Harvest Homestead Reflections
“All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of interdependent parts . . . The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, water, plants and animals, or collectively, the land.”
Aldo Leopold
Harvest Homestead Reflections
“The spider’s lesson is to never be greedy. It shows that objects of necessity can be objects of beauty and art as well. The spider also teaches us that we can become too easily enraptured with ourselves.”
Marlo Morgan
“The patches of bluets in the grass may not be long on brains, but it might be, at least in a very small way, awake. The trees especially seem to bespeak a generosity of spirit . . . We know nothing for certain, but we seem to see that the world turns upon growing, grows towards growing, and growing green and clean.”
Anne Dillard
“It may be more appropriate to think of ourselves as a mode of being of the earth, than a separate creature living on the earth. Earth does not belong to us, it is us.”
Elizabeth Roberts
“From the forest and the wilderness comes the tonics and barks which brace humanity.”
Henry David Thoreau
“Return to the land means recovering something of the biorhythms of the body, the day, and the seasons from the world of clocks, computers and artificial lighting that have almost entirely alienated us form these biorhythms.”
Rosemary Radford Reuther
“There is a muscular energy in sunlight corresponding to the spiritual energy of wind.”
Anne Dillard
“I would insist that our love for our natural home has to go beyond finite, into the boundless – like the love of a mother for her children, whose devotion extends to both the gifted and the scarred among her brood.”
Barbara Kingsolver
~ Peace and Love ~
Bruce
through the luminary lens 
Stunning photos and marvelous quotes, Bruce. Your beautiful bounty took much planning and work, but look at what you have been able to can and preserve. 🙂 You are an inspiration, my friend.
Thanks Debra…. to use a carpenters expression you’ve hit the nail on the head with the work, the planning and the results of the preserving. Only now after about 6 weeks, are Fran and I able to slow down a bit. We have been going full tilt since Fran’s daughter and our grand-kids left in mid August. It is really a rewarding process.. On the other hand it is somewhat bitter-sweet in knowing how this years heat waves have caused suffering and loss through the terrible forest fires and such, locally too. It really commits one to work even harder for the good of the future…. Fran and I are continuing to try to learn and move forward as such … We began a new book a bout 3 weeks ago called “Commanding Hope” .. it’s very difficult read, very hard to absorb, hard to fully understand but we are trying! It’s all about embracing 3 kinds of hope…. honest hope, astute hope.and courageous hope. We all must try. Good cheers in your own endeavours in this direction Debra.
wonderful!
Yes Angela…. wonderful, indeed. Amazing at harvest time in the garden, isn’t it!
Beautiful quotes and photos, Bruce. What a bounty from your garden!
Thanks Rosaliene. This year most of our harvest was the best year we’ve ever had. This is such a bitter-sweet reality for us because as I’m sure you are aware, north western North America had such a terrible un-precidented heat wave in early July. for about 10 days. We reached temperatures of 35 degrees centigrade here on northern Vancouver island for 7 days or so, and longer and hotter in the south part of the island. Never have we experienced had that length of high temperatures in my memory…. we joke here that we live on the “wet coast”, not the west coast. In past, if we were to experience 30 degrees for a day or two on a rare summer, that would be hot for us…. With climate change, this is no more. Ironically our garden thrived with the extra heat… I wouldn’t want to be a full scale farmer this day and age because of the changing weather… farmworkers are heroes to me!
Exquisite photography, Bruce. Good eating. 🙂
Thanks Linda…. with all of our lovely harvest every meal is “gourmet” I tell Francis.