Things to do to save your soul and help the planet

Remember all those things you could do to save the planet?  Did we do them?  Did they work?  Given the dire forecasts for the years ahead, like this post from Guy McPherson, I think I'll just try to stay sane.  Here are some old and maybe new ideas in no particular order.

1. Drink water from free water systems, not plastic bottles.


2. Quit driving. Walk, ride a bike, or don’t go.  Or bum a ride.

3. Watch sunrises.

4. Grow food.

5. Replace lawns with gardens or wild vegetation.

6. Plant trees, even though you may not see the fruit.

7. Compost your shit. For heaven’s sake, stop dumping it in drinking water!

8. Catch rainwater.

9. Re-use grey water from your washer, shower, or kitchen.

10. Generate no waste.

11. Quit using the word “waste”, because then you will see things as resources.

12. Turn off the damn lights when you leave the room! Didn’t your mother teach you that?

13. Tell someone they’re beautiful.

14. Raise an animal, butcher it and eat it.

15. Buy from locally-owned businesses.

16. Use a local currency.

17. Shop at farmers’ markets.

18. Plan a ‘green burial’.

19. Darn a holey sock.

20. Hug someone you love.

21. Go for a walk with your children.

22. Decorate a plain surface with found or repurposed objects.

23. Learn to identify ten new plants.

24. Offer gratitude before each meal.

25. Make music, either alone or with others.

26. Recycle your television (and don’t just watch TV online).

27. Define “enough” for yourself, and then get there.

28. Get rid of ten things you haven’t used in two years.

29. Eat some wild food.

30. Cook dinner from scratch.

31. Know that you are good enough just the way you are.

32. Plant flowers that honeybees and other pollinators like.

33. Acknowledge the inherent rights of other organisms and act accordingly.

34. Include water, air, soil and rocks in the above.

35. Take some food to your neighbors.

36. Plant flowers.

37. Take a day off from work. Repeat regularly.

38. Give a handmade present.

39. Give a gift of your time.

40. Obtain something through barter.

41. Invest in relationships.

42. Help a neighbor with a project.

43. Invest in a new independent business start-up.

44. Join and help out at a CSA farm.

45. Take a class or read about permaculture.

46. Try a cotton “pee rag” instead of toilet paper. Wash it when you’re done.

47. Talk to a plant and listen for a reply. (You’ll hear it in your heart.)

48. Designate one day a week in which you buy NOTHING AT ALL; a shopping Sabbath.

49. Use a hand tool in place of a power tool on your next project.  (Hammers don't count!)

50. Post this list where you will see it regularly. See if you can check off these things in a year.

This year's chicken project

We're scaling up a bit from last year's 18 hens for meat.  This year it's two batches of 25 Cornish roasters. Giant feed-sucking meat-producing mutants. I'm planning to finish some at about ten pounds so they dress out to nice Sunday-dinner size 7-8 pound roasters.
The first new addition was a hoop-style coop that can be used as a greenhouse when the second batch of chickens is done with it, in true permaculture function-stacking style.  The plastic sides roll up 2/3 of the way for ventilation.

I call it the Chicken Cathedral after the gothic arch design made with PVC conduit (gray stuff is more sunlight resistant). I'd cut the 10-foot lengths down to 8 feet next time, instead of leaving them at 9 feet.

Some construction details for the DYIers:

Plastic ridge pole notched to take arches and couplings.  Must think about snow load!

The wood frame and braces are 1x3s to reduce weight, so I attched the chicken wire with wood screws and washers. Pounding staples would have knocked the whole thing apart.

Involving the next generation in making the door from a leftover 1x10.  LR was a big help!

All moved in! 
I add straw bedding when things start to stink, and we recently moved the whole thing about 12 feet to sheet mulch a new section of garden.  The first batch is about ready to "move to the freezer".  They will actually eat greens and garden scraps, too.
We've hung burlap coffee bags on the sides for shade, and on hot days we spray water on the bags to provide a bit of air conditioning.  The heat has definitely slowed growth a little.

Update 26 September:
We raised 48 chickens, totalling 307 pounds (average = 6 lbs dressed wt.).  Even with increasing feed costs, we managed to do it for about $1.50 per pound.  The birds got mostly non-GMO grain, but we ran out toward the end.  Next time I might butcher earlier and shoot for an average of 4 - 5 pounds.  Pretty happy with the Cornish Roasters!

Sugarin' 2012

It's begun early this year. I tapped our maples yesterday, and thanks to a wonderful Christmas present, most of the sap runs downhill on its own!!! Twenty-four of the thirty trees are connected to tubing, which gathers and runs down ...


to the shack (sorry about the thumb).


The line empties into the barrel, which can be drained into the pan through the green hose.


There's been a lot of wondering about sap quality this year, thanks to the insanely mild winter in the Midwest. We've only had snow cover for February, really, and hardly any really cold weather. What will we get??

Sugar levels test at about 2%, in the same range as last year, so it will probably be just as sweet. For us, it's partly about the ritual. It just wouldn't seem like spring if we didn't get our maple tonic.
Migwech anininaatig!
(Thank you maple tree in Anishinabemowen or something like that.)

Eggs!!

At long last, the chickens have begun to earn their keep. About 8 days ago, our Buff Orpington announced her accomplishment with a big "bgaawwwk!" Since then a couple others have started to lay, and yesterday, they finally started using the nest box! Thanks girls!

Free food this fall!

Five pints of autumn olive berry jam from the bushes around the garden. Yum!


Apples from under the neighbor's tree. Will they last until I find a cider press?


About 2/3 bushel of English walnuts from another neighbor's tree. We'll dry them and nibble all winter long!
Get to know your neighbors and their plants! Make friends and trade stuff and skills. Begin the weave the fabric that will make this world a lot more fun.

Sugar Shack update

Back in January, I left you with a picture of four posts and a roof, finished in a brief thaw. By the time we tapped in March, the shack had FEMA-style sides made with tarps.

We had a barrel-style stove, and burned mostly cut-up pallets. It did well, boiling over 550 gallons of sap. The pan only holds 18 gallons, so there were lots of late nights.

Since then I've been making some improvements, like recycled redwood siding:

The door and frame were left behind by the previous owner. Thanks!

The best shot of all - it's done!

Wood storage is on the back side, in the shade. The top panel with the window tilts out to let out steam when we're boiling. Can't wait to make syrup in style next year!

Chicken update (or whole story)

So I couldn't stay away all that long. Too much to say I guess, and a few things to show off.

Come sit for a spell, dear reader, and I shall relate a tale of innocence and innocence lost, of a despicable act of murder, and of resilience. This is the story of our first adventure with raising chickens.

My tale begins in April of this year, when I put the finishing touches on our hen house and the fencing for an outdoor run,

We were invited to adopt two mature hens from a colleague in town, who had too many hens for his space. So with giddy innocence, we took in Elizabeth and Annabelle, who promptly started giving us eggs.

Our spring day-old chick order arrived on April 28^th, so in a couple weeks we also had six more tiny and adorable lives to care for. All went fine until the first week of June, when Annabelle, the lovely Buff Orpington died for no apparent reason. She had even laid an egg a few hours before. The remaining hen, a Barred Plymouth Rock, seemed lonely, so I hatched a plan to put the chicks, now 6 weeks old, in a pen adjacent to hers. I even rigged a little door so the younger birds could mingle and meet their elder, who frankly wasn’t all that nice to them. On a Monday morning, about June 12^th or so, LR found a scene of ghastly mayhem and mass murder. Four of the six pullets were dead, and a fifth was mortally wounded. Only one chick had been eaten. She also found evidence the identified the attacker in the form of a big pile of raccoon shit. The family was distraught, and I spent the morning cleaning up the mess. One of the hardest things I’ve had to do was bury my 6-year-old’s favorite chicken.

In the meantime, we had ordered 25 chicks to raise as broilers. I quickly changed to order to replace the lost layers, and those chicks arrived at the end of June. Be advised that 25 chicks in brooders in July REALLY stink up the garage in a hurry! Our flocks now consist of 1 Buff Orpington, 4 Black Austrolorps, 2 Rhode Island Reds and a Silver-Laced Wyandotte for layers, and 18 Rhode Island Reds as meat birds.

I elected to get RIRs for meat on reports that they taste really good, and on comments by Carol Deppe in The Resilient Gardener the chickens don’t acquire a really beneficial fatty acid profile (more omega-3 fatty acids) until they are past the 8-week butchering age for Cornish cross broilers. I plan to butcher them sometime in October. Until then, they are doing fertility duty in the expanded Zone 2 garden (it’s a permaculture thing). Eat, grow and poop, that’s all I ask. Next year we’ll have some better soil to plant in.

The garden is surrounded by four-foot wire fence and a strand of electric wire to prevent invasion and more murder by Evil Raccoons or marauding coyotes. Note the welcome presence of an autumn olive next to the pen! The girls go nuts for the berries.

Just today, the 18 RIRs got to run around in a fenced-off section of the garden so they can poop-n-scratch. They'll stay that way, with the tractor as an overnight shelter, until The End.

Check back in October for the Egg Watch and more adventures!

Adios Blogosphere?

So it's been 3 months since my last post. We have 5 rabbits now, and chickens very soon. The sap is flowing generously so I don't spend much time in the house. As an austerity measure, we canceled the internet connection at home. I probably shouldn't do blog posts at work, and I barely have time to eat lunch anyway. For the forseeable future, this is the last post from Snowy Hollow. Know that all is well and very busy. I leave you with these to-dos:

1. get out of debt before the economic house of cards crumbles (may you have better luck than me)


2. get to know your neighbors, even if they don't think like you do (reverse the Googlization of the world!)


3. get a good pair of boots and a good bike


4. take a permaculture class and REALLY study it


5. get chickens

So long, and stop by if you're ever in the neighborhood!

Sugar Shack Phase One

Here it is so far! No driving 20 miles to the family's sugar bush to boil our sap this year. Two years in a row I've messed up my back doing that. Even better, this shack is downhill from just about all our maples. Did you know sap (mostly water) weighs about 8 pounds per gallon? I'm finally getting smart!

I took advantage of a break in the weather to finish the roof today. The taller posts on the south side are from a maple that was cut last summer. This year, we'll have a tarp-sided lean-to, but I have a lead on barn siding to be added sometime this year. There's also a framed steel door to be added. The things people leave behind when they move out!
By now you know it all has to fit into a permaculture-style scheme around here. Each element of the design should serve more than one function. So, in addition to boiling sap in early spring, the shack will also be a small greenhouse. I have some windows to frame in on the south side. Just picture an outward-slanting glass wall on the bottom two-thirds of the south wall. The top third needs to open to let the steam out. I figure I can get it warm enough in March and April to start some spring greens, and maybe start some peppers by late April.

If we ever have enough of anything to sell, I'll add a canopy and table on the west side for a little market stand. Oh wait; if I do that then the guv'ment inspector people will want to call us a farm. Y'all just stop by and leave something in trade instead!

In a mixture of Anishinabeg and Hebrew traditions, we'll boil sap under a "roof that leaks starlight" this year. Call it our "Sap Sukkah"! I'll have to plug all those holes when things warm up. The beauty of scrounged sheet metal.

In other permaculture principles, I saved some of our wood from an uncertain future. The County road crew was trimming trees since there wasn't any snow to plow, so I asked them to leave the branches from our trees and the neighbor's. They also left me about 5 yards of wood chips! Now I just have to get it outta the driveway!

Twas a good Yule!

We hope yours was too. As you can see, we got a new camera!

I built this playhouse for the girls last summer out of scrounged or salvaged wood, used windows and some "boughten" lumber. Don't look too closely; I'm a biologist, not a builder.

We hosted a Solstice / Advent Spiral gathering for our homeschool group. I'm not sure how it worked 'cause I was off replacing a tire that developed a leak after hitting a gargantuan pothole.

Our favorite family gift was Wildcraft, a cooperative herbal foraging game from the nice folks at learningherbs.com. It's great fun for a wintry day, beautifully decorated, and really nice because the game ends when everybody makes it back to Grandma's house!

Now my mind turns to garden design and seed catalogs. But first I need to get a roof on the sugar shack so we can boil sap here!

The virtues of Elaeagnus umbellata

Much to the chagrin of the native plant lovers, I've had a conversion since we move in here at Snowy Hollow. I've come to appreciate Elaeagnus umbellata, know far and wide as autumn olive, the fast-growing invasive, thorny shrub that forms dense stands if left to its own devices. Years ago, I knew it as host to fruit-eating birds in fall and early winter. My first Bohemian Waxwings and Pine Grosbeaks were found in autmn olive thickets. As a kid, we planted one in the yard in northwestern Pennsylvania. Somewhere along the road, I bought into the "evil invader" line.

So, when I found a few on this land, I thought about taking them out. Then I started looking at them through the eyes of the ecosystem. I learned they fix nitrogen, a most valuable trait in restoring worn out and devastated soils. They can also act as a nurse plant for young trees, shading them lightly, protecting them, and providing extra nitrogen as they get started. And if that's not enough, the berries have 17 times the lycopene content of tomatoes! Autumn olive may be seen as invasive in some eyes, but I hold it to be an ecosystem healer and a free health food! We made a few pints of autumn olive berry jam this fall.

I'd highly recommend trying it; sort of a complex tart flavor that can be balanced with as much sugar as you want, but don't overpower it.

So here's what I've learned from Elaeagnus umbellata: dense growths of any species are a sign that it has traits or abilities that make it well suited for those places, and dense growths of anything don't last long. All ecosystems are trying to build fertility as they go through the process of ecological succession. In the case of autumn olive, it grows well where native ecosystems have been displaced and, very likely, where soils were trashed by efficiency-minded farming practices. It grows well in places that need its healing, nitrogen-fixing skills. If you seek to get rid of it, acknowledge this and replace it with something native that can do the same job. I'd also bet that this plant will put itself out of business as the fertility of the ecosystem improves.

One might come to another anaolgy involving "aliens": they do the jobs that natives (a.k.a. gringoes) can't or won't. Why do we depend on migrant labor to tend and harvest our food? Because we're incapable or too damn lazy! Let's not deport them unless we're prepared to take their places. So instead of annihilating a very helpful plant in the name of botanical purity (one could really make some analogies here!), consider what it does; then make some jam!

The Edge of the Petri Dish

My friends, I have something to tell you. As you know or can easily imagine, we live in a world with finite resources. And yet, our economy is based on an ideal of continual growth. For that to occur, someone needs to be selling something, and others need to be buying it, always, whether we need it or not. Cheap resources get converted into products. Where do the raw materials for those products come from? Earth; the water and soil of the planet. Everything we eat, breathe, drink and buy is some form of processed sunlight, in combination with soil and water.

As you can imagine, with about 7 billion people on the planet now, we are starting to run out of stuff. In some places, it’s clean water. In others, it’s topsoil. We are reaching the limit of the planet to support us, at least in our extremely consumptive Western lifestyle. Ecologists call this “carrying capacity”. On the graph below, the curvy line shows population over a period of time (the horizontal dimension). Note that the population reaches a certain level and begins to decline. After that it oscillates around a certain number, represented by the horizontal line. That number is the carrying capacity.

If this were a graph of GDP, the upward trends would represent economic growth, and the downward portions would signify recessions. Consider what we’ve been hearing lately: “long, slow recovery”, “double-dip recession”. Seems like recessions hit about every ten to fifteen years, though I may be mistaken. I’m just an ecologist. If we were to graph GDP over the last 200 years, might it look like the graph above?

I didn’t just summon you here for an ecology / economics lesson. By the way, Marston Bates eloquently reminded us they are the same thing. I wanted to share what I’ve been learning since last winter. One of the big resources that will soon limit our potential for growth is oil. Consider for a moment, or a day, how many things in our lives rely on fossil fuels, especially oil. Now the bad news: there is a growing body of evidence that global production of oil is at or near its peak, and will begin to decline in the next few years. We have every expectation that demand will not decline, however, and when demand begins to exceed supply, prices go crazy. Read this again carefully: we’re not about to run out of oil; we’re about to run out of cheap oil. Case in point: the summer of 2008. There are many others if one wishes to dig them up. Yes, we seem to be up against the edge of the Petri dish.

Before you panic, I’d like you to do one or more of several things: visit http://www.transitionculture.org/ and watch the movie “In Transition”, or better yet, read The Transition Handbook by Rob Hopkins. I found section one to be very helpful in explaining the combined threats of Peak Oil and climate change. Section two is an essential reminder that dealing with what we are facing involves a grieving process and recovering from addiction (to oil). The second helpful thing I’ve found is The Archdruid Report, a blog by John Michael Greer. His wisdom and wit are delightful and thought-provoking. A third helpful thing is to attend one or both of the speakers in Traverse City this month.

Another very helpful and hopeful way to deal with the idea of economic, social and environmental upheaval is to remember the ancient wisdom about the healing and nutritive values of plants. Most of our pharmaceuticals are, in some way, derived from oil. They all rely on cheap oil for manufacturing and transportation. One of the solutions or inevitable outcomes seen by those peering into crystal oil drums is that production of just about everything will become much more decentralized, even hyper-local. Enter the beauty of knowing how to use a few herbs.

In my yard, I have plants that will nourish me (dandelion and burdock), treat wounds (yarrow), stabilize blood pressure (dandelion and garlic), reduce the pain of insect stings and bites (plantain), help one’s body use iron well, thus treating anemia (dock), reduce fevers (catnip), help treat colds and flu (elderflower and Echinacea), and many more I’m just beginning to learn. If we can’t get our prescribed pharmaceuticals, let’s go walking in the woods and fields. Those of us who know a few or some of these plants are in a position to help others. We might become the village herbal healers.

There’s a great deal to digest in the news that oil supplies will soon get precarious, or downright undependable. Take your time; go through the stages of panic and grief. After all, we may need to grieve the loss of a culture (also known as suburban sprawl). Talk about this with trusted friends, but they’ll probably look at you like you’re crazy. Get to know your neighbors, too. You might even share a favorite herbal tea with them. Friends, our actions now will determine whether we smack hard up against the wall of resource limitations, or whether we slow gently to a stop on our current path, and have time to steer a course toward a more balanced future.

(Previously published for the Herbal Alliance of Northern Michigan.)

Been building, not blogging

If anyone wonders about the lack of activity on this blog, rest assured I'm still here. I've been working on summer projects, like a playhouse for the human girls, and a hen house for the feathered girls (next year). It helps to get some things done before the snow flies. I'd like to have pictures, but LR dropped the camera in a mug of tea a few weeks ago.
We harvested about 25 pounds of honey last month, too. Thanks, bees!

Profound words

"Water and dirt are the most important things. Kind of like our mom and dad, and everybody in the whole world are the kids. Except some of the kids are treating them badly. A whole bunch of children are treating them meanly.
"Those plants and rocks and trees are my brothers and sisters. I want to write a book about it when I learn to write."
- words of LD, age 5, as best I could capture it.

How long can you tread water?

Years ago, Bill Cosby did a comedy routine about Noah and his hypothetical neighbor. Picture Noah, working away on the ark, in suburbia. From memory:

Neighbor: “What’s this?”
Noah: “It’s an ark.”
Neighbor: “What’s it for?”
Noah: “I can’t tell you.”
Neighbor: “Right. Could you get it out of my driveway? I gotta get to work! (Pause) Really, could you give me little hint?”
Noah: “How long can you tread water?”

These days, I feel a lot like Noah may have felt, knowing what was to come and how it would affect people. Since last December, I’ve been attending a book study group/bunch of concerned people that has been reading Rob Hopkins’ The Transition Handbook. In it, Hopkins reviews the evidence for the twin impending threats of climate change and peak oil, and the evidence is pretty damn compelling. I have read it, and I accept the evidence as sound. This is not the same as “I believe”; it’s a case of “I have a pretty good idea (borrowed from the movie “Dogma”).
If you’d like to read the arguments for yourself, read Hopkins’ book and The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler. Review the past several months of weekly posts at The Archdruid Report. Don’t take my word for it, but start reading soon. The bottom line on climate change is we’re in for warmer, probably drier times in the short term, with droughts, mere water shortages, probable crop failures and other disruptions to the food supply, and certainly thousands, if not millions, of climate refugees.
As far as Peak Oil, we may have passed the time when worldwide oil production has begun to decline, while demand continues to increase. According to Kunstler, we are probably in for a period of uneven supply, and wildly fluctuating prices. The $140 per barrel oil of 2008 will seem like kid stuff. Oil supplies will not run out for a few more decades, but oil and shortly after, natural gas, are going to become more and more scarce. Some have said we have as little as two years.
Imagine how Noah must have felt, knowing that something completely disruptive to our culture is coming. I wonder how he looked at his neighbors, what he felt. If it was "you're gonna get what's coming to you, decadent slothful sinners", then I can empathize. Our way of life is based on cheap energy, particularly oil. We've been pretty lousy inhabitants of Planet Earth, rather like the spoiled "entitled" brats who trash hotel rooms. I also care about people, and hate to see suffering. I guess I would settle on "it's time to face the music", but I'm an oil-sinner too.
How do you carry around a secret like this? I would tell everyone I meet, but I (and others) risk being called Chicken Little or Boy Crying “Wolf”. We’ve had a taste of the economic chaos that lies ahead: corporations failing right and left, huge banks failing, government acting as fast as it can to do too little too late, or worse, something totally counterproductive. Hopkins offers two chapters on how we might deal with our grief for the loss of a way of life. For those who might pray for salvation, either technological or spiritual, I offer what I have learned from the Archdruid: “No one’s coming, Harry” (from Harry Potter #3). No one is going to bail us out of it this time.
So how does one bring up the notion of Energy Descent, coming down off our addiction to oil? I do believe, for the planet’s sake, it’s a good thing. But how will I get to work in the winter? Will I have a job? Will it matter? Will the bank holding my mortgage fail, and I can just squat here? How will we meet our needs for food, water, health and heat? And the big one, will people pull together as they do after disasters, or will they freak out and retreat behind parapets and portcullises (those pointy iron things that drop down in front of castle gates)? I really think we need to start talking, first with trusted friends, then with family, then with those in our communities.
Here’s my plan, and I have one big advantage over Noah: I’m not sworn to keep this a secret. I’ll get to know my neighbors, and find out what skills or goods we can provide for one another. I’ll get serious about saving seed and growing my own food, or seeing that it’s supplied from within a few miles. I’m already growing some plants for medicine, and I’ll expand this. After the chickens start laying well, I’ll offer eggs for trade. I know how to build good compost, so I’ll help them make good soil. I could even offer rides to town. Maybe then I'll mention that energy prices are going to shoot up like crazy in the next few years. Let's weave the fabric before we really need it!
We might make it if we keep the old adage in mind (if I might amend it): “Steal a man’s fish and you eat for a day, steal his nets and you eat till the nets wear out. Ask him to teach you to fish, and you both eat.” It’s not about treading water this time; it’s about learning to swim, and learning to swim together.

Repurposing and herbs

We're just past the Summer Solstice, and the harvests and gathering has begun. With regular showers and thunderstorms, the gardens and woods look like a jungle. We've been harvesting some herbs to dry lately, and I was motivated to finish a project I've been thinking about for awhile. When we moved in here 2 years ago, I found a crib in pieces in the pole barn, and I saved the mattress frame with a drying rack in mind.

I suspended the rack from the rafters of the barn. The herbs are bundled and hung inside paper grocery bags. Small things like flowers could be laid on top of the rack, then covered to keep the dust off.

The bags are labeled, of course, because the herbs won't look the same when they've dried.

When it's done, we heave away and raise the rack up to the rafter, where it's nice and warm. The oregano's a bit long so it hangs out of the bag.

The view from underneath. We have oregano, thyme, lemon thyme, parsley, sage, mint, chamomile and lemon balm for now. More later to be sure.

Enterprises

Welcome to Snowy Hollow's fresh home-grown garden veggies! LR is dipping her toes in the waters of small business. Today's offering is leeks for a dollar a bunch. What a great home schooling opportunity!

Our other new undertaking is raising blue oyster mushrooms (no rock band references please!). A friend had a large maple come down across her road, and another friend had some leftover spawn. Manna from heaven!

Step 1: spread spawn over surface of green log

Step 2: stack on another log and spread more spawn

Step 3: Wrap the whole thing in plastic to keep out other kinds of fungi. Now go do something else for a year while the fungus eats the wood.

Spring at Snowy Hollow

Look who's coming to dinner! If he only knew how close he was to the table ....

Crabapple

One frame of the girls busy tending brood, packing in pollen.

One of the bees on an Evergreen Hardy White onion; seed-saving step one.

It's been warm and dry, and things are rapidly turning into summer. The spinach and pac choi will be bolting any day, but the turnips are coming on strong! I transplanted the tomatoes and planted cukes and borage near them on the south side of the house to capture some additional heat (permaculture!). The only thing left is the basil. Then we start the fall garden in soil blocks in late June.

Meet the ducks!

The pond in our backyard is as big as a good-sized bedroom when it's full. Most of the summer it's about half that size, and 2 summers ago it dried up completely, much to the dismay of the toad tadpoles. We're about a mile from the nearest lake. Still, we have a pair of mallards. They've been with us 3 springs now, never nesting, and they leave for the night.






























The girls dubbed them Chris (short for Christmas-head) and Suzie. They're getting quite used to all the playing and commotion.

Weedy thoughts

As one of the human occupants of this place, I am trying to listen and heal the land from past abuses. We host one of the last remnants of forest for which Elmwood Township was named, or it was here until previous owners cut the “valuable timber”. The aerial shot on Google Earth shows a beautiful intact canopy. The timber was “thinned from above” as they say, meaning they took all the big trees and left barked-up smaller ones to sway in the wind. How do I save what’s left of that jewel, and ask the land to feed me, too? What do I do with the front yard, or the hill to the south?
As I learn more about plants and permaculture, this question becomes quite complicated. I’m getting a re-education about “weeds”. I’ve had to reconsider my attitude toward many plants in the light of new evidence. When we moved here, I saw sumac as an aggressive root-suckering plant, and autumn olive as a thorny invasive pest. Burdock was something to be given a wide berth, especially when wearing a wool sweater. Now I know sumac provides a refreshing beverage, stabilizes soil, and provides food for honeybees at a time when few other plants are blooming. Autumn olive is a nitrogen-fixing shrub, hosting microorganisms that pump nitrogen into the ecosystem. Its berries are popular with wildlife, and a related species is used as food for humans. Burdock is simply a medicinal, edible wonder plant; see its virtues as described by Susan Weed.
Native, invasive, naturalized, pest: all categories of species we like to use. The native plant proponents would have us go back to a pre-Columbian flora. Any more recent arrivals are treated as pathogens – pull them, spray them, just get rid of them. Are they pathogens? Is baby’s breath an infection of ecosystems along the Lake Michigan shoreline? In our bodies, pathogens move in when our immune systems are weakened. Numerous cultures can teach us that sickness is not inevitable, as American medicine seems to believe. Healthy ecosystems are resilient, and resistant to minor changes, so population explosions of a single species must be a sign of something wrong. What is out of balance in these ecosystems that allows one species to become so dominant? Joe Jenkins has an interesting view of humans as pathogens in his book, Balance Point.
I’m convinced that plants simply live where they can, or are needed. If they can fulfill a role (a.k.a. fill a niche) in an ecosystem, they do. If a non-pre-Columbian plant species get established, it may be because the existing ecosystem has changed significantly. Yes, spotted knapweed can dominate a landscape, and Phragmites can take over wetlands. But knapweed has a deep taproot and can bring minerals back up to a starved topsoil. It will eventually decline as soil organic matter builds up. It is also one our biggest sources of nectar and pollen in late summer, making a honey harvest possible. It has taken over the old farms around here because the soils won’t support much else but lichens. It’s soil-building starting from square 1 ½. Phragmites thrives along shorelines and wetlands with high levels of nitrates. It is actually cleaning up the excess nutrients before they can cause a destructive algae bloom. Now, where are those nitrates coming from?
Permaculture designers and gardeners use properties of various plants to imitate a naturally-occurring ecosystem. There are nutrient accumulators that bring up nutrients with long tap roots, ground covers that hold soil, nurse plants that protect young perennials, shrubs and trees, insectary plants that attract beneficial insects, and the well-known nitrogen fixers. So there are reasons to keep burdock, lamb’s quarters, autumn olive, clover, yarrow, Queen Anne’s Lace, and many others, even stinging nettle. Perhaps we should not be so quick to judge, or slap on a label like “weed” or “invasive pest”. Perhaps these plants are trying to tell us that these ecosystems are in need of serious help! Yet we insist on shooting the messenger again, or in this case, pulling it up by the roots. It’s been said that a weed is just a plant whose virtues have yet to be discovered. If that’s the case, there are few if any weeds.
So where does that leave me in my new education? Native vs. non-native has a much diluted meaning. Goldenrod is a valued friend, and knapweed stays where it can for now; the bees love them both. Sumac has a home on the steep hill in the powerline right-of-way crossing the property, and autumn olive is to be left alone to accumulate nitrogen in those nearly-bare areas. Many others are welcomed for their food or medicinal value, or for just plain beauty, like the thousands of Dutchman’s breeches blooming in the woods right now. Who am I to say what stays or goes? The land knows what she needs, and the plants are her way of healing herself. To paraphrase John Burroughs (I think), when you pull up one plant, you find it hitched to everything else, including yourself. Now, what happens if you pull hard on your own shoelaces?