das loft

I met Peggy at the permaculture course, which finished 3 weeks ago. She has a farm in Winlaw, and she's super fun. 34, really experienced in natural building as well as gardening, super friendly, pretty frank, and you can ask her anything. I came to Peggy's and one of the first things I asked her was whether she had a scythe. (I was inspired by the tall, thick cooch grass that came right up the edge of her garlic, onion and potato beds.) At first she didn't think she did, then she remembered that someone had visited her once and left their home-made scythe here, but nobody's made use of it since. She wasn't sure if it was any good, but showed it to me and I fixed it up a bit. The "bar" of this scythe was carved wood, and the blade was attached by that copper stripping stuff (looked somewhat makeshift) and was getting a bit loose. I added another screw and it seemed to tighten it well. I sharpened the blade with a file and got it quite nice. It only had one handle on it - for the left hand - so with my right hand I had to hold it by the bar. I used it to scythe around the vegetable patch. It worked really well - very sharp, maybe sharper than Ricardo's scythe, even - but I found myself switching the way I held it with my right hand pretty often because it would get sore. So I think I need a proper right-hand handle which would allow me to turn my wrist exactly halfway between the two positions I keep switching it between (as I imagine most scythes have). I haven't had a chance to build one, but that's the next step. At the end of scything, I noticed the blade had come a bit loose again, probably from all the dirt and/or rocks I banged the blade against as I used it (which can't be good for the blade anyway). I'm sure I have to learn how to avoid banging the blade against anything, but it's a bit tricky when the grass is so tall and the land isn't flat and hasn't been fully rock-picked. That just seems to be how most of the land is around here.

Yeah, BC is awesome. You know it. I'm having trouble coming up with reasons to prefer Ontario over BC. Sure, the land isn't flat here, it's rocky, and it's expensive. People are worried about the private hydro-electric installations and say the rivers are at risk. I learned today that California has destroyed most of its rivers extracting gravel, and it now relies on imports from BC's gravel pits, thus destroying BC's rivers. The way clearcut logging and planting happens here is apparently the reason for the annual droughts and also the proliferation of the pine beetle. And it's common knowledge that the economy of the Kootenays is sustained by the drug trade. The mosquitoes are bad in Winlaw (not that it matters much). But the people are fantastic, the markets are wonderful, Nelson has the largest selection of bulk items in Canada at the Kootenay Co-op (bulk essential oils?!), the air is incomparably fresh and delicious, the summers are hot but not humid like in Ontario, the vegetables and fruit trees grow large, the creeks supply the cleanest water without filtration (for now), organic, raw milk is not difficult to obtain, the mountains are gorgeous... and I haven't even been camping or gone to the natural hot springs yet (I will be soon, though).

Labels: bc, drugs, farm, food, gardening, nelson, winlaw