Welcome to the Elders Circle Blog

By Paul Myers

– Piece originally published in The Gibsons Farm Collective Newsletter – 

I figure old hippies never die, they just keep singing “Turn Turn Turn.” With a nod to Pete Seeger and the Biblical writer of Ecclesiastes (3,000 years previously), it was the Byrds – to you youngins’, the inventors of folk rock – who had us all humming the tune (and who made a zillion bucks on it).

To everything turn, turn, turn
There is a season turn, turn, turn
And a time to every purpose
Under heaven

Whoever gets the credit, there’s a lot of wisdom in those words. Though we humans fairly worship predictability and fixed realities, the deeper reality (and to quote another world religion) is “impermanence is the only constant.” The real trick in life is to embrace this truth, however awkwardly the hug feels, and to rejoice at the new opportunities that await us around that next bend of mystery.

So here we are to tell you about a next bend, and about how exceptional our nine-year run with the Gibsons Farm Collective has been. Perhaps you go back that far with us, back when farmers Dawn, Linda and Katie were freaking out every Thursday over at the Green Room Organics shed to serve twenty or so customers. We’ve grown hugely since then, in every season turning…to every purpose.
 
So again, as the gracefully aging Dawn and Paul now hand over proprietorship of GFC to Michelle Butti of Sun Creek Farms. Michelle and her spouse Steve are mainstays in the GFC already, providing us with their heavenly products for many years. Their farm is located exactly across the road from our northern property border, on Russell, so the food pickup will be just spitting distance from us (we’ll see you there!). We are elated that amidst changes the GFC carries on, by such capable successors, and with a new burst of vision for local food sovereignty. We are also grateful again for you, for supporting this most worthy cause, the cause of healthy food and a strong community.

A time to be born, a time to die
A time to plant, a time to reap.
 
Paul and Dawn
 

By Paul Myers

– Piece originally published in The Gibsons Farm Collective Newsletter – 

Here is your sacred hideaway. Here is your haven of calm, of conversance, of predictability. Here is where you know where the teaspoons are, and where you can find the lamp switch in the dark. Here is your place of self-expression. Here is where you can feel, and be, your Self. We arrived home just a few days ago after a two-week sojourn from a far place, a place where the water faucets were turned around and the lamp switch wasn’t. In this short time away we see that the farm has changed. The season of turning seems to have gathered the force of a centrifuge. Ponds are filled now. Fallen leaves are soggy. The woodpile needs restocking. Yet this too, is home. Our hideaway. Our true selves.

The human longing for home comes from a deep place within us, much deeper than the mere comfort of familiarities. We leave the birth canal to wander. We travel far and wide through the adventure of life. But however straight or serpentine the path, in every step—would you not agree?—we are still walking homewards. To nephesh, to our true self.

Though fall presses down hard now, GFC still brings gorgeous local food to your tables, with special mention this week of the availability of farm-raised Brookbank lamb. Supplies will not last, so get here early! The lamb will be available on a first-come first-served basis this week at the pick up.

Also, Paul’s Farm-Blogs-Now-A-Book has passed the proof stage and is currently at press (if you like the blogs you will love the book!). This work of meditations and farm life pictorial will be offered exclusively at cost to our great GFC friends.
 
Paul Myers

By Paul Myers

– Piece originally published in The Gibsons Farm Collective Newsletter – 

Many years ago I took a flight from Seattle to Missoula, Montana, an unforgettable experience for one reason and one only: it was the first time I saw just how thoroughly the logging industry has touched our landscape. Almost from takeoff to landing I sat with face to glass, stunned at mile after mile of clear cut. It seemed like the whole world had a bad haircut. Yesterday I had a shimmer of that memory while on another low altitude flight, this time from Edinburgh to London. Of course, England long ago lost most of its forests, and even any sizable tract of wilderness. But my surprise this time was not about denuded landscapes. This time it was about full landscapes; specifically, the ever-present glow of lights for the entire duration of the flight. There seemed to be nowhere left that was not lit. Even more, was the ubiquitous automobile. Everywhere cars, luminescent blood vessels by night. And as we dropped to 1,000 feet on approach, there was a certain madcap hurriedness below, like legions of petrol-burning ants. Legions indeed. 400 million gallons of refined gasoline are consumed around the world every day. Despite the efforts toward ‘fuel efficiency’, world consumption of oil continues to rise. In fact, it looks like 2018 will finish out at the all-time high of 100 million barrels of crude a day. Wrap your mind around that number if you can (I can’t). A spin through the supermarket here likewise had me agog, this time at the oil-now-plastic packaging of everything, and I mean everything (bananas? really?). I went past row after row of single-use, quasi-food items with entirely superfluous added colour, crinkle, and crackle. Sheesh.

We have our work yet to do then. For of course, no nation or land is not radically different from another yet, where there are both the hard truths such as those I just described, and the hopeful gains for those with ambition to live prudent in this world with no new wildernesses. Friends of healthy, local, unwrapped food, stay the course. A change is gonna come.

Paul Myers

By Paul Myers

– Piece originally published in The Gibsons Farm Collective Newsletter – 

Can’t quite say why, but both of our vehicles have dashboard clocks that run ever so slightly slow. About once every two weeks I reset them both. Push, hold until it flashes, push, push, push. “Digital” they may be, but not so very unlike the days when, if your clock was off, you opened the front, and moved the clock hands manually to the proper time. That is to say, then and now, take the quick fix. As long as we do not get inside that clock, it won’t change. It won’t fix it itself. Instead, we change, by developing patterns that adjust for the deficiency. By learning to live with it.

This is my somewhat offbeat introduction to say that I am done growing potatoes the way I have always grown them. Years ago, when we first started planting spuds, we encountered problems: wire worms, marginal yields, and so forth. We tinkered. Tried a few different varieties. Tried planting later, then earlier. Tried watering more, then less. Tried one location, then another. But the pattern of deficiency held, and instead of getting into the inside of the problem to create the change that would last, we changed. Dawn surrendered, but only because she is less the potato addict than I am. I soldiered on alone, but began telling myself that potatoes simply “do not grow well here”. Moving the clock hands, as it were. Sure enough, this year’s harvest of my beloved Seiglindes look not much different from past years.
 
Meantime, farmer Stephanie recently showed me her potatoes, grown right here at Brookbank, virtually right next to mine. Yep, you guessed it: they are totally gorgeous. WTF?

So it’s time to step back. To observe with new eyes, then step in, but deeper. Get past the face of things, into the inner workings. Ask myself a different set of questions. Stop adjusting myself for the deficiency, content with the half-happiness of merely moving hands. Ask others for counsel. Listen to the land.  Get to the core. I just happen to love potatoes, and life, that much.

Paul Myers

By Paul Myers

–Piece originally published in the Gibsons Farm Collective newsletter–

I love a good talk on the nature of things, the ‘what and the why’ of the world, the role of people in the world, and the more prickly questions of the unseen but real. Metaphysics. Ontology. Epistemology. Existence. Reason. Universe. Nature.  That kind of stuff.


Oh shoot. Did I lose you already? Did you suddenly have chill memories of that skinny old spectacled prof with unkempt white hair and a monotone drone? Of all that arcane philosophy-speak, with its spaghetti-like conversation, and its ability to lose you faster than you can get lost on an L.A. freeway? Well, I don’t blame you. So let me bring you back, and quickly, with this claim: no word in the English language has been so humiliated, so waylaid and left for dead, as the word “philosophy,” which, easily parsed, means simply, “the love of wisdom.”
 
So let’s start again. Existence. The love of wisdom. The Universe. The love of wisdom. Nature. The love of wisdom. Reasoning. The love of wisdom. Conduct. The love of wisdom. Knowledge. The love of wisdom. The meaning of Life. The love of wisdom. I realize, of course, that I can’t blame the English language for the takeover of philosophy. The Greeks themselves lauded the pursuit of knowledge ‘for its own sake.’ In other words, from the get-go philosophy began earning its reputation for being damnably abstract, puttering about intellectually with great self-absorption, but having nothing actually to do with life on the ground, with whether you will stop on red or pay the new price on a pint of Haagen Daaz or even if you will enlist to become a sniper in Iraq. And what the Greeks started our modern institutions have perfected, such that most of our learning today comes almost entirely by reflection and almost not at all by experimentation. In fact, I used to call my student days, “life in a book-lined bomb shelter.”
 
There! I always feel so refreshed after I have vented some on Academia. Still, Academia or not, there arepowerful, intriguing, and needful questions that humans regularly find themselves asking. Am I part of a larger design? Do I have any duty to the Earth? Who is my neighbour? How do I know that what I know is what I need to know?  Is it okay to be me? Is there a God, or a ‘something’ to which I belong? In a world where we are defined by what we do, what does it mean to ‘be’?  I grant that to connect such questions with our real-world, everyday lives is not always simple, but I do have this to say: The love of wisdom! Wisdom, by definition, is “knowledge, experience, and good judgment.” Can we just get back to this please? To this trinity of formidable, life-freeing, world-changing qualities? The love of wisdom means that true philosophy embraces learning as an adventure in the world, right down in the mud, the blood and the beer of it all, and in such a manner that reason, spirituality, and ethics actually do affect whether we stop on red. True philosophy is learned when we work on the land, when we feel the wind sweeping down Elphinstone mountain, when we feast together at a pot luck. We hear it teach us not from a lectern but in wordless Nature and in the engine that will not start until we fix it. We see it budding in the seedling that rises strong thanks to our collaborative work in co-creating. It is the ground beneath our feet, the ground behind and before us. The ground of our very being.
 
Paul Myers
 
COMING SOON:  A book with selections of Paul’s GFC posts over the last few years (and farm photographs) will be published next month and available for purchase on the GFC online Fresh Sheet order page, Amazon, and the usual other outlets.

By Paul Myers

–Piece originally published in the Gibsons Farm Collective newsletter–

Lately I have been wondering again what it will all come to. Politics has finally morphed into pure entertainment, but alas, less of the Disney variety and more of the Rocky Horror kind. Xenophobia is on the rise again. Africa disintegrates with Bokom Haram and a hundred other militia-terrorist armies.  The Philippines. Thailand. Afghanistan. Palestine. Columbia. The UN currently lists more than five dozen countries where there is armed conflict. That’s a lot of fear, and a lot of loathing. There are pandemics and pestilences aplenty. Food is becoming scarcer as our soils erode and our oceans become giant trash bins. With the trees falling and the engines of humans burning, the carbon is getting ahead of us, and the world is getting hotter. These ‘big picture’ realities, they are difficult to grasp, much less to do something about. I wonder, why do wars seem to remain a legitimate option for resolving differences? Why do those who have the most still want more? Why do we not – even out of self-interest - care better for our planetary home, the only home we have? My questions do not have easy answers. Sometimes I want to hide from it all. But then I know that my community is the whole community, the whole world. I am also something of a longer for deliverance, if you will; the mystic-hoper who believes that to send our aid near and far, our concern, our prayers, our conversation, our unspoken, formidable hopefulness, is not futile.
 
Circumspection is always advised. For the bleak side of life is but one side of life. One of our GFC food buyers has gifted her purchase to a family in need. A single kindness such as this – no fanfare, no heroism – has more weight than a cannon. In time, and when kindnesses such as these multiply one upon another, the cannon itself will finally be rendered futile. Do you share this belief with me? that every small goodness we do is a world-altering event?
 
This is our human story, of course. Two steps forward and one back. To go forward without any expectation of regression along the way is not being realistic. Thankfully, the guardians of evolution and increased human knowledge prevent us from freefalling completely; that step back is but one step. Step by step we go, and along that journey we will witness the slow death of war, the demise of prejudice, and the end of want. Dying is not serene, but it is certain. The people outwilling the unwilling, loving their neighbour, and respecting the planet will make certain that with time, and with loving choices, we  will overcome. I am remembering this today: Two steps forward, but only one back.

Paul Myers

By Paul Myers

–Piece originally published in the Gibsons Farm Collective newsletter–

Every niche in society does it. In lieu of crude truths we speak euphemisms. For instance, we do not say outright much anymore that someone has “died.” That’s too blunt, too unsympathetic by half. Instead we say they “passed away” or worse, “entered their rest.” The military has perfected the art of not saying what they are saying. Civilians who get killed are called “collateral damage”, while carefully aimed bombing is a “surgical strike.” The corporate world is another niche that uses a host of benign terms to shroud darker realities. "Correction" means the shareholders are not going to get what they signed on for. "Outsourcing" means employees at home are going to lose their job to cheap labour abroad. And anything with the word "green" in it usually means they have a creative public relations department. Yet another term is "redundant", which applies to those who found out one day that they had a doppelgänger in the company doing what they already do, making them expendable.
 
As to the latter, I'm hoping someday that Brookbank Farm – and me with it – becomes redundant. You heard me correctly: I want you to be my doppelgänger. Please, take my job away. You see, in the Edenic world of my mind, everyone has a garden of their own, where they grow food for themselves, plus a bit more for those cannot.
 
Of course I know that for the time being I am perfectly safe from unemployment. But why not add to your diet some food of your very own? It’s not so daunting to do, truly, and it does not take much time or space. Call it your Personal Victory Garden. Grow a bit, and sense your small victory over supermarket servitude! And if you are already doing it, then perhaps you could add one more corner. It is amazing the quantity and diversity of food that can be grown in the most humble of spaces.
 
Last week I went to visit my pal Jay, where I got a sudden renewed rush of hopefulness for my own unemployment. I squinted my eyes. Impossible! But no, it was not an illusion. I saw tomatoes growing. I know, “no big deal” you say. Well it’s not…but wait a sec, it is, because Jay does not have any garden space and would not ever want one. He is the archetypal city-dwelling, career white collar worker, lifelong bachelor living in a modest apartment and dedicated in his free time to sports and more sports. Do you see this picture? Work, hockey, beer, more work. No, Jay would not like to garden. But he does love tomatoes, thanks to a Mom who spoiled him as a kid on the real ones. Friends, those few pots on his balcony, with those plants that needed some pruning and tying up, and Jay beaming…well, it felt like my redundancy was finally drawing near.

Paul Myers

By Paul Myers

–Piece originally published in the Gibsons Farm Collective newsletter–

Before I wised up, the Protestant Work Ethic nearly killed me. You know it: work hard, save your pennies, then work harder. Then die. This principle, and not piety alone, will redeem you. Or so it is said. Today I have a new ethic, and I say it without shame: I’m trying to find ways to do less work. There are a few methods to go about practising my new principle. One is to just get lazier. I’d like that. Seriously, and it sounds really good on paper. That might be possible somewhere; say, in a goofproof job where it would cost more to fire me than keep me. Or possibly, if work is more of time-filler than a stomach-filler (which it isn’t). But on a farm this method will not fly. Yes, you can skip weeding the potatoes and they will probably give you some return anyway because, after all, tubers live mostly bombproof, hermetic lives below ground. But if you choose not to feed dozens of livestock you might end up with a scene out of Jurassic Park. No, there’s no escaping work around here. The other method is to obtain a greater reward for the work you do.  This, of course, is the smart way. How can we do less and get more? Double or triple the current return on every calorie burned, every hour clocked, every buck spent?
 
Once again Nature provides us with instructions. For instance, mulching around trees (as Nature does) or, better yet, introducing perennials that are symbiotic with that tree are one such way (goodbye Weed whacker!). Another way is to ease up some on the penchant for tidy edges and other very non-Nature human obsessions for order, predictability and calm. It is actually just fine to just “let it go” here and there. “Wilding” parts of the landscape are both beautiful and provide habitat for beneficial species of birds, insects and other creatures. These, in turn, will work for you; birds, for instance, being Nature’s best pesticide, while bees and dragonflies will happily pollinate the crops. Yet another is to “multi-task” plants, animals and structures. A plant may in succession or all-at-once provide shade, windbreak and food. Before an animal becomes your dinner, it can mow your grass and provide fertilizer. A structure can have one use in Spring (such as propagating seeds) and another in winter (such as cold storage).  The more hats we can put on various farm elements, the less work we will end up doing. Multiple functions reduce work and waste, maximizes resources, and strengthens your systems with the homerun power of Nature, diversity. Even around the house, finding and then using objects that do more than one thing will save us work, money and space, and reduce our consumption. Let’s find creative ways to get the real down-time we deserve.
 
Introductions
Dawn and I have finally got hold of a principle that becomes more important with every advancing year: Success is succession! We are so pleased to now have two outstanding farmers doing much of the work this season at Brookbank Farm. Stephanie Grindon is a permaculture enthusiast, has her own landscaping business on the Sunshine Coast, and is an observant and skilled market gardener. Elly Rakhmetouline brings equal talent with seed and soil. She recently had a flower farm in Richmond, lives in Vancouver and spends 3-4 days a week here on the farm growing great food and beautiful flowers.

They form a very dynamic duo, and they are growing some amazing annual food crops and flowers, provided to you through GFC and at the farmstand. If you see them wandering about, be sure to say “hello and kudos!”

By Paul Myers

–Piece originally published in the Gibsons Farm Collective newsletter–

At the supermarket there’s an entire aisle of non-food crap dedicated to a scientific truth: human evolution is such that we naturally crave salt, fat, and sugar. (My own scientific truth adds to that list expensive shiny new things, massive recognition, and a back rub that possibly leads to other things, but I’ll save that for another post). I must be still crawling out of the primordial soup myself, because I’m still largely a single-crave creature: sugar. I have such tender memories of wheedling a dime off my mother and heading straight to the Village Market with it, there to plumb the Gnostic depths of the longest, most beautiful candy counter ever created. What should I get this time? The perfectly created Crunch bar? A box of Milk Duds because they stick to the roof of my mouth? Or something sassy perhaps, like Necco or Red Hots? Average sugar consumption in North America rose from 3 kilos annually per person in 1900, to 55 kilos per person in 2000. Well folks, for evolution and for the Motherland, I certainly did my part. Cookies. Cokes. Frosted Flakes. Gum. Ice cream. Cotton Candy. Oh yes, and fruit too: pulverized, reconstituted, shot through with food colour, corn starch, and more sugar, and sent back to me as a delectable little Hostess Pie.   

I’ll skip the story of my own long, sometimes tortured, sometimes still-faulty, journey away from non-food crap and go right to the good ending. The good ending isn’t about me. The good ending is in the accompanying photo. Yes, that gaggle of kids you see there, two of them my grandkids, who took part – rather, could not be restrained ­– from picking the-low-hanging-fruit-of-the-Earth-as-manifest-in-apples. It was a great time, and, on at least two counts, also another eye opener for me.
 
First, I saw an ancient tree as a long candy counter. While a sugar crave may be hard-wired into humans, a Crunch bar isn’t. I was joyed to watch kids gorge on Nature’s provision (and I was grateful to their parents). In fact, Nature deftly provides a veritable procession of sweetness through most of the year. Strawberries and other early berries, both domestic and wild. Cherries next, and when these fade the plums arrive. Midsummer brings currants, thimbleberries and blueberries. August is here with apples, sundry melons, and blackberries. In September there will be pears, grapes, crab apples, cranberries and huckleberries. In the colder months we can reach for the same food that we preserved in advance.
 
Second, I saw my teachers again. I mean the kids, of course. The little Yodas all around us, who have not yet been sullied by adult refinements. Who are still unpretentious and thrill in simple pleasures. Who live on the surface, who say what they see, and most of all, who gravitate to goodness. Hence, they lead us back to where we need to be. Back to the low hanging fruit in life. There to pluck the uncomplicated delight, and to harvest the least work for the greatest gain. 

Back to the easy sugar.  
 
Paul Myers

By Paul Myers

–Piece originally published in the Gibsons Farm Collective newsletter–

A rich, loamy earth is a thing of beauty. But farming is not only about what’s in the soil.

There are many influences on the land that are not fixed to the land. In the lingua franca of agriculture we call these “sectors.” Tops on the list of sectors, of course, are sun, wind, and water. But there are many others; for instance, people, animal, bird and other creaturely movement, noise, frost, and lightning. Politics, social trends, and bylaws are all invisible, but they also deeply influence our land.  Earthquakes come and go, but they might create a canyon on your back forty where one never was.

A sector is always a head scratcher. Do we want it here? Can we get more of it? Or do we not want it? Can we prevent it from entering? Or perhaps we want it, but differently than it now is. You can alter the influence of full sun merely by plopping a baseball cap on your head. If you need more shade than that, you can erect structures, or plant trees for dapple light. Likewise, water is generally a welcome sector, but if it’s pounding down on your tomatoes or running across your driveway, you may want to attempt to channel it. Here at Brookbank Farm, for instance, we channeled the water energy sector with our ponds and waterways development. To add to these conundrums, at times a sector may be wanted, and at other times not.
 
The game of sectors is a particularly dicey one, for the simple reason that we are not omnipotent. In the last week or two I curtailed all physical activity and, at length, had to settle myself into a state of resignation, all for two sectors that I had no power to influence. Truly, I wish I could say that I got “zen”, but it really was more akin to simple misery. I coughed. I wheezed. I dosed myself on synthetic pharmaceuticals. I speak first, of course, of the pervasive, inescapable, sector of air pollution we have had due to forest fire smoke. Second, there was an almost complete absence of any wind sector. Did you notice that the smoke drifted but did not blow? When a particulate is two microns in length (that’s two millionths of a meter) there is not a lot that can be done about not breathing it. When the wind goes still – and, ask any sailor, sometimes you live or die by that wind - you can only wait out the doldrums. The insidious Slow Death Fog lingered, and it would stay that way until either fires were quenched or the now most welcome sector of wind returned.
 
Well thank God there’s been a sector change.  And as I resume a life of normalcy (to the extent I may be accused of such) I think retrospectively on the powerlessness of that experience. We do what we can to influence the influences. But we are not omnipotent. Whether by zen or by misery, we accept our finitude.