trees are cool

I'm very cozily snuggled up on the couch at my sister's house with the best cat in the whole world curled up around my laptop (white macbook, black cat. very pleasing aesthetically), his head lying on my left hand while i try to type. You could hear his purring in the next room, if you were here. I LOVE this cat.

I had a really nice week. Not only am i getting cat love from Lil' Guy, I'm also catsitting for my boss' two little kitties (they sleep on my feet at night) and soon Meg and I will be looking after Tuna, Brit's true love. It's amazing what good company cats are; how nice it is to read a book or (attempt to) type with a kittie curled up on your lap. Yes, I know, you're probably all rolling your eyes. I'm aware that I'm probably going to be a crazy cat lady at some point in my life. But seriously, sometimes humans just get you down. They're so confusing, undependable, melodramatic, and you can't lock them in your house until you get home to make sure you have someone to cuddle at the end of the day. You know?

I'm technically on holiday right now, though so far I haven't had much time to relax. I took a two-day introduction to permaculture class at the UBC farm on tuesday and thursday. Not only did it allow me to meet a group of really lovely, involved and caring people of all ages, it also re-inspired me back onto a path that i've been veering on and off of for the last few years. In a way it feels a bit scary, because i've been trying to just focus on the teaching thing, and just go for it, but to be honest i really haven't been feeling all that excited about it. I love (some) kids, and I feel passionately that a political and environmental education for young ones is one of the most important ways that we can start to see some changes in the way the world works, but as for being a public school teacher... it just really hasn't been getting me all that excited. It's not that education isn't something I want to pursue eventually, just that there are other things that get me so much more excited, and maybe I should pursue those things first, and then go into education when i have more of a practical, hands-on education in something that I can then pass down to the next generation. Important somethings: how to grow our own food, how to care for the land, how to build and live in healthy caring communities.

I learned some amazing things in the last couple days at the farm. Yesterday we got a rudimentary lesson in grafting, which is something i find totally magical. For anyone who doesn't know, grafting is a method of growing fruit trees that has been around for thousands of years (according to Wikipedia the Chinese have been grafting since 2000 BC!). The basic idea behind it is that because of cross-pollination it is extremely difficult to reproduce the same fruit, say apple, twice. If you plant an apple seed from an apple you love, the chances of the tree that grows from this seed producing a fruit anything like it are extremely small. And since it takes such a long time for a tree grown from seed to bear fruit, you won't know whether the apples are delicious or terrible for 5 to 10 years. To get around this, people use grafting. The technique consists of taking a specific root stock and fusing it together with the shoot from a tree that you know grows the desired fruit. The root stock is selected for its size (which will determine the size of the tree) and disease resistance, while the 'scion' or shoot is selected for the fruit. (Apparently pears in BC are grown on quince root stocks. weird). So nowadays people are using dwarf root stocks for easy harvesting. Most commercial apple orchards are using such a small root stock that the trees are not even free standing - they have to be trellised like beans. Very odd. Anyways, the weirdest part is the process itself - there are several methods but it all comes down to exposing the fleshy part under the bark of both the root stock and scion, then taping the two together until they heal together and fuse into one tree! I think that's just incredible! I propose we see if that works with humans. I wouldn't mind trying to fuse an extra arm on or something... How did they discover such a thing? I guess it's a funny question, because we tend to think "oh, how could anyone discover that without modern science", but when you think about it it makes sense, as they obviously could only discover something like this by observing and understanding their environment in a tangible, everyday way; something we tend to leave to science these days as we go about our weirdly detached lives.

This is something that really inspired me about the course as well; beyond learning some really interesting practical skills (cob building, aspects of design, companion planting, etc) we were really forced to think about ways to be more present, more thoughtful, more aware of ourselves as part of a community. The first activity we did on the first day was to go into the woods and close our eyes and listen to the sounds around us, and then to open our eyes and go around sticking our noses in the dirt, on the trees, all around, seeing how many smells we could find, and then closing our eyes and touching things, relying on a stranger to lead us around. Everyone felt a little silly and awkward at first, but it really stuck with me how much we forget our senses, and the wonder of things all around us. We spend so much time thinking thinking thinking, anticipating, dreading, remembering, planning, that we forget to look around us and appreciate what we have right this instant, to really and truly see (and smell and taste and feel and hear) how much beauty there is everywhere, every day. This aspect of the workshop really struck a chord with me, and I have been thinking about it a lot. I have been living in my head so much lately; I feel as though I have spent so much time in the last few years worrying about my future, trying to plan ahead, trying to figure out my life, trying to sort out and fix and understand difficult relationships, romantic and otherwise, and also worrying about the past, regretting things and remembering things and all of that... and what does any of this get us? Of course it's important to spend time thinking and digesting, and planning ahead can be really important too, but there needs to be time in my life for just being happy with what I have, for turning off the anxiety and worry and realizing that, despite the parts of life that are difficult and that are part of being human, there are always reasons to be happy and to be grateful. I am really trying to do that right now – I desperately need a break from my own anxiety; I can’t remember a day lately that I haven’t woken up feeling worried about the future and rethinking the past.

Sarah, one of the employees at the farm who taught the grafting section was also the leader of my internship at the farm a couple of years ago. I had a really nice chat with her about her path to where she is now. She did an apprenticeship a while back at Linnaea Farm (where she first learned about grafting) on Cortes island that I’ve been looking into, and had nothing but good things to say about it. It looks like an amazing program: it’s been around since the eighties and incorporates a full permaculture certificate into the program, on top of all the amazing experiential learning that I’m sure you’d get just from being there day in and day out. And they have a really cool elementary school on site, so I could still work with kiddies. This is something I’ve been thinking about doing for a long time; spending a full growing season on a farm and learning by doing. Every year I chicken out (no pun intended), maybe because I’m afraid of the commitment it entails; leaving the city and my life behind for 6 to 8 months, living in extremely close quarters with a small group of people, making a decision about my life so far in advance. But just being at the UBC farm made me remember all the reasons I want to do this. I never feel as happy as I do when I am learning or when my fingers are in the dirt. I love the peacefulness it brings me, being somewhere quiet, watching things grow. And I really believe that this is something that needs to be learned and passed on. We are losing so much important knowledge about how to feed ourselves, how to keep the land healthy and productive. There is so much that has been lost already – plant varieties, knowledge, and good land and healthy soil. I don’t think I want to be a farmer, necessarily, but I do really want to learn these things and see where it takes me. I remember as a kid I always wanted to be either a farmer or a writer, and maybe I should keep one of those dreams alive. I do love chickens.