‘Brash’ Pile. Stacking Functions. Pantry pasta.

Travel

20 Nov

My brother-in-law brought his chainsaw to fell the overgrown pear tree at the back of the barn. It had outgrown its artificial, man-made pruning shape, was interfering with the barn roof, and had contracted Fire Blight. It’s wood was full of water, a bright golden color and very heavy. We stacked the larger logs and he chopped up the smaller branches with the chainsaw like a bunch of parsley gathered under the knife. My sister and I began stacking and weaving the small wood into a long thin mound running along the contour of the hill for about twenty feet.

The whole tree - all twenty five feet of it — was now heading back into the earth. The larger portions of the trunk could be sawn into planks if I can find someone with a band saw willing to try it. Pear wood is beautiful, dense and buttery. The medium logs will be especially good for cooking meat outdoors. Pear wood smoke… even the words evoke a flavor. However not much of it will be burned. Burning biomass is waste and polluting. The alternative is surprisingly straightforward: the rest of the tree will go back into the earth via the action of soil microbes on a thoughtfully created pile. All that the tree took from that spot (in soil nutrients, water, sunlight) for the last twenty years will go back in to feed the soil life and contribute to growing something else —probably the nearby apple tree that has not been pruned in the conventional restrictive, extractive manner of commercial orchards.

This pile on the contour of the hill is an example of permaculture. Permaculture is, in essence, a rhizomatic system of design principles. Which means it’s an ever-growing and connecting outlook on how to live in creative collaboration with the earth and each other. Looking at one example of permaculture design — actually doing it in your backyard —is the most elucidating experience you can have of the ideas.

This was a moment of cycling resources, using what you already have, what needed using up, with least destructive impact, in fact creating something positive. This little pile was placed carefully after determining the contour of the slope with a level. But no high technology or equipment was needed (apart from the chainsaw which is a big input, but a one-time use). It now serves to catch organic matter and moisture that would otherwise drift down the hill. Gradually the wood will become veined with the fine white networks of mycorrhizal fungi, break down and become soil. I dug a slight dip on the uphill side and piled the sods on top of the branchy berm to encourage the soil organisms to begin their work. This dip will also serve as a swale to catch water making its way down across the slope and instead let it sink below my pile and be stored in the shaded soil there.

This is not a traditional permaculture-type swale. It’s my experimental amalgam of a swale and a ‘brash pile’. Swales are typically dug along contour and the soil mounded up on the downhill side, and are used to direct and capture water. A ‘brash pile’ is what the traditional English woodsmen would do with all their branchy debris. They would work by hand (and draft horse) through a forest — coppicing hazel or chestnut, say — a practice of cutting trees on a seven or twelve year cycle to obtain poles and other timber products, simultaneously prolonging the tree’s life and usefulness. As they went along they’d create beautiful woody hedges of the slash. Placed strategically, they served as fences or to direct traffic of wildlife, humans, or just organic matter — blown leaves, dust, the moisture from collected snow.

Another principle of permaculture at work on our little afternoon of tree cutting was Stacking Functions. Much more than one thing was accomplished with a single expenditure of energy (both human and a couple cans of fossil fuel). Instead of just killing a tree and burning the debris, we created something useful to the soil in that spot; a water retention opportunity; a refuge for wildlife; a place to plant more trees and shrubs where they will benefit from the added nutrients and moisture; a way to use up what would be ‘waste’; and creating something rather beautiful.

Returning to the kitchen, I was faced with an ‘empty’ fridge. You know, one carrot in the bottom drawer, a heel of parmigiano, a jar with one curled anchovy floating in oil. This is the best opportunity for pasta! Pasta cries out for ‘nothing sauce’. Even when you have beautiful clams or gorgeous fresh tomatoes, pasta is always best when extremely simple. I have to remind myself the more I restrain myself the better it will be. If we end up with nothing but noodles with butter it’ll be delicious, so there’s nothing to lose.

A crushed clove of garlic in the pan, that sad anchovy, a shred of dried chile, that’s all that’s needed!

But then I had some really good olive oil and that dry parmigiano. Perfect. Something from nothing, using up what needed using and creating something useful and beautiful.