Chelsea Green

Foraging Ideas. Cultivating Change.

Winter  2020
“It amazes me that I spent so many years of
my life not noticing the bumblebees right
underneath my nose. . . . I can’t turn the clock
back, but I am committed to doing more than
my fair share of seeing and hearing now.”
­—Brigit Strawbridge Howard
 CHELSEA
GREEN PUBLISHING
the politics and practice of sustainable living
CONTENTS
Since 1984, Chelsea Green has been the leading publisher
of books about organic farming, gardening, home-
steading, integrative health, sustainable living,
socially responsible business, and more. A Walk on the Wild Side 4
Now employee-owned.
Speaking for the Bees 6
WINTER 2020, ISSUE 6

Copyright © 2019 by Chelsea Green Publishing A Search for Rural Justice 7

A “Farm-to-Closet” Vision for

Front cover photograph by Enna Grazier (www.grazierphotography.com).
Page 2 photograph by Charlotte Strawbridge.
the Future of Sustainable Fashion 8
Page 3 photograph from Fibershed by Paige Green.
Page 5 photgraphs by, clockwise from the top, Alisha Utter, Nancy and Why Rabbit Is the New Chicken 10
John Hayden, Nancy and John Hayden, and Jessica Sipe.
Page 6 illustrations by John Walters.
Page 7 photograph by Rob Amberg. Artisan Cheesemakers Unite! 11
Page 8 photographs by Paige Green, top, and Kalie Cassel-Feiss, bottom.
Page 9 photograph by Paige Green.
Page 10 photograph by Christine Ashburn. What If? 12
Page 11 photographs by istockphoto, top, and Jennifer Francoeur, bottom.
Page 13 photograph by Miriam Klingl for Werde magazine; illustration
by @Mary Evans / The Watts Collection. The Power of Direct Action 14
Page 14 photograph courtesy of Lisa Fithian.
Page 15 images courtesy of Rick Reinhart, top left; Set Tobocman, top
right; and Kisha Bari, bottom. Bringing Health Back to Health Care 16
Page 20 photographs by Matt Haslum, top; Matt Haslum, middle; and
Rosie Bladwin, bottom.
Page 21 photograph by Meghan Hoagland. Tripping over the Truth17

Cancer and the New Biology

Our Commitment to Green Publishing
of Water 18
Chelsea Green sees publishing as a tool for cultural change and ecolog-
ical stewardship. We strive to align our book manufacturing practices
with our editorial mission and to reduce the impact of our business Answer Hunger with Fastercise 19
enterprise in the environment. We print our books and catalogs on chlo-
rine-free recycled paper, using vegetable-based inks whenever possible.
This magazine was printed on paper supplied by Echo Communications London Calling 20
that contains 100% postconsumer recycled fiber.

The Art of Tying Wreaths 21

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 A Walk on the Wild Side
An Interview with John Hayden

John and Nancy Hayden have spent the last quarter century transforming their
organic vegetable and livestock operation into an agroecological, regenerative fruit
farm, nursery, and pollinator sanctuary. They call it The Farm Between, and as we
walk among the diverse medley of wildly burgeoning shrubs and trees, it becomes
clear that the name is much more than a geological marker. It’s emblematic of the
Haydens’s experimental approach, which is less about imposing their will on the
land and more akin to learning how an ecosystem can repair itself if given
the chance. The following conversation with John digs into the philosophical
and scientific ideas presented in their book, Farming on the Wild Side.

This was not a prosperous farm when we bought it. They’d Is it more profitable as far as your gain? Your harvest?
gone out of business. It looked nice. Everything was mowed and
The harvest might be lighter than a commercial apple crop, but
edged and painted, like a picture you see on a milk carton. Now,
because our inputs are less, the profit’s better. We don’t have
this is what a prosperous farm looks like. It’s scruffy. It’s chaot-
the expenses that commercial, monoculture growers have. The
ic, but it’s a planned chaos. We’ve got to rethink “pretty.” We
monoculture mentality is not ecological thinking, and we’re
have the functional beauty of all the biodiversity going on. We’re
paying the price. The costs are put off onto society with the pes-
supporting the pollinators and the birds with all this habitat.
ticides and the run-off and the soil erosion—all these negative
There are beneficial insects living here eating up the pests, so we
things. We’re reimagining a transformational way of farming
don’t need any pesticides or fertilizers. I came out this morning
that doesn’t put costs on society. We’re bringing benefits to soci-
and saw a bunch of monarch butterflies. We purposely cultivate
ety: We’re sequestering carbon; we support pollinators and oth-
milkweed, so we’re getting a decent population here.
er wildlife; we’re slowing down the water with all these plants
We used to grow vegetables, but [The Farm Between] is in
and root structures and pulling all the nutrients out of the water
a flood zone. When we lost a crop, we decided we needed to
before it flows off our land. Even our ditches are full of trees
switch things up. Now we have aronia, black chokecherry. This
that suck out the phosphorous before it goes downstream. The
is an awesome plant. It has the highest antioxidants that you can
whole watershed drains through our farm, so the trees down in
grow. It’s very cold hardy, and it’s beautiful. The leaves all turn
the riparian zone act as filters in addition to storing carbon. We
red in the fall.
use them for woodchips for mulch. We cut them and coppice
We’re constantly experimenting. . . . We planted apple trees
them, and they grow back. Everything’s working together. We’re
on 20-foot spacing and then put cover crops in the alleys that
trying to stack as many functions as we can into this space.
also serve as pollinator habitat. It’s got a mix of different species
Monoculture farms have one function: grow the crop. And
. . . some perennial vegetables, like sea kale. [Sea kale] produces
it’s all at risk. Pesticides are a risk reduction strategy, and the
a loose floret that’s really delicious. We’ll just let it go to seed
pesticide companies know it. They show you big scary pictures
this year to see what happens.
of pests. Not all farmers are biologists, though; they don’t fol-
Letting plants do what they naturally do to learn about low the pest lifecycle that closely, so they see a pest, panic, and
them is intuitive and makes a ton of sense. spray, even if they’d rather not. Their crops are a commodity,
too, so they’re not getting the highest value. They’re selling it
Yes, we spend a lot of time just observing. An apple orchard is wholesale; their margins are small. They can’t afford to lose 10
what we want, so we’re trying to find out what works in between. percent of their crop. Here, we have about 30 different crops, so
All this biodiversity helps us keep our pest population stable. We if I lose even 20 percent of my apples, some other crop is going
don’t have big outbreaks. We can take a 10 percent loss, and it’s to make up for that. Every year, some crops are stellar, some are
no big deal because we don’t have any inputs. We’re not applying mediocre, and some are bad, but it all balances out to be good.
pesticides and avoid all the effort that goes with that. We’re not just tweaking a broken system; we’re developing a

4 • Chelsea Green Publishing

better one. We don’t have all the answers.
We’re still playing around and observing
and figuring things out, but we’ve got
some good leads. We’re interacting. We’re
immersed in this, and we’re watching, re-
vamping, and learning. And we’re doing
okay! Economically, we’re a lot stronger
than when we were livestock or vegeta-
ble farmers. We’re growing higher value
products and have found great markets for
them. It may appear helter skelter, but a
lot of thought goes into how we farm. We
try to figure out the least amount of work
we can possibly do and still make a decent
living—and be doing good for our environ-
ment. We’re not trying to maximize profit
or maximize yields. We’re trying to find
that optimal balance.

Through all these efforts, it’s as though

you’re reseeding nature, even though
the traditional definition of nature
doesn’t involve people. Maybe people
have to be involved in creating a
“new nature” because there’s not
enough “pure nature” left.
We do! We’ve got to find ways to make a
living by keeping the planet alive, not by ex-
tracting and damaging our systems beyond
repair. Nancy and I are really interested in
not tilling the soil, for example, because
tilling the soil wreaks all kinds of havoc
on that ecosystem, too. Churning things
up adds oxygen, and the bacteria go crazy
and start burning up the organic matter.
We like to keep things covered and not dis-
turbed. We’re as hands off as we can be.
Everything we do is intentional with
the ecology in mind. That’s what we’re
trying to model here. We love exchanging
ideas and inspiring people. We love gar-
nering lessons from different approaches,
like permaculture and biodynamic farm-
ing. And we love our monarchs! Just look
at them!

Paperback • $29.95

chelseagreen.com • 5
Speaking for the Bees
Our planet is home to at least 20,000 species of bees—a statistic most of
us would be content to simply take note of and then carry on with our lives.
Not Brigit Strawbridge Howard. Her sudden realization of the teeming
diversity a few paces out her backdoor stopped her in her tracks. Every day
since has been filled with the awareness of silver birches and hairy-footed
flower bees, skylarks and rosebay willowherb, prompting her to become not
just an avid observer of our most prevalent pollinators, but an impassioned
architect of their habitat. Amateur naturalist turned native wild insect
champion, Howard truly speaks for the bees, as is evident in this excerpt
from her book, Dancing with Bees.

Bees. Where to begin? For the past decade to at least 20,000 different species of bee. As bees and other pollinators go about
or so, they have filled me with ever-in- This is quite a staggering figure, one which their daily business of foraging for pollen
creasing wonder and delight, as I have im- surprises most people when they first hear and nectar, their aim is of course to collect
mersed myself in watching, listening, and it (it certainly surprised me), especially if as much as possible to take back to their
tuning in to them, alongside all the other they have previously only been aware of nest to feed, or provide for, the next gen-
wild and wonderful creatures and plants I the existence of honeybees and bumble- eration of their species. Bees are no more
have come across in my travels. bees. Even more surprising is the fact that setting out to “gift” us than they are set-
ting out to pollinate the plants they visit,
but the result, in my eyes, is one of the
“Having a relationship with the rest of nature is knowing most wonderful gifts that nature bestows
that we can, if we wish, rekindle our lost connections, upon the human race, and one without
which we simply would not survive.
because somewhere deep inside us all, there lives a
little spark of ‘wild’ just waiting to be ignited.”
—Brigit Strawbridge Howard

Given the enormity of our reliance
upon bees as pollinators of our crops, it
beggars belief that most of us know so lit-
tle about them. Mention the word “bee” to
most people, and images of hives, beekeep-
ers, and honey are the most likely things
that will spring to mind. However, if you
were to give the same people a sheet of
paper and a box of colored pencils, and
ask them to draw you a bee, most would
draw something shaped a little like a rugby
ball with striped yellow, white, and black
bands, to which they might attach a head,
six legs, two antennae, and a pair or two of
wings – something that looks, essentially,
like a bumblebee rather than a honeybee.
But in actual fact, Planet Earth is home
of all these different species, only 9 are
honeybees and around 250 are bumble-
bees. There are also around 500 so-called
stingless bees. The rest are ‘solitary’ bees,
and it is amongst these species that I have
found many new friends. . . .
Most of us are aware that bees are im-
portant pollinators, but far from being in
awe of the fact that something so tiny is
capable of achieving something so extraor-
dinary as pollination, we tend instead to
take this gift—or “service” as it is so sadly
referred to these days by economists­—very
much for granted. I use the word “gift”
with consideration and awareness of the
fact that a gift is usually something that
has been given with intent to a recipient. Hardcover • $24.95

6 • Chelsea Green Publishing

A Search for Rural Justice
An Interview with Charlie Thompson

Charles D. Thompson, Jr., is Professor of the Practice of Cultural Anthropol-

ogy and Documentary Studies at Duke University. His numerous books and
documentaries have helped bring underrepresented rural issues in the Unit-
ed States and Latin America to the fore. When Chelsea Green sat down with
him to discuss his latest book, Going Over Home: A Search for Rural Justice in
an Unsettled Land, one interview question turned into a history lesson about
the economic and sociopolitical drivers of agricultural insecurity and rural
injustice stretching back to the days of Thoreau. Charlie’s book—and his
response below—expose a deep history of racism and wealth inequality still
Paperback • $18.00
felt in rural communities today.

We founded this country to be governed of black farmers who’d lost their land friction of the machine of government, let
by “We the People.” That looked good on weren’t able to collect on their loans be- it go, let it go . . . but! if it . . . requires you to
paper, but of course we know that Jefferson cause of systematic racism. be the agent of injustice to another, then I
didn’t really mean everybody. What we’ve This contradiction of saying we believe say, break the law.” [Charlie’s emphasis]
had since 1776 is a grand experiment in in one thing but practice another is the Who is “We,” and what is it we must do
making a representative democracy work. heart of our problem. We haven’t dealt with in order to build democracy? We have to
Today, we hear a lot about “economic de- the original sin of American slavery. We ha- know when it’s our time to listen. We the
mocracy.” In the 1930s, that discussion was ven’t dealt with the displacement of indig- People of Privilege have to be quiet. How
prominent because we’d just experienced enous peoples. So the exploitation contin- do you get out of the way and not give peo-
a major Depression. Roosevelt saw this as ues. We elect a president that talks about ple voice—they already have voices—but
an opportunity to democratize the econo- people from across the border being rapists help people have an audience? How do we,
my. The Department of Agriculture came and murderers when we’re using them to as activists, stand in solidarity with people
about during that time, as did new efforts harvest our food. We’re living a lie. Thoreau who’ve been suppressed without speaking
to give people access to land—including said, “If the injustice is part of the necessary for them? That’s the big challenge.
African American, Native American, and
Latino sharecroppers who had never had
access to owning part of this country.
The ’30s also saw what we know now
as the Agricultural Adjustment Act, which
gave subsidies to the largest farmers. En-
ter agribusiness. By the ’60s, we had huge
farms run by machinery and agrochemi-
cals. That’s when Rachel Carson started to
say, “Now, wait a minute!” A decade later,
Earl Butz was saying, “Get big or get out.”
That sparked a movement that result-
ed in Farm Aid and a huge class action
lawsuit on behalf of black farmers in the
1980s. I was the guy who took the hotline
call from Tim Pigford who said he was
having racism and loan problems. Tim
goes on to be the main plaintiff against the
Department of Ag, but even after winning
the supreme court case, tens of thousands Charlie Thompson, seated, with farmers in an Iredell County, North Carolina, feed mill in 1986.

chelseagreen.com • 7
A “Farm-to-Closet” Vision for the
Future of Sustainable Fashion
Rebecca Burgess has coined a new term that represents a not so new idea: fibershed.
Centuries before the advent of the swift trend cycles of a multimillion-dollar fashion
industry, functional fibersheds were everywhere. As a means of protection, spiritual
identity, gender, adornment, societal rank, personal style, and basic modesty, people
necessarily sourced their fibers from the plants and animals that populated their home
ground. Like the water within a watershed or the food within a foodshed, the fibers
in a fibershed embody the ecology, economy, and culture of a place. The following is
adapted from Burgess’s book, Fibershed.

There is a deep, almost cellular response in hu-

mans when we take on work of a fibershed, one
that creates an unbreakable bond. In fact, it has
been an incredible surprise to see how many
people are similarly committed to the cause of
regionalizing and relearning what it means to
produce your fiber and dye. Through my work I
have seen the act of growing our own clothes to
be a galvanizing community experience.
Because we have been disconnected from
the impacts our clothes have on land, air, wa-
ter, labor, and our own human health for such
a long time, we’ve been lulled into a passive,
non-questioning state of being as consumers.
When we begin reconnecting these dots, how-
ever, we create opportunities to build new re-
lationships that are rooted in sharing skills,
physical labor, and creativity, all of which carry
meaning, purpose, and a way to belong to one
another and to the land. While there has been
important work in recent decades to ensure ac-
cess to safe, local, nutritious food as a culture,
we have largely overlooked the production of fi-
bers and dyes that make up our clothing. In fact,
when people hear the word clothing, most au-
tomatically think, Oh, I don’t care about fashion,
and assume it has nothing to do with them. But
clothing—like food—matters because we di-
rectly engage with it every single day. Clothing
is a multifaceted industry that involves many of
the same supply chain dynamics as the food in-
dustry, starting with its roots in agriculture and
dependence on the land.

Top, Rebecca Burgess with harvested indigo; bottom, volunteers working in the indigo field.

8 • Chelsea Green Publishing

 In Fibershed you will read a vision of change
that focuses on transforming our fiber and
dye systems from the soil up. This vision
embraces everyone involved in the process,
including farmers, ranchers, grassroots
organizers, designers, manufacturers, cut-
and-sew talent, crafters, fashion pundits, in-
vestors, transnational brands, and you—the
wearer. It is a vision for globally impactful
solutions that consider and provide a voice
on how to reconfigure the seat of power
and begin putting decision making into the
hands of those most familiar with the social
and ecological infrastructure of their com-
munities. It is a vision that enhances social,
economic, and political opportunities for
communities to define and create their fi-
ber and dye systems and redesign the global
textile process. It is place-based textile sov-
ereignty, which aims to include rather than
exclude all the people, plants, animals, and
cultural practices that comprise and define
a specific geography.
This place-based textile system is the
fibershed. Similar to a local watershed or
a foodshed, a fibershed is focused on the
source of the raw material, the transparen-
cy with which it is converted into clothing,
and the connectivity among all parts, from
soil to skin and back to soil. In the fiber-
shed where I live, natural plant dyes and
fibers such as flax, wool, cotton, hemp, and
indigo are being grown using practices that
are both traditional and modern. Many of
these cropping and livestock systems are
showing benefits that we are just beginning
to document in detail, such as ameliorating
the causes of climate change, increasing
resilience to drought, and rebuilding local
economies.

Weaver and natural dyer Rebecca Burgess, M.Ed,

is the executive director of Fibershed, chair of the
board for Carbon Cycle Institute, and author of
Harvesting Color. She has more than a decade of
experience writing and implementing hands-on
curricula that focus on the intersection of resto-
ration ecology and fiber systems. Paperback • $29.95

chelseagreen.com • 9
Why Rabbit Is the New Chicken

Not convinced that a pasture-based rabbit production could amount to a

sustainable business enterprise for the beginner to market-scale farmer?
Nichki Carangelo, a third-generation Italian American, second-generation
small business owner, and first-generation farmer from Waterbury, Con-
necticut, proves that a viable pasture-based rabbitry is not only user-friendly,
it’s also profitable. In 2014, she founded Letterbox Farm Collective in Hud-
son, New York, which now contributes to a burgeoning local food economy.
The following excerpt from Carangelo’s book, Raising Pastured Rabbits for
Meat, makes the case for rabbits over chicken. Paperback • $24.95

In a country with a $41 billion broiler you’ll need some version, should you de- ital. In fact, a well-managed commercial
chicken industry, Michael Pollan’s 2010 cide to use a pasture-based method, the rabbitry can repay its entire initial invest-
claim that “rabbits make more sense than heaviest item on the list is going to be a ment in a single year.
chicken” seems pretty bold, but Time mag- wheelbarrow. . . . Finally, rabbit adds diversity to your
azine agreed in its piece, “How Rabbits That rabbits are so portable makes diet. The traditional American dinner
Can Save the World.” Even the New York them a great starter enterprise or farmers plate had a lot more than beef, chicken,
Times has hopped aboard the bandwag- and homesteaders without secure land and pork on it. Prior to the widespread
on. The wider world is abuzz about the tenure. Unlike some larger livestock, like implementation of concentrated animal
supposed super protein, and yet very few dairy cows, who require more permanent feeding operations (CAFOs), which heav-
farmers are stepping up to meet the rapid- infrastructure like a milking parlor, or ily focused on the production of these
ly increasing interest in sustainably raised goats who may need extensive fencing sys- three proteins, our dinner tables were
rabbit. I can’t help but wonder why, as I tems, everything you need for a rabbitry laden with a wide variety of proteins, like
see tremendous opportunity for any new can fit right into a U-Haul and be moved venison, bison, pheasant, and of course
and seasoned agrarians willing to learn across town or even cross-country in a jiff. rabbit. To eat rabbit is to eat food that is
this increasingly lost art of raising such Rabbits require minimal start-up cap- rich in heritage.
triple-purpose wonders. With compara-
tively little money, space, or labor, rabbits
can earn you an honest living and return
some much-needed (and demonstrably de-
sirable) diversity back into the markets for
food, fiber, and fertility.
For starters, rabbits are easy to han-
dle. Unlike a lot of other livestock, they’re
small and docile. Well-bred rabbits from
good stock are unaggressive and easy to
pick up and move around. Plus, they aren’t
heavy. Even the largest breed of domestic
rabbit, the Flemish Giant, maxes out at a
very manageable 22 pounds (10 kg).
Rabbits, and everything they require,
are light and portable. This is true in terms
of both daily chores and major moves, like
relocating to a new piece of land. Aside
from mobile rabbit tractors, of which

10 • Chelsea Green Publishing

Artisan Cheesemakers Unite!

Over the past 35 years, the US Food and Drug Administration has pushed for
a mandatory requirement for the use of pasteurized milk in cheesemaking,
claiming a public health risk for raw milk cheese. This scenario is playing out
abroad as well, where creameries are collapsing because they can’t comply
with EU health ordinances. In Ending the War on Artisan Cheese, Catherine
Donnelly defends traditional cheesemaking and exposes overreaching gov-
ernment actions that limit food choice under the guise of food safety. The
following excerpt explains how the loss of artisan cheese is tantamount to
the loss of culture. Paperback • $24.95

The debate over the safety of raw milk

cheese has fiercely divided American chee-
semakers and government regulators and
outraged cheese lovers. Currently, certain
cheeses can only be legally manufactured
from raw milk if they are aged for 60 days
or longer. Aged cheeses have enjoyed a
long and well-documented record of food
safety, and the FDA’s attempts to man-
date pasteurization of all milk intended
for cheesemaking comes despite scientific
evidence supporting this record of safety.
The FDA’s activity has escalated recently,
with the establishment of stringent micro-
biological criteria that only cheeses made
from pasteurized milk can easily meet.
When artisan and farmstead cheesemakers
voiced their concern . . . through their con-
gressional representatives in late 2015, the
FDA temporarily backed down, but these
cheesemakers remain extremely fearful for
their regulatory future.
That is because, besides making our
cheese more bland and the range of avail-
able cheese styles much narrower, a ban
on raw milk cheesemaking would eco-
nomically devastate nonindustrial cheese-
making in the US. This is particularly true
in states like Vermont, New York, Califor-
nia, Washington, and Wisconsin, where
artisan cheese producers use raw milk in
the production of aged cheddar and other
value-added cheeses. The artisan cheese
renaissance is creating precious oppor-
tunities for small-scale dairy farmers and
cheesemakers who are often in rural econ-
omies facing challenging times.
Jasper Hill Farm is one example of an
artisan creamery that is flourishing in the
Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, a region
where, until recently, many barns hadn’t
seen cows in 40 or 50 years because the low
price of milk bankrupted farmers. If arti-
san and farmstead cheesemakers are not
able to differentiate their products from
industrial, pasteurized processed cheeses,
things will head south for them once more.
Mateo Kehler, the cofounder of Jasper Hill,
put his frustration bluntly in the foreword
to The Oxford Companion to Cheese: “I used
to believe that the greatest threat to our
business was a microbiological threat but Dr. Catherine Donnelly is a professor of nutrition
and food science at the University of Vermont.
have learned the microbiological risk can
She won the James Beard Award for Reference and
be managed. I now believe the biggest risk Scholarship for her work as the editor-in-chief of
to the cheeses that are the foundation of The Oxford Companion to Cheese, the most com-
our business is a regulatory risk.” prehensive cheese encyclopedia ever published.

chelseagreen.com • 11
 What If?
An Interview with Rob Hopkins

From What Is to What If author Rob Hopkins is cofounder of Transition Town

Totnes and Transition Network and author of The Power of Just Doing Stuff,
The Transition Handbook, and The Transition Companion. He earned a spot
on Nesta and the Observer’s list of Britain’s 50 New Radicals and was voted
one of the Independent’s top 100 environmentalists—which is all to say he’s
unwilling to accept our inability to get a grip on the climate crisis, let alone
any number of other societal, cultural, and global ills. In the interview that
follows, Hopkins explains what prompted him to start asking What if . . . ?

What set you on this journey to rediscover imagination?
It was really a journey of discovery and connection. I started
reading Bill McKibben and Naomi Klein and other brilliant en-
vironmental thinkers, and they kept saying, “Climate change is
a failure of the imagination,” and then they’d go on to talk about
something else. But I kept thinking, wait now, what about that?
Why are we failing at something that comes so naturally to us
as children? Could it be that at this most critical point in our
planet’s history, when all our resources and senses are required,
we are not well equipped at all? We’re so busy that there’s no
time for our imaginative lives. Our imagination is actually shot
to bits. What should be a taut muscle is actually flaccid and
nonresponsive. There’s something slipping through our fingers
here . . . and when you point it out, it really resonates with peo-
ple. It’s an idea that gets under your skin. If climate change is
anything, it’s the logical, gruesome outcome of when Margaret
Thatcher said, “There is no alternative.” We keep going on do-
ing the things that destroy life because we can’t imagine an al-
ternative. Really? Future generations will say, “You got so stuck
that you couldn’t even imagine it??? Come on!”
We’ve come to see imagination as a luxury. We need to
move to see that it’s absolutely not a luxury, that it should be
fundamental to how our policy—and other aspects of public
and private life—works. We need to create an environment
where our imagination enshrines us. It needs to run through
everything we do. Instead, we’re creating a perfect storm of
imaginary contraction, and that is the worst thing we can
possibly be doing to ourselves, our families, our communities,
countries, the planet as a whole. We’re suffering from pre-trau-
matic stress disorder—a constant background state of anxiety.
When we have anxiety, the hippocampus shrinks by 20 percent
and we lose the ability to think about the future. Our collec-
tive hippocampus is shrinking, too. We’re awash with cortisol
as a society. This is driving the contraction of the imagination.
I became fascinated with finding a place, an actual place, that
could restore this shrunken part of our brains . . . a campus for
the hippocampus.
That’s what brought me to Dundee, Scotland, in 2018 to
visit a project called Art Angel. It was founded in 1997 to help
people with mental health difficulties find their voice through
the arts. In the book, I describe how Art Angel offers an alter-
native, an antidote, even, to mainstream psychiatric treatment,
which many people experience as disempowering to say the
least. At Art Angel, people receive the personal warmth and
connection that should be part of all psychiatric care: being a
part of a community, and the chance to create something tan-
gible and meaningful. Art Angel participants are not called “pa-
tients” or “clients”—they are “artists” because being an artist is
a sign of being human and allows someone who has lost the
ability to make decisions to make them again. In Dundee, I saw
what could happen when the contraction of the imagination
starts to go back the other way. If there’s any role that we need
to be playing, it’s to create these spaces of safety and hope.
What if . . . our leaders prioritized the cultivation of
the national imagination?
Right! What if? At the moment, every government elected says,
“We’re going to make a national innovation strategy.” But in-
novation is something you do when your fundamental model
works. It’s like pizza; you can innovate with pizza because piz-
za is fundamentally great and everyone understands pizza. You
can innovate with different flours and cheeses, but you don’t
need to reimagine pizza because pizza is fantastic. Neoliberal
growth-based economics are not like pizza, and they’re driving
us off the cliff at great speed. When that is the case, we need
imagination more than we need innovation.

12 • Chelsea Green Publishing

 Hardcover • $24.95

So, what would happen if we had leaders who put the culti-
vation of imagination to the front? I spoke to an amazing woman
in Mexico City who runs something within the city’s adminis-
tration that is basically a Ministry of Imagination, which sounds
like something out of a Harry Potter book, but it actually exists
in Mexico, and it’s phenomenal. In Bologna, Italy, they have a
Civic Imagination Office, which sits between the administration
and the people and basically works like a Transition group, firing
up people’s imaginations with possibilities and ideas and then
getting alongside them and helping their ideas happen.
In my book, I try to sketch out what it would look like if
there was a National Imagination Act in which every public or-
ganization that spends public money would have to figure out
how to set up the circumstances under which the imagination
can flourish.

How will we know when our collective and individual

imaginations are working for us again?
Yes, people want to know, “How do you measure imagination?”
Is it possible to say Jill has an imagination score of 8.3 and Rob
has one of 6.7, so Jill wins? That’s not going to work. But we can
ask what it might look like to live in a more imaginative world.
At the end of a chapter called “What If We Considered Imag-
ination Vital to Our Health?” I suggest that we’ll know when
our daily lives feel as though they’re becoming rich with pos-
sibility, full of imaginative thoughts, less anxious, more open
to ideas. I asked Lucy Neal, an artist and Transition activist, for
her thoughts on this. She said, “You could get out of bed and
think, ‘I have no idea what’s going to happen today, but I think it
might be something quite nice. I’ll go ’round the corner and have
a look.’ There would be joy in the air, and joy is very radical . . .
because it connects us all to life, and life is enthusiastic for life.”

What’s your dream for this book’s impact? How do

you want it to be used?
I hope it will kickstart conversations and help people reevaluate
education and their relationship to technology and their rela-
tionship to the future. I hope it leads to activists making their
activism more playful and inspired. I hope it becomes an antidote
to the growing sense of despondence, and an argument for why
that attitude runs the risk of becoming a self-fulfilling prophesy.
I hope it unlocks a whole different way of looking at things.

chelseagreen.com • 13
The Power of Direct Action
An Interview with Lisa Fithian

Lisa Fithian has shut down the CIA. She has disrupted the World Trade Or-
ganization and camped in a ditch with Gold Star mom and protester of the
Iraq War, Cindy Sheehan. She has stood her ground in Tahrir Square, occu-
pied Wall Street, marched in the streets of Ferguson, and walked in solidarity
with tribal leaders at Standing Rock. Now in her fifth decade of anti-racist
organizing, Fithian doesn’t intend to stop fighting. Her book, Shut it Down:
Stories from a Fierce, Loving Resistance, gets at the roots of her powerful, un-
stoppable activism, and why each person’s unalienable right to resist fiercely
and, yes, lovingly is more important now than ever before. Paperback • $19.95

This book helps focus what I believe is at
the core of each successful uprising: how
to build crisis in a way that’s humane and
loving. It’s about courage despite fear, and
love for one another in the face of hate.
Fear is our greatest demobilizer. It makes
us more vulnerable to negative forces. But
when we come from a place of love, we are
grounded, connected, and open. Many are
living in denial as the world comes down
around us. We are reacting, feeling over-
whelmed and powerless, instead of acting
with creativity, power, and love. The ques-
tion is how do we go on the offense?
Explain your ideas behind insti-
gating “crisis and chaos” to build a
movement. What can anyone gain
from what sounds like things we try
to avoid?
In living systems there is fundamental
chaos. We need it. It’s the space where new
things can emerge. When shit gets bad, we
realize things need to change. We either
resist or close down. To face the chaos to
come, inoculation is key—creating an en-
vironment suitable for growth. You need
to prepare people for what to expect so
they don’t back down. It helps them un-
derstand their options, and their anger
and grief. If we’re in denial about those
feelings, they show up in unhelpful ways.
Positive feedback fosters more change,
while negative feedback reinforces the sta- real with one another. We can’t hide. We
tus quo. In organizing, I embrace the posi- can’t live in that ego state of trying to be
tive whenever possible. Our limbic system something we’re not. We have to be rooted
is hardwired to see the danger, the threat. in solidarity and mutual aid. I’m not here
The government knows this and creates to save you. I’m here to be in solidarity
all kinds of rational and irrational fears to with you. Our liberation is bound up to-
keep us demobilized, vulnerable. But are gether. This journey we’re on is each and
we really unsafe? Is this a true threat? Our every one of us doing our own healing.
agency is our power, so we must learn to Yet we’re interdependent. We can’t do it
distinguish between being uncomfortable alone. Movement work is the same. It’s a
and being unsafe. This is especially true lifelong process that we keep showing up
for white people, who often confuse dis- for. We’re a big extended family on a long
comfort with a threat. It’s good prac-
tice to ask ourselves, “Is this fear real
or a triggered socialized response?”
This is where good strategic organiz-
ing comes in. We can anticipate, pre-
pare, and create conditions that keep
us in our power no matter what the
government does.
What kinds of networks and
alliances are the most effective
for creating change?
What we need are authentic relation-
ships, whomever they’re with. I think
shared power networks are the most
effective way to build movements, and
alliances can be a part of that. Cultural
transformation is required to move us
away from power-driven ways of re-
lating and toward authentic ways of
relating. Alliances aside, we have to be Lisa’s first arrest.

14 • Chelsea Green Publishing

road. And our paths keep crossing. A key
piece of Indigenous wisdom asks us to be
in right relationship, and many of our cur-
rent movement structures are not. This is
where change needs to happen.

How can we avoid resistance

fatigue? How do you sustain your
personal motivation and enthusi-
asm in the face of what can feel like
impenetrable forces of power?
I’m really clear on what I believe. When I
train, one of my goals is to ignite people’s
belief in what’s possible. Once you feel
your own power in a beloved community,
there’s no going back. We have to be inten-
tional about building cultures that keep us
human and help us care for one another
. . . cultures of belonging that accept us for
who we are. We don’t learn from feeling
guilty or being shamed; this stifles growth
and distances us. When I take action, I
make sure it is welcoming, colorful, beau-
tiful, uplifting because that’s part of the
magic. If we’re not having fun doing this,
we’re missing an essential part of change.
Joy. Inspiration. Love. When you work
from the positive, you create the possibility
for something more powerful to emerge.

You are a white, anti-racist organiz-

er. How do you “own your privilege”
and use it for good.
Be honest and real. Recognize your priv-
ilege and use it strategically. Don’t go in
assuming you know about other people’s
lived experience. Listen more than talk. Ed-
ucate yourself. Keep showing up. As white
people, we have a choice whether or not to
not deal with our white supremacy, but if
we don’t, we continue to be sick at some
level. I am learning to see myself as an ac-
complice, not an ally. I, too, have skin in
this game. The quality of my life is directly
connected to the quality of everyone’s life I
come into contact with. Don’t assume that
what you can do is needed, savior style. We
want to be of use, to change what is wrong,
right now. People of color have a different
perspective and experience. They’ve been
abused and exploited for a long time and
have a lot of healing to do. Things won’t
change overnight. White people must un-
derstand this is life work, that we have the
power, access, and resources to make the
injustice visible and undo our part in it. This
involves learning to give stuff away—mon- Top left, Lisa at a janitor sit-in; top right, call to
ey, time, resources, information, access. It’s protest poster; bottom, Lisa leading a training.
a choice of no longer being complicit with
white supremacy and capitalism. It’s shed-
ding all the trappings of our ego. And it’s
liberating to give it away! The measure of
the quality of your life is not in what you
have but in what you do and give to others.
How has your civil disobedience
changed who you are?
It’s given me the confidence to act with
courage despite my fears. It has taught me
to believe in myself, in people, and that to-
gether we can change things. It has given
me a sense of wealth even though I have
no money. It has helped me to understand
my privilege. It has taught me that as we
change ourselves, we change the world.

chelseagreen.com • 15
 Bringing Health Back to Health Care
An Interview with Travis Christofferson

The United States is the sickest nation in the Western world. Despite modern
innovations in science, our health care system is broken. In Curable, science
journalist and health care advocate Travis Christofferson asks an important
question: What if the roots of the health care crisis are systemic and psychological,
perpetuated not only by corporate influence, but by deeply entrenched patterns
of irrational thought—and how does this implicate the very scientific research and
data that doctors rely on to successfully treat their patients? He demands that
we recognize health care as a badly organized system, which is inherently fixable.

Atul Gawande said, “The system is broken, and better What I’m interested in is how we release physicians from
is possible.” How is better possible? the structural and administrative minutiae and bullshit so they
can be freed up to apply their human intuition to individual
There is a massive amount of over treatment, and variation in
patient scenarios, and then pair that intuition with their ex-
that treatment. There are many different electronic health re-
tensive, very specialized knowledge base. It’s the interplay and
cords (EHRs) for notes, prescriptions, and billing. The second
information exchange—the mutualism between these two
problem is that doctors see clinical pathways and “best practice
types of knowing—that will result in the best doctor-patient
protocols” as a straightjacket that limits their treatment op-
relations, the highest quality information sharing, the most
tions, when, in fact, they’re very effective at establishing best
valuable knowledge building for all parties, the most accurate
practices for different treatment scenarios—the best time to
diagnoses and effective treatments, dramatically increased re-
put in a stent, for example—which lessens mistakes. The data
covery rates, a much more enjoyable health care experience for
is clear that establishing best practice does work, while still al-
patients, and greater professional gratification for doctors—not
lowing for human intuition. I’m talking about the underutilized
to mention the “softer” rewards of making a positive difference
ultra-basics: repurposing already existing drugs, vigilant hand
all around.
washing, use of checklists. The absurd simplicity of a checklist
As it stands, physicians are practicing under a huge cloud
paired with the enormous impact of life-saving . . . it should be
of uncertainty. Largely, they’re selling an illusion of control.
a no-brainer! But doctors often don’t like checklists. It often
And we, to our detriment, buy right into it. Our health system
has to do with ego. You can’t just say to a highly educated, expe-
is basically operating in the Dark Ages.
rienced physician, “Do it my way.” They need to be shown the
data that proves the simple things work.
Meanwhile, doctors are overworked, going from patient
to patient all day. And they are long days. They get hungry,
tired, irritable, and understandably taxed—even annoyed at the
expectation that every patient should be their primary focus.
Doctors are only human. They, too, want to go home to their What simple solution should we implement to make
families at the end of the day. They need sleep. This profes- our health care system function better?
sional and emotional system-wide fatigue ends up translating The most obvious is to change the way doctors get paid. High
into highly regarded doctors not paying close attention to the quality systems like the Mayo Clinic pay their doctors salaries.
living, breathing people sitting right there in front of them in This dramatically changes how medicine is practiced. When
the exam room. Simple, first-hand observation of a patient—a doctors are compensated in a “fee-for-service” structure, they’re
whole patient—can lead to the most effective “prescriptions” forced to think like businessmen and have to consider which
for health, which often don’t require medication as we’ve come procedure will lose money and which will make money. This
to know it. But lapses in basic observation can lead to misdiag- is a terrible incentive for someone entrusted with the care of
noses of the worst kind. others’ well-being.

16 • Chelsea Green Publishing

What is the future of medicine?
I don’t see how anyone cannot be optimis-
tic about the future of medicine. Sure, we
have immediate problems to surmount,
but beyond that, medicine can only get
better. Technological progress is exponen-
tial, and right now, there’s an intersection
of remarkably powerful tools that have the
ability to profoundly manipulate human
health. For example, we can now sequence
the entire genome of an individual at a
reasonable cost. This was inconceivable
decades ago. Now, imagine this sequenc-
ing technology combined with a new
technology called CRISPR-Cas9 that can
rewrite the genome with exact precision.
This combination has the potential to mit-
igate a tremendous amount of suffering.
Scientists have developed a tech-
nology that can de-age a cell of any age
by co-opting the cellular program that
unfolds at the moment of fertilization—
a process that reboots our DNA to a
ground state, thereby resetting the age
of the cell to biological age zero. This is
not science fiction! This is here today.
It’s only a matter of time before this
technology becomes incorporated into
real-world therapies.
Additionally, we’re beginning to un-
derstand the variables that matter most
to our individual health. This empowers
us to live better, healthier lives. It’s not
difficult to imagine a future where all
human disease is solved, including ag-
ing. This, of course, presents society with
entirely new issues, but any civilization
with this degree of engineering and prob-
lem-solving acuity will be able to solve
these secondary challenges as well.
“This book has profound consequences for how
Hardcover • $24.95
Travis Christofferson’s
Tripping over the Truth
now out in paperback!
In the wake of the Cancer Genome Atlas project’s failure to provide a
legible roadmap to a cure, Travis Christofferson illuminates a promis-
ing blend of old and new perspectives on the disease. Tripping over the
Truth follows the story of cancer’s proposed metabolic origin, from the
vaunted halls of the German scientific golden age to modern laborato-
ries around the world—a journey through time and science that leads
to an unlikely connecting-of-the-dots with profound therapeutic impli-
cations.
Tracing humanity’s struggle to understand the cellular events that
conspire to form malignancy, the book reads like a detective novel, full of
twists and cover-ups, blind-alleys and striking moments of discovery by
people with uncommon vision, grit, and fortitude. Ultimately, Christof-
ferson arrives at a conclusion that challenges everything we thought we
knew, suggesting the reason for the failed war against cancer stems from
a flawed paradigm that categorizes it as an exclusively genetic disease.
For anyone affected by cancer and the physicians who
struggle to treat it, this book provides a fresh
and hopeful perspective. It explores the new
and exciting non-toxic therapies born from
the emerging metabolic theory of cancer that
redraws the battle map, directing researchers
to approach treatment from a different angle,
framing it as a gentle rehabilitation rather than
all-out combat. Tripping over the Truth may one
day prove to be the text that tipped the scales in
favor of beating the unbeatable disease.
Paperback • $18.00
cancer is managed and prevented. Metabolic
therapies will be more effective and less toxic
and have the potential to significantly improve
quality of life and long-term survival for millions
of cancer patients worldwide.”
—Thomas N. Seyfried, PhD, author of
Cancer as a Metabolic Disease
chelseagreen.com • 17
 Cancer and the New Biology of Water
A Cancer Survivor Interviews Dr. Thomas Cowan

Since his bout with throat cancer, ForeWord editor-in-chief Matt Sutherland
has been hot to discover the most reputable integrative health and
wellness books that address alternative approaches to cancer prevention
and treatment. Cancer and the New Biology of Water is one of these books.
The following is an excerpt from Sutherland’s interview
with author Thomas Cowan.

In the book, you clarify the misconception that water
has only three states—liquid, ice, and steam—when,
in fact, there’s a fourth: gel, or “structured” water.
This form of water/gel is what’s inside our cells,
and you credit it with being a carrier of the body’s
life force, the single most important factor for our
well-being. Please tell us how you arrived at this
conclusion?
I arrived at this conclusion mostly by looking at
physiology and what the most important and
successful cancer programs are trying to ac-
complish. Our most important biological func-
tions are to establish voltage or a charge in our
cells, which is accomplished by the intracellular
gel. This allows the cells to assume their proper
spatial orientation which is key to function and
lost in cancer. The intracellular gel also controls
the expression of our DNA, another fundamental
biological function. We are far too focused on the gene
and not how it gets expressed. The expression is a result of its
being acted on by the gel.
And, as I said, really all of the successful cancer programs
of the last 100 years were working with the gels whether they
knew it or not.
lessens. Any non-native EMF (Electromagnetic Field) makes
the water more chaotic, deteriorates the gels, and causes wide-
spread disease.
Why are EMFs so harmful? What other factors do you
think have caused the spike in cancer over the past
100 years?
When you look at cancer incidence over the past 100 years,
there was a spike with the introduction of AM radio,
then another spike with FM radio, then television,
then electronic devices, then 3G and 4G—and the
coming spike with 5G will make the previous
spikes look like child’s play. My four horsemen
of the apocalypse are EMFs, glyphosate/modern
agriculture, vaccines, and school.
You write that healthy, structured water
in the body is infused with “life force.”
Are we getting closer to discovering a way to
source this life force directly?
Yes. People, including me, are busy using energy devices [to di-
rectly enhance the body’s life force], which, while not perfect,
hold great promise for the future of medi-
cine.

What can we do to maintain or improve the health of This interview first appeared in ForeWord
Reviews and has been edited and adapted
our intracellular gel? for this use.
Intracellular gels are formed from two directions: The first is
the quality of the water itself. The second is the [energetic] Thomas Cowan, MD, is the author
forces that act on the water. Gerald H. Pollack proves this with of Vaccines, Autoimmunity, and
experiments in which he suspends a horizontal hydrophilic the Changing Nature of Childhood
Illness and Human Heart, Cosmic
tube in water. If you have water with toxins in it, you get less
Heart. He has served as vice presi-
flow. If sun shines on the water, the flow increases. If you put it dent of the Physicians’ Association
directly on the earth, the flow increases; if you put your hands for Anthroposophic Medicine and
or your dog next to the water, same result. If you put your cell is a founding board member of the
phone or any other wireless device next to the water, the flow Weston A. Price Foundation. Hardcover • $24.95

18 • Chelsea Green Publishing

Answer Hunger with Fastercise

In the United States, more than 35 percent of adults and nearly 17 percent of
children are obese. This is true in spite of our cultural obsession with diets,
exercise fads, and health food. Denis Wilson, MD, faces this issue head-on
with an unprecedented science-backed fitness regimen that’s convenient,
natural, and adaptable to even the busiest modern lifestyle. In The Power of
Fastercise, he draws on the latest medical research to help people lose fat
and preserve muscle through a sustainable practice without rigid dieting.
This fresh, informed look at fitness works with instead of against the body’s
essential need for movement, metabolism, sustenance, and strength. The
following excerpt presents the fundamentals of Wilson’s revolutionary ideas. Paperback • $19.95

Sometimes it can feel as though our bod-

ies are fighting against us. But maybe
we’re just having a big misunderstanding
with our bodies. Some fitness problems
boil down to simple miscommunication.
In recent medical literature, terms such
as signaling, perception, and response are
showing up more and more. This research
shows that our bodies respond to signals
they perceive. Wow. That’s really incredi-
ble when we think about it. Given the right
signals and resources, the human body can
grow, heal, think, sing, dance, paint, run,
jump, and reproduce. The human body
is incredibly complex, yet it is built to re-
spond to simple signals to help make our
lives as easy, successful, and pleasant as
possible, automatically.
Automation is at the base of the mod-
ern technology that has revolutionized
many aspects of our lives. Like the human
body, machines and computers respond to
signals they receive. “If this, then that,” is a
phrase at the heart of computer program-
ming. If this signal is received, then that
action is taken. This automation helps run
the internet, cell phones, cruise control,
air travel, space exploration, an endless ar-
ray of home appliances and fascinating en-
tertainment, and many other convenienc-
es. If we send the right signals by pressing
the right buttons in the right sequence at
the right times under the right conditions,
then wonderful things can happen. How-
“How can we expect to
feel our best unless we
live in harmony with the
way our bodies work?”
—Denis Wilson, MD
ever, if we don’t send the right signals, then
none of the magic of modern technology
happens, which can be disheartening and
frustrating.
The same can be said for the human Denis Wilson, MD, is the author of Wilson’s
body. In fact, I contend that the complex- Temperature Syndrome, Doctor’s Manual for
ity of the automation happening in your Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome, and Evidence-
body on a daily basis far outstrips the tech- Based Approach to Restoring Thyroid Health.
nological “miracles” of computers, smart- As the originator of the WT3 protocol,
phones, and smart homes. There are so he has been educating physicians for over 26
many amazing things that our bodies can years on the use of sustained release T3 in
do automatically. They clean our blood, the treatment of Wilson’s Temperature Syn-
make sure we get enough oxygen, digest drome, a condition in which people exhibit
food, refresh us with sleep, and maintain low thyroid and low body temperature symp-
our body temperature, to name just a few. toms but have normal thyroid blood test re-
Sometimes, though, it can seem that our sults. Dr. Wilson speaks at medical conven-
bodies also gain fat automatically. Imagine tions and medical schools both nationally
if we could send our bodies simple signals and internationally and trains physicians on
the use of herbs and nutrients.
that directed them to automatically lose
fat and build muscle instead. Fortunately,
that is possible, and in this book, I explain
in detail both the science and the practical
actions you can take to send such signals
to your body.

chelseagreen.com • 19
Notes from an Editor

London Calling
by Matt Haslum, Managing Director, UK

Chelsea Green Publishing UK Ltd has been up and running for a little over a
year now. It’s amazing to see how an employee-owned, free-spirited publish-
ing house nestled in rural Vermont, now also situated a stone’s throw from
Covent Garden in Central London, is taking root and flourishing.
Some context: The UK publishing scene is time talking to farmers and producers in
a dynamic, crowded marketplace where ed- regenerative agriculture and food commu-
itors jostle and agents hustle, and there re- nities, a powerful message keeps coming
ally is a constant rotation of Bridget Jones– through: Diversity breeds resilience.
esque, prosecco-fueled book launches of Diversity breeds resilience.
varying degrees of glamour. Despite con- I think this perfectly encapsulates why
stant challenges, British bookshops con- Chelsea Green is such a good fit for the
tinue to thrive, and the publishing land- UK publishing scene, and more broadly,
scape is flourishing—for now. Yet for all why independent publishing with vision
the books and all those publishing houses, and passion is crucial to a healthy publish-
there isn’t a UK publisher doing what we ing ecosystem. We are the diversity in the
do: working directly with practitioners, ex- marketplace. Our books show how mak-
perts, and craftspeople to create books that ing other, better choices for the world can
help people to change their lives, health, restore resilience and self-sufficiency to
and environments for the better. our lives, as well as an intangible sense of
Our mission is simple. We bring the fulfillment.
best of our US books to UK readers, and Given the right conditions, any book, Top, Matt Haslum on holiday; middle, Rosie
we’re working to develop our own ‘UK like any seed, will not only break through Baldwin and Sara Bir at the Pebble Festival;
originals’ publishing programme. We bring and grow, but thrive and stand out amongst bottom, the Chelsea Green booth at the
over US authors and create bookshop and its peers. Abergavenny Food Festival.
event tours for them, introducing them to
keen British readers, growers, fermenters,
foragers, and health practitioners. This
approach is bearing considerable fruit. We
have Sandor Katz visiting from Tennessee,
and he will be headlining the Abergaven-
ny Food Festival in Wales, one of the UK’s
premiere food festivals with over 40,000
attendees. We’re delighted to be publishing
Brigit Strawbridge Howard and Rob Hop-
kins—two UK originals—this autumn, and
their books (Dancing with Bees and From
What Is to What If ) are being received bril-
liantly on both sides of the Atlantic.
Since joining Chelsea Green, I have
attended more food and farming confer-
ences than I ever thought I’d attend in my
life (read “none” for farming). Spending

20 • Chelsea Green Publishing

The Art of Tying Wreaths
From Carving Out a Living on the Land
By Emmet Van Driesche

Hardcover • $28.00

The art of tying wreaths is about con- For mediums, for example, I tend to cut wreath up slightly in my right hand, which
trolled chaos. Too perfect, and they look at every branch junction, leaving as many also holds each bundle in place, while my
lifeless. Too uneven and they look unsure pairs together as are evenly matched, to re- left hand pulls each turn tight in a straight-
of themselves, having lost their pleasing duce the number of stems I need to handle. armed downward motion. . . .
symmetry. The trick is to ensure that each For large wreaths I often leave every other The wreath is formed as each bundle
bunch of greens that forms the wreath branch junction, and for smalls I often cut overlaps two-thirds of the previous bun-
falls within certain parameters for size and each branch junction apart. These trans- dle, skewed so that one-third of the width
length, and once that benchmark is met, to late into pieces that are roughly 6, 8, and 12 is inside the ring and two-thirds is outside.
avoid making them completely uniform. inches long for small, medium, and large. When building each bundle in my hand be-
I prefer crimped rings, as they are cheap I take care to have the cut portion fall fore wrapping, I make sure the top branches
and, unlike smooth rings, keep bunches nicely onto the pile on my workbench so are the best quality I have, as they will be
from sliding around. I also use #24 green that all the branches are oriented face up the most visible. Scruffy pieces go all the
coated wire, which is strong enough to with their stems toward me. This makes way in the back to fill out the density while
keep the wreath together without being it easier to pick up the right amount for remaining hidden. When I cut the greens, I
overkill and is camouflaged well against bundles. . . . If all my pieces fall within make sure to cut at branch junctions so that
the greenery. For my small, medium, and the length parameters, all I need to do is there are no long cut stems sticking up that
large wreaths, I use 6-, 12-, and 16-inch di- pick up six to eight pieces, bunch them in will be visible in the finished wreath.
ameter rings (15, 30, and 40 cm). The rule my right hand, and hold them to the ring The last few bundles that complete
of thumb is that the finished wreath will while I wrap the wire with my left. I start the wreath get their stems tucked under-
extend past the ring by about 6 inches on the wreath by twisting the wire several neath the branches of the first bundles,
each side, for a total of a 1½-, 2-, and 2½- times around the ring, and then spiral it and when I can’t fit any more on the ring, I
foot finished diameter (46, 61, and 76 cm) three times around each bundle, pulling flip the wreath over, snip off the extra stem
for the completed wreaths. tight each time. . . . I find it easiest to come length of these last few bundles, and tie a
Before tying wreaths, I like to prep a big up through the center of the wreath and quick hanging loop with the wire that also
stack of greens, preferably enough for sev- wrap down around the outside. I hold the keeps it from unraveling.
eral wreaths. Picking each branch up from
the pile by the cut end, I start snipping off
appropriately sized lengths, methodically
working my way down toward my hand.
For each size of wreath, there is a length
range to shoot for: small wreaths, 6–8 inch-
es (15–20 cm); mediums, 8–10 inches (20–25
cm); larges, 10–12 inches (25–30 cm). These
lengths translate to different branch junc-
tions. Your typical balsam branch is per-
fectly symmetrical, with smaller branches
pairing off a central stem. Each of these
branches, in turn, is composed of a central
stem with even smaller paired branches.
These branch junctions are a consistent
distance apart where they meet the central
stem, making them convenient measures
of length for the different sized wreaths.

chelseagreen.com • 21
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 “ WHAT IF we wasted a lot less energy and
generated most of what we do use from renewable
sources? WHAT IF we made refugees feel
welcome and supported in their newly adopted
homelands? WHAT IF we measured the econ-
omy with metrics other than how much bigger it is
from one year to the next? WHAT IF we could
think about car-free cities, no prisons, a more equal
distribution of wealth without our brains getting
completely discombobulated? WHAT IF we
revived our collective imagination, and asked
WHAT IF in great abundance—starting now?”
—ROB HOPKINS

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