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/

The Game

Spider in the snow

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.

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/

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.

Solar Power in the Winter.

We have lived by solar power and wood for 11 years About 90% of our needs are met. When the sun comes up, it determines what we do for the day.

With 290 watts of panel and six golf cart batteries, and a little propane powered generation we run a knife and tool business and live comfortably.
We did rid ourselves of some stuff.

The first item we stopped using was a refrigerator. It did take some adjustment but after 5 years without one we're convinced a fridge is a totally decadent piece of equipment for many people. Of course not everyone can stop using one because of their circumstance. A root cellar, pantry and freezer are all one needs. A simple camp cooler goes a long way.
Added insulation on the freezer and a timer reduced the power consumption of this appliance by 1/2. Now we only use the freezer in the winter and keep it outside under cover which cuts its consumption by another 70%.
We eat fresh mostly, from our garden and what we forage, and whatever we are able to dry and can.
We are always expanding our vegetable gerdens. Our meat comes from trade and hunting.


We heat and cook by wood and our hot water is heated through a water jacket in the cook stove which feeds a tank we installed. With the lining off the tank it is like having another heater. A small propane cook stove for back-up uses about $25 in fuel a year.

In Chilcotin territory in B.C. (there is no the, like Yukon territory) there is lots of sun but we do have spells of up to a couple of months without much sun. I installed a big alternator (200 amps) in a propane powered vehicle, machined a drive pulley to increase the rpm so that idling gives what the batteries demand, and it plugs into our small house to the batteries. About twice as efficient as a new Honda generator, quieter and as mentioned, on propane.
If you have the luxury of working at home the

trick to solarpower is to use it when the sun is

out and work around it


when it is not.


In our business we recover all our steel, wood and antler. The highest quality is there but you have to look for it. We do as much by hand as we can (it is a trade off towards surviving in an unfriendly world) and sell through the internet, locally and a few shows.

We used to travel across the countryside to sell. With a connection to the internet by satellite we drive much less and spend maybe $60 a month on gas.


We try to buy only what we need - I suppose the method is to figure out what one truly needs. For us it is a never ending process to be self sufficient and sustainable.