Urine as Garden Fertilizer

Using Urine in the Garden

I wish that all of my neighbours would come to my property to urinate. I’d keep individual graduated buckets for them, and then give a prize for the largest donation at the end of the year.

Much of the information that follows comes from, or was verified by, Carol Steinfeld’s book “Liquid Gold: The Lore and Logic of Using Urine to Grow Plants.” It’s a slim volume, only 95 pages, but if you need to see something in print before you’re convinced to make the shift to urine-based gardening, then the $15 dollars will be money well spent.

During this past summer, I planted ten new blueberry plants (8 varieties) in the back garden. They appeared healthy and happy for the first few weeks, but then developed red spots on their leaves – which is often an indication that a blueberry plant is nitrogen-deficient. This got me wondering whether nitrogen-rich urine could be used to help balance the nutrients in the garden soil.

When Tova was still living here with me, we both peed in the gardens regularly, but not too close to the plants. I had noticed that where I peed off the deck, often from the same location, the grass below had died away. That raised some concern as to whether urine would help or hurt a growing plant. Steinfeld’s book answered many of my questions.

The message, at its simplest level, is that urine can be one of the single most important inputs into a garden. Over the course of a year, an adult excretes approximately 116 gallons of urine. If that healthy individual is consuming and digesting both plant and animal proteins, then his/her annual urine production will contain enough fertilizer to grow “50-100% of the food requirement for another adult” In the book, Anna Edey from the Solviva garden states that she grew “200 full-grown onion in one square yard, fertilizing only with urine… also (using) wood ash, which is alkaline, to balance the pH of urine,.. and to supply extra potassium to plants.”

That said, the nutrients in urine must be supplemented by other organics - carbon, fibres and beneficial micro-organisms – in order to maintain and improve the health of your garden soil. While perhaps Anna Edey was able to grown 200 onions using urine fertilizer, it likely relied also on the established health of the existing soil – which would require a broader compost mix if that health is to be maintained.

In order that the nutrients in urine can be best utilized by garden plants, the urine must be oxidized to a nitrate form by aerobic soil bacteria. There are a number of ways to accomplish this, but the common goal is to combine the nitrogen and nutrient rich urine with carbon-rich materials to create a C:N (Carbon:Nitrogen) ratio of 25:1.
On its own, urine has a C:N ratio of only 0.8:1, which is too low for microbes to effectively use and process into beneficial forms. So carbon rich materials such as sawdust (400:1) or brown leaves and garden clippings, straw, wood shavings or peat moss are all perfect mediums to absorb and balance urine for garden use.

On my property, I have a large pile of wood shavings from milling logs for building materials. I didn’t want to add these on their own directly to the gardens because the C:N ratio would have likely depleted much of the existing soil nitrogen during the decomposition process. Now, with the urine added, the shavings should be a positive addition. Come to think of it, information I’d read last summer had suggested that I mulch heavily over the newly-planted blueberries using wood shavings. So this might have been what caused the original problem I had that eventually led me to this new resource (newly-realized resource).

Three other methods suggested for combining urine to grow garden produce include, 1) combining urine with greywater draining into an “aerobic garden bed” (check online for the “Washwater Garden” at www.ecowaters.org)
2) dilute the urine at least 8:1 and then it can be applied directly to garden plants. And 3) pour urine (probably should still be diluted) onto “well-mulched aerated soil, covered with 3” of wood shavings or leaf mulch and containing plenty of humus material.

By separating urine from feces, the fertilizer becomes a lot easier and safer to handle and use. There are many high-tech separating toilets on the market, but we simply keep a plastic jug or small bucket to pee into. This in turn is either diluted and then added to the garden, or else taken and poured directly onto the compost bin section that contains largely carbon materials. As well, by separating, the remaining feces doesn’t develop the same foul odour that occurs when the two are combined.
The feces collected in the compost toilet is also now drier and easier to store for composting. However, because of possible pathogens in feces, the processing time is much longer and so it is preferable to do this as a separate project. As well, while humanure will eventually decompose and become a valuable input, it is urine that contains up to 90% of the nitrogen and potassium found in combined wastewater. So don’t just flush it away.

On those days when nothing else seems to be going right – everything I touch is breaking or dying or just not happening – then at least I get the satisfaction of adding to the future garden cycle. Peeing into the bucket, or walking over to stand in front of the compost bin and directly add my 11 grams of nitrogen daily to the cycle of life. That’s comforting. Some days it seems like it’s about as much as I manage to accomplish.

One Year

Sometimes I get frustrated with how little I managed to accomplish of the huge ideas and all that I planned to get done this year.

A story:

A few years back while I was sailing down the Pacific coast of Central America, I met a beautiful old man, a sailor and navigator, the type who really represented what those two titles used to mean. He was in his early 80s during the time I knew him. He lived aboard his wood sailboat, a Spray copy that he and his brother had built with hand tools and a team of horses near Lake Champlain about 50 years earlier. He had no engine or anything electric onboard. Candles and lanterns for light. A five-gallon bucket to bail out the water that leaked in through the rotting planks.

By the time I met Bob Carr, he was having a hard time to keep his boat Sirius maintained. A few years earlier, they had been hit by a French freighter about 10 miles off shore, and the boat had been damaged and its masts and spars destroyed. As well, Bob was having a few health problems, mostly tropical skin conditions that had festered too long and had become weeping ulcers on his legs. Still, he refused most favours, or help of any kind. He didn’t want to be “beholden” to anyone for anything.

At one point during that time, I had flown back to Canada for a number of months and I worried about Bob. Could he keep his boat afloat? Would his crooked shoulders and arthritic hands be able to keep rowing against the tidal currents when he decided he wanted to go ashore? (I would always wait for slack tide, but Bob wasn’t intimidated by the tidal race.)

When I finally reached the rough little town of Puntarenas where we had our boats, I rowed over to Sirius, wondering if Bob was alive or destitute or thriving. I rapped on the side of his hull and called for permission to come aboard, and Bob came out of his cabin. He was squinting at the tropic sun in the afternoon, his eyes watering, and cataracts prominent. He stood on the deck as solid and twisted and strong as I remembered him. His leg sores were still red and draining, but he said he was fine. He said that there had been a few hard times saving his boat during the past couple months, but most of that was in the past now.

What I remember most was when he said that sometimes things felt like everything was going wrong, and nothing was happening the way he wanted it to go. He talked with that quiet but solid voice. The kind you know you should listen to. Not preaching, but wisdom leaking out without effort. His hands looked like they could still crush walnuts. Big hands, the kind you needed to work the coal-fired forge he kept in his cargo hold.

He said that at those times when everything seemed to be falling short and nothing was going the way he wanted it to go… he said that he realized that maybe sometimes we’re just asking for too much.


I could write a long list of what didn’t work out this year – and why it wasn’t fair, or that it was fate, or bad luck, or my black karma, or lack of focused desire to manifest, or whatever catch-phrase or mantra we like to go on about. But I think that I’ll just stick with Bob Carr and his wisdom. Everything and everyone are exactly where they (we) are supposed to be.


The good things that have come this year include:

- the good energy and motivation from Kymo – a long-time friend, a food forester, and great spirit to have as a neighbour.

- an expanded garden that produced well, even after a wet cool early summer. About 60 tomato plants of 20 different heritage and open-pollinated varieties. Lots of greens, potatoes, carrots and new additions like tomatillos and a couple varieties of squash.

- finally receiving the water licence and permissions from the government and First Nations to proceed with our planned micro hydro project – and plans this winter to begin clearing and slashing work along the path where we will run the twin 2” pipes.

- Moving the access driveway to the back of the property so that the waterfront area can now be used for more gardens, orchards, and building sites. This was done well and affordably thanks largely to our friend and distant neighbour Rod, along with his excavator and gravel truck – all fuelled with the requisite cold cans of Coors Lite (no class) Thank you Rod.

- Rod also did me the favour of giving me 20 minutes of instruction on running the excavator, and then generously told me to “play around with it.” Likely he wasn’t expecting to be gone for two or three weeks when he made the offer. By the time he returned, the hillside behind my house was cleared and terraced, and I’d planted 16 new fruit trees, a row of blueberries, and seeded it with Rye, clover and oats. Thanks again Rod.

-Along with the main hillside terrace orchard, I terraced a number of smaller areas, planting fig and walnut trees, as well as using some of them as the new winter garlic garden (approx 300 garlic planted)

- I killed my first deer this year. Once again, any success in this last year has been due largely to the help and guidance of others with more experience than I have. My friend David (a.k.a “Cowpoke”) took me to T. Island last winter at the end of the hunting season, but by the time we were there it was January, with storms blowing and tearing at our tent camp. But I think that I came back empty handed deer mostly because I wasn’t yet ready to kill a deer - to take full responsibility for the act and everything that necessarily follows to complete the obligations one has to the animal.
This year, in the first week of the hunting season in September, I killed a 3 point Black-tail deer on T. Island. Once again, Cowpoke was camping with me, and so the field dressing and handling of the hide went as smoothly and respectfully as I could ever have hoped it would. Since then I have been able to enjoy and to share venison meals with other friends and also with my parents when they visited last month. Thank you Cowpoke.

- David Parkinson and the Food Security Project he works with have organized and initiated the Skookum Food Provisioners’ Co-op. Although I haven’t been able to participate as much as I want to so far, it is another solid step in the community towards finding ways that people can access, produce, process, store and share good, healthy and affordable food. Thanks you David Parkinson.

- Good friends Jonathon and Jenna often have to field my gardening questions. This year they also gave me some guidance as I began my first efforts to can tomatoes and peppers and herbs into salsas and sauces for the winter. Fantastic. They also sent me home with a large pressure canner that I hope to use after the next hunting trip.



- Completely unexpected – we had a great one-day workshop where Brig (student and long-time friend of Mushroom guru David Aurora) came to our community from a neighbouring island to help us gather, identify, understand and prepare mushrooms of all types. A local winemaker provided wines, and I brought along one of my raspberry homebrews. No one went home unsatisfied.
On the following morning, Paul (a friend, neighbour, and definitely a solid source of gardening experience and knowledge and inspiration) generously took me along for two hours of very successful Pine mushroom picking. It is very rare for anyone to share their local mushroom knowledge. This was a first for me, and Paul was a great guide, silent and patient. It opened my eyes and mind to another luxurious food source that the forest provides.

- I had a chance to talk with local First Nations people about salmon harvesting and smoking techniques. While it is likely too late to take part this year, I now realize the amazing food opportunity that exists very close to my front door. Thank you to Vince, Melvin and Frank.

I could go on further, mostly telling of other favours and words of wisdom I’ve received, but it comes to me most clearly when I sit down with a group of friends and neighbors and we share such wonderful food that we have grown, collected, hunted and prepared ourselves – venison, salmon, chanterelle and pine mushrooms, squash, salads, and even the wines and ciders made from the apples, blackberries, plums and other fruits we have picked.

While I’m aware of how little I still know, and how clumsy are my first small steps in the garden and forest, it feels like I’m walking along a good path, with a few good neighbors, guides, and friends.

Thoreau at Walden Pond

Thoreau’s Walden: Reality or Romance?

The part (or, “one" part) that confuses me is whether this land experience becomes easier as my knowledge and skills improve. When I search for guidance on that topic, I find conflicting stories.

Where I live on the west coast of British Columbia, there are a large number of individuals and couples who moved here in the 1960s and 70s as part of the U.S, draft dodge, or a “back-to-the-land” movement. Many of these people eventually abandoned the physical part of that dream, remaining concerned with the same values and politics, but taking on full-time or seasonal wage-work to live more easily inside a cash economy. I have heard second-hand accounts that concluded the early experiment “was just too much work.” I’ll have to talk directly to some of these people to get a clearer picture.

One of the best known accounts of an individual attempting to opt out of the frantic pace of “modern life”(in the mid 1800s) is Henry David Thoreau’s book "Walden." He spends two years and two months in his cabin by Walden Pond, and during that time he questions and passes judgement on most of the dominant economy and the society that supports it. His conclusions concerning quality of life have inspired many dreamers, discontents, idealists, and misfits, both young and old, during the last century and a half since its publication.

Thoreau states that “I maintained myself thus solely be the labor of my hands, and I found that, by working about six weeks in a year, I could meet all the expenses of living.”

A couple pages later he writes, “to maintain one’s self on this earth is not a hardship, but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely… It is not necessary that a man should earn his living by the sweat of his brow, unless he sweats easier than I do.”

Much more recently, Eric Brende wrote about his back-to-the-land experience in his 2005 book "Better Off." He describes the eighteen-months the he and his partner Mary spent in a semi-Amish community at an undisclosed location in the U.S. During that time, they benefited from the help and advice of the neighboring family, the Millers – who were also the owners of Eric’s rented home.

Eric and Mary arrive in the community with little money or practical gardening and construction experience, yet the food grows, vegetables are canned, surplus produce is sold, albeit with difficulty. While Brendte tries to temper the romantic tone of the message in his book by writing some rational advice in the final “P.S.” chapter, much of his story creates the impression of an ease of existence that this life choice might offer.

I arrived at this property five years ago. I have a lot of construction, mechanical, and other trades skills to draw on. I had dabbled with gardening, hunting and fishing, but in those areas especially I have a lot to learn.

For the first few years, Tova and I did little on the property other than machete back the encroaching blackberries, build a few raised-bed gardens beside the house, and prune the existing fruit trees. There were also a few emergency repairs done – such as a new roof on the house and replacing most of one wall and part of the floor after I discovered major carpenter-ant damage. Beyond that, we were both consumed with writing and academic projects on one hand, and finding enough cash work to pay basic bills and the mortgage.

As I wrote about in the “September” post, I am sometimes overwhelmed with the volume of small chores that can consume days or even years. That is a reality that I find missing in the two books mentioned above. I wonder about that discrepancy of experience between their accounts versus those of my unpublished neighbors and my own past few years. Was it really that much easier for Thoreau to find self-sufficiency and contentment strictly because of his wise choices? Is it actually possible in this present time to arrive in a rural community and begin with little skill or finance and yet sustain yourselves with small-scale agriculture?

I think that both accounts leave out some critical factors – Thoreau’s in particular. Thoreau was given free use of cleared land that had lay fallow for some time so that he was able to rely on its existing fertility for that short time period rather than using soil inputs. In the second year he decides to plant only 1/3 acre rather than the 2 ½ he did in the previous year.
“...if one could live simply and eat only the crop which he raised, and raise no more than he ate, and not exchange it for an insufficient quantity of more luxurious and expensive things, he would need to cultivate only a few rods of ground.”

In this way, he concludes that he can simply move from one location to the next without returning manure or other inputs to the soil.

He partially justifies this plan by observing that he wasn’t the owner, but merely a “squatter.” Of course, this in turn might lead to a discussion of the “Tragedy of the Commons” debate, wherein free access to common land can be a huge benefit to a wider community until that population rises beyond a certain point, or an individual or group decides to profit from the common land without returning to it at least as much as was harvested – even if that return is in the form of manure.

Another major missing element in Thoreau’s account is his pattern of almost daily meals at his mother’s house in Concord. There is nothing wrong with that reliance on the generosity of family and friends to supplement our own production, but that economic input needs to be emphasized rather than leaving the impression of the ease of rural life – i.e. a few hours in the garden, and the rest of the time lazy fishing, writing, feeding crumbs to a cabin mouse.

I thought that Brende also creates an the impression of relative ease to sustain the physical part of life necessities – food, shelter, etc. in the main body of his book. That said, I did appreciate his last few pages of post-experience reflection where he gave some more sober words of advice to would-be pioneers. However, in many ways, the two messages seemed to be in conflict.

Perhaps, in both of these books, the contradictions result mostly from the desire to paint a picture that is more uplifting than the complete experience would give – either because an optimistic flavour would more attract a publisher and subsequently sell in the book market; or because that is the message that the authors felt a reading public needed to hear at this point in time. Some breath of hope.

Whether or not I accept their message as a whole, a few of their simple wisdoms are critical and apply no matter how we choose to live.

-Brende repeats in both words and actions, “Never bring in more technology than necessary.”

Is it the novelty of the item and or desire to not miss out on what others are doing? Or is it the advertiser’s convincing portrayal of the easy life that will follow your purchase? … because eventually we have to recognize that very rarely do we actually gain that promised life-of-ease, contentment and satisfaction simply by buying the next piece of hardware.

As a starting point, we can use Thoreau’s self-interest equation – …the cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.
We have to consider the time it takes to earn the funds to purchase the item; the effort to learn to operate it, and often unquestioningly changing our life patterns to accommodate the technology (such as accepting the distraction sending and receiving text messages rather than being completely engaged in the face to face interactions with family and friends we once relied upon).
And beyond that – we also have to consider the effects outside our immediate experience with this technology. The cost to the environment of this industry – past, present, and future. The cost to quality of life – in our own personal experience, to those workers poisoned by the industry, to those who have never used these technologies but still suffer from the toxic fallout. And the effect it has on society – shifting from direct interaction (human touch, physical presence, etc) to that of Facebook friends and digital relationships.

This isn’t to say that these technologies are wrong or evil, but rather – returning to Brende’s simple point of advice – consider and question all of these new toys and technologies before inviting them into your life. And think beyond your immediate diversion and novelty experience.
What am I truly missing in life, if anything, and will this technology satisfy that need or desire? And simultaneosly we have to ask, Can I justify the real and complete cost of that item - financially, politically, socially, environmentally?

In response to the latter question, people often impatiently and defensively reply that it is impossible to get at any real answers - not knowing where to start; too time-consuming; nit-picking, etc. However, I believe that, especially at this point in time and technology, ignorance is a concious choice fueled by laziness and selfishness.

As always, I welcome any comments from other groups or individuals who are working through these questions in their own way.

The First Deer

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Mostly Quiet

During the first week of September, I hiked and camped on T. Island off the coast of British Columbia. I spent my days searching for animal tracks and Black-tail deer. I examined their droppings, rubbing them between my fingers and comparing the shine and size and softness. I discovered the location of scrapes on alder and cedar trees where bucks return again and again to rub the velvet off their new antlers. There were plenty of does and fawns in open areas, but bucks usually stay out of sight during daylight hours. They push in deep under thickets or behind tall salal bushes so that they’re well hidden from hunters

For the first three days on the island, I didn’t speak a single word. I walked and ate and slept alone. I would usually stop in the afternoon to eat the fruit and cheese I’d brought along. If it was hot, I would swim in the ocean at one of the isolated coves and then find a mossy bluff for a nap. Later, as the afternoon sun began to cool, I would find a good spot to wait and watch for the deer to begin moving again.

On the fourth day, my friend Cowpoke arrived to camp beside me. He’s an odd and angular character, with thick glasses and a red beret, but he has focused his life around animals and has become a teacher for me. Sometimes we hiked together. At other times we went our own ways and then met again to cook supper as the sky grew dark.

Two days later, just as the light was fading in the early evening and I was standing alone behind a large cedar stump, a proud three-point buck stepped out from the forest and into the grassy meadow. I was wearing Cowpoke’s camouflage pants and jacket. There was just a light breath of evening breeze working in my favour, and I felt a pocket of cool air filling the meadow. The buck took three careful steps into the tall grass. Then he stopped, staring out across the field, his disproportionately large ears turning independently, searching for any hint of danger.

On T. Island there aren’t any bears or cougars or wolves. Man is a deer’s only predator, and bucks seem to be aware of that, tracking the yearly cycles to anticipate the start of hunting season. Throughout the month of August, you can often see bucks boldly moving through open areas. Sometimes they even use my truck bumper to scrape the velvet from their antlers, but as September arrives bucks disappear into thicker forests during daylight hours.

Last winter, in January, I made this same trip with Cowpoke. It was my first visit to the island, and we hiked through the hills and along ocean bluffs. Sometimes there was snow or ice on the ground. Sometimes it was pouring rain. Often it was hard to sleep in the tent at night with storm winds tearing at the fabric, and giant cedars and Douglas firs groaning and bending, massive branches shaking the ground when they crashed down near our tent.

I didn’t fire a single shot with the crossbow during that trip. A number of times I had the cross-hairs in the scope set just above and behind a deer’s forward shoulder, on the soft entry to his heart and lungs and body organs, but each time I had to relax my trigger finger. I had never killed a deer before. Sometimes I started to question what I was trying to do. Other times a single branch blocked a clear shot to the kill zone, or the distance was slightly beyond what I was confident to fire, or the light had faded to the point that the scope image was too vague and faint. Sometimes the reasons were less clear.

On this September evening, during the first week of the hunting season when only bows are allowed, the buck moved closer to where I stood motionless. I moved only my eyes to scan the meadow. He stopped again and began feeding sixty feet away – a perfect distance for a shot with a crossbow bolt, but his body angle was difficult. So I waited. I had the cedar stump to brace against. The scope sight and the bow were steady. I wanted him to turn and put his flank more square to my shot. I remained still. Quiet breaths. The light faded and daytime colors began to slip into evening greys. I watched through the crosshairs, both eyes open, my index finger still outside the trigger guard.

After so many hikes, and years of reflection on whether it was ethical or natural to kill another beautiful being and to eat its flesh, I had settled with my decision. I knew that I could argue well for so many different viewpoints – animal rights, doing the least harm, the health of our food, environmental concerns, respect for all life, sustainable sustenance, anthropological and cultural beliefs, and on and on. But at this moment I was ready to set aside that endless internal circle of questions and the judgements I felt from inside and out.

I would wait for the right shot. I would be as certain as is physically possible. I would wait until the deer was close, and until the shot was clear, and I could see into his eyes, the movement of his breath in his nostrils and lungs, his chest swelling and contracting, his ears canting side to side. I felt confident now that I could field-dress the animal so that his essence, meat, hide and organs would all be treated well, with respect and without waste. It was still about killing another sentient being, but I would also consider the deer as a gift offered to me. And with every gift accepted, I understood, there are also these obligations.

I looked through the scope, cross-hairs just behind the upper part of his shoulder. I consciously turned off my heart fears and focused only on the decision to kill well. The three-point buck stopped eating, and he looked up from the meadow grass. Still I waited. He turned his head toward me. My finger moved to the trigger. The metal against my skin. Then he turned a little more, this time with his chest and body as well so that the cross hairs rested solidly on his heart and organs. I breathed in and out again. At the end of the exhale I began to squeeze my right index finger through the long trigger action, moving smoothly until it stiffens slightly at the threshold point. Still steady. I pulled through the point of resistance.

The crossbow bolt shot across the space between us. A frail rubber O-ring held the expanding broad-head tip closed and compact during the brief flight. Then the impact against his body. The rubber ring snapping as the broad-head tore into his chest, forcing the razors open so that they could rip and tear through his organs, through his heart and lungs and his flesh.

The deer jolted upwards. He exploded running, cloven hooves tearing up the grass and leaves and cedar needles as the evening darkened. I watched the first part through the scope, not moving the crosshairs, following through like I’d practiced time and time again on target cardboards. For a second I doubted my shot. I wondered if I’d missed completely, or if the bolt had just glanced off his body and startled him. For a second I wondered at what I’d done, why I chose to kill this proud deer, all of the arguments, the ‘fors’ and ‘againsts’, but I pushed it out my mind. I focused only on finding the blood trail and of finishing what I had started.

Twenty feet from where he had been standing, I found the bolt on the ground. One of the blades was twisted out of shape, but his blood drops smeared the length of the fletching so that I knew it had passed completely through his body. I saw the scuff marks and loose pebbles where he had rounded the corner, charging for cover in the forest, thinking only of thickets and bushes where he could burrow and hide.

A three-point buck. He must have known without words that he should never have walked into an open meadow against a headwind. He was old enough to have experience, to recognize the risk. He must have avoided other close calls on T. Island with all of the hunters that come every year. Maybe he first tried to deny what had happened, but likely he already knew that he was dying.

Did he feel ashamed? Was he angry with some god, or at himself? Had he seen me at all, and did he understand where the sudden pain had come from? Was he embarrassed to be dying beneath his tall crown of proud antlers still red from the alder and cedar rubs? I didn’t wonder about these questions at that time.

I waited motionless until after he had charged around the corner, and then I followed his desperate tracks as they me led towards the forest. The first explosion of panic had carried him in full flight through a small pocket of trees, his legs and body fuelled by reflex and what was left of the stored power in his body. Even with his blood draining onto the grass and needles, his desire was enough to lift him across the early stretch of the meadow until after what was only a few short seconds, but seemed so much longer, he felt the unforgiving pull of gravity and the release and the emptiness.

When I rounded the corner, I saw his body lying in the meadow where he had collapsed still thirty feet before the trees. He tried once to lift his chin, but his head was already down under the weight of the antlers. If he’d managed to reach the forest, it would have been hard to follow him in the early darkness. He would have escaped deep beneath the low branches and scrub, hoping to lose me so that he could die alone with his sorrow.

By the time I knelt beside the deer, he was breathing only the shallowest of breaths. Seconds later, even that stopped. I spoke quietly, to myself or to him. I took hold of his antler to steady his head. I reached across him, and with the hunting knife in my other hand, I cut through his neck, his wind pipe and arteries to finish bleeding his heart. Only a trickle flowed from the opening.

The sky was almost dark, and the autumn air was growing cold. I called Cowpoke to join me, and we put on headlamps and used a block and tackle to hang the deer from a sturdy tree. I used my hunting knife to cut a circle through the fatty tissue around the anus and its attached intestine that leads into the body. I took a short cord and cinched it around the exit to stop feces from contaminating the meat. Using the same knife, I slit the hide on the deer’s belly from its crotch to its sternum, and then split the breastbone to open the body cavity wide.

The deer’s stomach and intestines were still warm. As they spilled out of his body, we used our hands to control them, fingers cradling his intestines to keep the bladder intact, and to separate the liver and kidneys from what was going to fall and eventually feed other animals. I reached inside to pull loose a last attachment from the anus so that the cinched cord followed everything out through the belly as it fell free to the ground. We used our knives to free the connective tissue binding the hide, pulling from underneath to “fist” the hide from the deer’s body, cutting it free from his legs leaving the head and antlers still attached until daylight. By the light of our headlamps, we picked out loose hairs with a soft rag and then wrapped the hanging body in a clean sheet to keep flies and animals from the meat through the night.

It was colder by then so that I knew that the deer would cool quickly. We would have to get moving early in the morning to take it from the forest before the sun warmed the air. Cowpoke built a campfire to sit by. We sat and talked. Sometimes I would walk over to look again at the white sheet hanging ghostly in the night, now a few spreading stains near the bottom hem where the last blood was draining.

Eventually Cowpoke fell asleep beside the fire. I’d kept him awake most of night helping me and guiding all of the work on my first killed deer. In the morning he’d be tired and his body would ache, but if I made a pot of coffee early, he wouldn’t complain. That’s the way he is.

I lost track of time. I remember that at some point during the night, I chased away two raccoons and, later, a squirrel that I saw crossing on the branch above the deer. A loon sang her lonely song in the dark, but with Cowpoke sleeping across from the fire and the deer hanging behind me in the shadows, I didn’t feel alone. I stoked the fire for company and kept it burning through the hours of the night. A number of times an owl called and it echoed in the hills. Once in a while I would hear the roll of ocean water washing in on a nearby pebble beach, and sometimes I noticed the comforting crackle as the firewood burned. But besides those sounds, I can’t remember hearing anything else. Mostly it was quiet.

September

September – Harvest and the Long List

September is about the shifting seasons, from summer heat and sunshine, to the cooler nights of autumn, perhaps the first rains again after the drought of July and August. Most of the garden production has to be picked, and, with that, we have to decide what to do with the harvest. Canning, freezing (if you have electricity), drying, fermenting, eating, and sharing.

We harvested most of the tomatoes this month, and the beans and peas. We pulled many of the carrots, turnips, and beets near the end of the month, and most of our lettuce greens has already bolted - I think that this was due to choosing a garden location with too much direct sunshine. As well, we picked most of our apples to keep ahead of the black bears, although they did claim the final King Apple tree while we were away for a few days near the end of the month.

During that same trip, Stellar Jays invaded the ripening grapes and left us nothing. My neighbors use fine-mesh fishnet to cover their grapes during the late season weeks. And another neighbour regularly hangs CDs from the cherry tree branches as the fruits begin to ripen. She says that she has to use them only during that week or two, otherwise the birds begin to ignore the flashing and movements. As far as the coveted plum harvest, there was a lot less fruit than usual this year, but those we did pick, I cleaned, pitted and then froze at friend’s house in town.

I’ve started batches of wine and cider. I have about 9 gallons of apple-cider (transparents and macintosh) in the earliest batch; 8 gallons of yellow plum wine; and 10 gallons of apple-pear cider. – All of this is fermenting in 5-gallon glass carboys or 1-gallon jugs. Later, when life slows down, I’ll take all of the frozen blackberries and Italian plums to make another 10 gallons of wine.

On September 6, I finally killed my first deer. Since the temperature is still quite warm, making it impossible to safely hang the meat for a number of days in one of my buildings, I chose to have a local butcher hang the deer for a week and then cut it into roasts, loin-chops, sausages and ground deer. I hope that later in the season I will be able to get another deer and butcher that one myself.

The largest life shift that took place in the past month was that I broke up with Tova, my partner of 7 years. While I’ve spent a lot of my life in solitary pursuits (single-hand sailing, forestry towerman, long solo road trips, ,…) the house can seem very quiet after having shared it with a strong personality for many years. It has been giving me time to wonder why so many of us always yearn for that which we don’t have at that moment. And what is so important about finding time and space to write another book that might sell a few thousand copies and then disappear; and why am I working so long and hard on an endless “to-do” list just to grow and hunt for food, and to carve out a lifestyle that might be more sustainable in a physical sense. Likely I could sell this place and pursue a life focused on those same values, in a more mainstream pathway that would leave me more free-time (i.e. free from land and house and garden work), and perhaps thereby exist in a style that would have satisfied Tova as well. I don’t have any answers.

A partial list of all of those tiny things that can swallow up your life – unless you learn to breathe calmly, and have them become your joy and meditation

-moving laundry on and off the line between rains.
- -shovelling out the compost toilet into composting bins
-firewood (cutting, hauling, splitting, stacking, carrying back inside, burning it)
-cleaning stove and chimney
-mouse-proofing the muddy crawlspace under the house (with incredible help from Tova)
-maintaining the access road and driveway (seeding shoulders; cutting drainage lines, new culverts, etc)
-orchards (planting, pruning, picking, pests, black bears, and more)
-seeding new areas ( raking, seeding, watering, building scarecrows, weeding)
-preserving harvest (sauerkraut, fermenting, canning, drying, pickling)
-fending off bears; fixing compost fence and fruit trees after they break them
-collecting seaweed – to eat, compost

And that long list of all those things that are broken and demanding attention:

Cracks in the chimney; collapsing retaining seawall, rotting logs under my small house; corroded and broken telephone line that runs along the forest floor and along the shallow section of the ocean inlet for about a kilometre… and wondering why my new blueberry plants look so unhappy; and what are those small black worms on the leaves of the new cherry trees; and making plans for a new greywater system; and finishing the new well; and starting the first work on the microhydro system I will be building as a partnership with 3 other neighbors….

And through all of that, I continue to talk to other individuals/couples/families who might be interested in buying a share of the property in order to establish a landshare title – working together so that we can all afford to live affordably in a beautiful place, sharing the bounty and produce of the land as well as the responsibility to maintain it. When they read this post, they will likely have to do some soul-searching before deciding to commit.

Scarecrows on the Hillside

As we continue looking for one or two people to share our property – creating a land-share coop community – we continue to change the shape and mix of the landscape. Our neighbour Rod came down the hill with his excavator to begin cutting through a large sand berm in order to move the access driveway from the waterfront area to the back of the property. At the same time this would leave a large and beautiful part that could then be used for fruit and nut trees, berry production, and one or two sites to build a modest home or cottage. Unfortunately, after the initial flurry of activity with the excavator, the transmission in Rod’s gravel truck collapsed as he was bringing it to the property to have me drive it while he loaded the road material in the back.


That happened about two weeks ago, and we’re still waiting for the truck to be repaired and restart the road project. The fortunate part is that it allowed me time to begin working on the hill slope behind our house using a chainsaw and machete rather than working it first with the machine. As I began clearing, one tree at a time, I found good patches of salal berries, elderberries, huckleberries perched on rotting stumps, and a winter run-off that might be good with cranberries mixed in with the existing ferns. Rather than having the machine rip out the trees and stack them on a burn pile, I was able to look at each one and decide which ones I would leave to cast some thin shade to certain zones, or to use their root systems to maintain an open slope.
It also meant that I could cut up and haul more of the wood for firewood, and machete off all the branches to be put in a separate pile to be chipped into mulch later on. Slowing down gave me the chance to look at the natural rolls and curves and then imagine how we might be able to utilize them as we start creating a mix of fruit trees, berry patches, native plants, and ground cover that will help build the soil and provide feed for whatever animals we decide to raise next spring (rabbits, chickens, sheep??)

We sowed our clover/oats/perennial rye mix just before and during a good rain. Following the advice of another neighbour, we gave the ground a light raking, then covered as much of that area as possible with thin tarps in order to prevent birds from eating all of the loose seeds. As well, since there isn’t much rain predicted for the near future, and our gravity feed water doesn’t have enough pressure for a sprinkler system, the tarps trapped the moisture and raised the ground temperatures. Within two or three days the seeds began to germinate.
I think that we should have left the tarps on for another few days, even if the plants began to look white and limp, before taking off the tarps. This would have allowed more of the slow seeds to germinate as well. It also would have given us another couple days before we had to start the time consuming task of watering with a hose and nozzle for a couple hours each morning and evening.

But it is beautiful to see the new green carpet of clover and rye beginning to take root. And the scare crows spread around the hillside look like they are enjoying themselves in the breeze. I even gave each one a solar light to help them through the few short-night hours.

New Gardens

New Gardens

This year we’ve expanded the gardens by two or three times of what we had last year. Yet it’s still just a start of what we hope to build.
It is only mid-May, and I have to admit that I let my enthusiasm get away on me a couple of times, so that I wasted a certain amount of effort by starting seeds weeks ahead of the season, and transplanting some starts outside too early as well. It just means that I had to start over again. The garden is teaching me patience and peace of mind.

The land here has a wide mix of growing conditions. The back garden has some decent soil mixed with clay. All of that garden area holds on to good moisture, even during long, hot dry stretches. In some sections I have mixed in extra sand and/or peat to loosen the soil and improve drainage. At present I have started garlic, artichokes, Jerusalem artichokes, climbing peas, kale, chicory, leeks, potatoes, carrots, blueberries, gooseberries, red currants, strawberries, broccoli, brussel sprouts and various herbs. By the end of the month we will transplant various squash, cucumbers, melons, cabbage, bush beans and tomatillos into this area.
The front gardens are a series of winding raised beds. We plan to add to this garden since it gets the best sun exposure on the property. We have built up most of the soil in this section, mixing topsoil, sand, peat, compost, manure, seaweed, etc.. In the less exposed beds lettuce, kohlrabi, turnips, various Chinese greens, radishes, parsley, spinach, garden cress, carrots, broccoli, brussel sprouts and chard are growing. In other beds there are more climbing and bush peas, many herbs, broccoli, arrugula, kale and sunflowers. Within the next couple weeks we will transplant about a dozen varieties of tomatoes that are now growing in the small green house.

By planting small amounts in various areas, I hope to discover this year what plants work best in each area, and under what soil conditions.
The new and large area that will be opened up after building the new driveway, will have less than full sun exposure(depending on how many trees we decide to cut), and is almost completely sand and sandy clay in some areas. In other words, even if we bring in extra soil to build beds or plant trees, the area will be ‘extremely’ well-drained. That said, there should be plenty of water for moderate but consistent irrigation.

** If experienced gardeners/farmers have suggestions concerning what to plant in this area, I would appreciate their advice. *** We plan to seed native grasses over the entire area as well so as to be able to raise small animals (poultry, rabbits, ducks??) starting next year – for meat, eggs, and manure.

Beyond all of these gardens, the property has about a 10 or 11 mature apple and plum trees, along with another dozen young plum and apple varieties donated to me by gardening friends in Victoria.
I am waiting for the machine-work to complete the new driveway and landscape terraces by early June so that I can plant 14 more potted fruit trees (7 types of cherries, and the rest are pears, plums and apples) into the ground, as well as a number of fig trees and other berry bushes.

After three weeks of sunshine and almost no precipitation, it has started to rain steady and beautiful this afternoon. I’ll have a mess of black slugs to deal with, but the gardens will love the moisture.

Slug Patrol

Slug Patrol


Every morning starts with a walk through the gardens, the greenhouse, and the collection of fruit trees – especially the potted trees that are still waiting to go into the ground this year after all of the machine work is finished where the old driveway used to run.
I call it the “slug patrol” but it really involves more than just hunting out the slimy black creatures that are doing their best to reclaim my back garden. During the last four years I haven’t done much back there so that the surrounding black berries pushed in from the sides, horsetails and morning glories had free reign, raccoons ravaged the compost pile so that the area began a fast return to the wild. Still, during that time, I would occasionally hack out a clearing to plant a garlic patch (it is the only truly self-sustaining crop that survives back there) each fall. The three apple trees produce well for us, if we can get in before a black bear and her cub arrive just as the fruit ripens. There are two clumps of rhubarb that emerge from the tangle every spring and early summer. And there is also a large square section with old strawberry plants that somehow still produce even while having to compete with the slug, horsetail, black-berry, etc. onslaught each season.
This year, I decided to take back a small section of this back-garden tangle to plant some pole beans and climbing peas. While working compost into the garden, I noticed that the soil seemed quite a bit better than other parts of the property. Encouraged by this, I cleaned up another raised bed area for different carrots. Before the week was over, I’d moved from one section to another, so that a potato patch went in; a cabbage section was cleared; a long row with eight new blueberry plants now skirts along one edge after I cut back the blackberries. Artichokes, gooseberry, more leaks and kale and chicory have a foothold in the worst sections, and another large raised bed is waiting for more squash, cucumbers and beans. One more bonus is that the garlic is looking better than any crop we planted in earlier years.
The gardens in front of the house are a little easier to maintain. They aren’t so close to the encroaching wild. Plus, since I walk past them throughout the day, I regularly notice if a slug, or our cat, is becoming too interested in one of the plots.
The slug-patrol gives me a chance to start my day outside, making sure that no pest is given any extra daytime hours after their long night feeding on our vegetable starts. I might have to repair damage from last night’s wind, or do some watering if things are dry. Sometimes I come up with a new garden plan for next season, or just a way to make it easier this year. But mostly it’s a chance to really enjoy each new bit of growth and change that can sometimes happen in the span of just one day.

Taking time to Write

A Second Introduction

Taking Time to Write

It feels good to finally take a moment and begin recording a few thoughts and events that have taken place since the new year began.


When you live on a small plot of land in the rainforest of the Pacific Northwest, you have to make a point of doing something – some bit of maintenance, building, planting, weeding, wood cutting, fixing, etc – everyday just to hold on to what you have. Rainy winter months want to wash your efforts away. Mould grows in hidden corners. Carpenter ants and termites thrive in these conditions. The forest floor and fern bogs behind the house are black with rotting organics.
It reminds me in some ways of the experience I wrote about while in the Darien jungle region of Panama. There can be a claustrophobia that engulfs you in a rainforest. It seems that you can never fully set down your machete if you want to keep a little patch of sky and open air around you. And if you were to sit patiently for long enough in that open patch, then the surrounding bole-climbing vines would follow your shadow lines and climb over you and encase you; slugs and worms, centipedes and maggots all doing their part to turn your patient body back into fertile soil.

I also understand that most of these feelings come from the desire to change a natural forest into something different - my vision of what I want to see here – a mix of forest and gardens, orchards and wetlands. Likely the best thing I can do is to look at what already works here (forest stands, mushrooms, wild berries and fruits, native ground cover mixes, etc.), and then adapt much of my plans to work with those elements. I also have to accept that many of these firmly-established populations such as slugs, deer, bears, horse-tails, and black berries are often going to look at my puny efforts as their good fortune. Perhaps they’ll silently thank me as they choke my gardens or harvest the vegetables and fruits while I sleep at night. All I can do is to say “you’re welcome.” I’ll look at the disaster scene in the early morning, drink my coffee, and make a new plan.

Since deciding to make this shift to a more sustainable balance of life, I had a very slow start for the first few months. Much of that was caused by the need to earn enough to make the payments on the half of the mortgage that my former land-partner (and very good friend, Bill) used to be responsible for. After he decided that he wouldn’t be able to spread himself between his home in California and his second home on this ocean inlet, I took over his payments and began the process of searching for one to three other partners to own the land as a community co-op land-share title. As of last month, another good friend, Kymo, has decided to purchase a ¼ share and to build his cabin with materials that exist on the land (Cedar, Douglas Fir, stone, sand, clay, etc).
In response to that, I have begun work to move the road access to the back of the property. By doing this, we will free up the former driveway area along the waterfront, for orchards, gardens and building sites. It will also give us better access to the back of the property where there are growing conditions that might be suitable conditions for other food gardens (mushrooms, Wasabi, blueberries, …) as well as potential habitat for raising ducks.

For the last few months, I’ve been working steadily on the property. However, similar to the activity of trying to write a book, or to “fix-up” an old sailboat, it often seems like we are accomplishing nothing. With every project completed, I see three new ones that I hadn’t noticed before. And for every simple task to do, there are three steps ahead just to get to that task. For instance, Tova and I wanted to cut some firewood from a big Douglas Fir that had fallen during a storm. Before we could get to that project, I remembered that the chain on our saw had to be sharpened, and that I needed to get to town to buy a new file for that. As well I noticed that the truck’s back tire was low on air, and in order to fill the tire I would have to do some repair work on the compressor’s regulator to get the tank to fill, and then drag out the generator (which hadn’t been used for months) in order to run the compressor since our smaller solar inverter isn’t strong enough to start the compressor. You get the picture.

In the last couple months, it has felt so good to get back to the simple and physical task of preparing and planting gardens around the house.

In his beautiful book "Trauma Farm: A Rebel History of Rural Life," Brian Brett writes:

In a garden you learn the value of time. Weeding, like farming, is never accomplished. It’s an activity, not a result, so a good gardener learns not to fret about finishing a job… You work until your mind runs free. (p. 77-78)

I will likely quote more from Brett’s beautiful book in future posts. His family’s experience during their past eighteen years on Willow Pond Farm is a very worthwhile read.

I find that even if I’m not trying to write a book, it’s good to take the time to record a few notes, and maybe even sketch or photograph some scene or detail that we noticed while weeding or building. It helps to stop all of the busy-ness.
These occasional notes and photos are better than trying to record “everything” – something that often happens when gathering material for a magazine article or book. In that situation, I can sometimes get so caught up in the act of documenting the moment that I end up with the record, yet having completely missed the true experience. It has to be somewhere between the two.