Finding Our Way Home - Part II
Hunting and Gathering
When I first saw the land, all I noticed were the trees.
Immense trees, hundreds of years old. Cedars, spruce, white pine and cypress among the white oaks. All standing northwest of the old stone house in which we would live. The trees were guardians: of the house, of the land, of the mountainside. Huge. Strong. And so green. Rather than standing alone on cleared land like the new homes, all the old houses in the valley were sited with woodlands to the northwest. That's the direction from which our storms come. The people who built these houses over five hundred years ago knew this - but I did not. Not until our first summer hailstorm. We raced outside with every bedsheet from the cupboard, desperate to cover the tomato plants in the garden. But the plants were virtually untouched by the hail. Having planted the annual vegetables behind the house, right up to the trees, the trees blocked the worst of the deluge.
Now with the winds ramping up to breath-taking speeds, we have come to depend on those trees to reduce wind speed along the ground. They are essential for growing our food, actually essential for the survival of all the herbaceous plantings now. We created our seasonal vegetable gardens to the southeast of the woods, directly outside the kitchen door for convenience, thinking nothing of the trees. We built the bird barns there too. Again, for convenience. But the trees became an important part of our maintaining sustainability. They shelter the structures as well as the crops, provide sunscreen and cooling in the increasing summer heat, and supply all the animals with a wealth of food. And as I add trees—oaks and bay laurels and junipers, fruit trees and berry bushes—connecting the garden to the woods in an agroforestry kind of way, the additions provide more screening and protection, more animal habitat, and more food for all of us.
I want the insurance policy the trees provide—but there is something else, something less tangible as well. The trees welcome me within the landscape. I am a part of it all. I don't want to “get out into nature” for an hour or a day only to return to sitting at a desk. I want to live and work embedded in the growing world. There are reasons that, as children, we are enchanted with fairy tale stories of the cottage at the edge of the woods. The biologist Edward Osborne Wilson wrote that our innate attraction to the natural world, to all forms of life, has evolutionary origins. We are hard-wired to find comfort, grace, majesty, spirituality, guidance and wisdom in the natural world. Forests mean everything - from intrigue to safety. For me, now, trees mean home.
When we first began to plant the gardens around the house, I bought a few shrubs from the local animal feed store: viburnum, raspberries, currant bushes—plants common in local gardens. I planted them where the oaks and conifers left off and my garden-to-be began. My neighbor came over bearing welcoming gifts; two large wild cherry saplings. It was an epiphany, one of many to come. Moreno dug them up from his land because they were struggling for sunlight and nutrition in the understory. Knowing that wild cherries do well in these parts, he thought I might like them. It had not occurred to me to liberate the saplings from under their mothertrees, but the idea of spending zero money and instead, digging up saplings which could not survive, trees perfectly suited to place, was very appealing.
Seven oak saplings too close together to survive
We live within an oak/pine forest - but the oaks dominate. They are the keystone species in their habitats: stabilizing the soil, minimizing erosion, contributing nutrients to the surrounding ecosystem. Both the living trees and the downed wood support many species... insects and lichen and fungus, birds, bats, amphibians, reptiles. And their acorns are a vital fall and winter food for our many animals. During certain prolific years—called mast years—oaks drop thousands of acorns directly underneath their canopy. The idea of collecting a few of these, extending the forest using oak trees, while at the same time improving the soil health and water holding capacity of my garden—at no cost—was very appealing. But an acorn is not a guarantee of an oak and rather than collect and plant acorns, I decided to dig up some of the scores of small oak trees which had taken root under the mothertree, leaving the acorns for the many animals which are dependent on them for winter food.
On my walks in February and March, I take along a large canvas bag as I hunt and gather. And I bring a small hand hoe in the bag. I am looking for oak saplings, but only if they are under a tree, without enough light and space to grow well. I go hunting when the soil is wet. Now, in early March, on a grey day, it is the perfect time. The trees, the saplings, are still dormant, without a hint of new leaves. When I find a bunch of tiny trees piled up on one another, I loosen the soil around each trunk continuing down and around the taproot until it is free. Oaks and conifers have long taproots (below) and a standard pot will never do. I use milk and juice cartons to contain them. I replant them immediately into their native soil and pop them into the canvas bag. At home I give them a drink of water, keep them out of bright sunshine for a few days, then move them into a community of other saplings, giving them moisture and another year of well-tended growth. The critical part is collecting the saplings when they are dormant, but when the ground is no longer frozen, before they have new leaves. During their dormant period next year, I will introduce them to the edge of the forest, to be with their kin, in the field where trees once stood. The hole I will dig will be as deep as the taproot and twice as wide as the container. Depending on the soil, I may dig in a little high nitrogen composted chicken manure, but not until late spring, not until they have begun to grow.
To be clear, I am not suggesting that we all go out to rape and pillage the forest. I take only what cannot survive. I take only from my own land. Were I to remove a sapling from under someone else's tree it would be with their permission. I am committed to growing all my own plants. I will not support a garden center or worse, bare root mail order. By taking the saplings under the mothertree, the ones which grew in spite of all the odds, I am getting a strong future tree, I am planting a stronger future.
It's a win-win for everyone - except for Big Business.
I also take cuttings of certain trees and shrubs, only the ungrafted ancient trees.* I select the plant I want (for drought resistance, for early fruiting, for winter hardiness, for whatever... ) and get a healthy and robust duplicate of the mothertree rather than taking a chance on what pollination will give me by gathering seeds. If I sell the plants, my profit is 100% (minus taxes). And by growing my own, I make a political statement. By not buying from nurseries or mail order, I do not perpetuate a wasteful and fossil fuel-driven system. By taking cuttings from mature trees, I can choose which trees are the most vigorous and/or productive in an increasingly challenging environment. And I have an exact copy. (The trees from which I can take cuttings are species and region dependent. Some trees are duplicated by grafts, some by root cuttings, some by leaf cuttings.)
Right now we are pruning the fruit trees and the grapes. There are cuttings all over the ground... woody branches from a half meter to several meters long. I select ones I can cut to one half meter—still dormant but with the beginnings of numerous swelling nodes. Using a clean and sharp rose clipper, I snip off the nodes on the lower half of the cutting—cutting flush with the stem and wounding the plant. This is actually a horticulture technique to encourage living cells in the area to rush to the wound, divide and initiate root growth. I do not use rooting hormone, which is often suggested in propagation. For some, I plunge the entire lower half into a deep pot of garden soil. For easy to root cuttings like laurels and roses, I stick the entire denuded part of the stem directly into the ground. I keep it damp for several months. When the cutting begins to grow I know it has roots. No compost yet. Not for the first planting. Hardwood cuttings are the easiest way to propagate trees; it takes almost no time, costs nothing, and you get a duplicate of whatever tree, vine, or shrub you are cutting. Right now I am potting hundreds of cuttings from my fig, pomegranate, and plum trees, as well as the grape vines, rose and current bushes. I have up to ten cuttings in one pot and anticipate at least fifty percent will develop roots and grow into healthy viable trees and shrubs (above).
The specific plants from which I take cuttings depend on the season, the crisis du jour with the weather, what I come across in my travels, and total whim. Most are for food, but I also need trees to enlarge and protect the local ecosystem. At the moment, the issue in my area is the rain, mud and wind. Mudslides and rockslides have become more common, driven by our rain-saturated soil. But there is also the continuing issue with the wind, which will only get stronger. Along with collecting oak saplings, which will take up a tremendous amount of moisture and serve as a windblock while full of leaves, I take cuttings from trees and shrubs which are evergreen, which stand up to wind and hail in deep winter. I look hard at what is standing tall—or left standing—along the road after a storm. The cypress trees are stalwart, and cuttings can be taken in the winter. The laurels are easy to root and make large trees. I propagate them from long branching hardwood cuttings and after removing the lower leaves, I plunge them directly into the soil, in a shady spot in the garden for a few months. Just until they have roots. Then I move them wherever I will be needing them.
Most of this land was forest for millennia; planting more trees, large trees like oaks and cypress, is successful because they are at home. The large trees are the wind blocks and water regulators. I use fruit trees and bay laurels to blend the gardens into the woodlands - creating a continuous thriving self-sustaining ecosystem. Though I am reforesting, I am also making a food forest, creating far less work for myself and more resiliency while the house, the gardens, the barns, the woods are becoming an integrated whole.
I could live on just what I could forage but that would not be sustainable. If everyone in my area took from the woods and fields using the old rule of taking only what they need, the animals would be hunted to extinction, the trees would be cut down for firewood and lumber without coppicing, the fungus and wild foods and medicine plants would disappear. Today we have one third of the forest and twenty times the population of two hundred years ago, when we could still take what we needed from the wild, thanking the spirits with burnt offerings or tobacco. One cardinal rule for our current times, even on land that is mine on paper (but of course does not really belong to me), is that we must give back/put back more than we take. Planting trees is a part of giving back and harvesting mindfully.
The tree is a universal symbol of the unity of all life, a symbol of integration. Many cultures have a circular image of the tree of life, the branches and root system intertwining. Everything connected. And it is all connected—we could not grow food here were it not for the trees. Our land is on a steep incline, the weather is beyond unpredictable. The patches of orchards, olive groves, gardens and fields have been carved out of the forest. Without the trees, we would be a wind-swept wasteland.
But beyond the very practical, I hunt and gather the trees and berry bushes, planting more of them, out of pure selfishness. (And my regular readers will recognize this recurring rant.) It is more than a livelihood, more than a protest against buying and growing the economy. Yes, collecting, propagating and planting connects me to the natural world and the ancestors but it is also my therapy. By living in the forest, I never hear a car alarm or see a noisy screen. (I do hear wolves and owls.) I am rocked to sleep by the wind in the trees. Every tree I plant is a small but positive and assertive act of defiance against the brutality we inflict on one another, most of our animals, and our ecosystems. No landscape painting can capture the thrill and majesty of living among all these ancient trees, among its creatures and its natural beauty.
© www.thesubversivefarmer.com March 2025
* If propagating all your own plants appeals to you, do not follow my directions or anyone on the Internet. No blog nor any article can give you all the information you need. Buy THE book. Really. It is the one book absolutely every horticulture class uses. Plant Propagation. Principles and Practices. Hartmann, Kester and Davies. My copy is 30 years old and still an invaluable resource. There are lots of copies in second hand book stores. The information hasn't changed.
In a previous lifetime, Zia Gallina worked as a botanist for the National Parks Service, on the C&O Canal outside of Washington D.C. (lecturing on wild indigenous and naturalized medicinal and culinary plants). She was also an adjunct professor teaching biology and environmental science at American University, Washington D.C. But she has always been a champion of small-scale biointensive farming, tagging along behind Mother Nature, trying to stay as close as she can get.
