You Are What You Eat (feeding your food).

We sprouted whole wheat,
Covered it with water .
Stirred in some apple cider vinegar,
like they said,  and
it started to ferment.

Two containers, one to soak and sprout,
one to ferment.
Feed from the ferment. Replenish the ferment
with

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/

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

Pink Salmon & Dandelions

Our gardens have been tucked in for the winter.


After we harvested the potatoes we turned in the soil with the potato plants and the season's mulch of reeds, grass and cardboard. Aki broadcast rye seed and peas. Let them grow for a month and at about 5" high turned them under with some seasoned chicken manure, raised the bed, skirted the rise with bark and cardboard, planted 2/3 of the garlic crop for next and covered it in a thick blanket of reeds.
The reeds will be pulled back in the spring to let the soil warm. When the plants are up the reeds get distributed throughout the garlic as mulch.

Some yells, some screams.

Some friends gave us some red kuri squash. It looks an awful lot like pumpkin. So we carved it for halloween. We had it lit for a night...then we ate it... Jack's head. We found our halloween tradition.

We have been spending some time in the forest collecting firewood. Always rejuvenating. We are looking forward to the deep dark winter.

The three of us watched a movie a month back set in Afghanistan, "The Kite Runner". It spanned a timeline of 30 years. We're still thinking about it.

Basted in honey and butter. Roasted and eaten.

Served on a moose antler platter.

Pink Salmon, dandelions, artists and farmers all have something in common, and we are still trying to grasp and pin down this thread.

December 21st. We are alone and we've got something all to ourselves.

Deep in thought in the deep, dark winter.
http://www.caribooblades.com/

Smoke in Our Skies

It's been a spring and summer of sunshine, hot, dry and fires. In the last month smoke from forest fires blocked out the late afternoon sun for a couple of weeks. A forest fire just south of us was 53,000 hectares big. Very high ground water levels. The mosquitoes were extreme and lasted an extra month into August - still a few around.

For Aki, Kai and I it has meant a great harvest. This winter holds a palette of sun dried tomatoes, dried broccoli, cauliflower, broad beans, peas,herbs and kale. Aki is canning pesto, hot pepper jelly, Saskatoon jam etc, etc... .

Every knife and tool we've made this year has been produced with just solar power. We work with the Sun. The Sun basically dictates what we do, how and what we eat, what time we go to sleep, when we wake up, how many movies we watch and in the deep, dark winter, how many emails we can write. We'd much rather be guided by the sun than by Exxon or Shell.
We've been harping about solar power for 15 years to anyone who would listen. Not many were listening but a few were watching. To us it is mind baffling that everyone hasn't a panel or two. We all know the sun.
Today, silicon, which makes up roughly half the cost of making of most solar electric panels, has dropped from $400/kg to $70/kg in one year..... and the silicon Baron's are still making money. Kind of sounds like the oil companies. Right now you can get Sharp panels for 2/3 of what they were a year ago. .


At the time when we moved here we invaded Iraq. Now we're occupying Afghanistan. Sure is a disgraceful situation we find ourselves in. All for a pipeline. All for oil.

Anyone can.
Running your shop on solar electric power is easy. With this system we've run our cabin and shop for 13 years. We started with one panel, 2 batteries and an inverter.
We are 100% solar powered from the end of March until the end of September now. March and October are good for sun energy just not unlimited. We work full time making edged tools. Our power needs decline until December 21st, by the end of February we have the power we need from the sun again. It's December and January when we slow down and burn candles in the evening. If you're connected to a grid there is no fluctuation. We tried to keep up the production for these dark months only to fall behind and get stressed. This year we'll snow shoe, think more, and play more music.

We designed and installed our system. It was fairly easy.
We went with 6 volt golf cart batteries. They are tough (We've frozen them solid and they have come back). These batteries are inexpensive and easy to replace although we haven't had to. 8 batteries and they are all in good shape. Twice a year I'll clean them with baking soda and water, then top off each cell with distilled water.
We've seen people spend lots of money on batteries. You don't have to, tough golf cart batteries are the way to go, especially for a shop. If you live within a grid you don't need batteries.

We have 390 watts of panel. 2 are BP and one is made by Sharp, a 20 amp regulator and we have a 2,500 watt (with a surge of 3,500) inverter we bought at Canadian Tire.

We built a manual tracker. Three panels, framed, on top of a 20 foot steel pole set cemented into the ground. As we work we turn the panels to face the sun.
This has increased our power by 35%.
The tracker put us at the level of power we are satisfied with and gave us a very good ground.--- An excellent ground is really important. Ground your inverter, batteries and panels.

Trick is to work with the sun when it is out. We don't think of it as storing power. Use power when it is there in the sky.
At night we use stored power for light, music, watching movies, and small amp tools.

If you have a steady wind, a wind generator is the way to go.

It's quite amazing once you begin... A different way of seeing. It feels like a breakthrough. Life on another level. Being responsible for your own power instead of being forced to be part of the crime. We are all, in this part of the world, part of a crime.

Questions like, "what do you do when the sun's not out", or statements like, "solar panels are made by oil energy" seem true enough in an all or nothing way. When the sun's not out we relax. The real cost to the environment of a panel is paid off in as little as 5 years. Life is saved. Solar electric panels are guaranteed for 25 years.

Electric cars are a boondoggle unless you plug into the sun. Electric anything, otherwise your plugging into oil, coal and nuclear reactors.

Living with the sun as the source of power, growing your own food, taking time to think, taking only what you need and most of all being empathetic, not psychopathic.

http://www.caribooblades.com/

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.