MAY 19 2018
SOME PERSONAL STUFF
My roots.
I am city-bred, first generation. Both my parents were the first and only ones of their combined six siblings to leave rural life and move to the city. There my aunts, uncles and grandparents visited us quite frequently when shopping for items not available back home.
My father’s parents operated a grocery store, while my mother’s parents were small-time general farmers: cows, pigs, chickens and a horse, farming some 20 hectares of good soil, most of it surrounding the homestead. The immediate neighbors had similar holdings: nobody rich, nobody poor.
Both my grandparents were elders in the same church, sincere devout people, deeply committed to the Christian faith in its then rather uncomplicated expression. They were an example for me in their piety and simple trust. For generations they had lived their quiet lives in the Netherlands’ most northerly province, Groningen.
Urban Groningen was known as ‘the city’ or in Dutch, ‘de stad’, nothing more. People planning to visit the cattle market, or buy new clothes, simply said that they were going to ‘stad’.
I grew up in that city, an ancient one, dating back well before the 11th Century, the date when construction of the Martini church was started: the immense blocks of squared rock of its 100 meter high steeple-tower came all the way from southern Germany, some 500 km away, signifying the people’s tenacity, devotion and willingness to sacrifice some 1,000 years ago.
I attended educational institutions there for 16 years, the second half studying Latin, Greek, German, French, English, Dutch, plus various science subjects, all compulsory. The only option was Hebrew, and I now regret not taking it.
One of my ancestors was a delegate to the provincial council. A plaque above the entrance of his rural church honored him some 300 years ago for faithful service to the province and the Royal family, the house of Orange.
I was named after him, Egbert Drewes, the same as my maternal grandfather. Even though I was born and raised in the city, and once in Canada, settled in 1951 -23 years old – first in Hamilton for 4 years, then in St. Catharines for 2 decades, my staying often at my Opa’s farm as a kid, gave me a lasting desire for the country side. Having always been self-employed, first in insurance, then adding real estate, in 1975 I sold my agency and moved to rural Ontario, moving into an uncertain future.
That move was motivated both by the oil-crisis in 1972-3 and by reading THE LIMITS OF GROWTH, which deeply influenced my thinking and kindled my desire to attain a degree of self-sufficiency for our family. In the 1970’s there was a lot of scary talk. The sudden spike in the oil price threw the entire global economy in turmoil, and it surely affected me as well.
So I looked for a location far from large population centres, where land was still affordable. I bought 50 acres of mostly trees and rocks but enough cleared land to build a house, just about 200 km from both Toronto and Ottawa, 5 km north of the small village of Tweed. A pretty safe location, I thought.
Before we started building a well-witcher came who with his witching rod followed one underground stream, and then another, and where they crossed he told us to drill. He also told us how deep, and lo and behold, exactly where he had indicated a well was drilled, giving us 150 liters of pure ground water per minute, sufficient for 10 families.
We built some 150 meters from the highway. With the highway under re-construction, the company needed to dispose of large amounts of earth: they were happy to construct a driveway to my building site, an advantage to both of us.
Our dwelling.
I had designed a 2 storey house, with on the north one story – built into a hill, and a small window – and on the south 2 storey with four large windows, catching the sun, constructed with 2×6 studs, R20 insulation and extra foam insulation as well: a passive-solar house.
The first floor contained a three piece washroom with a shower, 2 bedrooms, and my office as well as a utility room, a root cellar, completely surrounded with earth, and a pantry for food storage.
I later added a one storey addition expanding the office space, a foyer, and making the bedroom bigger. On its roof section I installed 10 solar panels, an additional power source. On the second level I placed the bathroom in the centre, so that the heat generated there would be retained. Also the masonry chimney had 2 flues so that I could have a wood stove on both levels. Later, with more efficient wood stoves I only used one large wood stove on the first floor.
Once the house was ready, by living frugally I studied for 3 years to qualify for Real Estate Appraiser, taking courses at York, Trent and Queen’s Universities which also required the completion of three master theses, 100 page reports on Single Family Dwelling, on a 12 unit apartment building and a commercial building before I became an AACI, Accredited Appraiser Canadian Institute. This allowed me to appraise a full range of properties, such as the Picton airport – a former RAF fighter training center – several river dams, a 5,000 acre former Weston retreat just east of the Algonquin Park, a uranium mine in Bancroft, and the entire Bruce Peninsula, 500,000 acres, for an Indian land claim, just to name some of the more odd pieces of real estate I evaluated. I did a lot of work for all levels of governments, federal, provincial, and many municipalities.
My garden.
I moved to Tweed to become more self-sufficient, that involved not only building an energy-efficient dwelling but especially having a large vegetable garden.
That was a lot of work: the soil was basically pure sand, and to make it more fertile, I went over to the neighbors some 200 meters away, and was allowed to cart away in my wheelbarrow age-old black earth, saturated with cow manure, too rich for growing, but mixed with my sandy loam it became good garden material. I forgot how many loads I transported, but 43 years ago I was that much younger, so I invested a lot of sweat into that undertaking.
I also constructed a simple 8`x 8`compost bin. Since we became vegetarian, almost each day we generated a bucket of green stuff. Since friendly near-by farmers were willing to provide us with manure, the last 5 years I did not touch the accumulated compost.
But in this past week I found the extra energy to completely empty our compost enclosure and carted 25 wheelbarrow loads to our vegetable garden of some 2,000 square feet: beautiful black, airy loam, promising us a good crop for the season to come.
FOOD
A recent article in WALRUS dealing with the FUTURE, suggest that “the production of whole foods – milk and meat, spices and flavouring, even fruits and vegetables – might soon become unnecessary and even irresponsible. The article expresses the belief that all these food items can be manufactured today brewing the same chemical compounds that give fresh summer peaches their taste. Given the scarcity of land and water synthetic food might soon become the only reasonable choice. Well, color me old-fashioned, but I don’t buy this at all.
May 19 2008
The best thing you and I can do to save the world, and, at the same time benefit our families, is to start to grow your own food, because today we don’t eat food, but oil. With oil barreling toward $100.00 (Can), edibles will become ever more expensive. That means that we have to get our guts in gear and start digging, something good for body and soul, as manual labor promotes peace of mind, improves physical well-being, while home-grown produce provides healthy nutrition.
The world now has now close to 7.5 billion with ever more demanding mouths, while food supplies per capita are about to shrink, signaling food inflation. The only way to keep this in check and furnish basic food for your family is to engage in “subsistence gardening.”
Today we burn 30 billion barrels of oil a year, but in 20 years annual production will be less than half that amount, while the number of people in the world will have increased by 50 percent. It doesn’t take an Einstein to figure that with drastically reduced amounts of oil and chemical fertilizer, our future will feature growing food shortages. Alternative energy sources will do little to solve the problem. Our main energy will be pure body power: we and our shovel, we and our hoe, we and our weary back, which, by the way, will save us sleeping pills.
In our ‘wisdom’, we have turned prime farmland into subdivisions and big box stores, have allowed pollution to poison our pollinators, are burning food in our gas tanks instead of fueling our muscles, so, no wonder that finally, after some 210 years, the fear of global famine, expressed by English parson Thomas Malthus in his “Essay on the Principle of Population,” will come true.
The old is new again. The best security is an old-fashioned vegetable garden. The cost is minimal. And now – May-June – is the time, as plenty of rain has softened the earth, making digging a lot easier. Get a sharp spade, one with a short handle. This way you lift with your hips, avoiding a ‘back-breaking’ experience.
Choose a sunny patch, away from trees. Cut the grass there to the very roots, which makes turning the soil a lot easier. Shake out the sod, releasing the good earth into the dug portion. Put the grass and roots into a compost bin. Compost must be an important ingredient of your soil. If you don’t have a compost bin, start one today: put in leaves, grass cuttings, left over food, peals and all organic material. Keep the contents wet so that they disintegrate easier.
Where I live spring time comes with one obstacle: black flies. Let them bite you. After a few years you will become immune to their sting at least that is my experience. God made everything for a purpose, perhaps black fly bites strengthen our immune system, but they certainly help as pollinators and with bees in short supply, even black flies can be a blessing.
Once you have dug that patch, braved the pesky flies, endured that tired back and blisters in your hands and loosened the soil, you are ready to plant. For a start I would recommend green beans, onions, red beets, carrots, as well as a variety of cabbage plants. If you have room, plant some potatoes as well. Of course, tomatoes and squash plants are a cinch.
Remember that variety is essential. Any meal should have three colors: green salads, red beets, and orange carrots, for instance: the more colors on your plate the better. Michael Pollan, in his book “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto,” says, in a nutshell, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly Plants.” He also says that much of what we buy in the store is not food as much as ‘foodish’, quasi-edible substances made for long shelf-life rather than nutrition and taste. When you grow your own, you know what you get.
Most vegetables are easy to grow. Green beans need little care. Carrots need a sandy soil and, since the seeds are so tiny, constant watering until the greens break through the surface.
Potatoes attract Colorado potato beetles. I handpick these creatures and if there are too many I dust the plants with a friendly pesticide, which I also sprinkle on my broccoli and cabbages. Kale, a very healthy dark green plant, is the least trouble-prone.
So do yourself a favor, engage in a wholesome exercise, grow your own and prevent a lot of polluted air from happening, while enriching your table with nutritious fare. An all-around win-win situation.
I am city-bred, first generation. All our kids are in the city, Toronto, Hamilton, Minneapolis, Santa Fe, Greater Kitchener area: for them the city begs as the jobs are there. I was fortunate to make a good living away from urban North America.