There’s a need to find one’s place on the map. Not just the physical, but where are you in the rhythm and cycle of nature. The more you can locate yourself there, the more things work out …

I have lived a lot of different lives in this one, and some of them parallel. Sitting on the back deck, Yeti launched into describing the activity he was currently engaged in this past January.
 
Pruning
 
What I’ve learned after over ten years of pruning is that all the pruning books and workshops tell you what to cut off a tree. I realized that doesn’t matter. It’s not important what you cut off but what you leave on. Because you’re having a conversation with the tree and its moving energy. When you cut a branch off, that energy goes into the branch next to it. So, a conversation can be a poetic exchange or a screaming fight. I prefer to be a little more harmonious.
 
Where did they get pruned last year? How did they respond? I can tell from the different colored growth, and often a ring will show where the new growth started. You’re working with wood. In carpentry, you’re working with deadwood. A fruit tree responds when you make a cut. What matters is how the tree responds and in which direction after you’ve made the cut. It’s more important to anticipate what the tree’s likely to do than how it looks. So, when I make a cut, I picture how the tree’s going to look next year and possibly three to four years down the line.
 
I ask, “How can I help the tree?” Sometimes, it doesn’t need much. When you’re growing the tree to have fruit it would be helpful to know how and where the tree flowers! There are two core ways of pruning: A) spur trees, such as cherries, apples, pears, and some plums, make fruit in the same place for ten to fifteen years. You don’t need to prune much once you have the core framework. The trouble is that you may cut off too many spur twigs. B) Terminal bearers such as figs, persimmon, grapes, peaches, nectarines, and most citrus, flower and fruit on either last year’s or this year’s new growth. If there isn’t much fruit, then you prune harder.
 
When I come back the next year, I see what happened. I prune it differently, just maintaining it so it hums along. I don’t have general rules like take a third off here, etc. I prune every tree differently.

I came to Sonoma County in 1995. I had an acre farm for twenty years growing grains and heirloom seeds. It’s hard to make money on land. If you’ve inherited land, then you can just about make it work.
 
I don’t have a plan in my life. I don’t know when I’m going to be here and how I’m going to get there. As a farmer, I sometimes work the weekend. Nature operates its own way. Sometimes you need to hustle and put in overtime because you’re dealing with perishable goods. A lot of gardening and orcharding has to do with timing and being aware or in tune with the rhythms of nature. Then you can decide how to interfere. For example. pulling weeds can be done in a positive way if they then become compost. You can plant legumes to enrich the soil.
 
We are bound by the daily rhythm of sunrise to sunset, the lunar rhythm, the annual ones of equinoxes and solstices, and longer rhythms, say, seven years or 3,000 years. There’s a need to find one’s place on the map. Not just the physical but where are you in the rhythm and cycle of nature? The more you can locate yourself there, the more things work out without you having to do a lot. The beauty is that stuff happens out there whether I do something or not.
 
In orchards, there are certain clovers that I don’t hoe but let reseed, and I also bring in clovers. Clovers have a parasite growing on their roots, and their rhizobacteria will take nitrogen in the air and transform it into nitrogen available to the plant itself. Nitrogen is very volatile. That’s what happens when you till or plow, you release nitrogen from the soil into the air.

Building soil
 
Most people grow plants from the top down, and I like to grow them from the bottom up. They buy a plant, put it in soil, and add fertilizer and that works. But you’re bringing in resources from outside all the time and it’s high maintenance. If it’s edible, does it have minerals in it?
 
I work the soil, often for two years, before growing something. It takes two to three years to get good soil going. There are very few places that have four feet of river bottom (rich, loamy soil.) It requires careful cultivation using hand tools. There are ways to use a tractor and do mechanical interventions. Timing is the key. Growing cover crops such as peas produces nitrogen in their roots but when they flower things start to change and nitrogen gets transferred to the seeds for annuals. So, I stop at this point and use a scythe or sickle-bar mower, but not a weed-whacker, to cut the crop cleanly near to the ground. I then add it all to the compost pile.  
 
I’ve done an acre with a scythe and I leave all the roots in the ground. The roots decompose quickly and aerate the soil. If you till in the crop, then you have to wait three weeks while it’s gassing in April/May when the cover crop is peaking, and you lose a lot of compostable crop. When you use a rototiller then the soil becomes fluffy, but you’ve broken up all the soil structure and after watering a couple of times the soil is like cement.

It’s very labor-intensive building soil for two to three years but then you’re cruising. Usually, one needs some digging initially but after that the soil is loose. The key is building the soil because as a farmer in order to make a living you need as much a) water b) sunlight c) nitrogen as possible. You’re selling produce by the pound or box. You want it as heavy and as large as you can get. When we go to the store, we usually pick up the biggest one. When I grow food for myself, I want a) nutrients and b) flavor. Fortunately, they’re the same thing. The flavor comes out of the minerals and helps preserve the vegetable longer.
 
I’d enrich the nutrients with 50-pound bags of minerals, especially lime. This increases the calcium and also raises the pH because the soil in Sonoma County is very acidy. Often, by looking at plants that are already growing there, you can tell a lot about what the soil is like. For instance, thistles don’t grow in a healthy meadow. They enter when the soil is overgrazed or too compacted. Nature puts them there as if to say, “Keep away while we heal the soil.”
 
There are many nutrients already in the soil that become more available as you build it up. In the West, we like to pound and pave. We put on our boots and compact the soil without even being aware. So, it’s best to keep the soil loose and not run equipment over it; to place beds in areas with pathways around them. That soil gets deeper and deeper with roots extending down and earthworms going up, so the roots keep searching for minerals. The cover crop after composting helps tremendously with that process.
 
When you’re bringing in fertilizer it’s to increase the nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium (NPK). There is tons of phosphorous already in the soil but only 2 to 3 percent is available to plants. As you raise the organic matter in the soil the phosphorous and other minerals become more available because microbes are chewing up organic matter.
 
Studies were conducted in England on royal lands with grain crops about 150 years ago. The experiments were conducted on 40-acre lots divided into 5-acre parcels and minerals were found that had not been in the soil before planting. 
 
My garden included a diversity of food crops grown in four sections: i) vegetables ii) beans iii) grains iv) cover crop or fallow, and in between, a cover crop every winter. Every four years I would add a summer cover crop. This really bulks up the soil’s organic matter. After eight years you’ve got “cake” out there. I had started with pounded cement. There had been horses on the farm for twelve years. I hoed the grass and made it into compost. Then cover crops. The plants grow better and stronger. They need less water and are less diseased. It’s a high initial input.
 
One of my visions is to have 5-acre spots set up so that even as people move on, the farm stays there! We’ve lost sight that soil-building is the real 401(k) plan! (A long-term employer-sponsored pension plan in the US.) I always considered my net worth in how many compost piles I had sitting out there in winter.
 
It takes ten days to make a good compost pile. The compost pile teaches you. After a few months, you know what decomposes and what doesn’t. By the fifth pile, you have it dialed in. It’s a conversation between you and the compost pile. I used to turn my piles after three weeks to see what was going on. Now, I just leave it. It takes a bit longer. In the compost pile, you’re getting a higher temperature and a higher quality of organic matter. It also allows more cover crops to grow in the beds, so you’re getting at least 50 percent more compost each year.
 
I don’t really know how to grow plants. I grow soil and then the plants grow themselves. We seem to have lost this foresight and prefer getting immediate returns and gratification. In Europe, there used to be cycles of growing and on the seventh year leaving the land to lie fallow. For me, it was four years.
 
With fertilizers, organic or other, plants aren’t given the time to extend their roots and accumulate minerals because they’re getting a quick shot in the arm in those top two inches.

Fruit Trees
 
Most people dig a small hole and fill it with compost and fertilizer in a gopher basket, so the roots are happy and don’t venture anywhere. After two or three years the nutrients are gone and there’s no network of roots.
 
When I plant, I dig a large hole and first put some minerals at the bottom. For that, I use an English digging fork. I then place a gopher basket and fill it only with native soil, followed by lots of compost around the basket. That way the roots have to spread.
 
Alan Chadwick has been a big influence, although I don’t double dig. I traveled across the country six or seven times and talked to farmers. Everything’s based on location. What works in Lodi doesn’t work in Wisconsin. Watching YouTube farming videos, you have to figure out what works for your location. For example, in Wisconsin, a farmer might spread onions on the ground for two weeks so the green tops die slowly. In Sonoma County they’d be baked in three days, so you need to put them under shade. In Wisconsin, they’d mold under a tree. The more we understand about what’s already happening, the more we can gently step in.
 
Gardening is not about knowledge. I encourage and inspire people. I try to find out what they already know. The smartest people often get in their own way. It’s just being out there and observing! Then, if you can back it up with some knowledge and experience, all the better.
 
I observe a lot just walking barefoot. I pick up a lot of vibrations and energies through my feet. To me, it’s so obvious. People say to me, “Why do you walk barefoot?” “I don’t walk barefoot. We both woke up in the morning and you decided to put something on.” 
 
I have respect for all things. I went to my teepee and found a lizard in my bed. My landlady had just adopted a cat. The next day there were five lizards sheltering there. Bluebelly lizards would jump on my feet and do their push-ups. At 4:30 in the afternoon when the last ray of sun was going down, I sat by a wall and a lizard had figured out the same spot. For a couple of weeks, we hung out. Most people are rushing around too much.
 
I don’t think you need to walk barefoot. For me walking barefoot is to be aware and in touch with my surroundings. At one point people called me “Yeti,” referring to the big, ugly, hairy monster. People who don’t understand often put down what they don’t understand. It doesn’t matter how many times life knocks you down, it’s how many times you get back up. Once I recognized that Yetis only leave their footprints behind in the snow, in other words, they live harmoniously with nature, I said, “Yes, I want to be called ‘Yeti’.”  
 
Our society is very visual at the expense of the other senses. There are many frequencies we don’t see. A video is not actually moving or real. Writing a letter, you tune into each other. I once drove a car from Portland, Oregon to Portland, Maine. We stopped at Burlington, Vermont. I knew my ex-girlfriend had moved there. I called and found that she was literally next door to the place I was staying in. That’s the stuff we’re losing, connecting with each other without high-tech.
 
Yeti ended on a gardening note: Experiment, try it! Even if it dies, you can always plant more.