A Harvester’s Dilemma

0 degrees this morning! A long way from and an alien climate compared to the setting of my last blog entry. Our maple trees are nearly all tapped and we had two days of limited harvesting prior to this most recent cold spell. Long range forecast isn’t favorable for the maple harvest: we may be facing the 3rd short crop in a row. However, it’s a little soon to predict so we’ll do our best to have a tight line system with no vacuum leaks and we have been able to recover about 500 taps that were lost during the epic 2008 ice storm which will improve our yield.

Weather isn’t climate, so no season or event can be easily attributed to climate change. This may end up as a big crop, or next year’s might; even so, the knowledge we’ve gained about our forest from working with local foresters, and from following climate science, is enough to tell us that things are changing.

These realities connect me emotionally with farmers everywhere. While farming has always been subject to climate patterns and weather events, today the stories come fast and furious about threatened livelihoods, disappearing habitats, diminishing food security, and water shortages. As I stand before each tree in the forest, I find myself gauging its apparent health and capacity, considering its resilience in a time of growing stressors, and weighing the decision to tap it or not against the immediate risks to my family. At times, I deliberately try to saturate myself with this “me or the tree” angst because I believe these feelings lay at the root of so many sustainability problems. While I know that in the long run, survival can only happen with a “me AND the tree” approach, I can identify, for example, with all the fishers I’ve met on expedition aboard Llyr who’ve told me that they know the fish are disappearing from their reef, but they need to feed their families today. What can they do?

Now, as time approaches for us to go to Vanuatu, the setting where we’ve determined to work long term on ridge to reef conservation efforts as Island Reach, I’m reading about how communities are experiencing sea level rise, salt water intrusion into their fresh water sources, more frequent and devastating storms, the decline of their inshore fisheries, and much more. Focus is on building local capacity and resilience in the face of such changes. I’m glad I know, viscerally, that dilemma that often goes with harvesting: to act in the short term for immediate personal survival or to act for the longer term with the aspiration to protect an ecosystem, and thereby ensure real survival through a relationship of interdependency.