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/

Harvesting

Our gardens have done well this season. Root vegetables, the brassica family, peas and most greens have thrived here.

Getting ready for the frost in the middle of August. By August 25 we had a frost every night for 1- 1/2 weeks, a break of 2 or 3 nights and then the frost was back. By October there's a hard frost every night.

It was a cool and short growing season this year with a couple of frosts overnight in July. Natural. It lets every plant know ...

Aki has dried our winter supply and she has been canning over the last couple of weeks. I brought in our second load of fire wood. Aki dries broccoli, kale, beet greens, wild mushrooms, rose hips, herbs like basil, oregeno, sage etc.., cauliflower, tomatoes, peppers, cherries and horseradish.

We've been eyeing the rose hips - they're red and ready to pick, just have to get around to it. Perhaps that'll be a job for Kai, who is helping out more and more. We dry rose hips for tea and cooking and our rose hip wine is on the go. This year we'll try rose hip/apple jelly, as we're enjoying the first real crop of apples from our little orchard.

We love this time of year. Cool enough for the cookstove, warm days, no bugs. A good harvest is an added bonus. Things are coming together as we prepare for winter.

Bugs had their way this year but were overcome with a little extra work from ourselves as well as the plants. We've found that cardboard box makes for really good mulch and the worms and toads love it.

An organic farmer told us that rather than worms being good for your soil, they are more importantly a sign, with their presence, that the soil is good.

The cardbord biodegrades over the season. By next spring it is decomposed and the soil is richer for it. We're not worried about what it looks like because of the amazing things it provides for the garden. We have researched whether it will cause any ill effects to the soil and it doesn't. The cardboard is easily biodegradable.

The inks are vegetable based and degrade as well leaving nothing behind but great compost.

This is August

Lunch is fresh.

A fresh lunch becomes challenging

by the middle of October.

Now we are seeding rye grass and peas as a cover crop for the winter. All our kitchen compost is buried directly into the garden. We dig in rotten wood, egg shells, wood ash, composted chicken manure and grass that hasn't seeded. We find that what we prepare now will have a lot to do in determining next years yield in our bushcraft /survival garden.

Please check out the body of work we've done over the summer at, www.caribooblades.com/newknives.html

Gardening with the Tide

Lots of rain, thunder, spectacular lightning and the mosquitoes are to be reckoned with and getting worse.

This is all adding up to a great mushroom season. Morels and boletes . An excellent start for the saskatoon berries. All the seedlings have lots of water.

A great aspect to all the rain is that the range cattle have enough to eat out there and will leave us alone.

Ranchers lease crown land, range, for their beef cattle. We are surrounded by crown land. Some dry years they eat all the grass, flowers and shrubs in the gov't range so they begin busting down our gerden fences.. This is not an enjoyable experience. We end up harvesting early because they won't stop until they've eaten everything. If there is enough rain in May and June the vegetation grows , gets a head start. Fingers crossed, the beef won't bother us.When it comes to beef, we have no rights.

The lodge pole pine is gone but still standing supplying us with easy firewood and building logs.

Looking across the lake at the fringe of trees left in the riparian zone, it appears as though we live on the edge of a cliff, but the open space just beyond is a clearcut. Trees take up water, and when the trees are cut down, the water runs into the lake, and the lake rises. The tide.

The tilled garden plots that are now under water have sprouted cattails. .

Our new crop.

Each spring now we wait to see how much garden space we will have. Raised beds help enormously. We wait, but there is inevitably much mud-slinging in the turning of the soil.

We have everything in now, and the gardens are looking good.

The swallows are building, the air is full of birdsong, new life begins.

http://www.caribooblades.com/

Muddy Boots

The melt down, break-up has started. With the sun higher and rising, the days warming up and revealing the earth, the famous Cariboo/Chilcotin clay mud is just beginning to form. In about a week the mud will be deep enough to keep us mudded in for two weeks. It begins to dry out in about a month and turn into a cement hardness. Any attempts to get out will leave ruts until the rains in the fall. Nothing quite like getting stuck in the mud. Over the last 11 years we've spend days digging out until we figured r and r was a better way to go. Now we don't even attempt to get out - if there is one concept we've learned here it's how to relax.

Now we thoroughly enjoy being able to stay in. A sense of freedom really.

We are almost through our dried food and the winter meat supply. At the same time our chickens are now laying a dozen eggs a day, our small green house attached to the cabin is producing a small amount of greens. In a couple of weeks dandelion greens, wild onions and fireweed shoots will become welcome additions to our diets.

It all happens eventually...with no worries.

Anticipation and a great sense of our lives is the fruit produced after a winter of work and thought. We used to think that everyone should attend an art school for awhile just to learn about themselves in relation to everyone else. Now we think that maybe living in the bush with nothing could be the way to go a longer distance.

We are setting a date now for some time off our knife and tool making.

A new charcoal burning forge and a new charcoal making kiln are the goals for our time off. A busy gardening month as well. The cycle continues.

http://www.caribooblades.com/

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.

Summer

Life in the bush during this time of year. I think there is no other place we'd like to be.

There's lots of work to be done and there is lots of living to do.

Skidding out pine beetle killed trees with the

old 1955 Massey - Harris.

After a day of falling and skidding out dead trees.

Our winter supply of cariboo potatoes . We water the potatoes and the wild flowers take off.

The mosquito eaters are more than welcome to tag onto our eaves.