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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.
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We've had several days with lightning and thunder in the afternoons, accompanied by high winds and-- by rain! Enough to bump the fire danger down from extreme to high, and in some places in the district even moderate or low. It's not enough to totally skip watering the garden, but it's enough to reduce the urgency. It's also enough to bring down the smoke level in the air, and it's cooled down here to perfect skin temperature.

Now, it was pretty extreme wind, and it's likely more of the lightning strikes will flare up when things dry out and warm up again -- the last round left three spot fires around the highway -- but for now, a reprieve.

Tucker came up for a week. At one point I'd asked the question, if a lot of what had been going on before was burnout, then what? Well, the "then what" is that he was able to engage emotionally and intellectually with what I was asking, to share his stuff and to be vulnerable and to make long-term plans and be realistic about the likelihood of those plans, to listen to me and be empathetic and loving, and to give me space to make my own missteps so I could overreact, catch myself, and apologise instead of it leading to a spiral. These are new skills for us and we need to be careful not to tear the new skills by overworking them but it was so nice. When my counselor said what I wanted from him might be mystery, it didn't land quite right. He is capable of surprising me, and that's fundamental to longevity of this stuff, but I think what I wanted from him was hope. Hope for visits like we just had: not perfect, but generative and close and loving.

Added bonus I can send some pork down to Josh with him.

In farm news the muscovies are coming out of every corner with babies. First a chocolate mama showed up with 9, then a lavender one with 7 the next day, and the black mama who's mysteriously nesting in the pile of feed bags had one. I've consolidated them all with the chocolate mama in the quail house along with the geese and anconas. I'm pretty sure there's a humidity component involved: when things are dry and the nests are dry I don't get so much of a hatch. Then when it rains or if I soak the bedding around the nests (not in the nests) things move better.

Hopefully I got all the babies off the ground quickly enough that they'll do ok. I think there's a disease in my soil that catches them if they're not taken off it in time, and I've lost a lot to it over the years. I'm considering building more enclosed space up off the ground for that reason. Having the aspen chips is really nice in that regard: it's going to be a brutal season to get straw.

In light of the pottery studio dissolving I'm keeping an eye on kilns. They've hired a studio manager and have mentioned that no personal work will be done in the studio -- I haven't talked to the studio manager yet, this had come through the program director. It's such a shame to have a lovely studio, two brand new kilns, all those wheels and equipment, and only use them for classes and not allow anyone who's taken a class to do follow-up work. And maybe they'll get to that point. But I have re-learned the lesson that, for things important to me, people and organizations are not necessarily reliable.

Mostly looking at kilns is a hobby right now: they can be got pretty cheap because they're super heavy and hard to move, but that money is not in the plan right now. Good to keep an eye on what stuff looks like. At this rate I might be able to go down south for pagan stuff and maybe...

...a very soft and purring cat just came and sat across both my arms. I guess that's it for this update.

Respite

Jul. 18th, 2023 08:12 am
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Yesterday was cool with almost no smoke. I was able to open the windows and little breezes played through the house. It was lovely, especially since I was cleaning house for Tucker's arrival. I even washed all the squished mosquitoes off the bedroom and bathroom walls! It's been long enough since I was a housecleaner that I begin to forget how much difference those little things make to the feel of a place: cupboard fronts (which I did not wash), walls, light switch plates, baseboards. It makes a house look newer and lighter.

I'd got these tiny tiny pouches from the grocery store trash run that said "add to 1L of water, let dissolve, and spray" and they were a bathroom cleaner. They worked surprisingly well, and even more surprisingly the scent didn't bother me. I guess the format is meant to reduce the number of spray bottles and weight of water that gets shipped around. I have a couple more to drop into cleaning buckets of hot water (not how it's meant to be used, I know) for big wall-cleaning days. I continue to be grateful for my vacmop.

Today the smoke is creeping back. I'm in the office to figure out what's going on with this summer: my fieldwork is a no-go, since more than half the road-accessible area of the district is under evac alerts or orders for fires and at least a couple of the blocks I was going to sample are probably on fire. Between the smoke and the alerts fieldwork is probably counterindicated.

This morning I put on my "neurodiversity is beautiful" shirt and wore it to work. Previously I've worn autism-coded symbols but not anything with the word. I figure I may be dizzy, tired, and disoriented but that's the best time to pull off representation - when I'm too occupied by living to overthink it.

Wish me luck on scooping some good work out of the pile today. Contracts all summer will destroy me. I can't even put correct names on itineraries lately.
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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.
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but this is apocalypse itself:
the air the colour of creamsicles
thick as porridge
obscuring the mountains
and even nearby cars.

this is apocalypse itself:
ash sifting down
whitening my truck in the mornings
and snowing on my hair
as I water my garden.

this is apocalypse itself:
eyes stinging over the dubious
air sucking through my mask
and the hammer of annihilated trees
hitting my lungs with every door opened.

this is apocalypse itself
as it is in story
as it is in song
as it is in paintings:
sun orange through an orange sky at noon
fire everywhere
and only dust underfoot.

***

Thoughts on looking at an evacuation alert near my home

So many years we didn't even realize we weren't winning
Secure in our delusion as a dominant species.
We thought we could control the trees because we could cut them down
Thought we could control the water because we could put up dams
Thought we had dominion over animals because we could kill them.
On our maps everything was known, and was ours.

We make new maps now.
Where once we had roads, boundaries, ownership by this or that person
Now we have lands we have surrendered.
Orange and red crawl across the roads, across forests, obscuring them
From our ways of controlling. They seize back control
With each lick of flame, each curl of smoke, pushing and pushing
Until our maps give way.

There be monsters, the maps say,
As they did before, this land is no man's. Fire, drought, flood:
Now who controls the trees by killing? Who holds back the water from falling? Who devours the animals?
We surrender to the supremacy of the monsters
As we once did
So we do again
And again
And again
With our new maps washed in red.
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They say it will pass so quickly
And somehow it does
There you are,
Forty, with each summer hotter than any in memory
So quickly you didn't notice
You still feel like sixteen inside
A little bewildered
And still believing in rain.
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I'm never quite sure how much "normal" people keep tabs on the world around them. As a land manager there's a lot of input I'm used to about the landscape. So the other night I had open:

https://firesmoke.ca/

https://wildfiresituation.nrs.gov.bc.ca/map

https://www.lightningmaps.org/

windy.com

zoom.earth (less helpful with smoke)

Government weather page

Pages for each of a couple nearby fires as per the wildfire situation map

google maps
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Welp.

The last couple evenings we've had the winds blow up, super gusty with occasional 60-90km/h, and a lot of lightning. I think there have been something like 40 new fire starts in the district in the last 48 hours that are known, and our district is really large so several won't be known for awhile: there is enough ambient smoke that new smoke plumes won't be seen easily. The district to the east of us had probably another 30 or so starts in that timeframe, and the majority of the towns within 100km of me each have "their fire".

https://wildfiresituation.nrs.gov.bc.ca/map if you're curious, I'm in the Prince George fire center southwest-ish corner, but remember that the size of the icons doesn't change so the fact that they cover the whole province when you're zoomed way out doesn't mean we're all on fire. The gut-read on that map is much more accurate to the on-ground situation if you zoom way in.

Anyhow, the air at work is suddenly electric. I've felt this before here during big fire seasons. Because fires are a huge personnel draw but only sometimes, the provincial government has a program set up where people from within it can go help with fires, everything from warehouse and logistics to actual ground crew, when they're needed. The firefolks borrow our trucks (lots of them are from mexico, australia, etc) and priorities get revamped even more on the fly than normal. The office mostly empties out and is left with a skeleton crew of people rotating through their off-deployment times and juggling a situation that changes minute-to-minute.

My sampling program is supposed to go in order down a random list of 100 locations throughout the district. When the summer students come back from running trucks down to the fire center, I'll have them comparing the map of 100 potential locations to the map of fires: I'd been planning to do the first 8 on the list but I'll be lucky to find 8 that aren't either on fire or with access blocked by fire by this point.

If an evacuation alert (which is basically: you may be evacuated at any moment) comes down, we'll have to stay within the alert area since once it's transformed to an actual evacuation there's no re-entry. And obviously I can't take all my animals into the field with me, so I wouldn't be able to re-enter to get them.

Exciting times, and my summer has definitely gone from the next month of scheduled work to very on-the-fly. I think I like this better, once I settle into it? But here we are.

Tonight is supposed to be another big wind-and-lightning evening, and then I think we get a break for a couple days.

Likely two more months before any fires will fully extinguish.

Jury is currently out on whether this is better than somewhere with hurricanes or tornadoes? But all my walks outside with the dogs, sitting in the back field in my baby orchard, watching my tomatoes and corn grow: I still love it here. I'd still rather be here than anywhere else.

Which is lucky, because I think my planned visits down south this summer are coming off the books pretty quickly, to be replaced (hopefully not) with an unplanned evac in a truck full of animals.
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Well, I'm super exhausted and can't breathe, which makes sense because recovery from the last week) plus my downstairs is completely covered in concrete dust including all my clothing that had been freshly washed and laid out on the bed and in the closet. And I'm back at work doing a leadership program that is extremely anti-autistic.

But: goodness are there a lot of animals around this year. A bear on the neighbour's lawn, two separate elk sightings, a deer making her way through my neighbour's garden while I was watering mine, five bears on the forestry road in one day, swallows that took the place of the bats eating my mosquitoes, looks like maybe a high in the rabbit cycle, etc,

First wild rose opened June 2nd, spruce buds are opening very quickly, arnica cordifolia and viola canadensis are all over and open, tons of them. Dandelions are going to seed.
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Dents are coming up: open oak party, early riser, and oaxacan green. They're coming up more unevenly, I'm not sure if it's a quality of the seed (viability or genetics!) or because they're in heavier, clumpier soil which is both harder to get the furrows even and introduces more variability in each individual plant's journey to break the surface. I went to look because I got spooked by the crows making food-calls in that field but so far it seems to be ok.

I do love the corn names.

Soon the flours should be up. We have a good slow rain today. Tomatoes are starting to root in.

In a couple hours I go pick up Tucker for solstice.
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It may be ok.

Outside is calling me really hard right now. There's a perfect wind, the lake right outside my office window is full of little wavelets, the sky is true sky blue with just enough fluffy white clouds to add interest, every leaf is just out with that new-leaf bright green and no silvering from pest damage or yellowing from drought yet. Half the dandelions are in seed and half are still invitingly yellow, just asking to be made into fritters.

I need to sleep out there, I think. You'd think 7 acres would be a lot but my forested parts are right up against the highway and everything else is visible to a neighbour. I'm working on planting myself barriers but I need to clear, then plant, then everything needs to grow.

Last weekend, to celebrate new ducklings and to celebrate having someone to share food with, I brought out a duck. Normally that's 5 days of food: a seared breast two days in a row, then legs and picked-off bits and gorgeous crackling skin two days in a row, then soup one day. Because I shared it's 4 days: I get to go home to duck cracklins and stinging nettles creamed in duck fat, then figure out which direction I want to take the soup tomorrow (pho flavourings, maybe? With starch noodles?). It makes such a difference to me having someone appreciative to share with, not an anonymous person to sell to but just a place where bounty can flow over and be enjoyed.

It's turning into summer. The seeds are in the ground. We need rain, and I should run irrigation. Things will grow without me for a bit. The time for heavy work turns into the time to relax, observe, and enjoy; the time for giving labour to the soil turns into the time to receive my body back bite by bite.

I've been wearing my ring, scythe and wheat, ebb and flow. It's been so hard to ride everything that's been happening with any sort of grace. Today I remember that the wheel will turn anyhow, it will turn and turn and turn and there will always be change. When I lose my grace, when I get thrown off and need to climb back on, there's always another turn ahead to handle more smoothly. Acceptance is not an end state; it's a practice.

Good

Jun. 11th, 2022 12:10 am
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Good talks with Avi. He's pencilled in end of July/beginning of August. I suspect there may be a Tucker return after that. I love these people a lot, you know?

If I did calligraphy I'd send an invitation registered mail to Nicholas.

My foot is healing up quickly; I'm giving it lots of breaks and time up in between gardening. There's still some swelling, I'm hoping it gets circulated away rather than needing to abcess. The pain is way down, anyhow, even as much as two hours after being on it.

Corn is almost almost all in. Just some flour corns left to go. Most of the enormous amount of painted mountain is in finally so just the various magic mannas (cream, starburst, and mixed), papas blue, oregon blue, and montana morado to go. Well, and Morden. And a succession of gaspe. But still. The ground is pretty dry, they keep calling for rain and we keep not getting it. That plus my heel make tilling a little harder and that plus the fascinating composition of the soils in those fields means that the plantings are a little ad hoc, but that's ok. The flints are at least segregated in the wood field, the dents are surrounded by painted mountain in the middle, and the flours will go at the end of the far field. I'm putting in blocks of beans etc as spacers in some cases. I'm mixing in a bunch of greens and herbs, both scattered and in rows. I don't know that the greens will have longstanding great quality given they're competing for moisture with the corn and they're on a south slope, but at worst I'll harvest a little and they'll go to seed, giving me weeds that are not wild mustard. There is a little bit of lamb's quarters growing, which I should try to leave to go to seed, but it's a very clean field since it was under grass for so long. Wild mustard and a little cress are pretty much the only weeds right now.

Okay. Facilitating the landrace gardening group meet'n'greet tomorrow morning. I'd better get some sleep. Just, I need to not forget to seek out and spend time with my people. It's good for me.
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One month till solstice. The cool overcast with daily twenty minutes of hail and cool wet breezes drifting into slight warmth of sunshine has given way to the big sun. The big sun lives everywhere, all the time, and except in stone-walled basements lined with blackout cloth it is inescapable. Up in the morning, out into the garden at seven, and the big sun is high already and working to warm the day into real heat. I come in by ten-thirty with a sunburn on my cheeks despite long sleeves and hat and sunglasses. Up late the sun is wildly energetic; at dinnertime Tucker calls from the dark of Virginia and says, "the sun's still up there, isn't it?" and indeed it is, it's only starting to consider leaving its flamboyant afternoon party to even glance at the horizon. At ten it is dark, mostly, with lingering blue along the horizon, but that won't last long. There have been summers I've not seen dark for months. Staying up on solstice the sun does go below the horizon but the horizon nver surrenders its light; deep twilight is as far as it gets.

One month till solstice and my favas, soaked, are in the ground late. One tiller on the way from the factory and the other in the shop, both unexpected delays, and my favas were soaked so there was no putting them back for next year. I took the mattock and fork to the upper field and put them in, roughly 12 x 14, packed much tighter than I was expecting because I was trying to minimize the labour. No barley went in the mix, though I will definitely put in alyssum and calendula or borage up there. This was half what I grew last year, the mix of Lofthouse and Russian Black, and half new genes: Ianto's return, Aprovecho select, sweet Loraine, sunshine coast, Montana Rainbow, Frog Island, Can Dou, perhaps some others I'm not bringing to mind. My saved seeds germinated well. The soil was unexpectedly sandy up there, probably from the old riding ring, with random rocks of all sizes. We will see how they do.

One month till solstice and I have a weekend to myself, staying up till midnight making meatloaf and then out at seven to plant seeds and back in before noon. Now I'm sorting my corns in preparation for planting, like any autistic person with their collection, and thinking about both how happy that makes me and how much I really do hide these behaviours. The distinction between things no one else talks about because no one else does them, and things no one else talks about because we all do them but they're private, that's the space where neurodivergence hides.

One month till solstice and I am hiding from the sun in my also-sunny livingroom like a bowlfull of light and writing until the still aggressively sunny evening.
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Harvested the first of the grain.

Hordeum nigrinudum barley from PR seeds was ripest and I couldn't dent it at all and which the voles left alone, but all 5 were well into the hard dough stage: faust from Ellen, previously via Salt Spring Seeds and which voles liked; Excelsior from Salt Spring Seeds and which the voles absolutely devastated and which also tasted pretty good during the ripeness test; Arabian Blue also from salt spring seeds; and purple dolma barley from the experimental farm network and which the voles really left alone.

Prelude wheat from PR seeds was undentable hard and nice and tall, the heads were beginning to bend. Ethiopian Blue Tinge wheat from salt spring was surprise ripe, at least it was in the very firm dough stage and difficult to dent. It grew closer to knee high, like barley, while the other wheats grew more like shoulder high.

I also harvested most of the bouchard soup peas since the pods were yellow and various levels of deeply wilted and dry/papery. They were in the ground exactly 3 months.

Ceres might be ready soon.

I'm pretty sure there's ergot growing on my triticale! That's... something to think about.

They're in my house drying, all of them, some in brown paper bags and the three bigger harvests (purple dolma and the wheats) in cardboard boxes.

I went out originally because someone on the forums was asking something about uniformity or what they looked like and I wanted to take pictures for her. Then I realized the voles were making serious inroads on my barley and the wheat was ripe, so... I cut it and brought it in.

Do you know those moments when you fit so well and so perfectly into the world that nothing else can possibly have space to feel bad? That feeling of bliss where there is nowhere to go but down, but it doesn't matter because it's just so good in that moment? The feeling of completion where there's no seam between you and the entirety of what is supposed to be? The times when you are given more than you could ever need until it lifts you, like water lifts you, stealing all the weight of everyday? The world-stopping moments when you know you are fully loved, right down to your core and without room even for the shadow of a doubt?

These couple hours of tasting and taking pictures and cutting stalks with my hand-shears and disentangling stalks of different kinds of grain: this is what I was made for. I am so lucky to get to do it.

Edited to add: I somehow forgot to mention just how beautiful these grains are. Hordeum nigrinudum is a two-row awned barley: it looks like a children's drawing of grain but in a dark midnight purple, two short rows of grains in a neat plane on either side of the stalk. Excelsior and purple dolma have marbled green/beige and purple leaves and husks; purple dolma has rather disorganized looking seed-heads like a quick linework sketch while excelsior has rows that wrap around the head and husks that part slightly to reveal very uniform glimpses of shining dark purple-almost-magenta-but-too-dark kernels against the matte husk. They're beautiful. There's nothing better.
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Seems like it's easier to write daily during the week, and when I'm at work. Makes sense. I'm lucky to have that spaciousness at work. It does mean I'm not going to the field, but my excuse is that a little fire showed up on the wildfire map across the road I was going to take into the bush today. We've had some rain, but fires have been moving very quickly and being out of contact along or past a road with a fire on it makes me twitchy. If it did blow up there'd be no way to let me know.

We have a safety system when we're in the field but it's missing the crucial component of being able to be contacted while I'm out there-- I can always call out but there's no agreement on, for instance, always running on a certain radio channel so they can get me.

The province lost another little community last night. It lost Lytton awhile back now, a train wheel against the track sparked a fire fight near the town, and it seems like within half an hour after the spark the town was gone. That was the day after Lytton had hit the "hottest spot in Canada ever" record two days in a row. Last night was Monte Creek, a little outlier town west of Kamloops. A big fire had been building in the mountain for days but a big wind drove it downhill, across the highway, and through the town.

A lot of the province is on fire.

Meanwhile I see damp grey clouds and patches of blue sky outside and it sprinkled rain twice yesterday. The apples are swelling and swelling; I keep the duck pools under them so they get several dozen gallons of water each per day, plus some fertilizer.

Tomatoes are starting to roll in.

The tomato trial has basically two parts: one is to gather information, and the other is to choose and collect seed from the ones that will continue on into next year.

Gathering information about plants and earliness is lovely. I walk along the rows, I count clusters of green tomatoes, I observe the plant growth form, I poke around looking for buried ripe fruit.

Continuation is more complicated. I'm still saving seed from everything that ripens, but. The panamorous row is a truly random collection of mixed wild and domestic genetics and it is producing a lot. What it produces is... fascinating. There are a couple cherry sized tomatoes, lots of saladette-ish size, and I just got my first beefsteak of the whole garden from that row (though Maya & Sion is coming right along behind, and maybe Taiga too).

Before I put seeds in to ferment, especially from the panamorous row, I taste the fruit. The panamorous tomatoes get sorted into A (tastes quite good), B (insipid, mealy, or has a weird acrid aftertaste that I associate with certain wild genes), and I have a tiny pile of Wow! Unfortunately the best panamorous tomato so far was densely fleshy with only 2 seeds. That might indicate an obligate outcrosser -- some of these have genes which prevent them from self-pollinating, so it's possible that ones with fewer seeds are obligate outcrossers which didn't get well-pollinated because our weird weather is hard on bees this year. It's possible that something else is going on. There certainly seem to be more seeds in the less tasty ones, sadly.

I'm keeping the B pile because any of these plants may themselves be hybrids so the offspring will be different than the parent, and/or they may have crossed with the garden tomatoes I planted in a ring around them. Any single one of those seeds may hold something amazing. And by increasing my seed supply in this way, and to this extent -- I'll have tens of thousands of seeds by the end of the year at minimum -- I can start hard selection for direct seeding and eventually self-seeding into an animal disturbance soil seedbank.

Basically-- I can plant lots and lots of seed and not too many plants will survive. The ones that survive will be the ones I want, and once I have enough survivors in that situation I can start tasting the first fruit of each and pull out the unpleasant ones so they don't contribute. Eventually, after a couple or a dozen years, I should have enough early tomatoes that I can pick some and others can drop to the ground and self-seed that way. As long as I keep removing the unpleasant ones there will be seed accumulated in the soil that will express itself over several years and the fruit should get tastier and tastier.

It's a multi-year project! There are a series of goals -- first, plants that ripen from transplants. Then, plants that ripen from seed. Then, plants that taste good. Then, plants that can seed themselves.

In the end the idea is to seedbank like this for many species. Bare land sprouts plants, it just does. If I can shift the seeds in the soil, it will mostly sprout plants that I want. Everything will sprout earlier than if I'd planted it after the soil warmed. There should be selection only for what doesn't sprout early enough that the cold kills it; I don't need to do anything for that to happen. This should allow me to get a really good early crop to work return out of the garden.

Gardening in this environment requires some knowledge; I need to have a good visual grasp of what all my desired plants look like when young. Then if I want an area to be only tomatoes, or only brassicae, I'll leave those sprouts there and weed everything else out. For warm crops, weeding everything else out might look like harvesting well-developed chard or lettuce or broccoli raab or lamb's quarters that started much earlier, leaving a patch somewhere to go to seed and replenish the soil seedbank.

Precisely what seed replenishing rotation looks like depends on how long a sufficiency of seed remains viable in the soil. We've mostly bred multi-year dormancy out of domestic crops without even trying; our seed is basically always saved from what we planted this year so it's a strong selection for most of the history of domestication. But. I bet you that with the quantities of seed that can be pumped into the soil when I let several lettuce plants go to seed (hundreds of thousands at least) or even tomatoes and tens of thousands, that it'll come along on its own.

So, yeah. I'm basically tasting a widening trickle of tomatoes and making decisions and occasionally wrinkling my nose or grinning. I'm walking a path that leads far into the future and may never arrive there. I'm using my sense of discernment and consequence. And I'm having a lot of fun.
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On the one hand, the conventional pagan calendar was formed in a very different place and agricultural system.

On the other hand, I picked roughly a gallon of sakatoons, 2L of raspberries, a jar of pickling cucumbers, and a bunch of other stuff on the weekend.

I'll probably be picking that many raspberries every 2 days or so for a bit.

Every day I miss eating a cucumber I need to make up for it the next day by eating two. The pickling cukes are poised for a bit of an avalanche.

The tomatoes are trickling in slowly, lots of orange ones from the polyamorous row comparatively. My seed collection is swelling.

Apples are swelling. Everything is building and building, the trickle before the flood of harvest.

For my garden it's a good year.

Things are rough in other directions right now. Engaging with relationships as they are, not as I want them to be: that's taking a lot of constant presence and effort. When my expectations get too tangled up in something I often can stop appreciating what it actually is, and I also generally stop looking for what I need in places I can actually find it. Maybe PDA makes me extra aware that carrying the weight of other people's expectations is a heavy burden. It's not one I prefer to inflict on those I love without consent.

But every day I come back to the garden and for awhile things are alright.
greenstorm: (Default)
On the one hand, the conventional pagan calendar was formed in a very different place and agricultural system.

On the other hand, I picked roughly a gallon of sakatoons, 2L of raspberries, a jar of pickling cucumbers, and a bunch of other stuff on the weekend.

I'll probably be picking that many raspberries every 2 days or so for a bit.

Every day I miss eating a cucumber I need to make up for it the next day by eating two. The pickling cukes are poised for a bit of an avalanche.

The tomatoes are trickling in slowly, lots of orange ones from the polyamorous row comparatively. My seed collection is swelling.

Apples are swelling. Everything is building and building, the trickle before the flood of harvest.

For my garden it's a good year.

Things are rough in other directions right now. Engaging with relationships as they are, not as I want them to be: that's taking a lot of constant presence and effort. When my expectations get too tangled up in something I often can stop appreciating what it actually is, and I also generally stop looking for what I need in places I can actually find it. Maybe PDA makes me extra aware that carrying the weight of other people's expectations is a heavy burden. It's not one I prefer to inflict on those I love without consent.

But every day I come back to the garden and for awhile things are alright.
greenstorm: (Default)
Yesterday was another appointment with the trauma therapist provided through work. The previous time I'd spoken with her it was pretty useful but this time was, if I'm honest, a bit of a shit-show.

I used the term partner. She talked about my "husband".

She lectured extensively about how women "like us" think about many eventualities at once, whereas men like my husband usually only take one thing into consideration when they're making a decision. Oh, and men are always more worried about financial things.

It honestly was too much energy to deal with it all so I agreed along but it was not comfortable even a little.

By the time she was shocked and worried that if I was thinking about buying property with someone I might want to discuss the exit plan before we signed anything it barely even registered.

The gist of what she's saying is, concentrate on actionable things and take actions, and basically don't think about things where actions can't be taken. Additionally maybe be creative about what actions can be taken because there's usually something.

We also got our "post-covid" flex info from work, we've known for awhile they'd be calling us back to the office Sept 7th but that something was in the works for some kind of remote flexibility.

Turns out their plan is-- I get it, but I don't think it's super well thought out. Basically there's room to work remotely 1-2 days per week for normal folks, then for folks who want to work 3-5 days remote there's a more rigorous process with approval from higher-ups (not that we have any higher ups right now, different story) and you are likely to lose your permanent office/desk.

On the surface that makes sense, right? Not using the desk much, might as well not pay for the space to keep it, and as I've noticed this year it's not really feasible to ride the middle line of a couple days from work and a couple days from home per week without paying for a second set of equipment out of pocket. But it super disincentivizes folks from coming in for a day a week to keep in touch with the rest of the folks in the office and I'm a little concerned about that. Forestry is 10000000% politics and relationships and maybe 2% science.

On the other hand it's probably not as bad for me: my town is in the bust part of the boom-bust cycle so our office is empty on the best of days. I don't think anyone's going to remove my name from my cubicle. And I suppose that in the summer folks are taking a lot of vacation (lifers can have 8 weeks or so of vacation, or sometimes more) and also a bunch of us are in the field pretty often. For relationship-building it might make sense to try to go to the field once a year with almost everyone rather than keep abreast of them in the office. But still.

Speaking of in-person, the parade of summer students is occurring. I took one out two weeks ago (I think?), another one last week, the same one this week, and each in succession next week. I think the following week or two I also will take out the third summer student. The first two haven't been in the bush before and-- I'm glad I checked before we left the office because the second one didn't have any water with him. He also didn't bring the water to the block, so we walked a kilometer and a half back for lunch and to the block again, but I think he's getting sorted out. They are both enthusiastic, polite, and friendly kids.

My ex-previous-job friends were talking about how much energy summer students bring into the office, especially back in the days when there would be 40 of them (I think our whole office is 30 people nowadays, and in the office they were speaking of there were 12 by the end?). I think it's true. Supervising or managing folks who have never had a professional job before, or who have never been to the bush, is sure different than handling someone who has some idea of what they're doing.

These daily writings were supposed to be exploring my emotional landscape but they're coming out pretty much like news bulletins. Well, like news from before the shock and disaster era of news. I guess I haven't felt spacious and energetic enough to really dive back into there. I've been working my way through a pretty great video (youtube https://youtu.be/diE7f6CKj6c ) by Sarah HendrickX called Hiding in plain sight: shining light on women with autism profiles. It's... there's a lot to unpack in it, and I'll no doubt write more about it in the future. It's an odd feeling to be seen in some ways so clearly, but to still have to accept such ill-fitting labels as "woman" to get that info. It's like cutting my arm off to escape a trap, but at the same time once I'm out of the trap I can't drive home without the arm. It's damage.

There are good things in the world too. I got my shipment of Ugandan vanilla beans, which smell truly amazing even compared to other vanilla beans. The tomato trial with seven or eight ripe varieties so far feels like a completion and proper fit of self into the world, more than I can describe it makes me happy. Being happy in that way I wish I had someone to talk about it with, but here we are. It's been cold and raining, below 10C at night and below 20C during the day, so my trial is going to be fairly representative of my conditions and I'm less likely to need to evacuate for a wildfire. The green cherry tomato I got from the grocery store, that I saved seed from, has ripened some fruits so it's early, and they taste amazing even though they're the first fruits off the plant. I am impressed.

I'm just putting off going out into the cold in fuzzy socks to do chores, though, so I'll go get the pigs their bounty of spoiled dairy and their grain and watch the baby geese and maybe harvest some more cucumbers for sunomono. It's definitely sunomono season.

It's good, out there, but it's not enough time to grow back after everything else.
greenstorm: (Default)
Yesterday was another appointment with the trauma therapist provided through work. The previous time I'd spoken with her it was pretty useful but this time was, if I'm honest, a bit of a shit-show.

I used the term partner. She talked about my "husband".

She lectured extensively about how women "like us" think about many eventualities at once, whereas men like my husband usually only take one thing into consideration when they're making a decision. Oh, and men are always more worried about financial things.

It honestly was too much energy to deal with it all so I agreed along but it was not comfortable even a little.

By the time she was shocked and worried that if I was thinking about buying property with someone I might want to discuss the exit plan before we signed anything it barely even registered.

The gist of what she's saying is, concentrate on actionable things and take actions, and basically don't think about things where actions can't be taken. Additionally maybe be creative about what actions can be taken because there's usually something.

We also got our "post-covid" flex info from work, we've known for awhile they'd be calling us back to the office Sept 7th but that something was in the works for some kind of remote flexibility.

Turns out their plan is-- I get it, but I don't think it's super well thought out. Basically there's room to work remotely 1-2 days per week for normal folks, then for folks who want to work 3-5 days remote there's a more rigorous process with approval from higher-ups (not that we have any higher ups right now, different story) and you are likely to lose your permanent office/desk.

On the surface that makes sense, right? Not using the desk much, might as well not pay for the space to keep it, and as I've noticed this year it's not really feasible to ride the middle line of a couple days from work and a couple days from home per week without paying for a second set of equipment out of pocket. But it super disincentivizes folks from coming in for a day a week to keep in touch with the rest of the folks in the office and I'm a little concerned about that. Forestry is 10000000% politics and relationships and maybe 2% science.

On the other hand it's probably not as bad for me: my town is in the bust part of the boom-bust cycle so our office is empty on the best of days. I don't think anyone's going to remove my name from my cubicle. And I suppose that in the summer folks are taking a lot of vacation (lifers can have 8 weeks or so of vacation, or sometimes more) and also a bunch of us are in the field pretty often. For relationship-building it might make sense to try to go to the field once a year with almost everyone rather than keep abreast of them in the office. But still.

Speaking of in-person, the parade of summer students is occurring. I took one out two weeks ago (I think?), another one last week, the same one this week, and each in succession next week. I think the following week or two I also will take out the third summer student. The first two haven't been in the bush before and-- I'm glad I checked before we left the office because the second one didn't have any water with him. He also didn't bring the water to the block, so we walked a kilometer and a half back for lunch and to the block again, but I think he's getting sorted out. They are both enthusiastic, polite, and friendly kids.

My ex-previous-job friends were talking about how much energy summer students bring into the office, especially back in the days when there would be 40 of them (I think our whole office is 30 people nowadays, and in the office they were speaking of there were 12 by the end?). I think it's true. Supervising or managing folks who have never had a professional job before, or who have never been to the bush, is sure different than handling someone who has some idea of what they're doing.

These daily writings were supposed to be exploring my emotional landscape but they're coming out pretty much like news bulletins. Well, like news from before the shock and disaster era of news. I guess I haven't felt spacious and energetic enough to really dive back into there. I've been working my way through a pretty great video (youtube https://youtu.be/diE7f6CKj6c ) by Sarah HendrickX called Hiding in plain sight: shining light on women with autism profiles. It's... there's a lot to unpack in it, and I'll no doubt write more about it in the future. It's an odd feeling to be seen in some ways so clearly, but to still have to accept such ill-fitting labels as "woman" to get that info. It's like cutting my arm off to escape a trap, but at the same time once I'm out of the trap I can't drive home without the arm. It's damage.

There are good things in the world too. I got my shipment of Ugandan vanilla beans, which smell truly amazing even compared to other vanilla beans. The tomato trial with seven or eight ripe varieties so far feels like a completion and proper fit of self into the world, more than I can describe it makes me happy. Being happy in that way I wish I had someone to talk about it with, but here we are. It's been cold and raining, below 10C at night and below 20C during the day, so my trial is going to be fairly representative of my conditions and I'm less likely to need to evacuate for a wildfire. The green cherry tomato I got from the grocery store, that I saved seed from, has ripened some fruits so it's early, and they taste amazing even though they're the first fruits off the plant. I am impressed.

I'm just putting off going out into the cold in fuzzy socks to do chores, though, so I'll go get the pigs their bounty of spoiled dairy and their grain and watch the baby geese and maybe harvest some more cucumbers for sunomono. It's definitely sunomono season.

It's good, out there, but it's not enough time to grow back after everything else.

Machine

Jul. 3rd, 2021 08:27 am
greenstorm: (Default)
Yesterday was the first field day I've led in awhile at work. I had one of the summer students with me.It got some stuff done but wasn't super productive; we're learning to estimate lengths and diameters from 7.5cm to 50m or so in various configurations which requires lots of guessing then measuring. It's easy enough to just to measure first, but then your eye doesn't get calibrated and you don't get to the much faster accurate estimation stage. I've also never really been a production-speed bush worker, and the summer student is new to the bush.

That is to say, this was not enormously more productive or meaningful than any other day at work. The summer student is a standard gifted young woman who'd eager to please and fast to learn, so pleasant to work with but not a particular connection.

And still at the end of it I felt so happy, and embedded in the world, and so much myself. I think I always doubt this when I'm not on the edge of it because I can't explain it well. Heavy physical work while inside doesn't have the same effect for the most part. Just being outside all day sitting in a chair probably also doesn't, though who can sit for that long outside? But the thing that I need to make me happy is to do physical work outside for several hours on most days.

It doesn't really have to do with the rest of my circumstances much at all.

Noteworthy event of the day: saw a juvenile sandhill crane by the side of the road driving out to the bush. It looked like a young ostrich that happened to be the colour of a fawn, very gangly and non-flighted as it ran along the ditch and scrambled up an embankment. So weird.

The southern interior is basically on fire right now after the heat wave and the ensuing lightning storms. There was at least a brief period where all highways that lead up here were blocked off, though one could still go through Alberta or take a ferry up the coast and drive at the cost of an additional day or two. This is the first time I remember a community being wiped off the map by fire: sounds like a train cast a spark from its wheels and about half an hour later Lytton was gone. Normally our firefighters are pretty amazing about protecting structures but there was barely time for most people to get out... and some did not.

Things are cooling down now so hopefully some of the fires get under control but they are running fast and far right now. Part of working in forestry is basic wildland firefighting training because we're all well-suited to be co-opted into firefighting efforts; there's a government requirement that we're trained and keep basic equipment in our vehicles in case we see and can put out anything while it's small in our extensive travels.

It's good to feel even-keeled again. I have a lot of field time this summer so hopefully I can keep this feeling on tap.

Today will be deboning entire pork shoulders (google the shape of a pig's shoulder blade for a feeling of sympathy), gardening, picking up feed, and doing some duckling things. I should also plan out my cures for the prosciuttos. Sichuan peppercorn? Star anise? It'll take thinking about. I'm also considering jerky-ing some in the liquid from jalapeno carrot pickles, which sounds pretty great, doesn't it?

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