noah Elwood Weaver died in 1973, I started to ask my dad about our family roots and especially the history of our Weaver and Eicher Family farms in Ohio -

And learning about current farming practice by reading stories such as I just found in Yes! Magazine that I subscribe to....The Way Climate Change Unites Us. Building Bridges https://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/building-bridges/climate-change-politics-farmers-20191121
 Here is my grandpa, Noah Elwood Weaver about 1910 in the spring on the Eicher Family farm.  His soon to be wife, Edna Helena Eicher was raised on this farm in Montgomery Co Ohio, where a variety of apple trees could be found.

 Here is Emma Esther Eicher, Edna's older sister, help her mom and my great grandma, Lane "Helena" Paul Eicher make apple butter inside the old Eicher homestead just prior to her death in 1913 after a surgery for her goiter, an enlarged thyroid that led to her gaining a lot of weight.

Apples and trees, planting of many types have played a big role in the Weaver family tree in my experience.

 Here in 1945 are my two younger brothers, Jim born 1940 and Jack born 1943, in the Weaver back yard on the hill the Dakhota call "Tate'paha"" windy hill, and behind them are 2 of the some 9 apple trees that had been planted by others prior to my parents buying the property in 1943.  We would harvest apples in the fall, and make apple sauce using a hand foley food mill and can the apple sauce

 

In the mid 1930's when my parents were still living in Ohio, they helped plant a variety of trees on the Chase Farm in Hancock County where Peg Glessner (Weaver)'s, mom, Inez Chase Glessner had been raised. Here is a photo of how they sheltered the seedings, ash, maple and tulip trees that my dad took in 1934. 

Property Weaver-Agerter Legacy on the Straight River Rice County 

 I learned the values of planting trees that are recognized through photosynthesis. As we all know "Photosynthesis is a process used by plants and other organisms to convert light energy into chemical energy that can later be released to fuel the organisms' activities. This chemical energy is stored in carbohydrate molecules, such as sugars, which are synthesized from carbon dioxide and water – hence the name photosynthesis, from the Greek φῶς, phōs, "light", and σύνθεσις, synthesis, "putting together". In most cases, oxygen is also released as a waste product."

Part of the story, 16 acres along the Straight River near Faribault, that my parents and their friends the Agerters stewarded from 1942 - 1983.  In the summer of 1983 the land was transferred to the Nature Conservancy and River Bend Nature Center as the PH Weaver legacy gift. 

 

Camp Fire cooking with the Berhow family by the shed build on the "prop", Peg Weaver, in front with Ruth, Byron (By) and Marde Berhow in the back. The Berhows were some of my parents best friends in Faribault as they both arrived in town around 1939 and had young kids at the same time.

 

This author in the early 1970's, with some of the pines growing after Dewey Van Orsow and his scout troop planted trees in the field....as part of the 16 acres.   

Summary of the 700 seedlings of 6 species that were planted by the boy scouts in 1971.

  
Letter from Ron Osterbauer, Feb 1982, River Bend Nature Center to Peg Koering of the Nature Conservancy  with cc to Charlie Turnbull and Orwin Rustad of Faribault on the board of directors.
Map at River Bend Nature Center, as photographed by this author in the Autumn of 2019, noticing the Weaver Cabin Remants near the the bend of the river,

Visited Rice County this autumn we stopped by a family orchard on St Paul Road on the east side of Faribault on our way through Cannon City, Northfield and back to the Twin Cities.  Stopped by this orchard that the Minnesota Trump family has run since 1954.  Check out this link: http://www.trumpsorchard.com/about_us_history.php
  
Tasty non pasteurized cider too   -- And once again I picked a bunch of local apples here in the Twin Cities and processed them by hand in this foley food mill, and then canned them to put in the freezer for sharing over the next year. 
 

 Here as some of the sauce jars of cranberry apple and regular apple sauce at the end of harvest season this October.  Some tomatos, fennel seed to celebrate too.