Hazelton

Alright, so let’s back up here a little and get y’all up to date.

After leaving Prince George, we spent about a week in Hazelton, doing what amounts to woofing (the working on organic farms thing) in a community called Two Mile. Our connection here is a guy named Chris Timms, who is one of the instigators of Common Unity Farm, and he invited us to stay and work and find out what’s happening here. Kaleb and I met him a few months ago when he came down to Vancouver for the Rising Tide training weekend and stayed in Kaleb’s place.

He has been living and working up here with a man named Darren and his four kids, and a rotating group of gardening nomads. They’ve built a permaculture garden and they cultivate an impressive range of fruits and veggies at the agriculture resource centre at the bottom of the hill. (If anyone ever offers you cinnamon basil, take it. Ask no questions, just shove it in your mouth. I mean it.)

They’ve got some really amazing things going on, from the solar-powered cabin and surprisingly attractive composting outhouse to the Hagwilget Mountain across the valley, a landform so beautiful you have to look away or sacrifice your day’s productivity.

And there were so many people there.

I have a small but solid group of people in my life in the city, people who get me pretty well, have seen me at good times and bad and are generally pretty forgiving of my flaws. I’m exceedingly lucky. So lucky, in fact, that I sometimes forget just how terrible I am at meeting new people, especially when they come in groups of more than one or two. We arrived in the afternoon and found Chris tending bees at Senden, the community resource centre. We went from there to Anton’s (who doesn’t live there right now because he’s finishing up his mechanic’s training in Alberta) and were introduced to Darren. Amber and Elena showed up shortly thereafter. Then Dani-Rae, who lives in the loft. Then we all went to Nancy’s and met the kids, Jade, Honour, Emery, Moise, Emma and baby Hugh. We met Darko and Tammi and another handful of people whose names I’ve forgotten. I had a beer and put myself to work making a salad out of a bag of greens Darko brought and items scavenged from our cooler. I had a few conversations and exclaimed as delightedly as I could about the pork chops we ate. I was doing alright.

We went back to Chris’s and he showed us the lookout. Then three more people arrived, and I hit the wall. I grabbed the keys and went in search of a spot to put the tent. I blew up the air mattress and went to bed.

Earlier in the evening, several people had asked us if we were there to weed at Jim’s the next day, and so we decided to say yes. After meeting a few more people and getting a minor scolding from Kaleb for being so unfriendly, I sat quietly in the dirt and weeded. For hours. It was the best.

I pulled little plants up one by one so as not to remove too much of the soil. I dug my hands under the roots of stiff thistles to avoid the thorns. The others chatted and Jim told us that his carrots were the best of anybody’s, just ask around, and at lunch we ate salmon sandwiches and some of the biggest, crunchiest homemade dill pickles a person could ask for. We even earned a little gas money. I started to feel better.

The next day was for working at Chris’s and I was sent down the hill to Senden to help with market prep and whatever else was needed. I bagged some kale and picked some basil, and then once again set to work weeding. This time it was a bed of onions, so overgrown with weeds and old mulch I could hardly see the onions. Once again I spent hours between the rows, shoeless and already caked in dirt from the previous day. Nobody said much to me, but waved me over to the picnic table for lunch, passed around a bucket of carrots and a bag of peas and some rice from their dinner the night before. I shared my trail mix, the chocolate bits melted and reformed in clumps of almonds and pumpkin seeds. I asked a few questions about the garden and market, and talked a little about what I was doing there. After lunch, I finished with the weeds and Elena helped me mulch the onions.

It’s not so much that I particularly liked weeding. It’s repetitive and it was hot outside and my knees got sore from all the squatting. But it gave me some space to get my head in order. To have a little more control over the pace at which I took things in. And this is always what it comes down to, control, but I think there are worse ways to get it than spending a few hours a day liberating vegetables.

The day after I switched from weeds to wood, taking straight-grained logs from the pile and splitting them into kindling. Wielding an axe was a bit awkward at first. I couldn’t decide which way to swing the axe and kept switching my grip back and forth. (You swing both ways! says Kaleb, laughing like a loon.) But I got the hang of it and spent another several hours filling up cardboard boxes. At one point I asked Chris if I should stop, if it was still useful, and he said if I chop it, they will eventually burn it. So I carried on. I told Kaleb I thought maybe I needed more manual labour in my life. They put down their axe for a second and looked at me a little incredulously.

“Of course you do, you goober. You’d be so much happier.”

So there it is. The secret to my health and happiness and ability to cope with new people lies in repetitive manual tasks. If you know of anyone in Vancouver who needs their garden weeded or their wood chopped, do let me know.