“Since 2019 we have been propagating and distributing thousands of nut trees for free around the southern edges of the Salish Sea”
“This place sits on traditional Nisqually and Squaxin territory, and the Nisqually and Squaxin people have cultivated, cared for, and lived here since time immemorial. We owe them gratitude for the gifts they have given this place in the form of healthy soil, diverse plant communities, and deep generational knowledge about how to tend the land and live in relation to it”
“we welcomed presentations by local forester Patrick Shults on tapping our native Bigleaf Maple trees for maple syrup followed by a workshop on food sovereignty and plant relations by Tessa Halloran, garden coordinator for the Cowlitz Tribe”
“Patrick handed out free equipment to tap maple trees as part of a distributed citizen science and data collection project on the viability of maple syrup as a local tree crop, while Tessa facilitated a beautiful interactive workshop on plant relations, giving people an opportunity to learn and share their knowledge about local medicinal and edible plants, emphasizing everyone’s agency in reclaiming situated relations with their food”
“We ended the formal activities with facilitated group discussions on climate resilience and food systems, adapted from the Inhabit facilitation guide for Strategic Climate Resilience”
“We know that our climate is changing and the industrial food systems that we all depend on for survival are vulnerable. The soil is depleted, the weather is too hot and dry and then too wet all at once. Our global supply chains are increasingly fragile, threatening the availability of everything from food to petroleum to fertilizers. Hotter temperatures stress vascular plants, and current estimates include a 20-40% decrease in food productivity and nutritional value by 2080 (see Eric Toensmeier’s The Carbon Farming Solution)”
“We know all of these things to be true and it seems like we should be declaring an emergency in our everyday lives to contend with this crisis. But the scale of the problem seems so immense, and the demands of reproducing ourselves on a daily basis so high, that it’s easier to be paralyzed and overwhelmed than to figure out how to act”
“When confronted by an impossible-seeming present, turning to the deeper time of human history can be both soothing and instructive”
“In 9,600 BC, global temperatures rose by 7°C in less than a decade. The rapidly-receding ice sheets and changing climate led to mass northerly migration by Mesolithic peoples in Europe. As they traveled, they brought plants with them—most significantly, the hazelnut tree. This tree became the cornerstone of the Mesolithic diet in Europe for thousands of years, in a continent-wide food forest that, according to Max Paschall, included over 450 different edible plants growing in the understory and also produced coppiced wood for building shelter and producing heat. This was a cultural ecosystem created by humans migrating in a changing climate—a food system that improved soil, encouraged biodiversity, and required human entanglement with the ecosystem”
“Two thousand years ago, during the height of the Roman Empire, deforestation and monoculture grain production upheld by slave labor had spread across vast swathes of land. When the Roman Empire collapsed, so too did the unsustainable grain production and deforestation that it required. Chestnut trees spread across the mountains of Italy and became a perennial food source for people exiting the collapsing empire. Those same chestnut forests, tended by local communities over thousands of years, later fed Italian anti-fascist partisans fighting Mussolini. Our landscapes and ecosystems create possibilities of resistance and of life far into the future”
“In the Pacific Northwest, Garry oak savannas were a vital cultural ecosystem producing vast quantities of acorns as a staple crop, a rich tapestry managed by first peoples through controlled burns and a deep understanding of long-term forest health. The violent process of colonization, land theft, and cultural genocide that followed—as well as a century of fire suppression by colonizers—destroyed many of these oak savannas”
“We know that tree crops—whether the starchy carbohydrates that chestnuts and acorns produce, the high protein, high fat nuts like hazelnuts and walnuts, the sugar from maples, or the many forms of fruit that we all know and love—are highly productive for humans but also good for a changing climate. They improve water infiltration in soil, reduce water runoff, create healthy soil ecosystems, provide habitat, absorb atmospheric carbon, and create cool microclimates through their shady canopies and evapotranspiration. We also know that well-tended trees can live for hundreds of years”
“Historically, revolutions unfold when the price of bread is too high. From the French Revolution to the Arab Spring, the many tensions and contradictions in society can be contained until people can’t afford to eat. Once there is desperation for basic staples, governments fall and societies change rapidly. The problem with our fragile industrial food system is that when it truly collapses, government policy will be unable to fix it. No amount of farm subsidies or food stamps can replace depleted soil or broken supply chains. And if we wait until the cost of bread and the hunger in our stomachs is the motivating factor for revolt, it will already be too late”
“We need to plant trees now—with all the urgency of a bread riot, but with the endurance needed for a generation-long project. As the gambles of industrial agriculture and settler-colonialism reveal their failures, we have an opportunity to make a different wager”
“We are betting on the planet and on our local ecosystems as part of a vital life support system. We are betting on reciprocity with plants, animals, and soil. This is vitally important and urgent; it is also more rewarding and immediately satisfying than many other activities I can imagine”
“To grow trees, to tend the soil, to hope that the trees we plant today, wherever we can plant them, might provide shade and food for human and non-human animals alike, and to remember that our own well-being and our own fates are linked to the plants and soil immediately around us—this is our gamble”