Hey, So I just realized that you all have been leaving comments on my blog. I feel much more loved now as I wondered where many of you were. Keep them coming as they mean a lot to a guy who is the boonies and gets lonely at times. Sheep, what..ok. In addition, the reason there was such a break in the frequency of my posts was because there were two classes back to back at the ETC. The classes were outside of the regular curriculum of our apprenticeship and it was great to be able to take them. My last post was about the earthworks and dam building part of the course. The second weekend of the course was in forest gardening and orchard remediation. What in the hell is forest gardening and orchard remediation you ask? I have no 
fuckin idea, but I got like 33 chigger bites on my left forearm and that shit hurts. This is not my forearm, but this is a chicks foot who got the chiggers. Gross....we will not be making out anytime soon....probably....
I lied, I know what orchard remediation and forest gardening are and I will share. Forest gardening is a type of gardening system based on mimicking woodland ecosystems. It is a garden you have usually in addition to your vegetable garden which requires more attention and should be placed closer to your house then the forest garden. While you do mimic the forest using this system, you use plants such as fruit or nut trees, edible and medicinal shrubs, herbs and bushes that can give you a food yield. You place plants on multiple levels as in this drawing to take advantage of three dimensional space.
These plants are intermixed to grow on multiple levels in the same area, just like plants in a forest. It is a pretty amazing system and you don't need to live in or near a forest to have a forest garden.
fuckin idea, but I got like 33 chigger bites on my left forearm and that shit hurts. This is not my forearm, but this is a chicks foot who got the chiggers. Gross....we will not be making out anytime soon....probably....I lied, I know what orchard remediation and forest gardening are and I will share. Forest gardening is a type of gardening system based on mimicking woodland ecosystems. It is a garden you have usually in addition to your vegetable garden which requires more attention and should be placed closer to your house then the forest garden. While you do mimic the forest using this system, you use plants such as fruit or nut trees, edible and medicinal shrubs, herbs and bushes that can give you a food yield. You place plants on multiple levels as in this drawing to take advantage of three dimensional space.
We conducted the course at the previous natural building coordinator's house. He and his wife have been working on their house for four years and it is pretty amazing. They bought 90 acres of clearcut land and have been restoring it all the while. These are some pics of the inside of the place. The walls were made from cob, which is an old English building technique that uses clay, sand, straw and water to make an earthen wall. As you build it you can place glass bottles in the wall to make designs such as these.
While we were there we helped with another building technique called light clay straw which is a mix of clay, water and straw that one can use for insulation. It is about a gillion times faster then cob, which is pretty labor intensive. It is great for places like the pacific north west that doesn't require as much insulation as say Alaska.(Picture Left: Me in the big ass hat and yellow shirt mixing a batch of light clay straw. Picture Right: The wall after light claw straw was stuffed in, it still needs a coat of earthen plaster, but it will keep you warm!)
So orchard remediation. Basically we learned how to prune an ailing orchard to help it get back some of it's gusto. At it's most basic you are trying to trim the tree in such a way that all the leaves are able to collect light and contribute to the energy the tree derives from the sun. It gets complicated, but I'll spare you the details as I'm sure you are actively fighting the urge to click on to internet porn instead of this boring ass blog. Plus I forgot half of what I learned already, so I can just blame my lack of description on your despicable habit. Seriously....porn is gross. And you know who you are.
It was a wonderful 10 days. Side note: It has been great to be in a place where almost everyone knows more about a subject area you are studying together as group then you do. Not only has it been humbling, it has been a growth experience. So often when one asks a question, others answer without truly understanding the question that was asked. This seems to make sense though, as much of the time people are as excited to share what they know as they are to help another. But I think much of the time people who answer questions are more concerned with being able to talk about something they know about then truly shedding light on another's question. A bit more ego then empathy. Maybe I'm projecting here a bit as I feel like I am guilty of this. So I wanted to note that my experience of being in the un-know has left me more sensitive to how I engage with people who ask questions. I often find myself getting so excited about the chance to convey all the information I have jammed in my brain that the other person becomes talked at, instead of to. It is hard to figure out where to draw the lines between the excitement of communication of ideas, ego and empathy. Point being....I'm trying to draw new ones....in erasable ink of course. Until Later Youts.
Ja Boy
