Michael Nolan is an author, food advocate and public speaker.
From the garden to the sewing machine, kitchen to the wood shop, Michael is taking Thoreau's words to heart as he strives every day to "live deep".
I wrote earlier about influence versus change. I got to see what I find to be a small miracle, and one that I thought would never happen. Tears welled in my eyes and I said to Michael, “Something is happening here, and the land likes it.”
As I helped put in some natural breaks to prevent erosion yesterday I looked at a small, slightly underdeveloped mulberry tree. As I look closer I see that it had something that it didn’t have before, NEVER in it’s short life. I can see mulberries in their infancy stage hanging and waiting to become what they have longed to be.
Growing up, I had a neighbor that had mulberry trees in her back yard. She never used them, so I would pick and eat them. She liked the fact they didn’t all go to waste and allowed all the kids to eat them if they liked. Here we will be slightly greedy as we only have one tree that has given us the blessing of berries this year.
Where the persimmons are for the squirrels, rabbits and yellow jackets (hate the yellow jackets) and the peach tree is still struggling for new growth; the berries will become a pie, maybe even a cobbler to be shared after dinner.
I look forward to those dinners in the cool evening breeze around the fire pit while talking about our day and planning the next. It is moments like this one with the mulberry tree that make it easy to see how we will be able to grow at least 60% of our own food by next year while getting back to simpler times on our homestead. When you do right by Mother Nature, she even wants to help.
