fall update (nov 12, 2008)

Well. I guess it’s about time to give an update and harvest time check in.

Haven’t written for a few months, I guess, lots has happened.

Socially, on this sweet fair island, I’ve been getting out there some more. Some of my new friends and Kate and I have initiated some local food gatherings: getting people together to talk/do some more food production and the re-valueing of local food. That’s been good. It has turned into a gleaning network at this time of year – working together to figure out who’s got what fruit still hanging out there and who’s got a press etc. That’s been fun. I managed to come away with about 75 liters of apple cider… the hard stuff… much of it will become vinegar. Delicious stuff. Right now it’s still quite sweet. But it will get drier.

I’ve managed to secure some big garden space at a lovely lady’s property. She is an ex-market gardener, tons of experience and a keenness to see the space used and more food grown. There will be other people gardening there too. Kate and I are hoping to plant our trailer home there as well (when it is built).

I’ve been spending some time working in the oyster farming industry. I’ve learned that while it is a miracle of food production with ecosystem enhancement more than destruction, it still falls short of a sustainable step towards feeding the world’s people.

The strings that hang down from the rafts are beautiful. There are large multicolored oysters with feathery anemones, spiky urchins, crawly craps, spongy sponges, and about a hundred other creatures. It is fish habitat and food, and all seems to be growing off the nearly endless microscopic food that floats in the water. And pounds and pounds of food are there. Especially if we got into using all the ‘by-catch’ as food and fertilizer. So growing food, with a positive ecosystem impact, you’d think I’d be all over it.

Trouble is, that while I was standing in the rain and the wind on a wobbly rickety raft, up to my ankles and elbows in sea slime and evicted creatures, cold and hungry, I learned that all the oysters I was harvesting are going to Hong Kong to be gobbled up by wealthy business men. Oyster farming is better than many farming activities, but when it is shipped around the world and eaten in fancy oyster bars by richies, it’s hard to feel like you’re making a dent in world hunger. Not only that, if everyone ate local and we had a reasonable population density everywhere, then we could all just go to the beach once a week and get a ton of food. We wouldn’t need to boat around with 2-strokes, and tie large styrofoam blocks out in the water.

I’ve been working on a goat barn with some folks. We are going to cooperatively manage and buy a bunch of goats for milk. That’s been interesting. Anytime anyone has the opportunity to cooperate intensively with others in the community, I suggest they do it. It is so interesting and rewarding when it works, but extremely challenging.

I’ve also been playing some soccer, practicing archery, hangin’ out with other young farmer/foodies.

My life on this island revolves around food. And so at this point I’d like to review the last few months through the lens of my mouth and guts. Right now as I write, behind me is the gently simmer/hiss of various pots on the wood stove. One large one contains pig fat, bits of meat and water. I have been rendering lard from some pigs that were killed on the farm. The fat, beautiful, healthy, delicious, multi-purpose stuff, is a waste or by-product to most people. I was able to glean three heads which had lots of beautiful marbled meat and fat. I canned much of that.

Another pot on the wood stove has a head stew cooking down. The forelegs and head of a beaver is the central feature of that brew. I didn’t trap this one, but I trapped the last one a few weeks ago. Beaver is good eating, has a beautiful fur, and chops down apple trees by the dozen. We aren’t on a campaign of eradication, just population thinning and feeding ourselves. As well as training them not to go in the orchard.

I have also eaten raccoon, wild brandt goose, canada goose, garter snake, salmon, salmon eggs, tuna, oyster, clam, domesticated duck, chicken, and cow. Most noteworthy would be my exploration of organ meats. I’ve probably mentioned my infatuation with Sally Fallon and her take on good eating and healthy living. And she is very big on organs. So far I have only eaten liver and kidney and heart. Heart is the most delicious. Probably because it is the flavour and texture that we are all used to, being a muscle. But tender after a bit of stewing and a very nice fat/meat ratio, barely needs spicing. Liver took a bit of warming up to. But knowing how healthy it is really gets my appetite going. That and I learned to marinate in some kind of acid for a while before cooking, and then breading and frying is my favorite. The same technique can be used for kidney. Next I’ll get into sweet meats, the glands.

Another pot on the stove has salt water in it, which I am boiling down to make salt. And another pot has pig fat in it too. Wave after wave of steadily more pure fat. This one’s ready to be poured into jars for later use.

Recently, an exciting food adventure was had down in Squirrel Cove where me and Jay (I’ll tell you about him in a second) went to check out the salmon running up a little creek. If you have never seen this yearly ritual, you should. It is beautiful and inspiring. Especially in a small creek. These giant fish, only half submerged struggling their way up to lay their eggs as one final thrust of life as they decay before their death. As we watched this miracle, we noticed some dead salmon laying in the water. Jay and I, being committed gleaners, checked it out for its edibility. With it’s colour gone and eyes gone, we decided it was too far gone. But upon examination of it’s internal shapes and colours, we discovered eggs… lots. And they were beautiful bright red and clearly designed to survive for quite some time in the gravel bars of a raging river. So we decided they were edible. And Sally Fallon says fish eggs are a super food, and very good source of fat. And we giggled as we thought of how vibrant they were, all the fish’s remaining energy going to produce these little seeds of life. Unfotunatly, she didn’t make it to the right spot to bury her jewels, but in nothing truly goes to waste anywhere, and we were glad to play our part. We made salmon egg cakes with onions, flour, egg and salt and pepper, they were fried in butter… The eggs got much firmer than I expected. But they were very good.

I’ve been eating meal after meal that is 99% local without even trying.. just by finding and making the most delicious and healthy food I can. That is cool. Pepper and some spices are the only thing that doesn’t come from the world around me, and those I inherited from other people.

I’ve moved into a beautiful octagonal home on the farm here. Beautiful exposed beams, high ceiling and a little tree house type loft. Large kitchen is a blessing, after having crammed into a 250 sq ft house with about 4sq ft of counter space. I know, I know the trailer is going to be smaller than that, but it is going to be intelligently design to maximize storage space. And when choosing between a functional kitchen and lounging space, I choose the kitchen.

That’s about the critical things.. oh, I guess the gardens are worth mentioning. Everything is wrapped up now. Just kale, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce, chard, parsley, carrots, beets, turnips, rutabagas remain in the ground. Onions, potatoes are in the barn loft and root cellar respectively. In cans on the shelf are tomatoes, peaches, pears, apple sauce, plums, chicken, pork. In the freezer we have blue berries, black berries, raspberries, strawberries, butter, salmon stock, pesto, and prolly some other stuff. We will not starve this winter.

Oh and Jay… Jay is a semi-permanent wooffer who recently arrived. If I had a tribe, he’d be in it. He came a hardcore raw vegan, but when Kate and I showed him that we were happy, healthy and ethical with a lot of meat in our diet, he quickly jumped on board. And now he loves it and we’ve been having tons of fun snaring beaver, breading beaver, gathering salmon eggs etc. I hope he sticks around for a while.

Okay – that’s enough. Hope you’re well.

l!fe is good.

the post-vegetarian manifesto (July 9, 2008)

So in my last post, I described my run in with one unlucky squirrel and the heartache associated with taking a life to feed my own.

I froze my friend, and thawed him out when the time was right. It was right when I attended a local foods potluck at the linnaea farm program house. These kids are pretty into their local food, and especially the wild foods. I thought I’d be a hero for sure. And to some I was.

But some folks were “offended”, to quote my informant. Apparently, the vegetarians in the group didn’t feel that it was appropriate for me to have brought the squirrel. My informant tells me that they think it is wrong to take the life of a wild creature.

Having not the opportunity to respond to them, I have decided to vent my rage on my blog. Forgive me, this is what I do. .. I’m of course kidding, I feel no rage. But I am slightly frustrated by what I think is a lack of sound reasoning as well as being judged without having the chance to defend myself.

So: I have been exploring the boundary of a hunter/gatherer mode of subsistence and a ecological farming mode. I do not yet know how to life a happy, healthy life entirely without farming, but I do see that in an ideal world, it would not be necessary to cut down the glorious rainforest so grow sweet delicious vegetables and fruit and animals for food. Ideally, my life would be as little of an impact as a wolve’s or a bear, simultaneously taking and giving back to his/her environment. I guess it isn’t immediately obvious to people that to kill a squirrel takes one life, while a field of soy beans takes an ecosystem. I committed homicide, and farming is ecocide. These are the facts. I haven’t yet decided where I stand or what balance is appropriate, but I think the logic here is infallible.

I also believe that it is fairly anthropocentric to believe that to take a squirrel’s life is immoral and ripping off an ear of corn or cutting off a head of lettuce is nothing to even think about, much less think twice about. I know very little about plants. We all know very little about plants. Some people certainly believe that they are conscious, some believe that we can even communicate with them. Many indigenous people’s knowledge of the plant world comes from the plant world itself, the plants themselves. I have seen them struggle for life, stretching in the right directions for light, food, water etc. They are amazingly responsive to their environments. And they are alive and gives them certain rights to life. And yet we kill them without batting an eye.

I don’t think it is wrong to take a life to feed your own. That is living. But we should certainly give it a lot of thought.

And Kate raises the point that we also brought some canned chicken, the old laying hens from the farm, and this was not offensive. It is more acceptable to bring an indian jungle bird over and raise it in a house with imported feed from god knows where and god knows what’s in it, than to kill one squirrel in a forest teeming with them. I bet more squirrels died on the road under the wheels of the trucks that supplied the feed for those chickens for two years than I could kill with all the pellets in the world. But I guess that’s an external cost of farming not at linnaea and certainly not discussed.

And those are my thoughts.
L!fe is good.

Living is Killing. (april 25, 2008)

I’d like to share my latest noteworthy experience.

I shot and killed a squirrel. To eat, and to see if I could and to know what that feels like.

I wasn’t really convinced I could and I therefore I wasn’t quite expecting to kill it and wasn’t quite ready for what that meant. To be honest I hadn’t quite thought it through. It made me sad.
Turns out it doesn’t feel good killing a mammal. It doesn’t phase me much to kill a fish. I don’t quite know why that is. They’re both very animate feisty creatures. And philosophically I am not opposed to killing things to eat.
Physiologically, I suppose, squirrels are closer to humans than fish and that may have something
to do with it. But I think the thing of it is that squirrels might have families. I am drawn to learn all that can about squirrels now that I have taken one of their lives. And to imagine a lover left wondering, or babies left unfed turned my stomach. I cleaned and stuck the little guy in the freezer for when my squirrel appetite returns.

I suppose it didn’t help that I heard a squirrel in the area calling shortly after the deed was done. She was 15 feet up in a tree, sitting on a branch chirping every couple of seconds or so for ten of fifteen minutes. I don’t know for sure, but it is quite likely that she was looking for someone who wasn’t coming home.

The least I could do was leave a platter or sunflowers seeds, pumpkin seeds and walnuts out to help feed the family. And to apologize. I didn’t need to kill for food. But it was a powerful lesson and for that I am grateful.

It is an experience I think all meat eaters should have. And if you think that cows are not family creatures with feelings and love, you are mistaken. I recently moved a cow from my farm to another farm and the hole left in the herd lingers still, after many weeks. It was a hard thing to do. the move was scary, the unknown. And other cows definitely miss her.

and last year a cow was killed just outside the barn and several month later, a young teen cow, a relative of the deceased escaped into the area that the slaughter took place. She could still take in the odour of her family member in the grass. and she was audibly and visibly very disturbed, making sounds I had never heard before.

So take it not lightly when you enjoy a steak or your next meal of squirrel liver - it is a serious thing worthy of serious reflection.

Be well.

The world is ours (Feb 29, 2008)

Haven’t written in a while… been busy I suppose.

I was on Saltspring for almost a week. Housesitting… for $400 a day. My responsibilities included, caring for a dog, and existing within an agreed upon set of physical boundaries (the property). That was crazy. That’s like a year’s salary for me. So I might buy a sail boat… go sailing.

I’ve been thinking about this whole private property thing. You know. All land is owned by someone and all must require purchasing or permission to use. And that’s kind of bunk. This land is free dagnammit and so am I by-golly and fer fuck’s sakes I’m gonna help myself.

The story, as I understand it from the editor’s introduction to John Locke’s Second Treatise, is as follows:

In the beginning, god made everything.. and man (his words, not mine). And everything was for man to use for his sustenance and happiness. All men are created equal and so we have equal right to sustenance and happiness, meaning land. And we needed no government because we are an inherently rational race and so we know that we need to get along in order to work together and all be happy.

He figures that the fairest way to split up the booty is to say, well everyone gets to ‘own’ the land they work. So you mix you labour with ‘raw’ land and its yours. And this also means that you can only ‘own’ so much land as you can work. This is a neat way of limiting how much land men can ‘own’.

This all sounds rather fair to me, assuming you modernize it a little and throw in the rights of women and children and brown people and wild plants and animals (perhaps these latter two, first and foremost). And if Johnny had stopped there we almost certainly never would of heard of him. He would have been silenced, killed, burned at the stake for heracy or whatever because had this revelelation been widespread all the rich, royal folk who publish and financially support rich philosophers like Mr. Locke would have themselves been burned for being such greedy little pricks. Perhaps this is as true today as I think it would have been back then.

J.Locke didn’t stop there, however. He added two main clauses. Firstly, he described the introduction of money in the history of man, land and equality. Money in use meant that you could ‘work’ a virtually unlimited amount of land by buying labour from others. And this also meant that you didn’t have to own land for sustenance and happiness because you could buy them (and you’d have to). It was still considered mixing your labour with the land if you had hired help because by buying that labour, it became yours.

His second clause was that our greed would overwhelm our ‘inherent rationality’ that previously kept order. And we would then need an all-powerful government to oversee transaction and punish transgressors of the law, especially those who question the limitless ownership of land by a few. Of course this government would be democratic, with elected representatives. Unfortunately, it was a given for Locke that only those with land would be allowed to vote. I guess if they had let the others vote, they might have had something to say about the concentration of land and power.

Locke wrote in the 1700s or so, and after ‘punishing transgresors’ for long enough, the landless seem to have forgotten that private property as it is currently defined and shared was a completely arbitrary and illogical manifestation benefitting those already rich. Then when you allow nearly everyone to vote, there is no longer any questioning of how things should work. Some of us have not forgotten.

So now, I have two legal choices, work most of my finest hours of life at a job I don’t like (or all of those hours at a job I do like), and trade that for ’sustenance and happiness’ or get a mortgage and still work most of my finest hours at a job I don’t like (or all of them at something I do like, like farming).

Fortunately, there are innumerable illegal option still at my disposal. And the one that has most recently caught my sparkle is squatting on some land, finding and growing food and building a floating shack to live in. Should be pretty exciting.

And I would love some help. So if anyone out there would like to come and take back a slice of the pie that was ‘legally’ stolen from us. We can all float on, happily and sustained ever after. C’mon, I’ve got just the spot.

Love,
Max.