Thomas planting trees in the forest understory
Greetings, gentle reader. This is Thomas and Nicole writing with our melons together as Team Bodaydajyib. We'll be rambling and trading, tag-team style, and maybe you'll be entertained.
T: Chicken wire displeases me. It's expensive, ugly, difficult, and I don't have any chickens. Still, the rabbits here swarm on much unprotected greenery like giant starving locusts in angora coats. So, in abandoning the prison of woven wire, the survival of millet in the open garden calls for skillful tactics of diversion and deception.
N: I recently moved into a garden that is surrounded by a rusty, weed-tangled mass of chicken wire, arranged in a vaguely fence-like way. As a garden intern here, I grew to appreciate the feelings of security a taut, shining stretch of new fencing gave me; I could burrow into my sleeping bag at night feeling fairly certain that our precious veggies were safe from the jaws of those ill-willed bunnies. I feel ambivalent when faced with a fence that was so flamboyantly not concerned with matters of security. Every time I set foot in the garden, it dares me to try to whip it into shape, to turn it into the sort of impenetrable barrier that inspired me in my younger days.
T: "Generations" of gardeners at DR have nurtured our fabulously diverse village herb garden. Hang around thereabouts after a quenching July thunderstorm-- perhaps at dusk when shifts change--and you're liable to glimpse an herb garden faerie sipping intoxicating waters from the cusps of a nasturtium or comfrey leaf. One particular faerie (who got her wings clipped for snitching) peruses this booze while riding bareback on a rabbit-steed. Funny though, there's plenty of salad-bar quality greenery lush in this garden, yet the bunnies don't mow it all down as in other similarly unfenced locations. With a good lot to choose from, the browsers seem content to taste just a little of each, and not obliterate any one variety of these healthful plants. So diversity helps a lot here, as does the protection of willow-whipping, drunken faeries.
N: So far as I can tell, this garden I'm working in lacks a faerie police force. And, as it has not been maintained as a perennial growing space, it doesn't have such a bounty of sturdy yet tasty plants for the rabbits to peruse. Without a fence, the seedlings that I have tended with such high hopes will almost certainly be mowed down to sad little stumps soon after I transplant them. So, my attention turns once again to that warped mess of chicken wire, and to the concept I stumbled on during my days in Buffalo: the rustic traffic impediment. A rustic traffic impediment works on three principles:
- When wandering the land from one point to another, humans and other mobile creatures tend to choose what seems to be the easiest route, so obstacles may be used to make certain routes less appealing.
- An obstacle that is too imposing and well-constructed can draw attention to a route and actually make it more appealing to beings with especially perverse, mischievous temperaments (i.e., bunnies, humans).
- A thing of beauty is a joy forever, especially if it will eventually rot away.
A rustic traffic impediment is like a fence in that one of its goals is to discourage travel through a certain area. It should be a little rickety and shabbily constructed to avoid arousing feelings of oppression or thwartedness in those whose travel it is meant to impede. It should utilize locally available dead plant material. And it should be aesthetically pleasing, at least to the person who is making it.
T: If you've any inclination towards weaving or basketry, or swerving around things in general, then wooden hurdles might be just the rustic traffic impediment for you and your sheep. Even sans sheep, these woven panels of fencing are right nice for trellising vines or infusing vernal flair to imaginary boundary lines. For ages now, folks have managed coppices of many sorts of trees and shrubs to supply wood for the vertical poles (known in England as "sails") and long slender shoots used for weaving hurdles. Coppicing involves cutting a plant down just above the ground, usually while still dormant in the late winter, thus stimulating a flush of sprouts to re-grow in the following seasons. Pollarding is a similar practice where the cut is made higher above ground and, as is oft the case where trees meet utility lines in the sky, the crown re-sprouts up top of the trunk and makes a lollipop form. Grand subversive permaculture prize goes to the aerial tree trimmers who weave their own cherry picker buckets high amongst the buzzing wires.
Making the hurdles certainly takes a bit of skill and I'd better get on with engaging the craft quite soon, for the sake of an apple tree and eventual hedge of sand cherries planted very close to a road. Hazel and willow are traditional woods to employ, but I'd rather leave the hazel stands alone for now. The willows by the swimming pond, when asked of their consent to coppice, replied, "Go fish." Anyhow, plenty of trees around here shoot up sprouts from stresses other than my axe: osage, locusts, ash, mulberry and cottonwood, to name but a few. I've politely lopped a collection, and green woodworking texts give splendid guidance for the necessary overs, unders, and twists of hurdle making. I look forward to persuading more coppices to emerge in the coming seasons--thus perpetuating the gifts of more arbors, baskets, woven walls, and diverted trucks.
N: So, in order to protect my beloved cabbage, bean, and tomato babies, I've begun to prop up my mess of chicken wire with sticks I find here and there. I figure I can make a sort of stable fence if I tangle and weave enough debris together. If all goes well, the bunnies will simply assume the fence is one of the many piles of detritus that dot our landscape, and hop around it. Or, if they are able to figure out what it is, they will feel sad for the person who built such a pathetic edifice, and conclude that whatever lies inside must be equally worthless, once again hopping on by. Or, if they are feeling curious, and wriggle through one of the gaps that are likely to be a key feature of this fence, and find a veritable smorgasbord of delicious and vulnerable plants, and eat everything in sight . . . well then, my hurly-burly rustic traffic impediment and the barren landscape within will be a proud monument to slipshod work and its consequences. Dancing Rabbit is in dire need of public art installations. I will sit in my garden, watching my useless but lovely traffic impediment decay, and shake my fist half-heartedly at the rabbits as they come and go as they please. (It will obviously be both profound and provocative.)
T: Lamb's quarters, burdock and wild parsnip are three local edibles that take care of themselves and don't need no stinkin' fence. While some folks may call them weedy invaders, I just can't stop loving the rugged tastiness and am really worried about possible over-harvesting. As our population and plucky appetites grow, choice stands of these and other nutritious volunteers get more and more visits from us browsing bipeds. The former natives of these parts cultivated chenopodes such as lamb's quarters for both its leaves and seeds, and the sustenance and storability of burdock and parsnip roots are well recognized (as are burdock's many medicinal properties). So how about a perennialized polyculture of these hardy self-seeders? I fancy collecting plenty of seed (it's a trick to not collect burdock seed) and getting these and other locals (cowcress, sunchokes, elder, hazel, plums...) dancing in a forest garden. Whilst clean culture advocates or "invasives" watchdogs may be alarmed at the prospect of proliferating weeds, many others relax with sustainable notions of more passive foraging and ethical wildcrafting.
N: Yeah, so maybe next year, when my garden has been taken over by plants that are more resistant to rabbit predation, I can sit in it, covered in wild parsnip blisters, my hair a snarled nest of burrs, gnawing on some filthy root. Whenever the rabbits pass I'll cackle triumphantly and screech: Who's dancing, now, huh? They'll probably be so creeped out that they'll stop coming around for a while, and then, THEN my precious, precious veggies will thrive unmolested! (Mwah hah ahahaha.)
The End
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