Hungry fall

There are a LOT of bears around right now. In town there were 15 sightings yesterday of at least 5 different bears, my one bear on the back has swelled to several of different sizes, etc etc. Not sure if this is because of the drought, of a frost that nipped a lot of the flowers this spring and led to less fruit, or the fires chasing them in close, or probably all of them. Plus the last few years have been really good years for the bears with 3 cubs per sow being frequent, so a year where a bunch starved is definitely due. Starting this early, though-- it's going to be an intense fall as they all go into calorie storage mode. I clearly need to fortify.

Which is an introduction to just saying that last night I woke up at 3am and helped Thea and Avallu chase two bears away ("help" is an overstatement, I held the flashlight. Man those dogs run fast) and then went back to sleep. In my dreams a sow and three cubs came close into the yard and me and the dogs were hitting them with sticks to try and get rid of them and then a friend(?) showed up and finally shot the sow. Then we were starting to allocate meat & fat (I'm more interested in fat, for soap) when I woke up. It was one of those experiences where real life blends seamlessly into a dream, I was wearing the same thing, it was basically just a continuation.

I woke up tired into a beautiful sunny dew-drenched morning and told my dogs they were so, so, so good and came in to work.

Too much

I've been trying to write up the pottery studio meeting on Saturday for awhile. The tl;dr is that I'm hopeful about the new studio manager they've hired, I really do not get along with the program manager (she tried to suggest I owed them $700 for stepping in and trying to salvage willow cuttings last minute as a volunteer), I'm hopeful the new studio manager will shield us, we have access to the studio this month and some sort of revamp will happen in Sept, the pots I threw before this went down and couldn't get in are bone dry so I can't trim them but I'm gonna try water etching, I still super want my own kiln, the other folks in town who do pottery are pretty cool and I will try hanging out with them if the studio thing fails, I STILL WANT MY OWN KILN.

But here's the thing. I went out on Friday for half an hour, and did an hour of tilling one evening. I went to the pottery meeting for three hours Saturday. And that wiped me out completely for the weekend. I spent pretty much all the rest of the time in bed, back to 3 naps per day minimum. I made it down to pick up feed, which was an hour of driving, without driving into anything. So I guess whatever it is is still here.

I'm considering moving the pigs to the back, through the main area the bears come in through. Baby on his own could likely face down a bear, the whole herd I have no concerns about whatsoever. There are no little piglets right now, which helps. They'd enjoy the grasshoppers and long grass too.

I'm trying to double-feed the animals lately, giving them two days' worth of feed, then skipping a day and just topping up water. It gives me more rest time. Cautiously in favour?

This has been a catastrophic year for grain here: frost, then drought. The barley is barely calf high and the wheat was mostly ploughed back under. I'm trying to stockpile some feed before it gets ultra expensive.

Meantime it's a great year for me getting my fall grains in. Because I didn't get the whole garden planted I have lots of space, and because we've got something like 2" of rain in the last week the ground is lovely for tilling. I'm starting to get the ground turned and decide which grains are going where, how far apart, etc-- some of them I'm just starting with 40 seeds and I'm not sure they'll overwinter, so I need to figure out how to safely plant and mark basically 20 pieces of grass in a big field over the winter. Very excited about it all, though, especially the glutinous barley, some of the wheats including my saved seeds from the ?2019 trials, and the ryes.

Time of the megafires

So fifteen years ago I sat in on a presentation for some fire predictions for the boreal and sub-boreal. They were using the term "mega-fires" and speaking to the fact that no matter what forest management we did there was no model that didn't involve really large fires in the future, say 20 years.

Today we got a technical update around mega-fires, which pretty much started in 2017 up here, around "we knew they were coming and they're now here to stay" and we kinda know they'll be getting bigger. We're also not able to expect the June lull regularly. Lots of talk in land management around controlled/introduced burns, including post-harvest burning and seasonal burning. I think it's realistic how they're skipping over seasonal burning, almost, in favour of full-on anchor burning, because the fire behaviour doesn't really reduce as much in some of the seasonally-burned landscapes anymore. The 2-4C we're expecting in climate increase in the next 25 years here will make a difference, as has the past increase.

1.52 million ha burned so far in BC, that's coming up on 1% of our land area I think? we're expecting 2 more months of fire season. So far it's had impact on fewer people because it's been in unpopulated areas, because Donnie Creek is a pretty intense fire, but it may well start moving down south.

The rain we've had hasn't been enough to increase streamflow, so they're saying it probably won't do much except give us some days of safer firefighting.

I'm still of the personal belief that we'll get a very significant shift from forest, especially conifer forest, to grassland and savannah, especially aspen savannah with trees that can resprout from roots. Though my understanding is that aspen doesn't have good seed survival in hot/dry situations, so it may drop out if it's not able to recombine/evolve quickly enough. Hopefully the little black spruce bogs dotting the landscape will remain to some degree. Super hopefully we have grasses that can sequester carbon in the soil, and that make some soil since we don't have much. I kind of wonder if we should be working on climate migration for grasses? I know so little about prairie ecosystems though.

At work, as of two weeks ago, my own office had given 28 person-weeks and 8 trucks (plus trucks taken by the individuals on those person-weeks) to firefighting over 2 months. So work was half-staffed previous to the fires, now we're at maybe 1/4 staff. Then, once the fires are over, we start on habitat restoration.
In addition to provincial full-time staff and loaner staff, here were 3 international incident teams (2 australian, 1 from mexico) just in my little corner of the district, I think we now have 1 aussie team and possibly the first brazilian team ever?

It's interesting to see how fast it's all normalized. I knew water was going to be big on the radar, I think I didn't realize how much fire would shift my actual work?

Anyhow, just thoughts after a briefing. The brainstem is much happier with clearer air and a little rain.