Tag Archives: indigenous

by Amy Antonucci | May 31, 2024 · 7:39 pm

Joyful Pruning!

“Nature is not a place to visit, it is home.” — Gary Snyder

To plant a tree is to be connected to a place with depth and longevity. When we were finally settled somewhere, “owners” of a place, it was a thrill to plant trees and bushes and other long lived perennials – anything beyond annual crops. We started with asparagus, rhubarb, berry bushes and trees. Fruit trees especially, plus a few for pollinators and medicine: peaches, pears, mulberries, linden, and unusual permaculture choices like persimmons and pawpaws.

This signified a level of stability and rootedness that I had been working towards for years. During all of that preparation I had studied how to plant and care for trees and other perennials. Now that it was time, though, having to do all of that and do it well was intimidating. I needed to sift through all the information I had garnered to figure out how best to keep them healthy and get a yield (permaculture principle 3).

Getting and preserving a yield

There are many pruning books, videos, and methods. Having read “The One-Straw Revolution” by Masanobu Fukuoka I knew that one could choose to be very hands off. Then again, permaculture orchardist Stefan Sobkowiak has an amazing organic orchard that he prunes and shapes intensively. There are also many variations in between. What should I do?

Feeling unsure of myself, and fearing hurting the trees, I started with minimal pruning. I saw the problems with that quickly with our peaches. We’d been warned that peaches could be difficult to grow in New England, especially organically. While I can confirm that it’s not easy to grow a perfect looking peach, our experience is that they grow fast, flower like crazy and make tons of delicious fruit! We still get hit by polar vortexes or super late frosts and lose a year like everyone else, but usually they thrive.

See the two big cuts we had to make after this overgrown peach broke?

The first peach we planted and barely managed ended up leaning sunwards, overloaded with fruit on long, high branches. Unsurprisingly, a main branch cracked and broke after just a few years. Luckily, it was above the graft so it has come back, but we lost a couple of harvests and I doubt it will live as long as it could have. So, I started pruning harder.

I also began to feel more confident in what I was doing and not second guess every single cut I made. I was able to visualize how the tree would respond to my cuts and what it would look like later on. The constant worry that I was doing it wrong faded. I could even enjoy spending time with the trees in the late winter cold, looking forward to their spring growth and summer fruit.

Pruning the Red Haven Peach in Winter

The Red Haven in Summer

I found a new level of satisfaction in the process when I read “Sprout Lands: Tending the Endless Gift of Trees” by William Bryant Logan a few years ago. In it, the author describes how most people lived in close, reciprocal relationship to the forests around them. They depended on and used their products for survival, intensively managing them with coppice and pollard techniques. Not only did these pruning techniques not

Pollarded Maple

kill the trees, but they made for longer lived individual trees, and healthier, more diverse woodlands. In Sproutlands he visits England, Spain, Japan, California and other places, finding the same story everywhere.

“I think having land and not ruining it is the most beautiful art that anybody could ever want.” -Andy Warhol

This is a narrative we recognize in permaculture. Rather than seeing humans and nature as two clashing entities, we recognize that humans are a part of the biosphere that evolved to have good, useful relationships with our fellow beings. That is how every species survives and thrives. So, I shouldn’t be surprised to once again have that reality shown to me, but given our species recent tendency to destroy things we depend on I find it hard sometimes to discern appropriate from destructive behavior.

When I first found permaculture this is part of what spoke to me. I was coming from both a farming and an activist perspective. As a farmer I appreciated permaculture’s practical improvements towards a sustainable, healthy food growing system. As an environmental and peace activist it was refreshing to find a way of looking at the world that did not assume that humans could only be problematic.

“The one who plants trees knowing that he or she will never sit in their shade, has at least started to understand the meaning of life.” – Rabindranath Tagore

This story of connection continues to this day. A 2022 study found that “the world’s healthiest, most biodiverse, and most resilient forests are located on protected Indigenous lands.” Even the World Bank with it’s poor track record of protecting land or people, recognizes that “Indigenous communities safeguard 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity and forests on their land are better maintained, with a higher preserved biodiversity than those on non-Indigenous lands.”

Now that I have gained skills and practice, and a larger understanding of what is possible, interacting and working with the plants brings me great joy. So does the abundant harvest that the trees and our work with them bestow upon us. It is my wish that all people have access to this level of interdependent security and resilience.

Unpruned Grapevines

Pruned Grapevines

Grapes to Harvest

Culture

Zac & Ike

In August we brought two new boy goats onto our homestead. We do this every few years in order to avoid inbreeding in our herd. Over the winter we researched goat farms with different genetics from our animals who shared similar values and practices. We wanted them to allow the kids to be raised by their mothers, to keep the goats horned, to minimize medications and to breed for a good milk supply. When the kids were born in the spring, we checked them out online and reserved two: a buckling from their best milker for breeding and his polled brother, who would be wethered (neutered), to keep him company.

We manage our herd to maximize environmental sustainability and the well-being of the animals. To me, their well-being includes paying attention to their social needs. I know that some people think I’m silly, maybe even “not a real farmer” because of this. However, so many of the problems people tell me about their goat-keeping attempts trace back to their not understanding those particular needs. One of the most basic of those is that as herd animals, goats should not be alone. This is why I don’t sell goats singly, and why we brought home two when we really just needed the one buck.

The farm we were buying them from is two hours away from us. It was a fine trip there, listening to Sproutlands by William Bryant Logan. On the way back, though, each in their own dog crate separate from each other and taken away from their home, the little guys had many loud, scared complaints that I tried not to let completely break my heart.

Our New Boy Goats Arrive!

When the boys got here, they needed to be separated – quarantined – from the other goats. Although the farm they came from is reputable and does the appropriate disease testing, sometimes issues are missed and we take biosecurity seriously, prevention being worth so much more than cure. The newcomers are supposed to be adding value to the herd not infecting them with diseases or parasites. Also, giving them time to get to know the other goats from afar makes for a more

Marley, Our Resident Buck

peaceful eventual integration. These two would be going to live with our other two boys, who were years older and at least double their size.

So, we fenced off an area and set up a shelter with food and water and bedding. I was proud of the little home we put together. However, they had other priorities. From the moment they got here their focus was on our resident goats. The boys called and called to them, stood looking at them, and slept in the corner of the yard that was closest to them despite how unsheltered it was and its lack of food, water and bedding. Listen to them here:

I wasn’t terribly surprised by this behavior, figuring they are herd animals and thus want to be with the rest of the herd.

Right around this time, I happened to watch a talk from Biodiversity for a Livable Climate entitled “How Animals Shape Ecosystems” featuring Carl Safina talking about animal cultures. He mentioned programs that raise endangered animals then release them into the wild and how much more successful they are if there are still some wild animals of the same kind there for the newcomers to learn from. The way he defined “culture” amazed me. Here’s a quote from his Living On Earth interview: “Culture is the behaviors, the habits, and even the attractions that we learn socially and that are transmitted socially. The amazing thing to me is that, whether it’s human, modern, Western technological culture, or whether it’s sperm whales, culture basically does the same things for social beings. It answers the question of, how do we live here, where we live?”

My shortened version is: Culture is how we learn to live successfully in our specific place on the planet.

Suddenly, my view of what the little boy goats were doing

The herd likes to be together

took on a deeper meaning. They weren’t just looking for safety in numbers, they wanted to join the existing group to learn from them how to successfully live in this place that was new to them.

It also shifted my view on current human cultures. Previously I thought of culture as a collection of stuff (music, dance, dress, etc) that people in a place ended up doing that became important to their group identity. I appreciated and found the diversity fascinating, but saw it as somewhat ephemeral and random. Now, I see that those acts and items are an expression of what culture really is – an understanding of what to do, what to eat, what to wear, how to work together and connect that helps a group fit sustainably into a particular place (Darwin’s survival of those who best fit into their environment comes back to us here). I see also that the way so many of us have been forced out of our traditional places has us confused. Our carefully created ways of living don’t necessarily apply to our new environment, but the work of developing new strategies takes time – and sometimes fails, especially if we cannot connect with those who have belonged to that place before us.

Maybe this is part of the reason why so many cultures right now are dysfunctional enough to not live up to the title of “culture” as they seem to teach people ways of being that actually destroy our ability to survive. It also sheds more light on why Indigenous people comprise less than 5% of the world population but protect 80% of the Earth’s biodiversity. Respecting and protecting their rights, saying no to market schemes that push them off their lands, and humbly turning to them as our teachers and leaders could be a key to our surviving and thriving – our goats could tell us that!

Socializing the New Guys

In the case of our new guys, we had good reason to keep them by themselves for awhile, and we were here to help them survive during the quarantine period. We took our cue from them about what they most needed and created a plywood lean-to in the spot they picked up against the barn. After two months with no health concerns coming up, we shifted fences so they could have some nose-to-nose contact with the boys they would eventually live with. The little buckling had a romantic day with Diana which seems to have resulted in a pregnancy. To be extra safe, Steve built a secondary shelter in the older boy’s yard with entrances too small for the adults to fit through. When we actually did bring them

Shelter Only Accessible By Smaller Goats

together, there was a lot of sniffing, a little pushing and shoving… and then a lot of welcome quiet for me! After months of those little boys calling and crying and worrying me that something was terribly wrong with them, it seems they really did just want to be with more of their own kind. Phew!

As a bonus, I have another book to add to my winter reading list: Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace. The promise of more rest and great learning makes the cold and dark less daunting as we enter December.

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Filed under Goats, Interdependence, Uncategorized

Tagged as animal, goats, health, homestead, indigenous

by Amy Antonucci | May 13, 2019 · 3:37 pm

Winter Squash I Have Grown, Respect Where it’s Due

Curing Winter Squash in 2018

Winter squash (Cucurbita spp.) is an amazing food resource – prolific, nutritious and with a long shelf life requiring no electricity. We humans love it as well as our chickens and goats. Over the past few years I have branched (vined?) out to try more varieties, especially heirlooms, to honor and help preserve what the native people of this region cultivated. Those master plant breeders cared so well for this land for thousands of years, including living through climatically challenging times. We immigrants could learn a lot from them.

Here is a review of our trials so far, starting with our latest finds.

Seminole Pumpkin or Chassa Howitska (Cucurbita moschata)

I first heard of this squash in 2018, but it was cultivated by the Seminole people in the Florida Everglades since the 1500s. I came across it in the Fedco catalog’s Indigenous Royalties program. They included a disclaimer that we might be too far north to succeed with this crop, but it’s claimed pest and disease resistance tempted me to risk it.

Seminole Trying to Cross the Road

It was slow to get started in the cool spring we had, but once it got going there was no stopping it. It grew farther and wider than I’d planned for or imagined possible. It snaked out into the road, pulled small trees down in its path and sent down roots everywhere it touched the ground. I had to climb into the patch regularly to free my persimmons, jostaberries and beach plums, not an easy feat. The foliage was huge, dense and deep green all the way to our first frost. I never saw damage from vine borers, squash bugs or powdery mildew.

Seminole Squash Vines (see the blue of my shirt in the jungle?)

I also couldn’t see much fruit through the greenery, leaving me to wonder if we’d actually have a crop from it at all. But after the frost hit, I ventured into the tangle with 5 gallon buckets, trip after surprising trip eventually bringing in 414#, all from an original 6 planting spots with a couple seeds in each.

Seminole Ripening on Vines Just Hit by Frost

None of it was totally vine-ripened. The small green fruits we used like zucchini and shared with the goats. Any that had started to turn orange I brought inside hoping they would ripen. This was in October. Over the next couple of months, any that showed signs of rotting we cleaned up and ate ourselves or fed to the animals. By January a batch of 50# had totally ripened, living in buckets in our dining room. These can supposedly last for years without even being kept cool. I’ll be testing that and can report back!

Cured Seminole Pumpkin

As for taste… the immature ones weren’t sweet, but were more nutty and like summer squash. As they ripen they sweeten up. They have made lovely fluffy pies and are especially great for pumpkin bread. Their size of 3-5# each is handy for using in the home kitchen.

I’ll definitely plant these again this spring, but farther from the street!

Boston Marrow (Cucurbita maxima)

This heirloom seed came to me from The Piscataqua Seed Project in 2018. It can be traced to upstate New York where it may have been gifted from Native Americans to settlers, then documented in Salem, Massachusetts in 1831.

Boston Marrow Squash

I grew one plant in one of our young orchards. It happily climbed up a small nearby oak. As expected, it made one large fruit, an impressive deep orange 20-pounder. We cracked it open in February and it cooked up sweet and moist. I made a few delicious pies and squished squash dishes. My complaint is the size. Chopping it up and having to process it all at once is not convenient at a typical home scale. If you cook for many people at once this is a great one, which I’m sure is why it is becoming popular with chefs at farm to table restaurants.

Long Pie (Cucurbita pepo)

Long Pie Pumpkin, Ripe and Stored through April

I received seeds for Long Pie at a Seacoast Permaculture seed swap in a homemade envelope with no photo. In 2016 I planted a variety of winter squash, including these seeds, in our front garden and orchard. That turned out to be a big vine borer year. Every few years there is a surge in their population and we lose much or most of our crop. Those are the ups and downs, the boom and bust cycles of nature, which I don’t worry too much about. But one vine kept going after all the others succumbed. It formed long dark green fruits looking like a weird cross between a zucchini and maybe a butternut. I didn’t know what to do with them so left them.

Long Pie Pumpkin, Still Green on the vine

When they started turning orange in the late summer I had enough information to research and realize what they were.

I was already a fan after seeing them shrug off the pest pressure that year. Their long-keeping nature, handy size and shape, and how they sweeten nicely over time keeps them on our must-grow list. Other local growers have noticed it as well.

Delicata (Cucurbita pepo)

Delicatas in Storage in April

It is my personal history with Delicatas that endears them to me. When I was a beginning grower in the early 1990s, farmer David tried these out. Small and sweet with edible skin, they were perfect for me as I was living alone, making meals for one. I love them halved, sprinkled with cinnamon and baked. They are not super pest resistant or prolific, but they keep well for many months.

It is also an heirloom. I buy the Zeppelin variety which can be traced back to 1894, before more recent breeding programs.

Butternut (Cucurbita moschata)

A Baby Butternut

Everyone knows Butternut squashes, right? I thought I did, but only recently learned that they are direct descendants of the Canada Crookneck grown by the Haudenosaunee and likely other New England, New York and Canadian tribes (see “Seven Sisters” by Dr. Fred Wiseman). More recently they have been selected for straight necks, but still maintain resistance to vine borers, a trait common to C. moschata.

I’ve grown these for years, and never intend to give them up. This year I grew both Waltham and Burpee, with the Waltham being the better producer. Butternuts have generally been my best keepers, sometimes all the way until July. This year they haven’t been lasting as well, which I expect is because none of them escaped chew

Butternut Squash

marks from rodents in the fall. Maybe the Seminole pumpkins will outdo them on shelf life, we’ll see. They are sweet and delicious and a convenient size.

Looking to the Past, Planning for the Future

I had thought this blog post was going to be a simple one on a simple topic. However, while writing it, I found myself struggling with conflicting feelings and thoughts. I love this food source and I have a lot of gratitude and respect for the people who developed it. But honestly, it has come to me more through theft and appropriation than gifting.

The case could be made that I shouldn’t be on this land – there are others who should be. But here I am anyway, living in the wake of histories and choices that I didn’t have a say in. And – where else could I be? I’m ½ Irish and ½ Italian with no citizenship rights in either country. There isn’t a clear way to go back.

We can learn so much from Indigenous people. In fact, permaculture specifically looks to cultures who live in good relationship to the land. Many Native Americans are urging the rest of us to learn from them before we destroy us all.

I have no answers here, only questions and struggles. But sometimes hard questions are more important than quick answers.

I plan to continue to grow Native American crops – squash, beans, corn, potatoes, tomatoes and more – and try to give credit where it is due. I will also pay attention to current issues in native communities and find ways to give back for all that I receive.

Here are just a few projects and resources to look to for ways to support indigenous peoples rights.

The NH Coalition for Indigenous Peoples’ Day

Cowasuck Band of the Pennacook Abenaki People

Indigenous New Hampshire

Dawnland documentary

Grand Canyon Trust (If you went to SELT‘s 2019 Wild and Scenic Film Fest in Portsmouth NH in April you’ll remember the film on this subject: Too Precious to Mine)

Standing Rock Sioux Tribe

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Filed under Gardens, Uncategorized

Tagged as farm, food, homestead, indigenous, permaculture