9969 Fibershed

Contents Introduction 1 1: The Cost of Our Clothes

17

2: The Fibershed Movement

43

3: Soil-to-Soil Clothing and the Carbon Cycle

79

4: The False Solution of Synthetic Biology

109

5: Implementing the Vision with Plant-Based Fibers

129

6: Implementing the Vision with Animal Fibers and Mills

173

7: Expanding the Fibershed Model

199

Conclusion: A Future Based in Truth

221

Acknowledgments 225 Appendix A : Ingredients to Watch 227 Appendix B : Fibershed Affiliates 237 Resources 249 Suggested Reading 259 Notes 261 Index 271

Introduction

O

n an early morning in July in 2010, I stood at the northern edge of the San Francisco Bay looking out over a stretch of fog filtering through the Golden Gate Bridge. I was waiting for a group of children who were part of an ecological arts class I had developed for our local science museum. Within moments I heard the sound of small feet scampering across cement floors, their voices echoing through the high-ceilinged World War Two–era hallways. This was the day we made our annual field trip to the old fortifications to observe the Mission blue butterfly habitat that was being revived among the remains of the war bunkers. I usually looked forward to this walk together, but that morning I was overwhelmed with concern.

A few moments earlier I had called a company in Santa Cruz that focused on growing specialty plant starts to see how their experiments with my indigo seed were doing. For several years I had been growing organic indigo to produce a natural blue dye for my textile creation work.

By 2010 the project had expanded to the small farm scale, and there was no longer enough space in my apartment for the seedling transplant trays. To implement this scaling-up efficiently, I leased a small plot of farmland twenty minutes away. I also decided to test the germination rate and the compatibility of my seeds with mechanized plant-start equipment. The company in Santa Cruz offered the kind of help I needed for expanding the project while allowing me to concentrate on my paid work as an environmental educator. On the call that morning, I learned that the company’s second germination test had gone well—so well, in fact, that the company had already shipped the indigo plants out—except they had no idea which farm they had been sent to.

I knew the tiny seedlings in their one-inch-deep containers weren’t going to live long without being watered, and the recent history of my efforts ran through my mind as I imagined the plants being delivered to

Fibershed an unknown location and withering rapidly. Four years of seed saving, countless days of seed cleaning, and my dream of creating a completely homegrown fermented indigo dye for vat production would all be lost if those seedlings went without water for even a few hours.

Fortunately I received a call a short while later from color-grown cottonseed breeder Sally Fox, a colleague who lived approximately two hours northeast of me in the Capay Valley, near Sacramento. Sally had received a message that morning from a neighboring organic farm. The caller told her that an unidentified set of plant trays had been delivered to their site along with their tomato and bell pepper seedlings. He suspected the plants were part of Sally’s plant breeding projects, and Sally thought that they were likely part of my indigo project (how this all worked out so well, I’ll never quite understand, but I’m eternally grateful to them). I called the farm owner, Tim Mueller, who expressed an interest in both the plants and the project and told me he was happy to keep the remaining indigo plants watered in his greenhouse. What did he mean, remaining plants? The rest, he said, had already been planted. I was very relieved to hear the crop had found its way to the soil, even if that soil was two and a half hours from my home.

That weekend I visited Riverdog Farm and was heartened to see an integrated crop-and-livestock system at work. Chicken tractors dotted the fields, pomegranate hedgerows lined the dirt roads, and a large peach tree hovered alongside the office. After I arrived, Tim jumped into my car, and we drove down the road to leased acreage where rows of bell peppers had recently been planted. There among the food crops were two long rows of indigo, totaling six thousand plants. I’d never seen indigo grown like this before. It didn’t look like my garden, of course, where I had begun the indigo project years ago, but it didn’t resemble the small farm I was managing, either. These meticulously planted, 150-foot-long rows were a hopeful sight.

Standing there, looking at the indigo in its new home, I was filled with the inquiry that Michael Pollan expressed in his book Botany of Desire, a question that arises from looking more closely at the relationships between humans and the species that we cultivate and help to multiply: “Who is domesticating whom?” The rich and nontoxic shade of blue that Persicaria tinctoria yields has motivated energetic human support over the centuries to expand the terrain where this crop was originally cultivated. By working its magic on humans, the plant has spread its genetics far and wide—as I was now helping to do. As a result of Riverdog Farm’s efforts, I was now assured of having enough material to create the critical mass of dried leaf—440 pounds—needed for composting in order to make what is known in Japan as sukumo, a naturally • 2 •

Introduction

The Grow Your Jeans project involved hours of dedication by team members. Rebecca Burgess grew and processed the indigo used to dye Sally Fox’s organic cotton yarn, shown here.

grown leaf concentrate of temperate-climate indigo that can be used year-round for indigo dyeing work.

For the rest of the summer, I happily harvested and processed the crop with my friends, and for the next two years, we grew indigo at River­dog Farm, successfully achieving the critical mass of dried leaf we needed from each harvest. We were able to build a stock of composted indigo leaf that has now been used by the Berkeley Art Museum, in an experimental program at clothes maker Levi Strauss, in a prototype project for Fibershed called Grow Your Jeans, as well as in a range of dye workshops that have been offered to the local public. The indigo project is now in its seventh year and continues to grow, even in the face of California’s drought conditions, to include a number of new farmers and a new generation of Persicaria tinctoria stewards.

Taking on the responsibility for introducing (or reintroducing) a new crop like indigo to a community can be a daunting task. But there is • 3 •

Fibershed

Leslie Terzian of TangleBlue wove the cloth for the Grow Your Jeans Project.

a deep, almost cellular response in humans when we take on this type of work, 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, water, 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, however, we create opportunities to build new relationships 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 access to safe, local, nutritious food as a culture, we have largely overlooked the production of fibers and dyes that make up our clothing. In fact, when people hear the word clothing, most automatically think, Oh, I don’t care about fashion, and assume it has nothing to do with them. But clothing—like food— matters because we directly engage with it every single day. Clothing is a multifaceted industry that involves many of the same supply-chain dynamics as the food industry, starting with its roots in agriculture and dependence upon the land.

• 4 •

Introduction

Models from the Grow Your Jeans fashion show pose for a group photo.

Left to right: Celeste Thompson, Leslie Channel, Thyme Francis, Dario Slavazza, Alycia Lang, Sally Fox, Sophia Zuchowski.

• 5 •