Tales from the Dirt Side

I love this book! I'd had it on hold at the library for some time and it came available just in time for the long hours I logged travelling to visit family for the holiday weekend.

It is sooo good. It's the tale of three women who each run their own successful, organic farms on Vancouver Island and together own and operate Saanich Organics which distributes local, organic food through a box delivery program and to restaurants and grocery stores.

The book literally gives the reader "all the dirt" on how they do it. There is a chapter written by each woman, devoted to their own farm enterprises, how they started out, what they learned along the way, mistakes they made and rewards they reaped. Rather than being repetitive, these chapters reflect the individual personalities and styles of the women, and their unique approach to how they farm. Chapter four is a discussion of organic farming in general and why they are so passionate about it. Chapter 5 covers the details of their co-owned business.

This book is incredibly rich and full of so much invaluable information, but it's not at all a dry nuts and bolts manual. It is alive with personal stories, humour, blood, sweat and tears. It feels almost as if you are an apprentice on one of their farms, working along beside them while they share their wisdom and experience with you.

I love how open and forthcoming they are with all that they know. There is no hoarding of proprietary knowledge or trade secrets. They genuinely want to see more farmers growing healthy, organic food and make a decent living from it and they are happy to support the movement every way that they can.

This book is essential reading for anyone interested in small-scale, organic agriculture. Even if that is not your plan, it's still a great read for learning about organic farming, getting good gardening tips or just to be inspired by three beautiful, strong, smart ladies who are doing amazing work in the world.

Wes and Wendell

Early morning yoga by candlelight + a conversation between Wendell Berry and Wes Jackson = a blissed out way to start the day!

Some particularly blissful gems:

"We have to look to nature to learn how to farm."

"If we can begin to think about running agriculture on contemporary sunlight with no soil erosion, I think we have the basis for a new set of metaphors and we can begin to think about the end of economic growth."

"We are the environment. We are embodiments of the environment...We take our measures of the work we do...from the place we're in."

"We are embedded in a structure that gave rise to us. We didn't give rise to it."

"The only safeguard of abundance is temperance."

Two great minds there. Verily.



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Revealing the Hidden Harvest

These people are my friends. I heart them. They radiate awesomeness. And so does their new project.

"Ensuring Ottawa's fruit and nuts are valued, picked, and shared.

Hidden Harvest Ottawa is a social enterprise launching this spring, supporting Ottawa's urban orchard through planting trees and organizing harvest events.

We will be seeking lead volunteers to organize community harvest events (training provided), as well has volunteer harvesters and tree owners who would like the bounty from their edible trees to be put to good use.

Sign up to be the first to hear when we are accepting applications for volunteers and harvest locations.

Together we will make good use of healthy, local food. We will be addressing climate change with our forks, and building community by sharing our urban abundance!"


If you live in Ottawa, you should check it out!

On Hold

I heart my public library!

Tales From the Green Valley

Oh my goodness you guys!!! Guess what? Before there was the Victorian Farm and Edwardian Farm, there was Tales from the Green Valley!



There's hedge laying, plant medicine making, wattle and daubing and all kind of 17th century farm intrigue and excitement. So pour yourself a mug of ale or make yourself a posset and enjoy!

Why?

I'm not a wife, I don't have children, and I divide my "punk, DIY housewifery" time with my job, but I am so relating to just about everything in this delightful, declarative post, over at Apron Stringz.

Lengthy excerpt (but please do read the whole thing):

"Let’s be frank.

I believe the world is fucked up. We have ravaged the wilderness into near oblivion, sucked the life out of every arable piece of land, bombed and enslaved our fellow humans, all in order to provide for our extremely decadent first-world lifestyle. I know I can’t change things to any significant degree, but neither can I turn aside and pretend I haven’t noticed. I cannot, in good conscience and healthy mental condition, proceed at full speed...I am guilty of participation at every level, but I cannot reconcile a life that does not at least try for something better. If I am weary with effort, I will know I am doing what I can do.

And here’s what I can do.

If I believe that massive-scale agriculture is defiling our land, and corporate food products are defiling our bodies, I can base our diet instead on whole foods from local farms.

If I believe that using fossil fuels supports global bullying and violence, not to mention environmental degradation, I can make the time to walk and bike whenever possible.

If I believe that the immense resources sucked down and shit out for every piece of plastic crap we think we deserve is inexcusable, I can mend broken things, reuse materials, buy second hand, do without.

But you know damn well those choices are not so simple, and that is where the skill and craft and countless hours of housewifery become meaningful. After the romance of changing the world has subsided, it all comes down to the number of hours in a day and the number of dollars in your bank account. In case you’ve never been to a farmer’s market let me tell you that local, sustainable food is enormously more expensive. If I want to be able to afford the luxury of responsible purchases, I need to defray costs by cooking everything from scratch. Creativity in the kitchen is worth money– stretching that costly ethical meat by picking every last shred off of last night’s roast chicken and cooking the bones into stock; planning ahead for variety and convenience so that we are less tempted by the many corporate foods surrounding us on a daily basis; and ‘adding value’ at home by making our own jams, yogurt, granola, and bread.

Although cooking tends to monopolize my own housewifery, cleaning up after everything is a law, like gravity. It has to be done, and someone has to do it. The infinitely humble task of washing dishes is radical political action, because after cooking your ethically and sustainably raised chicken into stock to make a second or third meal out of it so that you can afford to keep supporting that righteous local farmer, there is a pile of greasy dishes to be done. If a=b and b=c, than a=c."

Amen. And now back to my dishes...


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"Herbs are our teachers and our elders."

I love this video with herbalist and poet Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie. She's so beautiful and radiant!

Grow Weeds! Make Money!

Huh, I wonder what kind of search engine traffic the title of this post will generate?

Anyone who gets directed here looking for information on how to grow and profit from a particular kind of 'weed', will be disappointed. But maybe they'll stick around long enough to check out the amazing and magnificent Michael 'Skeeter' Pilarski video below and learn that Skeeter who, among many other seriously cool things, wildcrafts and cultivate weeds, which he sells on the herbal market. (Again, not that kind of 'herb'.)

Maybe, the disappointed person will be moved enough by Skeeter when he says awesome things like, "There's a lot of reasons to have weeds in your garden" or "weeds and the garden are dancing together for everyone's benefit" to give up their other 'weed' growing idea and take up the brave and noble pursuit of growing honest to goodness, down to earth, humble weeds. Useful weeds that you can make money on!



Wow. I love this guy!

This Universe

In a parallel universe I have a modest homestead, on a bit of acreage that includes a woodlot and running water. It's within biking distance of a small town. It's seriously pimped out permaculturally speaking. There's a forest garden, lots of hedgerows, passive solar, an amazing compost system (humanure included) and hugelkultur everywhere. I forage and wildcraft everyday in my Zone 4. I have a root cellar full of stored crops, a kick ass pantry and apothecary. I live really frugally and DIY a lot of my infrastructure and basic needs with salvaged and thrifted materials. I borrow, barter and trade for many other essentials. For whatever cash I do need, I teach yoga classes at the local community centre, lead weed walks and run reskilling workshops to emerging Radical Homemakers. I sell my herbs and other garden products at the farmer's market. I spend more time outside than not. I live by seasons.

In this universe I live underground, in a rented basement apartment in an older suburban neighbourhood in a medium sized city. I don't have any control over my thermostat. I have a kick ass pantry and apothecary, but no root cellar. I pee in a bucket and compost it. I DIY as much as I can and always look for thrifted or salvaged materials before I buy new. I'm happy to borrow/lend, barter and trade with anyone who's willing. I live really frugally but still pay the bills by working an office job Monday to Friday in a climate controlled building. If I didn't look out the windows every now and again, I'd have no idea what the weather was like. I garden on 4000 square feet of rented allotment gardens that are a 15 minute bike ride away from my home. I'm not allowed to make any permanent structural changes there (Although we did build three hugelkultur beds along some edges!) I have two more weed walks planned for this summer. I forage and wildcraft in my Zone 4, it just looks a little different in a cityscape and because I work everyday and lots of things are weather dependent I can't always get to the plants when I need to.

In this universe I give heartfelt thanks for a sunny day on my morning off and make plans to take advantage of this small window of opportunity. After yoga and before work, I bike to my closest semi-wild Zone 4 area to harvest dandelion flowers for an infused oil. I enlist the help of the ADG. But when we get to the park we notice that some of the pine trees are giving off their pollen. He's been interested in collecting some and we've been watching the pines waiting for just this moment. So I leave him to that and start to fill my basket. When I have enough, I check on the hawthorn trees and realise that they are in bloom and need to be harvested now, or never. I harvest until the ADG finds me and tells me I have to leave for work. I get him to help me for just a few more minutes, we thank the hawthorns and then walk back to our bikes. The dandy blooms will sit out overnight to let some of the moisture evaporate out of them before they go into the oil, but the hawthorn flowers need to get tinctured right away. Since I don't have time, I ask the ADG for the favour and give him quick instructions on tincturing. I send him off but not before he points out that I have just handed a man a basketful of flowers to carry through the streets of Ottawa. But he's also got a bag of pine pollen so I figure that more than makes up for it!

Ok, so maybe I don't have the homestead and the acreage and my job keeps me indoors at times when I would much rather be out. I don't have the land for my hedgerow and forest garden (yet). But I make the best of what I've got. And what I do have is pretty amazing and wonderful. I have someone who will carry a basket of flowers home for me and take care of them. It's a good universe to be in.





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I Heart Ruth Stout!

This weekend was a real milestone of the season for me. It marked the first harvest of the year (1.5lbs of sunchokes and 9oz of horseradish) and the first good chunk of time working in our allotment plots! I nibbled raw, stinging nettle leaves. I got in a tussle with a raspberry cane and have scratches on the tip on my nose to show for it. I relished the feel of tools in my gloved hands, reacquainting myself with their heft. I emptied soil and straw out of an upturned boot and left the dirt under my nails as a badge of honour. It all felt so unbelievably good, and I'm eager to go back for more. If all goes well, we'll have peas in the ground by the end of the week. I've lots of pictures to show from this weekend, including a pretty epic unearthing of the aforementioned horseradish root, but I've got to sort through the pics yet.

In the meantime check out the story of amazing gardener Ruth Stout. The woman didn't even start gardening until she was 45 and kept at it well into her elder years. She seems to have been quite the gardening renegade, advocating a no-till, no-weeding, no-watering, no-fertilising style of raising up vegetables at a time when plowing, chemical inputs and irrigation were the order of the day. Her story is an inspiring one and has me dreaming about pottering in the earth until the end of my own days.





You can read more about her methods here.

Cook What Is

I read the best quote on this cool blog I just found.

"Cooking this way reverses the modern relationship between a chef and an ingredient. Rather than writing a menu and then going shopping, the chef walks through a garden or market; goes foraging, fishing or hunting; and cooks what is. This approach can deliver vibrant flavours and lively meals. Responsive cooking is not only a way to approach dinner. It is a way to approach life, grounded in what is, eyes wide open to what could be." -Molly O'Neill, from The Blackberry Farm Cookbook.

Yes! How delightful and beautiful is that? Cook what is...grounded in what is, eyes wide open to what could be. Love.

And the blog is pretty awesome too. There are posts about wild foods and herbs, medicine making and fermentation. Double love!

Reading Crow

Just got this book out of the library yesterday. I'm only a few dozen pages in, but I'm loving it. The author had me at her first Wendell Berry quote.

And then I read this:
"...but it remains our daily lives, in the places we live, that make us ecosystemic creatures; these are the seat of our most meaningful interactions with, and impact upon, the wider, wilder earth. We are connected by the ways that we choose, consume, and share water, food, shelter, and air- just like all the other animals. We cherish the few, sweet days we manage to escape to places we consider true wilderness, but the most essential things we can do for the deeply wild earth have to do with how we eat, how we drive, where we walk, and how we choose every moment of our quotidian urban lives."

Amen sister. Amen.

Fellow nature lovers, get thee to your nearest library and check out this book! Oh and have a look at her blog too. It's delightful.

I Heart Novella Carpenter

I got the book Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer by Novella Carpenter out of the library a couple of weeks ago and inhaled most of it during a 7 hour rideshare and bus trip to visit family and celebrate my grandparent's 60th wedding anniversary recently.

The book was an enjoyable and delightful read, not to mention very inspiring. As much as I tend to fantasize about retreating into the solitude and quiet of some small holding in the country, it's still pretty rocking to learn about what's possible in an urban environment. As long as I remain a city girl you can bet that I'll take my cues from the likes of Ms. Carpenter!

You can also read about her adventures in urban farming on her blog.

Incidentally, Novella is the sister of the author of These Days In French Life, who no longer blogs publicly, but maintains a gorgeous and equally inspiring Flickr photostream. I heart her too!

I heart Nikki McClure

I can't tear my eyes away from Nikki McClure's beautiful artwork.

I love the way she elevates the everyday into something sublime and celebratory. Like this, and and this, and oh my this.

So beautiful. I want them all.

I Heart Diana Beresford-Kroeger

I recently listened to an interview with Diana Beresford-Kroeger on CBC's the Current (Part 3) and immediately fell in love with her.

"Tree-huggers may just want what's best for trees. But it turns out that hugging a tree might be good for the hugger too. Trees are the most visible part of an eco-system ... and the support system for a lot of the life in it. For example, we mammals wouldn't exist if it weren't for the oxygen trees provide.

But according to Diana Beresford-Kroeger, trees do a lot more than provide oxygen, food and wood. She says they have healing properties that we are just beginning to appreciate and understand even if our ancestors seemed to be aware of them thousands of years ago.

Diana Beresford-Kroeger is a botanist and biochemist based in Merrickville, Ontario about an hour's drive south of Ottawa. She's also the author of The Global Forest."

I went on to the internet to see what else I could dig up on her.

I found this.

"One hour from Ottawa in Merrickville, Ontario, is Diana Beresford-Kroeger and her husband’s 160 acre property. Over eight acres of the property have been carefully designed to provide a background for her substantial botanical research. Within this garden, Diana has trialed over 6000 species and varieties of flowers, shrubs and trees including varieties she has bred to withstand the rigours of a changing northern climate.

The garden compasses a number of diverse habitats including a water garden, a small vineyard, a North American medicine walk, a potager, a formal mixed orchard and an extensive perennial flower garden. Incorporated into all this is a collection of North American nut bearing trees, the "anti-famine’ trees of the past.

According to Diana, "These trees kept aboriginal communities alive during times of famine. Hickory nuts and others are very high in fat, carbohydrates, and protein and they would sustain a people when the animals disappeared".

Diana is passionate about the preservation of rare and near-extinct plants and the medicines they contain. Throughout her gardens are what she would name her "holy grails", trees and plants nearly lost from the earth. Some of these rare and beautiful specimens have been discovered during her travels into the St. Lawrence and Great Lakes forests. Others have come from places as far away as Japan, Siberia, and the Balkans. A strong believer in sustainability and diversity, she often collects the seeds from her varieties of rare trees and plants and protects them for future use through distribution to research institutions as well as members of the public."

I also got this book out of the library. It's lovely.

"Now to survive as a species ourselves, we must put nature back together, we must hold hands, one with the other, and enact the bioplan. And like the stars of the heavens, each one of us must light our own pathway. It is only then that our combinations of connections will make the magic of the Milky Way. This we can do, not solely because we are just human, but because we hold the noblesse oblige of another's hand."

I also learned that she is speaking in Ottawa tomorrow night as part of the Writer's Festival.

Who's the most excited person on this blog!?! Me! I can't wait to hear her talk in person.

Do you think it would be inappropriate for me to tell her how much I heart her? Would it be weird if I asked her to take me home and adopt me into her family? What if I just hid in the backseat of her car and waited until we were all the way at her place before popping up and saying, "Diana I heart you! Will you adopt me?"

How could she say no?

O.k. o.k. maybe I'll just politely ask her to sign a copy of her new book...

Update: I just found this PDF article about Diana and this radio interview. The interview is from just this past Monday and it's awesome!

(I'm not internet stalking her, I swear! It's just good, wholesome research is all. I'm doing it for the trees really. For the trees.)

I Heart Hank and Vera Jones

If you live in the Ottawa area you may have heard of Hank and Vera Jones. They were in the news last summer. The couple have turned most of their half acre yard around their Constance Bay home into a pollinator garden.

Where Hank and Vera see a beautiful and natural habitat, filled with native flowers and grasses that support biodiversity and encourage important pollinator species, some neighbours see unkempt lawns. A complaint was made to the city and in accordance with the by-laws, city officials threatened to mow the garden down.

Fast forward to this year and Hank and Vera's garden continues to exist and thrive, especially after a generous donation of native plants from the Fletcher Wildlife Garden, and widespread support from environmentalists, councillors and organisations, but the issue has not been fully resolved.

Hank has written an open letter to Ottawa city councillors, asking them about their position on the by-law for property maintenance, and has created a rich resource page to educate people on the importance of pollinator gardens.

They are also dialoguing with neighbours to explain what they are doing and why in the hopes that raising awareness of their garden will help people understand the nature of the important work they are doing and support or at least tolerate it.

I think Hank and Vera really are the bee's knees! I love what they are doing and wholeheartedly support their work.

And if that isn't cool enough, Hank has been busy with another fantastic project. Check out these rad salad tables he built. I mean, are these awesome or what?

I heart Hank and Vera Jones. So much in fact that I contacted them a while back and asked if they would be willing to open up their home for a Transition Ottawa reskilling event in which guests could tour the garden and get a demonstration of the salad tables. They were thrilled by the idea and we set a date!

I can't wait to meet them in person and especially tour their garden and see their salad tables in action.

If you live in the area and are interested in joining us for the event, check out all the details here and feel free to register. It'd be great to have you!

I heart Hedgerows!

Hedgerows!

Hedgerows!

Hedgerow medicine!

Hedgerow flowers!


The music on that video is terrible. Don't listen to it! Turn the volume off and listen to this instead.

Too obvious? Try this. Too precious?

How 'bout this?

Ok, let's finish it off with a little prog rock.

I heart Bob Pollard.

And my public library. That's where I got the book on hedgerows, and now I am in love with hedgerows. I want a hedgerow!

I heart Dan Barber!

Last December I gushed and swooned over Dan Barber's TED talk on A Surprising Parable of Foie Gras. Well he's back on TED again, this time, weaving another beautiful and romantic tale about his relationship with...fish. I seriously heart this man and his vision for the future of food.

"What we need now is a radically new conception of agriculture, one in which the food actually tastes good."

"Want to feed the world? Let's start by asking, how are we going to feed ourselves? Or better, how can we create conditions that will enable every community to feed itself? To do that, don't look at the agribusiness model for the future. It's really old and it's tired. It's high on capital, chemistry and machines. And it's never produced anything really good to eat. Instead, let's look to the ecological model. That's the one that relies on 2 billion years of on the job experience...Look to farms that restore instead of deplete, farms that farm extensively instead of just intensively, farmers that are not just producers, but experts in relationships..."

Major swoon fest!

Lining up for the radical, homemade Kool Aid

I heart Radical Homemakers!

"RADICAL HOMEMAKERS: RECLAIMING DOMESTICITY FROM A CONSUMER CULTURE

Mother Nature has shown her hand. Faced with climate change, dwindling resources, and species extinctions, most Americans understand the fundamental steps necessary to solve our global crises-drive less, consume less, increase self-reliance, buy locally, eat locally, rebuild our local communities.

In essence, the great work we face requires rekindling the home fires.

Radical Homemakers is about men and women across the U.S. who focus on home and hearth as a political and ecological act, and who have centered their lives around family and community for personal fulfillment and cultural change. It explores what domesticity looks like in an era that has benefited from feminism, where domination and oppression are cast aside and where the choice to stay home is no longer equated with mind-numbing drudgery, economic insecurity, or relentless servitude.

Radical Homemakers nationwide speak about empowerment, transformation, happiness, and casting aside the pressures of a consumer culture to live in a world where money loses its power to relationships, independent thought, and creativity. If you ever considered quitting a job to plant tomatoes, read to a child, pursue creative work, can green beans and heal the planet, this is your book."

Yes! Yes! Yes! Totally radical dude.


Thanks to Homegrown Evolution for posting about it. I heart you.

Updated to add long excerpts from this article by the author.

"The Radical Homemakers I interviewed had chosen to make family, community, social justice, and the health of the planet the governing principles of their lives. They rejected any form of labor or the expenditure of any resource that did not honor these tenets. For about 5,000 years, our culture has been hostage to a form of organization by domination that fails to honor our living systems, under which “he who holds the gold makes the rules.” By contrast, the Radical Homemakers are using life skills and relationships as replacements for gold, on the premise that he or she who doesn’t need the gold can change the rules. The greater one’s domestic skills, be they to plant a garden, grow tomatoes on an apartment balcony, mend a shirt, repair an appliance, provide one’s own entertainment, cook and preserve a local harvest, or care for children and loved ones, the less dependent one is on the gold.

By virtue of these skills, the Radical Homemakers I interviewed were building a great bridge from our existing extractive economy—where corporate wealth has been regarded as the foundation of economic health, where mining our Earth’s resources and exploiting our international neighbors have been acceptable costs of doing business—to a life serving economy, where the goal is, in the words of David Korten, to generate a living for all, rather than a killing for a few; where our resources are sustained, our waters are kept clean, our air pure, and families and can lead meaningful lives.

In addition, the happiest among them were successful at setting realistic expectations for themselves. They did not live in impeccably clean houses on manicured estates. They saw their homes as living systems and accepted the flux, flow, dirt, and chaos that are a natural part of that. They were masters at redefining pleasure not as something that should be bought in the consumer marketplace, but as something that could be created, no matter how much or how little money they had in their pockets. And above all, they were fearless. They did not let themselves be bullied by the conventional ideals regarding money, status, or material possessions. These families did not see their homes as a refuge from the world. Rather, each home was the center for social change, the starting point from which a better life would ripple out for everyone."

I heart Jamie Oliver!

Ok. Wow. Seriously. I am totally lining up for some of this dude's (100% natural, not from concentrate, sugar free) Kool aid.


Jamie's wish:

"I wish for everyone to help create a strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food, inspire the family to cook again and empower people everywhere to fight obesity."