Regards,
Aki and Scott
Knife makers, Aki and Scott, post about the bush and survival, living off the grid, bush craft growing food and living with the sun's energy.
Two Massachusetts writers who have had an impact on our lives here here.
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.
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
150lbs of tomatoes |
Rocks picked for a garden wall |
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 tothe 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.