Erin's land journal

Every day there's more sunshine.

We had a fresh blanket of snow two nights ago and through into yesterday early afternoon. I popped out on work breaks to snowblow, working from home, and it was the kind of fine dusty-sand snow that blows all around and is easy to snowblow but hard to walk through.

Today it's very sunny, -20C. That sounds cold but with the sun at least making it above not just the horizon but the trees there's so much directional radiant heat and everything is bathed in light. The air is cold enough that it's full of glitter, sparkling like a christmas card or fantasy movie set.

I have a friend at a similar latitude in maybe Sweden whose geese are starting to posture. I should split off a couple groups for breeding before they pair off inappropriately.

I started seeds for the garden club meeting in two weeks, we'll be splitting the tightly-packed seedlings at the first leaf stage and everyone will be potting up some micro tomatoes and small pot-friendly peppers. It's much too early to plant indoor starts for planting outdoors at the end of May, so this is a way to get our hands in the dirt and play with seeds and build some community without having overgrown seedlings later on. Plus it introduces people to micro tomatoes and I do have a ton of micro seeds. The club is providing soil and pots (I am also bringing some pots scavenged from the grocery store program's poinsettas). This makes me happy.

My apple seeds will arrive soon and I will soak and stratify them. I have no money right now but am hoping to order a couple more haskaps and some oaks for this year. Maybe I'll sell some pottery to do it?

Speaking of selling pottery, I have the kiln lined up to buy from my mentor in spring, but money is a definite issue. I'm considering doing a "help set up my ceramics studio" kickstarter/indiegogo/maybe patreon sales type thing, though it makes me nervous. I do love the idea of crafting items for people based on a couple data points though (big or small, handle or no handle, texture or no texture, colour family, choose a word if you like).

drive through the night:
the feeling of morning;
vision before colour

I got up at 4 in the morning so I could give the stove a bit of a burn on fresh wood before turning it down. The road was dark but not snowy, frosty but not wet. Newly-painted centerlines stood out under my single aging headlight and my high beams had a long reach. Sometimes I had company on the highway, usually in clumps going to the mill, to the pipeline camps, to a town. Often I was alone and that was better.

The Highway of Tears is becoming familiar. The cell signal is much better courtesy of a political push; this is how we deal with missing indigenous women (though to be fair the men die at a pretty high rate too): we put money into a program, in this case into some company's pockets. They put a bus in down here too, though it's not tremendously useful. Meanwhile the folks north of me, in Middle River and Takla, apparently call the ambulence when they are in dire need of a ride to town.

There was a lot of dark this morning. When I woke up, when I pulled out of the driveway with my grow lights shining through the window behind me, the sky was the clear bowl full of stars that dominates our winter landscape. The moon was a sliver superimposed on a sphere, low near the trees, and it took a very long time for the sky to grow pale grey behind me as I headed west.

There's no snow on the fields. The word I associate with this open, windblown, waiting-for-winter feeling is sere, colourless-dun and patient. When the light came up I was in the Bulkley Valley as it opens up, as the mountains rise to shape a valley, as the trees retreat to the hills and leave even the patchwork of the previous valley. With the mountains it feels wilder; with the fields it feels cozier and more settled. I like it here.

When I stopped for gas I could tell it was light because the truck, still for the first time in three hours, started crowing. The ducks were upset, chattering away, and that's always hard on my heart.

Three days of especially hard labour, of angling the vibrating pressure washer to kick up a minimum of bird-shit-spray, stray, and feathers into my eyes and sinuses as the light fled; of rounding up the ducks and pulling out the keepers over and over as they kept running back to rejoin the main group; of hauling and pushing and pulling heavy carriers as gently as possible; of carrying bucket after bucket of grain to every group of animals so they'd have days of food for the day I was gone and for an extra day in case something happened; finally four hours of relentless driving in the dark until the light crept up behind me and a bright spot of sunrise showed in the south (why the colour just in the south? I have no idea).

Unloading was easy, having enough carriers is a blessing that way since the animals don't need to be transferred.

The morning was for errands, but first I passed a sign that said "Alpine World" on the highway. When I stopped, the man who ran the plant shop said he'd forgotten to bring in the sign the other day and gave me a two-for-one deal on winter-bare potted apple trees: a Gloria and a State Fair will join my collection. We chatted about apples for a bit, then I moved on. The feed store was less helpful: $22 for a bag of layer pellets ($48 for organic) and I figure I should just wait till I get home. Then the wholesale place, where I get my yearly bakery-quality flour to mix with my home-ground stuff and where I picked up hedgehog mushrooms grown by a small local company. Since I'm innoculating logs with them I might as well taste them, right? The "taste like crab" thing arouses both my suspicion and my interest.

I'm also somewhere I can replace the headlight that went out the day before, so I picked up one of those and some oil. I think she might be burning a little oil? Too hot to check right now though.

By that time it was 11, and my check-in at the hotel was 1:30. I borrowed their parking lot, right in downtown, and walked to lunch and to more errands and sightseeing: replacing insurance, getting soft pretzels and doughnuts for lunch on the road tomorrow, inhaling and looking for inspiration in the european deli/sausage shop, picking up beer from the local brewery, looking at potter's shops and bookshops.

Halfway through my plate of pierogies and sour cream I noticed a cat come to the front door of the restaurant and sit expectantly in front of the glass. After a nod from the owner I let him in and he stalked meaningfully into the back room; twenty minutes later as I was nearing the bottom of my London Fog he stalked back out and sat by the door again, at which point I let him out. "It's not my cat" the owner said, "but he can come in"

The most delightful part of the town was the little farm/craft hub. It had two walls of fridge and freezer cases, with each little section labelled with a different farm: this one had lamb, this one had pork, this one had frozen meat pies. I was badly tempted by another set of mushrooms, and by a mushroom grow kit, but my strategy of doing a full circle of the place before picking up a shopping basket paid off: I was over budget, but not as much as I could have been.

Beside the fridges and freezers were tables of storage produce, mostly garlic and squash at this time of year. There was a bunch of baking, dried mushroom powder and coffee and jerky, and then the other wing of the building was occupied by arts and crafts. All sorts of paintings were on one wall, glass baubles hung from the ceiling, and a blacksmith's display of hooks and pokers took up the back. Textile arts and cosmetics were displayed in two rows down the center, each arranged by artist as the food had been arranged by farmer. Here was a farmer that raised their own alpacas and spun impossibly soft scarves; there was someone who sewed waterproof canvas diaper covers and bags; on the other wall was jewellery and sweaters and round hats and pointy hats.

Altogether it was perfect: in effect a condensed farmer's market full of lovely displays closely side-by-side. The lovely variety and texture of goods was highlighted by how closely the displays could be spaced: unlike a farmer's market there was no crowd and no one was standing behind their goods watching. Lacking the budget to buy paintings I bought three greeting cards from one artist and four from another which will get clustered in frames in my two bathrooms. I chose three kinds of garlic because of course I did, music and spanish roja and marino, half of each to eat and half to plant. The music was notably bigger than the others. I also brought three chocolate bars out with me, half-sized ones (!) suitable for my way of eating sweets: sour cherry with light and with dark chocolate, and a peanut dark chocolate. The mushroom kit remained behind, as did the soft fingerless driving gloves and the frozen spanakopita and the blacksmith's towel hooks.

With that I checked into the hotel. When I reserved the room I asked for something on the top floor (I don't like people above me) with a bathtub and that's what I got. With a courteous "are you alright with stairs" I was given actual keys and headed down the long corridor, up the stairs, and then back the length of the building to find a big, old, worn, sparkling clean, comfy room facing a quiet back street. One thirty, time to collapse, to touch base with folks, to just enjoy the feeling of...

...there's nothing. My hobbies aren't here (though I brought patterns and books to read) and folks are still at work. These days of working my body hard (I was hobbling last night until I put on my muscle salve) and planning and keeping the pressure on myself let up into this evening of perfect release where I sit in a hotel room and contemplate the options of bath or nap, pizza or sushi, light from a bulb or an open window.

I love this feeling and I also can't get here without the buildup. A lack of demands is in itself a demand, and I can't experience it except when the cliff of necessary work falls out from under me and I'm left in midair, still trying to run and finding that instead I'm flying. In a good world I fly far enough to land on the next, carefully-chosen cliff and dig into another good run followed by another flight, and so on. Pacing those leaps and those runs is everything, is the difference between energy and burnout, is the difference between flying and crashing.

There's room in this space for all of me, for delight in the farm hub and deep sadness as the way the goslings' father called after them as I carried them away, for the texture of locally-raised beef jerky strips and lazy contemplation of dinner and the sideways leap of just sitting and writing instead of any of that. There's room for feeling capable and confident as I look up headlight replacement videos and for relief at being able to go home from a place where civil rights stickers in the windows are all in reference to vaccines and masks and wistfulness and envy and possible future thoughts about living somewhere full of small farmers and a little hub I could contribute to. There's room for my body to be tired and for the bed to come up and support it and for me to stay sitting up, typing, with the silvery feeling of exhaustion in my head and for that to be an ok choice.

Pizza or sushi? Bath or nap? I could install the headlights first, even?

Either way, I made it. I did all of it, on my own, and I am here fully filling up my space.

Vision first, but then: colour.

Prepping for the trip still in odd moments at work. It's going to take a bunch of prepping.

o Talked to the abattoir, I can pick up either around 5pm the day of (fresh) or 2-3pm the day after (frozen). Neither of those really allows me to drive home across full daylight. Processing what I'll do.

o Keeping an eye on the weather. Snow is supposed to hit afternoon/evening of "the day after" (so maybe I should load the fresh birds up in coolers with ice and try driving straight home? But it's a 4 hour drive, and I'll have done the 4 hour drive in at 5am that morning, but I'll maybe avoid snow?)

o Updated BCAA/roadside auto insurance, just in case

o Got grain last night, need to offload a bunch of it still, which means...

o Need to cut and power wash a couple more grain barrels (and need to powerwash carriers and coolers)

o Still researching possible places to stay, there's a nice place (The Creamery Inn) in a small town nearby, but that isn't close to restaurants. There's also a treehouse place in that small town that would be fun if Tucker was coming along. Hotels in the bigger town are an option. Keeping an eye on budget, of course, this will cost me a couple hundred in gas and more than that in butchers' fees.

o Got snow tires put on.

o Slowly acclimatizing the ducks to eating in the goose shed, so I can put them in there Wed night, close the door, and get them in the carriers on Thurs so I can leave at 5am Friday.

o It would be great to get the mat off the truck bed and wash under it.

o I definitely need to put the top on the truck, which I haven't done singlehandedly before. It's several hundred pounds and very awkward, I think I have a system that involves scootching it along 2x4s. I should probably find someone who can be a safety check-in after I do that. I guess that'll happen Wed evening, since I need to unload tires and grain tonight.

o I need to choose which geese are going, I have three selected but need to select the other couple.

o Also need to pull my breeder ducks.

o Need to get lumber and other odds and ends under cover suddenly, since it's supposed to snow and if it sticks then everything is there forever/until May or June.

o Really should cover straw.

o Need to pack, including birth control pills and pads since this of course will be happening over my period.

o Need to make sure the truck has emergency supplies if I need to sleep in it, patch a tire, etc.

o Need to figure out how to get both full carriers and coolers into the truck, this is a lot of items that take up space. Tetrisy.

o Need to load the animals up on food/water on Thurs night.

o I'm tired.

There's been a harvest, a slaughter, a reaping. Maybe that latter is the best word: "harvest" has been used more often lately and I believe softens the act more than it should, while "slaughter" doesn't contain the purposefulness of the act.

Anyhow, as always after killing animals for food I am left with awe at the bounty they present. Today I am in awe of geese, I love them, and I am going to write about them at great length: I will write about how they fit into the energy balance of a human farm and small-scale agriculture; I will write about how they fit into the landscape and what kinds of landscape they fit into; I will write about their social fabric and their personality; I will write about the varieties that live here and maybe something of that history.

Everything that's alive is made up of the landscape: of the sun that falls on it, of the atoms that make it up. Geese are a part of the landscape; geese are grass. Wild geese migrate because they follow the first bite of grass as green ripples north across the hemisphere; they move to places where plants and grass are abundant to fatten and to raise young. On an ideal goose farm it's the farmer's job to maintain grass as much as possible in that first, new growth stage; on a goose farm it's the goose's job to go out and gather that grass with wide, webbed feet that will not tear vegetation or compact soil where even human feet punch through marshy turf if it's trodden repeatedly. The geese can go out day after day, though, harvest and fertilize the grass and stir up the puddles and muddy bits. They tend the grass lovingly and they bring it back for the community to eat in the form of their bodies, in the form of their energy-rich fat that is so concentrated and can be so resource-intensive in an agricultural system.

Thus in wet landscapes geese are particularly well-suited to feed us; they don't require draining the tiny percentage of wetlands that are left, and in fact with geese we can allow wetlands to creep back. In spring goslings hatch out into abundance. They grow fat and happy on grass and water and more grass over the spring and summer; they can fatten on the abundance of apples and the detritus of gardens and gain fields in the fall; then as winter comes and the grass is gone they can either be harvested and cured into confit and prosciutto and jerky or they can use their insulation of feathers and stored grass-as-fat and a little grain to live comfortably, without elaborate infrastructure, until they are needed to nourish us one-by-one. And they are a good animal to be slaughtered as needed: they have enough meat and fat to feed many, but not to need extensive space in a refrigerator or cold room at butchering time. Breeding geese can be kept over winter and the whole cycle will begin next year.

This lightness on the land, the symbiosis with grass wetlands, is one of the beauties of geese. They replace expensive and fuel-intensive resources for draining and ploughing fields or cutting hay with natural behaviours that make them happy; they allow us to skim a percentage of the productivity of a landscape without enormously altering it and without using energy and resources -- except the genetic resources inherent in the geese, the behaviours of breeds with instincts to survive and thrive that have not yet been extinguished by our modern form of domestication.

Because the my geese haven't been so heavily domesticated even the ones that have been most heavily bred behave in ways that support their life cycle of good use of the land. In the winter they come together into one big amiable flock: hungry predators will avoid a large flock of geese; they share heat and are easier for a farmer to protect when they're closer together; there are fewer geese after harvest and the large group is less damaging to the land; and in my case the ground is frozen so the concentration of geese doesn't pack down the mud but instead enriches the closer-in gardens for spring. During this close time they're in constant communication with each other: they call and respond quietly throughout the day, always aware of their friends and neighbours.

Conversely in the summer small breeding groups of two or three or sometimes four will spread out across the whole landscape, if they have enough space choosing nests distant from each other so no patch of grass is too heavily grazed as the first tiny blades of green emerge. At this time they grow more assertive towards visitors, both to protect themselves from predators since they lack the protection of the flock and to protect their precious eggs. A goose's social cycle is fit to its environment.

Different breeds of goose fit into their environments a little differently. My Chinese geese with their upright stance evolved to be herded out to wet fields during the day and to be herded back in at night: they're intensely friendly with humans and the angle of their bodies allows them to walk greater distances more gracefully while their small size and grace let them weed between rows without trampling plants. My pilgrims were bred in North America as a farmyard goose, more and almost indifferent to humans, and the different colours of males and females meant that as more land was co-opted by settlers the females could be more easily kept and spread to fill that land quickly. My Embdens are a more modern breed with huge bodies suited to more domesticated landscapes with more intensive meat production and less distance to travel. My Romans are the oldest domesticated breed of goose, vanishingly rare to find without a fashionable knob of feathers on their heads, engaged and assertive with humans and with a chatty habit that summons help when needed. I'd speak about my Pomeranian saddlebacks with their great parenting and their cleverness that supports both friendliness and survival appropriately but-- they are my first geese, and I am biased.

That's all to say geese can be a beautiful part of a landscape's pattern, especially a wet landscape. They're deeply social creatures who reach out vocally to establish relationships with people near them. Both their company over so many centuries of domestication and the food of their bodies is a real gift, and it's important they continue to exist on this earth in relationship with us.

Pigs/Geese: winter over in greenhouse and then move through fields

March/early April onto frozen ground as the greenhouse thaws enough to plant: field #1 from frozen ground to 1" thaw: barley, kale, cabbage gets planted when the animals leave.

April till mid-May into field #2 for and tomatoes, squash, and corn go in after.

Mid-May into field #3, either perennial pasture or fall/very early spring plant of grain (rye?).

Quick sweep through haskap and apple pastures to pick up excess fruit. in summer/late fall as required.

Mid-Sept back into field #2

Oct back into field #1

Nov back into greenhouse.

That's 3 fields minimum plus orchards and greenhouse. It supports a rotation, either a 3-year one or a couple years in field #3 which could also be planted with a good hog mix. Realistically it would be better to have several field #3s if it's not going to be perennial pasture and they could step through maybe 1 per month.

Requires mobile hog housing and some sort of watering infrstructure.