Destroyers of Worlds

  Like winning a lottery. Peace, fresh air, food and water, freedom. Money didn't buy this, hard work, sacrifice... none of those things. 

It was art and the conviction that life is. Taking life from anything has to be considered in light of ones own life. 

 Growing our own food is a luxury. When it was time to slaughter it was always hard. We would talk about it. How everyone who ate meat should have to experience taking life to survive.  

 

 

 

 

The Israeli government is using Jews as human shields.

 

Scott and Aki   

www. caribooblades.com

 

 

 

 

Post-World Youth Chess Championship reflections

It's the start of a new year, 2014, the Year of the Horse.  The snowdrifts are creeping up the trunks of our fruit trees.  The silence of the wintry landscape is broken only by the occasional voices of chickadees and whiskey jacks, and of the dogs barking at distant coyotes and not-so-distant moose.  This makes it difficult to recall being in the Middle East just weeks ago.  The preparation, the trip itself, returning and recuperating (Kai brought home a cold bug and generously shared it with his folks), took a good chunk of time and energy out of our year, including the entire Christmas season.   Sometimes it seems as if the whole thing was just part of a dream, or a movie starring familiar actors whose names I can't quite remember.

 It was an extraordinary experience, one which we are still digesting.  I was never a part of anything so huge when I was Kai's age.  I don't think he fully understands that not everyone gets the opportunity to travel to the other side of the planet, or to participate in such a large scale international competition, all before the age of 11.  He says it was cool.
 One thing is for certain - Kai will carry a part of this experience with him for the rest of his life, as will myself and Scott, but for Kai it will undoubtedly loom much larger.  One of those unforgettable formative blips in a young one's existence.

Left Al Ain sadly, a beautiful oasis in the desert.  Palm tree-lined throughways, low-lying burnt orange buildings a few shades lighter than the ever-present sand dunes visible just beyond the rooftops.  We did manage to get to the desert by hiring a taxi to drive us to the city limits and wait for us as we ran barefoot into the dunes.  The thrill was tempered somewhat by nearby SUV-driving yahoos (similar to some of the snowmobile-driving ones back home) but we managed to climb and roll far enough away to get some sense of the mind-blowing vastness of the desert.
Visited the world's largest shopping mall in search of souvenirs, but were defeated by the seemingly endless covered walkway (serviced by a string of moving sidewalks) that connected the metro station to the mall proper.  By the time the actual shops began to appear,  all we could think of was finding food and escaping.  We did manage an escape of sorts, and ended up in the mall's theatre complex watching the Hobbit, with Arabic subtitles.  On the way out, we did see the mall's aquarium, which must have been about 3 floors high and housed stingrays, sharks and eels among countless other forms of marine life.  Quite stunning, and surreal, sitting amidst Starbucks, the Gap and other familiar retail names.
Still needed to pick up souvenirs so the following day we headed back to the old part of the city, this time starting from Bur Dubai, then crossing the Creek by abra (water taxi) to Deira, which we'd explored the first time.  Lots of narrow alleyways, colourful storefronts with apartments above, noisy hawkers.  Kai had his first drink of coconut juice from a green coconut, wandered through the Spice Souk and Gold Souk (one of the biggest gold markets in the world), had some tasty paneer and mutton kebabs, back to the hostel.
 Got to know the metro system, where there is a women and children's car which men are supposed to stay out of during peak hours, as well as a Gold car, which is roomier and costs more.  Every stop is announced in both Arabic and English, the diversity of passengers is fascinating, everyone is very polite and quick to give up seats to women with children.  I don't remember seeing any elderly people on the metro.  I read that expats must leave the country once they are no longer employed.  And perhaps Emirati elders take cabs.
Our final day in the UAE was spent relaxing on the sands of the Arabian Gulf before the gruelling trip home.  We rented an umbrella for 10 Dh and staked out a spot on the sparsely populated beach.  The Hungarian couple who had given us directions to the beach had declined to swim (too cold. Only Russians swim there at this time of year.  And perhaps a few Canadians, they had chuckled).  The water was cooler than I had expected, but lovely once in.  I realized I was floating effortlessly for the first time in my life. Salt. We swam, Kai built fortresses, across the water from Iran, and Iraq. 
 The metro was packed, and the hostel manager was unable to call a taxi to the airport for us due to the crowds heading to the World's Tallest Building (the Burj Khalifa, which we had seen from the World's Largest Shopping Mall) to see Biggest Fireworks Display Ever.  We did make it to the airport, dragging our suitcases through the crowds at the metro, and departed from Dubai at 11pm, just missing the New Year's extravaganza (see Dubai New Year's fireworks on YouTube)

 The bright sunshine, the sub -35C mornings, the pots of soup on the crackling woodstove, are the things shaping our thoughts right now.   And it's all good.

www.caribooblades.com

A Bushcraft and Sustainable Garden

We live in the bush and have created a garden that was unheard of in these parts. In fact, the old timers thought we were crazy. Cultivating wild flowers, greens and vegetables along with domestic greens and vegetables. Enriching the soil with what is around us. Doing it all by hand with the help from tools we've made. Simply. Leaving a light footprint.
We call it bushcraft gardening.

150lbs of tomatoes

We've learned about patience, stamina and how to relax here.

Fruit trees have been difficult but now we have a small orchard. Between moose, deer, bears, voles and mice it has been a challenge.

Honey bees have been emotionally draining because they die from causes we can't control but now they are thriving.

We now raise them in empty boxes, no frames, They build their own natural comb all the way down. We've combined a traditional Japanese method with Warre managment methods. No chemicals, no treatments.




Growing our own food has taught us in between frost, hail, bear, moose and deer, birds, rabbits, mice, voles, bugs, hillbilly pigs and the dreaded free range cattle to relax. The boreal forest is filled with animals that want almost everything that we grow.

This gardening method is sustainable, organic and has very little impact .

It's a state of mind going into the wilderness with nothing but seeds and a shovel, an open mind, relaxed and keenly observing your surroundings with a sense of freedom and balance.

Everything around you may have a use for your bush garden. Rocks act like sinks storing heat energy from the sun that can offset cool nights. They are fertilizers slowly giving important nutrients to the soil. They collect and trap water. They can also be protection from animals and cover for others, like toads.
That old stump – do I remove it, or can I plant a garden around it and let it slowly fertilize?

Rocks picked for a garden wall

Rotten wood has got to be the supreme bush fertilizer adding organic material and fluffing up heavy soil.There are droppings from animals like deer, moose and rabbit which are good "on the spot" fertilizers.

Harvesting what you need with care and never taking more than 1/3 of anything.

Surviving with respect and again, with a light foot step

Those “weeds” or wildflowers – pull them out or cultivate them, let them flower to attract the bees.

If the location of your plot is covered with grass or weeds turn it over and leave it in place. It will decompose and become food for your plants.

Fireweed shoots--Excellent greens

Certain bugs, wild plants and critters can help. In a wilderness garden you may cultivate dandelions, wild onions, wild parsnip, lambs quarters, mushrooms, chickweed, cattails. In fact one could have an excellent wild garden cultivating just wild plants.

Crops like garlic, potatoes and broad (fava) beans can be grown without the stress of everything else wanting to eat them. We grow these crops without any protection.
Location.

I asked my son what his first thought was on our gardening in the bush. He said food.
It is about the food, the sustenance.

Soil, your climate, exposure to

the sun, access to water, location of your plot, predators...

We've been fertilizing by mulching with green grass (before it goes to seed) covered with an inch of sand then covered with an inch of rotten wood. We have some chicken manure that we fertilize beans and greens with. After the crop is harvested we plant rye grass or Chinese vegetables. When the thick head is 6 to 8 inches high we turn it over.

17 years Aki and I have done it this way. Kai can pick any 2 x 2 foot spot in the garden and pick enough worms for a day of fishing trout.

Regards,
Aki and Scott

Our business, http://www.caribooblades.com/

The Game

Spider in the snow

Finding Empathy

-30 this morning. Warmed up. Yesterday morning the thermometer tube was empty. Its lowest reading is -40.
This being our first year keeping bees, as we’ve written about in a previous post, the cold snap is a bit of a worry. Until a week ago it was a warm winter.

So far the hives are strong.

After a very wet late spring and wet first half of the summer, the bees began to seriously gather nectar in August. The frost arrived at the beginning of Sept so we fed them open trays of sugar syrup until they stopped taking it near the middle of October so they could build up their winter stores.

It seems to be a crazy idea keeping bees here, a subtropical insect. We see the honey bee collapse as a microcosm of the state that human beings are manipulating the environment. They have as good a chance here as anywhere else… being kept. Maybe a better chance.
We stuck to the Warre hive management philosophy.

All three of us spent hours observing the hives, reading and researching.
With observation windows built into a few of the boxes and the observation of the hive entrance we committed ourselves to everyday, we are building confidence that we can have a reading of the health of our hives.

Meat birds, healthy and thriving, becoming predators. When they arrive as day old chicks they grow seeming to have no idea except to stay warm, eat their feed and drink. When they get older, 3 weeks, you can feed them grower, feed them all day, keeping their trough full. They lie around and eat.

After a couple of weeks of this most get comfortable and may only move half a dozen yards for the rest of their lives. After nine or ten weeks slaughter them and fill your freezer.
We did this one year. We felt so disgusted with the operation that we didn’t raise meat chickens again and realized that this method of raising chickens was still so much better than what is out there. We stopped eating chicken.

After reading an article in Mother Earth News about raising meat birds in a humane way, we decided to give it another try.
As soon as the chicks arrived our son Kai gathered worms and bugs from the garden and introduced them to the chicks. It was hilarious. Leaping out of the way of the marauding click beetles. Then, one stopped, slowly, with trepidation, watching, studying and zeroing in on one of the beetles. It made its attack. Soon they were chasing each other around trying to steal each others' finds.
After a couple of days they would all wait for Kai with anticipation.
We have a couple of hens who have chicks about the same time and that are about the same size. We put the Cornish Giant meat chicks with the hens and their chicks. All together into the same run. The meat birds quickly learned how to forage from the lessons of the hens teaching their chicks. The Giants began to dwarf the laying birds. They turned into ravenous prehistoric mini raptors.
By the end of their time they’re travelling in flocks with free run of the property. Foraging for bugs, toadlets, worms, seeds and whatever else they need. Twice a day, first thing in the morning and in the evening Kai feeds them grower to satisfy their insatiable appetites. Every evening 25 giant Chickens gather out front and wait for Kai. Their lives are fast and furious. Ten weeks go by. We slaughter all the Cornish Giants and fill our freezer with chicken.
　
From the standpoint of having nothing. Come closer to your end than you feel comfortable with. Then push it a little further. You could die. With a little time and imagination you will be able to empathize. you can begin to see what you need to survive as an individual living amongst life on this planet. Maybe even become a brother or sister with most on the planet.

Every year the winter firewood piles have become easier to build.
The mature pine forests are dead. Huge trees collapsing on each other falling like dominoes.

Time and imagination.
There are a lot of changes coming fast.

Regards, Aki and Scott


http://www.caribooblades.com/

June Bees

Lots of rain, sun in between.

Our first thought was that the flowers are going to be incredible.

 

Imagine waking to a torn sky. Lying in your bed covered with debris. Falling. A cacophony of sounds, fighter jets, bombs....your child.

  Just planted the greenhouse in our bushcraft garden. In a month it is a tomato, pepper and basil jungle. You can refer to our post titled, "Sustainable Bush Gardening", posted on the 3/7/08 for information and pictures of our gardening methods. Dandelions and saskatoon bushes bloom, indian paintbrush, strawberry, silverweed, violets and on and on. Meanwhile fireweed and the wild roses are growing strong. It is almost surreal even in a normal year when the bloom happens. We've been having a wet spring similar to a season 8 or 9 years ago so . Survival. This chick didn't make it. Mushrooms that haven’t shown their fruit for years. Amazing to witness the boreal forest become rainforest. When it rains, when it pours the verdure explodes. There was a Moose and her long legged calf crashing the pond today. Just browsing. Lots of bears this spring. A pair of eagles seems to have taken up residence close. Lots of ducks. Mallard, golden eye, merganser, bufflehead, red head, widgeon, ruddy, coot, scaup, ring neck. Canada geese. The resident sand hill cranes and red tail hawks are back. Our presence may be a nuisance but they get used to us and thrive. Even the garlic, onions and peas are slow this year. Cool and wet. Most has started growing now. Potatoes still aren't up. Short season, higher altitude and things grow fast and recover. Maybe.. We planted more seed rather than seedlings for late broccoli and cabbage. Looks like the seeds may catch the earlier planting of small seedlings. We decided this was the year to start keeping bees. The more research we did the more daunting the task, between what they say you have to do, what humans have done to them and the short honey season and long winters here. The point of death and extinction instead of sustaining themselves like they have been doing for at least the last forty million years. There are so many opinions, so many who “know”. I read, “one question to 12 beekeepers and you’ll receive 13 different answers“. As far as I can tell, that is the case. We built our own honey bee hives with several design ideas in mind. A STUMP, Emile Warre hive management, Kenyan top bar hives and the 8 frame Langstroth design. Another design feature, that was mentioned by a friend who kept bees for 15 years was a honey bee hive he helped removed from between the walls in a cabin. He said it was the strongest hive he had ever seen. There has to be something more logical than an “all or nothing world“. Using 2 x 10, double end walls for hive boxes (3 1/4“ thick), a few boxes with windows and coverings. Warre’s dimensions wide (300mm) but 40% longer, 11 top bars each. Two boxes are deep and long enough to accommodate Langstroth frames. We ironed in bees wax and painted the outsides with linseed for moisture protection. We can easily lift the hives whole with the pulleys we installed to fit boxes in from the bottom keeping the disturbance to a minimum. The hives will not be opened until fall. The hives are by our kitchen window under shelter. We can watch the hives and check their progess by looking in the windows once in a while. We are feeding them sugar syrup because they arrived with nothing. We won’t take any honey this year. Next year they’ll eat their own honey during the spring. I’m reminded, when I rinse my face off in the rain barrel that we’re in this together you and I, everybody… they have no choice. We have no choice. Some we don’t mind sharing water with…How many millions of barrels of oil and how many tons of radio active material were dumped into our oceans this year not to mention all the stuff that is routinely dumped. For many years. To be people responsible for the way we live. Just being fair. www.caribooblades.com/shop.html