We purchased a forest and woodlot in the shared territory of Nlaka'pamux and Shuswap nations.

We asked permission from the Cook's Ferry band much to their surprise.
The beginnings of us learning what Truth and Reconciliation means for us all.
2 of the 4 co-owner families moved onto the land and fenced 1 acre of the meadow to begin our food security journey. 

We divided the acre into 4 quarters using swales with buried carbon on the contour.

Into the swales we planted all the perennial food and medicinal plants we could find for our zone.

We need someone to document and map these plants for our inventory.

In between the swales is about 50' of meadow that was planted to annual crops for food.

All annuals and perennials were to be observed for potential markets as a farm.
We fixed the cabin gravity fed water system and installed a solar power/generator power system.

In the fall/winter we began the thinning of the incredible fire hazard that has become an international story from extreme hot fires each summer.

Lytton, the town that made international news in 2021 as it burned to the ground, is 75km away from our watershed.

2019 was spent building on our first years efforts in food and shelter security.
Chipping wood using our neighbors chipper to mulch all the perennials in the acre nursery/garden.

We built a 70' greenhouse/hoop house to grow more sensitive crops such as tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers, as well as medicinal crops that fit our zone.

We budgeted $300 each year to purchase seeds and plants from Richters Herbs in Ontario. 

We tried to get our neighbors sawmill running with limited success.

We met with other valley residents at a government townhall meeting on how to firesmart our watershed and community. 

The CWPP (Community Wildfire Protection Plan) came from this meeting.
I presented the concept of Slash Swales On Contour (SSOC's) to the community, fire chief and government officials.

From this we gained the understanding that cold fires can return if the forest canopies are not touching.

We inreased our efforts to thin our forest so that no canopies are touching.

We managed to thin 2 acres out of an estimated 100 this winter. 

See parts of this website for the incredible transformation from a dark forest understory where no light, no snow, no rain could reach the understory without great effort; much evaporating in the process and not reaching the soil horizon and watershed.

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This year we finally got the neighboring sawmill running. 

Our neighbor Bhumi Farms lent it to the Shuswap nation Bonaparte peoples. 

We attended the training session with them and learned how to operate the swing blade mill which cuts on both the push and pull of the head rig.

In the fall the Bonaparte had finished with their milling project and the mill came to our property.

We began milling the larger trees that were being thinned out to fire protect the estimated 100 acres of interior douglas fir.

We started seeing a pattern emerge of about 60% too much carbon in our forest.

Where 4 trees should be standing in 30 square meters, there were 10.

These 10 competed for a very limited amount of moisture and a large amount of sun; we are a hot and dry climate in summer.

Of the 6 trees cut down in each 30 square meters they were noticeably brittle; their branches shattered as i would walk up the tree limbing it with my chain saw.

I've since noticed that when i fall a tree in later years from an area that could still be thinned, the branches are much more supple and do not shatter as i walk up the tree limbing it; I can't kick the branches and watch them break; instead they bend; this is a good sign!

Of the 6 trees cut down (roughly):
1/3 go to firewood and fence posts and rails,

1/3 go to SSOC's (Slash Swales On Contour)

1/3 goes to the sawmill

The SSOC's (Slash Swales On Contour) are a very important part of this entire learning process in how we live and work within a forest while allowing it to be resilient.

The tragedy of our provincial forestry program since colonization is we have eliminated the large dead-down (dead trees) in our forest understory.

These large trees (24"+ in diameter) were pushed out of the way so the machines could access the merchantable trees.

They were pushed into very large slash piles and burned over the decades.

Now as the fungal scientific revolution and microbiome scientific revolution come to light, we understand that these large dead-down are the immune systems of the forest and fungus is 80-90% of the moisture holding capacity of the soil!

This is revolutionary in scope and scale!

This is game changing news!

2021 saw us was a big year for both our food and shelter security projects.

In the acre gardens we started to see telling results to the nursery.

The rule of thumb for perennials is sleep-creep-leap.

2018-2019 was our first planting of perennials; they slept and started to develop a root system.

2019-2020 they crept as their root system expanded.

2020-2021 they leapt and started to show above ground growth.

This was the first year to tell us what plants liked being in our microclimate and zone.

Some we learned like the zone but were planted in the wrong place; they wanted more or less moisture in the soil and/or more or less sun exposure.

We started to see what plants were not just ok with our zone but were thriving with very little help from us.

Like Mark Sheppard says in his revolutionary book 'Restoration Agriculture', he prefers the STUN method (Sheer and Total Utter Neglect).

We started dividing these plants and expanding the nursery into a more production phase of operations.

The sawmill started to produce building materials.

We started designing a Goshals (cow barn) for our neighbors.

We continued thinning the fire hazard of the woodlot in the winter months and were now into the 4th and 5th acres.

We started talking and reaching out to scientists and other organizations on how to mechanize and speed up this process.

The Ecoforestry Institute reached out to us and we began dialogue of how to bring this philosophy into the interior dry belt forests of BC from the west coast.

Suzanne Simard's revolutionary work was published in her essential book 'The Mother Tree Project.'

2022 we built the Goshala (cow barn) for our neighbors zebu herd of cattle.

We did this using the nicest of the fire hazard thinnings from our woodlot.

We also did a community work shop on how to infill the walls using local non-toxic materials of earth and straw.
Here is the link.

The garden work slowed down a bit from this Goshala focus and we started looking more seriously for a community member who could take over the farming full-time.

A couple from Ontario showed up to answer the call.

We continued planting out the most successful plants from the nursery and building our inventory.

2023 our full-time farming with a dedicated manager began.

Our food security and market development grew.

We continued our reading of Truth and Reconciliation with Frist Nations and continued our process of engagement.

We held a number of new moon healing circles to learn how to "sit in the fire" with difficult subjects/ideas and learn how to talk through them without anger, hatred or violence towards others.
Here is the link to this enlightening project.
The sawmill gave us issues but it continues to run and produce building materials.

We put 100 logs on deck for milling from the thinning of the fire hazard.

We did our first sampling of machinery logging in the valley at our neighboring Bhumi farm.

We learned a lot and had tour with local government, first nations and citizens.

The mechanization of SSOC's is now on the map!

We are ready to ramp up this part of the shelter security projects.

We are ready to invest in a more productive mill as well.

2024 is now here.

We are climbing out of winter and it was a productive winter of building more SSOC's.

We punched our first swale to the northern slope where the best timber grows in the northern hemisphere of this planet.

It will become an interpretation swale-trail where we can bring the growing number of tours that come each year from local school classrooms, to university students, scientists, government officials, interested citizens and eco-tourists.

We plan to welcome chickens this year to help with the growing insect "problem" in our meadow.
One of our favorite permaculture sayings is "The problem is the solution."
We also have the attention of the local forest industry now. 

We have spent the last 5 years building samples of how to best store carbon and maximize the humidity bubble at the soil horizon level.

We have 5 years of SSOC's to now study, observe and now mechanize to help accelerate this method of resiliency and adaptation.
Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to learn.