Our last stretch at the farm was spent mainly on permaculture, seed saving, and beekeeping, as well as lots of practical work in the garden. Permaculture is especially interesting to us – it is basically the practice of designing balanced systems where the waste from one component is the input for another component, so production involves less work: a lazy person’s farm. One guest instructor on permaculture told us he produces 80% of his food from a few acres and almost all of the work is simply harvesting.
Seed saving was a surprisingly fascinating topic, and in today’s world of patents on seed and genetically modified foods, seed saving is often a form of direct political action. It is strange that this practice has practically vanished in much of the world, when for centuries this is how mankind selected and bred plants best suited to local conditions, pest resistance, etc. In recent years seed savers networks have emerged to revive this nearly lost art. If you garden, save your seed!
Beekeeping too was unknown to us prior to the farm and life of bees is a bizarre thing to understand. We were a little nervous donning beekeeping suits and being lectured about all of the things that can go wrong when you try to steal honey from very irritated bees. One guest lecturer has taken a break from beekeeping after an unfortunate incident where many bees found a breach in his suit and stung him in the head, many times. Suiting up for the first time was a slow process, with every nook and cranny being checked to make sure no bees can enter. It felt like we were about to enter some biohazard area or walk on the moon. As we approached the hives the bee man started puffing smoke into the hive with a special device and suddenly a cloud of bees was upon us. At this moment we had a surge of adrenaline as our minds said, “DANGER! KILLER BEES! RUN!” We never really felt comfortable with the cloud of angry bees swarming on our suits, but slowly and carefully we opened the hive and removed the honey.
For now we have no plans to enter the beekeeping or organic farming business, but we will attempt to grow some basic veggies in our front yard and join our local Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) organic veggie delivery service.
The rare cow/horse
A chicken in a sack, ready for a road trip
How many people can you fit in an Ecuadorian truck? Answer: 22
An example of the vegetarian meals at the farm
On the last night Chris utilized several open chords on the guitar around the bonfire
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