I’ve posted a few days ago something about 15 of us taking care of the trees in Tamera. Just like you are doing now, I have smiled... What could possibly do a few people, just for fun, in a few days... almost nothing, it must be all about marketing.
...about 15 people, well-heeled with few reaping hooks, we arrived on the border of a dusty road, near a man made lake. Between the road and the lake there were a lot of fancy colored wildflowers and tall grass displaying their natural beauty... here are the trees, Herman says...
Where? He is must be joking...
But we soon discovered that the tall grass was hiding the enormous beds, sort of some large furrows, specific for permaculture...
Each of us received a furrow to take care of, to cut off the grass and the wild flowers, to let the sun reach down to the little trees coming to life from beneath... slowly we have learned to discover them, only 2-3 centimeters high, planted here and there, on beds.
We started to clean around carefully, without pulling them out, without getting them damaged, without taken them by mistake with some other plants... and hidden by the tall grass we also had to hold over and keep the sunflower plants, about 40 cm high, fragile and thin, meant to protect the future trees, offering them the shadow needed to futher develop.
And so, we had to pay great attention, as it was not as easy as it seemed.
Permaculture does not classify the plants upon their usage in our immediate interest, but integrates them in the circuit. For example, everything we have cut had to be left right there, lying down on top of the furrows among the little trees, in order to become food for the ground. Nothing is lost, nothing is taken out of the circuit, and everything is being reused.
The row that I've had in care was with elder berry plants. Each area is different, they have seeds gathered from all over the world and preserved, entire ecosystems are recreated, not only what it seems to be useful or edible. When the baby trees will grow a bit bigger, they will be planted on lands previously prepared by... pigs, as I have described in an older post.
The "exercise" lasted for about one hour, it was like a sort of an open lesson on ecology, ecosystems, equilibrium, ground quality, soil, about climate and human integration, we didn’t get tired in listening Herman and having him answering to our questions...
Looking back, just for the fun of it, I did some counting on the spot: on my row there were 10 plants per meter, by 5 meters long, results that I have put to light about 50 elder berry plants... I smile to them, my mother makes an wonderful elder berry juice; Ileana, the neighbor of Oana, my friend, makes a competitive fruit marmalade, the smell of which I simply adore; in the morning, here in Tamera they use to drink water with elder berry flowers, so I've just strengthened now a very special relationship.
Mathematics just wont let me go, I’ve really loved it, nowadays I bow in front of my former Master Teacher Cracana, and I cast up 15 people x 1 row x 5 meters x 10 plants/m = 750 little trees cared today! If you count that a tree needs around about 3m space to fully develop, we must have taken care for almost 1 hectare of forest!
This is a lot, if you think that such a forest is being planted at once! One single action this year and the forest will last for centuries! Whenever hearing Herman talking about centuries, suddenly time becomes irrelevant. It doesn’t really matter when and where a forest has been planted. It does matter that it exists.
For us or for our children's sake, it is important to do things like these because time flies anyway, but with or without a forest the history will not be the same.
We leave very happy... we didn’t have planted yet an entire hectare of forest but for sure it matters what we did.
Another day we have been to the green house, where we planted seeds in hotbeds and watered them. We also have seen there how a few thousand of little trees had already come to life. One thousand x 10 square meters, equals with ten thousands square meters, meaning they had there quite a few hectares of future forest. Let’s say five thousands plants = five hectares.
It's not such a big deal if you think how much we consume every day and that we actually need a few billion of hectares... But it means a lot thinking that such gestures are almost non existent.
I was impressed of how fragile the oaks, the pines, and all the majestic trees that we normally picture them when they're hundred years old were... their delicacy touched me in such a way... they were just baby trees, you could tear they down with just a few drops of water... and they really needed us, to help them become our healthy lungs once again.
I felt like asking them for forgiveness, "we did not know, please forgive us, this time we understand, we’ll stop being irresponsible, please come back among us and give us oxygen, shadow, and birds and life!"
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