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vicki fisk: Ding.

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vicki fisk: Good morning, pampers. Thank you for tuning into our show. Actually, it's afternoon, but thank you for tuning in. We bo and I, down and dirty with Beau and Vic.

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vicki fisk: are happy to be here today, and we have a very, very special guest that's dear to both of our hearts that we are going to be bringing on in the in the.

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Bo H: In the meantime.

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vicki fisk: Time.

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Bo H: Let's do a little housekeeping.

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Ian Saxon: Bye.

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vicki fisk: Join us on our Facebook page, down and dirty with Bo and Vic.

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vicki fisk: and we post all of our articles, all of our links to our podcast on our Facebook page. And that's easy access. And our show is every other Sunday, at 4 o'clock, central time, then you have to adjust for your time zone, and you can go directly to our live shows at that time.

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vicki fisk: and we want to introduce Ian Saxon, who lives in Wales.

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vicki fisk: and he has an incredible story really his whole life story on how he has reforested or rewilded 7 acres of property in Wales. So I am going to hand this over to Beau to do a little introduction on how she came to know Ian, and we will go from there.

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Bo H: Well, an introduction on how I got to know Ian. Actually, it was on a a dating site.

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Bo H: and something I swore I'd never do. But I did. With some parameters. It had to be

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Bo H: a spiritual and nature oriented website, which it was. And that's how I met Ian.

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Bo H: And then I was fortunate enough

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Bo H: to go to live on his land for most of 2,016. But before that he came to America.

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Bo H: and funny story we were talking about this the other day

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Bo H: we were driving from the Oregon coast to Boise, where I used to live. That's how I know Vicki, and he goes. Whoa! Look at that train, and I'm going. What about it? Because it was so long, you know, they don't have long trains in the Uk. Anyway.

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Bo H: his property is a wonderful magical, so inspiring property. And we're

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Bo H: interviewing him today because he's basically taken a piece of

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Bo H: sheep grazing land and turned it into a mystical

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Bo H: property with fairies and all kinds of elementals, birds and the trees that he's grown. And so we're just going to

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Bo H: ask him a few questions today. Huh?

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Bo H: How did the how did you get started, Ian? How?

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Bo H: What inspired you to take this land and make it into what it is today?

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Ian Saxon: Well, Hello! First.st well, this is kind of something that's been with me since my childhood.

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Ian Saxon: I was always aware of nature. I was brought up with nature around me, and that was always the most important thing in my life.

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Ian Saxon: I remember as a child, when lots of people, lots of kids. If you ask them what they wanted to do when they grow up. They want to be a fireman, a doctor, or whatever footballer.

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Ian Saxon: I said, I want to live in a cabin on the side of a mountain by a stream

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Ian Saxon: which is kind of what I did.

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Ian Saxon: So yeah. So I went through went through my early teens, living in various different communities, in mostly in Wales.

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Ian Saxon: But back back in that day we didn't have the word permaculture. We didn't have the word sustainability. We didn't have the word rewilding.

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Ian Saxon: but that was happening. One of the places I was at for a while, which was the teepee village in South West Wales.

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Ian Saxon: large area of land where it had just been left, mostly just left to go back to nature, and

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Ian Saxon: that was rewilding without without the word.

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Ian Saxon: So I wanted to create somewhere where nature could take over

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Ian Saxon: where it wasn't controlled. It didn't have stock on it. It didn't have fences on it.

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Ian Saxon: So, whilst looking for a parcel of land, I happened to come into a small amount of money which allowed me to buy a property in Wales

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Ian Saxon: only about an acre of land, but enough to start playing with

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Ian Saxon: the land that surrounded the cottage was originally a parcel of land that originally went with the cottage with a

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Ian Saxon: a river boundary around it, but it long since been split up and sold.

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Ian Saxon: so I was able to buy that back again and get that 7 7 acres back in to the possession of that cottage and that little, that little small holding.

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Ian Saxon: So this was after 13 years of living in the cottage that the land came up. I knew the farmer wanted me to have it. We came to a good agreement.

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Ian Saxon: So the 13 years I'd been walking around that land dreaming it.

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Ian Saxon: I'd visualized everything I wanted to do with it, not knowing that I would ever actually have that land.

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Ian Saxon: but I dreamt it, and I kept dreaming it. Every day I'd be out, and I would walk the perimeter of it, and I would look, and I'd know what trees I was going to put where

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Ian Saxon: everything I knew.

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Ian Saxon: Anyway, magically, the land did come up for sale, and I was able to get it, so as soon as I got it, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it, and where I wanted to do it.

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Ian Saxon: So the 1st thing was in the the river field

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Ian Saxon: flat, which is the main flat piece of land bordering the river.

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Ian Saxon: I was able to put nice big vegetable garden down there, polytunnels, etc. Get that started.

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Ian Saxon: And then the work of planting came along. I planted somewhere in over 2,000 trees.

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Ian Saxon: largely grown by myself, or collected from stands of wild trees where there was too many to grow, and they needed thinning out.

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Ian Saxon: I also did a lot of direct seeding, which is actually one of the fastest ways. You can grow a woodland because many people buy, you know, saplings, plant them, protect them, etc. Etc. Whereas I can grow out with a handful of acorns.

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Ian Saxon: or a handful of hazelnuts.

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Ian Saxon: or any other seeds, and go around and plant them, which cost me nothing, and I can plant twice as many as what I need to grow. Some are going to get eaten, some are going to get rotted, but a large amount will make it, and those will grow faster than any sapling that you plant.

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Ian Saxon: because they've not had the routes disturbed at all.

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Ian Saxon: So that's that's what I. That's what I started off doing. In the meantime I was working in local forestry.

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Ian Saxon: A large private estate nearby Powers estates. We have lots of woodlands. So I did a lot of work in there and learned a lot.

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Ian Saxon: but at the same time I was always into coppersome.

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Ian Saxon: which is a tradition that we've had in these parts of the world for since the beginning of time, nearly. And it's basically using the woodland in a sustainable way.

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Ian Saxon: using the wood in a sustainable way. So you never, rarely, actually, you did modern forestry in this country since the war, when we suddenly realized we hardly had any trees. They started planting forestry everywhere to make up for what we didn't have. But what they did was monoculture, spruce and pine.

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Ian Saxon: which you know in your country is native and looks great in this country. It's almost a blot on the landscape. It's completely unnatural in this land.

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Ian Saxon: Apart from in Scotland, where you have Scots pine forest traditional.

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Ian Saxon: Now, coppicing is a tradition that we've had, which is where you're farming wood from the land, but you never take it all. You only take small amounts of it in a particular manner. So the basis of coppicing is you've got a small tree

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Ian Saxon: 8 10 inches, something like that across. You cut that off close to the ground. You'll get shoots. Come up all the way around it. You leave those shoots to grow. You'll end up with very long, very straight pieces of thin.

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Ian Saxon: thin timber.

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Ian Saxon: After 7 years to 14 years, depending what you want, you can crop that timber again

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Ian Saxon: now for for the in the beginning years. What you're going to get is lots of lots of long, straight bits of wood which you're then going to be using to be making wattle fences. You know where you've got.

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Ian Saxon: You've got uprights, and then you've got the other wood. The other sticks weaved in between. So you create a panel

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Ian Saxon: bigger wood you would split and make hurdles with.

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Ian Saxon: which is a similar thing, but in in larger scale.

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Ian Saxon: so all of those would have been used, for we had no metal fencing, so to keep livestock in, you had to have you had to have hurdles

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Ian Saxon: and such like. So those were all made in the woodland. Also in the woodland you would be making things like wooden rakes.

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Ian Saxon: Lots of furniture was made in within the woodland.

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Ian Saxon: A lot of it would have been using a an ash pole lathe, which is a long length of fresh green ash, which is very bendy. The lathe itself is made out of wood. It's a very simple lathe, with the treadle at the bottom and a rope going up to the ash pole.

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Ian Saxon: I'm pushing on the treadle, the ash pole comes down, pulls it back up again. Hey! Presto! You have a wood lathe, so a lot of the old furniture you would find in houses around here with turned wooden legs. Those would all be done in the woodland. The guys that worked in the woodland would live in the woodland. While they were doing this, producing all these different goods.

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Ian Saxon: one of the end products. After you've made all the tools after you've taken material for fencing, etc. Etc. Etc. The stuff that's left at the end would then be gathered and put together cleverly in a large pile, a very large pile, maybe 10 foot across, 4 foot high, something like that, all made up of the smaller sticks.

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Ian Saxon: Those would all be burnt, but before they're burnt the soil would be

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Ian Saxon: drawn up around the wood so that you excluded oxygen or bar a little bit at the top.

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Ian Saxon: you get that fire burning, and then eventually you block the oxygen off completely. So the wood basically combusts it doesn't burn and disappear, and down to an ash. What you get left of it, of course, is charcoal. So then the charcoal would then be sold locally for what people used for cooking, etc.

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Ian Saxon: What else can I say? Obviously there was food came from there as well, because a lot of these woods would be planted, because I don't know if you do. You have Hazel over there.

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Bo H: We do, but not, I don't know. If there's maybe in the Appalachians it might grow wide.

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Ian Saxon: That's what I thought down down there. So so I remember having native American teachers come here many, many years ago. They were doing a sweat barge, and they're absolutely amazed with the hazel, because the bendability of the hazel you can bend it into all sorts of different shapes. Traditionally, gypsies used it over here to make a what we call a bender, which is like a tunnel, if you like, made out of hazel.

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Ian Saxon: You know.

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Bo H: The shelter, isn't it?

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Ian Saxon: It's a shelter. Yeah. Yeah. But

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Ian Saxon: they got glorified into some incredible structures, especially in the 19 seventies, with the whole teepee kind of movement and the festivals. People were making benders, but these were some beautiful benders with porches, separate rooms going off them, lovely, lovely carpets on the floor, wood burner all covered in tarps, but fantastic people were living in them still do in some places.

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Ian Saxon: So anyway, the guys in the woodland would move into the woodlands and live in the woodland. Whilst they were doing the work they would often make a bander, and it would be covered with sod

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Ian Saxon: just to make a just to make a temporary home.

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Ian Saxon: and then, when they had cleared an area, an acre so of woodland, now they would take all the small stuff that would be coppered low to the ground, and then that would grow up again. 7, 14 years! They'd come back, cut it down. It would grow again in between that you'd have mature trees that would be left.

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Ian Saxon: Some would be shaped and used for ships.

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Ian Saxon: others would be shaped and used for a-frame. Traditional oak buildings, houses?

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Ian Saxon: So you so you never clear fowder. Woodland, which is, which is modern.

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Ian Saxon: woodland practice. Over here grow a woodland, fell it and replant it, and you just destroy all the wildlife. Everything that's there.

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Bo H: Right.

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Ian Saxon: So that is changing.

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Bo H: Lots of that going on in the Us. Right now.

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Ian Saxon: Yeah.

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Bo H: Where I live. Yeah.

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Ian Saxon: Yeah.

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Bo H: Clear cut.

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Ian Saxon: With it.

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Ian Saxon: They're changing over here in that. What they've realized is that what they're trying to bring back is broadleaf trees again. So over here. If you take a spruce woodland and you clear feather

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Ian Saxon: 2, 3 years, you come back and you won't recognize it

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Ian Saxon: 1st year it'll be 1st couple years it'll be foxgloves and all sorts of wild perennials coming up within 2 or 3 years. You've got willow, ash, hazel, all all the what we call the

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Ian Saxon: weed. Some people call them weed species. What's the word for it.

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Ian Saxon: anyway? Yeah, those are the 1st trees that come up, and within within no time. 1015 years! You've got a thicket of woodland.

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Ian Saxon: There's no mature trees in there, but give it time. The mature trees will shade out the other trees, and then the oaks and the birches and the other slower, harder woods will start coming through, and the woodland will regenerate on its own. Naturally, if you leave it for many years. They were cutting down woodlands and then replanting with hardwoods.

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Ian Saxon: you know, if you want a wild wooden, you really don't need to replant you, just leave it, cut it down and leave it and watch it do its thing. It's a magical process that happens.

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Ian Saxon: or at least here because it's very wet.

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Bo H: There's a lot of you you mentioned plantation

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Bo H: forestry. There's a lot of that here, too. They'll clear cut a land. And and the company that does it says, Oh, but we're replanting. Well, they replant all the same species.

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Ian Saxon: Yeah.

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Bo H: And I don't know about there, because I haven't been to the Uk. In what 9 years, but especially in Idaho and Eastern Oregon and Washington, and into Montana.

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Bo H: When they when they plant the same species.

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Bo H: a. They seem more prone to to either an infestation from pests or diseases, and then they start dying off, so that a natural forest, where you have all the different species.

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Bo H: and and Vicki and I have talked about you know

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Bo H: what you see on the surface, but but underneath the ground with the mycelium, and and you know the the mushrooms and all that. That's

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Bo H: that. There are places here that are, they are rewilding or reforesting. And I I think

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Bo H: pun intended. I think that movement is growing.

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Ian Saxon: Yeah.

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Bo H: But yeah, so I'm sorry for interrupting. Keep going.

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Ian Saxon: Yeah, I mean, we hope that movement is growing all over the world. Really, it is.

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Bo H: Yeah.

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Ian Saxon: Well, if you look about, it is happening, it's it's slow to start. But it is happening. Yeah,

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Ian Saxon: So yeah. So I had, I planted over 2,000 trees on this land, and I've already coppiced lots of it, so I've got mature trees getting bigger. I've got lots of hazel and ash. There's shoots all over the place, which I cut for all sorts of different things, for fences, for beam, poles, for pea sticks.

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Ian Saxon: and of course I supply all my own firewood off of off of that. So I'm allegedly carbon neutral.

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Ian Saxon: we have our own water. I've got 2 springs here, one of which had been closed for many years, but I reopened when I got the land, but they only last till April May, if we're lucky, and then they're dry till November.

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Ian Saxon: So eventually, after all years and years of just using rainwater in the summer or river water, then we eventually got a borehole

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Ian Saxon: very, very clean water, very, very good, endless supply, very happy with that. But we don't. I never abuse it. I never use it like a like a

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Ian Saxon: you know it's a resource that you've really got to respect. Living without water in the summer for so many years

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Ian Saxon: gave me so much respect for it. Every little drop was important. You know water's sacred, and to be treated like that just because it comes out of a tap doesn't mean to say that it's not sacred.

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Bo H: Right, absolutely.

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vicki fisk: Said.

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Ian Saxon: So we have the water, we have the firewood, we've got the vegetable garden, we've got fruit trees and bushes, etc. There was a period where I was hunting with Mahara's hawk as well, because we get a lot of pheasant on the land.

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Ian Saxon: So there was a period when I was hunting pheasant and going down that route a bit.

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Bo H: Like to talk a little bit more about your.

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Bo H: We call it falconry in this country.

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Bo H: and you're and you're and also restoring injured birds. That's really interesting.

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Ian Saxon: Yeah. So

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Ian Saxon: with the birds I always had always, always had a fascination. I remember seeing my 1st buzzard when I was about

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Ian Saxon: 8, 9 years old, down in the South, down in Devon.

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Ian Saxon: on a gate post as we drove past, and then they were an endangered species here, because birds of prey have been

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Ian Saxon: almost wiped out, decimated by Ddt. Being put on the land, which in turn killed everything and killed the mice. The mice would eat it. The birds would eat the mice, the birds would die.

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Ian Saxon: So it's been a long haul to get birds of prey

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Ian Saxon: back up in this country, but it's been a real success story with, I mean buzzards. Now they're no no longer protected. They're just everywhere.

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Ian Saxon: red kites. They were over, and there was just a I mean, literally dozens of pairs left in Wales. That was it. They'd just been wiped out. Now you see them every day, everywhere you go. They're everywhere because of feeding stations and protection, and people have learned respect for them now, whereas one time they were just seen as vermin.

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Ian Saxon: Now now people love to see them. So I had that fascination always from from a child. And then one time.

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Ian Saxon: a long time ago, I was I was down, not feeling good, and and I was just trying to bring myself out of that. Well, I happened to go see an advert for a falconry centre which I went to

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Ian Saxon: met some of the guys there, got chatting, and was surprised at how much I could actually do if I wanted to. So I went along there and started having some. I started an apprenticeship there, learning falconry.

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Ian Saxon: I did that for a while. Then I went to some other people who had a very different approach to falconry, a non-hunting approach. They were more doing, rehapping and shows. But I got a lot of information, a lot of knowledge from that.

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Ian Saxon: I had lots of reservations about it, because I do not like restriction of animals.

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Ian Saxon: and also not very keen on the food source which most of them were feeding them, which is dead day, old chicks, but they're kind of seen as a byproduct of the chicken industry, and if falconers and people didn't have them, then they would just be burnt or ploughed into the ground. So

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Ian Saxon: so it's kind of a pretty unpleasant.

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Ian Saxon: unfortunate byproduct. Those things put me off completely, and I just. The desire is so deep in me to be around those birds, but I don't want to go down that road, so I gave it all up, forgot about it, thought, no, I'm just going to let go of this.

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Ian Saxon: And then I walked down me, Riverfield and I found a buzzard with all his feathers broken off.

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Ian Saxon: Okay, so it starts here. So I brought that up. So I've got to go and get some dead day old Chicks now.

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Ian Saxon: and I've got to build an aviary, and I've got to start putting into practice what I've learned with this bird.

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Ian Saxon: I knew she was a youngish bird, and she had obviously been

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Ian Saxon: not fed. Well, all the feathers were broken, so malnutrition, calcium deficiency stuff like that. And that was my 1st bird mystic.

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Ian Saxon: and that was my 1st bird that I that I learned so much on

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Ian Saxon: the more I the more time I spent with her, and the more involved I got the more birds started to just appear.

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Ian Saxon: people would magically, yeah, you know, every time you have that dream, and you put your intent into that.

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Bo H: Yes.

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Ian Saxon: Focus into that. It's incredible what turns up lately I've stopped doing it in later years, and I have to really not think about it, because if I think about it, I thought about it the other day, and an owl turned up. So

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Ian Saxon: so, so yeah, so then I've got all sorts of birds coming to him, and then the local vet would ring me on a fairly regular basis, and say, Hey, we got this bird here. Could you come and have a look

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Ian Saxon: so

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Ian Saxon: many, many times when you get them, you just have to say no, you can't do anything with it. It's too far gone, or it's too injured to keep in captivity. It wouldn't. It's a wild bird. It wouldn't be fair to the bird, and they have to be euthanised, but

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Ian Saxon: but

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Ian Saxon: for all of those that didn't make it, there were lots and lots and lots that did make it, that I got back to the wild, which is such a wonderful experience. I can think of a female

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Ian Saxon: peregrine falcon. I had beautiful big girl.

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Ian Saxon: and when I got her she would stand on your wrist, which a wild bird just should not do. That wild bird should be flapping and flying away from you. So

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Ian Saxon: she had a respiratory infection, and she had ticks all around her neck, and she was very malnourished, so

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Ian Saxon: we treated her with antibiotics, for the respiratory infection, got rid of the ticks, etc. Etc. Got her fed up well, and she came on very, very nicely to the point when she was ready to start battering herself around the aviary, so you only have a small aviary so they can't injure themselves. So that's time she's ready. She's got to go.

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Ian Saxon: So I took her. I knew roughly where she'd come from, and I looked on the map into that area, and I could see this big rocky escarpment. And I thought, that'll be it. That's Peregrine. That's Peregrine territory.

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Ian Saxon: That's where they hunt from, you know.

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Ian Saxon: So yeah. Drove over there, found this place over the other side of the valley, and we looked over, and you could see the rockiest rocky escarpment over there

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Ian Saxon: took her out, and the local farmer and

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Ian Saxon: partner came out, and they were kind of alternative farmers, you know, from the seventies that came up. So they were all they were cool, and they were really happy to see what we were doing.

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Ian Saxon: and they knew of the peregrines because they were there. They watched them. They were aware they were there.

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Ian Saxon: Anyway. We released this bird. She plumped straight over the valley straight over to the Rocky of Scotland.

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Ian Saxon: Short while later I got an email from them saying that they've seen her with her partner, and they've been flying over the garden, and it's great she's back.

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Ian Saxon: Months after that I got another email from them, saying she's back again, and she's brought all of her youngsters, with her.

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Bo H: Oh, what a great story!

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vicki fisk: Sweet, very nice.

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Ian Saxon: So lots of lots of stuff. I also did a lot with crows. Crows are just like so dear to my heart. I just love all the corvids, so intelligent, so wise, so clever, and so mischievous.

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Ian Saxon: Tika.

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Ian Saxon: the last one I had was Fifi, and she was the others was. She was a big crow.

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Ian Saxon: and I also had my Harris hawk at the time.

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Ian Saxon: The Harris hawk wasn't a rescue bird. That was a bird from someone that has a pair that hunt

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Ian Saxon: all winter, and then he breeds them in the in the summer. So I had a youngster off of him.

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Ian Saxon: So my Harris hawk. I flew every day along with the other different birds.

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Ian Saxon: But no, the funny story was

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Ian Saxon: with the crow that I had. Fifi

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Ian Saxon: Maharashawk Talon used to see us feeding

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Ian Saxon: Fifi, the baby from a baby, so I mean, naturally a Harris hawk should take a crow. No problem.

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Ian Saxon: but because he had he had watched her grow up. With this. He had accepted her as part of our tribe.

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Ian Saxon: part of our group. I'm sure you know, Harris Hawks hunt in a pack. They're one of the few birds, only one out of 2. Lots of birds in the world actually fly in a pack. Harris hawks is the one

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Ian Saxon: So anyway, I've had my Harris hawk on the perch in the garden, and Fifi the Crow. She would fly past the Harris hawk within inches of him.

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Ian Saxon: just to annoy him.

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Ian Saxon: left his wing like that. But never once did he attack her.

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Ian Saxon: because he knew she was part of our group.

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Ian Saxon: Yeah.

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vicki fisk: And oh, my God!

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Ian Saxon: She's gone wild now. She yeah, she went. She went. Yeah with it. She met up with a load of other wild crows, and she came to say goodbye.

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Ian Saxon: gave me a good rub all around my neck, and.

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vicki fisk: Oh!

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Ian Saxon: Yeah. Beautiful birds, lovely birds so under under understood Corvid

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Ian Saxon: know so many people just disregard them. People look at birds of prey, and they're majestic and powerful. Look at the crows.

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Bo H: Crows, and the ravens.

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Ian Saxon: Yeah, the whole range.

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Bo H: So smart. You're smart.

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Ian Saxon: Have their own language, I mean ravens. They've identified over 50, 50 odd, different, separate, individual words that they.

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Ian Saxon: They do. They have their own language. So yeah, I'm a big, big supporter of crows.

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vicki fisk: Have. I have a family of 4 crows living here, and I thought that they were roosting in my huge pine tree up front because they they hung out there all April just

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vicki fisk: thick as thieves, and I never could find a nest but

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vicki fisk: Then they've migrated to the back area, and I've got a lot of trees that they must be roosting in.

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vicki fisk: and then I have this gigantic cherry tree in my backyard, and they are in heaven. They're just and.

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Ian Saxon: And she.

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vicki fisk: They're chasing the squirrels away.

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vicki fisk: and oftentimes I look out my back, and all 4 of them are sitting on the fence, and they're they're so entertaining, and I don't. I mean, I know that you can get friendly with them, but I don't. I've never done that. But

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vicki fisk: I so I get a I get very annoyed when they're all just going off for hours at a time. It's like there's no peace and quiet.

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vicki fisk: But then they they were doing a big mate. I don't.

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vicki fisk: I think they were doing a big mating ritual at 1 point, because they were making the weirdest sounds together and hopping over one another. And and so I'm going. Okay. You guys go ahead and do what you're doing, you know. But they're still here.

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Ian Saxon: Frozen business. That is.

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vicki fisk: Yeah.

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Bo H: Yeah.

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vicki fisk: Yeah, we have a lot of that. Yeah.

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Bo H: I have. I have where I live. I have crows. I always talk to them. There's bald eagles. There's red tail hawks. The other day

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Bo H: I'm house sitting at my sister's, and I'm pretty sure

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Bo H: some prairie falcons were chasing. It was a bigger bird, it wasn't. It wasn't a raven.

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Bo H: It well could have been I don't know but they were chasing him. They were making the most racket, but you know they chase them away from.

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Ian Saxon: Yeah.

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Bo H: Their nest, because corvids are very sneaky, and they like to eat eggs.

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Ian Saxon: Oh, yeah.

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Ian Saxon: Yeah.

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vicki fisk: Yeah.

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Ian Saxon: I remember my Fifi, my crow she had. There was a sparrow hawk flying over, and if you get them

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Ian Saxon: but she she hated, hated. She hated anyone coming into her airspace.

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vicki fisk: No.

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Ian Saxon: Birds of prey she really hated, and if I could have filmed her it would have been hilarious. She was flying above this sparrow hawk, diving down, diving down, shouting at it, trying to kick it. She was relentless, and it could have turned around and had her. But she was too.

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Ian Saxon: No.

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Ian Saxon: Oh, by the way, I said, something I need to mention is when I talk about buzzards, I'm not talking about vultures. I'm talking about red tails. Okay? So our buzzards are what you call red tails.

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Bo H: Right, right.

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Ian Saxon: Only only ours don't have red tails, and they're a bit smaller.

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vicki fisk: But thank you.

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vicki fisk: No, no.

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Bo H: Can I ask you to to tell a funny story about when you 1st got your land

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Bo H: and you were reforesting it, and you had a polytunnel full of.

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Bo H: Okay? Yeah, yeah. I did. So. So amongst the other things I did with the land I used.

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Ian Saxon: The polytunnels down in the river field to grow, to grow plants to sell.

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Ian Saxon: I did. I used to do 20,000 laurel cuttings a year.

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Ian Saxon: which went off to a big local nursery.

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Ian Saxon: and I did sell vegetables from there as well at some points, but it was always more, always made more money on shrubs and trees.

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Ian Saxon: and the other thing I did was Japanese maples.

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Ian Saxon: I fell in love with Japanese maples, so I literally have thousands which I sold just privately, you know, at different different events and stuff, and people knew I had them. Oh, consequently my land is covered in Japanese maples.

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vicki fisk: And then.

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Ian Saxon: Very colorful in the autumn.

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Ian Saxon: So yeah, I had one tunnel full of Japanese maples.

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Ian Saxon: and one day there was a knock at the door, and I opened the door. And it's

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Ian Saxon: it's the local police with a warrant to search the premises.

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Ian Saxon: and they wouldn't. They wouldn't tell me. But they kept searching. And I'm like, why, why are you doing, you know, really, anyway?

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Ian Saxon: Shortly after this other policeman came to the door with the big torch.

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Ian Saxon: and one is he had obviously just come up from the river. Field, looked at the other guys. They looked excitedly at him, and he said, There's nothing there? No?

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Ian Saxon: And I thought, and that's when I said, Oh, I get you! You think I had a polytunnel full of cannabis.

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Bo H: At least.

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Ian Saxon: Japanese maples.

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vicki fisk: Fun.

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Ian Saxon: We all had a good laugh, and I said, Well, fair fair play, they do kind of look a bit like that, you know.

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Bo H: Exactly.

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Ian Saxon: Someone must have seen them sticking through the polythene somewhere, and I don't know where, because we're pretty remote. But someone must have seen them, and reported them so.

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Bo H: You have the road there on the other side of the river. Maybe somebody a nosy. Somebody saw them, and we.

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Ian Saxon: So many trees, so many trees you can't see across it. I don't know who knows.

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Ian Saxon: Thank you. Bye.

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vicki fisk: That's funny.

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Bo H: That was a funny story can for our audience who a lot are here in the Us. Could you describe what a polytunnel is? Because I'll bet you just like a lot of people didn't know what caucusing was. I have a feeling some people don't know what a Polytunnel is.

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Ian Saxon: Okay? So Polytunnel, I'm sure plenty of people do know in America what polytunnels are, but it's basically U-shaped hoops

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Ian Saxon: stuck in the ground with Polythene over the top. So it's like a glorified cold frame or cloche

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Ian Saxon: yeah

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Ian Saxon: into it's a greenhouse. It's a big greenhouse covered in Polythene it's it's a way of having a greenhouse that's cheap to build

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Ian Saxon: and cover a lot of space quickly.

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Ian Saxon: Yeah, and and extremely efficient and extremely necessary, particularly in this climate here, because we get late spring, late frost in the spring and early frost in the autumn.

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Ian Saxon: So you have a short season like when I 1st came to bows in Boise, and I was there in what? October, November, and they're cropping peppers from the garden. Well, we can't even grow peppers in the garden, let alone crop them in October, November. Everything like that has to be in a tunnel here just to keep the frost out. Yeah.

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vicki fisk: Well, I have.

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vicki fisk: I have a tunnel one. I've got 3 big rows of, you know row plants.

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vicki fisk: and I have one tunnel, but it's it's covered in row cloth.

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vicki fisk: the permanent, not plastic. It's that road cloth, and I keep all of my greens going all summer, where they'd all be bolting and dead by pretty much by the end of June, because of the heat.

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vicki fisk: But I keep the hard sun off of them, and I've got I've got my kale, my chard, my spinach, and my cilantro

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vicki fisk: all summer long, so they're they're wonderful wonderful things to have in your garden to either make the season longer, or keep the greens and things that are so heat sensitive, alive all summer.

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Bo H: So that's the polytunnels that that Ian. Well, he only had one when I was there, but it's almost like a quonset hut, so you can walk.

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vicki fisk: Yay beds in there. Nice? Yeah.

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Bo H: So really.

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Bo H: And then I was wondering, you know, how you were talking in about

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Bo H: the woodsmen with their lathes.

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Bo H: to work. The are people still doing that is that, or.

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Ian Saxon: Yeah, yeah.

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Bo H: No, no, no.

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Ian Saxon: There are.

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Bo H: You know.

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Ian Saxon: There. There are people still doing it up until probably 30 years ago, maybe a little bit more

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Ian Saxon: it was. It literally pretty much been resigned to just museums. But there was the last few people still making stuff.

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Ian Saxon: Country still had the knowledge, and still had the craft. Well, then, in the particularly in the seventies and eighties, you know, with the resurgence of interest in all that kind of stuff, people started to relearn all of those skills which they have, and it is now a living, breathing thing. It tends to be more, you know.

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Ian Saxon: fairs and things like that. I mean, you know, farmers aren't using what old fences to keep their sheep in anymore. It's all fence, you know, metal fencing or hedging, but but they are still used. Yeah, lots of people have regained those skills. Yeah, it's a country craft that people have now kept alive. And you know, if you go into craft markets and stuff like that. Then people will sell a lot of those.

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Ian Saxon: Those items. Lots I did. Lots of. I've got, not on a ash pole lathe, but I made most of my own wooden bowl, wooden bowls and plates, and all sorts of stuff like that.

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vicki fisk: Nice.

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Ian Saxon: Yeah, some.

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Bo H: Sometimes I geek out on Youtube videos that are about permaculture and regenerative farming and and

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Bo H: something new to me. I actually wrote an article for bbs and solar punk.

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Bo H: and people are going back to the old ways on their property and doing a lot what you've been doing for years. Ian.

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Bo H: and I. I feel like one of the reasons Vicki and I started this channel was because we

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Bo H: we have some experience and wisdom in a lot of the old ways, I mean, think simple things like canning a lot of you know. We talked about it in our permaculture.

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Bo H: our last show about permaculture, how people are so dependent on going to the grocery store for everything.

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vicki fisk: And.

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Bo H: That's really a sad state of affairs. It's unsustainable, and you know it's 1 of the things I loved about your property is you had the garden. You reforested the woods. You had fairies because I saw them, and you know, just

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Bo H: being with the land. I've been a back to the Lander person since I was a teenager, too, and I grew up loving nature, and I know Vicki did, too. So

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Bo H: yeah.

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Ian Saxon: It brings you spiritually. It brings you completely in touch when you're not, when you're not doing that. It's so easy to not be in touch with the seasons to not be in touch with the rhythms of the earth when you're out there, and everything depends. Everything depends on what the weather is going to be like. Everything depends on what the season's going to be like, and the.

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vicki fisk: Right, exactly.

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Ian Saxon: Here. The seasons vary dramatically from year to year. So you really have to be prepared for anything. But you're constantly got yourself focused on on what the land is doing, what's growing, what isn't growing? What's been a good year? What's been not such a good year. So you're just in touch with the natural cycles and patterns of nature on a daily basis.

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Ian Saxon: You know.

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vicki fisk: I am.

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Ian Saxon: Earth, air, fire, and water so many children these days. They just don't know this.

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vicki fisk: No.

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Ian Saxon: I, in fact, a little story. I got a stepdaughter here who who hadn't lived anywhere like this here before, but now she does.

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Ian Saxon: and one day she'll laugh if she knows I'm telling this story.

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Ian Saxon: One day I was trying to teach her how to like the, because I've got an outhouse that I built out there

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Ian Saxon: wooden, and she had moved into that, and the heating is a wood burner.

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Ian Saxon: So I had to teach her how to light a fire.

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Ian Saxon: and she's being a little bit about it, you know.

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Ian Saxon: And and I asked her why she said, Well, I don't think I don't think it's really important to us these days about how to light a fire, because we don't need that anymore. We've got other ways of doing it.

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Ian Saxon: Oh, God, I was peeved.

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Ian Saxon: I huffed and puffed for quite a while, but anyway cut a long story short, this came back to bite her because she did learn how to light a fire. She did learn what dry wood was, what dead was, what wood was, what green wood was, you know, so what to use when to use it and how to use it.

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Ian Saxon: And then she ended up in various situations, away with friends in cabins and alternative structures and stuff, where all they had was a wood burner, and of course her friends were trying to light this fire, and they were using green wood, wet wood, and.

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Ian Saxon: Was able to say, I think we need some better wood than that, and she knew how to light a fire, and she put that into practice. Time after time after time.

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vicki fisk: Nice.

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Ian Saxon: And she's come back and said, Yeah, okay, you were right. Yeah.

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Bo H: And she impressed her friends right.

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Ian Saxon: Absolutely. Yeah. And this is what they

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Ian Saxon: they all need. This earth air fire and water

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vicki fisk: All need to know about it. It's the most important thing.

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Ian Saxon: Living in a city, you know, where you're just out of touch with Nature completely. How? How can you expect people to be

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Ian Saxon: normal, to be in tune, you know, in, in that everything, everything around you is false, everything.

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Bo H: It is, and I feel that that humans were meant to live like that in touch with nature.

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Ian Saxon: Of course.

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Bo H: And it is.

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Ian Saxon: We are. We are part of nature. That's why.

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Bo H: Exactly. There's no separation.

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Ian Saxon: Ourselves separate. We're not a separate thing. We're dependent on it. And we interact with it. It's cool. And what we are. Yeah.

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Bo H: Yeah, exactly. I have a funny story about making a fire.

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Bo H: Years ago I took a course in horticulture class. It was called edible medicinal and poisonous plants in Southern California

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Bo H: and in in this class it was, you know, all adults. We were all in call. I was actually in my forties when I took it.

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Bo H: and we had 3 field trips where we would go camping. We went to the mountains to the chaparral, which is.

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Bo H: there's no, there's not chaparral a lot of places kind of like a prairie, but it's not.

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Bo H: And then we went to the desert and we went to Joshua Tree Park, and our teacher would take us around and tell us what all the plants were, and what their uses were, or if they were poisonous. And the 1st night there.

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Bo H: The guys in class were trying to start a campfire and nobody could get it started. So I said, I'll do it. So I, you know I put the wood as you're supposed to, and the kindling, and the whole 9, and my teacher at the time Dr. Horn loved the man said, Wait, wait! I want to get this on film. So he brings out this handcorder. That's probably

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Bo H: 3 feet long, and he's recording it. That's how long ago, that was.

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Bo H: But the guys are all going. Wow! How did you learn how to do that? And my parents taught me, you know. And that's 1 thing is teaching the children like you did with your stepdaughter, Ian. It's so important. And you know, then some kids just have no interest like I don't think my daughter can start a fire. I'm willing to teach her.

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Ian Saxon: You take a little kid and show them you take them out on the land, and you show them a fire and show me one kid that's not interested.

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vicki fisk: It's.

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Ian Saxon: You know.

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vicki fisk: Yes, yes.

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Ian Saxon: And it's like, but it's dangerous, so we mustn't let them near it. You know. It's like at the moment in this country, if you've got a knife in your pocket is an epidemic of knife violence in this culture. We've got knife violence rather than gun violence.

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Ian Saxon: But, like you know when we were kids. Every kid I knew carried a knife. We all carried a knife. Everyone had a penknife and a load of string.

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Ian Saxon: Yeah, yeah, your basic stuff these days. They don't know about.

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Ian Saxon: They only know about carrying knives for violence. They don't know about carrying knives for all those other purposes.

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Ian Saxon: right, because what perpetuates the violence is that it's always in the mainstream media. It's in people's faces.

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Bo H: I've been carrying a knife since I was a kid, too.

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Bo H: Yeah, yeah, they they come quite in handy.

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Ian Saxon: Yes.

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Bo H: Once I once I was going through Tsa. I was in Colorado, and I was coming home to Boise.

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Bo H: and when I went I put. I had the best Swiss knife it was. I've had it for years. I put it in my luggage. Well, I and then, when I got there, put it in my purse, and I forgot to take it out, and they confiscated I was so I was so pissed off.

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vicki fisk: Yeah.

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Bo H: Somebody got to keep a nice knife, but, anyway.

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vicki fisk: Hmm.

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Bo H: Do you have any questions, Vicky?

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vicki fisk: But

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vicki fisk: not not really. I was gonna offer when I was down in my kids place this weekend, you know, about the harvest, and being in tune with the seasons, a few things came up, and Jay and Amy are my kids, and they live on 2 acres, and they have. They have a

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vicki fisk: so many different kinds of perennial food plants and the Nanking cherries were ripe. So my daughter and I went out and picked Nanking cherries, and

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vicki fisk: within 4 h we had 5 quarts of Nan King. Cherry juice steamed, and I was just thinking of how instantaneous

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vicki fisk: it's literally liquid sunshine, you know. Here are these beautiful beautiful berries ready, and now we've got a few quarts of this liquid sunshine, and it's just divine. And yesterday, when I got home.

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vicki fisk: the service berry tree right next door in Mars. Gar, my dehydrators full of service berries. Now, you know, to go in granolas and just put on oatmeal, or whatever you know you do with them, and and I love the analogy of just capturing the sunlight in the height of the when things are ripe.

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vicki fisk: and that is literally eating that energy all throughout the year, when you can capture it and and preserve it.

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Ian Saxon: Yeah.

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vicki fisk: And you know, that's what we're all interested in. You know you're creating this forest around you. That's capturing all the biome of all of the critters that live there, all of the insects.

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vicki fisk: And I was thinking, when you're talking about the and especially here in the Us. When they just completely clear cut, and then they go in, and they they plant these little sapling pine trees.

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vicki fisk: It takes decades for that biome to revisit.

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Ian Saxon: A woodland is, an it's an organism. It's a whole organism. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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vicki fisk: And so if we can just get little parcels of land back to that.

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Ian Saxon: Yeah.

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vicki fisk: It's

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vicki fisk: I mean. I was sitting out yesterday with Ken in my backyard, and I've got these larkspur, these wild larkspur growing, and the bumblebees, I mean, there's a an inch and a half long. It's so big it lands on a branch, and it bends the branch over itself.

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vicki fisk: and it's just. I mean, I don't need to go anywhere else to enjoy the entertainment of these

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vicki fisk: hungry insects just devouring the pollen in these flowers. It's it's so fun.

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Ian Saxon: You know.

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Ian Saxon: How do you find the insect populations now.

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vicki fisk: There's no, there's almost no honeybees.

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vicki fisk: There's a lot of bumblebees and some smaller lots of pollinator bees. Most of the ones that I'm witnessing are ones that live in the ground. They don't have hives

399
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vicki fisk: so honeybees. I hardly see any anywhere.

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Bo H: Hardly see butterflies here.

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Bo H: See, I just swallow the other day, but they used to be.

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vicki fisk: Yeah.

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Bo H: Them.

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Ian Saxon: Correct.

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Bo H: It's like it used to be able to fall asleep to crickets.

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vicki fisk: No crickets, none.

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Ian Saxon: See ya.

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vicki fisk: And.

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Ian Saxon: See, I just it just makes me wonder like again I say to my stepdaughter, it's like, if you could have, if if you could have seen when we were not. Not that long ago. You went out for a drive in the car and you came back, and the number plate in the windscreen was splattered with insects.

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vicki fisk: Yeah. Yes.

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Ian Saxon: I sit here with the summer's evening, with the door wide open and the lights on the room would have been full of moths and all sorts of things. I used to have to put screens up at the window at night with the window, with the light.

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vicki fisk: Right.

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Ian Saxon: Muffled in.

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Ian Saxon: I don't need them anymore. The same.

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vicki fisk: No, it's.

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Ian Saxon: And like, yeah, the area that I'm living in, although it's mostly kind of sheep around here. A lot of them are organic and the ones that aren't organic. They're not really using hardly anything other than a, you know, a bit of feed on the land artificial. But

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Ian Saxon: they're not really doing anything different here that they've done for the last 50, 60, 70 years.

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Ian Saxon: So like in an area where they're growing crops and they're using, you know, very toxic chemicals, insecticides, and herbicides. I can understand that because there's nothing like that around here, and yet the insects are still dying, and if that's happening, it's not coming from. It's coming from the atmosphere, isn't it? It's coming from everything.

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Bo H: Temptrell in the Uk.

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Ian Saxon: Yeah.

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vicki fisk: Huge.

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Ian Saxon: People talk about.

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Bo H: Guys just to let you know. Yeah, it's fast when you're it goes fast. When you're having a great conversation. Yeah, I think it's a it's a number of things. I think it is

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Bo H: toxic in this country, anyway, the chemicals that they use on the polyculture, but I think a great deal of it also is the chemtrails.

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Ian Saxon: Yeah.

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Bo H: Water gets in the soil.

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Bo H: Here they are, knocking down forests and trees to build subdivisions for all the people that have moved here since 2020. I won't mention why, but I think we all understand what that means.

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Bo H: and there's no place for the butterflies to, you know where the caterpillars to make their cocoons. There's no

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Bo H: orange.

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Ian Saxon: On a positive note. There's a place in the south of England called Nap Nep Nap estate. I think it's Nep estate.

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Ian Saxon: and so it's big for this country. It's over a thousand acres

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Ian Saxon: and they've rewilded that. But they have livestock on there still, and they still farm the livestock.

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Ian Saxon: but they don't the amount of input they used to have to put into the land in terms of fertilizers, chemicals, and stock and everything that the stock needed. They just they worked out in the end. It would be easier to let the whole lot go wild still, keep the stock on it. They still get to take stock off of it, but they don't

434
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Ian Saxon: the lambs, because the lamb does it itself. If you find.

435
00:53:43.090 --> 00:53:43.420
vicki fisk: Good luck!

436
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Ian Saxon: And they have they have got in in this country one of the biggest

437
00:53:49.470 --> 00:54:19.240
Ian Saxon: conservation projects go. It's not conservation, really, because it's birds that weren't there. Turtle doves which have almost become extinct here. That's the only place in the country where they're starting to re-nest nightingales, all sorts of creatures that are disappearing everywhere else. They're expanding down there because, you know, 7 acres is good. 5 acres is good. I know lots of people with little areas of land, and if you put all those together, that's a lot of.

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Bo H: Right.

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Ian Saxon: You need. You need it all joined up. That's what you need to get to get the real effect. There's a whole area towards West Wells. We're now talking about rewilding so.

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vicki fisk: No, I see.

441
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Ian Saxon: But working.

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Bo H: Yeah. But like what you were talking about the Napa state, that's I think that's what they call regenerative farming. Basically.

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vicki fisk: Correct.

444
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Bo H: So they are. It's it's like a symbiotic unit.

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Bo H: So we're come to the end of our show guys. And

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Bo H: I'm popping this on, Ian. Maybe we could

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Bo H: have you on again as a guest. Not necessarily right away. It's up to you our schedules, but I think our audience is going to be fascinated also, if you have any questions for Ian.

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Bo H: if you go to bbsradio.com

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00:55:12.310 --> 00:55:18.259
Bo H: forward, slash down and dirty, and you go down scroll down. There is an email

450
00:55:18.510 --> 00:55:25.000
Bo H: that you can fill out. We will get this. And so we can put that on the agenda for next time any.

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vicki fisk: Yeah, yeah.

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Bo H: Parting words for either of you.

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vicki fisk: It's fascinating, and it's so nice to reconnect with you and hear your story. And we're all we're all interested in the same thing of regeneration and helping to educate people who really don't know a lot of this. They don't know how to garden. They don't know how to to

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vicki fisk: take care, or be stewards of the land. So that's what Bo and I are really interested in. And you've been doing it all your life, too. So it's really nice. Thank you so much.

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Ian Saxon: One laugh.

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Bo H: One love love you both. Thank you so much, Ian, really, Chris, appreciate you.