The Off Season ... And a bit of blog hiatus (but stay tuned...)

So it's been two months now since work began winding down in the Yukon.  By mid-September the snow started to fall in Beaver Creek, and I left the Yukon on October 1st for coastal BC, Washington and Oregon.

I'll be spending much of the off season putting my energy into a couple other creative projects of mine.  As such, the blog will likely not be as active as it was through the summer (surpassed 350 views for July alone!), though I do hope to keep the blogs' momentum going.  The last year has been a good one, having met some awesome people from diverse communities all over the continent, having learned something from each community.

A few of the most empowering of experiences I've had (and have chosen to write about on here) in the last year have been my posts about mutual aid and relief work in Brooklyn, NY following Hurricane Sandy last November, radical resourcefulness at the Florida Earthskills Gathering last February, and the tales of urban farming and local resilience from the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans last March.  If you have an hour to spare, I highly recommend reading/watching the post about Hurricane Sandy relief.

I hope to attend a primitive skills gathering over the winter, and to do a bit of farm work further south.  I'm unsure how present I'll be on the blog over the winter, but stay tuned. We're just gearin' up.

Winter in the Yukon often begins in the season of Summer

Traditional Landscaping is too 1950s.

A few shots from the summer...

Grow your own food.  Repurpose garbage.  Let your weeds grow tall. 

It looks good, and produces food and medicine for you.  And it's free.

Edible plants: Curly kale, Ornamental kale, Calendula, Nastertium, Tomato, Mint, Terragon, Basil, Thyme

Native plants: Fireweed, Yarrow, Caribou

High Latitude Gardening: Round Two (grow greens this far north!)

Fireweed, Black Spruce and direct sunlight at 10:30pm

Spinach
Green onion
Oak leaf lettuce
Green beans
Radishes
Turnips
Carrots
Cucumber
Dino kale
Curly Kale
Red Russian Kale
Beets
Alaska Peas
Swiss Chard
Celery
Tomatoes

That's what we're growin'.  While some of my stash has been going missing at the White River Community Garden on the other end of town (see last post..) the greenhouses that Rita, Randy and I grow in are doin' well.  You'd be surprised by the small amount of land needed to have a consistent harvest of greens and veggies.  We've been using about 40 square feet between two greenhouses and have been harvesting every single week.  The season is slowly winding down already (last night was the first frost) but the greenhouses are still producing.  We've been getting a consistent harvest of greens (easily enough to supply 3 - 4 people with their weekly share of greens) and Rita and Randy have been canning beets the last couple of days.  We've had too much that we've had to start giving away greens and veggies so they don't go bad.

We grew in greenhouses so we would be able to lock heat in through the nights and take advantage of the hot sun in the day, while we had it.  Leafy greens grow fast this far north.  We always have a consistent flow of kale and beet greens.  They don't mind the cooler nights (kale prefers it, actually), and you don't need to wait for hot sun to produce a flower until it begins producing the fruit (ie, our tomatoes and cucumber are struggling).  If I were further south I'd grow more tomatoes, but if you're in the north, your best bet is to grow leafy greens.  Ya won't be disappointed.

Typical early-season weekly harvest (mid-June).  Spinach, Radishes,
Radish microgreens, Spinach shoots, Dino, Curly and Red Russian Kale.

An early-July weekly harvest.

Late-July/Early August weekly harvest.

Chantelle sleeping amongst beet greens.

Indoor edible jungle, number one.

The downside of community gardens

Sense my sarcasm?

Harvest wild edibles and use them as tea and medicine.

This stuff grows like crazy all through the Boreal Forest.  Yarrow can be made into a tasty tea and is also used as an anti-septic.  If you get a cut or scrape while on a hike, chew on a few of its leaves for a couple minutes, and then run the leaf he affected area.  A lot of native herbs (regardless of where you live) have such properties.

Look 'em up and check 'em out.

DIY Rainwater Harvesting System made of Garbage!

                                      

The cabin I live in has no plumbing.  Although I shower and often eat on the other end of town, we've had to cart water over to the cabin from the gas station which is a 5 minute walk down the highway.  Well, we're now harvesting rainwater to cook and clean dishes with.  Things just got a little easier over at the cabin.

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The premise of this blogpost is that paying to live an environmentally and socially responsible lifestyle is backwards.  Paying for sustainability is a contradiction, and if we really want to live environmentally and socially responsible lives (in other words, if we want to be accountable for our actions when it comes to the environment, labour and our consumption), then what we have to do is radically decrease our personal consumption.  By saying this I don't mean that we should all start buying hybrid cars or ride the bus once a week and deem ourselves "doing our part".  Nor am I saying that we should merely lobby the municipal government to build bike lanes and then conclude that the "crisis is averted" because the government will save the planet for us.  What we have to do is change ourselves.

Re-skill yourself and learn how to problem solve.  Little by little.  

It's empowering.

In this blogpost I want to display how cheap, easy and creative it can be to repurpose existing resources which are found all around us.  I'm talking about resources like barrels, PVC tubing, old bike frames and tools.  In an overgrown field amongst rusty cars these resources are seen as garbage.  On a clean store shelf they are seen as commodities.

You don't need money to accomplish things.  You need skills.  And creativity.  And maybe some guts to hop into your first dumpster. 

A facilitator at the Florida Earthskills Gathering I went to in January told stories of how he took the concept of "dumpster diving" to the next level.  He was interested in making his home more sustainable and energy efficient but took a unique approach to retrofitting his home.  His goal was to spend as little money as possible.  So he started searching through dumpsters on construction sites, behind mechanics shops and big box stores.  He told us how he built a rainwater harvesting system out of things he found in the dumpster.  He spent zero dollars in its construction.  And he now doesn't use municipal water.  He collects his own, and is now one step closer to becoming off the grid.

After hearing this story I decided I wanted to do the same.  And now I have!

Wrap your head around terms like "repurposing", "reclaiming" and "radical resourcefulness".  Did you ever move old couches from the curb down the road into your bedroom or basement during Spring Cleaning when you were a kid?  How about searching through milk crates of old records which were a dollar a piece to find something you thought was rare?  Dumpster diving is just like that, but next level! 

But enough with trying to make this seem cool.

I used an old barrel, an empty cleaner tub, a bucket, 7 milk crates, some mesh and a bunch of used vacuum hose to build what collects my water for me.  I salvaged them from around the property of the cabin (there's a bit of old junk laying around from when the owner still lived here..) and from the garbage at the hotel I work at.  I also used silicon and nails.  I don't drink it, nor do I shower with it.  The water will be used to cook with, wash dishes with, and brush teeth.

1. Rain gathers on roof, flows into eves trough

2. Rainwater is diverted into used vacuum hose

3. Rainwater drains into "silk catch" (bucket filled with rocks, covered with mesh).
This filters out sediment and decreases velocity of water.

4. Rainwater drains from silk catch and is filtered for sediment
once more before entering primary basin.

5. Primary basin.

6. Secondary basin, with nozzle. 

Pie time

Whoever planted a patch of rhubarb on the hotel property years ago had a good idea.  Hidden amongst 5 foot tall fireweed was a huge rhubarb patch which now belongs to the kitchen and which will soon be in pie form.  My sidekick Carter and I harvested it from the hotel property today.  Good work, we do.

The Perks of Growing in Greenhouses

Harvest #1: Radishes.
Three weeks.

Even though we only have about 24 - 28 square feet per greenhouse, they're proving to be pretty productive.  We're using raised beds in both greenhouses.  Some of the soil was purchased in Whitehorse whereas some of it had been salvaged from planters.  

If you want try growing food but don't have the land, knowledge, nor patience to wait a whole season for a harvest, then grow radishes!  We were eatin' these things within 3 weeks of planting.  

Build a Hoop House!

Building one of these things is pretty straight forward.  If you have even the least bit of carpentry experience you and a friend could easily build one like the one Randy and I built in a couple evenings.  It can easily extend your growing season by 5 weeks, and will make warm sunny days about 8 degrees C warmer inside.

We built the 6' X 12' hoop house last week beside the one we are already using on Colleen's property.  Up here in this area of the Yukon, we are in USDA Hardiness Zone 2a (east coast equivalent would be in areas of northeastern Ontario or northern Quebec).  It's crazy to think of the difference in climate mountains make around here - on the Alaskan side of the St. Elias Mountains (about 300km south of here, on the Alaskan coast) is Zone 7b (equivilant to central Texas, or Georgia).

Anyways, USDA Hardiness Zones are used to determine what varieties of plants can grow region to region.  Zone 2a means that only plants that can withstand winter temperatures of -42.8 - 45.5 C will usually survive here.  Yes, it does (I've been told..) get that cold up here in the winter.  As such, Whitehorse (capital of the Yukon) has an average of 75 frost free days per year.  To put that in perspective, Toronto has an average of 150, whereas New Orleans has 300.

Using a hoop house is kind of like moving a piece of your land hundreds of kilometres south, into a different Hardiness Zone where there are more frost free days.  Up here in the Yukon and interior Alaska, the combination of daylight (FYI, tomorrow is the Solstice.  The sun will rise at 3:20am and set at 11:38pm) and using a hoop house makes for a delicious combo.

Supplies you will need are:

2'X4's to make the frame

1" tubing which make the hoops
(which are fitted into 2X4 frame by using a big drill bit)

Plastic covering and thin pieces of wood
(placed over plastic and drilled into frame to keep plastic covering in place)

A door, nailed to the frame.  Voila. 

A few summer projects

This’ll be fun.

A couple of the hotel buildings, in the 1960s

I’ve been back up in the Yukon for a little over a month and have three more to go until the contract at the hotel I’m working at is complete.  My job up here is to landscape and maintain the grounds at the hotel (same one as last year).  The hotel has changed a fair bit over the years, but it still has a bit of a lodgey vibe from when it was called the Alas/Kon Border Lodge when it first opened in the 1960s.  It’s been here since then and takes up a decent piece of property with the grounds requiring a fair bit of work.

Last summer was my first season working this job and coming back for this season means I know what to expect and what I need to do to have fun with it.  I also now know the land up here a bit more, the climate, the town and friends from last year so I figured I’d use the resources that exist here, coupled with a few ideas of mine, and make my summer into a giant agricultural experiment.

Beaver Creek in the 1960s -
A few lines and dots in the Boreal forest
(not much has changed)

So I came prepared and have been laying the groundwork for a few summer projects.  Here’s what I have in town to work with:

1. 35 - 40 garden beds at the hotel with a
 liberal spending budget for the landscape.

2. Greenhouse and compost at Colleen’s place.

3. White River First Nation Community Garden

   with greenhouse, compost system and tiller.

4. Lots of junk.  Old barrels, tubes,
        old fooseball tables, etc.

5. Container gardens built on skids
at the back of the property

I’ll keep ya posted on progress.

"We want y’all to go to school, do the right thing, and ride y’all bikes”

My friend in Detroit posted this short doc on riding bikes in Detroit.  Oh, how I miss racing city busses on my bike in downtown Hamilton on a hot summer day.. Enjoy!

Detroit Bike City from Alex Gallegos on Vimeo.

May = winter, when world = climate change

Not even the old-timers in town have seen snow this late.  Sure, the north has long winters, but not this long.  Check the pics.

Raised beds out back

Lonely compost awaits being spread over warm soil

The Wangell-St. Elias Mountains from town

Migration complete! Back in the Yukon.

I checked the stats on my blog, and apparently for last month I had 78 pageviews from the US, while only 24 were from Canada.  Very few American's I talked to while living in New Orleans had any idea as to where the Yukon was, so I carefully labelled the map below, just for you guys!

I arrived back in Beaver Creek, Yukon yesterday.  There's still a foot of snow on the ground.  It's 9:30pm and the sun is still pretty high in the sky.  Today I got started on germinating seeds.  

Wearing three sweaters at once never felt so good.

(fyi - Everyone talks like this in Canada.  Everyone.)

Grow food, be part of the creation of a local food system AND make a living? Yes, such a thing IS possible..

Your typical high-end restaurant can be a really effective tool in creating a local food system.  They like their food fresh and want to be able to acquire more product whenever they need it.  

When growing food in the city, produce can be harvested, delivered and consumed all in the same afternoon.  

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It's a simple formula that many chefs and farmers are now using to recreate our food system:

In its practical sense, chefs who choose to purchase local product (as opposed to purchasing from a nation-wide food distribution company) can often rely more on their producers.  If they run out of a specialty product in the kitchen just before the dinner rush, they can more-easily acquire more of it.  Also, local product is basically as fresh as it gets.  No nation-wide food distribution company can trump that.

In its political sense, growing food to sell to restaurants, I think, is one of the best forms of protest.  Don't want to support companies which pollute water tables in Latin America and take advantage of countries who don't have as tight of environmental regulations regarding spraying a large (and by North American standards, illegal) amount of pesticides on sweet potatoes?  How about not wanting to support Kraft solely because (until you knew) you were never given the opportunity to consent to monetarily support the environmental/public health burden that is Monsanto?  

Growing a bit of our own food is a good start and enables us to decide what hidden environmental/social costs we do or do not want to buy into.  Growing food and selling it enables others to choose what they want to purchase.  

And regardless of politics and petroleum,  it just tastes better.

Here are some pics from a farm that I had a work-trade with in my neighbourhood.  They have three areas where they grow microgreens and a specialty salad and sell them to a bunch of restaurants.  They harvest twice a week.  Microgreens are delivered to the restaurants either the same day or the day after. They deliver to about twenty restaurants and have three full-time staff.  Wicked business.

Jim bragging about growing Mustards on less than an inch of soil.

Mustards growing on sidewalk. 

The salad harvest.  Wild flowers and various native and non-native greens.  

Anyone can grow microgreens in any environment on any surface

Use cinder blocks, bricks, ice cube trays, old drawers, or anything else you can think of and try it out.

Farming below sea level

Just as a disclaimer (and a healthy reminder to those of us who often don't recognize positions of privilege and how they affect the way we communicate and understand the world and ourselves), there is a principled difference between my experience of the Lower Ninth Ward and a locals experience of the Lower Ninth Ward (i.e.: I am white, the Lower Ninth is not; I wasn't here during Hurricane Katrina, many locals [if they did return] were).  I'm talking about farming in this blogpost but there is much more history and soul to this place than growing vegetables on vacant lots.  

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The canal side of the levee.  To the left is where the barge
broke through and flooded the Lower Ninth during
Hurricane Katrina.  15 feet in 6 seconds.

I'm writing this from 2 feet beneath sea level.  The house I am staying at was purchased last year and is currently under construction.  Outside and across the street there is one occupied home, while beside it on either side there are a few vacant lots with an abandoned house a few lots further down.  Down the road are more vacant lots, some maintained while others look like meadows or small farmers fields. Around the corner there are the Make It Right homes - futuristic-looking homes built by a post-Katrina not-for-profit.  A couple blocks further is the levee which holds back the ocean from the neighbourhood.

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The Lower Ninth Ward from the levee

Living below sea level is a bit strange.  You're not able to put it fully into perspective until noticing that all houses are built on concrete slabs because if they had basements they would act more like swimming pools.  Or until you take a walk down the road and see the giant wall where the levee broke during Hurricane Katrina 8 years ago.

Post-Katrina, sections of the neighbourhood are being rebuilt in different ways.  There are the Make It Right houses (an organization headed by Brad Pitt [here we call them Brad Pitt houses]), newly constructed and affordable shotgun houses, and then there are farms.

Reminds me of Detroit!
(but with palm trees)

A lot of people argue that the Lower Ninth Ward was a food desert long before Katrina hit.  For anyone unfamiliar with the term "food desert" and how it fits into the context of the Lower Ninth, this video will give you a quick example.  When the storm went through, it took with it the remaining small grocery stores.  Today, within a 10 minute walk, there are two gas stations which mainly sell things like ready-made fried-chicken, beer, chocolate bars, and things like canned soup, peanut butter and instant oatmeal.

The other day I woke up and wanted to go out for a coffee.  While living in any other city, this has never been much of an issue for me.  Google Maps says it take 50 minutes to walk to the closest place to get a decent cup of coffee, and the closest supermarket is an 1 hour and 40 minute walk.  As in any food desert, this all means that people who can't afford to drive / are overworked and unable to make the time commitment to get to a supermarket often don't make the trip.  In turn, the food that people consume in food deserts is often lacking in nutrition and freshness - think of having instant oatmeal for breakfast, peanut butter and jam on white bleached bread for lunch, and canned soup for dinner.  No fresh fruit or veggies.

I didn't make the trip to get the cup of coffee.

A lot of people say that Katrina offered the Lower Ninth Ward an opportunity to start from the ground up, to rebuild in a way that would have the issues of the past belong only to the past.  Small farms and community gardens have popped throughout the Lower Ninth Ward because of the lack of nutritious and fresh produce nearby and abundance of vacant land since Katrina.  The produce grown usually stays in the community, giving residents greater access to food.

Brad Pitt Houses

Heather on a roof top

One of the Capstone gardens,
where I put some time in from time to time