I can hear birds tweeting in the background as Rebecca Burgess describes sericulture as a dynamic and diverse industry. She tells me about different communities she has witnessed producing silk in beautiful, gentle ways. She tells me about a community in China where a whole homestead survived on very little, thanks to integrated systems that made sure everything was used with great efficiency. They had one or two hogs to feed the family for a whole year. They grew mulberry trees to feed the silkworms they were raising and, in the shade of the mulberry trees, they had a vegetable garden where they grew other greens to eat.
They harvested wood from dead mulberry trees to build fires to cook with and to keep the house warm. They captured water in buckets from a stream that flowed past
