EEC Forest Stewardship

So much forest burned. On the hundreds of kilometers drive through British Colombia and The Okanogan, we got a glimpse of the charred ridges and mountains throughout this Northwest Region. Early dawn light creeps across Washington’s Tonasket Valley. On the last morning of a week long road trip, I had come to the familiar landscape I have seen burn several times in the past decade. At one point in my life, I had lived here, with plans to stay and settle, but I’m very glad I didn’t, because it burned. The ridge this picture was taken from, it the homestead of my sheep mentor. This view looks into hills I once lived in at Scanlon Lake. It burned in 2015. These hills burned this summer, 2026. North, in Summerland, the hills are black for miles. That community is still in shock, with pamphlets in the local grocery store about wildland fire prevention and outreach programs for those who lost their homes in the fire. This was an unplanned stop on our way home, but the charred forests were still smoldering across The West.

Canada is a truly vast landscape. After driving for hours we were inching our way across a single Provence. So much green and gold swept by as we climbed through passes and across dammed lakes. We saw a couple of rivers, but most were held in vast glacial valleys flooded with trillions of liters. Fresh water is required for our life on earth, and there is a lot of it in Canada. They release it down into The States, where it feeds our rivers and lakes. Still, with all that water, the forests still burn. In the picture above, Canada’s Okanogan lake splashes about in a windy weather front. Across the water, the hills are ash grey with patched of black charcoal reduced forest. Further north, near Glacial National Park B.C., the neighboring timber plantations were brown with beetle kill or black from burns coming through. The burning legacy grew as we entered Banff. We did not drive up to Jasper, where a 2024 fire destroyed much of the landscape. Wildfires across the planet are growing in number each year, and Canada is no exception. I scrolled through the wildfire history of the country and watched the exponential growth.

That concept is still not getting through to most folks, and I think what we witnessed on our drive began to bring the point home in physical devastation. Yes, wildfire is a natural part of forest ecology, but only intact forests work well with fire. Canada had the most timber plantations I’d ever seen- which does make sense for the scale of the land, but then again, there was not very much public or protected land outside of National and Provential Parks- which were usually very limited in scale, token patchwork at best. I did not see any old growth trees anywhere we hiked or camped. At a road side trail in Revelstoke, we saw some labeled “old growth” cedars that might have been 120 years old. No, the trees were cut, across the whole Provence. obviously, thinning and cutting plantations happens, and it’s considered fire management, but if the land had kept it’s forest, with original primordial roots and microbes, the fires that roll through would be slow and low. Intact canopy would keep moisture in the ground and prevent erosion. Since human exponentially cut the forest that had been evolving and building for thousands of years, we now traverse a landscape of barren monocultures and fire scarred ridgelines.

Mount Revelstoke National Park, B.C. (pictured above) is attempting to mimic wildfire in its forests to help reduce fire danger through controlled burning. There is a study about dendrochronology and fire within the park, which is helping to lead controlled burns today. I was surprised in my search for studies in Canada, to find mostly east coast topics of forest fires. Maybe Canada is shy about this topic because so much of the forests are commercial timber. If we admit that plantation forests are more susceptible to out of control wildfires, we would have to change timber management practices. Instead, at least here in the US where we have public land, we sell harvesting rights to timber companies, and they replant the cut forest with tight together monoculture coeval trees. This paired with the removal of understory and the biomass that would have naturally decomposed back into the soil to build moisture and resiliency for a native forest, increases drought conditions and fire susceptibility.

For British Colombia, the fact that there is still old growth harvesting going on in that Provence says industry and commercial timber is worth more than changing forest management practices to help suppress wildfires, which will only grow worse with climate change. After witnessing so many older trees cut in BC forests, even around campgrounds, I think Canada just might be trying to erase any understanding of what truly old trees look like, or what they do to prevent out of control fires. Instead, Canada seems ok with the continued cutting, for money that only gets into the pockets of shareholders in big timber industries. The little towns throughout rural Canada that we drove through are not thriving through timber or mining, and that’s the same throughout the world, because natural resources are finite, and these industrial harvesting methods do not manage with this in mind. Instead, the industry adapts to using smaller and smaller trees to make veneers, particle board, and laminates for construction.

How can we help? Write your local, state, and federal representatives and tell them you want commercial timber industries to be held responsible. Tell them to stop leasing timber sales in our public lands, and instead, let native forests evolve and adapt to wildfire by growing into mature ecology that deters hot fast burning. In our national parks here in the US, where logging is not allowed, there are still wildfires, but they are not great conflagrations that destroy all the forest and run amok into towns and neighborhoods. When we drove through The North Cascades N.P., there was evidence of burning, but the damage was minimal, and the forest was quickly regenerating after the burn. This is not the case in human managed forests, and it’s time we all acknowledge the problem and change the practices of timber plantation planting to better adapt to fire danger.

I’ve been planning a trip to BC for over a year now, and finally launched into the north the first week of October. The road trip would be a full week of hopping through National and Provential Parks across British Colombia. The half way point was Banff, at the edge of Alberta, where we planned a two day stop over before our return back home. My housemate Brenn accompanied me, and was a patient navigator and companion through this adventure. We were blessed with good weather and smooth driving (for the most part). Fall color was coming on quick, and we reveled in the golden larches and aspen along the way. Out goal was to see wilderness, and that’s what we did, driving up to Revelstoke, then Glacier, and finally, Banff. Our first few days were quiet and relaxed, with sightings of bald eagles, a big horned sheep, and lots and lots of mountain peaks. We were also learning as much as we could about the geology of the area. The rocks were off the hook- and so divers. In short, this part of the world is known for hectic geological confusion, a lot of tectonic uplift combined with a conveyor belt of Pacific islands crashing into the west coast builds quite a picture in millions of years of evolution.

Then there were all the glacial terrains, including some still active ice caps in the higher elevations. We went on a hike to see the ice, and instead, learned about how quickly these relics are melting away. In Glacier National Park (Canada), we were greeted with a waterfall, where once a great sheet of ice formed. It’s sometimes still a shock to see how fast climate change is happening all around us. But the reminders are so important. We did see the ice from the parking lot, and coming back on the highway, but glaciers in this part of the world remain in retreat, and will probably be gone from these mountains in our lifetime. Something else that remained elusive on our trip was the carnivores- which was probably a good thing. I had been a little nervous about being in grizzly country on this trip, but the bears stayed away, and we only encountered one trail that was closed for bear activity.

At our campground in Revelstoke, there was a bear locker at our site. I was very appreciative of it’s presence, as everywhere else we camped we had to keep the food in our truck- where we were also sleeping. Eek! Again, no problems occurred, but we took the threat seriously and always cleaned up our camp before bed. In Canada, you can be fined for “baiting” if you leave any food out. That’s a fair consequence in my book, because the animals are euthanized if they become problems in campgrounds. We did not see anyone else being careless, so the message is getting through.

That cute beaver symbol on the bear locker is the Canada National Park emblem, and I love it. The image is a statement of rehabilitation in the parks, where they are embracing natural restoration through the amazing powers of beaver damming. Sure enough, at Revelstoke, beavers are hard at work on The Headwaters of The Colombia River. We were in awe of all the wetlands below in the river valley. The picture below is our attempt to show what we saw, but scale is hard to capture in the great outdoors.

Though much of our trip was in the truck getting from place to place, we still had daily hikes and wonderful fire cooked meals each evening. It was great to get back into the camper lifestyle, and we slept well and warm in our bed in the bed of the truck. Most of our meals revolved around hotdogs and cheese, meals were simple and easy. Breakfasts were Brenn’s specialty, a lot of pancakes! PB&Js supplied our lunches, and we did enjoy hamburgers one afternoon on our way home.

One place we did not sleep so well was Banff. After a few days of really sinking in with nature, we arrived at what we thought was our main destination for the trip, Banff. But Banff was a mob scene- with so much tourist trap agenda and throngs of people pressing into each other in town. We arrived at our campground in shock, seeing the city of RVs and trailers with little vegetation or privacy from site to site. Our reserved spot was next to the bathroom, with no fire ring. I had no idea this place was so huge and developed, with plug-ins everywhere. As we settled in to cook our meal, a tour bus pulled in across from us and unloaded 12 Chinese tourists with their luggage. The folks began unpacking tents and setting up, yelling back and forth in agitation, as the wind picked up and made setup much more difficult. The yelling went on well into the night, but once things quieted down, a new racket picked up; the trains. Trains run through every park we stayed in, which is very different from American National Parks. In Canada, trains built the nation, and keep it running, so trains always get the right of way. In Banff, they line up to get through a tunnel under The Rockies, and stage this transition at our campsite. Diesel engines were idling below us all night long, and as one faded off into the tunnel, another would arrive to wait its turn. It was a nightmare- and we got little sleep, even with ear plugs. By morning, I had resolved to get the heck out of there, and we did.

Though out original plan was to stay in Banff a couple of days, we drove right out of there, and headed south to Radium for some hot springs, which we learned were not open till later in the day during the winter schedule, so we headed back towards Glacier and Revelstoke, sad that we had not been able to enjoy Alberta. Our spirits were much lower that day, with little sleep and a lot of driving to get back into wilderness once more. We found a recreational camp site and settled in to rethink our trip. Brenn was still craving hot springs, so I got out one of the maps and found two thermal sites to the south. This rout would change our trip considerably, but we were ready to pivot by then and decided to go for it. Now our destination was Arrow Lake, and the hot springs there. We ended up on a surprise free ferry ride, as Arrow lake is a deep glacially carved lake- like Lake Washington, which makes setting bridge pylons impossible, so they use ferries. We had a delightful crossing with great views of the landscape, and friendly Canadians eager to meet and greet during the crossing.

Our hot springs adventure set us back on track for the rest of our trip. We relaxed for an afternoon in the hot mineral waters of Halcyon Hot Springs and then found our final campsite in Canada. Mable Lake Provential Park was our final stay in BC. This was the only time we experienced mild Canadian anger about how our administration has been treating our neighbors. I don’t need to go into details, but in short, we were charged double rates at the site, and were given stiff smiles with thick underlying contempt for being “foreigners”. We understand why many Canadians are upset with The US, and that’s part of why we chose to go on our trip there, so we were spending our money in Canada, and appreciating there great landscape and hospitality. We were actually surprised there was no more attitude, but as usual, Canadians remain friendly and willing to reflect with visitors who show respect and appreciation.

Because we had changed plans after Banff, we ended up making a surprise visit to my sheep mentor on the east side of The Cascades, near Tonaskit. It was wonderful to be together after several years, and a little Canadian Whisky brought laughter and good cheer as the cold continues to set in. On our last day of the trip, we crossed through The North Cascades National Park. It was snowing. The mountains are so beautiful, and we made a safe drive through them, back into Western Washington, just in time to see the sun set on our west coast as we made the last few hours drive home.

So much gratitude for safety, amazing landscapes, good company in my friend, and lots of friendly and helpful Canadians. We saw and learned so much, and hope to return for more in future. I’d like to plan a Banff trip where we don’t camp in town, and plan to go up into Jasper too. One thing we did see a lot of on our trip was burn scars. It was apparent that a lot of Canadian forests have burned, and it’s looking similar in Washington too. Along with the retreating glaciers, summer drought is leaving our western forests vulnerable to fire. It’s made worse by all the timber plantations now dominating the tree line throughout the west. Timber forests are not well managed- lacking the thinning needed to keep fire danger low. Very few of the parks where the native growth is left to nature were chard, and if there was evidence of burning in them, it was low and slow, and not able to go far. We could all take some valuable lessons from this- that nature has her own ways of protecting against fire, by building up great sponges in her root systems, with the biomass left on the ground to help keep groundwater from evaporating. Beavers can also play a crucial role in this protection of forests, by banking water and holding it along forest edges. When nature is allowed to manage herself, we thrive too.

I cannot say we should stop all forestry practices, that would mean more fossil fuel plastic crap in the world, but we can stagger our plantations, allowing swaths of native forest to grow between the lumber stands. Timber plantations should be thinning, but they delay it because it’s an expense with no income (they can’t sell the slash). That slash should be banked to keep moisture in the soil, not chipped and dumped along road sides. Until we start prioritizing the natural world over short term profit, the forests will continue to burn out of control, and our water will shrink away, until there is nothing left to drink. Write to your local and federal reps about this issue now. Tell them you want to see your forests protected, not cut down for shareholder dividends. Visit your national parks, and support local restoration projects where you live. Salute your local beavers and thank them for the hard work they do to keep water available. If you can, take a trip to Canada and spend some money there to support a friend’s economy. The exchange rate is great right now, so go north my friends, go north.

There are great ground covers springing to life in the fields at EEC Forest Stewardship. After several years of intentional reseeding, rotational grazing, and patience, some of the diversity is beginning to shine through. These pictures were taken in August, with no irrigation. Green is the key to seeing a good pasture landscape at a glance, but peeking into the detailed patchwork of many different plants- not just grasses, from broad leaf plantain to self-heal, the herbs are blending well. Why is this good news? Not just the resiliency of our pastures through the dry season, but also a myriad of dietary options for our grazing stock- geese, chickens, and sheep. There are also more flowering plants throughout the growing season for our pollinators. Rotational grazing keeps the pasture’s well mowed, but there are rest periods between animals, allowing a full lifecycle for the vegetation.

There are also patches of ground where more recovery is needed. In less productive areas, I usually mulch the space with cardboard and reseed in the spring and fall. I’ve got all the pasture spaces grided out for rotation, and each one is about 50×50′. Each quadrant gets about a truckload of aged manure spread on it every few years, just to build soil faster. The improvements are easy to see from aerial photography. The left hand photo is the land the year before I took ownership. 14 years later, the landscape shows a much more enhanced space of production and restoration. Diversity of plantings, water catchment systems, gardens, orchards, and improved infrastructure have grown these first few zones of cultivation to retain water, build deeper roots to keep the soil in place and restorative.

I don’t mow. The sheep do the cutting of fields now. In some places, along building edges and sometimes to clear bramble trying to establish at the edges of my fields. There are long lists of future improvements for this land, especially where people live and work in these upper zones of the landscape. One other large new system not shown in the recent 2025 photo is our new solar array, between the house and the water pillow (cistern). The continued planting and improving pasture, edges, and groves, as well as the majority of the land not pictured below. The additional acreage is dominated by larger forest stands, salmon stream, and a huge back field currently developing a chestnut grove.

This is indeed, a lot of area for one person to tend alone. I keep the systems I manage as automatic as possible- I don’t have to stretch the vegetation towards the sky, or peddle photosynthesis. Nature does so much of the work on her own, I love helping her out by putting more diverse plantings out in her domain. That’s the beauty about our role in the landscape, we can shape some of the plants and animals towards our own needs, while maintaining a healthy ecosystem everyone can thrive in. What I’ll get done in my lifetime is modest, on the grander scale of evolution, and with the climate heating up, we’re bound to see a lot of favored species change in the next few decades. The wildlife and native plants continue to show what’s changing and what’s adapting well.

In our 3-5 months of dry season, the land must be able to keep its self cool and damp just beneath the surface. Seeing the pastures green assures me there is still good water near enough to the roots of these plants to keep things lush and growing. We’ve had over a month of no significant rainfall here, and in the picture below, the green side is ungrazed, the brown side is grazed to short cropped grass. It’s like a cut lawn going brown in the summer without irrigation. Many domestic lawns are now being grown with this in mind. Water scarcity is already happening in a lot of this country, as well as around the world. I’ve not irrigated either side of this pasture, but the rested side is looking green because it’s had a recent chance to grow and recover its lush protection from the sun and wind evaporation.

It’s crucial to keep the moisture in the soil for a lush, green pasture. Looks tell you some of what’s going on, but looking a little closer to see what individuals are supporting your pasture diversity is also important. Choosing to manage pasture space with grazing animals, rather than a mowing machine, also influences what gets cut and what is left behind. Below, the sheep have been grazing this pasture for about a week, and still, there are a lot of grasses seeding out and being left behind by the animals. This happens when I don’t pressure the sheep in a field. In the drought months of summer, I move the sheep more often, and let these thatch grasses cover the fields to protect them. The growth is still low, not a fire danger, as the vegetation is still low to the ground, and banking green just under the dried out seed stalks above. If we have an extended drought into fall, I can put the sheep back on this smaller clearing, hemmed in with electric mesh netting until they graze it down.

Clients sometimes ask me for specific rotational plans on my farm, something predictable and easy to follow so they don’t overgraze, or under-graze their land. There are general schedules you can follow, based on herd numbers, pasture productivity, and specific acreage, but the variants go far beyond these basic measurements. How much rainfall is your pasture receiving? What kind of forage is available? Are you using a multi-animal system? Is the land naturally productive or in need of amending? Will you vary your fields with crop rotation or reseeding? The option are seemingly endless, and for the management on this landscape, taking things a week at a time has come in handy for me with my animal numbers. The geese are still teaching me how they best fit into these cycles, as the numbers vary year to year with each clutch hatched. What I do know, is geese do graze a lot, and they like already grazed by the sheep spaces best. Each breed of animal will have its own set of needs and favored brows.

My Katahdin sheep brows, which a lot of other sheep breeds do not, so I take that into account. I try to always have vertical planning in my pasture use, especially along edges of trees, fence lines, and larger forest groves. These transition spaces are great for shrubs and climbing vegetation, like blackberry. No, I do not plant or encourage blackberry, but I do let some trellis out for the sheep in late summer. The flock will happily reach up to brown berries and the protein rich leaves of this invasive bramble. Note the broad leaf growth in the above pasture close ups- clover, vetch, sedges, and rushes are also present in many of my grid pasture spaces. These areas are usually also lush in late summer, if I don’t overgraze them. Timing comes with observation, and that’s the only way to catch a field before its been too eaten down. Sometimes I miss my window, but that’s not the end of the world either. The landscape here continued to recover, and more and more plant life is successfully establishing as my understanding of this small vignette expands.

There are also crucial missing pieces in this ecology, that I try my best to artificially replace- like sheep to make up for a lack of elk and large deer populations that would be moving through. Mob grazing and all that dropped manure from the sheep certainly add something, but are not the same as the natives that once dominated old growth forests- also removed, but slowly growing back- at least part way. I say this because there is not enough topsoil to hold mature old growth trees, so a lot of the current canopy will eventually fall to help build proper ground cover for the giant 12′ diameter old ones to return. Forest planners today seem to miss this important detail in planning the restoration of our native temperate rainforest. It is almost impossible to estimate the amount of topsoil lost when the first clear-cuttings happened along the west coast. The best guess is tens of feet. Today, sediment from erosion due to clear cutting continues to dump thousands of tons into our rivers and out into Puget Sound each year. Below is a picture from Oregon showing the erosion in the 1950s.

Above is an older tree cut at the turn of the century (before motorized chainsaws) note the springboard holes. I’ve marked where the original soil line would have been on this tree. It’s at least 5-6′ above the current topsoil today. You can see where the trunk base flared out against the rocks and soil that used to be there. This tree was probably about 100-150 years old- which is young for a red cedar, which can be thousands of years old if left to grow. What a lot of us think of as old growth, is actually still a young tree in forest ageing in The Pacific Northwest, again, we really can’t imagine what was here when the first cuttings began a century and a half ago. This stump is about a 6′ diameter, but early logging pictures tell us it’s a baby.

So what does this have to do with pasture improvement? Why am I not just planting cedars and returning all this land to forest? It’s going to take several lifetimes to bring back the topsoil these giants will need to stay rooted, especially as our climate becomes more violent and unstable. Wind storms knock down lots of trees each year in our area, and that wind is only going to become more powerful as storms increase in power. We are planting trees here at EEC, but we’re also working to build resilient landscape for the coming storms. This modest 10 acres continues to build fertility and bank water in our earthwork systems. The rich pasture area is banking soil for future forests. We’ll keep doing our small part one grazing rotation at a time, with sheep that are thriving, and providing meat to the community. No grains, no antibiotics, no hormones. This land is chemical free, because our animals are not fed concentrations of medicated chemical feed.

Here at EEC Forest Stewardship, the ecology of this landscape remains intact and in recovery. We’ll continue to maintain healthy pasture management, rotating our animals and reseeding for recovery. There are more and more patches of new plantings in our forest edges each year, and eventually, most of this property will be reforested. A few open places will remain, because transition zones in a forest are great for diversity. People also like sunlight, so having an open area to the sky where you have your home is important for mental and physical health. Many of our favorite food crops also like sun, so pastures keep enough open space to plant and cultivate too. We’re still reforesting most of the land in time, but grazing will continue at Leafhopper Farm for many decades to come.

Our international trade reliance on food alone should be a big red flag. Here in Western Washington, we can at least source local food year round- because of our amazing temperate climate, and a lot of inputs on farms that do. Livestock operations can only scale to the size of inputs they earn, and the vast majority of what you buy in a store is not 100% pasture raised. Though most of our grains go abroad, well, did go abroad, but that’s changing here in the US because of our current administration at the federal level. This same chaotic admin threw out clean water protections at the EPA and stopped oversight testing, encouraging industry to pollute away. The microplastics are in us, our water, soil, air, everything, and we’re not slowing our plastics intake. In my ’73 trailer, the floors are plastic, the walls are painted in plastic, kitchen counters, appliances, and spice lids are all plastic. All this will shed for the rest of its existence. It’s blowing out through the door onto the porch and into the gardens. But it’s falling in our rain, hanging in the clouds as they circumnavigate oceans and continents, interconnected around this finite globe.

I’ve been asking myself a lot about what’s left of our forests here in Washington. It’s part of a very important ecosystem that holds our lungs, the purest air in America, some say, except during fire season, which is getting longer each year. The water I rely on for my farm is pumped from an aquifer that is also finite. Only so much water can be taken out, only so much put in. These cycles of boom and bust are part of nature’s balancing act. Living scales of this planet determine when it rains and when drought sets in. These cycles can be followed, with a bit of forecasting, but we don’t know what’s coming next, and even if we did, we could not stop it. This is the way of a living system, and our hubris to keep thinking we can rule it, rather than work with it in a smart way, dumbfounds. Here is a timeline of recent cutting on The Olympic Peninsula, there are countless tree harvesting operations across this state, but this peninsula focus is in an area where watershed buffers and some of the last older trees vanish. I used Mapquest for this, simply zooming in and out to see a frightening time-laps just south of The Olympic National Park.

There are so many already cleared and replanted timber plantations all around, yet these more recent cuts are targeting edges of protected areas where buffers were drawn half a century ago. When we cut these last buffer areas, where natural re-seedings are still happening, we are letting go the last of the recovering forests that struggle to bank our water, clean the air, and keep soil in place on the ground. Plantation forests can’t do the work properly, as there is no building soil, diversity of species, or lasting habitat for long term regeneration. The timber plantations do not naturally reseed with much, the ecology keeps being stripped back to bare earth, now sprayed with harsh chemicals, preventing the last of native plants to retreat and die out. This madness is our undoing here in what was one of the most pristine, regenerative temperate rainforests on earth. The original forests here acted like a giant sponge to hold all the rain in the ground; slow sinking the rains into aquifers.

Our finite aquifers are being drained now more than ever, around the world. More and more straws pushed into Mother Nature’s skin, the living, breathing landscape, sucked dry. When we play vampires to this planet, we loose our paradise home, consuming it in greed with the aid of distraction from our screens. Then whole neighborhoods loose their shared well, while other’s on municipal water structures, see the bills climb higher and higher. Your other utilities are mounting too, with electricity, one of our favorite conveniences, climbing into the top spot, though water is life, and no matter how much electricity we have, we’re not drinking it.

Anyone happily going down the road of desalinization plants and reverse osmosis on the scale we’ll need for the whole world, knows nothing of finite still. Leftover brine from saltwater purification kills the ocean when it’s released back in, and the power to generate such ambitious industrial processing, consumes more than each of us ever needs in a lifetime, several times a week. It’s crazy town, and we’ve all bought in, choosing to live there through our participation. Wheels on fire indeed. Then we pour chemical cocktails all over what’s left of our natural world; fertilizers, insecticides, herbicides, and all the fuel to get it to us, into our fields, and on the food we eat. Seeds are coated in these chemicals before planting, the soil is doused in it several times a year, and the food keeps loosing taste and nutrition. We keep expecting to get something while giving nothing back, nothing alive.

Imagine trying to live off plastics and artificial chemical drenches? Then cut and remove the majority of our living biomass. The math does not add up. We will not get away with this much longer, and that’s where understanding the situation of food and water in our world today is so important. The happy little hippy places like Leafhopper farm can’t suddenly produce enough non-chemical food for the community. We’d all have to start cultivating. If the world turned to providing its own basic needs, we’d suddenly realize how little most have, no matter the money in the bank.

Perhaps those with a lot of land could grow a lot of food, but not without the people to help with all the work on so much land. That’s why big farming equipment and the fuel companies run agriculture, at least the agriculture that lets you go to the store and buy anything out of season. Everyone wanted to grow stable crops and livestock will need water, and clean water if they want our eating of said crops and animal products safe. It’s not right now, not unless you’re able to afford local hand crafted. That’s not where most of us stand in the grocery store. How many of you are clicking a shopping list online and picking up or having it delivered? That’s another great way to hurry along consumption in our communities, eating away at the leaf like the fat little caterpillars we are, until there are no more leaves, and we can’t keep having them shipped in from abroad. International instability through climate change, wars, political corruption, power hungry madness, has already destabilized much of global trade.

I’d also like a moment to mention how much abuse USA inflicts on Central and South America for the sake of the fruit industry. This includes the berries you eat, having pineapple in the store at all, and any other kind of juicy sweet fresh things out of season. Our economic hit men and covert military operations to control local governments, to take over, have led to some of the cheapest, most readily available food ever brought to the store. We complain about “those people” coming in through our southern boarders one way, not ever acknowledging the destabilization wrought on them by our own government, to create the illusion of prosperity in US. Now the chickens are coming home to roost, and we’re letting ICE pick pick pick our communities apart.

The layers involved in keeping the lights on, taps running, and food on the table has become utter lunacy. With all that withdrawing without returning in good condition, we’ve spent out our collateral and are now running on fumes and distracted by data centers. That’s the specter of capitalism haunting us. Corporations are wealthy important people now, so your little town, city, democratic right gets put on the back shelf, but you get more streaming options, and tokens for your little play thing A.I., trained by megalomaniacs of social media addiction. A dash of sports betting never hurts. With a country running at a 40 trillion deficit, we’re all doing just fine.

What can you do? Grow something at home and start learning about seed saving and seasonal eating. Discover more about your wild water, options for filtration, and what your community is doing to protect its water table. You might need to move to a better water source, and check forever chemical levels in your area. There are no maximum levels in our current national inspection system, which is a full reversal from research released just before 2025, that showed the great harm in forever chemicals, and recommended maximums to help keep people safe. Most highly populated areas are contaminated- especially near military instillation. Stop drinking bottled water if you can, it’s often as bad as tap water, or worse. Our courts recently ruled that safe drinking water is not a fundamental human right, so what comes out of the tap can be toxic, and that’s now ok. Test your water and invest in filtration while you can.

I can’t stress enough what’s coming down the pipe, we’re living in a land of insanity, and corporate greed continues to drive us deeper into complete ecological collapse. I won’t spend much more time breaking this down for you, but one more nail in the coffin of our food systems is the price of diesel fuel. Trains, planes, and trucks bring your food to the grocery stores- because they aren’t growing it out back, that’s for sure. Refrigeration revolutionized the food industry, and brought fresh produce, dairy, and meat to people across the country. Now the refrigerated transport, which runs on diesel fuel, is collapsing because it’s too expensive to move trucks around. It’s economy before environment, and when both fail, we’re up that nasty polluted creek without a paddle. Find your local grower now and start helping them plan for next year’s crop. Learn what’s local and where to invest so you’ll have a food source when the store shelves are empty. Supply is going to dwindle, no matter the demand, act now to make sure you know where your next meal is coming from.

Another year of bad burns here in Washington State. No, EEC is not in danger of burning, there is much less fear of wildfire on the west side of the mountains, but it’s still a threat. We’re getting smoke from the east side of the mountains, and with our off shore breezes taking a break, the pressing soot from burning forests and brush land that is parched. There is no rain coming to stop the conflagration. This is The West’s summer fire season, it’s a natural cycle that, up until the colonizing and settlement of wilderness. There are clear relationships still active between First Nations people working with fire to maintain open hunting forests, fertile planting clearing where camas once grew to feed the modest but well balanced villages of people who lived in seasonal cycles, closely connected to the natural world they know intimately. Political initiatives to control the environment for commerce, has lead to clogged plantation forests, draining of wetlands, and the squandering of millions of acres once full of old growth forests, incredible plant and wildlife diversity, and more than enough bounty for all who lived there.

It’s heartbreaking to see thousands of people living in what they think is a safe place, when we know the threat of fire is so high. There is a lot of talk of just “cleaning up” and “maintaining” the land to keep fire at bay. Forests and grasslands are not the problem, it’s our hubris to build in remote places, then try to blame anything else but our own choices to do so. Fire has always been a part of healthy ecology, but mankind- and I stress man, still wants to think he can control everything, continue the exploitation of the natural world, and have no consequences. This is the heart of our civic madness today, and it’s been the world as we know it for too long. Do not think that I assume the land where I live now is safe. We’ll have a burn one day here, and it will be terrifying, because we already know there is no quick way to get out, and we’re over built, so if a fire does take hold, there is no safe escape.

As the smoke creeps in from the fires, work here becomes a lot more challenging. It’s hard to breath through a mask doing labor, and I pull it off to get enough oxygen. We’re not in terribly bad air here. Yes, it’s hazardous, but I can work for about an hour without getting a headache, then work inside the sealed up house with an air filter and standing AC in the bedroom to sleep comfortably through the night. I never thought I’d need air-conditioning in this region. After the three digit heat dome a few years ago, when the house got to 94F, I invested in a portable AC and air filter for emergencies like this. It was only four days of smoke like this, but for all the livestock and wildlife still living outside, constantly breathing the pollution hanging thick across the fields and forests. The big LGDs are laying still in the shade while the chickens are on their roosts in the coop. The geese are sheltering under an old flat bed trailer. Everything is still now, and it’s a little haunting. Even the birds hold back on their songs. Silent summer.

There is a subtle layer of ash on everything now. I’ve been harvesting blackberries and wondering how the taste of this year’s wine will reflect the fire season. A few years ago, when it was like this, the fall mushroom season was delightful, so there are some potential silver linings and such, but more land burns, hotter temperatures climb, and there is no sign of rain. In the future, there will be fire on the east side, and in this much greater population concentration, more lives will be at risk. There have been some stunning incidents in the past few years that warn of us what’s to come. Lahaina Hawaii, Los Angeles California, and this year, Spokane Washington, are all important examples of what does happen when wildfire comes to population centers. Again, I’m so thankful Duvall has not experienced fire, and that it’s the only inconvenience of smoke we endure here now.

There are long term health issues to come if I keep working in weeks of smoke over the summers ahead. For the wild-land firefighters, it’s so much worse. We’re still sending people to fight dangerous, out of control elements, without safe breathing equipment. It would be too expensive. These burns cost US trillions of dollars in damages, as well as the lives of those who fall in the line of duty, and those caught in the flames, or more likely, suffocation in the smoke. This experience will continue to happen more and more often as the extremes of climate change continue. Hopefully, out species remains part of this incredible ecosystem, and the epic grind of geologic time, in which our land masses continue their great movement around a tiny speck in the universe that happens to support life.

At EEC Forest Stewardship, we recognize the longer droughts, harder rains that run off into the sea and away from our aquifers, and the need to restore rainforest. An earthwork system of swales and basins slows runoff and banks it back into the soil. Moisture in the vegetation keeps the landscape more resistant to fire. Burning is part of the ecology in this region, so planning for some fire to eventually move through is a given. We don’t let the brush build up- the sheep graze around our hedges, thinning as they go. The grass is short from grazing geese, chickens, and sheep; livestock manicures so the fire has less fuel. Where the forest and understory is already well established along the creek, the temperature drops several degrees. The soil is saturated with water during the rainy months, and the ground remains damp year round. These conditions resist fire, and keep the burning slow and low, protecting the habitat.

Human habitat is less folded into these smart ecological evolution. We put up highly flammable structures, full of plastic-OIL products that release toxicity into the air, water, and soil, when burned. Again, reflect on the recent urban fires in our country, look at what the home owners who want to rebuild are facing in cleanup. The soil will hold toxins for many decades, our products bring forever chemicals into the environment, polymers that would not exist in a regular woodland or grassland burn. Those “wildfire” smoke alerts are the ones I really try to avoid being exposed to. In protecting against the buildings here burning, all new build since establishing here in 2012 are fitted with metal roofs. This is a token action, but I am thinking about fire danger and preparing the buildings. Every little bit of planning we can implement now could help in future.

One more aspect of fire season to reflect on is how wide spread this occasion has become. Fires are thought of as only happening out west, but the smoke is getting to The East Coast too, and Midwest, blowing down from Canada. Also, fires are burning in the summer throughout the country, even in places like Florida and South Carolina. Dry conditions and drought are happening everywhere, so no one can completely avoid these conditions. Now is the time to prepare your home and know your evacuation rout. Study the ecology around you and know if you are in a fire zone. We must all accept that these environmental changes are happening and adapt to survive in a future that will not be slowing down. More drought will bring more fire and smoke, so invest in proper masks to have at home in case of emergency. Since the world has chosen to burn instead of transitioning away from the fossil fuels feeding the climate change, we’re all in for one heck of a ride.

Cool rains have come to the highlands. Sustained nighttime temps in the 40s signals the mushroom spring. The slopes of alpine mountains come alive as the last of summer’s flourishing spread begins to unwind. Mycelium remains active year round, processing the decomposing vegetation back into soil packed with nutrients. All kinds of mushrooms spring forth, on logs, in sand along creeks, under thick brush, and between the stumps of elder trees long hauled off on a truck to mills already in decline. Legacy old growth returning peaks like these offer magical glimpses into the world of fungi magic, and signal different chemical compositions within the forest floor. Interpreting that is a little above my knowledge base, but I can appreciate shape, color, base substrate the mushroom fruits from, and the age and composition of the forest. This helps me map species throughout the landscape and note what kind of habitat, weather, and elevation of the bloom.

These details help me form an understanding of what mushrooms might be happening when, and where to seek them out. The edible ones are ideal, but the really cool looking fungi always gets an appreciative nod from me, like this Cortinarius violaceus, really pop on the spring green moss along the hillside. There were several in an area about the size of a pool table, all blooming from mossy debris. I wondered how the patch would develop over time, or if this was a one and done event, and the new spores would move on to settle on a new mossy bank to establish elsewhere in future. Mushrooms seem so random in where they pop up. Remember, that visible fruiting body is attached to a well established mycelia in the unseen substrate below ground. These colonies extend in mycorrhizal networks that travel under the soil for endless miles.

Some of the most charismatic mushrooms are for eating, like the hedgehog patch pictured just above. What a delightful find on my hunt, and below you can see how this species got its name. This family has a toothed under cap. I like to call them muffins of the woods- because that’s what the tops of the caps look like, strewn across the forest floor. It’s such a treat to come upon a flush like this, and I picked almost all of them- leaving a few to keep up the good work in spreading spores to plant future food- that’s sustainable harvesting, and it’s important to practice while foraging in the wild so that mushroom patches flourish across the landscape.

Another well liked species, with international reputation, is know locally as a king bolete, but carries the culinary title porcini. These are wold famous, and such a cherished part of the fall harvest for any passionate mushroomer lucky enough to stumble across them on a forage. We guard our spots, and they are usually reoccurring each year. You do have to hunt, but with the right timing, it does not take long to fill a modest cloth bag in a few hours of diligent hunting. In just a few hours of lazy wandering across alpine glades on steep hillsides, I harvested the collection pictured below- a feast to grace the table.

It’s in the bag if you get your timing right- I’ve been scouting my patches since the cool weather came in. Mushrooms fruit earlier at elevation- not much is out in the lowlands right now, it’s not cool enough yet, but once the rains start at Fall settles in, we’ll be sing chantrelles start closer to home. Up in the peaks at the end of September, things were hopping. I could not take more than a few steps before running into another beautiful mushroom. I appreciate all types, not just the tasty ones. I also appreciate mushroom aging, and trying to capture images of fading glory to help ID the fruit through all it’s stages. Mushrooms can go through quite the transformation form pinning out to flaking or melting away- almost overnight. The life of above ground mycology is fleeting at best- with the exception of bracket fungi, like reishi.

These hard bodied, wood eating fungi are much longer lasting, but in time, as the nutrition of the decomposing wood wanes, so too do the polypores. You can see past reishi blooms further down the stump. This particular species is rare in our landscapes, so I always take a picture, but leave the mushroom where it is. Please don’t handle a mushroom if you don’t know about it- not only could you be touching something toxic, you might also damage rare species unknowingly. Mycology is a deep learning journey, and I remain at the shallow end of the pool, but I’ve got enough knowledge to swim, but I can’t go beyond where I can stand. I’d call most mushroom beginners waders- just on the steps, or knee deep in the kitty pool. Want to go deeper? Take some classes with trained mycologists near you, join your local mushroom club, and take lots of good photos of what you see when you’re out. I’ve been cultivating my local knowledge for almost two decades, and I still have moments of confusion in the field- but not with the ones I take home to eat!

Ever since I was first shown chantrelles here in Western Washington, special thanks to Johnny Miller, the amazing human that first encouraged me to learn about mycology, I’ve been hooked on fungi. This kingdom of the living world remains so mysterious, so full of endless learning, and a heck of a strange thing on this earth. It’s such a pleasure to be out in the mountains appreciating the oncoming Mushroom Spring of 2026, beginning in the high country, with porcinis for the larder, and the popping eye candy that is violet webcap.

In September, the weather cooled off nicely, and some of the sheep in my herd were ready to cull for our larders. One animal in particular, our breeding ram for the last 4 years, was on the list, and by the end of the week, I had slaughtered him to hang in the cooler. It’s always hard to choose when breeding rams should go, they play such a crucial role in herd development. I’d purchased this ram from Canfield Farms in Snohomish. It’s my second ram from that breeder, and she keeps great records and registrations on her Katahdin flock. I bought my ram form fertility and good frame size. He threw many great animals, improved my herd genetics with longer backs and higher rates of twins- especially in first year ewes. The breeder, Michelle, was clear about his lineage- that he had some wool, and was more a locker lamb kind of breeder, rather than a quality registered producer, and was therefor not as expensive.

My flock is not registered, and I usually cull most of my lambs for food, so I knew he would not be the animal to grow my flock under. He did improve my lamb carcass size, which is great. I’ve kept two of his great looking ewe lambs for breeding, and they drop twins every time, so I’m happy with his performance, but after 4 years, I’m ready to look for another ram, and have one lined up now for pick up from my sheep mentor on the east side of The Cascades this winter, along with one of her ewes she thinks will be good genetic mix in my flock. I’ve taken my breeding ewe count down to six for this winter, my lowest ever. The choice comes out of responsible herd management around the ecological changes happening in our region.

Western Washington is in a five year mega-drought. This may not seem possible, seeing all the evergreen lushness of The Puget Lowlands. Why, we had over an inch of rain earlier this month, and the grass is starting to come back in the pastures, but within a week of this deluge, we’re dry again on the surface, and in my compost pile, just a few inches below the surface, the soil is bone dry. An inch of rain did not soak down into the ground to water the deep rooted plants. I’ve pulled my flock off the land early, feeding hay and alfalfa now, in September. That’s expensive, and I will not raise my prices, so something has to change. I only bought 1/2 the winter feed I normally do. That’s a lot of savings, but to have only half the normal feed, means only half the herd can overwinter. Timing the ram removal helps lighten the fall feeding load, and he’s hanging nicely in the cooler with 5 other lambs. I’ll cull three more in October, staggering the work between a much needed vacation into The Canadian Rockies for a little RnR.

Ok Liz, why did you start off this post with a raw sheep heart? Well, that’s the ram’s heart, and it’s malformed. I knew, as soon as I pulled it from the chest cavity during the gutting process, that there was something off about it’s feel. Yes, I do all my own slaughtering and butchering folks. I can’t stress enough how important this is for any shepherd truly connected to their animals. From birth to death, I’m the full time care taker, steward, and processor of these Katahdins. This fully hands on approach guarantees my sheep the best quality of life with the least amount of stress. I also see the insides of each animal I slaughter, checking health and quality all the way through. Well, with this ram, the heart had a congenital defect, and as I stood with the heart in my had, I could feel that one chamber was hard and thick, while the other was thin and flabby. You can see in the picture above, the left facing chamber seems collapsed, while the right is full- not with blood, but with built up wall muscle.

I’m not a cardiologist, but I’ve handled many ungulate hearts in my animal processing career and know what a normal heart should look like- usually by feel alone. I squeeze every heart to make sure any coagulated blood is freed from it before freezing. Organs are part of the full nutritional return from a food animal. You should try to eat as much of the whole animal as you can, because every part has an important nutritional role in your diet. It is ok to eat genetic defected animals? Yes, the genetics of the sheep will not harm me when consumed, but for flock health, I cull any defects when I find them. This is the first animal from my flock with this defect, and he was brought in genetics bred by another farm, but his genes are in my animals now, so I’ll have to keep a close watch on future throw backs.

I did notify the breeder, she admitted that, because she does not see what the butcher does, she was unaware. She also let me know that the organ meat was usually ground up for dog food, and not sold as part of the carcass. That’s most unfortunate, but common today. She said the genes in that ram were part of a quest a lot of breeders have for a certain gene that apparently makes the muscles of an animal double the size the normally are, making for a huge lamb carcass- but it’s a genetic anomaly, and brings with it a lot of other problems. When we breed for certain traits, over time, other less ideal genes that go along with those desirable traits can sneak in. This ram also threw uneven testicles, which is not suitable for breeding, but carries on in her bloodlines. She breeds from both sides of this ram’s lineage. He also threw wool and sometimes, horns, which happens from time to time in general, but I’d never had horns before this ram, and wool was minimal.

Apparently, the double muscle genes come from a wool sheep, that’s been bred into Katahdins to try to get that extra weight development. This chasing of certain genetics time and time again can be costly for the breed in time. Katahdins are focused on a great frame to hold good meat weight already, and hair is imperative to keep the meat mild in flavor. So many choices in breeding, but you have to be ready to cull what’s not working. I had a beautiful golden ewe lamb this year, she was beautiful, but wooly, and her legs were too long for what I’m breeding for- short legs make it much harder to jump the fencing. The last thing you typically breed for in a meat breed like Katahdin is looks. When you start selecting on looks alone, you’ll get a host of bad genetics- just look at the dog and cat world- it’s rife with inbreeding nightmares that most people don’t fully comprehend until the animal is well loved in the home. Imagine if that ram had been a family pet, then one day, they walk outside and he’s dead in the yard, no evident trauma. What a moment for the loving owners- and it’s not their fault.

This did happen to one of my beloved barn cats. He had a congenital defect in his heart and he died at the age of 7. I found him curled up under a chair on the porch. The necropsy showed the heart defect, and my vet assured me I would not have caught it without very specific testing not usually done in cats. He died peacefully in his sleep, but too young. The cat was an accidental litter, a stray male had bred the queen (breeding female cat), so the owner did not know the genetics at all. Muir, my cat with the bad heart, was silver grey, probably bred for the look, but the sire was dumped because the breeders had discovered the bad heart.

Pets are one thing, but food supply is another. The issue is rampant in cattle now. They are often born with foot and leg defects, part of the bulking up we’ve done to cows- the idea that bigger is better, but that’s not always true in the living world. When I had the honor of hearing Temple Grandin speak this summer, she stressed how much genetic defect she saw now in cattle- especially dairy cows. She said the industry was not watching it’s genetics, and focusing on one or two traits, loosing the big picture. It means more cows are lame, in pain, and suffering infections. There are consequences to selective breeding, and without proper oversight- like pulling one or two from a large herd to butcher yourself so you get eyes on the carcass and the organs, which furthers genetic defects that may not show up externally. Responsible breeding is crucial to keeping our livestock healthy and happy.

You as the consumer can make choices too. If you can, find out where your meat comes from; not just where it was slaughtered, but who raised it, who bred it, where it grew up and what it ate. You will be eating what it ate, you will be consuming the stress if the animal was not treated well. These chemical imbalances are being passed on to the consumer. No, the genetically defective heart of one ram is not going to harm me to eat- and I will be eating it, not passing it on to my consumers. If it shows up in any future lambs, they too will not be sold to clients, because they are not top quality, which is what a small, artisan place like this strives for. Leafhopper Farm is committed to healthy, happy animals that live balanced lives through the seasons in their flock, eat mostly what grows here, with no chemical inputs or medications.

I do worm a sheep if its got a high parasite count- but that is so rare in Katahdins, who have a natural resistance- which we breed for. I also offer all my clients a farm tour upon request, and the opportunity to fully participate in the processing of the animal they purchase live on the hoof. Some clients buy the carcass and do the processing themselves- which is a cheaper deal, because they save on labor, and I’m ok with that. I want my clients to get as hands on as possible, so they are fully connected to their food. That’s a crucial missing piece in society today, and becomes a real eye opener for people who take the time to learn. If you are interested in experiencing such connection, please reach out to the farm- escocrain@gmail.com. I’m happy to talk with you more about options for lamb, geese, chickens, and farm fresh eggs.

Gratitude to all the animals that make this farm possible, and all the people already connected and participating in their food system directly. May good breeding choices continue to offer our clients a great animal at good value, while helping the restoration of the forest here in Western Washington. Thank you to all who buy my meat, give honest feedback, and support my continued improvement of the Katahdin breed. This flock is small, but feeding many, and returning much needed fertility to the land. Thanks to all who steward animals in a good way, and live close to the land with their learning, as well as those who pass it on to the future generations. It’s such a blessing to do this work, and so fulfilling- literally and figuratively. Cheers!

Along a favorite alpine lake, there are carnivorous plants thriving. These sun dew beauties are quietly waiting for someone to stumble in; passive hunting at its best. Wetland edges are full of diverse plant and animal life, making it a great larder for all. Much of Western Washington was once covered in wetlands, but European Colonial agendas knew that draining wetland uncovered fertile crop land, and where there were marshes, there were no pesky giant stumps of cut forest to have to clear. Bottom land was worth the work in these parts, and people happily ditched the sponge of crucial water that protected the land from fire, turning “worthless” land into black gold.

This was the way with settlers pushing into what they thought were “god given” acres for their use. To turn the land for good, planting crops and turning wilderness into precious pasture and field. They had already done so much of it back in their own homelands, though in Europe, only wealthy people with titles had land- in most cases. That was what drove so many to America, and why owning the land and making it your own is such a pioneer vision, still peddled as our divine right to this day, in a country with more public land than anywhere else on earth. All this land was taken, treatied away after generations of fighting, plagues, and forced conversion of the original people that had lived in deep connection with this incredible place for so long.

Where the wetlands are still intact, there are hints of what once was. Mosses, ferns, lichens, trailing blackberry, oso, salmon, huckleberry, countless understory trees, then the giants; towering pillars of apex standing. There were also beavers in these woods, keeping wetlands open and flooding new dammed areas where trees then slowly die back, thus opening up the land. Once the beavers move on, the wetlands will begin reverting back to meadow. Hundreds of years later, forest returns, or the beavers come through again, engineering the landscape more than any other animal, except us.

Hellebore flowers are so beautiful, towering purple, yellow, and green cascading down an impressive staff pointing up from unique wide leaves like stretched green fans. The nearby fire-weed looks enamored blushing pink in delight. Mountain spirea and blueberry cloak round the two where wetland edges meet forest. Beyond, high mountain hemlock and noble fir slowly gain height in minimal soil scattered on glacial till onto bare rock layers that echo recent volcanic building. These quiet alpine lake edges, where the marsh these plants thrive remains diverse and lush. After snow melt, the whole area floods, raising the lake level by 8-10 feet. I usually time my swim around when the water drops back down to its lowest level, the shallows- extensive on the south side, where this wetland thrives. The north side of the lake plunges into darkness, a hole that obfuscates into darkness. Steep scree slopes rise to sharp ridges that circle the north and east shores. No vegetation takes hold here.

While hiking out from the basin that holds these sensitive ecosystems, more wetland plants take hold in a more rocky slope with good spring seeps that feed a ledge wetland wonder. Here bear grass, more mountain spirea and arnica, and even some lowland familiars like salmon berry and red elderberry, pictured below in a unique maroon color. Could this be a mountain hybrid with an east of the mountains variety? There is some service berry here. Would blue elder hybridize with red? I treat it as red, and would always cook the berries.

There are just enough pockets like this around these beautiful mountains to keep some rare and illusive ecologies alive. From orchids to lilies and bramble, these alpine wetlands and lake systems offer unique opportunities to see a small example of what our own Puget Lowlands would have been Pre-Colonial degradation. At least here in Washington, there is a more progressive naturalist awareness that leans towards ecological protection, preservation, and restoration. These highlands are protected because they are not convenient to access. The hiking trail I use to get in is a well established logging road that was punched through here in the 60s. These trees were cut with gas saws, and the crews quickly learned why earlier loggers had left the area intact- felling large trees onto rocky scree piles shatters the timber, splitting the fibers and structural integrity. Re-plantings are thick and mono-cultured, but some of the older growth still stands, seeding out new generations of native forest to come.

There’s no electrical grid, passable road, or big view selfie hot spot- yet. Current dominion madness could strike at any time, activating the accesses for rare earth minerals, or granite to build autocratic statues. Bulldozers are in our National Parks right now scraping way endangered species. Federal lands are being opened up to roads and private extraction contracts. Taxpayers pay for the costly infrastructure (and maintaining it), then corporations make their short term dividends. None of these industrial and commercial gains can ever buy back the land degredated, and this applies to our industrialized food systems too. Start documenting, naming, and witnessing this place as we begin to see great change in our atmosphere, which will dictate the future survival of all life on this earth.

At the beginning of September, one of our tenants sent me a text with this picture at the front gate. They were letting me know there was a bear in the driveway, and then went on their way to work. I didn’t get the text immediately, but when I did take a moment to check texts, the picture sent a thrill through me. I’ve been seeing a lot of bear sign when out in the woods, and having one knocking on the door compelled me to go buy a bear tag for the season. August 1st- November 15th is bear season here in Washington State. You have to have a bear hunting tag, and a transport tag to harvest one during the designated season. Some areas of the state are closed to bear hunting, usually related to natural disasters like flooding or fire. State biologists closely monitor wildlife numbers throughout America, and their extensive data sets limits on hunting each species. Legal hunting in this country is closely monitored by biologists, to make sure populations of wildlife continue to thrive. Most wildlife is not legal to hunt. The few species that are, remain under close observation to maintain thriving populations, and will be removed from the hunting list in areas where animals are scares.

I do not usually set intentions to hunt predator animals, but I will harvest a black bear that’s hanging around the farm. I’ve got too many delicious temptations for a predator, and a bear will settle in to your larder if you let them. In the wilderness, bears have ancient trails through the landscape that take them to their different larders. Such places are staples of seasonal food they learn to rely on, like fruit and nut trees, rotting logs full of bugs, and good wetlands and clearings to graze in. A bear’s diet is mostly plant matter, but they are omnivorous and opportunistic. Black bears in our area have killed livestock. Since I invested in Kangal LGDs, my animals have remained safe. A few summers ago, I lost my Asian pear harvest to a bear. It got into the tree, ate all the fruit in one night, and pruned some branches. This year is an off fruit year, there are only a couple of pears on the tree, and I picked them last week.

The bear in this photo could be the same bear that took the pears a few years ago- they are certainly old enough. It almost looks like it’s checking over the fence to where the tree stands, just inside the gate. Bear’s use their sense of smell the most while foraging, it’s the largest part of the skull. This black bear’s nose is letting it know there is no fruit on the tree. The bear is also listening, hearing the person walking down the driveway, the dog barking, the chain on the gate being undone. These noises will push the bear off, as it cannot fully assess the threat level of all this noise, and better back off to wait for a more opportune moment to explore the area further. If this bear was a grizzly, we’d be working with a completely different set of principals in management. I did not want to live somewhere with grizzlies, and am so thankful we only have black bear to contend with. If you are not clear on the differences between these two species, take a minute to study the comparison below.

Yes, the sign says grizzly’s live in Washington, but only in The North Cascades. They are not this far south in our state, and most likely will never get down here, because there is not nearly enough habitat for them to roam. If grizzly’s were to return to this area, I would stop my sheep operation and stop planting fruit trees. Brown bear’s are a serious threat to people, and I’m not excited to try producing food in their territory, then trying to keep them out of it. Black bears are generally scared of people, brown bears will stalk and kill people. We are not a threat to them, and rightfully so, those bears are huge and mean business. This does not mean a black bear is no threat. I always show a healthy respect to predator animals, and the one that came past our gate is large for bears in this area. It would be a serious threat if it charged, and they can. Thankfully, this bear went merrily on its way, but could come back through any time. Stay tuned! We’ll certainly be writing about a harvest when and if one happens.