Aras Balali

I promise this is not a vegetarian bashing post. We are both a livestock farmer and trying to grow a diversified orchard here in southern british columbia, Canada. I have been pruning and grafting all my life without thinking about this question in any real depth. Recently I started reading about the work of Dr. Suzanne Simard who after over three decades of research has shown that trees in the forest are communicating and sharing resources. In my own experience of spending more and more time in the forest, especially in the last 5 years I feel that trees are conscious beings. However I still don't think that pruning or taking scion wood causes a tree to feel pain, but I have heard many people say this. There is a lot of anthropomorphizing happening on both sides of this argument. Some scientist say that trees cant feel pain because they do not have a nervous system like us and that they can not run away as a result of pain. That in itself is assuming trees are individual beings like us and in order to feel they must have similar system to us. This argument undermines the interconnectedness of the forest as a conscious being.
I am curious what your take is on this issue? How do you feel about pruning, grafting, tapping, cutting mushroom logs, harvesting willow for basket weaving, etc. etc. If we believe that trees are or are part of a conscious being that can feel their environment, what are the implication of that? Do we need reciprocity in our relationship with trees?
Lets see if we can have a respectful, honest and deep discussion about this.

After around ten years of keeping livestock and practicing regenerative farming, we are now transitioning our farming operation more into a diversified perrenial farm. While we contiue to keep some livestock, it is mostly going to be for ourself and family and to provide nutrients to the farm. I have been thinking a lot about the topic of travelling and leaving the farm once in a while, and being able to go on holidays or visit family members who are far away. As livestock farmers, it is really easy to fall into trap of daily chores and soon it may seem impossible that you could ever leave the farm. I am curious what people here think about the farm/life balance and if you need to plan and go on vacations once in a while. We share our thoughts, and some footage of our trips. At our peek, we had nine sows, around sixty weaners, a hundred sheep, a couple of steers and several hundred poultry. Yet we somehow managed to get away from the farm for a whole month, thanks to amazing farm sitters.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this? Do you have livestock, and do you have a desire to go on a vacation once in a while?

Thanks Douglas! I just bench tested everything first and then designed this in Rhino3D and built it over the course of last week. If all goes well, I will make a video of it in action next month after hopefully our cow has her calf. I am happy to post details of this build if people are interested. It uses an existing plug-in milking machine and just converts it to a more quiet and portable version

It is Aras here. A brown guy who is a digital fabricator living off-grid up in Canada mostly because my partner Anastasia is a farmer. She practices regenerative agriculture and does rotational grazing. Today I got her the perfect gift which I think some of you would appreciate. I made a video about it. Let me know what your thoughts are. Would you use this milking machine?

The way I see it is that colonization has been for several generations ripping us apart.  We can and definitely should try and build resilient local communities also known as villages. I do not care if people give a thousand examples of failed attempts or a million reasons why it may not work. I think it is worth trying it again. Going back to living locally is our most important work. It is true that most of us have forgotten how to live together and it will take a lot of work to transform our beings to be able to comfortably settle in a loving community. We are supposed to live in physical villages with our peers. A village is the smallest unit of happy human beings. Keep searching, you will find the others. Don't be afraid to try things and don't be afraid to say no to some things.  Villages do not have to incorporate every single point of view and that is the beauty of them. For example in our village we say no to alcohol, guns and we consume a vegetarian diet. You can make up a secret language, adopt or create a new religion, make your own calendar, whatever you want, just try it! It is your life and it is your playground. You do not have to listen to anyone or follow any instructions. The most important thing is to try. If we just sit and come up with reasons why it might not work then before you know it we will all turn into machines. Be brave, be unpredictable, be human!

Hi Everyone! I have been a long time lurker on this forum and it feels very awkward to just start posting now after all these years of sneaking away information from this forum quietly. However, the project I am involved in with now is just too good to not to talk about so I thought it is time to share.

My wife and I operated a small regenerative farm for about 6 years. About two years ago we realized that taking care of land is a community venture and not something that is meant to be done by just one family. So we started on a search to find the others and either join or start a community farm. After about a year of searching and many many meetings and site visits we ended up connecting to the Doukhobor community in Kootenays through my wife's family. We lease about 47 acres from them and intend on building a community orchard with the help of the community here. What is very cool is that over 100 years ago Doukhobors had thriving villages and orchards on this site and there are still many fruit trees around here some of which are over a 100 years old! There is very good water on site and the soil is sandy. Soil tests came back encouraging, although after many decades of neglect there is very little organic matter left, so there is a lot of work to do to build up soil nutrient and ecosystems.

We sold our land and most of our possessions, quit our city jobs and moved to the project site about a year ago and are living off-grid in a travel trailer. We plan to use all of our savings to fund this project and support our basic needs for the first 5 years while we build a diversified orchard / food forest for our community. We are working on the business plan and have been taking courses to help us come up with a feasible plan to support ourself after the initial growing phase. We plan to grow and maintain this orchard without use of any pesticides/herbicides/fungicides. Instead we are learning how to create an abundant and healthy ecosystem. We started our journey by moving here and learning by observing the natural environment before we make any permanent decisions about the orchard. We take daily walks in the nearby forest, bathe in the creek and write down notes daily. We do our best to obtain most of our food and medicine from the land. Living here and observing nature has been a transformative and healing experience for both of us. Even though we are just at the beginning of our journey and there are so many challenges and unknown surprises waiting for us. we feel that we have arrived and can finally breathe.

Do you think this forum is a good place to post updates about our project? What kind of things would you like to hear about? If you have any ideas for collaboration please feel free to reach out to me (arasbm@gmail.com). We are documenting our journey by putting out weekly videos on YouTube whenever possible. I'll put our latest video here. You can also find us on IG and FB by searching for Caspian Acres

It's lambing season at our farm and the lambs often come to this world in adorable pairs:

Here is a photo of our calf hanging out with a sheep, not the same animals but still a pair