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nafex - Re: [nafex] Fwd: Johny A.

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  • From: Douglas Hinds <cedecor@gmx.net>
  • To: nafex mailing list at ibiblio <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Cc: mark wessel <growyourown@earthlink.net>
  • Subject: Re: [nafex] Fwd: Johny A.
  • Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2012 04:29:29 -0600

On 11/12/2012 4:58 PM, mark wessel wrote:
I am very much interested in better understanding why you would only want
fruit from trees on there [their} own roots. I am assuming it is coming from
a nutrition standpoint. Maybe more?
Yes, it's a much larger concept than nutrition (which is kind of like chemical based agriculture), but not as easy to explain as "the soil is a densely populated environment in which myriad living organisms contribute to the health and growth of plants and the water retention capacity of the soil". I know that phytohormones are produced by a number of soil microorganisms because soil ecology is a recognized field and far more people have their attention focused on it than was true before Rachel Carson wrote "Silent Spring".

How do explain the taste of a fruit to someone who hasn't ever eaten anything comparable? (And this is even bigger, because a grafted fruit doesn't generate the same experience, which goes much farther and lasts a lot longer than taste - it's a whole different state of being. (I say that with the full understanding that nafex includes at least on subscriber that apparently despises holistic concepts and is likely to attempt to denigrate that comment).
It is a pretty big step to leave the country partly due to this reasoning.
Love to hear more Douglas.
Two separate but related issues are relevant and Seedling vs. Gmrafted Fruit isn't the main one, because in Southern California (my last home in the USA), more than a little seedling fruit was available at the time I left. Seedling Fruit is secondary to Diet as a whole because as mentioned earlier, fruit from seedling trees is THE staple element of my diet (which makes it even more important), which does not normally include cooked food.
On a side note, I see that Douglas is in Mexico. Diane Kennedy, in one of her
regional cookbooks from Mexico writes a bit about the importance of seedling
apples is [in] some of the very rural areas of the country.
But not anywhere I've lived (in Western Mexico, aside from a few years in the SouthEast (the Papaloapan Basin).

We have them here and I eat them occasionally (when they're brought in by a Tarascan Indian woman from the Patzcuaro Region, whose fruit has allowed me to remain in this overpopulated and large urban city to elaborate projects that have attracted the attention of participants in the next Federal Government (which will assume power on , December 1st).

In order to explain what drove me to do what I did (decide to move to Mexico almost 39 years ago), I'd have to present the events that led me to change my diet so radically in the first place: The (medically instigated) health problems that forced me to reconsider the assumptions that all of us were raised with, the experiments carried out in order to establish a working criteria that would hold up indefinitely and under scrutiny, provide for my physical needs and allow me to perform the tasks that my developed potential and experience allow (and the current local, national and international situations allow requires).

The unalterable conclusion is that things are what they are and if you know what to look for, the right decisions can be made. And while these discussions are all good and valid, the fact of the matter is, if you want to try or eat high quality seedling fruit you can't get it, any more than you can drive your fuel cell power car into the gas station and ask them to fill it up with hydrogen. The point being, this petroleum based gas stations weren't there either, a hundred years ago (and I can remember quite clearly when gasoline cost under 25 cents a gallon).

Forgive me if I seem to be evading the issue but if I'm going to explain why I uprooted myself from one language and culture and transplanted myself in another (an eminently reasonable question), it's going to take a little more time and effort that I was prepared to make when I decided to add a comment to this thread. But I think it's worth doing and suspect that the time has come to begin doing just that. And that's a commitment.

Meanwhile, I'd be happy to answer any specific questions regarding either the problems inherent to grafting and the potential of seedling trees.

As a point of departure however: Anyone who thinks trees were put here for H. Sapiens to exploit them in ways that run counter to evolution (which grafting interrupts) and diversity (ditto) is unlikely to sympathize with the perspective I present: Fruit Trees can do things we can't! And the availability and quality of the life-giving substances they (not us) produce depends on our understanding their very real needs and helping them fulfill their potential, so ALL of us can fulfill our own destiny. (And if that sounds religious, so does permaculture and organic agriculture - both of which have ignored this issue). Lastly, those that make those groundless accusations would benefit from acquiring a bit more respect for the work, rights and abilities of other living organisms - neither American Exceptionalism nor Human Despotism is going to help resolve anyone's problems, on nafex or anywhere else.

Douglas Hinds




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