Thanking Last Season

Today I was very mindful of how much food we were eating from last season. We had two nice meals, one of veggie burgers and roasted potatoes (with lots of condiments), the other was chapattis and a beany stew (again with lots of condiments). To make these meals happen I have been going down to the basement and taking out potatoes, parsnips and lots of mason jars of preserved food. Here is a little rundown of all the great things we grew and preserved last year (and are enjoying now):

• Dill pickles
• Pickled beans
• Mustard pickles
• Green tomato relish
• Sauerkraut (made from radish and turnips)
• Potatoes
• Parsnips
• Jerusalem artichokes
• Canned tomatoes
• Green tomato mincemeat
• Lots of various jams, syrups and applesauce
• Salsa
• Garlic
• Pickled garlic scapes
• Horseradish sauce
• We made kim chi a few weeks ago from overwintered cabbage, turnip greens, kale and Jerusalem artichokes
  

I really encourage everyone to get into fermenting and preserving. But you already knew that. Check out the great book Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz.

Like An Animal

I've been listening to some of the comments coming out of the Syrian refugee camps in Turkey and a comment that came out loud and clear (thanks to the Canadian media) was refugees referring to Syrian troops as "animals". They "behaved like animals" or "they were like animals".

Now how many assumptions and worldviews are represented in that statement. It's the same old civilized story: Animals are violent and savage. They are monsters preying on the weak. No civilized person would act this way. No civilized human being would destroy villages and force people out and torture children. These people weren't civilized humans, they were depraved animals.

There must be a lot of evidence to back up these claims since this view is so widespread. Are bears sacking cities as we speak? Have they ever sacked cities? No unfortunately most bears are smart enough to hang around the local dump, digging up a free meal. Perhaps foxes torture rabbits and their children everyday? No they are mostly looking for a meal and the fastest way to a meal is to kill your prey quickly. Torturing a prey animal just increases the chance that it might actually hurt you as it dies slowly and lashes out. Given this, it would be stupid to torture. All those nature videos of lions hunting gazelles show that, as quickly as possible, they rip out the gazelle's throat, ending its life quickly and what has been called 'humanely'. Lions have to eat too and they don't have anything against the gazelle.

No sadly the Syrian troops were not behaving like animals at all. They were all too human. Only that animal (and the specifically civilized at that) behaves in such a callous and cruel manner.

Smash

In the city today. Waiting for Jane to come and get me. It's garbage day and I found a bunch of windows and seriously thick glass just down the road. I thought when she came back I could go and get them. I would need a car to move them. I'm a little sad to say that the garbage truck has just arrived. I could run out and get the glass but really there is so much glass thrown away every day in this city I'm sure. So I'm just going to sit here and type this instead.

There is so much useful 'waste' thrown away every single day here. I can't even imagine it. We could be building houses, greenhouses, amazing trellis systems. We could be increasing food production in cities. We could be building passive solar buildings (admittedly, probably not up to the building code but at this stage it probably goes too far). We could be doing so much.

But we are smashing the glass instead. We are smashing it and moving it out of the city to be buried. How much embodied energy is being lost? One day we are going to be begging for these resources. We're going to be digging in dumps and unearthing these amazing treasures building a new world with the magic of the old.

The glass is about to smash as it's tossed in the back of the truck. So long.

Garden Update

I've certainly been neglecting the old blog. Update from the summer so far: the gardens are so fertile it's crazy. A friend and wwoofer Zsolt put up a fertility rune in the garden and the dandelions and grass have certainly noticed. They are monstrous. But it seems that the effect is more widely felt and the grapes and currants and gooseberries we planted this spring have gotten the message. I'm feeling a bit daunted by the idea of growing grapes but we'll give it a shot. It would be pretty special to make a few bottles of wine out of our own grapes, perhaps with some currants thrown in for good measure.

The potatoes are all in the ground at the usual time at the end of May. I just planted some sweet corn, hoping for the best. Last year I planted corn in July but didn't make a harvest. It was close but no cigar. All the seedlings (tomatoes, tomatillos, peppers, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, chard) are looking good and I've been potting them into bigger pots instead of planting them out early, when they are very small. I did so last year and I think I should have waited. It's nice to be able to experiment from year to year. In the ground are snow and snap peas, beets, parsnips, carrots, salad mix and garlic.

We have had lots of wonderful wwoofers through this year. Thank you to Will, Maiko, Zsolt, Susana, Emily, Marie-Eve, Patrick, Ashley and Markus! We wouldn't be so fertile without you!