Movement?

A couple potential jobs have come up recently.

One is in the area somewhat west of me-- same employer but a different area, so a different set of supervisor/management structure/decision makers (each region is basically a fiefdom). Housing prices there are a little more expensive than they are here; there doesn't seem to be an equivalent low end to the housing market, but the homes one step up tend to have a lot of useful stuff: heated studio or workshop, coldroom for hanging meat, pond, artisan or gravity-feed water, barn or pole barn, things like that. The area also has more of a farming community, including a multi-farm shop and farmer get-togethers, and it's where I take my geese to be processed. There's also an airport in the region, a nice music festival, more people and some nice restaurants including nice sushi restaurants, a lovely downtown, and fiber optic cable goes along the highway so some homes close enough may have it. New cell towers were built in the area. Plus a fairly significant white supremacist movement, social polarization, a very very contentious relationship with First Nations, and it's pretty much not accessable from the city in one day. I could almost certainly get this job. The posting closes at the end of this month; I haven't yet contacted the person in charge of that team to ask questions. Some good questions might include: what is the actual work (sounds like there might be a big monitoring component, which would be fabulous), what is the relationship of the work to the Nations, who else is on the team and what do they do, what is the policy on remote work and flexibility (could I work from over here until I can relocate, and if so how long is that expected to be).

The other is for a Nation that's heavily partnered with a large forestry company, I'm not sure if my credential is sufficient. The Nation is pretty remote but have an office in the biggest city in the area; I imagine the work would be fairly significant telework with an equally significant element of travel. This would be an extremely different employer; obviously a smaller company with I think no other foresters. Small companies, especially "family" (/band?) companies often run very very differently and I suspect I would be able to work to my own hours as I much prefer. Probably I could relocate throughout the region as I chose. I suspect I would be a really significant jack-of-all-trades and that would be challenging with a steep learning curve and no mentorship(?) but might also let me follow my interests a little more. Some questions I should ask: what are the goals or outcomes of the position? How are the decisions which this person will implement arrived at, and how often do they tend to change? Who manages this position? How much travel is expected? How does this position relate to the forestry company with which the Nation is partnered, who does which parts of the process (operational, strategic, landscape)? Will my credential be sufficient? How much mentorship and training budget is available?

Possibilities. None of them are clearly perfect. I probably can't actually afford to move, in the end. But maybe I should talk to some people?

(no subject)

I was invited to infodump about my favourite topic today. I responded with this:

I like plants, especially edibles, and especially temperate and cold/temperate edibles, especially growing in ways that genetics and combination on the landscape contribute to carefully-chosen system goals, especially heterogenous varieties eg modern landracing (or old landraces, I'll take 'em all!), especially if those goals are non-conventional (eg not 'how much land can we farm with the fewest people but the most gas and tractors' but more to optimize for human power or climate or the particular site's water or soil or aspect or or), especially if animals are involved in that small human-designed ecosystem, especially if it's allowed to evolve through propagation and selection over time, especially if the surplus that humans take from that system is optimized for local community use including aesthetic preferences and values as well as flavour, comfort, etc, especially if those surplus foods (but also fibre etc) is aligned with cultural use and preservation practices, plus I enjoy learning those use and preservation practices including charcuterie, brewing, canning, drying, annd fermenting. But sometimes I go on a kick and grow a monstera or my grandma's spider plant or fifty kinds of hot pepper just for fun and I keep a bunch of geese and cats and dogs and an old hen around as pets even if they're not contributing to my system. Oh, and I love love love plant variety trials; I live where the only domestic plants that grow reliably are from the old Siberian breeding programs so I need to trial and breed my own varieties (it's super cool here over the summer so nothing ripens, and it's -40C in winter so any perennials die).

Last year I trialled 24 varieties of corn including my heart-corn (gaspe) and discovered some new ones that do well here and I'm going to landrace them, and I made a a surprisingly successful squash grex, and I'm growing a bunch of tomatoes that a collaborator outcrossed to wild relatives to try and get the flowers to cross-pollinate more and thus allow more natural geneflow within the population so I don't have to make a million hand-crosses (tomatoes don't naturally cross much). I was asked in the group this evening about what kind of plant breeding I was into and kind of saved this up for a more appropriate spot. 🙂

Gaspe corn is knee-high and comes from the gaspe penninsula in Quebec, it's one of the shortest season corns in the world; it's a grain corn and grows about knee-high and fills me with absolute awe and gratitude that so many hands cherished corn from the time it was a grass in south-central mexico, and with love and attention they slowly selected and planted and selected and planted until it was corn, and then selected and planted and selected and planted and it spread into myriad forms across north america, slowly, going at the rate of friendship and sharing and at the rate the plant could adapt over so much time, through forms 20' tall with aerial roots, and then eventually spreading up to Quebec where it was so cold and short-season that it was basically unrecogniseable from not just the original plant but from the intermediate forms. All those people, all that persistence, that cooperatively created this plant that now can come live with me where no modern corn can grow. I love it so much. Also if you want to try growing some grain corn and are serious about it, I have seeds to share. (imagine a sea of green heart emojis)