Category Archives: Healing

On becoming farmers, Pt 1

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Since childhood, there has never been a day that I wanted anything more than to work with the land. Inspired in part from the magic of a childhood spent looking into long rows of cherry trees, where space seemed to disappear in the distance, swallowed whole by the vastness of the orchard. The bright red cherries looked like sparkling candy mid-July and the airplanes that flew overhead, dropped clouds that fell gently, and whined their way past the vanishing point of the horizon. I would wait and listen for the revving of engines as the planes banked out of site for a return swoop.

I knew nothing of the practice of farming; only the art.

cherriesIn high school, I worked on farms and in college, lived in a beautiful farmhouse atop a hill dotted with cherry trees, apples, pears, peaches. Tractors wound their way through the straight, even rows, chugging those familiar billowing clouds peacock-fanned-tail-style. My knowledge of the pesticides made me weary of standing too near, though I looked on still in reflection of my youth.

It was about that time that someone asked, “What is your idea of paradise like?”

I didn’t hesitate, “An orchard. The culmination of nature and human c0-inspired thing of  beauty.”

orchardNot long after, I began working on an organic farm just a few miles down the road. It was the first in a series of experiences that would lead me to discover a new way of farming. A method more in line with not only with my own philosophy, but one interwoven into the very fabric of ecology.

I went on to study biodynamics, and discovered permaculture nearly by accident, when my mentor suggested we plant a small orchard atop a knoll on her property. A thoughtful seed was planted.

By this time, I had begun to experiment with farming practices in my own backyard, a property not much over an acre. The soil had once supported an apple orchard, and lines were still drawn in the soil from years of tilling. Only a few trees remained.

It was 2004. Studies were emerging supporting a correlation between ag practices and the increased incidence in lymphomas in farming families. I was working for a share of food each week, and following the story in the local papers about a young woman running for Cherry Queen while battling diffuse large B-cell lymphoma.

When this brave young woman died in January of 2005, I began researching the link between laurenlymphomas and the use of organochlorines and organophosphates on cherry orchards in Peninsula Township, Grand Traverse Co. Michigan. In September, 2006, I was diagnosed with aggressive form of the cancer.

Time stopped. For six months, I underwent surgery, chemo- boardphotoand immunotherapy, and radiation. Innocence was lost. The orchard had lost its magic.

During that time I struggled with how to move forward. The mother to three young children, my life had been turned upsidedown. The way forward no longer seemed as clear as it once had. Or perhaps for the first time, I was examining life with enormous clarity.

A thought had sprouted in my imagination – a vision of the orchard as a living being, a healing place. The thought was what moved me through those dark, dark hours contemplating the outcome of the treatments. I needed to find a way to heal the old orchards. To bring about change, I couldn’t sit around and hope someone else would do it; I needed to be the change.

Healing Tree was born. A small-acreage experiment in growing fruit trees without the use of biocides. It has transitioned through some significant life changes. And today is taking root at the Conservancy-owned DeYoung property.

But the path was not so obvious. And the source of inspiration? Well, that was something quite out of the ordinary…

Discovering the Light

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Modern sophsiticated society seems to be lacking one crucial element; admiration for our elders. There was a time when they were the Google, Wiki, encyclopedias of knowledge we turned to for advice, information, and sometimes just for hope. There’s little comfort in asking my computer about the changes that are coming in this world.

My farming mentor, a woman who left city life in her 60s to explore living off the grid… a woman who packed her belongings into a garage and began a succesful CSA on a hilltop in Bingham, is transitioning out of this world into whatever transcendance awaits her. And I find myself in a mix of emotion from the warm feelings of gratitude for having learned about the world through her eyes, to sadness in the loss, to an overwhelming feeling of healing, knowing some part of that eduacation is now in the hands of a new generation who must step up and continue this legacy of learning and educating.

In the end, we can’t reboot the system, but we can in mycelium-like fashion, pass along the wisdom gleaned from experience with our mentor. In the end, it is not just Jayne who is transitioning; it’s all of us who have loved and learned from her. In forest succession, when one tree falls, light is revealed, and in that light new things grow. New ideas, new and exciting changes emerge. We are just now looking up to that light, we are just now beginning to grow.

The hill

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I must find a man who still loves the soil

Walk by his side unseen, pour in his mind

What I loved when I lived until he builds

Sows, reaps, and covers these hill pastures here

With sheep and cattle, mows the meadowland

Grafts the old orchard again, makes it bear again

Knowing that we are lost if the land does not yield.

-Jeanne Robert Foster

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Up an old farm road, some ways out of town, there’s a place that grows ideas. It’s a little unconventional (thankfully), and as the woman who owns the property has always said, “If you make it up the hill, you were meant to arrive.”

I could drive it, and sometimes I do, but mostly I prefer to park at the base of the hill and trace the two-track up through the still of the forest. A few days ago made the trek on foot and met up with a deer, all the while contemplating the juxtaposition between the system and game that is played in surviving via a new set of rules, versus the simplicity of rules laid out by nature. How one system deprives us of purpose, while the other feeds it to us in abundance.

I digress.

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The hill is my transition in and out. A time for me to process what I have learned, or while ascending, consider all that I have learned that has lead to my return. This farm is where I got my start in permaculture. It’s the place where I was given information, shown how to grow food, how to build soil, how to live and think outside of the melancholy of the free-market system.

A biodynamic farm. What happens here is dynamic, from how we build thematrix of the food web from that which we eat, to that which eats what we eat, to the larger picture of how we relate to the plants, each other, our place within this universe. This is where I first heard the universe described as “one voice, one song.”

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And that word “dynamic” – I love how it feels to say it. How it opens my throat like a yawn. How intrinsic a vocal movement meets definition is this word, dynamic.

We have been asked here to help an old friend restore her vineyard, planted 25 years earlier on a bluff over the bay. The vines are still bearing, though many other plants have joined them and there is much to learn about the ever-increasing intricacies of this now self-regulating ecosystem.

And in returning, we are visiting the ghosts of our past. Walking past echos of ideas still standing. Thoughts pending. Heartbeats rendered through the undulating landscape where milkweed, vetch, and valerian have replaced annuals in the fertile soil. This is a living memory. And to think I felt sadness when I first looked upon it! When it has so thoughtfully produced in our absence! Lifted the roof off the greenhouse, and blanketed the orchard in a cloak of yarrow and gentle green grasses.

We have been charged with more than the responsibility of salvaging a vineyard for harvest.

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That is too one-dimensional and careless a thought. We have been shown a path that will lead to wisdom gleaned from the harvest or from the goal of harvest. And what better way to begin, than to learn about a vine?  A vine that is so careful to root itself in depth and breadth before reaching out to others for support.

We will not be saving a vineyard; we will be saving ourselves.

At the root of any problem; find first the solution

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Branch infested with aphids prior to any application of spray.

We’re not your average farmers- eagerly awaiting a small infestation of aphids, so that we might experiment with solutions to eliminate them from our fruit trees, but there we found ourselves- eager at the sight of them to experiment with more traditional remedies. To prove more to ourselves than anyone else, that we can grow an orchard without chemical salts, fertilizers, and biocides- grow a food forest as nature might.

While nature doesn’t supply us with aphid spray (natural or otherwise), it does supply us with observable phenomena and if we apply this knowledge, rather than change the underlying structure, we can adapt and respond quickly; ensuring successful results.

We noticed not long ago that the tree suffering with curly leaf aphids was showing signs of stress. It had suckered on two occasions, and appeared thirsty. Within days, the aphids arrived.

Same branch the following morning.

People often look at aphids as the source of the problem with a plant, much as they might accuse the hungry woodpecker of destroying a tree. However, there are often underlying issues (and thankfully issues more easily resolved if noticed early on), that lead to infestations and disease.

Much as the overworked human might fall ill without rest and proper nutrition, and the tree, death by dismemberment, due to infestations of insects that attract woodpeckers, our trees will also suffer the consequences of illness, if not paired with good soil and adequate water.

Simply put, healthy trees stave off their own health issues. And trees interplanted with habitat for predatory insects that might feast on aphids, are at a huge advantage.

So apart from spraying a solution of peppermint oil, a soil conditioner, plus water (completely non-toxic), I also spent some extra time watering this particular tree and will interplant with some chives and comfrey in the next few days for added mulch and resistance to other aphid populations.

Normally, these trees would have been planted in an ideal mix of soil, mulched properly, and interplanted to start, however time constraints prevented us from first achieving the ideal conditions. What we hope to harvest from these trees, apart from eagerly anticipated apples and pears, is knowledge that may be applied in conventional orchards to replace costly and dangerous biocides.

“In teaching, there is healing; and in healing, we teach.”

Farmer Girl

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I grew up in a sturdy four square house nestled in the middle of a cherry orchard that spanned every horizon. The only tall trees I knew as a child were the two lone maples that framed the face of the house. Their canopies provided the shade that was my summer fort, where I could gaze into the hallowed depths of those infinite rows.

On the occasion, beautiful children wove their way between trees, while their parents worked, speaking in a language that was foreign and magical, picking cherries, and dropping them into buckets. How I longed to run amongst those children, but so foreign were they, I do believe, I thought them imagined.

Though I wasn’t supposed to wander from the yard, the dwarf trees ripe with red, sparkling cherries, standing in neat, tidy rows, were an irresistible attraction to my four-year-old curiosity. I ran down the rows until I could only barely make out the broad arches of the maple trees, and then back home again.

In May, the planes would come, dipping low from their perch in the sky, blanketing the orchards in a fine mist. On these days, my mother would lift me from where I played in the yard, and take me back into the house. From the front window, I watched the planes disappear over the horizon, listening to their motors rev and whine as they looped and lifted for a return pass. The air tasted strange, but the sight gripped at me and held me to the window.

My mother wandered the house, closing windows and cursing the men in the planes.

Later, before the cancer had settled into my blood, whenever someone asked me my idea of heaven, I explained to them the tidy lines of trees; my idea of heaven was the farm. What a perfect place; the natural pallet painted by the hands of humans and machines. It was the beginning of a life-long love of farming. There has never been a period of time when, like most of us who live in the greater Grand Traverse region, I have not in some way been connected with a farm.

At 26, I saw a photograph of a young woman in the newspaper. She was battling non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer of the blood while running for Cherry Queen. Something in her smile radiated out from the page. I sat with her photo for some time. Behind her, cherry blossoms clouded their branches. There, the neat rows beckoned.

Later that winter, I learned that the young woman had died. I ran a query for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer about which I knew nothing. Lauren had died of diffuse large b-cell lymphoma, an aggressive form of the cancer, dubbed “the pesticide cancer” for its prevalence among agricultural families.

Before long, I was knee-deep in research into the links between the increased incidence of NHL and the use of organochlorines and -phosphates on cherry orchards. I studied DEQ maps of water samples taken in Peninsula Township, where Lauren had grown up, spoke with the Old Mission school that neighbors an active orchard, where the branches of trees overlap the playground, questioned residents, learned of the prevalence of NHL and leukemia among families living on or near the orchards, and suddenly the sweetness of those beautiful, perfect orchards had soured.

Two years later, at 28, with three young children, I began having dreams that I was dying. In each dream, I was on a ship in the Straits of Mackinac. In the dreams, my girls stood on the deck reaching out for me, but I was leaving them. My heart ached as I turned each time and walked into the light afforded by sun filtering through spray forming off the bow.

In a final dream, I looked down upon a body resting in a bed on the second story of a house. The house didn’t have any walls and large, fierce animals were trying to get at the body to eat it. The body was naked, and an intense light emanated from the right armpit. The light was so bright, you couldn’t look directly at it. I fought off the animals, to protect the body, and awoke shaken and crying. That morning, July 19th, 2006, while in the shower, I discovered a large lump within my right armpit. The lump felt dense and smooth and it sickened me to feel it.

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In September, I was diagnosed with diffuse large b-cell lymphoma, the same cancer that had killed Lauren. My treatments began immediately.

Fighting cancer involves the poisoning of the body to destroy the cancer, while managing the extreme side-effects in a simultaneous battle to keep the body alive. Over the winter, I began chemotherapy combined with immunotherapy. I met with my darkest fears about dying. I accepted it might happen, but chose instead to focus on my babies. By the time farmers were gearing up to spray their orchards, I was completing my radiation treatments, and feeling a renewed commitment to farming.

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In 2007, we established Healing Tree Farm in response to concerns over the use of chemicals on our food-supply. So began an adventure in farming using the principles of permaculture, a method of farming that mimics natural forest succession, in urban and country settings. Since then, we’ve helped build school gardens, began the first permaculture courses taught at NMC, and have held free workshops to educate and inspire people to question the system and make changes according to the lesson book nature has provided.

Today, divorce has uprooted the farm, but seeds have been planted in three different counties, and we will never stop helping others achieve their goals of growing food without chemicals. This year, Healing Tree hopes to locate land to plant an orchard. This orchard we hope will represent the future of growing methods, using innovative thinking, rather than relying on biocides to solve problems, and growing food that is truly healthful, not only to those who eat what the land provides, but for those who work the soil and live nearby.

It is our hope to heal the old orchards, to restore magic to a place I have loved for as long as I can remember. This is what is meant by our name Healing Tree. In teaching, we are healing, and in healing, we hope to inspire.

Uprooted

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Dear Reader,

In the last year, we’ve picked up and moved to Charlotte.  And while in Charlotte, from a studio apartment to a larger space and then from there, back home again.  I was emailing back and forth with a number of permaculturalists this morning regarding artwork permissions for the Healing Tree website, when a few of them wished me well in our new space. This got me thinking, it isn’t over yet.  Our current space which provides for a large garden area, is also temporary.  The benefit here is that we may revisit the work we begin here since the property will remain in the family.  We’re still an uprooted family.  And in this economy, we’re not alone.  

So, what can you do if you’re forest garden plans have been uprooted?  

Firstly, stay involved.  Participate in an online forum, write a book, speak at your library or local school, talk with others about those things that motivated you to begin this work.  Secondly, consider a public piece of land or a family member’s land.  Often people are more than eager to allow you to work your magic on the landscape.  Forest gardens are beautiful, functional and add value to a space.  Thirdly, take this time to read up on those areas of permaculture that interest you most.  Think about all those books you’ve been saving for a rainy day; open ‘em up and start a refresher course for one.

This is the best time to learn to grow and forage for yourself and your community.  Stay in tune with the process and notice the positive change taking place all around you.  

Blessings and balance, Samantha

Where the farm began

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I suppose Healing Tree began somewhere in my heart and worked its way to productive thinking about sustainability at a point when I could apply it to the land behind our house.  Unfortunately, we had to sell that beloved space and move on; abandoning our hard work, but holding firm to the mission of Healing Tree.  

While we were away in North Carolina, we received a package from our old address.  Inside the box was a child-sized weeding fork and a note from the new owners.  The letter said that the fork had been discovered out back after the spring thaw.  It was broken, but the owner mended it and sent it to the address on our closing papers.  

When I first picked up the small tool, my heart swelled.  It had been my dream to teach our girls alongside the land and here we were miles from any open spaces, tucked away in a corporate landscape far from home.  I held the fork a long while and felt my hope renewed, as I knew we would once again establish the farm.  

Last night I dreamed I returned to the house and saw the land behind it flourishing with new vegetation, flora and butterflies whose wings flickered color on the wind.  It was beautiful.  When I awoke, I told my eldest daughter about the dream.  Her face bore a look of surprise and said she had also dreamed we had returned to the house to live.  At the time, I did not know what this dream might mean.

And then today I was busy unpacking yet another box.  This time unwrapping photos and fragile items we’ve collected over the years.  At the bottom of the box, wrapped tightly was the small weeding fork.  I unwrapped it and examined it carefully, then set it down upon Grandma’s old upright piano.  There was soft glow to wood as if it had been made whole again in more than just the physical and I realized the significance of the dream.

We may not return to the house and land we loved, but we will return to the farm someday.  We will return to the land; another section, but still connected to our former land; to all land.  And when we return, so will begin a new season at Healing Tree and a new chapter to our life story.  All this the fork represents – the altering of paths, the tilling of soil to breathe new life into the roots, our roots.  

The farm is more than just the physical.  A large part of Healing Tree is within the hearts and minds of those who continue the journey – Some on foot, some in writing, others in their song or art. 

“In healing, we are teachers and in teaching, may we heal.”

The universe in a weed

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If ever you’ve gazed upon a fully ripe dandelion; ready for the next big gust of wind or the aid of a small child eager to watch seeds carried into the sea of air around them; then you may have noticed the tail of each seed resembles a star and that when clustered together (much like this major run-on sentence), it resembles a tiny universe.  

The biggest lesson I’ve received from observing the natural world, is that everything mimics a larger system.  The smallest atoms with electrons revolving around an nucleus mimic the planets in orbit around the sun.  The laws of succession which produce nutrient-rich top-soil are mirrored by the same process over time in our universe with dead stars giving birth to matter which later forms new stars and new planets.  There’s always some reflection of ourselves or our garden or in the largest of imaginable places that resembles the smaller, that takes on the characteristics of another system within a system within yet another system.  The further out we head from tiny atoms to the great expanse of our own universe, we begin to see how each thing is connected and most importantly, it reminds us that we are a part of everything.

Healing Tree: the website

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I’ve been brainstorming ideas to make this blog more effective and I’ve decided to build a website around topics discussed on the blog while maintaining the blog as a central forum for discussion and ideas.  The website will offer resources to folks new to permaculture and also those more familiar with the “do no harm” approach to farming, including helpful links and articles written by me and those more familiar with the process.  

Since we’re landless, we’ll be propagating a new kind of garden – with vital seeds of change – online!

So much more than cherries

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It was the summer of 2004 when I first read about a young woman running for the title of National Cherry Queen while battling an aggressive form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.  The young woman’s story inspired me to research lymphoma, and since I was an NMC student at the time, I entered non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma into the online medical journals and discovered immediately NHL is the cancer most often associated with agricultural regions. 

That winter, after learning the young woman had passed away, I began to research further the increased incidence of NHL and the use of organophosphates and organochlorines in the orchards.  My paper, More than Cherries was published later that year and examined specifically how increasing toxicity over time affects the children of residents and workers living in and around orchards.  A year following the publication of my paper, I was diagnosed with the very same form of lymphoma as the young cherry queen contestant. 

Like many life-long residents of the Grand Traverse region, I grew up living next door to the growing expanse of apple and cherry orchards and while in college, I spent a few years living on a conventional cherry farm.  I love farming and consider it a noble profession – one that impacts and supports our community for the better, but after my own diagnosis, I became increasingly aware of the dangers inherent in spraying large expanses of land near homes, schools and businesses with chemicals designed to kill biological organisms.    

After talking with several farmers at length about the chemicals sprayed in the orchards, I am equally aware of the difficulties in moving from conventional methods into alternative methods that are less effective.  With costs rising and profits falling, the industry is under attack by economic forces beyond our control.   That said, it is still important and vital we begin a discussion about changing farming practices over time to account for healthier soil, better quality produce, higher profits and most importantly, the health and well-being of our community. 

Not long after my cancer went into remission, I began a new mission in my life inspired by my experience with ‘the pesticide cancer.‘  I began Healing Tree Farm in my own backyard, employing the principles of permaculture to grow fruit-trees without chemicals.   Permaculture is a “do no harm” approach to farming that seeks to mimic a mature eco-system relying less each year on the farmer for water and nutrients and becoming increasingly a biologically diverse habitat while also supplying food for the community. 

It’s a simple concept:  Grow food the way nature intended it to be grown.   Fruit trees in the wild are not in neat, clean rows that stretch out for miles.  They appear in the midst of layers of vegetation all with individual and vital functions for the overall environment.  In the permaculture orchard, trees are grown in guilds, or groupings separated by hedge-rows and surrounded individually by edible bulbs, nutrient-rich deep-rooted plants that may be composted in place, and a few plants that take in nutrients at different intervals than the tree, but serve to attract beneficial insects. 

That’s right, in the permaculture-orchard, insects and birds are welcomed guests. Since 90% of insects found in the untreated orchard are either beneficial (meaning they eat the “bad bugs”) or benign, encouraging bugs like predatory wasps and lady bugs to thrive in your edible forest garden will significantly and naturally offset aphid populations.  Growing extra fruits to encourage birds like the cedar waxwing -the bird known affectionately to farmers as “cankerbird” – will reduce cankerworm populations.  And encouraging healthy bacteria in the soil will help offset the types of fungus that often overwhelm fruit trees. 

It’s not an exact science, but it is a forgiving practice.  Nature is always striving for balance, so when we farmers miss a step, nature will fill in the gap.   The end result is a landscape that is beautiful, healthy, vibrant and bountiful. 

Still, I’m not so naive as to imagine conventional famers will immediately invest in practices so foreign to them.  I hope farmers will continue to phase out harsher chemicals and I hope for the sake of our community this will not be an issue overlooked any longer, but examined closely and discussed openly- Not in the my-side-against-your-side fashion, but as an exercise in building on the success of our community with future generations in mind. 

Let us not abandon our farmers who continue to struggle and who allow us to preserve an age-old way of living even in glum economic times.  At the same time, Farmers, let us not forget the community who support and engage you in change. 

We are the Cherry Capital of the World, but those of us who have lived our lives in Traverse City and outlying areas know we are so much more than the fruit we’re famous for.  Our region is rich with ideas for more sustainable practices in agriculture and beyond.  We may be the world’s largest producer of sour cherries, but more than that we are a close-knit community known for thinking outside the box; known for our pioneering spirit and dedication to our people and our wild spaces.   And for this home-sick girl miles from any orchards, Traverse City will always be one of the most beautiful places on earth.