There is a story told in LeGrand Cannon's Look to the Mountain in which the master blacksmith makes a scythe blade of Damascus steel for a young mower in 1769. In the high heat of his forge he pounds bars of iron and steel together, folding them over each other again and again. After tempering, the effect of the mingled metals in the blade is much like fudge ripple. The iron gives the blade flexibility as an antidote to the steel's brittleness; the steel holds the edge razor sharp, and gives the enduring shape of the blade. The price? Twenty-one cords of rock maple, cut, split, and stacked. The master smith assures the young man that there will be at least one blow of the hammer for every strike of the ax.

University extension agents argue persuasively that a farmer cannot afford the time to mow: he is forced by economics to sit all day atop his tractor attaching one implement after another to produce enough to make the payments on loan for the equipment. I do not offer the scythe and its related tools as an alternative to this scale of agriculture. Yet, even here the scythe has a place, trimming the edges where the machine cannot go.
I do not use a scythe in order to make enough money to support a livelihood, but rather to support a livelihood. Not only is the product of my labor- hay, mulch, grain-- superior to any I could obtain elsewhere in this chemical age. In addition, I deeply enjoy the experiences of contributing to my own sustenance and of relating intimately to the earth.

- David Tresemer

 

Death: W.C. Fields called death "the Fellow in the Bright Night-gown." He shuffles around the house in all the corners I've forgotten, all the halls I dare not call to mind or visit for fear I'll glimpse the hem of his shabby, dazzling gown disappearing around a turn. This is the monster evolution loves. How could it be?
The faster death goes, the faster evolution goes. If an aphid lays a million eggs, several might survive. Now, my right hand, in all its human cunning, could not make one aphid in a thousand years. But these aphid eggs-- which run less than a dime a dozen, which run absolutely free-- can make aphids as effortlessly as the sea makes waves. Wonderful things, wasted. It's a wretched system. Arthur Stanley Eddington, the British physicist and astronomer who died in 1944, suggested that all of "Nature" could conceivably run on the same deranged scheme. "If indeed she has no greater aim than to provide a home for her greatest experiment, Man, it would be just like her methods to scatter a million stars whereof one might haply achieve her purpose." I doubt very much that this is the aim, but it seems clear on all fronts that this is the method.

- Annie Dillard

"Despite the recent rise of fundamentalism, the crisis of belief continues. Many people, including me, have overcome it to a greater or a lesser degree by locating God in nature. Most of the glimpses of immortality, design, and benevolence that I see come from the natural world- from the seasons, from the beauty, from the intermeshed fabric of decay and life, and so on. Other signs exists as well, such as instances of great and selfless love between people, but these, perhaps, are less reliable. They hint at epiphany, not at the eternity that nature proclaimed. If this seems a banal notion, that is exactly my point. The earliest gods we know about were animals- tigers, birds, fish. Their forms and faces peer out from ancient ruins, and from the totems and wall paintings of our first religions..."- Mckibben

"Sit and be still
until in the time
of no rain you hear
beneath the dry wind’s
commotion in the trees
the sound of flowing
water among the rocks,
a stream unheard before,
and you are where
breathing is prayer."

Wendell Berry, from “Sabbaths 2001”

People involved in industry, design, environmentalism, and related fields often refer to a product's "life cycle". Of course, very few products are actually living, but in a sense we project our vitality-- and our mortality-- onto them. They are something like family members to us. We want them to live with us, to belong to us. In Western society, people have graves, and so do products. We enjoy the idea of ourselves as powerful, unique individuals; and we like to buy things that are brand-new, made of materials that are "virgin". Opening a new product is a kind of metaphorical defloration: "This virgin product is mine, for the very first time. When I am finished with it (special, unique person that I am), everyone is. It is history." Industries design and plan according to this mind-set.
We recognize and understand the value of feeling special, even unique. But with materials, it makes sense to celebrates the sameness and commonality that permit us to enjoy them-- in special, even unique, products-- more than once. What would have happened, we sometimes wonder, if the Industrial Revolution had taken place in societies that emphasize the community over the individual, and where people believed not in a cradle-to-grave life cycle but in reincarnation?

Every man is followed by a shadow which is his death- dark, featureless, and mute. And for every man there is a place where his shadow is clarified and is made his reflection, where his face is mirrored in the ground...He becomes the follower of what pursued him. What hounded his track becomes his companion.
That is the myth of my search and my return.

- Wendell Berry

Eating Animals, Foer

       There is something about eating animals that tends to polarize: never eat them or never sincerely question eating them; become an activist or disdain activists. These opposing positions -- and the closely related unwillingness to take a position -- converge in suggesting that eating animals matters. If and how we eat animals cuts something deep. Meat is bound up with the story of who we are and who we want to be, from the book of Genesis to the latest farm bill. It raises significant philosophical questions and is a $140 billion-plus a year industry that occupies nearly a third of the land on the planet, shapes ocean ecosystems, and may well determine the future of earth's climate. And yet we seem able to think only about the edges of the arguments -- the logical extremes rather than the practical realities. My grandmother said she wouldn't eat pork to save her life, and though the context of her story is as extreme as it gets, many people seem to fall back on this all-or-nothing framework when discussing their everyday food choices. It's a way of thinking that we would never apply to other ethical realms. (Imagine always or never lying.) I can't count the times that upon telling someone I am vegetarian, he or she responded by pointing out an inconsistency in my lifestyle or trying to find to find a flaw in an argument I never made. (I have often felt that my vegetarianism matters more to such people than it does to me.) 

       We need a better way to talk about eating animals. We need a way that brings meat to the center of public discussion in the same way it is often in the center of our plates. This doesn't require that we pretend we're all going to have a collective agreement. However strong our intuitions are about what's right for us personally and even about what's right for others, we all know in advance our positions will clash with those of our neighbors. What do we do with that most inevitable reality? Drop the conversation, or find a way to reframe it? 
 _______________________________________________________________

Stewed Dog, Wedding Style - A Classic Filipino Recipe

 First, kill a medium-sized dog, then burn off the fur over a hot fire. Carefully remove the skin while still warm and set aside for later (may be used in other recipes). Cut meat into 1" cubes. Marinate meat in mixture of vinegar, peppercorn, salt, and garlic for 2 hours. Fry meat in oil using a large wok over an open fire, then add onions and chopped pineapple and saute until tender. Pour in tomato sauce and boiling water, add green pepper, bay leaf, and Tabasco. Cover and simmer over warm coals until meat is tender. Blend in puree of dog's liver and cook additional 5-7 minutes.

       A simple trick from the backyard astronomer: if you are having trouble seeing something, look slightly away from it. The most light-sensitive parts of our eyes (those we need to see dim objects) are on the edges of the region we normally use for focusing.

      Eating animals has an invisible quality. Thinking about dogs, and their relationship to the animals we eat, is one way of looking askance and making something invisible visible.
_________________________________________________________________

The French, who love their dogs, sometimes eat their horses.
The Spanish, who love their horses, sometimes eat their cows.
The Indians, who love their cows, sometimes eat their dogs.

Jack Gilbert, RIP

"....Maybe the Etruscan texts would
finally explain why the couples on their tombs
are smiling. And maybe not. When the thousands
of mysterious Sumerian tablets were translated,
they seemed to be business records. But what if they
are poems or psalms? My joy is the same as twelve
Ethiopian goats standing silent in the morning light.
O Lord, thou art slabs of salt and ingots of copper, as grand as ripe

barley lithe under the wind’s labor.
Her breasts are six white oxen loaded with bolts
of long-fibered Egyptian cotton. My love is a hundred
pitchers of honey. Shiploads of thuya are what
my body wants to say to your body. Giraffes are this
desire in the dark. Perhaps the spiral Minoan script
is not laguage but a map. What we feel most has
no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses, and birds."

- Excerpt from The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart
 

 Link: A Guide to Seed Saving, Seed Stewardship and Seed Sovereignity

       “What can turn us from this deserted future, back into the sphere of our being, the great dance that joins us to our home, to each other and to other creatures, to the dead and unborn? I think it is love. I am perforce aware how baldly and embarrassingly that word now lies on the page—for we have learned at once to overuse it, abuse it, and hold it in suspicion. But I do not mean any kind of abstract love (adolescent, romantic, or "religious"), which is probably a contradiction in terms, but particular love for particular things, places, creatures, and people, requiring stands, acts, showing its successes and failures in practical or tangible effects. And it implies a responsibility just as particular, not grim or merely dutiful, but rising out of generosity. I think that this sort of love defines the effective range of human intelligence, the range within its works can be dependably beneficent. Only the action that is moved by love for the good at hand has the hope of being responsible and generous. Desire for the future produces words that cannot be stood by. But love makes language exact, because one loves only what one knows...

...But even in the much-publicized rebellion of the young against the materialism of the affluent society, the consumer mentality is too often still intact: the standards of behavior are still those of kind and quantity, the security sought is still the security of numbers, and the chief motive is still the consumer's anxiety that he is missing out on what is "in." In this state of total consumerism - which is to say a state of helpless dependence on things and services and ideas and motives that we have forgotten how to provide ourselves - all meaningful contact between ourselves and the earth is broken. We do not understand the earth in terms either of what it offers us or of what it requires of us, and I think it is the rule that people inevitably destroy what they do not understand.”

                           ― Wendell Berry

Aided and abetted by blue jays and their magpie collaborators

Why more people don’t eat acorns is no mystery: It is a plot perpetrated on us humans by a vast squirrel conspiracy, aided and abetted by blue jays and their magpie collaborators. OK, maybe not. But we can learn something by watching squirrels.

Squirrels don’t bury every acorn they find, you know. Scientists observing squirrel behavior back East noticed something unusual. The fuzzy varmints would seek out white oak acorns and gorge themselves on them, then dash off to find the acorns of other oaks, mainly the red oak. Powered by a meal of white oak acorns, the squirrels would then spend hours burying red oak acorns in the ground. Why?

Turns out white oak acorns are extremely low in the bitter tannins that give all acorns such a bad name. Red oak acorns are high in tannins. But tannins are water soluble. So by burying them, the squirrel hid the acorn from the stealing blue jays (and rival squirrels) and plunked it into water-rich soil. After rains and snow and freezing and thawing, the tannins leach into the soil and leave the red oak acorn as sweet as a white one.

Link: Comprehensive Article on Knee Pain for Cyclists

Link: The Greenhorns - A Resource Network for Young Farmers

Causes of Weak, Spindly Seedlings

Temperatures too high-- either day or night or both. During seed starting times, I try to keep the greenhouse temperatures in the 70’s during the day, and in the low to mid 50’s at night.

Not enough light-- Seedlings will stretch toward the light. I keep seedlings under fluorescent lights about 16 hours a day. The lights are just a couple of inches above the plants.

Not enough air movement-- You should have a fan running gently near the plants at all times. This helps them grow stocky and also prevents damping off fungus.
Also, brushing your plant tops gently with your fingers for a couple of minutes a day will help them grow stocky.

Seeds planted too deep or soil surface was too dry- Seeds have a limited amount of energy (in the cotyledons) to push themselves up through the soil.

Not enough food-- Once you see true leaves, you should be giving the plants weak solutions of fertilizer (I use fish & kelp emulsion).

Why a Salad Costs More Than a Big Mac

Link: How to Store Fruits & Vegetables

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

DIY/Bushcraft: Crooked Knife

Link: DIY Crooked Knife

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.



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