Beyond the Garden

...and giving thanks

Most of our blog posts have been about our gardening adventures, for us, a four-season event. It begins with a  spring harvest of over-wintered veggies and foraging from emerging perennials like lovage, chives, and asparagus. This is followed by summer-long tending of the usual and classic garden varieties from cukes to zucchini. In fall there’s garlic planting, and setting up the cold frames and winter is about harvesting those hardy greens.

Although gardening is a big part of our lifestyle, there’s more to it. We’re wannabe homesteaders. Homesteading can include many do-it-yourself activities, and the one right now involves a sawmill. Due to the gracious generosity of a friend, we have borrowed a Wood Mizer band saw mill for cutting our trees into boards.

With big projects in our future we’ve had to take down some trees to make room. Some of these are sugar maples up to about eighteen inches in diameter. Way too precious to be burned as firewood, thanks to the sawmill they are now repurposed as one-inch thick planks. Maple boards may come in handy as they are good for floors, cupboards, and fine furnishings. The first batch of these are now stacked, to let them dry for a couple of years.

And the large pines, some over a hundred feet tall and more than two feet in diameter are too big, clumsy and heavy for the sawmill. These required an investment into a chain saw attachment to pare them into posts and beams. The chain saw mill, with a 36-inch bar, can handle twelve foot lengths that are needed for timber framing. Some eight by ten inch posts are now drying, with more to follow as the big trees come down.

Most of our homestead is forest, and forest will continue to occupy most of the property. When we do have to take down a tree, we don’t want to take it lightly. We want to see it put to good use. Native Americans used the forest with respect and dignity. When a birch tree was cut to provide bark to make a canoe, they thanked the tree for providing this resource. Though we need to remove some trees, we also want to do so with a spirit of respect and thankfulness. That’s our guiding force for everything we do here. -G.H.

Forest to Farm, and Permaculture: What's Happening in the Orchard?

Our orchard is only a handful of trees, one of many ways that it is different from larger commercial ones. We are homesteaders, not farmers, and our goals are less about production than simply being able to grow some healthy trees that will eventually bear fruit. Since we are operating on a very small scale, we have the freedom to experiment with some permaculture ideas. Click here for an earlier post on this. 

A fruit tree and companion plants

A swale is one of many ideas of permaculture, and last year I dug one, click here for the post. The fill has settled in; branches, rotting logs, leaves, and raked-up forest litter, and the swale now serves as a pathway. Beneath the surface, decaying organic matter absorbs water from heavy rains and winter snowfall. The moisture then leaches gradually into the soil to benefit the fruit trees.

Last year I planted some aromatics and bee-attracting plants; lemon balm, lemon catnip, feverfew, anise hyssop, bee balm, and some comfrey and daffodils. In the berm (raised edge) of the swale I planted yarrow.

This year, I’ve added two shrubs; a highbush cranberry, and a red twig dogwood. These, along with the aromatics are intended to encourage birds, butterflies, and beneficial insects. Biodiversity is a concept of permaculture that is largely unknown in commercial orchards.

A new Red Twig Dogwood shrub

The shrubs create a new canopy layer. Canopy layers are a permaculture idea about mimicking the different heights of plants in the forest. The flowers, the shrubs, and the fruit trees create three distinct layers of vegetation due to the differing heights of the plants. The sixty foot tall oak tree in the center of the orchard is a fourth canopy layer.

The orchard was fitted into an area in the woods, and there are signs that the soil is trying to revert back to forest. Ferns are doing their best to take over, and much of the ground is becoming unworkable after all of my hard work with a grub hoe. It’s a struggle to get the forest to back off. The forest and cultivation appear to be two wildly different habitats.

The comfrey is flowering

To help condition the soil I tossed out sorghum and Canadian field pea seeds, which I had done last year also. This year I also seeded some Dutch white clover, and some going-to-seed dandelions. And planted some clumps of day lilies. I added a few food plants: chives, perennial onions, some asparagus, and some turnip seeds. Which of these will thrive is a guess.

Lime is essential for converting the acidic forest floor into an environment that is sweeter and more friendly to cultivated plants, and has been liberally applied, as well as wheel barrow loads of organic cow manure.

There’s lots going on there. Who would have thought that forest to farm is such a tough proposition? More on this as things progress... -jmm

Imagining a Sustainable Lifestyle

John Lennon wondered if we could imagine not having possessions, existing simply as a brotherhood of humankind. This isn't a hope for a utopian future. Rather, it’s been done before. It’s in our history; the fabric of our genetic make-up.

Life as it was.

Early humans were hunters and gatherers. One can suppose that this lifestyle consisted of self sufficiency and oneness with nature. Theory has it that individual tribes were communities in which the needs of all members were attended to. When the hunters and gatherers returned with edibles, the tribe shared. There was no one percent and no ninety-nine percent. Everything was for the tribe, the one hundred percent.

What we gather from knowledge of American Indian, African tribes, and other primitive cultures is that our ancestors had a physical and spiritual relationship with the earth. A successful hunt resulted in celebratory rituals. Art and music were born of this harmony between man and nature. These people took from the earth what was needed and returned what what was not, making a cycle of events that was infinitely sustainable.

And then came the industrial age.

Industrialization changed everything. Industries became a driving force, resulting in urbanization, specialization, militarization, and accumulation of wealth for the individual. The earth became a source of raw materials to feed industry. Great tracts of land are laid waste in the process.

And now the resources are becoming more and more scarce. Although we may not immediately realize it, this is showing up in the headlines in today's news stories. Oil wells dug deep in the oceans, tar sands being mined, natural gas extraction by fracking, entire mountains removed to find coal. The problems resulting from these are reported; oil spills, ground water contamination, local reports of cancers, loss of landscape, loss of useable land, earthquakes. Not to mention climate change.

And here we are.

Our homesteading lifestyle, and that of a growing number of kindred spirits, is our small effort in helping to reverse a disastrous trend toward oblivion. We are doing what we can, like not accumulating things we don’t need, saving energy, using local sources such as obtaining eggs, meat, and produce from local farms. More about this in an earlier post: click here. We share vegetables from our garden with friends and co-workers, make an effort to be involved with the local community, and are involved with a local land trust in their efforts to preserve natural habitat.

When the age of industrialization wears itself out, a simpler, more natural kind of lifestyle will be called for. We feel that we are going in this direction, taking a step back to our origins that actually feels like a step forward. We are closer to the natural give and take of nature; it’s a simpler lifestyle and seems far away from that of accumulating and possessing things.

There are things that each and every one of us can do.

We can grow our own vegetables in back yards, pots on porches, or in community gardens, take a re-usable shopping bag to the market, tote a metal water bottle, use local recycling facilities, and so much more. And, as we redefine our own lives, we can remember to be involved in meaningful ways in our local communities. We are on this planet together. And yes, John Lennon, we can IMAGINE the world as a better place. And we can do more than imagine, we can live simply and sustainably now. -G.H., edited by jmm