Switchin' it up, blogwise.

Hi,

Wordpress is another blog server that lets me post pictures and lets anyone and everyone leave comments. I've switched my blog over to there. Thanks for following this one. I'm getting into the swing of things here and expect to do a little bit more writing so I hope you'll subscribe over there and keep reading.

Take care, hope all's well!

http://arisfarmadventure.wordpress.com/

Late nights, long objectified days

Somehow I've gotten into a rhythm of staying up late into the night talking on the phone and then waking up early the next day to do farming. Somehow it is actually possible.

I had a beautiful realization today while pulling parsnips from the ground. I realized that they are alive. It is a weird thing, to know that the world around you is actually alive. I was looking at this parsnip I had just pulled and thought 'is it still alive now that I've uprooted it?' and then 'Where does it's life end?' A couple of weeks ago, on one of our first days in the garden, Titia and I were talking about working soil and how you have to be careful with it because it is alive. I could not wrap my head around it and told her so and she said "so if I understand you right, up to now you have been thinking of the world as a series of objects. Now maybe you can start thinking about it as a network of living things". With a new appreciation for the living nature of the world, I'm thinking, holy smokes! I've been objectifying everything. Everything I relate to is objectified to a certain extent. It's that old story where we name something, we label it and file it away and never think about it again. And we think we know what it is. I had objectified my life to the point where nothing was real anymore. In fact I think I probably even objectified myself. I am rejoicing in this great change from a static world of objects to a dynamic living organism and dedicating myself to recognizing the dynamic living quality of the world around me. Boy is it ever beautiful.

Change of place, change of pace?

Hey, sorry it's been so long. I've been swamped! You know the idyllic bike ride I wrote about early on? Well I've had some other feelings about it since. What might they be? It's exhausting, I can't handle it, O no, not again! That's just the way things go I guess. Everything's nice in small doses, but what is sustainable? That's the big question. Anyways, so I've changed it up a bit. I moved into a one room cabin in Brooke Valley, about fifteen minutes bike ride from the farm. Thank goodness Coral has been so generous to let me use her bike. It's really growing on me..

The cabin is beautiful. It's all wood, with a little sink, a wood stove, a nice big sittin' chair, and a simple, single bed. For the first time in my life I get to have a shelf full of mason chairs with grains, legumes, nuts and seeds. It's so beautiful, what a practical decoration! There is a wee pond just a few steps from the cabin which I did a little skinny dipping in the first night I was here. (shh..) It's nice to have wild water to bathe in. The downside is that I think mosquitoes really enjoy skinny dipping too and they tend to follow me home. I'm developing quite a collection of little tiny mosquito bodies. It's been hot here. At least during the day and then cooling off in the evenings. From what I here this is good, because once it's hot in the evenings it will be black fly season and there's no respite until August.

I'm still working on getting morning and evening chores figured out.. Tonight, for some reason the pigs decided they wanted to go in the back door of the barn and when they found the door was closed, they tried to come around the barn and one got all tangled up in a wheel barrow. I get pretty freaked out when the pigs do anything weird because they all way hundreds of pounds and are all muscle. When they have something on their mind, particularly food, nothing can get in their way. And yet, things seem to work out alright. So far anyways.

How many pancakes can YOU eat in one sitting?

So last week I sat down to breakfast with Titia. Actually, I sit down to breakfast with Titia almost every morning. It is always a wonder breakfasting with her, but this morning was particularly amazing, partly because of the contrast. Before leaving that morning I had some apple crisp for breakfast and thought to myself I'd better not eat too much, I don't want to make myself sick and besides it's better to restrain myself isn't it. So I arrive to the breakfast table to find Titia with over twenty pancakes on her plate, on one plate, dousing them in maple syrup and apples. Holy tolito! I haven't ever seen someone eat so many pancakes!

Needless to say I was a tad bit jealous about her reckless abandon with pancakes, so since then I've been trying to make up for it. I'm still trying to figure it out. I've learned a couple of great simple recipes from Titia so far. Poached eggs on a bed of spring nettles. Custard, made with butter, milk, egg and sugar as a sauce for spelt berries... Mmm.. I'll add to this list as I can. The first one is easy if you want to try it and can be done with any spring greens. I might do it tomorrow for breakfast!

Just fill the bottom of a pan with greens, about half an inch deep and a bit of water, enough to steam them lightly. Just a few drops will do. Cover them for a couple of minutes and let them steam. Now crack the eggs on top of the bed of greens and cover the pan for a couple more minutes until the eggs look nicely poached. Mm Mmm! I think this one is especially for Mischa (my brother)

Goats are meh-ehs and chickens are cock-a-locks

The past two or three days since I arrived on Friday night have been nuts! Saturday morning started with a romp around the barnyard tracking down two adolescent pigs that escaped on their way from the barn to the paddock. We found one muckin' around in the swamp, looking happy as could be and coaxed him back into his pen. He had to spend the day inside as punishment for running away. For all that though, there is an incredible respect for all things on our farm. I am learning through experience working alongside Titzia that all life is sacred. Everything that happens on the farm is done with love and with a deep understanding of how we effect our surroundings.

A great example is the blueberry bushes that we are planting. To make space for them, Titzia had to cut down a lot of pine trees and these trees are an essential part of the framework for the blueberry plants. We are using logs to make beds for the plants and using a mixture of woodchips and pine needles to help create the proper soil conditions for the plants to flourish. Just wait until you see the pictures, it's sooo beautiful!

It is quite a responsibility caring for a piece of land. There is so much transforming that is involved. Taking down trees to turn an area into a blueberry grove is just one example of the fine process that goes on throughout the farm. The care that is needed to insert a human influence on the environment without becoming heavy handed and crass or manipulative. It is a real mind warp trying to think about controlling and directing things in a way that totally honours the life force that exists everywhere. I was amazed to find that even though we were doing what seemed like a lot of destruction to put in our blueberry bushes, anything that didn't need to be damaged had to be cared for. There I was thinking the only things that mattered were the blueberry plants! And what care it takes even to handle the blueberry plants. They don't like to have their roots touched and they are bursting with delicate blossoms so they have to be handled with the utmost care. And at the same time, we have to work hard and fast!

The farm, I am finding, is a wonderful place of contrast where total opposites exist effortlessly together. It is a place where you can kick a goat in the butt because you love it and need it to go where it needs to go. Or cut down a tree and uproot a bush because you love the environment and want to offer it the chance to experience fruitful blueberry growth. As I say, it is a lot of responsibility. Developing this farm has had a huge effect on the land, it has totally changed it. In a sense the land has taken on an identity through working with the farmer which it never could have on its own. We have so much power over our environment and with this power comes great responsibility. There is so much beauty that we can create and so much destruction. Being on the farm is a wonderful opportunity to experience both sides of this coin.

One of the areas that I've been working on a lot is learning to communicate with the animals. The pigs are called su-sus, the goats meh-ehs and the chickens cock-a-locks. These are sounds the animals can hear quite easily so we use their names to get their attention; when it's time to be fed or to travel. It is a great challenge communicating with them and directing them to do what you need them to. After evening chores tonight Titzia offered some comforting words of reassurance "I know it's hard, you're probably in total culture shock. When have you ever tried to communicate with goats and pigs in a language they could understand?"

We've been using every second of the day that isn't spent caring for the animals planting blueberry bushes. Saturday we planted twenty five and we planted about the same amount again today. We still have another fifty to go and are hoping to do it all tomorrow. At our morning meeting today Titzia explained that a farmer should always have way more planned for the day then they can ever possibly get done and if they don't, than the farm can probably be doing more than it is. Our plan for today was to finish planting blueberry bushes, dig up the rhubarb and make holes for our new apple trees. As I mentioned, we didn't get anywhere close!

It sure is fun planting blueberry bushes though. The area where they are going in used to be a pine forest, and Titzia is using all the wood she cut down to make space for the blueberries. A lot of it got chipped into a beautiful mixture of woodchips and pine needles which we mix in with the compost and spread on top as a mulch. It is a beautiful golden green colour. Just imagine one inch bits of pine needles intermingled with small golden brown wood chips. They are a pleasure to work with. And the berry bushes! They are just beautiful. We are also using some of the logs to create beds for the plants, I'll post some pictures soon enough. Boy is it an attractive piece of work.

By the end of the day today I'm feeling pretty good and exhausted. And this is where I got to start my forty five minute bike ride back home to Coral's. This bike ride is an opportunity to meditate and be with my body and experience moving round and round really quickly. It is gorgeous, passing by forests and meadows and ponds. Listening to birds of all kinds singing to the night and watching the colours in the sky slowly change from blue to orange, to yellow, to indigo and seeing the first shining stars emerge one by one. I stopped by the babbling brook at the end of our driveway before pulling up to the house and listened to it's stories, watching it's movements up and down the bank and watching my thoughts of the day pop in little bubbles on the surface of the water.

Day one

I left Toronto at 2 PM on Friday, running late from a last minute studio session I had to do to make an advertising demo for voice recording work. I got a ride with a fe llow named Bill in the Little Stream Bakery delivery fan. At first I thought he was a gnome but over the course of our 6 hours together he did a pretty good job convincing me that he was human. We listened to a recording of the Rent Musical to help Bill prepare for his upcoming role as lead guitarist in the Perth musical which opens a week Thursday. He tells me that if I'm not careful walking around Perth I'm liable to be recruited for a musical or asked to join a band. I like the sound of things already. I feel this gentle warmth caressing me and exciting me. Who could have imagined a more perfect place?

My thoughts were confirmed upon arrival. I was greeted by two dogs, who's welcoming gaze and general excitment were the best greeting I could have imagined. I let myself in to a quiet house with a lovely welcome note inviting me to a fridge full of delicious leftovers. I found my bedroom, just off the kitchen through a set of double doors "the one with seedlings in the window" the note said. I was greeted by a huge collection of records, a sewing machine, a long, cozy-looking couch, an old school writing table that folds up into a cabinet, and a big old trunk, next to a big old bed with two lovely cats, who's names I'm still trying to remember. Ok now I've got some names. There's a cat named Bob and a dog named Bruno the other two, I still don't know. One day though, we'll have all the names straight.

We had an interesting thought tonight sitting around the kitchen table. Realizing that the babes on Titzia's farm, piglets and kids, all get to roam free because they are still so small that they fit through the fence. My first thought was "how wonderful, the young ones are free to explore" and then I realized that there must come a time when they no longer fit through the fence and wondering if they have an experience of growing up. We finished the night off with Coral reflecting on starting to care for goats this past year, realizing that she'd only ever milked a goat twice before she got them and had to milk them regularly. It was really nice to be reminded that it is often our fear of not being able to do something that gets in our way the most and that there's a lot we can do if we choose to. "There is genius in boldness" as Goethe would say.