Saturday, March 31, 2012
Monday, March 26, 2012
David Masumoto, Epitaph for a Peach
“…I hope to renew the practice of cover cropping. I am part of a
generation of grape and tree fruit farmers who never planted
clover or beans or barley. I plant a vine and expect it to last a
lifetime; a peach tree should last decades. Annual crops feel odd
and peculiar—I don’t know how to prepare beds and am not
used to planting something underground that would be out of
sight for weeks. Many of my generation never learned how to
sow seeds.
I planted my very first cover crop eight years ago when my
first child was born. I didn’t do it because cover crops would be
good for the soil and build up organic matter. And I didn’t do it
to provide a habitat for beneficial insects to overwinter and
make my land their spring home. I did it because my wife would
be home with a new baby and
she was tired of seeing only the gray earth of winter outside our
kitchen window. I did it for her dreams of spring walks through
the soft clover with the baby in her arms, breathing in the fresh
scent of spring growth. I did it for reasons that seemed disconnec-
ted with farming at the time.
….I’ve thought of buying a better planter, something adapted to
vineyards instead of vegetable beds. But I’ve become attached to
my Planet Jrs. They remind me of a simple age, and I like the
name. I also enjoy controlling each individual planter. Unlike an
eight-foot-wide, single-hopper machine that uniformly plants an
entire field with the same seed mix and in the same pattern, these
individual units can be adjusted to create different patterns with
a variety of seed combinations. I play artist in my fields, painting
with a blend of clover and vetches with a splash of wildflowers.
Next to a vine I can plant dense cahaba white vetch that would
dominate in the early spring canvas with its white blooms but
may begin to wither with the first heat of summer. Along another
edge I might weave in some crimson clover with its deep red seed
heads or scatter strawberry and red clovers for variety. I would
add a combination bur clover and a blanket of yellow flowers
with the green hues created by different medics, low-growing
but sturdy plants that creep along the surface and replace the
wilting vetches and crimson clovers in our valley heat.
My fields have become a crazy quilt of cover crops, a wild blend
of patterns, some intended, some a product of nature’s whims.
The different plants grow to different heights and in different
patterns, creating a living appliqué. The casual passerby might
not notice my art. From the roadside, it often looks like irregular
growth, bald spots, breaks in uniformity. But the farmer walking
his fields can feel the changing landscape beneath his boots, he
can sense the temperature changes with the different densities
of growth and smell the pollen of blooming clover or vetch or
wildflowers. He appreciates the precarious character of nature.
As if running your fingers over a finely crafted quilt, you can feel
pattern upon pattern. Just as a quilter may stitch together emo-
tions with each piece of fabric, I weave the texture of life into my
farm.”
— David Mas Masumoto, Epitaph for a Peach
generation of grape and tree fruit farmers who never planted
clover or beans or barley. I plant a vine and expect it to last a
lifetime; a peach tree should last decades. Annual crops feel odd
and peculiar—I don’t know how to prepare beds and am not
used to planting something underground that would be out of
sight for weeks. Many of my generation never learned how to
sow seeds.
I planted my very first cover crop eight years ago when my
first child was born. I didn’t do it because cover crops would be
good for the soil and build up organic matter. And I didn’t do it
to provide a habitat for beneficial insects to overwinter and
make my land their spring home. I did it because my wife would
be home with a new baby and
she was tired of seeing only the gray earth of winter outside our
kitchen window. I did it for her dreams of spring walks through
the soft clover with the baby in her arms, breathing in the fresh
scent of spring growth. I did it for reasons that seemed disconnec-
ted with farming at the time.
….I’ve thought of buying a better planter, something adapted to
vineyards instead of vegetable beds. But I’ve become attached to
my Planet Jrs. They remind me of a simple age, and I like the
name. I also enjoy controlling each individual planter. Unlike an
eight-foot-wide, single-hopper machine that uniformly plants an
entire field with the same seed mix and in the same pattern, these
individual units can be adjusted to create different patterns with
a variety of seed combinations. I play artist in my fields, painting
with a blend of clover and vetches with a splash of wildflowers.
Next to a vine I can plant dense cahaba white vetch that would
dominate in the early spring canvas with its white blooms but
may begin to wither with the first heat of summer. Along another
edge I might weave in some crimson clover with its deep red seed
heads or scatter strawberry and red clovers for variety. I would
add a combination bur clover and a blanket of yellow flowers
with the green hues created by different medics, low-growing
but sturdy plants that creep along the surface and replace the
wilting vetches and crimson clovers in our valley heat.
My fields have become a crazy quilt of cover crops, a wild blend
of patterns, some intended, some a product of nature’s whims.
The different plants grow to different heights and in different
patterns, creating a living appliqué. The casual passerby might
not notice my art. From the roadside, it often looks like irregular
growth, bald spots, breaks in uniformity. But the farmer walking
his fields can feel the changing landscape beneath his boots, he
can sense the temperature changes with the different densities
of growth and smell the pollen of blooming clover or vetch or
wildflowers. He appreciates the precarious character of nature.
As if running your fingers over a finely crafted quilt, you can feel
pattern upon pattern. Just as a quilter may stitch together emo-
tions with each piece of fabric, I weave the texture of life into my
farm.”
— David Mas Masumoto, Epitaph for a Peach
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Making Acorn Flour? Save the Tannin Wash
When I process acorns, I prefer boiling them in changes of water. I
save this tannin decoction and use it throughout the year for many
things. Tannic acid is extremely astringent, which makes it a
fantastic topical wash for acne, poison-ivy rash, burns, and other skin
ailments. I also use acorn tannin juice as a mouthwash, as tannins
help tighten connective tissue (gums), combat mouth sores, and
generally promote good oral health. Those who suffer from chronic
diarrhea and dysentery will benefit greatly from consuming the
acorn tannins or a tea of the inner bark.
More than any of these medicinal functions, I use acorn tannin juice
to tan hides. There are many plants from which tannins can be
extracted, but oaks and their acorns have ridiculously high
concentrations of tannic acid, making them ideal for tannin
extraction and tanning hides. I prefer acorn tanning to brain tanning,
not so much for the result as for my lack of desire to touch brains.
Anti-copyright 2009, Yggdrasil Distro
yggdrasildistro@gmail.com
yggdrasildistro.wordpress.com
Please reprint, republish, & redistribute.
save this tannin decoction and use it throughout the year for many
things. Tannic acid is extremely astringent, which makes it a
fantastic topical wash for acne, poison-ivy rash, burns, and other skin
ailments. I also use acorn tannin juice as a mouthwash, as tannins
help tighten connective tissue (gums), combat mouth sores, and
generally promote good oral health. Those who suffer from chronic
diarrhea and dysentery will benefit greatly from consuming the
acorn tannins or a tea of the inner bark.
More than any of these medicinal functions, I use acorn tannin juice
to tan hides. There are many plants from which tannins can be
extracted, but oaks and their acorns have ridiculously high
concentrations of tannic acid, making them ideal for tannin
extraction and tanning hides. I prefer acorn tanning to brain tanning,
not so much for the result as for my lack of desire to touch brains.
Anti-copyright 2009, Yggdrasil Distro
yggdrasildistro@gmail.com
yggdrasildistro.wordpress.com
Please reprint, republish, & redistribute.
Friday, March 23, 2012
Appropriate Technology: Zeer Pot
Thursday, March 22, 2012
The 10 Bushcraft Books - By Richard Graves
Graves' legendary books, online for free. Sells for $26 on amazon.com used, $285 new.
Graves' legendary books, online for free. Sells for $26 on amazon.com used, $285 new.
Wildcrafting: How to Make Your Own Herbal Poultice For Cuts, Bruises, Stings, Sprains
How to Make Your Own Herbal Poultice For Everyday Cuts and Bruises
1. Pick a handful of your desired herb (leaf and/or flower) and either massage and break the herb up with your fingers or chop it finely on a cutting board or in a food processor — or for a real old-school method, chew on it and spit it out (though probably best if you’re going to use this one on yourself, of course. To avoid the ick factor).
2. Apply the plant material directly to the wound, scrape or irritated area. If you like, you can wrap a cloth around the poultice to keep it in place.
3. Keep it there. For minor issues I might leave the plant material on for 20 minutes, but for more serious issues I will keep it on for many hours or until healing is complete. To keep the poultice strong, I might add in fresh herbs every hour or so.
Here are my go-to poultice herbs that can be applied to everyday uses (Remember: always talk to your doctor before trying new protocols, especially if you are on medication) :
* Comfrey is known for its ability to quicken the healing of bruises, swelling, sprains, and breaks. Allantoin, a chemical compound found in comfrey, helps to stimulate tissue growth and regeneration. It’s important to apply comfrey only to clean wounds, since its ability to quickly close open wounds can spell trouble for an unclean and infected cut. A comfrey poultice can also be applied to broken bones to speed up the healing time.
* Plantain is one of the most common backyard weeds. It has astringent properties that help to reduce swelling and analgesic properties that serve to reduce pain and itching. In herb circles today, plantain is often referred to as nature’s band-aid. I often apply plantain poultices to bug bites and bee stings with great results. Plantain can also be helpful for drawing out splinters that just don’t want to come out.
* Yarrow is especially useful to slow or stop bleeding in open wounds. Yarrow was historically used on the battlefield for its antiseptic and analgesic properties and was packed into wounds in combat to help keep them clean and prevent solders from bleeding
Bushcraft: Night Hiking
Link: Tips for Walking at Night
“Rod cells are also more sensitive to movement. A useful tip when trying to focus in on an object in low light is NOT to stare at the object directly, but use peripheral vision as this uses more of the rods. Look slightly away from the object and move your eyes.”
To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.
“Rod cells are also more sensitive to movement. A useful tip when trying to focus in on an object in low light is NOT to stare at the object directly, but use peripheral vision as this uses more of the rods. Look slightly away from the object and move your eyes.”
To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.
— Wendell Berry, “To Know the Dark”
The Groundswell of Illinois
…Nearby is the graceful loop of an old dry creekbed. The new creekbed is ditched straight as a ruler; it has been ‘uncurled’ by the almighty engineer to hurry the run-off. On the hill in the background are contoured strip crops; they have been ‘curled’ by the erosion engineer to retard the run-off. The water must be confused by so much advice.
Everything on this farm spells money in the bank. The farmstead abounds in fresh paint, steel, and concrete. A date on the barn commemorates the founding fathers. The roof bristles with lightning rods, the weathercock is proud with new gilt. Even the pigs look solvent.
The old oaks in the woodlot are without issue. There are no hedges, brush patches, fencerows, or other signs of shiftless husbandry. The cornfield has fat steers, but probably no quail. The fences stand on narrow ribbons of sod; whoever plowed that close to barbed wires must have been saying, ‘Waste not, want not.”
In the creek-bottom pasture, flood trash is lodged high in the bushes. The creek banks are raw; chunks of Illinois have sloughed off and moved seaward. Patches of giant ragweed mark where freshets have thrown down the silt they could not carry. Just who is solvent? For how long?
The highway stretches like a taut tape across the corn, oats, and clover fields; the bus ticks off the opulent miles; the passengers talk and talk and talk. About what? About baseball, taxes, sons-in-law, movies, motors, and funerals, but never about the heaving groudswell of Illinois that washes the windows of the speeding bus. Illinois has no genesis, no history, no shoals or deeps, no tides of life and death. To them Illinois is only the sea on which they sail to ports unknown.
- Aldo Leopold, An Illinois Bus Ride
So many goodly cities ransacked and razed; so many nations destroyed and made desolate; so infinite millions of harmelesse people of all sexes, states and ages, massacred, ravaged and put to the sword; and the richest, the fairest and the best part of the world topsiturvied, ruined and faced for the traffick of Pearles and Pepper: Oh mechanicall victories, oh base conquest.
- Montaigne
One of the peculiarities of the white race’s presence in America is how little intention has been applied to it. As a people, where we have been, we have never really intended to be. The continent is said to have been discovered by an Italian who was on his way to India. The earliest explorers were looking for gold, which was, after an early streak of luck in Mexico, always somewhere farther on. Conquests and foundings were incidental to this search—which did not, and could not, end until the continent was finally laid open in an orgy of goldseeking in the middle of the last century. Once the unknown of geography was mapped, the industrial marketplace became the new frontier, and we continued, with largely the same motives and with increasing haste and anxiety, to displace ourselves—no longer with unity of direction, like a migrant flock, but like the refugees from a broken ant hill. In our time we have invaded foreign lands and the moon with the high-toned patriotism of the conquistadors, and with the same mixture of fantasy and avarice.
...Surely there could be a more indigenous life than we have. There could be a consciousness that would establish itself on a place by understanding its nature and learning what is potential in it. A man ought to study the wilderness of a place before applying to it the ways he learned in another. Thousands of acres of hill land, here and in the rest of the country, were wasted by a system of agriculture that was fundamentally alien to it. For more than a century, here, the steepest hillsides were farmed, by my forefathers and their neighbor, as if they were flat, and as if this was not a country of heavy rains. We haven’t yet, in any meaningful sense, arrived in these places that we declare we own. We undertook the privilege of the virgin abundance of this land without any awareness at all that we undertook at the same time a responsibility toward it. That responsibility has never yet impressed itself upon our character; its absence in us is signified on the land by scars.
- Wendell Berry, A Native Hill 1969
Everything on this farm spells money in the bank. The farmstead abounds in fresh paint, steel, and concrete. A date on the barn commemorates the founding fathers. The roof bristles with lightning rods, the weathercock is proud with new gilt. Even the pigs look solvent.
The old oaks in the woodlot are without issue. There are no hedges, brush patches, fencerows, or other signs of shiftless husbandry. The cornfield has fat steers, but probably no quail. The fences stand on narrow ribbons of sod; whoever plowed that close to barbed wires must have been saying, ‘Waste not, want not.”
In the creek-bottom pasture, flood trash is lodged high in the bushes. The creek banks are raw; chunks of Illinois have sloughed off and moved seaward. Patches of giant ragweed mark where freshets have thrown down the silt they could not carry. Just who is solvent? For how long?
The highway stretches like a taut tape across the corn, oats, and clover fields; the bus ticks off the opulent miles; the passengers talk and talk and talk. About what? About baseball, taxes, sons-in-law, movies, motors, and funerals, but never about the heaving groudswell of Illinois that washes the windows of the speeding bus. Illinois has no genesis, no history, no shoals or deeps, no tides of life and death. To them Illinois is only the sea on which they sail to ports unknown.
- Aldo Leopold, An Illinois Bus Ride
So many goodly cities ransacked and razed; so many nations destroyed and made desolate; so infinite millions of harmelesse people of all sexes, states and ages, massacred, ravaged and put to the sword; and the richest, the fairest and the best part of the world topsiturvied, ruined and faced for the traffick of Pearles and Pepper: Oh mechanicall victories, oh base conquest.
- Montaigne
One of the peculiarities of the white race’s presence in America is how little intention has been applied to it. As a people, where we have been, we have never really intended to be. The continent is said to have been discovered by an Italian who was on his way to India. The earliest explorers were looking for gold, which was, after an early streak of luck in Mexico, always somewhere farther on. Conquests and foundings were incidental to this search—which did not, and could not, end until the continent was finally laid open in an orgy of goldseeking in the middle of the last century. Once the unknown of geography was mapped, the industrial marketplace became the new frontier, and we continued, with largely the same motives and with increasing haste and anxiety, to displace ourselves—no longer with unity of direction, like a migrant flock, but like the refugees from a broken ant hill. In our time we have invaded foreign lands and the moon with the high-toned patriotism of the conquistadors, and with the same mixture of fantasy and avarice.
...Surely there could be a more indigenous life than we have. There could be a consciousness that would establish itself on a place by understanding its nature and learning what is potential in it. A man ought to study the wilderness of a place before applying to it the ways he learned in another. Thousands of acres of hill land, here and in the rest of the country, were wasted by a system of agriculture that was fundamentally alien to it. For more than a century, here, the steepest hillsides were farmed, by my forefathers and their neighbor, as if they were flat, and as if this was not a country of heavy rains. We haven’t yet, in any meaningful sense, arrived in these places that we declare we own. We undertook the privilege of the virgin abundance of this land without any awareness at all that we undertook at the same time a responsibility toward it. That responsibility has never yet impressed itself upon our character; its absence in us is signified on the land by scars.
- Wendell Berry, A Native Hill 1969
Guerilla Gardening with Rob Avis
Ken Kifer on Cycle Touring
"A mountain is a completely different obstacle to the racing cyclist and to the touring cyclist. The racing cyclist, the strongest of the strong, in the peak of condition, is riding an ultra-lightweight machine, with speed as his primary objective. The touring cyclist, more of a Nature-lover than a jock, somewhat overweight and very tired, is riding a heavy bike with a heavy load, with pleasure as the primary object. The racing cyclist stands on his machine and speeds up the hill, running at his anaerobic threshold, averaging as fast a speed as the tourist does on flat ground. The tourist sits on the way up, riding at a pace he can maintain all day long, well below his threshold."
“On all of my trips, the greatest number of nights are spend neither at campgrounds nor at motels but at sites of my own choosing. What is wrong with a public campground? There are several problems with car campgrounds for cyclists. First, bicycle campers must often travel long distances and up steep hills to reach campground locations. For a motorist, to travel an extra five miles one way to the campground is no big deal, but to a cyclist the ten-mile round trip to the campground is likely to be 20% of the day’s travel. Second, campgrounds often offer little privacy and quiet. Unlike a motorist, the cyclist lacks all the extras to ensure privacy, is physically tired, and just wants a quiet night’s rest. A cyclist does not travel with a mob of screaming kids, a pack of dogs, a noisy radio, a color TV, a supply of charcoal or firewood, great slabs of meat, a cooler full of beer, a standing tent with auxiliary sleeping tent and connecting canopy, a full set of cookware, a gas stove, one or more gasoline or electric floodlamps, a bug zapper, fogs of chemical spray, a motorhome, a boat, a spare car, or an extra trailer. Nor is a bicycle camper thrilled with acre after acre of parking lots with mandatory gravel “pads” for the tent, open and smelly trash cans, a scarcity of scrawny trees, cigarette butts and beer tops littering the ground, and the obviously mandatory mowed grass. Frankly, sleeping in the backyard at home is a lot more of an adventure, and a lot quieter. Third, bicycle campers do not share the cultural attitudes of the others. It’s sort of like being the only Buddhist at a Baptist church.”
- Ken Kifer
"When I come to power, which I sense won’t be long now, I shall ban GPS on bikes. I don’t doubt they’re useful, but they take out the serendipity. A GPS tells you where to go; a map shows where else you could go. Read a map and you spot old castles, waterfalls or just better roads where cows graze and lambs gambol."
- Anon
Rainwater Harvesting Basics with Brad Lancaster Part 1
“I didn’t want to be part of the problem, so I was thinking of leaving, and he said: “You can’t leave. You have to go back home and you have to set your roots. You have to find solutions because if you leave now, wherever you go, you’ll take your problems with you and you’ll plant more problems. But if you can instead find a solution to these problems, then once you done that- you choose, you can stay or go. Because wherever you are you’ll be planting solutions, not problems.”
"There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places."
Wendell Berry
RSA Animate: The Empathic Civilization
”Empathy is grounded in the acknowledgement of death and the celebration of life, and rooting for each other to flourish and be. It’s based on our frailties and our imperfections, so when we talk about building an empathic civilization we're not talking about building a utopia, we’re talking about the ability of human beings to show solidarity not only with each other but with our fellow creatures who have a one and only life on this little planet. We are homo-empathicus.”
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Diversity, Complexity, and Local Knowledge
"There is, here and abroad, a slow, incremental, but ineluctable movement toward food that nourishes both person and place, that is grown with a far richer knowledge and awareness of biology than can be found in the 5-gallon cans of chlorinated hydrocarbons provided by Shell or Uniroyal. If the problems of modern agriculture are centralization, simplification, and biological reductionism, then the answers include diversity, complexity, and local knowledge. Such intelligence cannot be obtained in most of our land grant universities, and it is a pity this is so. For while we are justifiably confident that, when it comes t o anthropology, physics, and biogenetics, our universities uphold the highest standards of inquiry and experimentation, it is in the area of our land and food where they have failed us utterly. Here we must look to the land itself, and in particular to those people who “husband” it to find standards of truth that we can live by and that allow us to live in turn.
It is satisfying and tempting to think that the major problems of our day have major answers, but I doubt it. The problems that we face— eroded lands, vanishing topsoil, genetic loss, toxic food, poisoned wells— were created by the temptation to find simple solutions. The answers reside in intimate knowledge of species, biota, soil, climate, and place, a type of observation that is embodied before it is taught of transmitted.
It was Hans Jenny, a soil scientist, who first pointed out that there is often more life below and within the soil than there is above it, including Homo sapiens. This inversion of soil as medium to soil as life itself should be enough to convince any agri-scientist to adopt only those means of agriculture that support and nurture this life. But that has not been the case. Instead it has been (and will continue to be) the gardeners, truck farmers, and small landholders who recognize this fact and act upon it. Just as those who broke the prairie sod were pioneers, the new pioneers are those who restore the native land and soil. As biota leaves the soil, so does life vanish from society and civilization as we know it. The act of learning to garden and farm, so sincere and simple on its face, is an act of restoration that has implication far beyond one lifetime. It is a practice. And like any practice, it can only be learned through repetition, dedication, and good teaching. This is the good teaching."
- Paul Hawken, Blessed Unrest
"In one sense, it’s a mystery, but in the larger sense we know exactly what’s responsible—these huge monocultures in U.S. agriculture and world agriculture that are making bees’ lives very difficult and creating conditions where they’re vulnerable to disease and exposed to pesticides… In our culture, scientists have the last word- the ultimate authority commenting on matters having to do with biology. There are other forms of knowledge; very powerful forms of knowledge about biology.There is local knowledge, there is the knowledge of bee keepers, there is the knowledge of people who are really great observers of the natural world…We should listen. Because very often traditional knowledge gets there before the scientists."
- Michael Pollan, on Colony Collapse Disorder
Wildcrafting: Safe Foraging
Remember the following when collecting wild plants for food:
* Plants growing near homes and occupied buildings or along roadsides may have been sprayed with pesticides. Wash them thoroughly. In more highly developed countries with many automobiles, avoid roadside plants, if possible, due to contamination from exhaust emissions.
* Plants growing in contaminated water or in water containing Giardia lamblia and other parasites are contaminated themselves. Boil or disinfect them.
* Some plants develop extremely dangerous fungal toxins. To lessen the chance of accidental poisoning, do not eat any fruit that is starting to spoil or showing signs of mildew or fungus.
* Plants of the same species may differ in their toxic or subtoxic compounds content because of genetic or environmental factors. One example of this is the foliage of the common chokecherry. Some chokecherry plants have high concentrations of deadly cyanide compounds while others have low concentrations or none. Horses have died from eating wilted wild cherry leaves. Avoid any weed, leaves, or seeds with an almondlike scent, a characteristic of the cyanide compounds.
* Some people are more susceptible to gastric distress (from plants) than others. If you are sensitive in this way, avoid unknown wild plants. If you are extremely sensitive to poison ivy, avoid products from this family, including any parts from sumacs, mangoes, and cashews.
* Some edible wild plants, such as acorns and water lily rhizomes, are bitter. These bitter substances, usually tannin compounds, make them unpalatable. Boiling them in several changes of water will usually remove these bitter properties.
* Many valuable wild plants have high concentrations of oxalate compounds, also known as oxalic acid. Oxalates produce a sharp burning sensation in your mouth and throat and damage the kidneys. Baking, roasting, or drying usually destroys these oxalate crystals. The corm (bulb) of the jack-in-the-pulpit is known as the “Indian turnip,” but you can eat it only after removing these crystals by slow baking or by drying.
- Good Advice from Internet Anon
p.s. I would add avoid 'umbels altogether until you’re ABSOLUTELY sure you can positively ID them'…
* Plants growing near homes and occupied buildings or along roadsides may have been sprayed with pesticides. Wash them thoroughly. In more highly developed countries with many automobiles, avoid roadside plants, if possible, due to contamination from exhaust emissions.
* Plants growing in contaminated water or in water containing Giardia lamblia and other parasites are contaminated themselves. Boil or disinfect them.
* Some plants develop extremely dangerous fungal toxins. To lessen the chance of accidental poisoning, do not eat any fruit that is starting to spoil or showing signs of mildew or fungus.
* Plants of the same species may differ in their toxic or subtoxic compounds content because of genetic or environmental factors. One example of this is the foliage of the common chokecherry. Some chokecherry plants have high concentrations of deadly cyanide compounds while others have low concentrations or none. Horses have died from eating wilted wild cherry leaves. Avoid any weed, leaves, or seeds with an almondlike scent, a characteristic of the cyanide compounds.
* Some people are more susceptible to gastric distress (from plants) than others. If you are sensitive in this way, avoid unknown wild plants. If you are extremely sensitive to poison ivy, avoid products from this family, including any parts from sumacs, mangoes, and cashews.
* Some edible wild plants, such as acorns and water lily rhizomes, are bitter. These bitter substances, usually tannin compounds, make them unpalatable. Boiling them in several changes of water will usually remove these bitter properties.
* Many valuable wild plants have high concentrations of oxalate compounds, also known as oxalic acid. Oxalates produce a sharp burning sensation in your mouth and throat and damage the kidneys. Baking, roasting, or drying usually destroys these oxalate crystals. The corm (bulb) of the jack-in-the-pulpit is known as the “Indian turnip,” but you can eat it only after removing these crystals by slow baking or by drying.
- Good Advice from Internet Anon
p.s. I would add avoid 'umbels altogether until you’re ABSOLUTELY sure you can positively ID them'…
p.s. I would add avoid 'umbels altogether until you’re ABSOLUTELY sure you can positively ID them'…
Next Time You See a Bee...
Though a worker’s lifespan is only between 3 to 6 weeks in the height of the flowering season, a single bee can be responsible for a wide variety of roles inside and outside the hive.
The Hive
The inside of the hive is made up of many rows of vertically built honeycomb. This comb is a structure made up of thousands of individual hexagonal cells, into which the bees house everything from honey and pollen to larvae and pupae (“brood” is the collective term for eggs, larve and pupae that become “baby” bees). Everything happens within these cells. Bees move up and down and between the rows of comb, completely in the dark— until the beekeepers open the top.
The Housekeeper
After pupation, a new bee emerges out of her cell by chewing the covering, or capping, and makers her way into the world of the hive. Though sometimes called a “baby” bee, this individual is a fully developed adult with the exception of her stinger, which is still soft and not fully formed. After this young bee grooms herself and has a bite to eat of pollen and honey, her first task is to clean the cell from which she emerged. Because the queen is attracted to lay in a clean cell, this step is an important one in raising the next generation. Generally speaking, housekeeper bees keep the home neat and tidy.
The Undertaker
The beehive may be one of the sterile environments in nature; bees are sticklers for keeping a clean house. As such, some young bees, which can be called undertakers or mortician bees, are designated to remove the colony’s dead. It’s not a glamorous job, but some bee has to do it.
Because a dead bee lacks the moisture that gives it weight, undertaker bees are capable of carrying the deceased, flying with them, and disposing them as far from the hive as possible. Undertakers also remove any dead or diseased larvae to reduce the spread of illness.
If a larger creature, such as a mouse, were to crawl in and die inside of the hive, even a task force of undertaker bees would have a difficult time carrying it out. Luckily, bees collect a tree resin that they turn into a sticky, sterile substance, called propolis, sometimes referred to as bee glue. The bees will completely encase the invasive critter in this deep-yellow, antibacterial substance, sealing off any potential for disease to spread.
The Nurse
In another role, the female honeybee turns her attention to the young larvae and works to feed them around the clock. For the first few days, larvae are fed royal jelly, a substance made from a combination of pollen, honey or nectar. and a chemical produced specifically by nurse bees.
As larvae develop, the workers next make a mixture of nectar and pollen to create what we call “bee bread” and will feed a single larva about 1,300 times per day. Depending on how large the brood nest is and its needs, a bee will remain a nurse; when the larva is ready to pupate, the nurse bee will seal its cell with a wax capping.
The Lady in Waiting
Several lucky bees will find themselves in the role of attending to the queen’s needs. Because the queen’s role is very specific and, I can only imagine, very tiresome, she requires some assistance in caring for herself. Though it may sound luxurious, the queen’s attendants are not throwing tea parties or giving manicures; they groom and feed her and remove her excrement from the hive. (As mentioned, bees are very clean. Workers will fly outside of the hive on “cleansing flights” to take care of business, but the queen’s large body renders her unable to do so.) The attendants may even offer a bit of a cheerleading service, coaxing and guiding the queen to lay eggs as she makes her way through the hive.
The Organizer
At about 2 weeks of age, some bees, called organizers, are responsible for unloading the returning field bees of their nectar or pollen. The organizer bees store this nectar and pollen in allocated cells to later feed the colony. The bees that store nectar have an additional job; after they add an enzyme to the nectar and store it, they fan it down to have the correct moisture content to ripen the honey.
The Fanner
Controlling just the right temperature and humidity level in the hive is crucial to brood development and properly cured honey. Fanner bees work furiously to … well, fan air in and out of the hive and keep a constant temperature. Because broods require 93 to 95 degrees Fahrenheit to grow (and healthy broods equal a larger, stronger colony), the fanner is yet another critical role in the honeybee hive.
The Architect
At about 12 days old, a worker bee has sufficiently developed wax glands to begin wax production. As such the architect is now able to produce wax comb and to also make cappings for ripened honey and for developed larvae cells.
The Guard
With her stinger fully developed, a guard bee, in her last role within the hive, will protect the entrance to the hive with her life. Standing at attention, the guards meet and greet each bee that tries to get into the hive and will determine if the guest is family or foe by scent. Only those bees that have the hive’s pheomone will be allowed in. Those that do not are fended off. In the event that nectar sources are scrace or if a hive is weak, wasps, hornets, or other bees may attempt to force their way into the hive to rob the colony of honey stores. In a situation such as this, called robbing, guard bees will bravely defend the colony, perhaps to death.
The Forager
With about three weeks left to her life, the mature female worker finally leaves the hive for the outside world. Before setting sail, however, she familiarizes herself to the hive by taking an orientation flight. Learning the direction of the sun, the local landmarks and the position of the hive, the new forager ensures that she is able to return home once she is laden with her bounty.
After imprinting her hive, the forager flies in search of pollen and nectar collected from flowers. Some foragers will specifically collect propolis, that sticky tree resin, and others will gather water, an important element to establish the perfect moisture content in honey.
This stage is the most taxing partof a honeybee’s life. While it may appear that you have abundant flora and fauna in your backyard, a honeybee will travel anywhere between 3 to 6 miles to forage for the colony’s needs. This can take a large toll on a small bee. She makes trips between a source and the hive multiple times a day.
Foraging bees may meet a variety of ends while out in the field (so to speak), whether it is a chilled evening, a predator or sheer exhaustion. Retirement is not a cultural aspect of the honeybee hive, and each female works dutifully right up until the end.
The Hive
The inside of the hive is made up of many rows of vertically built honeycomb. This comb is a structure made up of thousands of individual hexagonal cells, into which the bees house everything from honey and pollen to larvae and pupae (“brood” is the collective term for eggs, larve and pupae that become “baby” bees). Everything happens within these cells. Bees move up and down and between the rows of comb, completely in the dark— until the beekeepers open the top.
The Housekeeper
After pupation, a new bee emerges out of her cell by chewing the covering, or capping, and makers her way into the world of the hive. Though sometimes called a “baby” bee, this individual is a fully developed adult with the exception of her stinger, which is still soft and not fully formed. After this young bee grooms herself and has a bite to eat of pollen and honey, her first task is to clean the cell from which she emerged. Because the queen is attracted to lay in a clean cell, this step is an important one in raising the next generation. Generally speaking, housekeeper bees keep the home neat and tidy.
The Undertaker
The beehive may be one of the sterile environments in nature; bees are sticklers for keeping a clean house. As such, some young bees, which can be called undertakers or mortician bees, are designated to remove the colony’s dead. It’s not a glamorous job, but some bee has to do it.
Because a dead bee lacks the moisture that gives it weight, undertaker bees are capable of carrying the deceased, flying with them, and disposing them as far from the hive as possible. Undertakers also remove any dead or diseased larvae to reduce the spread of illness.
If a larger creature, such as a mouse, were to crawl in and die inside of the hive, even a task force of undertaker bees would have a difficult time carrying it out. Luckily, bees collect a tree resin that they turn into a sticky, sterile substance, called propolis, sometimes referred to as bee glue. The bees will completely encase the invasive critter in this deep-yellow, antibacterial substance, sealing off any potential for disease to spread.
The Nurse
In another role, the female honeybee turns her attention to the young larvae and works to feed them around the clock. For the first few days, larvae are fed royal jelly, a substance made from a combination of pollen, honey or nectar. and a chemical produced specifically by nurse bees.
As larvae develop, the workers next make a mixture of nectar and pollen to create what we call “bee bread” and will feed a single larva about 1,300 times per day. Depending on how large the brood nest is and its needs, a bee will remain a nurse; when the larva is ready to pupate, the nurse bee will seal its cell with a wax capping.
The Lady in Waiting
Several lucky bees will find themselves in the role of attending to the queen’s needs. Because the queen’s role is very specific and, I can only imagine, very tiresome, she requires some assistance in caring for herself. Though it may sound luxurious, the queen’s attendants are not throwing tea parties or giving manicures; they groom and feed her and remove her excrement from the hive. (As mentioned, bees are very clean. Workers will fly outside of the hive on “cleansing flights” to take care of business, but the queen’s large body renders her unable to do so.) The attendants may even offer a bit of a cheerleading service, coaxing and guiding the queen to lay eggs as she makes her way through the hive.
The Organizer
At about 2 weeks of age, some bees, called organizers, are responsible for unloading the returning field bees of their nectar or pollen. The organizer bees store this nectar and pollen in allocated cells to later feed the colony. The bees that store nectar have an additional job; after they add an enzyme to the nectar and store it, they fan it down to have the correct moisture content to ripen the honey.
The Fanner
Controlling just the right temperature and humidity level in the hive is crucial to brood development and properly cured honey. Fanner bees work furiously to … well, fan air in and out of the hive and keep a constant temperature. Because broods require 93 to 95 degrees Fahrenheit to grow (and healthy broods equal a larger, stronger colony), the fanner is yet another critical role in the honeybee hive.
The Architect
At about 12 days old, a worker bee has sufficiently developed wax glands to begin wax production. As such the architect is now able to produce wax comb and to also make cappings for ripened honey and for developed larvae cells.
The Guard
With her stinger fully developed, a guard bee, in her last role within the hive, will protect the entrance to the hive with her life. Standing at attention, the guards meet and greet each bee that tries to get into the hive and will determine if the guest is family or foe by scent. Only those bees that have the hive’s pheomone will be allowed in. Those that do not are fended off. In the event that nectar sources are scrace or if a hive is weak, wasps, hornets, or other bees may attempt to force their way into the hive to rob the colony of honey stores. In a situation such as this, called robbing, guard bees will bravely defend the colony, perhaps to death.
The Forager
With about three weeks left to her life, the mature female worker finally leaves the hive for the outside world. Before setting sail, however, she familiarizes herself to the hive by taking an orientation flight. Learning the direction of the sun, the local landmarks and the position of the hive, the new forager ensures that she is able to return home once she is laden with her bounty.
After imprinting her hive, the forager flies in search of pollen and nectar collected from flowers. Some foragers will specifically collect propolis, that sticky tree resin, and others will gather water, an important element to establish the perfect moisture content in honey.
This stage is the most taxing partof a honeybee’s life. While it may appear that you have abundant flora and fauna in your backyard, a honeybee will travel anywhere between 3 to 6 miles to forage for the colony’s needs. This can take a large toll on a small bee. She makes trips between a source and the hive multiple times a day.
Foraging bees may meet a variety of ends while out in the field (so to speak), whether it is a chilled evening, a predator or sheer exhaustion. Retirement is not a cultural aspect of the honeybee hive, and each female works dutifully right up until the end.
The Joy of C2H5OH
"The joy of bourbon drinking is not the pharmacological effect of the C2H5OH on the cortex but rather the instant of the whiskey being knocked back and the little explosion of Kentucky U.S.A. sunshine in the cavity of the nasopharynx and the hot bosky bite of Tennessee summertime —aesthetic considerations to which the effect of the alcohol is, if not dispensable, at least secondary."
-Walker Percy in “Bourbon, Neat,” quoted by Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Since I first read this essay, when I was perhaps fourteen or fifteen years old, I have remembered that invaluable phrase precisely and used it on occasion: “hot bosky bite.”
"For some time, I supposed —stupidly— that Percy had simply invented the word “bosky” in an effort to capture the way bourbon tastes and feels: two syllables, because it is a matter-of-fact sort of flavor, concise even when complex. But of course “bosky” is a real word, with a definition: “Having abundant bushes, shrubs, or trees.”
Good God! If you’ve ever been in a hot Southern state in the summer, out away from the roads and houses, in fields or little glades surrounded by plain, unprepossessing woods, and if you’ve tasted bourbon, you must recognize that this is inspired, precise lyricism; it is the result of brilliant observation and masterful, unaffected diction. The flatness of bland blue skies which cling close to buzzing, sun-bleached, lush yet crackling lands, the simultaneity of heat and verdancy: this is the best metaphor I know for the flavor of bourbon, which, I regret, is irreplaceable if one gives up drinking.
Note also the two forms of prose: the specialized vocabulary of the scientist as a foil to the poetics of the the real point, the evocation of place and season and atmosphere. The sort of lexical pyrotechnics for which many esteem David Foster Wallace predates him, of course, although in “Oblivion” I believe he brought it to an apotheosis of sorts (an anti-apotheosis: the dull triumph of inhumanly technical language). But it is worth noting because Wallace’s real gifts, like Percy’s, have nothing to do with the niftiness of his interdisciplinary sentences; that is a matter of style, a style which either supports higher artistic aims or is lazy mannerism, as most writing in fact is."
- Anon
- Anon
Cyril G. Hopkins, “Shall We Use ‘Complete’ Commercial Fertilizers in the Corn Belt?” (1912)
“The real question is, shall the farmer pay ten times as much as he ought to pay for food to enrich his soil? Shall be buy nitrogen at 45 to 50 cents a pound when the air above every acre contains 70 millions pounds of free nitrogen? Shall he buy potassium at 5 to 20 cents a pound and apply 4 pounds per acre when his plowed soil already contains 30,000 pounds of potassium per acre, with still larger quantities in the subsoil? Because his soil needs phosphorous, shall he employ the fertilizer factory to make it soluble and then buy it at 12 to 30 cents a pound in an acid phosphate or “complete” fertilizer when he can get it for 3 cents a pound in the fineground natural rock phosphate, and when, by growing and plowing under plenty of clover (either directly or in manure), he can get nitrogen with profit from the air, liberate the potassium from the inexhaustible supply in the soil, and make soluble the phosphorous in the natural rock phosphate which he can apply in abundance at low cost?”
- Cyril Hopkins, Chief Agronomist and eventual Director of the Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station from 1911 to 1919
Prices may have changed, but the basic truths about long-term soil fertility and economic independence for the farmer are as clear now as they were then.
The efforts of Cyril Hopkins serve as a metaphor for independent truths set up against an advertising and sales blitz that tries to pretend the truths don’t exist. The result of more than a half a century of fertilizer salesmanship is that no one today remembers Cyril Hopkins. The soil fertility truths that he championed, although they were understood for generations, have been forgotten so long that they are now regarded as some sort of revolutionary heresay.
Hopkins was well aware of that possibility. He wrote numerous experiment station bulletins encouraging farmers to realize that no salesman was going to tell them about these ideas because there was so little to sell. He warned them that the large fertilizer manufacturers were concerned first and foremost with selling and only secondarily with farming. He predicted that the manufacturers would push their products endlessly, until farmers forgot how well agriculture could work with a bare minimum of purchased products. Well, Cyril Hopkins may have lost that struggle and been momentarily forgotten, but the truth of “permanent soil fertility” is still right there in the earth for those who care to look.
- Eliot Coleman
- Cyril Hopkins, Chief Agronomist and eventual Director of the Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station from 1911 to 1919
Prices may have changed, but the basic truths about long-term soil fertility and economic independence for the farmer are as clear now as they were then.
The efforts of Cyril Hopkins serve as a metaphor for independent truths set up against an advertising and sales blitz that tries to pretend the truths don’t exist. The result of more than a half a century of fertilizer salesmanship is that no one today remembers Cyril Hopkins. The soil fertility truths that he championed, although they were understood for generations, have been forgotten so long that they are now regarded as some sort of revolutionary heresay.
Hopkins was well aware of that possibility. He wrote numerous experiment station bulletins encouraging farmers to realize that no salesman was going to tell them about these ideas because there was so little to sell. He warned them that the large fertilizer manufacturers were concerned first and foremost with selling and only secondarily with farming. He predicted that the manufacturers would push their products endlessly, until farmers forgot how well agriculture could work with a bare minimum of purchased products. Well, Cyril Hopkins may have lost that struggle and been momentarily forgotten, but the truth of “permanent soil fertility” is still right there in the earth for those who care to look.
- Eliot Coleman
An Old Crow
“That this realization in itself has great value does not mean that any special value is attached to me. I remain a simple man, just an old crow, so to speak. To the casual observer I may seem either humble or arrogant. I tell the young people up in my orchard again and again not to try to imitate me, and it really angers me if there is someone who does not take this advice to heart. I ask, instead, that they simply live in nature and apply themselves to their daily work. No, there is nothing special about me, but what I have glimpsed is vastly important.”
| — | Masanobu Fukuoka |
Thursday, March 1, 2012
A Vernal Dam
I'm at that point in the year when I need the soil to warm
and bring the trillium and mayapples and the goddamn daffodils, and
especially the ramps…and the chickweed and the violets and wood sorrel
and the cattail laterals and the asparagus and the basswood leaves and
the trout lily bulbs and the dandelion and chicory greens and roots and
the milkweed shoots and the cow parsnip and carrot biennial shoots and
roots and solomon’s seal and amaranth & goosefoot tips and prairie
dock and honewort and dandelions and pursulane and sheep sorrel and wild
grape and mulberry and hazelnut and mallow and wapatos and the american
locust and the spring beauty corms and field mustard and wintercress
and garlic mustard and hog peanut and groundnut and sow thistle and
wood nettle and virginia waterleaf and dill and elderberry and burdock
and the ostrich fern and the primrose and black locust flowers and
staghorn sumac shoots and pollen…all of which happen to be edible (except for daffodils). ugh I
don’t want to do anything else.
“Another researcher in the 1970’s, this time in a New Hamsphire northern hardwood forest, studied many apsects of yellow trout lily (Erythronium americanum) ecology, including its nutrient dynamics. Trout lily is a delicate but not particularly useful plant, at least on the surface: it is edible only after prolonged boiling, and it may cause vomiting, which is one of its medicinal uses. It is, however emblematic of all ephemeral wildflowers in another way.
Ephemerals have adapted to a nice that is very short on time but long on nutrient and sun resources. High nutrient availability and leaching in the spring results from cold-season organic matter decomposition followed by high rainfall and snowmelt, at a time when most plants have not yet started to grow. The sun is strong, but not for long, as the trees will soon leaf out. In response to this environment, ephemerals quickly grow, flower, fruit, and store reserves for the following year’s dormancy and growth. All of this requires many nutrients.
This researcher looked at the nutrient dynamics of trout lily over a whole watershed to assess its impact on an ecosystem scale. He compared the nutrient intake of all the trout lily plants in the watershed to the total leeching losses from the watershed. It turns out that potassium uptake by trout lily equaled 82 percent of the amount lost to streams in the spring, and 53 percent of the total lost for the whole year. For nitrogen, the amounts were 91 percent of spring losses and 21 percent of yearly losses. By guzzling these nutrients and then releasing many of them as readily decomposed littler a short while later, when other plants are actively growing, trout lily becomes a “vernal dam” that holds nutrients back from leaching away in the spring. We can assume that other ephemerals function in a similar way, though we don’t know for sure. However, many ephemerals are highly nutritious spring edibles, and this supports the assumption.
Both of these studies point us toward herbaceous plants as key actors in the nutrient dynamics of forest gardens and support the strategy of using dynamic accumulator plants to help gather and conserve nutrients in our garden.”
- Dave Jacke
Studying agroecology is just like reading bedtime stories that carry ya into dream. It’s like hearing the world narrate your strolls: Here, we’ve brought you everything you need, and we’ve done it more gracefully than you could ever hope to imitate. So put down your books and your tools and anxieties. Take a walk in the forest, and be rewarded for happening.
"At first I would ask myself, "Can this be?" Later, I knew it could.
We would not see each other maybe for many days. When I went to the Nest Egg, I went only to be there, to see what was there, to grow quiet enough to hear its sounds and voices. And then one day again she would be there. Our paths would cross and we would go along a ways together while the season warmed and the leaves unfolded overhead, while the leaves fell or the snow. We walked always in beauty, it seemed to me. We walked and looked about, or stood and looked. Sometimes, less often, we would sit down. We did not often speak. The place spoke for us and was a kind of speech. We spoke to each other in the things we saw. As we went along, ways would open before us, alleys and aisles and winding paths, leading to patches of maidenhair ferns or to a tree where pleated woodpeckers nested or to a place where a barred owl gazed down at us backward over his tail. The woods showed us its small brakes of cane (especially lovely when their green foliage was laden with snow), its ascending vines, its lichens and mosses and ferns, its nests and burrows. We saw warblers, wood ducks, thrushes, deer. Around us always were the passing graces of moving air, lights and shadows, birds flight, songs, calls, drummings. Each of us knew what the other saw and heard. There was no need to ask, no need to say.
We went from paths to pathlessness. The woods has many doors going in and out. It is full of rooms opening into one another, shaped by direction and viewpoint. Many of these rooms are findable only once, from a certain direction on a certain day, in a certain light, at a certain time. They could not be returned to either now, after years, or then, after an hour. Windows opened in the foliage, through which, maybe, we would see a hawk soaring or a distant treetop suddenly shaken by a gust of wind. Sometimes these walks and rooms and vistas seemed arranged for us, for our pleasure, as in a human garden. But these, of course, do not constitute the woods, which is not a garden and is not understandable or foretellable even so much as a garden is.
We would come sometimes into a place of such lovelieness that it stopped us still and held us until some changing of the light seemed to bless us and let us go.
We came in April to a slope covered with bluebells, and knelt to smell their cool perfume, so fresh and delicate and unrememberable as to seem to have come from another world.
One afternoon in the spring when we were standing still and silent by the side of Coulter Branch where the water fell with a hundred voices down steps and glides among the rocks from pool to pool, where the mosses were bright green on the rocks and the tree roots and the stonecrop was in bloom, we saw a red fox step out of the undergrowth into a shaft of sunlight where he paused a moment, glowing, and disappeared like a flame put out.
It was a winter afternoon and the snow was falling without wind, straight down. The snow was gathering like blossoms on the green leaves of the cane. In the woods beyond us, we could hear woodpeckers calling. We had not said much. We were standing as still as the trees. The only thing we saw that was moving was the snow.
I said, "It's like time falling, and we and the trees are standing up in it."
"No," she said. "Look. It's like we and the woods and the world are flying upward through the snow. See?"
We stood without saying any more for a long time, flying higher and higher to meet the feathery big flakes as they fell. The evening began to darken. I looked and saw that she had gone, her tracks leading away through the deepening snow. And then I too went away."
“Another researcher in the 1970’s, this time in a New Hamsphire northern hardwood forest, studied many apsects of yellow trout lily (Erythronium americanum) ecology, including its nutrient dynamics. Trout lily is a delicate but not particularly useful plant, at least on the surface: it is edible only after prolonged boiling, and it may cause vomiting, which is one of its medicinal uses. It is, however emblematic of all ephemeral wildflowers in another way.
Ephemerals have adapted to a nice that is very short on time but long on nutrient and sun resources. High nutrient availability and leaching in the spring results from cold-season organic matter decomposition followed by high rainfall and snowmelt, at a time when most plants have not yet started to grow. The sun is strong, but not for long, as the trees will soon leaf out. In response to this environment, ephemerals quickly grow, flower, fruit, and store reserves for the following year’s dormancy and growth. All of this requires many nutrients.
This researcher looked at the nutrient dynamics of trout lily over a whole watershed to assess its impact on an ecosystem scale. He compared the nutrient intake of all the trout lily plants in the watershed to the total leeching losses from the watershed. It turns out that potassium uptake by trout lily equaled 82 percent of the amount lost to streams in the spring, and 53 percent of the total lost for the whole year. For nitrogen, the amounts were 91 percent of spring losses and 21 percent of yearly losses. By guzzling these nutrients and then releasing many of them as readily decomposed littler a short while later, when other plants are actively growing, trout lily becomes a “vernal dam” that holds nutrients back from leaching away in the spring. We can assume that other ephemerals function in a similar way, though we don’t know for sure. However, many ephemerals are highly nutritious spring edibles, and this supports the assumption.
Both of these studies point us toward herbaceous plants as key actors in the nutrient dynamics of forest gardens and support the strategy of using dynamic accumulator plants to help gather and conserve nutrients in our garden.”
- Dave Jacke
Studying agroecology is just like reading bedtime stories that carry ya into dream. It’s like hearing the world narrate your strolls: Here, we’ve brought you everything you need, and we’ve done it more gracefully than you could ever hope to imitate. So put down your books and your tools and anxieties. Take a walk in the forest, and be rewarded for happening.
"At first I would ask myself, "Can this be?" Later, I knew it could.
We would not see each other maybe for many days. When I went to the Nest Egg, I went only to be there, to see what was there, to grow quiet enough to hear its sounds and voices. And then one day again she would be there. Our paths would cross and we would go along a ways together while the season warmed and the leaves unfolded overhead, while the leaves fell or the snow. We walked always in beauty, it seemed to me. We walked and looked about, or stood and looked. Sometimes, less often, we would sit down. We did not often speak. The place spoke for us and was a kind of speech. We spoke to each other in the things we saw. As we went along, ways would open before us, alleys and aisles and winding paths, leading to patches of maidenhair ferns or to a tree where pleated woodpeckers nested or to a place where a barred owl gazed down at us backward over his tail. The woods showed us its small brakes of cane (especially lovely when their green foliage was laden with snow), its ascending vines, its lichens and mosses and ferns, its nests and burrows. We saw warblers, wood ducks, thrushes, deer. Around us always were the passing graces of moving air, lights and shadows, birds flight, songs, calls, drummings. Each of us knew what the other saw and heard. There was no need to ask, no need to say.
We went from paths to pathlessness. The woods has many doors going in and out. It is full of rooms opening into one another, shaped by direction and viewpoint. Many of these rooms are findable only once, from a certain direction on a certain day, in a certain light, at a certain time. They could not be returned to either now, after years, or then, after an hour. Windows opened in the foliage, through which, maybe, we would see a hawk soaring or a distant treetop suddenly shaken by a gust of wind. Sometimes these walks and rooms and vistas seemed arranged for us, for our pleasure, as in a human garden. But these, of course, do not constitute the woods, which is not a garden and is not understandable or foretellable even so much as a garden is.
We would come sometimes into a place of such lovelieness that it stopped us still and held us until some changing of the light seemed to bless us and let us go.
We came in April to a slope covered with bluebells, and knelt to smell their cool perfume, so fresh and delicate and unrememberable as to seem to have come from another world.
One afternoon in the spring when we were standing still and silent by the side of Coulter Branch where the water fell with a hundred voices down steps and glides among the rocks from pool to pool, where the mosses were bright green on the rocks and the tree roots and the stonecrop was in bloom, we saw a red fox step out of the undergrowth into a shaft of sunlight where he paused a moment, glowing, and disappeared like a flame put out.
It was a winter afternoon and the snow was falling without wind, straight down. The snow was gathering like blossoms on the green leaves of the cane. In the woods beyond us, we could hear woodpeckers calling. We had not said much. We were standing as still as the trees. The only thing we saw that was moving was the snow.
I said, "It's like time falling, and we and the trees are standing up in it."
"No," she said. "Look. It's like we and the woods and the world are flying upward through the snow. See?"
We stood without saying any more for a long time, flying higher and higher to meet the feathery big flakes as they fell. The evening began to darken. I looked and saw that she had gone, her tracks leading away through the deepening snow. And then I too went away."
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