My Year Long, Unforgettable Woofing Adventure On Skipley Farm
In Snohomish, WA., nestled in a small valley surrounded by sycamore, pine and maple trees, you'll find a 7 1/2 acre gem called #Skipley Farm owned and operated by Gil Schieber.
Gil is a horticulture expert who's carved out a niche for himself growing apples, blueberries, raspberries, salmon berries, currants, elderberry, aronia, grapes and a nursery with over 250 apple varieties. To call him prolific is an understatement.
Italian plums on one branch of a very fruitful tree
He grafts 100 apple trees an hour, selling them online through eBay all over the U.S., like a modern day Johnny Apple Seed.
I have lived on his farm for over a year while installing a 5 acre permaculture food forest farm close by and I've been picking his brains, and apples, for the wealth of fruitful information on growing he has stored in there.
That's Gil on the right and my buddy Mike standing by the first row of William's Pride apples. Hi guys!
I've done some woofing before while traveling in Mexico, spending 3 weeks with the indigenous Lacandon Indians, deep in the jungles of Chiapas, home of the Zapatistas. Places my well meaning friends, concerned for my safety, warned of dangers lurking there, though I never encountered
Watching the tribesmen carve a 30 foot canoe from a the trunk of a mahogany tree was like witnessing Michelangelo paint the Mona Lisa.
That's an amazing story of it's own and worthy of a Steemit post. If you're interested in that sort of thing, let me know. But this story of my stay at Skipley Farm has evolved into an opportunity worth mentioning.
Lacandon Indians in Chiapas, Mexico Image credit
Gil's generosity is boundless and abundant and it's been my great pleasure helping him on the farm, learning his trade secrets and meeting people from all walks of life who visit.
I never imagined the day I arrived that I would be staying so long and thank my lucky stars for leading me here.
With his blessing and encouragment, I'm launching a nursery to create the stock of trees and plants to plant at the 5 acres.
His knowledge of what grows well in this area is priceless and sure to help get me off to a fine start.
Some of plants we're propagating for the food forest project are:
- Autumn Olive
- Chestnut
- Northern Bay
- Apples
- Plums
- Pears
- Peaches
- Figs
- Mulberry
- Siberian Pea Tree
- Raspberry
- Grapes
- Hardy Kiwi
- Cherries
- Comfrey
- Valerian
- Yarrow
- Mint
- Echinacea
- Strawberry
- Goumis
- Gooseberry
- Hazelnut
- Filberts
- Currants
and the list goes on.
Blueberry plants in the nursery
Give and it comes back tenfold
Gil volunteered at the country fair last week and yesterday received a call from the fairgrounds asking if we would like some free hay. All we had to do was pick it up, all 75 bales of it. Score! We can certainly use it. So we hopped in the truck and hooked up the trailer to load it up feeling blessed.
Spreading hay around the chicken run and in the goats manger, you could almost see the smiles on their faces, the contentment of knowing they're well cared for.
Gil sitting on a load of free hay. Giving freely has it's rewards
Connecting with people is why and how I grow
Today was a beautiful, sunny Sunday and over 100 people visited the farm to pick apples and.grapes. Watching all their children jumping on the trampoline, playing with kid goats, rabbit bunnies and waddling after the ducks, made me feel rewarded immeasurably for the hard work of the season. Like earning Steem for a good post, only better. Organic Steem.
Apple stand on the farm
When visitors saw the nursery, many wanted to buy plants. I couldn't say no. Guess we'll have to start some more.
Visitors came nonstop. All wore faces glowing in relief to just be on a farm, their busy, city lives temporarily forgotten, finally able to relax.
One guy realized, after picking a basket of apples, he had forgotten his wallet. The expression on his face when I gifted him the apples was worth more than apples and I'm sure was a good investment.
It occurs to me that people are starving for a connection with mother nature, grasping for her hand, hoping for a reunion with something sacred, something real and earthly. Some deeply, rooted part of us all longs to express our connection with each other and food is blind to differences, woven into the human fabric that clothes us all, and we cling to it like leaves on its branches. Food connects everything.
Gil in his element.
Food producers are the center hub, the main artery of a community; a trunk from which many branches grow. Over time these branches flower and fruit, feeding friendships and sprouting new connections within the community, pollinating ideas that seed the future. Farmers have a front row seat and plenty to eat and they never eat alone, all because they planted a seed.
Today @pappa-pepper wrote a great poem about planting seeds and when I read it I knew he is one of us, a farmer of ideas worth spreading.
Real homeland security
A friend of mine gave me a screen print she made to give to farmers when she was part of a group touring farms last summer and printed on it is this poem.
Everywhere you are blessed, lovers of Earth, who serve the seed and soil and feed us all.
Deep honor to your every day work and what it means to grow food.
Be ongoing as we remember how to prosper and protect what is sacred.
The organic and unstoppable - our life-giving gardens and animal kin
Food for all - our family farms and farmers
I keep this pinned to the wall by the front door to motivate me in the morning and simplified it in my mind to- if you eat, you're in.
Erin's silkscreen poem by the front door
Steemit is like food
Steemit feels similar to me as when you hand someone something delicious to eat, that you grew and nurtured from seed, harvested and cooked with love, and they bite into it with relish and their whole face smiles.
Which reminds me, thank you Steemians for all the praise, upvotes and encouraging comments yesterday on my post about using chickens to plant gardens.
It was surprisingly my most popular post to date and I'm honoured by your Steem love.
A special thanks to @curie for selecting my post for Project Curie which you can see here along with some other great authors chosen.
I Upvoted my thanks to your featured authors post in gratitude. I thank you and my chickens thank you. Somehow, their eggs tasted better today.
I'm thinking of ways to use the Steemit platform to bring more smiles to the world. It needs to smile more.
Perhaps filling a truck up with apples, driving to the inner city and giving them away to homeless people. That would make a great post. What do you think? If it's going to be, it's up to me.
As the sun set and we gathered around the table for dinner, the smell of chilli and fresh, baked-potato bread permeating the air like a Mexican-Amish picnic, I felt as full as my belly, knowing that today was a good day and tomorrow is welcomed.
I wondered about my Steemian friends. What feast are they having or have had, that is indelible in their memories? Did they eat at all? Would this story inspire their own story that I'm eager to hear?
What's your story?
What food gathering stories bring the best memories in your life? If we were sitting around a table sipping coffee after a satisfying meal, sharing stories of the best experiences we could remember where food was involved, what story would you share. Please, do tell, I'm all ears.
Steemians with the best reply, will win $10 Steem Dollars from me transferred to your account.
Thanks for reading my post and Steem On. Follow @luzcypher
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Yes! It really is the life, isn't it? I'm further south in Washington State, in the Vader area South of Centralia. We're just starting up a homestead here, but I've worked on a few different farms. Nothing quite as idyllic as your photos, but I've visited some amazing farms and homesteads with the Lewis County Master Gardeners. I'll definitely follow you for more good mojo!
The feast most indelible in my memory was the first time I had fresh carrots I'd grown myself. I had no idea a carrot could taste so sweet, or be so rich in vibrant flavors. I've never come near that experience, even in farmers market carrots. I bet they were technically identical, but there is something undeniably superior about eating what I've grown myself. It's like a meal cooked with love only deep in the earth and loved for months with special care. This year, I hope to be tasting my own homegrown potatoes for the first time. I hear potatoes are also much better when homegrown. Excited!
In a book called, The Secret Life Of Plants, one of the chapters is about a study done that proves more nutrition is absorbed into the bodies of the people that cared for the plants they were eating. If someone watered a plant, they absorbed more nutrition them guests eating from the same meal, proportional to the amount of time spent caring for them, with the highest absorption rate going to the one who planted the seed. Fascinating. Thanks for sharing your story.
Carrots grown this year
Oh I'll have to look that up! I'm thinking of doing a post reviewing a variety of books to connect with nature. It's fascinating that the gardener would absorb more nutrients than the guest. Thank you for building community with your request for stories!
The book is coauthored by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird. Also, I updated my post to let Steemians know that the best reply for their favorite food related story will win $10 Steem dollars from me.
Cool! I think it builds community to host contests. I'm a bit nervous because I am expecting peppers in the mail from @papapepper and will be taking his #hotpepperchallenge. I'm nervous because it will be the first time video taping myself publicly. I do believe in being silly, though. :) I hope you get lots of comments and entries!
Cool, I won @pappa-pepper 's tattoo contest and am a judge for his next one. His peppers look delicious. Let me know how hot they are once you taste them.
Nice! I will!
Those grapes look so delicious. What an awesome adventure! Thanks for sharing with us Steemians. I'd love to hear about your other wwoofing adventures. What is your favorite place to visit/wwoof at?
Stay following and I'll tell you an adventurous story or two, or two hundred
When I was a kid, a retired man lived at the end of the street. All the kids called him Beans. We would go to his backyard, where he had a large, neat vegetable garden. He grew lots of carrots. I would always ask to eat a fresh carrot. But he would say, "I've got something better." He would go pull a turnip and slowly peel and quarter it with his little, old pocketknife. To this day, I absolutely love fresh picked turnips. I wish every kid had somebody like Beans in their life!
PS: I have a Williams Pride apple, too. They are such a great summer apple! They were so early here in Oregon this year -- some by the end of June! I'm almost convinced I could get a double crop off them if our climate warms much more!
Good story! I love turnips too. William's Pride apples were really early here as well. What kind of potatoes are you growing?
This year, I'm just going on the volunteers in the compost and a couple other places scattered around the yard, from past plantings. Last year, I grew a lot! 5 different fingerlings, 5 different storage potatoes. I'll put up a post about my Magic Molly fingerlings pretty soon. They were a great potato! Other ones, just off the top of my head: Red Pontiac (super productive), Keukok Gold, Banana Fingerling, Red Thumb fingerling, Red Maria, an unknown russet. I'll have to look at my photos for the rest, haha.