What is this Project all about Anyways?

 
 

DO WHAT YOU CAN,

WITH WHAT YOU HAVE,

WHERE YOU ARE.

-Theodore Roosevelt 

The purpose of this project was two-fold:

First- Find out what happens when we begin to look at our legacy systems and attempt to redesign them to better emulate the planet's natural systems.

Secondly- what happens if one simply commits to doing the same process 100 times? Even if when beginning, one doesn’t have all the right tools, skills, or knowledge. But despite that- still commits to the Process.

What will be learned? What sort of improvements in the process will be gained? What sort of insights can be gleaned through the span of time it takes to complete the project?

How Will You, as the Creative, change throughout this whole process in unique, interesting, and unanticipated ways?

And after it is complete, can you find a way to orient all this to benefit not only yourself but the wider community?

These are just some of the questions I asked myself as I embarked on this project.

Coming from a background of Permaculture, I desired to aim the guiding principles of Permaculture not just on gardening, but onto our existing systems. To look with fresh eyes for ways to -

-Stack Functions

-Produce no waste

-Use and value renewable resources

-Observe and interact

-Catch and store energy

-Obtain a Yield

-Apply self-regulation and accept feedback

-Design from pattern to detail

-Integrate rather than segregate

-Use small and slow solutions

-Use and value diversity

-Use edges and value the marginal

-Creatively use and respond to change

Using these Design Principles in mind, I came up with this project, "The Reishi Bonsai Bowl Project"

In which I take the 'waste' product of one system (Woodworking) and feed that into another system (Mushroom cultivation) as the input. Then takes the 'waste" material and feeds it once again to another system (Compost).

Thus mimicking much more authentically Nature's natural systems.

It looks something like this:

Input(Hardwood log) > Output(Wooden Bowl + Sawdust)

Input(Sawdust) > Output(Mushroom)

Input(Spent Mushroom Block) > Output(Compost)

Yield produced through this process:

  • Wooden Bowl(art)

  • Reishi Mushroom Fruiting bodies(living art piece)

  • Reishi Mushroom powder(medicinal)

  • Reishi Mushroom tincture(medicinal)

  • Lion's Mane Mushrooms Fruiting bodies(food)

  • Lion's Mane Mushroom powder(medicinal)

  • Lion's mane Mushroom Tincture(medicinal)

  • Red Wiggler worms(fed spent mushroom blocks and contaminated grains)

  • Chicken eggs(fed worms and grains not able to be used for mushroom work)

  • Compost(a vital part of the natural cycle for food production)

Now how do we take this and system build and share it to help build more resilient communities?

We build the first MycoMakerSpace- combining all three of these systems- Wood shop, Mushroom Farm, and Composting Facility into a working facility- and then Open Source the plans for it- so that communities can build their own, while collaborating with other facility to improve the designs. 

Imagine a MycoMakerSpace everywhere there is a publicly-funded library, with this setup, as well as a variety of other tools common to maker spaces.

Now in your community, you have the means to learn a skill, build anything you can imagine, grow food that is nutritional as well as medicinal, minimize food waste, and build much-needed healthy soil and compost, all while sharing resources, tools and building resiliency and trust in your community.

This is the larger goal of the project.

But first, we make art.