A Flawed Game

Spider in the Snow

is a poem by Aki

Regards,

Aki and Scott

www.caribooblades.com

Bushcraft and Survival Garden (updated)

 

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 (26 years ago). Cultivating wild flowers, greens and vegetables along with domestic greens and vegetables. Enriching the soil with what is around us, starting apple trees, doing it all by hand with the help from tools we've made. Simply. Leaving a light footprint. 

We live in the "working forest".  Logging, ranching and mining. Consuming.

We call it bushcraft gardening. I suppose you could call it survival gardening because that is how we survive.

Our tree limb greenhouse. 150lbs of tomatoes

Since we've been here the winter temperatures have gradually risen. We don't see a week or two of -30 or -40 anymore. When the cold began to move into our cabin anything on the floor froze.   

It might get down there for a few nights now. We might get a week or two between -20...-28 with a -18 in there. Still cold but it's an easier way. How fragile we are.

.
We're more relaxed now. We still live in our 800 sq foot cabin. We would not live anywhere else.

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.  We don't raise them now. Instead we've been cultivating our relationship with wild bees. Every year there are fewer. This year we had bumble bees. The 5 or 6 species of wild bees usually pollinating our plants were missing.. We've been using a feather trying to pollinate. 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He's a young adult now. 

After a judo tournament he skyped us,

" My body is aching, my fingers and toes skinned

My face hurts to touch and I can't make fists due to ligament injuries 

My spirit is unwavering 

Looking forward to getting my Nidan and making knives".

 

This gardening method is sustainable, organic and has very little impact  except birds, bugs, mice, snakes and worms have never had it better.

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

now

The fence is to keep out free range cows. For 26 years the free range livestock has been the greatest threat to our garden.

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

  Cultivate dandelions, wild onions, wild parsnip, lambs quarters,

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

a young adult now learning about the city and people. The old timers are dead. It will be our 27th winter. Not much has changed here. We're older and still thriving in the bush. We wonder and ask ourselves.

Regards,
Aki and Scott

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

Environmental Health ...Now

 We have lived off grid in central British Columbia for 26 years. Growing our food, living and using the sun's energy to survive.

 

Politicians in North America lie, cheat and have no respect for the people. We've been hearing over and over, year in, year out the same talk about what they are going to do about the degradation and corruption facing the planet. A guy comes along with a track record of exemplary work for the environment, throws his hat into the cesspool to help and everyone shits on him. Damn.

Fresh clean air, water, food....and a safe environment.

If you want to know what  Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stands for watch and listen to this recording of him speaking at the Seventh annual Rhoda Goldman Distinguished Lecture in Public Health Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, 15 years ago. It was a tribute to him.

Environmental Health and Demnocracy with RFK Jr.

If you want to find out more about the man today watch Math Hoffa's podcast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0XFMqHu2Ok . 

 

In search for truth.

Regards,

Aki and Scott

www.caribooblades.com

 

George Sears (Nessmuk) and Henry David Thoreau

 

 Two Massachusetts writers who have had an impact on our lives here here.

The potato patch.

 

 

It wasn't until  Aki and I moved into the bush in '97, started to make hunting and survival knives that we learned of George Sears (pen name Nessmuk), his methods, bushcraft skills and the famed design, the "Nessmuk" knife. 

 

 "Go light, the lighter the better".   

We've sold many bushcraft knives fashioned after George Sears Nessmuk knife design. In total a few years of living here.

We read Henry Thoreau. He writes of freedom. 40 years later we're still reading. Testaments on freedom. Holding his belief in life close.... we persevere. We read his work aloud. Always amazed at how pertinent his insights remain.

Starting the green house with lots of greens. They go to flower and the bees come.

Before

After

 

Bees are amazing. Privileged to work with them.

Bumble bee and mustard.

 

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived". 

Henry David Thoreau

 

 

Aki sun dries, freezes, sauces and cans. We eat a lot of tomatoes.

 

Peas, Aki and fireweed.

Fireweed and rocks.

 

 "We do not go to the green woods and crystal waters to rough it, we go to smooth it. We get it rough enough at home, in towns and cities". 

George Sears, Nessmuk. 

 

Lots of rain this year. We lost our lakeside garden to the lake.

Salad Greens.

I viewed Thoreau's ideas as my own. It only made sense to me.

Living simply. Living with a light footprint. Feeding ourselves with the food we grow. 

So we live by isolation in the boreal forest while the world changes.

It felt serendipitous, a few years ago we made a connection. George Sears was born in 1820 at what is now Webster, Massachusetts. Less than 100 kms away from where Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts in 1817. They grew up at the same time and essentially the same place. They were neighbours.

Photographs by Aki Yamamoto

 

Thoreau, July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862, was a an essayist, poet and philosopher. He was a transcendentalist. Thoreau wrote a book Walden which we have our son reading outloud to us these days when people are following rules and avoiding each other. 

"Thoreau's books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry amount to more than 20 volumes. Among his lasting contributions are his writings on natural history and philosophy, in which he anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern-day environmentalism. His literary style interweaves close observation of nature, personal experience, pointed rhetoric, symbolic meanings, and historical lore, while displaying a poetic sensibility, philosophical austerity, and attention to practical detail.^[5] He was also deeply interested in the idea of survival in the face of hostile elements, historical change, and natural decay; at the same time he advocated abandoning waste and illusion in order to discover life's true essential needs.^[5]

He was a lifelong abolitionist, delivering lectures that attacked the Fugitive Slave Law while praising the writings of Wendell Phillips and defending the abolitionist John Brown. Thoreau's philosophy of civil disobedience later influenced the political thoughts and actions of such notable figures as Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr.^[6]

Thoreau is sometimes referred to as an anarchist.^[7][8] Though "Civil Disobedience" seems to call for improving rather than abolishing government—"I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government"^[9]—the direction of this improvement contrarily points toward anarchism: "'That government is best which governs not at all;' and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have". 

(I copied this from Wikipedia only to give a little insight into Thoreau) 

Aki and Scott

www.caribooblades.com

 

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. Henry David Thoreau
Read more at https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/henry-david-thoreau-quotes

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. Henry David Thoreau
Read more at https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/henry-david-thoreau-quotes

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. Henry David Thoreau
Read more at https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/henry-david-thoreau-quotes

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. Henry David Thoreau
Read more at https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/henry-david-thoreau-quotes

Long December Shadows

Home

Photographs by Aki Yamamoto

 Our 21st winter living in the bush on the edge of the Chilcotin plateau. Every winter has been different.

 

                                                                      Aspen

                                                                    Bulrushes Reaching

Habitat

 Big Fir

 Big Rock

 Big Stump

 Side Road

Room With a View

 Landing

 Landing #2

 Of Volcano

Conference

Woodshed

Survivor

www.caribooblades.com