Good (Electronic) Fences
Keeping Wildlife and Wild Children in Bounds in the Woods (Conclusion of a visit to rural Colorado)
It was another sunny day at the 7700-foot elevation of the Shechets’ homestead. Sunbeams sparkled through the pine needles as Katie, Patrick and I chatted next to the barn where Patrick was doing a demonstration of his manual prowess. Among the many hands-on skills he has acquired is whittling bows. To master the art, Patrick relies on a book called WOODEN BOWS: What I Wish I had Known, From a 40-Year Veteran Bowyer.
From available bow-making materials, he picked up a slender tree branch stripped of branchlets and turned it over. Thence ensued a disquisition on the craft (which soon revealed another possible source of a phrase mentioned in the previous post, “bending the stick back”):
“So I can use wood stiff like this, but I am not tillering it correctly. You want to make sure it bends very evenly. Any kind of springy wood—this is maple, this is poplar” —he pointed to another wood sample—”any should work as long as you do a careful job of bending it and looking at what’s not bending and removing wood from that spot, and then you get masterful at the process. I’m also laminating it with seven layers of very thin fiberglass to help when the wood fails. It’s called ‘lifting a splinter.’ So when you’re bending this”—he bent the piece of maple now in his hand—"there’s compression on one side and the wood is pushing on the wood, and it is very, very strong in that way. But on this side, all of this grain is trying to lift out, each piece of this is, so the fiberglass just keeps those down.”
It was a lot to take in. I marveled at Patrick’s attention to detail, not a little humbling in view of my own comparative incompetence at manual skills. But what was it all for? Given his sylvan locale, did he hope to take up hunting and gathering? And along such lines, had they read, perchance, Michaeleen Doucleff’s book, HUNT, GATHER, PARENT, which promotes the idea that from the youngest ages children should be allowed to pitch in to help the family survive, and gradually be trained in the necessary skills?
He put the kibosh on the first notion quickly: “In Colorado, it’s illegal to hunt on your own land. The exceptions are three squirrels, rabbits, and foxes. They’re considered nuisance animals.”
“But then, if you can’t put it to practical use,” I asked, “why go to all the trouble of making a bow from scratch?”
Patrick gave me a sheepish grin. “The kids and I are having fun.”
As for the second question, neither Patrick nor Katie had read Doucleff’s book, but they were in full agreement with the thesis (and planned to order it right away). Katie, however, added that she didn’t want to acquaint her kids only with practical, survival skills but also finer ones like painting, reading, and conversation.
Idea #3: Embark together on at least one project in which everyone works with their hands, and the more challenging the better.
As we stood and talked and the kids quietly listened, we were only steps away from the garden. Cilantro, parsnips, giant blue kale, dinosaur kale, radishes, carrots, and corn, were also absorbed over their own conversational media, a loamy soil that Patrick had taken pains to build up over time. The garden was enclosed by a fifteen-by-twenty-by-eight wire mesh cage designed to keep deer out. I say “cage” but it was really a protective shelter that did for plants something like what the Shechets’ log cabin did for people.
About a third of the family’s vegetables were harvested from the garden. But it also had a more important purpose: it was another means to involve the kids in practical livelihood. They took turns with mom and dad tending and watering, weeding and picking. Patrick hoped eventually to supply 80 percent of the family’s food from the garden and animals soon to join the mix. He admitted that if he calculated his hours, at a pay rate commensurate with what he earned online, the veggies from Costco would come out cheaper. But again, saving money wasn’t the main goal. If the kids helped him grow the garden, the garden helped him grow his kids.
In this case, good literal soil was also important, and it was supplemented, admittedly, with imported topsoil and compost. As if that weren’t enough, Patrick was also contemplating bringing a bed of soil into the house. He envisioned enclosing the front porch and install a new floor of tamped-down dirt. Once firmly compressed, it could be sealed by linseed oil added gradually in layers. It was another idea retrieved from bygone days and recounted and updated in The Essential Rammed Earth Guide. A dirt floor, of course, would be cheaper and less demanding than hauling in cement, the materials were quintessentially local, and the floor surface would feel warmer and more “natural.” If that project sees success, on Patrick and Katie’s homestead the symmetry between accommodations for plants and people will go down to the flooring.
That balance might be somewhat upset, however, when to the vegetable companions are added animals. At the moment, Patrick was on the horns of a dilemma: Pigs provide the best meat but get big and unruly as they grow. Rabbits are meeker but less delectable. Pigs root around and aerate the soil. Rabbits leave droppings that perfectly balance nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. It was a hard call. A few months later I phoned him and learned that he had given up on the idea of pigs altogether in favor of “kinder goats”—pronounced like “kindergarten”—and had swapped rabbits for Ancona ducks, which besides surviving Colorado winters, would pick bugs off garden plants.
Idea #4: For biodiversity, add meticulously chosen, compatible plants and animals to the social mix. And remember, ultimately your human garden isn’t about saving money but providing the optimal “growth medium” for your loved ones.
The wire enclosure that protected the Shechets’ vegetables prompted another question: if woven wire kept naturally-occurring pests from overrunning the vegetable garden, what—in the Shechets’ wired cabin—kept electronic pests from overrunning the human garden?
For our second meal together, we sat outside at a picnic table under the trees munching homemade pizza topped by Patrick’s own gourmet sausage. The meal also provided a taste of conversation with the children. Disney was unplugged and the kids were on at full volume.
Given the subject I hoped to raise, I was glad when Leander, age four, pointed at me and said with a mouthful of pizza, “There’s a fly on him.”
In a tone of mild remonstration, his dad delicately responded, “He can probably see his own flies.”
“I saw a fly on him before.”
“You’re talking with your mouth full.”
At this I jumped in. “Hey, I have a question for you, Leander. What do you think is a more sophisticated insect? A beetle or a fly?”
All the kids chimed in at once. Aelish answered, “a beetle.” Cessaly said, “A fly.” Leander blurted out, “Beetle!”
I told them it was a fly. “Flies have the most sophisticated wings. They can hover, they can dart. They can do all kinds of midair stunts that other insects can’t. That’s why it’s so hard to catch a fly.”
But Cecily rebutted me by simply declaring, “My mom swats them.”
“I’m the resident fly killer,” quietly admitted Katie.
“And we got one that was on the floor,” added Leander.
“You caught a fly on the floor?” I asked him.
“A wasp.”
“Oh, a wasp?”
“I caught the wasp,” boasted Aelish.
“Did you take him outside?”
“Yes. In a jar and a piece of paper. It was pretty easy.”
Patrick started to say something about a British podcast on fly wings but was interrupted as the kids began chanting, “MORE PIZZA! MORE PIZZA! MORE PIZZA!” Over the din, he informed me that the wing muscles of black soldier flies taste like steak, and that this discovery opens a whole new industry for meatpackers: fly farms! Acquiescing to the children, he went inside for another tray of pizza. In his absence, I told the kids they were lucky to have a gourmet chef for a dad. His sauce had its own special blend of oregano, thyme, fennel, and red chili flakes. His sausage was home-cured.
Aelish, ever proud of herself, said, “Yeah. But I made up my own recipe!”
“So one day, you’re gonna outdo him?”
“Yeah, maybe. Well, most of us are gonna outdo him together.”
Patrick was back with more pizza, and I betrayed what had transpired: “They’re already saying they’ll outdo you when they’re cooking on their own.”
“Like banana soufflé!” cried Aelish.
“It’s possible,” allowed Patrick, trying not to look too pleased. He had a pretty full plate after all.
Idea #5. Hold at least one collaborative family dinner a week in which everyone takes part in the planning, preparation, cooking, and cleanup. If it catches on, the parents may become happily outmoded.
Not to be outdone, four-year-old Leander added, “I ate chocolate chips on peas.” At the moment his mother was coaxing him to finish his broccoli. I got it: the chocolate chips were the spoonful of sugar that made the medicine go down.
Soon enough, conversation worked its way back around to bugs. Patrick mentioned that, to ward them off, he spreads a blend of concentrated pizza herbs, including oregano and thyme, on the family’s picnic table.
I bent down to the table surface and inhaled. “It’s a very pleasant smell.”
“For bugs, it’s a neuro-inhibitor.”
But the topic of greatest interest was still to come. I complimented Patrick and Katie on the attention spans of their highly inquisitive children, who had been following along closely in every nuance and dip in conversation and making contributions whenever they could—even four-year-old Leander. Clearly, I effused, they had not been “raised on TV or computers.”
Mom and Dad gurgled in nervous laughter. “Honestly,” Patrick said, “they have a lot of electronics.”
On cue, the kids launched into a round of chanting, “WE PLAY BATMAN! WE PLAY BATMAN!” Over the din, Patrick continued:
“So. We’ve never had TV. But we have DVDs, and we also have gotten”—the kids were screaming over him, and he’s raising his voice in turn—“Disney Plus because we wanted to watch all our old Disney movies. And it’s all on there. And it’s too great of a temptation, you know, on a Saturday morning to say, ‘Go turn on Disney Plus. I’m going back to sleep.’ ”
What again? Patrick didn’t only screen technology. He also sometimes used technology to screen his kids. There can be times, admittedly (like now), when the distinction between a rambunctious child and an annoying insect becomes moot. “But…,” I asked timorously, “you control it enough so it doesn’t lower their attention spans?”
He nodded. Here are the specs of his “integrated pest management plan”:
No DVDs during the week.
Video games allowed so long as they teach kids reading or problem-solving skills and don’t last more than ninety minutes total per day for all three kids sharing a single Tablet. The device shuts off automatically in ninety minutes.
Permissable educational video games include “Teach Your Monster How To Read,” “Kahn Academy Kids,” and Oculus, which operates via virtual reality headsets. Oculus projects a visual overlay in a real room, setting the stage for a virtual adventure in which the child actively participates using all four limbs at once. “You need to jump, you need to crouch, you need to flail. We’ve got lots of data saying that it makes people better drivers who play video games. They’ve got better response times. I’m a strong believer in video games.”
I had never heard these arguments before. I was a bit dubious but also intrigued. I wondered out loud whether looking close-up at screens so many hours might cause myopia.
“Books can cause myopia,” Patrick replied.
“The kind of myopia you’re talking about,” Katie added, “is just laziness in the eye muscles and can be reversed. The kids go outside and play enough to counteract it.” In addition to the garden and bow and arrow, there was a swing-set and plenty of woods for hide-and-seek.
Bending the wood both ways.
Patrick amplified further on the wholesome possibilities of electronics. As a software developer, he had led Aelish in co-designing a math game, which involved text and a voice synthesizer. Solving math problems served as an incentive to learn typing and memorize the alphabet.
But there was an equal and opposite virtue to electronic media, when targeted in discreet and intermittent doses: Patrick bashfully confessed that he or Katie could listen to books on tape while cleaning up the kitchen, and thus repurpose the device as a kid-repellent. When Mom or Dad had on their own headsets, the children were not allowed to interrupt unless it was really important.
And thus did Patrick and Katie deploy four pest-containment strategies at once: wire mesh for deer, concentrated clove oil for flies, ninety-minute built-in time-outs for technology, and audiobooks to ward off pesky kids. I was impressed. I had to hand it to them. For residents of a wired cabin in the woods, high technology wasn’t only an enemy to keep at bay. Masterfully managed, it could also serve an ally providing invisible walls and imaginary havens, and even staving off the most perilous bug of all in an isolated 1000-square-foot dwelling: cabin fever. While the kids explored an enchanted forest on their Oculus, mom or dad could take contemplative walks in a real-life forest.
When quarters are tight, good screens make good co-inhabitants. All told, when it came to combining electronics, cooking, hands-on projects, and actual gardening, I believe the Shechets’ solution would have made Aristotle’s beam in approval. The soil in which they grew their family had a balanced pH. They had found a happy growth medium.
6. Build in limits to screen time, and steer children to educational or fitness-oriented online materials. If you’re in a remote area, balance face-to-face neighborly interactions with online communities in your chosen avocation, like writing or fishing or home remodeling. Always be conscious of balancing everything, and make adjustments as needed.
Compostable Moment: For Patrick and Katie, among Aristotelian virtues, economy falls lower on the scale than moderation or balance. In other words, it takes both more money and more technology to live as they do in the exurbs than as I now do in the walkable precincts of St. Louis. Patrick works longer hours than I ever did and has relatively little discretionary time. His demanding software job is indispensable to pay for his pricey spread and two cars (one as a backup in case of snow emergencies). Given these tradeoffs, something’s gotta give. For the Shechets, it’s been physical exercise, which everyday bicycling provided my family in the city and for which there is no practicable substitute in the woods. On the other hand, the Shechets found much greater continuity with their life-histories and extended family than I did by relocating my family several times before we finally found a workable living arrangement in the city. And they enjoyed a kind of quiet and rustic beauty utterly unattainable in the midst of my bustling burb.
Further Practical Pointers:
Patrick’s universal cooking algorithm:
I asked Patrick his recipe for cilantro chili, and he said he never uses recipes. He improvises. But after thinking about it, he realized that he follows the same basic flow chart every time. To whip together a good meal:
1. Determine what food needs to be used up, whether it’s most in danger or spoiling, ripest, or the best value at the store.
2. Determine what cooking method should be used. For instance, if you’re using cooked leftovers, don’t cook them all over again. Lightly stir fry.
3. Determine what other foodstuffs will go best with the selected food.
4. Decided what style of cuisine would fit these ingredients—Mexican, Asian, Barbecue, Indian—and season accordingly.
Dirt floors aren’t just for plants anymore.
Instructions for your own interior dirt floor:
1. Lay down a deep bed of gravel. For best results, use recycled aggregate available at commercial sand lots. This will make for the densest base, easiest to compact.
2. Tamp down with a hand compactor (a pole with a metal plate for tamping at one end).
3. Pile on a generous layer of dirt and tamp some more.
4. Brush on six to nine coats of boiled linseed oil and let cure two weeks.
Patrick’s reasons for giving his new room a dirt floor:
It’s warm and comforting to walk on.
It uses local materials that cost nothing.
“I have a lot of dirt.”
For references, see below.
Zucchini—the last word on organic recycling:
Katie shared a tip she learned from the Amish. When you discover an oversized zucchini in your garden, don’t throw it away. You can do one of two things: dry it (recommended only in an arid climate like Colorado) and then grind it down into a flour-substitute for baking. (Can be used in place of 20% flour in most recipes). Or if you live in a damper climate, puree it and save it in the fridge, and again substitute it for flour as needed.
Further reading:
HUNT, GATHER, PARENT by Michaeleen Doucleff, Ph. D (Avid Reader Press: New York, 2021).
WOODEN BOWS: What I Wish I had Known, From a 40-Year Veteran Bowyer by Jim Hamm (Independent, 2018).
ESSENTIAL RAMMED EARTH CONSTRUCTION: THE COMPLETE STEP BY STEP GUIDE by Tim Krahn (New Society, 2019).
Postscript: Since my visit there have been some changes in the Shechet household. Patrick got bumped up to vice-president of the company for which he writes software. Katie finished her masters’ but still forgoes career for motherhood especially now that a fourth child, Katheryn, has arrived. And finally, after losing a flock of duck to a probable fox and inadvertently antagonizing a neighbor with the new Great Pyrenees dog that was supposed to shepherd their goats, the family temporarily has relocated to a medium-sized town in North Carolina to be near Patrick’s brother and ailing mother, uncertain of whether and when to return to Colorado. Meanwhile, they’re enjoying life within walking distance of two grocery stores. . . .