The return of the extreme gardener

I'm sitting in my tent as I write this, pitched by the side of the TransCanada trail, listening to the highway in the distance, pretending it's the sound of the ocean.

After six days of cycling in southern Quebec, I was returning to where I came from, back to the rawfoodist farm in the countryside, a two day ride from home. After seven hours of cycling toward the farm today, on a bridge I crossed paths with another cyclist riding in the opposite direction, doing a world tour, having covered 12,000km in the last five months. He invited me to ride with him. I turned my bike around, and started backtracking along the TransCanada trail. Backtracking happens.

I'll only be backtracking 150km or so... then on to new trails. I have no large ambitions to travel the world by bicycle, though taking advantage of the last few weeks of snow-free weather only seems to make sense in our glorious northern climate. Heading toward Montreal, perhaps Ottawa, as long as I can bear out the cold nights with insufficient gear.

Chris, who I'm riding with, is living on a budget of $40 a week for all expenses. I'm ridiculously impressed, and will surely learn a lot during the ride. $40 a week is quite close to the world median income, and half the world's population live with less than this amount. The world *average* income is much higher, because the numbers are skewed by the large incomes of richer nations, and the average person would have around $8000 per year if the world's wealth were evenly distributed. But, in reality, half of the world's population are living with around $2000 or less per year, including my fellow cyclist. Halfway down the distorted champagne glass of the world's distribution of wealth. Minimalism worth aspiring toward. Chris can be followed at

http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/world

For the first time this year, I'm riding without a bicycle garden. When starting out, I planted peas in a water bottle. They grew well, though were later feasted upon during the night by rescued bunny rabbits. Glad they served a useful purpose. With the temperature dropping below freezing some nights, it seems that bicycle gardening is no longer a reasonable ambition until next spring. Perhaps I need to plant an evergreen.

However... in more fruitful extreme gardening news, I recently made a set of edible clothing for a local compost festival, growing wheat and rye on sheets of coir. People were eating off of my shirt the evening long! Photos posted below :)

Stay tuned for the return of the extreme gardener,

Meghan


edible clothing collective

farmer revolutionary

100 millimeter diet

Saving the world, one pickle at a time

For the past year, I've been concocting an unlikely plan to save the world by making pickles. It's a simple plan, it's a plan that could almost work.

Incredibly, while chopping apples with a friend, she told me that she has a plan to save the world with fermentation. “Me too!” I exclaimed. We both looked at each other quizzically, amazed that anyone else could share the same absurd dream.

She shared her plan first. If we ferment huge quantities of food and bury it in jars under the ground, if future humans are ever in great need because their above-ground food resources are scarce, they can dig for fermented food. Not exactly the plan I had in mind, but nevertheless an interesting take on the world-saving capacities of sauerkraut.

My pickle plan goes as follows: we are currently in the process of losing sustainable skills that are essential for the continuance of humanity. While we enforce mandatory education for youngsters to learn about trigonometry and memorize the periodic table, most children and adults are unable to identify wild edibles in their own backyard. The sustainable skills that were developed over centuries and passed down through generations—finding and growing food, making tools from natural materials, building biodegradable shelters, reading the landscape, making canoes and baskets—is simply becoming lost from our cultural collective knowledge. As an eager eco-citizen, I'd like to learn it all, these skills and competencies from a sustainable past and for a sustainable future. Unfortunately, I can't learn it all. Fortunately, collectively we can.

I give to myself, and to anyone else who's up for it, the “sustainable skills challenge,” to learn at least one sustainable skill very well, well enough to teach it to others. Let's retain the sustainable elements of our cultural identity so that we can pass them on to those around us, creating a more ecological present, and pass them down to the next generations, giving them the tools for a healthier future.

Getting back to pickles. My sustainable challenge that I decided to personally undertake is fermentation, learning how to conserve foods with simple techniques so I can eat locally year-round in a northern environment. After one year, I'm considered a local 'fermentation expert' (even if I'm not quite), and I've been able to help many people in my community learn basic fermentation skills. That, in its simplicity, is my elaborate plan to save the world by making pickles.

Cultures from around the world have fermentation traditions, making foods easier to digest, and allowing us to conserve foods for months or years on end. Cucumbers will normally rot within weeks, though when conserved as pickles they can be stored for years. I'm not talking about the uniform and sterile pickles from supermarkets that are covered in distilled vinegar and preservatives. I'm talking about classic, traditional pickles that are made with salt water, genuine living foods. It's amazing—cucumbers in salty water will naturally turn into pickles (scroll down for a recipe). In a salty environment, the bacteria that cause decomposition are unable to thrive, whereas the bacteria lactobacillus are able to live, and they naturally create lactic acid, which conserves the cucumbers and gives a vinegar flavour. Incredible.

Interestingly, fermentation is the only form of food storage that can actually increase the nutritional value. With canning, freezing, and dehydration there are losses of vitamins. With fermentation, while there are surely losses of certain vitamins, other vitamins increase in quantity. For example, in the lactofermentation of vegetables, B vitamins are contributed by the lifecycle of the microorganisms.

I made about 50 litres of pickles this week, with cucumbers and fennel directly from the fields, and water from the well. In a week or two they'll be ready to go into a cold room, where they'll be stored until the snow falls. Perhaps this won't save the world in and of itself. If in doubt, I'll bury the pickles underground for future survivors.

meghan


How to make lactofermented pickles:

There are many techniques for lactofermentation. I'm describing a simple technique that I personally find works well for small batches at home, using readily available materials. Check online for other techniques, especially if you want to make large batches.

Find a clean mason jar, larger is better.

Gently clean some cucumbers in water. Smaller cucumbers tend to make better pickles. The cucumbers should at least be a couple of inches shorter than the mason jar so they fit in easily.

Add cucumbers one by one. Shove in the last couple of cucumbers tightly. Ideally you should be able to turn the jar upside down and shake it without any cucumbers coming out. If the cucumbers are loose, shove some carrots tightly in the gaps. All of the veggies should be at least an inch lower than the top of the mason jar, and tightly wedged.

Add a mix of water and salt, with about 3 tablespoons of salt per litre of water. The salt should ideally be pure, without iodine or anti-caking agents. The water should be unchlorinated (leave tap water on the counter overnight before using it for fermentation, and the chlorine will evaporate). Add this mixture, completely covering the veggies, though leaving a little air at the top of the mason jar. If the veggies are tightly packed, they shouldn't float when the water is added. If they do float, this is problematic, since exposure to air can cause them to rot.

Close the lid of the mason jar gently, as the gases produced by the microorganisms need to escape. The microorganisms will form naturally, as they are all around us, and already on the vegetables.

Water will often overflow from the mason jar during the fermentation process, so it's best to put the mason jar in a bowl or a plastic container. Cover the mason jar with a cloth to avoid contact with sunlight, and leave at room temperature.

Check your pickles every day or two, to make sure none of the veggies are floating above the water. If there is a little white yeast, just scoop it off.

After a week or two, the pickles will probably be ready. Taste them! They should taste like vinegar. When they seem ready, put them in the refrigerator for storage. If it doesn't work the first time, no worries, just keep on experimenting.

Eat them in winter. Share them with friends. Learn a sustainable skill. Save the world, one pickle at a time :)

Someone told me recently that he wants in life is to be free, and that he envisions freedom as going to an airport without a ticket, and choosing a place to go. I think this is a vision of freedom that has been sold to us by the oil companies, by the tourist industry, by Freedom 55. Unlimited choice brings us a sense of freedom, though the consequences of those choices are externalized on a global scale, through tar sands, conflicts for resources, and oil spills. One of the most difficult moves for North Americans is giving up their car. Feeling unable to unleash ourselves from unsustainable habits seems more like confinement than freedom.

I did my first solo bike trip in August, a genuine sense of liberation as I rolled alongside the St-Lawrence river at my own rhythm. I feel like a turtle, slowly moving forward without any particular need to hurry, carrying my home as I go. I added a little garden bling to the bicycle, a tuft of wheatgrass sprouting forth from the handlebars. The wild plants in August are abundant: red clover, apples, saskatoon berries, raspberries. I rode 500km round-trip to attend a permaculture course in Temiscouata, a sparsely populated region of forests and maple syrup farms.


handlebar grass

Permaculture is an approach to agriculture that is based on long-term sustainability, earthcare, human care, and the imitation of natural systems. If left on its own, the earth tends toward diversity, the soil is constantly covered by plants, and perennials become established, leading to a complex ecosystem. In most forms of modern agriculture, we do just the opposite: crops are grown in large monocultures or segregated into rows, the soil is frequently bare, and we tend to grow annual plants which demand added fertility. No wonder farming is hard work, when we are always in a struggle, always forcing the earth to be something that it isn't.

In nature, when the ground is disrupted and the soil is exposed, erosion and nutrient-loss are consequences. Hearty pioneer plants naturally establish themselves on the exposed soil, quickly solving the problem by forming a ground cover. In farming, the soil is often purposely exposed and turned with machinery, and young pioneer plants start growing to re-cover the soil. In farming, we call these pioneer plants “weeds”, bringing a negative connotation to these plants that play such a vital role in the health of our planet.

In permaculture, we work with nature rather than against it, imitating natural systems, and establishing gardens that will ideally double as ecosystems. Permaculture is a philosophy, a set of principles and ideas, rather than a specific technique. Though certain techniques, such as forest gardening and self-fertilizing gardens, are associated with permaculture because of their potential to be fully sustainable. My favourite book on permaculture is Permaculture, a Beginner's Guide by Graham Burnett, which covers the fundamental ideas and philosophy in quite a short read, bringing the ideas deeper through illuminating illustrations.



I am now at an organic farm in the Quebecois countryside that is run by vegan rawfoodists. There are vegetables abound. We've been living on “warrior juice”, passing all the vegetables through the juicer that would be less attractive to customers, as well as lactofermenting and dehydrating the less-attractive produce for the winter.

wheatgrass warriors

It's amazing to see the amount of food that could be wasted on a farm, not because the food is bad, but because consumers have been fed such a perfect vision of cosmetic produce by the mega grocery chains, so “second rate” vegetables just tend to rot unpurchased on the shelves. I love ugly tomatoes. A motto to embrace next time I'm in a grocery store :)

There are neighbors here with apple trees and plum trees, with more than they can possibly eat. We've been doing apple-runs, trading for tomatoes and cucumbers. We hooked up a gigantic trailer to my bike, eliminating the need to bring a car. The rawfoodist fellow who runs the farm has a dream of one day making farm machinery that runs on bicycle power. Looking forward to the future...

meghan

Le Jardin Mobile

Can you spot the bicycle hiding in this picture?

My bicycle garden reached new heights during the second half of our trip, bringing a mixture of pride and embarrassment as we zoomed across south-eastern Ontario. In an effort to bring extreme gardening to more impressive parts of my bicycle, I decided to create an axle garden, on the inner part of the wheel. A resounding “yes” to a crucial question that has been confounding us for centuries: can plants grow and prosper while constantly spinning? Of course they can.

Our bike ride came to an end last week, tipping the odometer at 2,000 kilometers. My experience ended the same way it began: undoing my bike into pieces, packing it up in a box, and giving my financial support to the oil industry by taking a bus. So life goes when we're in a rush, and when we prioritize our desire to travel over earthcare. In the next month, I'll cover more kilometers by bus and carpool than I did in two months by bicycle. Perhaps it's time that I more seriously evaluate my relationship with transport.

At the very least, I've now developed the competence and confidence to cover long distances with the power of my own legs, bringing the potential to more whole-heartedly adopt a sustainable approach to transport. I look forward to traveling to my garden and nearby farms by bicycle now, all within reach at 80km or less.

Another valuable lesson learned from this experience is that my body thrives when living outside. After two months of camping and biking, I was no longer experiencing problems with allergies. Within one night of returning to civilization, I once again developed a state of constantly compromised health. Time to start looking for a second-hand winter tent and embracing the benefits of the outdoors.

After returning home to Quebec, the time seemed right to plant the peas that had been patiently climbing up from my water-bottle holder to my seat post. They are now establishing roots in our hay-fed garden in St-Casimir.

So the journey continues,

Meghan

Recipe for an axle garden: Cycle 1500 kilometres to a seed sanctuary that preserves heirloom varieties. Ask for a cutting of last fall's rye. Thresh by hand. Soak rye in a stainless steel water bottle for 8 hours, then sprout for 24 hours. Sew a “pillow” for the rye using cheesecloth, with 6 layers of cheesecloth under the rye, and 2 layers of cheesecloth over the rye. Ensure in advance that the rye-pillow will fit around the axle. Sprout rye-pillow in a plastic container in panier for 2 days. When young grass begins to peek out from the cheesecloth, attach the rye-pillow to axle using safety pins. Water several times a day, spinning the wheel while watering to ensure good coverage. Enjoy.

La velorution verte

I'm becoming an extreme gardener. I'm missing out on the planting season at our veganic eco-garden back in Quebec, so I've decided to garden where I am, on a bike. We generally change locations on a daily basis, covering between 30km and 90km. We recently stopped in Beamsville Ontario for two days, and I took full advantage of this temporary stability to add mobile gardens to my ride.

My fender is now growing wheatgrass. Young sprouts of alfalfa and clover are trying to grow from the bikeframe. Pea shoots are poking their heads from a plastic bottle reclaimed from a recycling bin. And in a reused plastic food container grows a polyculture of grass, clover, radish, canola, and beet.

When we visit schools to talk about sustainable living, we spread the idea of being the change that we want to see in the world. I have now seeded the beet I want to change in the world (what do I want to change the beet into? From a seed into beet greens... from beet greens into my cells).

The bike is now receiving much more attention from strangers, along with questions about how to garden and why we're cycling. It may be a feeble attempt at food production and carbon sequestration, though it seems to be a powerful force of smiles and education.

In French, there is a term that I adore, velorution. The French word for bike is velo, so it would simply translate into English as bicycle revolution, though in French it forms a beautiful pun. The velorution is more than a mode of transport, it is a state of being in the world. It's a world where cars are replaced by bicycles as the primary mode of moving ourselves from place to place, where the streets are safe to play in, where oil use and air pollution are replaced by exercise and fresh air, where city planning and zoning ensures close proximity between our homes and our workplaces and services, where individuals can meet and greet each other while riding instead of remaining stagnant extensions of a machine, where the constant drone of motors is replaced by the occasional ding of a bell, where 15km an hour becomes the standard pace of existence. It's part of the great slowdown, to regain our humanity, self-reliance and balance through using our own energies.

Between the 1940's and 1970's, agriculture was reformed during the green revolution. Technology was used to maximize yields, bringing synethetic fertilizers, pesticides, and fossil-fuel powered machinery to the forefront of food production. Yields have increased, though we are borrowing ancient sunlight, attaining larger yields because of cheap oil, leading to an overall loss of calories (and topsoil!) from modern methods of food production.

So, in an effort to flip things around, at least on my own bike, in my own garden, and within my sphere of influence, let me start working toward a velorution verte, my personal green velorution.

Meghan



How to add a bicycle garden:

A passerby in Toronto was impressed with the concept of bicycle gardens, and suggested that I find a way to patent it and sell it. Not a fan of monetizing or patenting life and knowledge, here is all the info, freely shared...

If you'd like to add a pot with soil, simply find a way to attach it to your bike (i.e. a reclaimed plastic water bottle can easily fit in a water bottle holder. Plant densely to avoid soil loss on bumpy roads).

If you'd like to work without soil to add gardens in funky spaces, follow this technique: (1) Begin with love and intention toward the bicycle and the garden, as it requires water and attention several times a day. (2) Wet some cheesecloth. Wrap cheesecloth around the desired part of the bicycle 2 or 3 times (like the fender or the frame), ensuring that you do not inhibit the function of gear and brake cables. (3) Add seeds, preferably pre-sprouted. Grasses, like wheat and barley, are the most effective, since the single blade can easily penetrate the cheesecloth, whereas two-leaf plants tend to be suppressed. Grasses also send out a quicker and heartier root network, and grow to more impressive heights. (4) Wrap the cheesecloth once or twice over the seeds. Close it using safety pins (5) Keep the cleesecloth constantly damp. In sunny weather, this could be 10 times a day. In a cool garage, this might be twice. (6) Ride, harvest, enjoy.

We reached the outskirts of Toronto yesterday. It's a strange phenomenon when country meets city. Until this point, we had been riding through eastern Ontario, where meadows and forests were contrasted with clearcut farmland. Now that we're approaching more populated areas, clearcut farmland is contrasted against new subdivisions. In one vantage point, there is a farmers' field, a golf course, and a row of cookie-cutter houses. It's the first time since leaving Ottawa that we saw industrial parks followed by rows of commercial franchises: the McDonald's, the car dealerships, the donut shops. I wanted to take pictures of this bastardization of land and culture. But, the photos would simply show what we see every time we're on the outskirts of a large city.

This has reminded me why I don't want to live in southwestern Ontario. Even if we find a small tranquil town, it will likely be overtaken by new land developments within my lifetime. There is nothing glorious in clearcutting habitats. As a culture, we keep increasing our vision of what constitutes an appropriate size of house. We need to downsize. Generations of people before us got by with far less indoor living space. The tiny houses movement, the intentional communities movement, discovering the joys of living with roommates, the acceptance of voluntary simplicity in our own lives... these offer an opportunity to have comfortable living spaces while also putting land aside for natural spaces and habitat renewal. It's all a matter of changing our expectations, of gearing our mindset toward finding fulfillment in an ecological future.

Eastern Ontario has much more to offer in terms of natural beauty. It's true that these areas of glorious lakes and forests have been designated as tourist destinations, though at the very least they retain much of their original ecological structure.

When deciding where to live in life, I will likely find my place by bicycle. Where the cars are infrequent and the drivers are polite, where the trees line the path providing shade and comfort, where you can freely pee at the side of the road, where you can stop at a farmhouse and ask a friendly stranger if you can fill up your water bottle, where someone thought to designate bikepaths so you can ride in a carefree way lost in daydreams... that's where I want to live.

meghan

I was dreading today. On our third day of cycling, we were scheduled to do 70km with a fully loaded bike. People told me that it's not as bad as it sounds. They were right. With well-pumped tires and sunny cool weather along quiet country highways, it's a blast. Despite certain body parts being a little sore (like my shoulders), all went very well. Last night I was up until midnight helping (or attempting to help) a fellow teammate fix a bikerack, and I've been promised a shoulder massage in return, so it's shaping up to be quite a good day. Once again, worry proves to be a fairly useless emotion.

18 wheel transport trucks, another common worry on cycling trips, are a somewhat misundertood phenomenon. I will probably feel differently about this if I have any close run-ins with these gargantuan vehicles, but for the moment I've befriended them. Any time I am taking a break by the side of the road and look at the oncoming traffic racing towards me, the transport trucks fill me with fear. When I'm on the road, riding alongside them, it's like a rollercoaster when they pass. There is a whoosh of noise, and they pull you forward in a vortex of wind. There is an exhilirating thankfulness of "Wow, I'm alive!" as they barrel off into the distance.

We've left Manotick and rode into Perth today. The countryside is beautiful compared to the city, though it's still evident that the human race has been dismantling and taming nature even in more "natural" settings. We didn't see any forests. We caught occasional glimpses of wetlands and rivers, and illusions of forests in the distance that proved to be shallow lines of trees. The remaining trees of what once were forests are now simply windbreaks for farmland. I understand the need to feed ourselves, though having a system of food aquisition that is based on clearcutting, tillage, fossil-fuel powered tractors, and long-distance transport is simply destroying the habitats that took millions of years to develop and find equilibrium. No wonder people drive north to build cottages in the forests, yet another industry that is threatening natural environments.

I look forward to planting my own forest garden one day. Forest gardens, otherwise called food forests, is a type of reforestation that is focused on edible perennials. Imagine a canopy of fruit and nut trees, with grape vines climbing, a black current bush, mushrooms on fallen logs, and a groundcover of strawberries and horseradish. This is a way we can reforest, create habitats and food for wildlife, sequester carbon, create enjoyable places to unwind, all the while providing ourselves with food. Planting a forest garden now also provides a positive element to a retirement plan. Rather than investing our money in questionable stocks, we can begin to plant trees that will provide us with a plenty of nourishment in our old age... food security as an ecological pension plan.

I saw an interesting sight while riding. Someone was removing dandylions one by one from a large property. He was almost finished, and there was evidence all over the manicured lawn that he had de-lioned the whole half acre. Presumably he was being paid by the landowner, or perhaps he himself was the landowner and was determined to get every last one. The house next door hadn't mowed their lawn once since spring arrived. It had a beautiful variety of shin-high grasses, and was aglow in yellow flowers. I don't know if I'm misreading the situation, but I'm guessing that the de-lioning landowner was perhaps making a passive-aggressive statement to their neighbours, that not only are dandylions not welcome on his land, but not welcome in their neighborhood in general. I passed dozens of houses in the countryside that had lawns that made a statement of wealth... entire acres of short green grass, mowed by riding lawnmowers that spew greenhouse gases. I wonder how we will change this outdated mentality, and create a new paradigm based on habitat renewal and sustainability. Guess we need to start with the kids. And the teenagers. And the adults. And the politicians. And our neighbours. And ourselves (thanks to Olivier for reminding me to start with myself :)

With the mobile community of cyclists, I've recently started doing theatre in schools about sustainable living. The children have had wonderful suggestions about how to help the environment. I'm pleased to see that even amongst 5 year olds there is an awareness of positive efforts we can take.

Peace,

Meghan

Je m'excuse pour le manque de francais, les francophones! Je trouve plus facilement mes mots dans ma langue maternelle... mais heureusement, nous avons un francophone avec notre groupe, donc au moins je pratique la langue orale! :)