Greenstorm's Journal

One friend did a bunch of research and time-stitching to get the beginnings of my disability paperwork filled out. Nicholas sent me some money so I can lay in straw and feed for part of the winter. Josh came up and helped (well, mostly did) cover the greenhouse (which has been sitting uncovered all summer) and the woodshed with greenhouse plastic and wiggle wire (which is magic). My doctor called me from her office at 8:30 at night before she left for the weekend to make sure my paperwork was done in time. Tucker split and stacked a ton of firewood (several tons, actually, in a literal sense) and is coming up to help my appointment in Dec.

I'm not just alive through the hands of these people. I'm happy.

It's been awhile since I wrote. I had that truly terrible cluster of migraine symptoms at first, then work was extremely busy -- we did a last minute heli flight that lasted a full workday, then I was helping with a conference one town over, then I was recovering, then I was helping with our seedy saturday, then I did a tiny bit of pottery at the studio, now it's now. It really took everything I had to get through that. I gave up on non-masked human social stuff for that couple weeks, on doing more than minimum for food and house. Now I want to sink into the deep pool of peace that is my house and my life. I want to watch my cat sleeping and intermittently pet him for hours while my mind unspools and processes.

There's a lot to process.

It's spring and the geese are all over the yard looking for nests and there are melt-pools everywhere. I can hear gregarious honking through my dog door.

While I was at the end of the conference, but still in it, before the drive home, I was sending off a quick email to my supervisor about how my work hours supported the yearly priority plan. I used the term "DEI" and he didn't know what that meant; I sent him a copy of our organization's new DEI plan that had come out and been circulated something like last fall and he said thank you; he didn't dispute (and never does) the time I spend on this but wow.

I introduced my colleague to proper vietnamese food for the first time and as I was dressing and flipping my pho he asked how I knew how to eat it. He loved it, even the (truly phenomenal) fish sauce.

I gave away 8 mugs as door prizes and several hundred packets of my own seed at seedy saturday. They had someone else as a speaker this year talking about "proper" seed saving (how not to cross, for instance) so I spent my time at the seed tables. First I was stuffing envelopes with seed and directing people to label them as I stuffed, but we quickly ran out of packets. Then I showed people how to do the origami seed packets, the librarian used her paper cutter and a pile of recycled paper to make squares, and we folded, filled, and taped. People kept coming in with big bags of seed. Someone came in with elaborate origami seed packets with a crane folded into them. We had such an incredible richness of local seeds come in, I felt so honoured, like a conservator of a community treasure. Several thousand packets of seed went out, free, to people. My mugs, some plant starts, other folks' homemade wine went out as door prizes. The space was packed. Everyone said it was an amazing event. One of the speakers brought 75 varieties of tomato seed to give away. They say that in the coastal indigenous cultures your wealth was measured by what you give away, and I always feel that, and last Saturday I felt wealthy. All the extra seeds go to the new seed library in the library there so anyone who missed the event can still grow things. A+ use of my time but following on the end of a long week it was a lot, and by this time I was really missing talking to my people.

Dogs finally got treated for the fleas Solly picked up when she went on her walkabout. I hadn't seen any in the last month but that means very little. I've been watching videos of a professional dog groomer doing livestock guardian dogs on youtube and trying to figure out how I could wash my pups. I'll settle for getting the mats out and doing a deep brush. Avallu's been loving this; I think it's time to start treating Solly for it. Thea has realized it gets her attention so she's settled into it.

My pepper seeds are all up except for the african birds eye. It's getting on time to start tomatoes and separate the peppers, which means setting up more lights, which means clearing a shelf or two, which means doing some work on my storage container. My first round of seeds, tomatoes from Jan 1st, is doing well-- some of the micros are flowering, and the F2s exhibit the breathtaking diversity that hold me in awe and that I'd always hoped to attain.

The headache seems to be somewhat recurring, but not as constant as it was. Nausea is a near-constant struggle. These two things may (?) be correlated to air quality, as they may get worse when I turn off the CR box or have the windows closed? On the other hand it's warmed up and I can keep a couple windows cracked open so my body just feels lighter in a lot of ways.

In two weeks I'm driving to the coast for a couple days to visit Tucker and bring him (and some clay) back up, maybe disseminate some mugs.

This Wed is a bisque kiln and possibly the following weekend a glaze kiln, that doesn't leave much time for glazing.

Odds and ends, unprocessed. Spring is coming. My mind doesn't think well. Still I'm doing what I love and am happy; I only hope this life doesn't have that fall expiry date.

This morning I woke up and it was -31C outside, -26C at work. This is really only the third cold spike this winter; it comes after a big day of snow on Sunday and forecast snow this week. I'd taken off work sick for the last couple hours yesterday afternoon, taken several naps, and fed and watered everyone extra. I woke up, filled water in the new downstairs laundry tub, fed and watered everyone again, started up my reliable truck, and drove in to work.

On Sunday I gave a quick workshop to the gardening club on cheap vanduzee-style kratky hydroponics. Folks got to take home lettuce, micro tomato, matchbox pepper, arugula, and tatsoi plants in collars of pool noodle skewered by bbq skewers that held them over jars and a little packet of nutrients. Driving in the highway wasn't ploughed yet, it had about 5" of snow on it. I was impressed, some folks came from the next town over and drove in on that! People were driving reasonably, important when you don't know where the highway is so you need to drive in the middle of it and navigate getting around each other when you meet a car coming the other way. Lots of good chat and met some neighbours, including the one with the oak trees (!) lining her driveway.

After that I went down to the clay studio and spent two hours loading the kiln with glaze tests. I'd had a migraine the week preceeding and making glazes is quiet, can be done from paper rather than a screen, and allows lots of slow and restarting. So I put in several of my own glaze tests, plus some of the big bucket's worth that had been newly mixed at the studio, plus one quick floating blue test for the studio out of alberta slip.

My own tests were chun celadon with minspar; val's turquoise with 3134; oldforge floating base with 10% iron, 3% copper carb, and 1% copper carb; and an ash glaze called "new hagi" from my birch ash. There was also a copper wash in there to pick out carving and see how it goes through those glazes. I also tried a bunch of studio glaze layering including seaweed and bailey's red 2 under the cedar hill white ravenscrag, blue opal and oldforge floating rutile overlap, and some spectacularly splattered tall forms that had used up the remains of bits of glazes people had decanted. Plus other people had bought some glazes and were playing with overlapping. The big kiln was full -- two of my bowls wouldn't fit -- and it will be very very exciting to open. Everyone is excited to see it. It'll be cool today but I don't think anyone with a key will be around, so tomorrow after work will be the opening.

I've been reasonably sick for the last week, basically since the scent issue the Tuesday two weeks ago. I didn't end up going to bed for three days like I probably should have, and ended up carrying symptoms into a true migraine. Funny enough I didn't realize they were migraine symptoms. I seldom get really disabling pain and my normal tell is southwest-patterned chevrons in my right visual field and holes in my left. This time I didn't get those tells, but when I went into the massage therapist she asked a bunch of questions: "pressure on your eyes? photosensitive? short of breath? nauseous? brain fog--" at which point I stopped her and said, "how do you know all this? I don't have all those symptoms now but those are the cluster I get with scent exposure normally" and she said "oh, they're just migraine symptoms". Anyhow, I'm reconsidering my scent reactions now. And I did eventually get a headache because I pushed it, even wearing sunglasses etc.

I had a great visit with Tucker, and a pretty good one with Josh despite being sick and somewhat rushed -- it was a couple days shorter than I expected, which is becoming expected with him. My animals are good and my grain bins are full, my house animals are good and snuggly, I woke up at 3am and stoked the fire and the house stayed nice and warm. My pepper seeds are up, and a couple of my hydroponics tomatoes are forming buds.

As I'm writing I see holes in my visual field that are subtle enough I only really see them when reading. Hm. Never had this linger for two weeks before.

I like it here. I like it here. I like it here. It's my home.

Taught the new pottery tech to take the specific gravity of glazes yesterday. I had figured it out by reading about it. She had been given a handout and didn't understand it, by someone who had never done it and I suspect didn't care to understand it. I also gave the tech the link to the "for flux sake" podcast which goes into a bunch of nuts-and-bolts stuff around the practical parts of glaze chemistry and running a studio. I wish there were more pottery podcasts like that and fewer "meet this potter artist in an interview and learn about their inspiration, how they started, and how they use art words". Like, I'm not opposed to having those, but there are roughly one to two hundred hours of that kind of podcast for every hour of practical stuff around how to make clay or glazes do things.

We also did a bunch of glazing with the new pottery glazes, and I introduced one of the members to websites where people layer and posts pictures of premade glazes. I don't think she knew that premade non-underglaze things existed. It's fun, I'm pretty sure she's also on the special interest train because she says this stuff lives in her head.

Apparently the new tech can't mix glazes because of her asthma, and she doesn't yet know how to run the kiln, so I'm coming in this Wednesday to run the kiln and... well, they'd likely like me to come in the next weekend to mix glazes but 1) I've been busy too many days in a row and it's causing my body to malfunction and 2) Tucker will be here and I want to spend time with him. So, I'll trust that the folks I mixed glazes with before, volunteers, can do it again if they want glazes.

Workshop last weekend went well, people got to take home plants and craft plant markers and folks chatted and had a good time. No one mentioned my mask -- I was the only person masking in the building -- so we'll call that ok too. Next workshop is kratky lettuces, I should get some started as a demo.

cw sui
( Read more... )

I also continue to lose capacity, especially if I don't spend a couple days a week lying down. I think it might be time to talk more about this with my doctor. I mean, I don't know how or what, but I don't think we've found the solution. Same questions as always, is it "just" autistic burnout, is it some sort of post-covid post-exertional malaise thing, is it some random autoimmune thing that all have the same vague symptoms, who would even know to rule these things out? I'm starting to get a ton of ads from everything from psychiatrists to physios to whatever else to "help navigate the medical system and bring back functionality" and I hate the idea that our system is built so folks who are least able need to pay to navigate this. I'm very lucky to have a job where I can functionally slack a bunch if I need to but I can't do nothing.

This last thought brought to you by trying to type this morning with arms that felt like noodles. Kind of ironic that I finally have community in this town, both a garden club and a pottery club, imagine that! but that my body is just kind of not having any of it.

Pottery thing last night. She walked it back a bunch so it actually felt welcoming, and another of the other members is getting interested in glazes.

People are complicated.

I ended up staying late last night and I have another heli flight today, and my body is so over all this. I've cancelled with Kelsey because I won't be safe driving to pick her up, and will spend tomorrow and Sat in bed in all likelihood.

Need to get food and gravol in myself pretty quick here so I can be ready for the flight. Very very few people don't get motion sick in a helicopter and apparently I'm better than most, but I still want to have myself sorted.

Okay. Some of this might be edging into language now.

I've written a lot about how I generally have been able to surround myself with people who liked or could tolerate me even when I present more as my actual self. I have ways of flagging, innoculating, etc so that happens. It happens best in situations where there are lots of people to choose from, so folks who aren't into being around me can select away.

Moving up here was at first not a problem because I selected into a workplace with people who were compatible. When that company went under I landed at one of only a very few places in town I could work in my field. While I thoroughly screened my direct co-worker and he's an excellent fit the rest of the workplace is not. Additionally the professional society is... extremely not, and both hit my PDA pretty hard. Note for later that the professional society is required in order to do forestry in BC.

Meanwhile there are plenty of people who I think are similar to me up here but I haven't figured out how to form community with them. Most of them are women, supported by a spouse, whose free time is during the day. Most of them have lots on the go.

And then the pottery studio started up and there were a couple folks with dayjobs who were also really interested in doing things. I was hopeful. It was and is a chaotic startup. As it falls out, though, the people with power in the situation are people who seem uninterested in actually doing pottery. One of those people at least is someone with whom I'm an anti-communicator, which is to say we completely misunderstand and badly interpret what each says completely every time (for instance, pretty sure when I tried to say I was happy to help get things off the ground she thought I was saying I was burnt out and reassured me by saying I was only supposed to come in a couple times a year, then when I pointed out the misunderstanding she said she went by what people said and not by the fluffy things they meant). The other is frequently on vacation and overwhelmed, though I think she and I are slowly learning to communicate.

And these people, for whom pottery is on par with going to see an occasional theatre event or going on a little vacation, seem like they'd like to populate the studio with other similar people: folks who make five or six things a year, who come and talk about their grandkids, who are a little uncomfortable with glazing but aren't really into learning about it. So when I come in and I want to learn about glazes and am happy to do research into them and put together a collection of synergistic recipes that don't need a huge variety of ingredients and a shopping list, or when I want to try and make sure people's work is finished before their access to the studio ends, or when I practice on the wheel a lot to reach a skill goal (which I still haven't done) they... don't know what to do with that, are suspicious of it, and functionally or systematically reject it.

That level of enthusiasm, of doing things more than on a surface casual level, is of course a deep part of my personality. So now the place I was hoping to connect with folks, to form community, where I could go and spend time and casually socialize without the demand of hosting an event... that wants to spit me out. I get along great with the attendees, it's the people running it that are the problem.

And to add just a little sting, the pottery studio is part of a nonprofit and they charge a membership fee "to make sure it isn't just a group of friends doing it for themselves" but actually serves the community. But. I'm not the community, I guess. I never really am.

So what I'm feeling is a lot of alienation, but not the cheerful kind I felt previously where I recognise that I'm different and accept that there's lots of diversity among people and I just need to sort myself into the right places. Instead it's feeling more personal.

And I think a lot of that is because my support system is kind of slipping away, and also because my PDA is overwhelmed.

But, more about that later. I think I've done well to get this far. It all feels very intense and uncomfortable and I feel somewhat helpless in the face of it. If I thought I could live in the states I'd run away to stay with my pottery mentor for awhile; she's encouraging, she appreciates that quality in me that drives me to learn things, and she's one of the old guard geek bipolypagan folks so I feel culturally at home with her.

I guess it says something that my escapist fantasy used to be running away to do canopy science where no one knew me, back when I was in a big group of people who I got along with, and now it's to run away to someone who knows and accepts me now that's what's lacking.

This is a post about impostor syndrome, neurodiversity, and power.

It's been awhile since I did this kind of magic. Then again, I'm getting very used to channeling this kind of magic.

First was the time in the forest and the river. That wasn't magic. It was just me, being myself in a space with humans. It had been a very long time. I didn't have to watch myself, to do anything right. This doesn't only mean I could wear clothes or not as I chose, but also that I could bathe in the river whenever I wanted, even if there was no one else doing it; I could behave as I needed during ritual without the requirement of conformity; I could talk about sciency forest management and being spiritually wedded to the land in the same breath; and when I couldn't stand up during ritual I could participate as I wanted without anyone breaking the space with undesired concern or assistance or excluding me.

I walked around and people fed me. That's how I feel loved.

I could have an intense discussion about the character and connection to my land with someone else similarly bound, learning through contrast and similarity and most importantly never feeling like an alien in that space though other people were behaving very differently at that time.

I could watch Tucker inhabit his space and we could come and go from each other with love and admiration without being bound by emotional responsibility for each other.

I could see friends I haven't seen in too, too long and remember they are friends.
That was one half.

The second half involved going to Sidhehaven and making objects. The first couple were mundane, warm-ups but shortly thereafter it was muse or magic, take your pick. I had gone to learn from Sherry, who's been a professional potter for over a decade now. I had also gone to make use of her tools -- she has the most amazing collection of pottery tools -- and to be in a dedicated space that wasn't limited to a couple hours every week except maybe it wouldn't happen because someone didn't have a key or something. Don't get me wrong, I like Sherry, but I was able to immerse fully in what I was doing.

I continued to sleep outside, more-or-less; instead of camping there was a little shed with one outlet, no heat, and a metal roof that sang when it rained. Benefits of being outside for me in the pacific northwest are that I don't have to handle folks' scents and that my body likes the arc of temperature variation. It's generally within a range I can handle.

Sherry cooked a couple times, made fresh bread, had figs and apples ripe around the property, and had a fridge full of food I could plunder. She showed me some things, was around to chat a little, kept me clued in to her schedule, but otherwise left me to my own devices in the studio. I could wake up and go make things before breakfast, before anyone was up. I could work late if I wanted. I could nap when I wanted, taking runs of 2-4 hours of intense concentration and channeling and then collapsing with some tea or a fig into a nap.

My plan had been to replace my plates and bowls I'd made when I did much the same thing in 2014, and to learn to throw taller cylinders. Those plates had been each imprinted with a single plant, inscribed with the latin name, and I'd thought I'd do something similar. The first day I did a circuit of the property with a notebook writing down which plants had available material and which ones I also felt an affinity for.
An hour or two later I was pushing clay against the deep crags of douglas fir bark and getting it hopelessly stuck instead of taking imprints. Another hour and I was draping clay over abalone shells. Twelve hours later I was layering cast-aside clay trimmings and texture mats and rollers and draping them over all sorts of objects. Twenty four hours later I was carrying a big rock into the studio to use as a form for bowls. Thirty hours later I was imprinting poetry, letter by letter, in incantations into the objects.

Thing about clay is it imposes pacing on the potter. It's generally used wet, in a paste or dough consistency where it can't necessarily support itself. Then it dries and as it does so it becomes more able to hold a form but also more likely to break getting into it. If it dries too quickly it cracks. If it's not try enough it can't be taken off a form, or even really handled in many ways.

It's only once clay is very, very dry that it can be put into a kiln and fired to a fairly low temperature. This sets it up so it will hold its shape and survive moisture instead of melting but leaves it porous. The porosity is important because then it's generallly glazed: covered in ground glass and minerals that are absorbed into it. Then it goes into the kiln again, much hotter this time, hot enough to not only melt the glaze into a layer of glass over the object but also to vitrify the underlying clay and make it non-porous to some functional (if not statistically certain) level.

I was at Sidehaven from Sunday evening to Wednesday evening. Nothing was perfectly dry when I left, let alone dry, fired, glazed, and refired. Sherry was loading the kiln for the first fire when I left. She was going to do a candle, basically running the kiln as a super low heating pad overnight to dry everything out before doing the first fire.

Clay changes colour when it fires. The physicality of it changes completely. I left heavy, damp objects. Because I was somehow working with porcelain I will return to smaller, bright white, light objects with much less heft. I won't make it back for months but when I do it'll be to apply the colours and textures of glaze to these objects: objects I haven't even handled yet. And if you think clay changes a lot when it's fired you should see glazes! They're usually a dull grey or red thick liquid when they go onto the piece. When fired they completely alchemize into colours: bright or dark, shiny or dull, speckled or swirled or depthlessly clear. Depending on how many layers are put on the piece, how porous it was after the first fire, what temperature it gets to, how quickly it gets to temperature and how long it stays there and how slowly it cools, it can look very different.

I have ideas right now, developed as the objects formed under my hands, but when I go back I won't even remember what they look like. I took pictures, but still. I was carried by my interaction with the clay so completely in the past couple days. I can only hope it comes back when I return. I made a lot of objects: ridiculous serving platters, big plates, small plates, nearly a dozen cups, some large bowls and some larger bowls and a couple sauce dishes. Enough to populate a kitchen with, really. It's hard to leave; it's good to know I can go back.

I write this on the train that connects Sidhehaven to the city, to Vancouver. The train is cheap, civilized, it runs every day, it doesn't get delayed forever like airplanes. I'm grateful, and a repeat feels achievable. Things want to be finished.

That is to say it's been an excellent vacation so far. The highway home is closed and rerouted due to a fire that's been burning on it for days. I'm not heading up for another couple days but I'm hoping the highway is open by then; if not we go around. Then home, to hopefully collapse into a pile of dogs and cats and just absorb for a little while. That or run around the garden to see how it is: my neighbours got a frost on the 20th but mom says my garden is fine.

Note: train was delayed by a police incident and ran a couple hours late. Apparently this is "not normal" and I am just cursed with transportation.

Yesterday I went to visit my coworker who ended up in the off-grid house I was considering last fall. It's beautiful up there, so quiet, and the house is so well designed. I picked blackcurrants. She's worried about fire, of course, but it's been challenging to get the area up to speed when there's so much smoke her solar doesn't work well, and her water is somewhat limited right now. I'm glad I didn't end up there in the end, with the animals it would have been too much for me to take on.

Today, as expected after doing anything, I had three naps already. I woke up from the third one at 1pm and it was dark enough I had to turn on the lights. Lightning and thunder started and then some rain. There was one lightning strike across my road definitely less than a kilometer away. I guess I'll be keeping an eye on that. There were also strikes all up and down between me and town, and just the other side of the highway from me. Nervous times. We got a heavy rain but only a few moments of it, enough to wet my shirt and the dog.

Trying to sort out energy to eat now, and then to carry a bunch of stuff out of the livingroom to storage: I've been sorting it into bins and want to wash the floor before Tucker gets here tomorrow night.

I tried being proactive at my doctor's appointment the other day and it worked really well: I came in with some tests I wanted and she went right along with it and suggested some others. I think there was a miscommunication at the very beginning of this journey, or maybe now we've peeled the PMDD and mood stuff off it and it hasn't got better and is, in fact, getting worse. Now there's the wait for specialists. I'm hopeful for some sort of understanding about what's going on.

So writing is a thing I've always done. I did pottery awhile ago too, but didn't keep it up really. Writing is easily invisible and it's also a form of something most people do: string words together. It's possible to characterize this as "getting it all out" or "journaling" or whatnot depending on the audience even if I do decide to mention it as something I do.

I've never really had interest in listening to podcasts about writing, or reading writing about writing too much -- I do love reading poetry, but that's not the same thing.

Writing has a lot of technical elements that I may not know words for but tend to be able to easily recognise, and if given a word for some technique I'll understand the referent easily.

Some of the autistic bits of my mind contribute ultra strongly to my writing:

Echolalia, where sounds echo in my head

Synesthesia, where sounds manifest as a physical shape/feeling of motion in my body

Pottery, on the other hand, is more esoteric. That is, it's deeply based in chemistry and physics that we don't interact with in our everyday lives, and that I didn't grow up learning about, and that aren't always apparent in the final piece without some knowledge to deconstruct it. So I've of course been tracking down learning to understand it better and for me the best way to do that is audio. So I've been listening to podcasts.

And... pottery isn't pottery. I've avoided the "I am a writer" as an identity world. Pottery podcast people are the "ceramics community" which is it seems a reasonably close community but very university-degree-based. There's definitely a level of homogeneity, and I think of that beginning "hey, we need representation" thing going on, but on a base of liberal arts folks, so that's interesting. It does seem like a super inward-looking community; almost all of the podcasts are professional ceramicists interviewing
other professional ceramicists about their feelings and life path, and that's not what I'm after.

I'm after silica and calcium and temperatures and analysis methods and practicalities and absorption and that kind of thing. I've only been doing actual hands-on once a week in the studio, but with my bathroom ripped out I'm considering putting the wheel in there and making it into a bit of a studio until I can afford to replace the shower.

When I do I'm thinking about putting words on my pottery. Echolalia is good for that: I get good phrases that come to me and I think would fit some of the forms well. And on some bigger pieces (someday I'll be able to make a slurpee-cup-sized tumbler even after drying and kiln shrinkage) I can fit a haiku or more. One of the fun things about that is I get to go through a lot of words, so none need to be perfect (this I also loved about the poem a day thing).

Things like:

every blossom falls
twice: a blizzard of of petals
then sweet ripened fruit

frost crisps the mornings
smoke and blaze in afternoons
unfurling green leaves

aspen and roses
air alive, sweet and complex:
scent-drunk with each breath.
(switch first and last line?)

our world is ending
the sun continues to rise
leaving us behind

cats bathing
open window rain
warm blanket

cupped warm between hands
heady swirl of scent and sweet
every morning's tea

Biggest roses grow,
Lushest leaves, sweetest fruits, all
From soil that drank blood

So much depends on
Sweetest roses growing from
Blood at the kill stand

First scent of warm green
First day to seek cooling shade
First crisp yellow leaf
First fireside blanket with tea

Your familiar voice
Wakes me from the daily round
Even from afar

Wine, bread, honey, you:
Starving-deep I drink and drink
Never paused for breath.

A little rambly since it's written spur of the moment and not edited

Landrace Gardening in Fort St James: the new way, the old way, and the local way

(baby apple picture)

This is a picture of year 1 of my ten-year apple project. Yes, I’m breeding my own apples! Yes, I’m planning something that won’t bear fruit (pun intended) for a decade! How did I get to this point?

When I moved to Fort St James from the coast I couldn’t grow any of my favourite tomatoes. I’d always grown fancy tomatoes and I wasn’t going to let the short, cool summers here stopped me. No one bred interesting, colourful, fancy-tasting tomatoes for the north. Covering my whole garden with greenhouse was far too expensive so I had to get creative. Literally, creative.

Lucky for me I discovered landrace gardening, otherwise known as evolutionary plant breeding or, to our ancestors, just good seed saving and growing technique. Modern landrace gardening is a powerful technology based in creating a pool of genetic diversity, then co-selecting along with your local conditions to create truly customized, locally-adapted species that will grow well in your own garden, under your own preferred cultivation methods.

(squash diversity picture)

The steps are easy:

1. Save your seeds! If a plant is successful enough to set seed in your garden it will probably do well there. If you grow your own saved seed every year, every year your plants will become more adapted to your garden.

2. Celebrate diversity, encourage cross-pollination! Traditionally when we save seeds we get rid of the unusual ones. This time the unusual ones are what we want! The broader your genetic base (the more different varieties you start with) and the more they cross, the more chances your garden creates for you to find a winning combination of taste and hardiness. If you select for cross-pollinating flowers that pollinators seem to love you’re helping yourself out in the future and helping the ecosystem.

3. Encourage selection by the local ecosystem! Yes, many of us baby our transplants, starting our peppers in February. Yes, it’s hard to let plants die. But if you don’t put out frost cloth, as long as not all the plants die, the ones that survive will be better able to survive the cold. If you water a little less and half your plants die, the ones that survive to set seed are more likely to be drought resistant. If you don’t battle the bugs, next year your surviving plants should be just a little more resistant. I’m harvesting tomatoes from my fields without any coverings.

4. Select for characteristics you value! This is your garden, you can grow what you want. I not only like multi-coloured tomatoes, I also don’t like to stake my tomatoes. I let them grow on the ground and only harvest those held up away from the dirt. Over time my plants oblige. I’ve heard of people adapting cold-night 4-lb aromatic cantaloupes and thick, high-eared raccoon resistant corn. Keep seeds only from the best-tasting and the plants will soon suit your palate. Keep seeds from fruits and plants that are beautiful, just because.

5. Share your seeds! Share your seeds with your neighbours so you can both increase your level of diversity and adaptation! Share your seeds because you’re proud of what you’re doing. Share your seeds to help people who can’t access food in these hard times get healthy food for themselves. Share your seeds because plants make lots of seeds and it will help you clear off your shelves!
(baby potato or fava picture)

This is my third year landrace gardening. I have several dry corns for winter, a group of outdoor colourful tomatoes, lovely frost-hardy fava beans, and a beautiful, variable squash that grow from direct-seeding in the Fort.

This year I’m starting projects too: potatoes from actual seeds, working on my idea of a perfect lettuce, and refining a fruit-salad tasting tomatillo. I’m also growing apples. A breeder in California, Steven Edholm, has had success selecting his own apples from carefully chosen parents. In landrace style I’m following his lead: planting 270 diverse seedling apples into a hedgerow this year. Aside from making sure they’re watered and not eaten by voles I’ll leave them for 7-10 years. At that point they’ll start fruiting. It’s likely some of them will survive our winters that long and will taste good. Then I’ll have a northern apple truly suited to me, perhaps as my own retirement present!

(corn diversity picture)

If you’re interested in learning more about landrace gardening we’re starting a garden club in Fort St James (facebook: Fort St James Gardeners will find us) and there’s an international community with free courses and forums at goingtoseed.org. Plus I’m always happy to chat about gardening and share seeds!