There is always a feeling of uneasiness when smoke drifts into our air and hangs ominously overhead. We breath in the microscopic soot and toxic particles floating into our lungs as we labor. Why not wear a mask? The breathing is even more difficult, and when I’m doing heavy cardio, shoveling the manure out of the barns, it’s impossible to get enough air in with face coverings and last for more than a few hours. At the end of August, 2025, I awoke coughing in the early hours of the morning, my windows were open, and the smoke had come in from the south, where a forest fire was burning on The Peninsula. ICE agents took two of our brave firefighters out of the field while they were on site working to extinguish the flames. The fire keeps burning and I keep breathing toxic air. It’s not that bad, only moderate air quality, and I don’t have per-existing health conditions that would stifle my general function. On some days, my throat gets a little sore, but I’m more concerned with the long term effects of living in these conditions. I watch the animals and ask myself how their lungs feel, how the wild birds are coping. I see how much land is burning and start to wonder if people understand what is happening, on what scale, and for how much longer this will go on.
The full moon rose with the stains of blood red light, shining down on all our mistakes, giving a reflection, a warning of our actions, how far too far might be. I think by 2050 we will have learned, again, that we are small animals running around in a very complex world we little understand. Our god head ideas of order out of this chaos can only carry us so far, then there’s this physical plain we’re all living on together, and how that living world we’re woven into, it unraveling. Our actions change the rules of survival to match our warped truth, that we have some kind of dominion over all things. Radical right leaning conservative christian rhetoric is embracing the rapture, and will have a reckoning, but it’s not going to be Jesus on a white horse. That white horse is death, pale and looming, with a glowing red eye, arching across the sky. A little too gothic horror for you dear readers? I’ve let the mood run away with me? Perhaps, but cataclysmic change is fast approaching, might I suggest a recent song I’ve been humming? Johnny Flynn’s Wild Hunt carries a rhythm of merriment through the unknown, and the lyrics by Robert Macfarlane pitch and roll listeners through the hedges and obstacles of life in old time cycles of birth and death that all life shares in this world.
That seems to be the feeling of our current times. With continued destruction of what’s left of nature, habitat, wilds, whatever you want to call space where people cannot or have not yet developed, we are rushing over the cliff like lemmings. Wait, that’s a wrapped Disney view. We’re parading over the cliff in joyous melodies not unlike the song I mentioned above. The hounds are loose upon the world, hounds of war? How can a few acres of forest farm in Western Washington come to reflect on these global issues and wax philosophically while the world burns? No, I’m not playing a fiddle and dancing because things are on fire. I’m dancing because that’s how I choose to make my way through this life, when I can. Dancing and laughing, for tomorrow we die. With intention, each day a place with meaning, not a chore to be gone through and discarded like a plastic cup. But is that not what we strive for today with our conveniences?
When I work under a red sun, the light casting orange light through the windows and onto the floor, more bustling in the hedgerow, is all this a distraction from what really matters? What does really matter? Family? Friends? Nature? The nature of things? I’m picking abundant harvest, drinking clean well water, and have fresh air- most of the time. The rains are returning, life keeps going on, and my place in it does not change for another day. There is much to be thankful for, and grateful in, that in this western state, there is bodily anatomy, a belief in science, and a boat load of technology. About that last one… Home of Microsoft, host to Alphabet, both companies that happily do business with autocrats and authoritarians with the same gusto while aiding genocide. These companies are making spyware and algorithm to measure all citizens worth and risk for long term profits. How can we make you a debt slave addicted consumer? How can we own you? It’s in the fine print. But seriously, your phones are now tracking collars we’re all wearing for commercial enslavement. We are bought and paid for with every online order or streaming service.
The land of EEC Forest Stewardship may not be under direct attack, but right now, tens of thousands of other land stewards in this country are being forced out of farming after being led down the path of subsidies and fixed commodity pricing. Family farms are about to be no more. Most are gone as it is, but the few left, still bought in to buyouts- not handouts. This after the main sources of agricultural workforce was deported by ICE and no, there is not anyone else showing up to pick the crops folks, so food is rotting in the fields. Farmers are begging for cold hard cash to get through this year to offset tariff troubles. Pay attention now please, this is crucial to taking off the blindfold, our industrial agriculture is failing. The romantic notion of small family farms is gone. You can make investment in small farm land on the chopping block with Vice President JD Vance’s company AcreTrader right now. Oh wait, he is selling opportunities to foreign investors, not Americans- so it’s foreigners grabbing the land, like back in the late 1400s on here in The Americas. This is real folks, the fleecing of America is rampant under the current administration, and it’s on a level the general public is not quite catching up to yet- if ever.
I’ll argue that we’ve been on a narrow path of madness for a while, and our self-made leadership now reflects the carelessness with which this country has been operating for a long while. We’re just finally seeing the full spectrum of stupidity cultivated through years of not caring or knowing. Ignorance is no excuse, and there will be no silver bullet to reconcile this monstrosity of a misstep. Red moons and orange day glow are just a friendly reminder that we’re on this ride together, and there is no getting out at the next stop- we left the last stop and are heading full steam ahead, into what? I’ve got a barn full of hay for the winter, and sheep eating a final growth of grass that flushed after an inch of rain. Mucking is half way done as I race to pick fruit, haul manure, and prepare for a new LGD puppy who arrives next week. The chores and duties never stop, but that’s what I love about this work and lifestyle. There is also a lot of dedication and personal discipline, which I could always use a bit more of. Sanity stays where a heart rests in a warm and happy home. This home is happy, as much laughter as can be in a burning world. It’s been happening like this since the world began turning, or so some other singer poet wrote. He also claims we didn’t start it, but we did.
Each of us is a light in the darkness, with a chance to shine and share gifts we alone posses. Often, because of our isolation at the behest of individual consumer marketing strategies to sell more, we feel lonely. Our very nature is community. When we band together and find common ground, we achieve great things. This can look like bureaucracy, but that’s how complex systems are best managed. I think it’s why people have so much trouble comprehending the natural world. It’s not just what we see with our eyes, or even the microscope, it’s billions of years of evolution, and if we are part of that product, imagine what the other species posses? As a whole, this planet is phenomenal, and very rare, as we know more and more about each day we look up (usually through highly engineered telescopes for best picture) and we’re still only on the doorstep of the universe, which is most likely ever expanding. This is the closest to that god head so many cling onto for some kind of comprehension and connection to something greater, but it’s not needed when you accept yourself in something that is truly great on it’s own, in this moment, for the brief time we have to enjoy and comprehend some part of it, can’t that be enough?
But I’ve run away with this writing again, and passed far beyond the boundaries of the little acreage this blog represents, and one woman, trying to keep her place with original instructions that linger a few pages back in our evolutionary development as a species. We were living by the grace of the land, following complex celestial calendars that did have continually predictable outcome, through extremes came and went. Seasons compelled boom and bust cycles of the planet, and over time, with the belief that we were made in some higher image, floating above all this terrestrial mishap, would guide us toward dominion through pacification of desirable traits from nature. Cows that give endless milk, birds that lay golden protein dense miracles on demand, and the grains of genetic modification to match. We turned naturally selected into industrial production and powered mega development and technological advancement of incredible ability- from our own limited perspective.
My daily ritual of feeding raw grains and mineral mixes to chickens for their eggs, the alfalfa for pregnant ewes, whose lams feed local families, that work, for basic needs (food), grown as cleanly and ethically, environmentally and restorative for future generations to enjoy, that is my original instructions. When I am practicing this craft, art-form, skill set, employment, best life, I am not lonely, though I am alone a lot of the time, and I know that without the two listed inputs from above- grains and tons of dried legumes, the domestic stock would drop to numbers small enough that the land could host them year round, but only feed me. I buy the inputs to scale my production up so others can buy what I need in cash to pay my bills and taxes to keep the land. I use the whole property as a canvas for restoration and productivity. Temperate Rainforest is the original make of this landscape, so I am working to slowly send it back in that direction, with a few minor shifts in plantings in an attempt to adapt to the climate crisis we created by living beyond the capacity of our lands. Look at most collapsed civilizations for this key oversight.
We’re continuing to repeat this historically proven misstep in our survival, and when you keep repeating the same thing again and again, you have insanity folks. The human species keeps tripping over itself for immortality, and that’s not part of the finite planetary cycles in store for a harmonious life and death that offers such beauty in being. Am I going too far outside the limited subject of agriculture? Farming, the civilization buy in for food production and land ties for human survival are being subjugated by corporate greed and slavery, in that people no longer have place, we’re all renters and nobody owns, just corporate conglomerates that overcharge for continued interest in dividends for their circle of investors (only 10% of the country). The stock market sits below like dangling marionettes, where investment opportunities trickle down into 401Ks and the petty games of individual trading by people who think they are independently controlling their money, but black rock and the banks they leverage, really call the shots when it comes to global wealth opportunities.
These wealth agriculturalists are predominantly white men, and so it is that perspective the rest of us live under in our day to day lives. Often called The Colonial Gaze, this is the lens we’re all circling, but many are seeking to turn away from this gaze, to see outward from themselves, instead of inward at a stagnant same. I think it’s a balance of self, in the center, and looking outward, past the close circle of immediate relationship- family and friends, to well beyond into a much greater circle that becomes vast and incomprehensible. Now, many of us will not venture further past the inner spokes of our understanding because of things outside ourselves we cannot control. The less able you are to venture out of your center, the more limited in scope your comprehension. Or is that so? Those who can reach beyond a central ring of limited ability and understanding, can explore and learn, meeting newness and differences with curiosity, rather than fear at not knowing. I will insert here that trusting on faith works in both directions, you can have faith that the unknown is possibly just that which we have not yet learned, or that we prefer a limit, a wall we cannot go beyond and so, we have to worship an invisible white male gaze concept of subjugation? Wait, how is this helping me get my food? How does this directly impact a small forest restoration dream or your retirement?
AI is teaching us how little we know, but with a white male gaze. That gaze looks over this landscape and tells me, on a small slip of paper that comes in the mail each year, what my soil is worth, and what my structures are worth, then puts it together within a tax system that should be DOGEed (by the way, a super white male gaze). I have to come up with the cash each year, and like so many- most adults in this country, at least, pay the government what I owe to be a citizen and enjoy the ease of interstate travel, global military dominion through war, which drives the military industrial complex we still buy into. I also get some great libraries, subsidies to help support the overall movement of goods and services I’ll never be able to fully comprehend, but I do know much of it is being stripped right now, and that I’m now also funding domestic terrorism in the form of those ICE agents and National Guard holding American cities under military occupation. American freedom, like our ecology, is crashing.
I grow food without chemicals and restore the lambasted environment that was left by generations before me who wanted to make a living cutting trees and making a little homestead for themselves. They did not think about who might have been there before them, why the trees had been left to grow for so long, and that having to remove that stand to make way for more people might not be in the best interests of humanity as a whole. The industrial processes that are used today, even on USDA organic farms, still treats the environment in a way that make me, my stock, and those families I feed less safe over time. Well, we’re reaching that time, and red moons, orange suns, and extreme weather will continue to remind us that there is a higher power, her name is Mother Nature.
EEC Forest Stewardship 