Knife Blog 2: PDC and inspiration

The knives we make were the suggestion of Rob Avis, the instructor of our PDC.  Rob had been a mechanical engineer in the oil industry for years before he and his wife both quit their jobs and devoted their lives to making the world a better place through permaculture.  I liked them both immediately, and Rob's background as an engineer laid to rest any fears of being taught by someone named "Eclipsing Flower" who sold shitty handi-crafts out of the trunk of his car to get by between PDC's.*

We, the class, were walking down the steep road that lead back to the main building at Mountain Waters for lunch.  We had just finished a section on water catchment and had spent a portion of the morning climbing through thick stands of impossibly tall cedar, treading heavily on the soft leaf-littered ground, examining the local terrain.

Now, we bounced heavily down the gravel road in the dis-jointed, uneven fashion often employed by the exhausted.   We had been learning a lot, and the fact that we were surrounded by examples and illustrations of our lessons lended gravity to any little stroll through the woods.  Trees and shrubs and insects weren't just there, they were filling specific needs and producing specific yields in the forest ecology.

I was one of the more giddy and preoccupied of the bunch as I had just finished three months of construction in a building so dry and dusty the skin on my fingers had began to split.  It seemed impossible to go from an extreme like that to a place where the air was laced with life and springs rose to form creeks of their own accord.  I was lost, thinking and so was surprised when he began to speak.

"So you know how to work with steel?", I was walking next to the much taller Rob.

"Yup,"  I said.

He nodded and put his head down, in the computational manner common to people of his trade.

"We were using these things called rice knives in Australia, cut grass down faster than a weed-wacker.  We had a race, way faster.  Think you could make some?"

"Probably."

"You could make them out of car hoods... reuse steel."

I nodded, and listened.  He described the knives in detail as we continued to walk back down the gravel road for lunch.  At the end of our talk, I was sold on the idea, green manure and sustainable tools, no engines to prime or cords to endlessly pull.  No black clouds of exhaust, just a simple knife, a little sweat, and fresh air.  It sounded good.

*To the Eclipsing Flowers of the world:  I am sorry.  I'm sure you're all wonderful people and potentially great teachers, but after being on the job for the past three months straight, I was looking for a bit more of a pragmatic, nuts-and-bolts approach to design.

The Knife Blog 1: Everything has a Start

Somehow, I got sick.

I had just come back from a carpenter gig where I was spending 5 nights a week out of town and was about to ship out to my very first Permaculture Design Course.  I had been lusting after the course ever since I'd heard of the stuff.  I bought books and read through them violently every night in my little hotel room. I dreamt of swales and thermo-syphons and water levels during long days in boots, covered in saw-dust.

And now I was sick.

It was T-minus 2 hours and counting until my bus to Nelson and I felt like melting into a small pool and pouring myself down the kitchen sink.

A few of my wife's friends were over and as the sun began to set, they started a fire in the back yard, as I lay in bed.  Their presence reminded me that I wouldn't be able to do any gardening for the next two weeks, reminded me that I had promised to finish the little cold frame before leaving town.

Guilty, I dragged my aching frame from bed, hobbled out to the shop and after a convulsive moment spent trying to unlock the door, went in and got a saw and nailer.  What followed wasn't exactly a flurry of action, it was more like what happens while trying to balance a glass of water, play trumpet and win a staring contest at the same time: between careful, strained movements there were deep breaths.

Eventually, the frame was completed and I found myself on a Greyhound Bus with a canteen of ginger tea my wife had made, I was headed West.  Watching occassional lights glide past the windows, I settled in, body warming with each sip of ginger tea. The interior of the bus, lighted only by the glow of a few computer monitors and the aisle lights, was the perfect place to sleep.  So of course, I couldn't.

Unable to resist multiple calls of the bathroom, I tried my best to stealthily climb over and around the various limbs and torsos blocking the aisle.  With a leaking nose and head filled with pressure and little spinning things, the result was less than graceful.  It was more the performance you'd expect from a fish.

The night wore on.  The bus hummed along, people slept, I tried every possible position to get to sleep.  Finally, adopting something of a narcoleptic yoga pose: laying across the two seats with my legs stretched against the windows, feet in the air, I fell asleep.  My arm joined the rest of the dispossessed body parts in the aisle.

Not long after, I woke with both legs and one arm completely numb.  I tried to let my legs down gently, but being numb, they fell to the floor with thuds as I attempted to sit up.  How much sleep did I get?  20 minutes? An hour?

Dawn was starting its work as the countryside out the window slowly lighted.  I clenched and unclenched my feet and fists, trying to regain a bit of feeling, and use.  The bus roared on, the countryside slipped past.

By the end of the journey, a few hours later, my body parts were working normally and the cold I had suffered through seemed to have disappeared.

At the greyhound station, the bus emptied.  I met a fellow Permaculture student, Jester, and not long after introduction, we were picked-up by our hosts and one half of Verge Permaculture, Michelle Avis.

As we drove up the mountain that overlooks Nelson, we were welcomed to the course but warned not to expect our lives to change.  Exhausted, rocking back and forth limply as the car went over bumps, I smiled.  Nothing could have been further from the truth.