Hey now!

Last week I got an email from a woman at a Unitarian Church in Knoxville, TN. Seems someone had been helping themselves to the berries and vegetables from the church gardens planted "specifically...to provide food for the local WIC program and their food training program." When confronted about their harvesting the "foragers" (and picking from someone else's garden hardly qualifies as foraging) made reference to the Land Scouts' Knoxville Map.

Now listen here folks: foraging isn't just a fancy word for stealing. And if you're taking from somebody's garden without their permission, that's not foraging. That's stealing. So please don't do that. Or, if you insist in doing that, don't call yourself a Land Scout. That's not how we do.

Berries often grow wild and are easy to harvest without destroying the plant or taking all of them. 

Lake Flies!

Thanks to meteorologist @jefflast for pointing us to the phenomenon of lake flies hatching over Lake Winnebago. And thank you to the fine folks at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for this 2009 animation showing us instead of telling us: there are a lot of these flies.
"Millions...potentially trillions." You can read more about the hatch on the noaa.gov site here. 

At long last it is (somewhat consistently) warmer and over half the trees are leafing out. I look forward to discovering new flora and fauna as we head into our first full Wisconsin summer.

Begin Within Your Bin

We moved to Wisconsin with a worm bin. I naively left it outside all winter -- Polar Vortex and all-- and resigned myself to the death of the worms. I found two survivors under the bin this spring and rejoiced to see them. Not great worm stewardship. Some more dedicated vermicomposters go to great lengths to warm their worms through the winter.

I added dryer lint to the bin at the beginning of winter. It did not decompose (perhaps because of the declining worm population) and instead formed blanket-like mats throughout the bin. Gross, but perhaps insulating? At any rate, I will not add it again.

When we traveled south to Tennessee recently (and to beautiful, riotously technicolor spring), I was able to stock up on worms from my mother's bin. And once again we brought red wrigglers to Wisconsin. They are now burrowing, eating, and pooping through our kitchen waste and "enjoying" the balmy 60-degree F weather of the bin (roughly 20 degrees warmer than the air above).

Next winter I will ask our landlord about storing the bin in the basement. Or I will build a straw bale fort around it. Or sneak them into the basement floor of the building where I work. For now I am glad to have the bin restarted and eager to see the population grow. Not only do the worms greatly accelerate the decomposition process, allowing us to quickly compost our kitchen scraps in a relatively small space, but rooting through the bin is a nice stand-in for gardening while the soil warms up enough for plants. It satisfies my green heart and gets me outside thinking about something other than myself and work. The presence and activity of the worms is its own odd, slimy promise of spring. Thanks worms.

Thaw

When we tell people that this was our first midwestern winter they assure us, "They're not usually this cold/bad/long." It was a long winter.

Until very recently (today, yesterday) it continued to feel like winter despite the passing of the spring equinox. There was evidence of the coming warmth: most of the snow was melting, the maple tree out back had tight clusters of buds on its branches, there were more birds singing, and most of the ice fishing shacks disappeared from the Fox River.

Now the maple tree has larger buds, the river is thawed, there are more birds calling, and this evening I saw in our neighbor's yard some irises are poking out sharply under leave litter. The ground is soft with melting snow. It is an odd expectant time. The longer days help lighten our hearts. As do the rising temperatures.

The lingering piles of plowed snow. I kick at them to break up the ice and help them melt faster.

Tsyunhehkwa

Last week I got to join a group of Wisconsin gardeners, land stewards, and others to tour Tsyunhehkwa, the organic farm, commercial cannery, and natural retail store of the Oneida Nation. It is an impressive operation. I'll plan to return in the fall for their annual White Corn Harvest and Husking Bee. In addition to traditional white flint corn and cash crops, the farm includes herds of Black Angus cattle, buffalo, and an apple orchard that sells to two local retailers and holds pick-your-own hours.

In addition to the thrill of seeing buffalo (in the distance) and getting out in the winter landscape, it was great to get to meet some of the people on the tour. Among them Abby, an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer who heads up several Community Gardens with the Brown County UW-Extension Office and Gretchen and Jazz of Milwaukee's Victory Garden Initiative. Hooray for northeastern Wisconsin land stewardship and women who get things done with land and communities!

In these days when the cold feels relentless and the darkness long it is uplifting to see programs like Tsyunhehkwa and to get to meet people such as Abby, Gretchen and Jazz. It's the promise of warmer weather and future growth. 

Program manager Jeff Metoxen talks to the group about the farm.

Landless Gentry

Several months ago I received an interview request from Willi Paul, new mythologist, permaculturist, and other  -ists that I'll let you define after checking out his work. It is a) exciting when people I don't know directly learn about and express interest in this project and b) great to have smart people ask challenging questions about this work. One of the things Mr. Paul asked was, and I paraphrase, "What about Land Scouts who don't have a garden?"

Our garden-- before things started freezing.

Yes, indeed, what about that? You can read my answer here (as well as the rest of the interview), but the short answer is: you have the land wherever you are and wherever you are is your land. As more and more of us become urban dwellers, the odds are that we won't have access to the acreage or even the square footage of the generations prior. And many of us are renters, perhaps unable to plant perennials. What we have is the bustling, breathing, pulsing, system-dense cities and towns in which we live. And if we're lucky we might have a patch of full sun (6 hours+) in which we can grow some plants in containers. Or not.

The point of being a Land Scout is to get to know your land. It is not necessary to cultivate a huge and beautiful garden. It is necessary only to go out and start looking and seeing. This is a good thing for me to remember as a) we have a one-year lease on an apartment and b) it is the beginning of our first winter in Wisconsin. I have a new opportunity to go out, look, and see. After a year through the seasons I hope to know this land better-- to have met the genius loci-- and to go forth from there.

She who keeps us walking daily. And a little snow.

Begin Again

I've been feeling bad about not posting here for so long. By way of explanation for that absence: we moved to Wisconsin and now I'm Land Scouting here. More on that later. For now in the spirit of new beginnings, the value of amateur naturalism, seeing familiar land anew, and a nod to the Catholic institution where I now teach, here is a poem by Mary Oliver.

Praying

It doesn't have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don't try
to make them elaborate, this isn't
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.