Deadlines

There are deadlines in all lines of work. In agriculture deadlines come in the form of weather forecasts, lambing season, ripeness of fruit, moisture content of crops, inspector visits, customer orders, and availability of labour.

One thing I have learned about myself in the year and a half since planting my orchard is that I am fundamentally a lazy person. If I don't have to do it this week, I put it off until next week. I have a huge to do list and more often than not when I cross something off it is usually because I have finally admitted to myself that particular item was simultaneously ambitious and completely pointless. 

This is surprising to me since every time I work for someone else, I give my all. Yet when left to my own devices I struggle to move on things. My to do list could be completely crossed off in two full days of work, but I procrastinate and procrastinate.

Except when there is a deadline. 

In the winter I plan my tree order for the spring and when the trees arrive it is a race to get them in the ground. Now, in the fall, I received two hundred flower bulbs (I want to experiment with bulb propagation) and as the weather forecast promised a week full of rain I spent a couple hours of my Saturday preparing beds, amending the terribly sandy soil I have at my home, and planting my bulbs in tidy rows. 

My to do list still has many items on it, with deadlines as far away as next spring. Some items, like protecting my tree trunks with wire cages, have more urgent deadlines. Realistically, having now begun to understand my relationship with my own self motivation, I now know I will likely get the cages onto the trees a few days before the first snowfall is forecast. 

Why should I be so surprised? This is how we were trained! Study the night before a test, do your homework the day before it's due. Deadlines got me this far, soon an orchard full of different fruits with different fertility, pruning, and harvesting deadlines will be managing my life and keeping me moving. For now, let's just do what needs to be done today.

Benjamin Franklin — 'Don't put off until tomorrow what you can do today.'

Eden Valadez — 'For now, let's just do what needs to be done today.'

Between Stress and Semi-Retirement

This time last year my job involved driving an average of four hours per day. I bought food in take away containers. I stayed in motels every other week, and used the tiny disposable shampoo bottles. I opened the plastic wrappers on bars of soap. I made coffee in the motel room and no matter what the coffee maker situation was, this was always guaranteed to yield several items of garbage.

Suffering from imposter syndrome (thinking that I had got into my job by accident rather than merit) I worked seven days per week and didn't bill all my hours because I wasn't sure that I had been as productive as I should have been. I guess my employer must have liked my results because every time I was nearing the end of my client list I would be sent another inspector's client list and asked if I could expand into their region and take over their clients.

The result was that I was stressed out all the time. The job itself was great and I believe in the work the company does, but it wasn't allowing me to live the kind of life I wanted.

Less than a year ago I left that job for a lower paid position that I am extremely qualified for (so no need to worry about imposter syndrome!). I also decided to work part time instead of full time. In order to make my decision look more deliberate and impressive in the eyes of my peers and family I refer to my 'part-time' employment as 'semi-retirement'. I work 38 hours in 4 days, and have three days off per week. 

Since adopting this simpler life, I have been able to devote more energy to what I care about beyond my career. Mainly, the environment. I got myself into the zero-waste movement, and have a zero waste kitchen. This summer I have been bicycling to work almost every day. I use my car once per week. I have time to read about the issues. I email politicians. Because of my research I can have more intelligent conversations and have occasionally broken through to someone who was willing to do more but wasn't sure how. 

The past few weeks have been busy . As my time becomes more in demand and my levels of stress increase, so has the use of my car and my cravings for sugary or salty snacks wrapped in disposable wrapping. It is useful to notice that stress and a lack of time are so heavily linked to our reliance on convenience. The less time we have to fulfill our own personal needs, the less we care about the needs of others.

Working four days a week has been incredible for me. Five days per week going to school, then as an adult working five or seven days per week meant that the majority of my time belonged to someone else. Now I feel my life is mine and I have an adequate amount of time to pursue my hobbies, see friends and family, and sleep! By the time Monday rolls around I am looking forward to going back to work, and by the time I start looking forward to the weekend, I am already very close to it.

Working four days a week is not accessible to everyone, I know. My luck in life has gone up and down and this part of my life is clearly an up. There have been times, and I am sure there will be times in the future, where I needed to take all the hours I could get just to pay my rent. But if semi-retirement is accessible to you, and having more free time is appealing to you, then I highly recommend it. 

A cool way to approach it if you are paid hourly is to ask your boss for a raise. Then say you also want to work fewer hours per week. The employer spends less money paying you and they'll be getting a fresher and more productive you for the hours that you are working. It is a win for everyone.

Whatever your life struggles are; everything is temporary. If things are good, enjoy them while they last. If not, well, it's only a matter of time before things change.

Gardening for Butterflies

After my last post I received an excellent question: apart from leaving milkweed in my garden, "How else can we encourage the monarchs?"

Milkweed is known to be critical for monarchs as it is the only  plant upon which monarch caterpillars can feed. The adult monarch butterfly however, can feed on any nectar producing flowers. If you want to give them a nutritious pit stop, plant flowers in groups. This allows butterflies to hop from one flower to another using relatively little energy while getting a full meal. 

Here are five great flowers for attracting butterflies.

Coneflower

Purple Coneflower

Aster

Aster

Black Eyed Susan

Black Eyed Susan

Bee Balm

Bee Balm

Lupine

Lupines

This is a beginner's guide as the truth is any flower/plant is useful as a habitat or source of food for an insect. Clumps of grass are great shelter during rough weather, for example. There are flowering charts and extensive lists of flowers and plants that attract butterflies for those who want to be meticulous.  If you aren't interested in having a binder of study material rest assured that having a diversity of plant species is guaranteed to attract winged visitors. Hummingbirds will certainly be attracted by the red flowers of your bee balm.  The only way to go wrong when planning a butterfly garden would be to create a lawn or to use pesticides. 

Biodiversity is the best thing you can offer. Try having perennial flowers that will flower at different times during the season, so that there is always a nectar source. Indigenous weeds are awesome when your gardening budget is low, letting them grow to flower before pulling them up is a great way to create a mini habitat with a huge amount of biodiversity. Indeed, these plant might be host plants for caterpillars from other species of butterflies.

Simply put: have a garden! Your garden is a space you are sharing with wildlife and insects. It is a refuge for these species from the acres of conventional fields and from the pavement and buildings that cover our cities and suburbs. 

Lastly, do them one huge (obvious) favour; don’t cover the plants and soil with pesticides and herbicides. The land might be in your name, but the earth cannot belong to a person. Animals and insects constantly have their food poisoned for something as superficial as a 'perfect' rose bush.

Go forth and make Eden rise! Really, it is that easy.

Milkweed

Milkweed flower

It is important for the survival of the monarch butterfly that there is a 'milkweed highway' from Canada all the way down to Mexico. This is because milkweed in the only plant on which monarch caterpillars feed. Growing milkweed does not have to be just for this reason. The flower is attractive and the smell is strong, which makes it an appealing nectar source for other insects as well. Honey bees can harvest the nectar for their honey, solitary bees, and other butterflies come feed too.

Monarch caterpillar

The most fascinating part of my milkweed education was learning that it is food for humans too! I love all things edible, and as an environmentalist farmer I like finding perennial food sources that don't require any digging! 

Here is what I learned from a book called Backyard Foraging by Ellen Zachos:

Young milkweed shoots are tender and can be harvested when they are 6 to 8 inches tall, just snap them at the base. Then, remove the mature leaves but leave a few immature leaves at the top of the stem. To eat milkweed, you need to boil or blanch the plant before cooking with it. This removes the bitter sticky white goo inside. Once it has been immersed in boiling water for 1 or 2 minutes, treat it like green beans. They taste similar to green beans, but better (according to Ellen!).

The unopened flower buds are described as being tastier than broccoli. Harvest when they are still tightly bunched together, green, and golf ball size. Again, you must blanch first. Then try steaming them with salt and serve with olive oil.


The immature seedpods (1 1/2 inches long, inside should be all white- the seeds should not be turning brown yet!) can be harvested and blanched. Then, try them in soups, stews, or stir-fries. 

Eden is a place where we can live from the land without destroying it. What better way than to allow this 'weed' a place in your garden. The monarch gets a place to lay eggs, the bees get a drink of nectar, and you get to try eating one of thousands of plant species we have forgotten.

Fantastic!

I Will Never be Vegetarian

I assume everyone reading this blog knows about the impact eating meat has on the environment. If you don't, and you want to educate yourself here is one link out of hundreds of resources available to you:  https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/meat-and-environment/ I am not a scientist and the point of this blog is not to bombard you with statistics, so please look elsewhere for those icy numbers.

For years I have been toying with becoming Vegetarian because I know it is the Right Thing to do. For a few years I wasn't doing it because I was in a relationship with someone who was very outspoken against vegetarianism and veganism (he genuinely believed if my friend would eat meat she could be magically cured of a chronic illness). Then for a couple years my excuse became that I didn't want to inconvenience my family.

Two months ago I learned that I suffer from co-dependency issues. I am afraid that by standing up for my beliefs and my ethics people will not like me, so I let myself disappear into the background. Having vocabulary for behavioural patterns is instrumental in being able to alter them. This is impacting several aspects of my life, including my diet. I wasn't becoming vegetarian, something I have always believed in, simply because I was afraid of setting a boundary.

I will never be Vegetarian. The label "vegetarian" is associated with hippies who love animals and think with their emotions first. I have worked on farms that produce animals for meat, and I have plucked the heart from the bodies of many dead turkeys in my line of work. I do not want to be a Vegetarian.

I do practice vegetarianism and I do eat a plant-based diet because I am an Environmentalist. I no longer eat meat. I want my intake of animal products (products like eggs and cheese) to be a very occasional treat. Eating fish of any kind has been off the table for me for awhile since I educated myself on the effects of fishing on our oceans (which will be dead by 2050 if we continue as we are). 

If you are an environmentalist I strongly suggest you practice vegetarianism. If you aren't sure how that would help, there is a lot of information out there that will convince you without a doubt that it is a necessity. If you suffer from a fear of judgement the way I do, start small. Setting boundaries for people with co-dependency issues is very difficult, but you need to. None of us should be afraid of being ostracized for doing the right thing. Practice vegetarianism for meals when you are alone at the very least. 

This is the simple biggest thing you can do to reduce your impact on the environment. It is time to start.

The Us Versus Them Bias

At lunch break my colleague expressed sorrow for the people who saved up money for a holiday and had to come home early because of hurricane Irma. Another colleague said yes, but they were lucky because she knows that some people weren't even able to book another flight-- they had to stay for the storm.
I frowned over my lunch and quietly said "yes, it is a shame for the rich people* who have gone on vacation. I think it's probably worse for the people who actually live there."
They immediately agreed, but it hit on a theme I had been thinking of for a few months. 

I remember in middle school we learned about the rainforest in science class. The ongoing destruction of this delicate forest for more farmland. What they didn't teach us was that this farmland was used to grow crops that would feed livestock and that by eating meat we were contributing to the destruction of forest ecosystems. They also didn't teach us that Canada's forests are also continuously being cut down and burned for agriculture. Instead, they taught me that people in these almost imaginary far off lands were less educated than our class of 12 year olds. They were cutting down these precious forests because they didn't know any better. 

By that age I knew enough about Canadian history to know that all the farmland around my school had once been a mature forest. It seemed that if we cut down forests in the past, that was okay, but people cutting down forests now was bad. And since all our forests were cut down a long time ago, we can no longer take any of the blame for ongoing climate change.

Last year I worked as an organic farm inspector. Before I go on, I want to point out that I do believe in organic farming and that all farming should be organic by default. Pouring poison directly on our shared planet and directly on the plants that feed us is frankly horrifying. But here is something problematic I discovered during the course of my work.

In order to avoid the three year transition phase for a conventional field to produce organic food** farmers were clearing forested land in order to plant their organic crop and earn certification in their first year. Because this land had never been farmed conventionally there was no need for a transition period. 

This is the problem when ethics clash with capitalism. Farmers are business people. They want more money for the business. That forest is not generating any income, we need to downsize the parts of the business that do not generate income and expand into new product lines that do. Hence, cut down the forest to produce organic buckwheat, hemp, corn, soybeans. Of course, this goes against the philosophy of organics, but it is hugely wound in our society's way of perceiving money as Good above all else. We worship the thing that makes us slaves.

Blaming people across the world for practices we ourselves perform, and then feeling sympathy for our own when natural disasters (exacerbated by our thirst for carbon and our destruction of perennial vegetation) is all part of the same problem. We see Us as something different than Them.  We are all humans that share one planet. If we could do away with borders, maybe we could see that more clearly. What affects one person in our global community affects us all. 

It can be overwhelming as an individual to realize our way of life is being attacked by capitalism and climate change from all directions, and yet we do have power to change things. Want to fight back against capitalism? Stop consuming more than what you need. Want to reduce your impact on the earth? Stop participating in practices that are known to contribute to climate change. In the meantime, we need to stop blaming the Other and start holding ourselves and our neighbours and our communities accountable for what we have the power to change.


*I know that not everyone who goes on holiday is rich from the lens of someone who lives in Canada. Compared to their neighbours they may not consider themselves rich, but compared to the global community, they are.

**Farmers want to avoid this transition period as the first years of transition have lower yields and as the crop is still considered conventional, they cannot demand the higher prices that make organic production competitive.

Drinking to a Healthy Community

Buy local.

We all know we should do it, and there are some pretty obvious ways we know how. Choose the local strawberries, shop at your farmer's market, buy soaps and Christmas gifts from local small businesses. 

Even though in principle I know I ought to buy local, there are some areas of my consumption where I had never connected the dots. Possibly because it had never occurred to me that there was a local alternative to the brand names with which I was familiar. 

I'm talking about spirits and cocktails.

My first priority in moving into my very own apartment was to have a fully stocked bar. Yes, nothing screams privilege like having your own bar and I was a good little consumer for wanting one. Luckily my mother made me the first offering toward my home bar; a bottle of gin distilled only an hour's drive away. This opened my eyes to the fact that I previously had thought nothing of buying gin imported from England, despite always choosing wine based on geographical proximity (anything but Merlot and Chardonnay, obviously).

To my delight there are several other flavourful Canadian gins(one is certified organic)! It doesn't end there, in the winter I am fond of Baileys in my coffee. Would you believe there were two Canadian cream liquors available in my local boozery? Not only that but I found Canadian coffee liquors, vodka, and whisky. Everything I wanted for my bar had a local equivalent. Though the brand name was different, the flavour and price were basically identical. 

Eden's Rise is about making our world more habitable, for ourselves and those who share this earth with us. What better way to be an activist than by choosing to consume products that have travelled a shorter distance?

Cheers to you!