@Plough @BenQuash 18/ The option for the poor and the option for the earth can’t be split: people and land are one covenantal ecology. One can’t be healed without the other. Integrated repair is how the Beautiful reweaves the world—local restoration seeding universal renewal.
@Plough 7/ Growing a New Creation involves properly coming to ground with it. One of the superpowers of tree crops, as such? They play a core role wedding us intimately to the Earth and one another, in the graced embrace of a profoundly convivial form of essence, permanency and delight.
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A long, beautiful day spent transplanting, mulching, watering, labeling and mapping a mix of 150 grafted European and Asian pears into secure land on Lopez Island with Jim Berkemeier. This, my first major establishment of material in the San Juan Islands, represents a highly-targeted selection reflecting almost a decade of experience moving among over 1,000 pear cultivars and the people who steward them. May they bless these islands. Today, I learn that Raven, a Waldron Island heirloom apple picked up by Chris Homanics, and in my scion stash, is unknown to the foremost botanist/geneticist and heirloom fruit geek of the Kwiaht Center for the Historical Ecology of the Salish Sea. Cause for celebration. The turn feels as a kind blessing. Placing these grafted pears into Lopez has been a rich and complex adventure involving the hands-on support of a great many wonderful folks. This is so very much a team effort. Thank you, everyone!