Entitlement

We both grew up on middle class streets in Canadian cities during the 60's and 70's. Gas was 35 cents a gallon. Electricity was almost free. Water was free.
During that time I watched my father convert our whole backyard into a garden with fruit trees. After reinsulating the roof and upgrading the windows, he plumbed in an 80 gallon preheating tank beside the furnace which received cold city water before entering the hot water tank, put a wood stove in the basement and plumbed it into the central heat, cut and dug a small root cellar off the basement. Our house was an average looking house on a city block but way more efficient. That was 40 years ago. If he was still alive he'd have at least a solar array on the roof and a heat pump in the cellar.


Following that patriarchal line, he was doing what his father and mother did. They did what my great grandparents had taught them. My great, great grandparents were pioneers and they did what they had to do to survive in a rugged environment.
The environment cannot be denied. All lines do lead to the same... survival. Our environment is everything.


Like so many boys of my generation, I didn't get to know my father because he died young. Heart attack. Doing all kinds of stuff for the environment and feeding everybody he could...didn't take care of himself. He was 56. Aki's dad died of stomach cancer when he was 47. Looking for a better life for their children, Aki's parents brought the family over from Japan in the 60's. The only "ethnic" family in their suburban neighbourhood. Aki was one of three Japanese-Canadians in her high school of 1200 students.

Shaking off our sense of entitlement.
By the second year we knew we were onto something but still a long way off. Now 16 years later we're still settling in and are just plain sad that more people aren't living this way. It is simple. Working with nature. More healthy physical work. Breathing fresh air, drinking fresh water. We grow all our own  vegetables, keep bees and keep chickens for meat and eggs. We know the organic farmers who raise the pork we savour over winter.

There are people doing this in the cities. Small , large backyards and container vegetable gardens...

for healthy food.

Eating fresh food, drinking fresh water and breathing fresh air, of course, is possible in the cities.


Nancy and Rosa's gardens in the lower mainland.

We initially came here for the same reasons that anyone would have.

We separated the compressor and condenser from the backside of our freezer, carefully bending the copper tubing so that it is away from the freezer.  Our Sears freezer is a bad design. Heating while you're trying to freeze. So much of this society is designed with the assumption of entitlement to cheap, unlimited and uninterrrupted power and resources. Separating just the motor will make a big difference. We throw a duvet over the freezer when it's not on.. Huge difference. We haven't had a fridge for 13 years. Between the freezer, pantry and root cellar we don't need one. We don't have a basement but our pantry floor is not insulated. From September until May the bottom shelf in the pantry keeps things cool. The root cellar always keeps things cool. An old sixty gallon water tank thermal cycling through our wood cook stove is like having a second wood heater and supplies us with hot water. A small green house off the south wall of our small house heats up for vented heat into the house, and supplies greens earlier and later in the season for us. For our power we've 416 watts of panel, a 30 amp controller, 8 - 6 volt heavy deep cycle batteries and a 1750 inverter. With cable, wire and connections, $3000 Canadian for everything.  A second 12 volt system for the water pump, a couple kitchen lights, pantry light and music we have 2 - 12 volt deep cycle batteries charged by a 50 watt panel, no contoller. This system is almost 17 and working fine. One battery is 17 the other is 12 years old. Maintainance is key.  These systems have paid for themselves at least 4 or 5 times.
The newest stat I've read is that the real cost of a solar panel operating in ideal circumstances is paid for in 5 years of operation financially and environmentally. In the city there is the huge advantage of being able to tie directly into the grid, eliminating the need for batteries. So many possibilities.

We went a little watt heavy as far as panel:battery ratio. During the dark months of January and December when the batteries get low repeatedly I'll sometimes disconnect 2 of the batteries to make it easier to break down the batteries' resistance to accept a charge. I found that reading a bit about batteries and 12 v (DC) was a good thing. From March until September power is not an issue here. We run our cabin and a small shop without any sacrifice. Working with the sun is the key.  We really live by the sun. For a couple of years it was an adjustment living off grid... now we wouldn`t live any other way.

Nancy Brignall and George Rammell's web sites, http://www3.telus.net/4.
Mike Edwareds and Rosa Quintana, www.rosaquintanalillo.com and http://mikeedwardsart.com
Together they're changing their neighbourhoods. Sites of art and rejuvenation.

Our site,

http://www.caribooblades.com/

We humans excel at adjusting, adjusting, adapting - until we almost completely forget how we used to do things... Forget what we've done, forget what we're doing. Forget where we're going.
Aki and Scott                        

 www.caribooblades.com

* It's an updated blog.

The Autumn Bush

The nights are still and quiet. Three owls talk over the boreal forest in the crisp autumn air. The tremendous sky of stars sets a relative perception clear... We're looking forward to the winter. Clearing our minds, closer to each other, reaping meaning and understanding from the information of the past year.

I'm thinning our woods of the dead. Letting in light for new growth, bringing in firewood. For what it's worth it's our twelfth winter and we have not cut a living tree to build with or for firewood. The trees are dying so fast here that we haven't had to.











6 cords of firewood a year, fencing and a couple of buildings.

Except for the fuel for the chainsaw, burning firewood is basically carbon neutral.








Our gardens are almost tucked in for the winter. We grow rye grass for cover and mix in rotted wood, compost, reeds, cardboard, ash and egg shell from our chickens. We also mix in sand because our soil is clay based.



Aki planted 109 garlic bulbs worth of garlic for next year, saving 20 or so to plant in the spring between other crops. After the potatoes were harvested at the beginning of September we dug in the potato plants, planted rye and let it grow 6". We then covered the bed with 4" of sand mixed with rotted wood, turned the bed with a fork, planted the garlic toes, watered with manure tea, then covered the bed with reeds. In the spring Aki will pull the cover back and as the garlic comes she'll give it another shot of green manure tea.





We will do the same with some parsnip seed.





This year we were able to save more seed: garlic, parsnip, peas, fava bean, squash, zucchini, spinach, chinese greens, potatoes. Almost had some broccoli seed...next year.

Out there in the world the environment is once again on the back burner, the rich are richer and we are a little poorer.

We've been duped again.


It is hard to see that anybody gives a hoot about children.





Adults are bizarre. To leave the kids our problems because we're too selfish to give up a bit of decadence.


Our food is canned, dried and in the root cellar. Warmth is taken care of.

We have 16 chickens this year, the most we've ever had. All laying - we've discovered pickled eggs... Reinsulating the coop - the mice love it in there.

This year has been a good solar power year. Every day that's sunny we appreciate the power of the sun, and every day that it's not we appreciate it even more.

It will be a good winter.

Our business,

http://www.caribooblades.com/

Winding down

We've finished our shows, the gardening tools are stored, the roof of the new shop is up. An arctic outflow has ensured the lake is well-frozen, tonight they say it is going down to minus 29 Celsius.

The woodstove is always going now, with a pot of soup simmering, and a kettle or two of hot water on top, something roasting in the oven, a pan of yogurt forming on the shelf behind, boots drying beside, mitts and hats hanging nearby. There is an abundance of fuel now, thanks to the pine beetle, but every log is still precious, as we are aware of the costs of even this "free fuel".

We still need gas for the chainsaw and gas for the truck to pull the trees out. And there are other costs - the damage to other plant life when we fall and skid trees, the smoke from the burning...


We, it seems, cannot exist without adversely affecting our environment.

We chop wood, shovel snow, gaze out at the frozen lake, and ponder this predicament
while politicians discuss the future of the planet over wine and cheese.

We are thinking, always thinking.

Harvesting

The month of August has been a busy one this year. It all started with a hard frost August 8th. First time this has happened and it was devastating to parts of our garden.





We survive the winter with the food we harvest and forage now.
















The main point to surviving here off the land is being able to sustain the blows that come. Between hail that set the garden back in June and the frost in early August, all in all it was a good harvest.


We picked up the pullets at the end of July.

Their combs are beginning to turn red now, Sept 22. We'll have a fresh supply of eggs all winter while the older hens take a winter break.









Aki dried about 16 kg of broccoli. Broccoli dries well and reconstitutes itself in stir fries, soups and egg dishes beautifully. She also dried cauliflower, beet greens, lovage, basil, mint, tarragon, she sun dried tomatoes and she dried a winter's worth of boletus mushrooms.


Fresh mushrooms










Dried Boletes




















We're big garlic eaters. This harvest will last till June.






With a small freezer of venison we're almost ready.

Fried Fungi

Lots of rain in the boreal forest brings out mushrooms. With the right balance of temperature, sun and rain mushrooms come out. In past years there has been so many mushrooms and of different varieties it is almost too much for my small mind to handle because of its quality of magical beauty.

We harvest edible mushrooms.

We take about 1/3 of the mushrooms we find leaving the rest to continue their life cycle.

Rosy larch and king bolete have pushed their way through the earth everywhere in the past couple of days.

Aki dries them. By the time winter arrives we have a mushroom cache; Oyster, field, horse and bolete.

We discovered an incredible delicacy yesterday. A large grouping of oyster mushrooms that had dried in the last week in perfect condition. We brought them home, marinated and reconstituted them in wine. Fried in butter, a touch of lemon, salt and pepper. It was one of the best meals I've had.

Rose hip wine is coming.

In the 10 years we've lived here surrounded by "crown land" we've lost 90% of our mushrooming grounds. Five years ago lumber mills got a blank cheque with the excuse of the pine beetle. They've taken everything around us. Fir, spruce aspen along with the pine. After they've taken what they wanted everything is bulldozed into a slash pile and burned. The trees go, the mushrooms go.
On a late fall evening, we drove up to the edge of the Chilcotin. It was dark. A red glow on the horizon grew larger as the climb home gave way to the plateau. The fires had been lit. There appeared dozens of red glowing halos dotting the ravaged forest along the roads. Massive fires fueled by gasoline and diesel, which would for weeks burn limbs, roots and unworthy trees, erase them as if they had never existed.

Dandelions

Dandelions are high in vitamins A, B and C and minerals like calcium, potassium, iron, phosphorous and magnesium.. The flowers are rich with vitamin D. The roots are said to be good for your liver and blood.

Aki, Kai and I eat dandelion as a main source of vegetable and green for the months of April, May and into June.

As we get our garden turned in the spring the dandelions we let alone the season before have small carrot sized roots. We stir fry them. They're excellent. The young greens are excellent salad material. The flowers we mix into omlettes, stir frys, salads and soups. Aki rolls the flowers in flour and seasoning and fries them in butter. They taste like a mushroom. We eat bags of them. We stop eating the greens as they mature because they become quite bitter but we continue feeding our chickens loads till the fall. We'll continue to eat the flowers and roots.

One dish Aki likes to make using the roots is based on one she grew up eating (her mother used burdock instead of dandelion root).

Slice roots and a carrot into thin strips.

Stir fry in a bit of sesame oil. Add soy sauce and a dash of chili pepper to taste.

Enjoy!

When bears come out from the high winter hibernation grounds one of their first foods is the dandelion. They get fat eating just dandelion flowers.

We've all heard about dandelion wine.