The Viking Ring
Western Washington University's webring. Born of Technical Writing with Proffessor Brown. Dedicated to sustainability, autonomy, and self-discovery.
Code of Conduct Join the Western RingLand Acknowledgement
Western Washington University stands on the unceded ancestral lands of Coast Salish tribes. A people that are still here, continuing to honor and bring to light their ancient heritage.
Our final project is based on the indigenous Three Sisters agricultural technique. While the extent of Three Sisters cultivation among Coastal Salish peoples is unclear to us, we still owe a debt to the collective First Nations for their insight. By combining western engineering and indigenous agriculture, we hope to spotlight a modern alternative to extractive capitalism: local subsistence farming -- strengthened by renewable energy and energy applications.
Decentralization and Food Production
Team Four Corners selected "Decentralize" for our final project topic. But decentralize alone is an adverb, not a deliverable object or action. After debating mesh networks, local consumption, and other executions, we settled on designing a micro-garden with solar powered grow lights and water filtration. With exclusively electrical engineering and chemistry majors on Team Four Corners, energy and water purity are topics we have experience and a professional stake in.
By locally sourcing food, we could cut out the estimated 6-25% of food production GHG emissions arising from transportation. Additionally, self-reliance would broaden the people's confidence, knowledge, and empathy with nature.
The Viking Ring hosts the design requirements and general conclusion. To further decentralize our project, detailed analysis of the four modules -- Power Generation, Power Storage, Lighting, and Water Filtration -- are stored independently on sites managed by Four Corners team members. We allow for dissenting opinions, future expansion, and makes our final project accessible past the end of class -- i.e., useful to society at large. The Viking Ring site can be thought of as a sum of vectors and, potentially, the first transparent expression of a General Will.
The Garden
For specific design requirements, we selected an 8'x10' plot of land and a $4,000 budget. Companion planting the Three Sisters -- winter squash, maize, and climbing beans -- nourishes the soil, deters pests & weeds, and overall maximizes the yield of the garden. Designing a purposeful garden was a team priority, but you could also plant flowers if you need independence from an overpriced florist.
In eighty square feet, we can plant three pairs of 8' rows with a 1.5' walking aisle between each pair. That's pretty dense! To cultivate enough food to be worth our while, it has to be. Our growing season is limited to May through September (harvesting in October). Due to lower temperatures & insolation, an outdoors good garden was not considered sustainable except during the spring and summer months.
The actual techniques of seeding, growing, and harvesting the garden are beyond the scope of our analysis. Websites like Native Seeds provide ample direction here. Rest assured, the Web Ring will be updated if we ever put the modular micro-garden into practice (first, we have to put together $4k...).
The Modules
Summary
The Four Corners garden ultimately priced out to $2,395 plus incidentals. We estimate that the alotted 8x10' plot of land could keep one grown adult in fresh produce throughout the five month growing season.