Guest Post by permaculture yogi Sarah Keown. Sarah is a yoga instructor in Saint Louis, MO and works for Real Earth Design.
Every morning I have a ritual that I start my day with. I wake up, light a candle and incense, and sit on my meditation cushion, watching my breath until the incense goes out. When I light the candle, then sparking the incense with the flame, I wish for peace and well-being to envelop the hearts, minds, and bodies of others. The candle is central to this daily ritual.
My partner and I inherited a honeybee hive when we moved into our new rental home last year. It was relatively neglected, and lacked essential components for the health, and ultimately the success, of the hive. While we were unable to save the hive, we were able to collect what honey wasn’t robbed by other bees.
We set the whole comb in a paint strainer and let the honey drip through into a bucket on a hot sunny day, pressing the remainder through with our hands. This left us with a giant ball of beeswax that we knew exactly what we wanted to do with.
I’d processed comb before for making salve, but was excited to take on the more careful task of candle-making. The comb sat for many months as our busy lives carried us away. Enter the global COVID-19 pandemic and everything was forced to stop. My job shifted and I found myself spending almost every hour at home. It was a blessing in disguise. I finally had time and energy to take on all the things I didn’t have time for, including candle-making! I didn’t have fancy tools or supplies, but was able to use what was on hand to get the job done.
Wax separating in water using the ever useful yogurt tub
I filled our tallest pot halfway with water and brought it to a simmer. I took a third of the comb we had in a paint strainer and let it simmer in the water. As the comb heated up, the wax melted through the strainer and into the water. After 20-30 minutes of squeezing out all the wax, I composted what was left in the strainer and poured the water and wax mixture into yogurt cups. I repeated this step with the other two thirds of the wax until all of it was processed. The wax and water separated almost immediately. As it cooled in the quart yogurt cups, the wax hardened on top of the water. After it fully cooled, I poured out the water and patted dry the thin discs of wax that were left on top. At this point the wax still had a lot debris from the honeycomb in it.
Beeswax discs before final filtration
To get the wax pure enough for candles I melted and filtered it one more time. I took all the wax discs and melted them in a double boiler. I then strained the wax through a reusable coffee filter into yet another infinitely useful quart yogurt cup.
In addition to the wax from the hive, I’d also been saving all of the remnant beeswax candles we burned from our morning ritual over the years. I filtered a second batch with those bits and pieces. It was amazing how much wax was generated from that alone.
Beeswax blocks fully purified and ready to make candles
With all of the wax fully purified, it was finally ready to be poured into candles. At this point I had been using our cooking pots to melt the wax and it was quite a pain to get all the beeswax off the pots after use. I ended up ordering a pot that was specifically made for melting wax, which made things A LOT easier. I also bought premade wicks and a pillar candle mold.
I melted both blocks of wax together in a double boiler, which took about 30-40 minutes. While it was melting, I dipped the metal bottoms of the candle wicks and placed them in the center of the mason jars I used for some of my candles. Setting up the pillar candle was a little different and didn’t require a metal tab (it’s important to oil the inside of the mold so it’s easier to get the candle out once cooled).
After everything was set up and the wax was melted, I poured it into the pillar mold and mason jars. I made sure to pour slowly and with control so the wicks stayed in place. After I poured, I made sure to adjust the wick on each candle so it was in the middle. It’s also important to keep the wick taut, but not too taut that you pull the metal bottom off. After the candles fully cooled, I cut the wicks to ¼” in height.
Finished beeswax candles
Through each step of the candle-making process I felt a connection to the nature in my neighborhood and a deep appreciation for what bees do in the world. Each candle I made was imbued with a promise to acknowledge and support these life-giving creatures.
Now my morning ritual is that much more special since the candle I light is a candle I made. I think of the darkness that exists in the world during these pandemic times, and I’m reminded of all the bees out there buzzing and dancing about. In addition to the many other functions they serve, the bees let there be light. For me, and by extension through my candle lighting wish each morning for the world, this light is right on time.
Guest post by Dr. Roslynn Brain McCann. She traveled the USA in 2019 interviewing leading permaculture figures and we will be sharing many of those interviews over the course of 2020.
How can we play a more active
role in reversing the degenerative patterns of inequality in gender and race
within our society? What are our internal and external dialogues, and how can
we shift those in a way that cultivates regeneration? In the weeks after my
interview with Karryn Olson, I have been thinking through these tough yet
important questions.
The people care ethic in
permaculture is front and center for Karryn, where her grounding question is “how
do we support, especially women, to move boldly forward as permaculture leaders
and into permaculture-related careers?” This question stemmed from her personal
life experiences, but especially from her role as a Permaculture Design
Certificate (PDC) teacher with the Finger Lakes Permaculture Institute: “I
would prep really hard…and I would feel like I would show up and I would teach
a knock-out section and the comments at the end of the day would be things like
‘Karryn’s such a good mom.’” It was exhausting.
Karryn made it a goal to change
this, “I really wasn’t going to the ‘it’s because I’m a woman’ or the ‘victim
place’. I literally did this experiment
where I tried different things for three years. First, I would prep twice as
hard as the year before. My next thought was, oh, it is because I go home at
night to my family. I’m going to stay, I’m going to be here at the course, so I
was the first person who greeted people, and I would be there 16 hours on my
day teaching. I made sure to teach really great technical content, too. Then I
literally had a man make a comment to me that he was going to ask my two male
colleagues a question that helped me understand he didn’t see me as a leader of
the organization. It was actually a wonderful moment, because I was like ‘it’s
not me!’, ‘IT’S NOT ME!’. It was so liberating.” And I kept wondering “Am I the
only person going through this?’ It makes you feel crazy, it really does.”
She then put out a call to
interview 20 women about their experiences in permaculture. Across the board,
difficulties were encountered ranging from sexual harassment to belittling,
regardless of how incredible the women were. This was not in an effort to put
down the permaculture movement, but to name ongoing degenerative patterns in
our society.
Although being a good mom is a compliment, so is being a good teacher, a good leader, a knowledgeable expert. And women have a lot to bring to the leadership table. “Studies talk about how women are actually really even better leaders because we are better at creating alliances. When we have more diverse people at the table, women are better at bringing in people and building bridges with people who have been disenfranchised, you get more innovation when you are more diverse. All of those types of skills are super important.”
Yet, as Karryn highlights in her Permaculture Activist publication from 2013, “According to the White House Project, in their ‘Benchmarking Women’s Leadership’ report, women receive the majority of all college degrees, make up almost half of the workforce, and are well represented in entry- and mid-level positions in most sectors of the economy. However, women occupy on average only 18% of top leadership positions (and numbers are lower among women of color). Further, the wage gap for women means that they make 78.7 cents for every dollar earned by men, and that gap widens with age.” In our interview, she elaborated, “leadership, we see as an archetypically male thing. So, women are judged negatively if we are too male, and negatively if we are too feminine. We get this double whammy…micro-disadvantages.”
The solution is not in putting men down – that would be a degenerative approach. Instead, we need to be having conversations about why is this the case, and how do we change this? What are the invisible structures at play in our body language? In our internal dialogues? Our external dialogues?
At 30%, something wonderful happens with leadership dynamics. As stated in her article, “when 30% of the people at power tables are women, organizations reach a tipping point. Women can then change agendas, inform goals, allocate resources, and impact the style in which goals are achieved. Cultural stereotypes are altered so that women are no longer seen as women, but as professionals…‘What is the landscape for women in permaculture in our circles?’ If not at parity, we can set policy to have 30% of our boards, teaching teams, speakers lists, etc., occupied by qualified women. They are out there, and we can find them by replacing the question, ‘Who do I know?’ with ‘Who don’t I know?’”
“It’s not just about how strong
our skills are or how professional we are…when you try super hard over a period
of time and you can’t get traction, it erodes your confidence.” So Karryn
applies her skills in various ways to help others, especially women, rebuild
their confidence. In addition to co-founding Finger Lakes Permaculture
Institute, she teaches at Ithaca College and started SEEDS and Regenepreneurs.
The following is a summary of each:
SEEDS: Strategy, Education, & Ecological Design for
Sustainability “combines coaching services with the
typical consultation approach. Instead of just “dropping knowledge,” and
leaving folks to struggle, Karryn works with people (often her clients are
women) to deepen their understanding of design and permaculture, so they can
create their own, robust permaculture design for their site, but with the
support of a professional.”
Regenepreneurs: This is Karryn’s main focus now—because
in talking with women, they were doing great work but too many weren’t earning
a living from it. So Karryn dove into learning all she could about
entrepreneurship, and supports people to learn those skills but from a deeply
regenerative approach. She does this through group programs and one on one
coaching.
Ithaca College Permaculture: Karryn designed and
installed with students Ithaca College’s first permaculture garden, located near Williams
Hall. She teaches the associated
course Gardens, Ecological Design and Practice.
Finger Lakes Permaculture Institute (FLPCI): Karryn
co-founded this in 2005. Over the years, FLPCI has offered workshops, study
groups, apprentice programs, and Permaculture Design Certificate courses, all
based around sustainable and ecological design. FLPCI became a 501c3 a few
years ago, and is building board capacity and focusing its efforts on an annual
Permaculture Weekend.
Food garden at Ithaca College
At Ithaca college, Karryn’s
1-credit course on Gardens, Ecological
Design and Practice gets students outside of the classroom. Homework
involves working in groups in the gardens. In another course, students made a “business
case” for permaculture on campus, given the stronghold of campus
mow-blow-and-go landscaping. “We actually did the math…the average lawn mower
running one hour is the equivalent to running seven cars at 55 miles an
hour…then we talked about ‘what is the embedded energy of the pesticides,
herbicides, fertilizers’…[referencing adjacent typical campus landscaping] all
of this is put in and ripped out multiple times. They bring in huge loads of
mulch and for a while, they were actually raking up all the mulch from last
year and putting in new mulch. It’s kind of nuts…if we were ever to have a
carbon tax, this is a liability, this approach. It’s actually a mismanagement
issue.” Through this type of work, she is helping students rethink our standard
mode of operating.
But it is through her newest
consulting endeavor, Regenepreneurs, where she is currently dedicating the most
time, excitement and energy. Karryn created Regenepreneurs as she was
encountering numerous people with amazing skills, but without the know-how of
how to apply those in a way that is most strategic given their life situations.
“We need to fast-track regenerative solutions.”
The concept of a regenerative
right livelihood is adapted from E.F. Schumacher and his work Buddhist Economics. “A lot of people are
trying to figure out ‘What is my path? How do I do the good work?’ I know when
I took my first permaculture course back in 1994 it was like ‘oh, I’ll become a
teacher, a designer because that was all I saw as the possibilities and I
started realizing ‘wow, you can take these skills and you could apply them in
unlimited amounts of directions if you understood the entrepreneurial parts of
it.” Helping others understand those entrepreneurial applications of
permaculture lies at the heart of Karryn’s current work, developing “skills to
co-create a regenerative future.”
Her ultimate goal? “I want people
to walk away being like ‘we can do this.’ So it’s really about their own
thriving, but then also having an audacious vision of what thriving could look
like for our communities and our future, our kids’ futures.”
As a woman, I connect with and am
touched by Karryn’s efforts, not to mention her magnetic personality. She is an
inspirational leader working to shift deeply rooted degenerative paradigms.
Something she said in the interview resonated deeply with me; During her
undergraduate studies, a male professor walked in carrying a baby and she
thought “how cool!” But then, she asked herself how she would react if it was a
woman: “What, couldn’t you find childcare?” That opened her eyes about how
“gender schemas” are deeply ingrained in all of us. These are hard realities to
face and they are things we all in some way or another have experienced and
personally furthered, and we need to be awake to it in order to set
regenerative patterns for people care in our culture. These conversations and
issues show the potential of permaculture beyond the landscape – fostering
regenerative hope in a time where we need it most.
Permaculture Institute Inc co-founder and original permaculturist. Scott has been teaching Permaculture globally for over 30 years. Full of wisdom and astonishing stories from the beginnings, Scott cares deeply about upholding the highest qualities of Permaculture.
