The Forest Garden

The statement at the left, headed "About Us" begins by saying "We are amateur forest gardeners...". "Amateur"(from Latin: amator, lover) means that we do this because we love doing it; we are not in any way professionals and this is not a commercial enterprise! But what is "forest gardening"?

I was happy to find an interesting and well-written article on forest gardening in Wikipedia. Here is a lengthy quote which explains what it is all about far better than I can:

"Forest gardening is a low-maintenance sustainable plant-based food production and agroforestry system based on woodland ecosystems, incorporating fruit and nut trees, shrubs, herbs, vines and perennial vegetables which have yields directly useful to humans. Making use of companion planting, these can be intermixed to grow in a succession of layers, to build a woodland habitat.

Forest gardening is a prehistoric method of securing food in tropical areas. In the 1980s, Robert Hart coined the term "forest gardening" after adapting the principles and applying them to temperate climates.

gathering passionfruit

Forest gardens are probably the world's oldest form of land use and most resilient agroecosystem. They originated in prehistoric times along jungle-clad river banks and in the wet foothills of monsoon regions. In the gradual process of families improving their immediate environment, useful tree and vine species were identified, protected and improved whilst undesirable species were eliminated. Eventually superior foreign species were selected and incorporated into the gardens."  

This is what we are working toward here on our land. We hope to develop a way of life with the emphasis on ecosystem restoration rather than on extractive exploitation, on self-sustenance rather than on commerce, on health and happiness rather than on wealth and social status. While we don't rigidly adhere to any particular model we have taken advice and inspiration from several teachers and organizations. Here are just a few:

One well known and popular system of forest gardening is called Permaculture. I find it heavy with complex terminology and design theory but I think it definitely offers a sound approach to living in harmony with the natural world for those who appreciate that sort of style.

In Thailand, the traditional mixed home garden with fruit trees, coconut palms, trees with edible leaves, etc. along with rice paddies, ponds with fish and ducks... in short; comprehensive agriculture, is still common in the countryside. The transition to modern commercial monoculture, however, is rapidly gaining dominance. A recently organized and articulated system called Wanakaset advocates a return to self-sufficient resilience.

Masanobu Fukuoka

Masanobu Fukuoka was a Japanese agricultural guru who taught natural "do nothing" farming practices.

“The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.”
― Masanobu Fukuoka, The One-Straw Revolution

Fukuoka Sensei proposed a way of life and a way of farming in which the healing of the land and the purification of the human spirit could take place in one integrated process. 


Farming is a way of life, an expression of our relationship with the living world and a means of producing what we need to live well.  Clearly, the way we sustain our lives directly shapes our qualities as human beings.  Both the activities we engage in to produce the goods we desire, and the quality of the products that we, in turn, consume, influence our physical, mental and spiritual vitality. If methods of production are harmful, and the things  produced are unhealthy to consume, such a way of life is destructive and should be abandoned. 

Ernst Gotsch

Just a few days ago I came across a video about the work of this energetic and dedicated researcher. His name is Ernst Gotsch and he has been farming and developing methods of rehabilitation of damaged land all his life. He has found improvements in micro-climate, and return of springwater resulting from forest restoration. Soil improvement with much greater productivity is the primary success achieved with his methods.

We like to be optimistic in thinking that perhaps there is a growing awareness, growing knowledge and motivation among alert people so that more and more of us will start working to reverse the damage humanity has done to the earth over the last few centuries. If it is not to be, that's alright too. We feel privileged to have the freedom and energy that allows us to engage wholeheartedly in such a fascinating and satisfying experiment.

Below, you can see a schematic diagram of our land. We don't yet have a raised water tank or solar panels (or ducks) but everything else is in place at least to some extent.

The proportion of "forest" will be much higher than is represented here. Click to enlarge.

Takien Tong

The historic photo above records two Thai royal barges, large dugout canoes meant to transport the king,royal family and officials on the Chaophraya river. Some sources tell us that these boats are carved from teak while others say the preferred wood is "Takien Tong". One book talks about Takien Tong being a kind of teak, but it isn't.

         

I'm going with Takien on this. It's a Dipterocarp species: Hopea odorata. Teak is completely different: Tectona grandis.

I first heard about Takien Tong when we were having our house built. While we had specified real teak for our windows and door frames, our general contractor reneged on this agreement and then absconded with more of our money than he deserved.

Our builder, however, stuck with us and, with him, we visited a window and door shop in the city .

When it became clear that real teak wood was prohibitively expensive, we settled on another tropical hardwood; Takien Tong.

When the windows arrived, I was pleased with the workmanship and impressed with the extreme weight and density of the wood. I was a little worried about the greenish color, though, but that was soon resolved as it changed to a nice brown during construction.

Here, on the left, is a young Takien tree planted near our pump-house.
Hopea odorata is native to Thailand although it probably prefers the places with more natural moisture than we have.

While we can't possibly live to see our little trees like this one grow to their immense maturity such as those that were used for the Thai Royal Barges, we can take whole-hearted satisfaction in giving them a loving start.

In Thai tradition, trees are believed to have spirit and the spirit that inhabits the Hopea is called Nang Ta Khian. Her permission should be respectfully sought before any Takien tree is cut down, otherwise misfortune may follow.

We don't feel we should worry at all about Nang Ta Khian's displeasure because, rather than destroying her trees, we are planting and nurturing them.

Hopea odorata wood is very hard, heavy, strong and very durable. It is resistant to termites and other wood-eating organisms. The grain is close and even.

Takien wood is difficult to saw but finishes well. Planing is fairly easy and the surface produced is smooth. Nailing properties are rated very poor. It is chiefly used for boat-building, dug-out canoes and for construction purposes, where durability and strength are of primary importance.

Traditionally, it is also used for carts, presses, flooring, roofing, piles, fence-posts, ploughs, furniture, etc.

Thailand's laws about cutting trees for timber are quite strict an fairly well-enforced, I think. As I understand it, trees planted for commercial purposes must be registered so they may be legally harvested and sold at a later date. We are purposely leaving our trees unregistered, hoping to block future commercial harvesting of these valuable trees when we are long gone.

Beyond any doubt, in the grand scheme of things, the value of a standing, living tree vastly surpasses the paltry commercial value of the cut timber or the finished products made from it, be they ever so useful or decorative.













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Tolstoy, Reciprocal Ethics

Sharing Equally the Toil and Its Rewards

Painting by Ilya Repin  "Ploughman" Tolstoy working in the fields

Early in the first part of Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy's great novel, "Anna Karenina", we see Konstantin Levin (the character I most identified with) paying a visit to his old boyhood friend Oblonsky at the government office where Oblonsky holds an official position.

Levin is physically well-built, strong and tall, but he feels awkward, inarticulate and out of place in the sophisticated ministerial environment into which he has ventured.
Oblonsky introduces him to his colleagues who are present. Quote:
"Levin was silent, looking at the unfamiliar faces of Oblonsky's two colleagues and especially at the hands of the elegant Grinevich who had very long, white fingers with very long, yellowish nails curving up at the points and large glittering sleeve-links. These hands apparently absorbed all Levin's attention, depriving him of freedom of thought."

These hands with their "long, yellowish nails" and Levin's reaction to them, set the tone for one of the major themes in Tolstoy's novel. The hands that belong to an official of the ruling class are pampered hands which have never known strenuous toil.

Levin, like Count Leo Tolstoy himself, was born into an aristocratic Russian family and has inherited an estate with numerous serfs. His advantages afford him the opportunity to live an idle and dissipated life among the wealthy and titled people of Petersburg and Moscow. He probably could become a government official, another Grinevich, if he so wishes. He feels, however, a strong aversion to such privilege, finding deeper satisfaction in managing his estate. He is drawn to the countryside, to the land, to the peasants who support society with their work.

Young Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy spent his early years bouncing around from university to his estate, to society and into the army without much clear purpose or direction. He drifted into the dissolute life of a carouser and a wastrel but increasingly, he found a personal anchor in writing. Associating with the literati of Russia and Europe gratified his vanity but he began to see something false and hollow in the intellectual vocation.
Much later in his life he looked back  with some shame and a great deal of regret on the wayward folly of his behavior as a young man. He described this earlier period with the following harsh words:

"I put men to death in war, I fought duels to slay others. I lost at cards, wasted the substance wrung from the sweat of peasants, punished the latter cruelly, rioted with loose women, and deceived men. Lying, robbery, adultery of all kinds, drunkenness, violence, and murder, all were committed by me, not one crime omitted, and yet I was not the less considered by my equals to be a comparatively moral man. Such was my life for ten years."    
                       Leo Tolstoy  "My Confession" 1880

As realization gradually dawned in Tolstoy's mind that the social structure within which his own life was so amply supported was based on grievous injustice and violence, he determined not only to reform his own life and the socio-economic conditions on his estate, but to work out ways that society at large might best be reformed.

We can find in the novel, reflections of the author's growing social awareness:
Nicholas Levin to his brother Konstantine:
"... our society has so shaped itself that the more the people work the richer the merchants and landowners will become, while the people will remain beasts of burden for ever. And this system must be changed."
Later, Konstantine's thoughts about his brother's ideas:
"...he had always felt the injustice of his own superfluities compared with the peasant's poverty, and now decided, in order to feel quite justified, that though he had always worked hard and lived simply, he would in future work still more and allow himself still less luxury. And it all seemed to him so easy to carry out..."

Neither the real Tolstoy nor the fictional Levin found that reforms were "easy to carry out". After so many centuries of serfdom, the farm workers didn't understand much about independence and felt little trust for the landlord and his newfangled ideas.

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Tolstoy the great writer was, above all, a dedicated thinker. Throughout his years he grappled mightily with the important questions of his own time and perhaps of all time. Brought to depression and suicidal despair by the relentless exercise of reason, he turned to the church for relief through faith. He soon rejected the absurdities of institutional religion, hammering out his own idiosyncratic version of Christianity emphasizing the core teachings of Jesus as expressed in the sermon on the mount.

From: "Reciprocity, Or the Golden Rule,  Tolstoy

Tolstoy pondered the "Golden Rule" as taught by Jesus: Matthew 7:12: “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.”  and he took it very seriously indeed.

Unlike K"ung Tzu who meant to re-establish and solidify the traditional hierarchical structure of his society, Tolstoy, so many centuries later, wished to use reciprocal ethics to break down hierarchies of power, privilege and wealth and to bring about egalitarian reform.

His belief that uncompromising adherence to this principle of reciprocal ethics was "the answer" subsequently brought Tolstoy to unpopular and dangerous positions. He became an outspoken advocate of non-violence, a pacifist opposed to patriotism and state warfare, capital punishment, and violent revolution. He became an anarchist opposed to government and to taxation.  He spoke forcefully against institutional religion and was excommunicated by the Russian Orthodox Church. He even became a vegetarian.

Late in his life Tolstoy took on the role of demagogue, attempting, in his didactic writing, to persuade wealthy and idle people to share their property with working people, give up luxury and learn to work for their own sustenance. The extremism of his ideas and his moralizing tone limited his effectiveness, I think. He convinced a few, influenced many but tended to offend and alienate most, including his wife and family members.

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But the equal sharing of toil and its rewards isn't only an issue of social/economic justice. By the sweat of the worker's brow, rewards that go far beyond mere bread and other material goods may be realized. Spending time in purposeful exertion out in the fresh air and sunlight, in contact with the natural world, bestows good health, substantial pleasure and deep satisfaction.  I have found through personal experience that these rewards of toil are very real and very valuable.

In the wonderful section of Anna Karenina in which Levin decides to join his peasants in their day's work mowing a large hay-meadow Tolstoy reveals this other aspect; the exhilarating joy  of physical work.

"Haymaking"  Yuri Kuznetsov

At first the peasants are uneasy about having their "Master" working alongside them and Levin finds that the work of swinging the long scythe is hard for him. Persevering, he slips into a rhythm and a state of self-forgetfulness as the day progresses. He gets to know the simple and good-hearted peasants and they, in turn, accept him into their company with helpful and generous good humor.
In the heat of the day, Levin experiences the blissful enjoyment of an ordinary drink of water:
"And truly Levin had never tasted any drink so good as this warm water with bits of grass floating in it and a rusty flavor from the tin dipper."

There is indeed a truly Epicurean pleasure in simple food when hungry and fatigued, in setting down the heavy pack after hiking 10 miles over hill and dale and just lying down on the bare ground, rest is blissful. Similarly, simple friendship with companions who have shared the effort toward a common goal is pleasure surpassing any concert or sumptuous entertainment.

"If the life of a man is filled with toil, and if he knows the
delights of rest, he requires no chambers, furniture, and rich and varied clothing; he requires less costly food; he needs no means of locomotion, or of diversion. But the principal thing is, that the man who regards labor as the business and the joy of his life will not seek that relief from his labor which the labors of others might afford him."
                  Leo Tolstoy: "On Labor and Luxury" 

"The possibility Of living On the land, of gaining one's sustenance from it by means of one's own labor, has always been and always will be one of the chief conditions of a happy and independent human life."
                 Leo Tolstoy; "To The Working People"

Russian Peasants by Anne Bobroff-Hajal