Editor’s Notes:
1/16/24: The text below was originally shared as a series of personal social media account posts. The text but not the pictures were moved to here for later, easier reference. One topic that has come up in conversation since then is the “Apple Guild” we saw growing amidst the wild apple forest near Almaty, Kazakhstan. For easy reference, this is the plant community that we saw in that location: Malus sieversii (white flower apple), Malus nizvedskiy (pink flower apple), Prunus armeniaca (wild-type apricot). Between the trees there was some grass, but really a huge amount of the following herbs: yarrow, tansy, oregano, wormwood, annual nettles, mugwort, elecampane, Asian mint, hops (about half the trees seemed to have heady-smelling hops growing up them), Chinese licorice like they use in TCM, and marijuana growing as a weed nearby. If you were to formulate a similar guild for what we say in the walnut-fruit forest of Arslan-bob, Kyrgyzstan, it would be: Persian walnut (Juglans regia), apple (Malus siversiana), pear (Pyrus korshinsky), plum (Prunus sogdiana), and barberry (Berberis nummularia). There is a lot of grazing, grass cut and gathered and stacked for feeding hay during the winter- all by hand. There were herbs similar to the apple guild which were gathered and sold for tea in town. There were also mushrooms people liked, it wasn’t the season for it but it was probably yellow morel mushrooms (Morchella esculenta), harvested in the spring.
Days Zero and One
Two hours until I board my first ever plane across the Atlantic. An over night flight to Frankfurt, Germany and then the rest of the day tomorrow en route to Almaty.
from etymology of “Almaty” on Wikipedia:
Almaty has its roots in the medieval settlement Almatu, that existed near the present-day city. A disputed theory holds that the name is derived from the Kazakh word for ‘apple’ (алма), and is often translated as “full of apples”. Originally it was Almatau which means Apple Mountain. The Russian version of the name was Alma-Ata (Kaz. Father of Apples). Since gaining its independence from the Soviet Union, the use of the Kazakh Almaty is accepted.
It’s mid-September. If I had a few days and was in the Midwest or Appalachia rn I would be checking all the ramp (Allium tricoccum) patches to see if the seed is ready. It’s a very underappreciated way to get into forest farming. If I wasn’t so jet-lagged, had a longer layover and a guide I’d be tempted to go looking for Allium ursinum seed in the mountain forest we flew over, just West of the airport.
I am bummed to have missed the World Nomad games, it was the same weekend as the RR conference so no helping it. I just learned that the Afghani team beat China to win the Kok-boru event, surprising no one; Afghanistan is renowned for their prowess at goat carcass polo. Other events include hunting with eagles, archery, three forms of wrestling and speed-yurt assembling. This also would have been fantastic to see, as it takes us like 2 days to throw up or tear down our yurt.
The level of hospitality and adventure and shit working out is amazing. Our third cluster of new Kazakh friends (Askar and Slavs, people who are on the permaculture wavelength and quite unexpectedly on that flower of life trip that festies in the US love) served us smoked horse meat and fermented camel milk for dinner. Delicious!!
…
This is our new friend, Andrey (Andrew) Kim. He was CEO of a tech firm that sold software to banks, but after getting inspired to save an Almaty heirloom apple, the Apport, he saved some money and quit his day job. He is working on marketing the apples directly in Moscow, and would like to start a cider company so he can use the B grade apples too. He took us out for plove and cappachino today, and we’ll visit his farms and help harvest apples later. Its in an area that would otherwise be swallowed up by development if nobody with foresight was farming it.
Post Soviet collapse, city planning stopped being a thing and businesses and suburbs have started growing out into Malus sieversii (wild apple) territory, as well as bulldozing the old heirloom orchards. Almaty is in a smog filled bowl surrounded by beautiful mountains, and I understand the desire to climb towards the treeline for new development. But the world needs those wild apples! I suggested to Andrew that he incorporate wild apples into the cider blend to incentivize conserving some of the ancient food forest and protect it from business parks. Andrew is also starting a commune, so young local people and agri-tourists can enjoy the apple farm lifestyle while being fairly close to town.
Historical notes:
Andrey’s family is Korean, from the Russian Far East. Stalin forcibly moved his grandparents to Kazakhstan, for fear of geographically consolidated Korean population defecting to the Japanese/Axis cause in the buildup to WWII.
Tselina, the virgin lands campaign, was pretty crazy by both Capitalist and ecological standards. Ploughing the steppe, a mountainous prairie ecosystem type, had to be heavily subsidized by other Soviets and washed away soil scary fast. But Andrew’s peasant farmer ancestors took orders from The Party, got paid okay, went along with it. Stalin also brought millions of Russ farming people East to Kazakhstan, a lot of them have moved to Astana after that inefficient dry land farming of the steppe wasn’t profitable in a Capitalist economy.
Humulus lupulus, “hops”
Cannabaceae
Growing wild in the foothills to the South of Almaty. It grows 15 feet up the apple trees and then kinda just stops, unlike kudzu or grapevine in the underfunded former food forests of eastern North America that are getting ripped apart by Invasives. It’s amazing that so much of the flora here is so useful. Nettles, wormwood, sweet Annie, a mallow and some kind of Chenopodium and a motherwort are the main herb-level plants in this wild/feral “cultura promiscua” (to borrow a traditional Latin term for useful edible polyculture.)
Hops dies to the ground every winter.
A bittering and preservative agent in beer that acts as a sedative.
Rosa canina, “dog-rose”
Rosaceae
First saw this growing feral in a few spots in Cincinnati by the highway in 2006, but those plants died. Really thriving in Almaty landscapes though! I was really into this plant at the time because I had just started to teach myself plants, and concurrently I was reading the Roseacrucean Manifesto and there seemed to be a connection- Jesus as a perfect man, or a rose without thorns figuratively. It was about this time when I also started wondering how early humans had domesticated the first crops, and asking if you might need to be in an altered state for that process to proceed, because you’d need to have a vision of the plant completely transformed to start working with it in that direction. I don’t know that that’s true, actually. But beginning with the end in mind one way or the other probably helps. I would later characterize examples of such altered states in the saintliness of a George Washington Carver, the energy-sensitivity of a Luther Burbank, the visions of a peyote-eating teosinte grower or the adderal-fueled gene editing sessions of lab-based plant breeder. The take away from further reading on the subject seems to be that one can get in an appropriate altered state just observing and appreciating a plant without drugs or ideology. Having the capacity to transform a life form to better suit our human desire takes more effort than going into a trance though.
-BBJ
From Wikipedia:
The plant is high in certain antioxidants. The fruit is noted for its high level of vitamin C, and is used to make syrup, tea, and marmalade. It has been grown or encouraged in the wild for the production of vitamin C from its fruit (often as rose-hip syrup), especially during conditions of scarcity or during wartime. The species has also been introduced to other temperate latitudes. During World War II in the United States, Rosa canina was planted in victory gardens, and can still be found growing throughout the country, including roadsides and in wet, sandy areas along the coastlines. In Bulgaria, where it grows in abundance, the hips are used to make a sweet wine as well as tea. In the traditional Austrian medicine, Rosa canina fruits have been used internally as tea for treatment of viral infections and disorders of the kidneys and urinary tract.[3] The hips are used as a flavouring in Cockta, a soft drink made in Slovenia.
Forms of this plant are used as stocks for the grafting or budding of cultivated roses. The wild plant is used for stabilising soil in land reclamation and specialised landscaping schemes.
Numerous cultivars have been named, though few are common in cultivation. The cultivar Rosa canina ‘Assisiensis’ is the only dog rose without prickles.
The flower is one of the national symbols of Romania.
Day 2
Yesterday we climbed through Ile-Alatau National Park, above the smog of Almaty to Kok-Zhaylau. We saw wild horses, a few wild apples, and a lot of wild plants you’d recognize from an herb garden or holistic orchard (yarrow, tansy, oregano, wormwood, nettles and mugwort). This apple “guild” we permie people like to prattle on about turns out to be the native plant community/species assemblage in the place where apples are from! Who knew?
Uber is like a dollar a person if you have three people, and helps transcend the language barrier. On the ride up to the park, the driver used a non-Uber map app and would of dropped us at the wrong place if hawk-eyed Chris hadn’t been tracking our progress on his own phone. And he still dropped us at the “wrong” end of the hike, but it turned out much better that way actually. Because when we hiked down the mountain, we walked on unofficial footpaths through the dacha neighborhood for awhile and would have been uncertain of where and how to enter the forest proper through that warren of Soviet-era micro-farmsteads. Thanking my lucky stars for that mistake 
😀
The dacha district was filled with apple trees, maybe half of orchard plots half were cared for. There’s a generation gap, for most part Millenials and younger don’t tend dachas, just older people who depended more on them through transition from USSR. The free running dogs in this town look healthy and are fairly friendly. We passed this BAMF human who was jogging up the damn hillside THREE TIMES on our way down here, idk how they was looping back down the hill or how a human keeps an 8 mph pace going up a 40 degree slope like that. They finally smiled at us on the third lap XD
Eventually we hitch hiked down the mountain the rest of our way home. There was a lack of cell signal in dacha district, and when we got into range we discovered that Kazakh Uber drivers were (quite reasonably) not prowling for customers at the steep, barely paved, windy-roaded, masterfully terraced garden territory that is the interface of apple forest and Almaty city. Eventually we felt kinda done with walking for the day, so I stuck my thumb out and we got picked up by the first car to pass us. Second day in a row where nobody passed us without stopping 
❤ I love this place!!! Kazakhs hail a taxi by pointing their finger at the ground, 45 degrees up from straight down, and there is a TON of spontaneous ride sharing with strangers that doesn’t use third party software.
We were the only Americans we’ve seen here so far, until we ran across some shady looking maybe missionaries at dinner.
Prunus armeniaca aka Armeniaca vulgaris, “wild apricot”
Rosaceae
Endangered wild progenitor of domesticated apricot. This one is present in low qualities in the apple forest we visited today. The pictures tree is 150 years old- slow growing, dense wood.
-BBJ
Encyclopedia of Life:
Small to medium-sized deciduous tree in native to western and central Asia and possibly China, where it has been domesticated and cultivated since around 2,000 B.C. for its delicious edible fruit. It is now grown in warm-temperate regions worldwide, but particularly in western Asia, the near East, and the Mediterranean.
Related species that produce fruits referred to as apricots include Prunus mandshurica (from Manchuria, Korea) and P. siberica (from Siberia, Manchuria, and northern China). There is also a purple apricot (P. dasycarpa) and a Japanese apricot (P. mume). The wild apricot, the progenitor of the domestic apricot, which is variously classified as Armeniaca vulgarism or grouped with P. armeniaca, has been classified as endangered, due to declining populations in its native areas of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and China.
Apricot trees are similar in appearance to peach trees (variously classified as P. communis, P. dulcis, or Amygdalus communis). They can grow to 30 m (over 100 ft) but are generally smaller in orchards, with a small, rounded crown, reddish brown twigs, with leaves that are oval to elliptical to rounded to subcordate (nearly heart-shaped), 5 to 7.5 cm (2 to 3 in) long, often pubescent (fuzzy-haired) on the underside around the leaf veins. The flowers, which open before the leaves, are white to pinkish, with 5 petals, around 2.5 cm (1 in) across. The early blooming makes it more susceptible to frost damage than peach trees, and thus it is generally not planted as far north. The fruits, which ripen to orange or yellowish orange, sometimes tinged with red, have soft flesh surrounding a hard, flattened stone, containing a kernel (seed) within.
Apricots, which are high in carotene (vitamin A) and vitamin C, as well as calcium, iron, and phosphorus, are eaten fresh or processed into juices (apricot nectar) and jams. They are popular in fruit salads, desserts, and baked goods, as well as some meat dishes. They are highly perishable as a fresh fruit, so are often canned or dried. The dried fruit may be eaten as a snack, or reconstituted by soaking and used for cooking. The kernels are also edible, although in limited quantities, as they may contain cyanide compounds. The kernels are also pressed to make apricot oil, which is used in cosmetics and massage oils.
Total commercial production of apricots in 2010 was 3.4 million metric tons. Turkey, Iran, Uzbekistan, Italy, and Algeria were the leading producers. Within the U.S., 90% of commercial apricot production is in California, where most of the production (valued at $47.5 million in 2010) was for canning and drying. Smaller amounts are grown in other western states and western Canada, and in northeastern states for local fresh markets and in home gardens.
Apricots are highly susceptible to insect damage, especially from Curculio beetles, and from brown rot disease (Monilinia fructicola fungus). In addition, fruits may crack when grown in humid climates, so they are considered difficult to cultivate in much of the Northeastern U.S.
Day Three
Today we were on the hunt for wild type apple (Malus sieversii) forest. Yesterday we hiked near Almaty, where the wild type is mostly cut down for dashas and nouveau rich Kazakh McMansions, but today we got out of the city and are looking for the real deal. Our guide was scientist and former director of Ile-Alatau National Park (founded 1936), Oleg Nikolaevich. He was demoted to grunt and replaced with a wealthy, politically-connected person after Soviet collapse and was happy we cared about forest .
He noted there is wild Malus sieversii (white flower) and wild Malus nizvedskiy (pink flower); there’s a lot of disagreement among taxonomists about apple systematics, not taking sides as I don’t know enough 
😉 we might have seen both. There was a lot of Urtica urens growing underneath 30-40 ft tall apple trees, with an umbeliferous plant called Heracleum (dissectum I think) whose young shoot is eaten, as well as something called “nine powers” that looks like prairie dock. Higher up on the hills it got drier, and in the drier places the essential oil-rich apple guild I mentioned two days ago predominates in the understory. Spacing between the trees varied from savanna to closed canopy woodland levels but there was always a thick herb layer underneath. I think we need to get further from civilization to find the fabled 80 ft tall trees with upright structure and few side branches. Not sure we’ll have time on this trip, maybe next time, it’s a multi-day wilderness trek by the sound of it… Grazing from livestock may be keeping the stocking level down near the C line. Speaking of which, it’s comical seeing horses and cows roaming on abandoned lots and across the street at the edge of the city as we drove towards the forest. Open range was ended in my eastern US home quite a while ago, and animal ag. is normally so separated from urban life in America that it appears to be happening in a different universe, apart from the odd backyard chicken.
Oleg tells us Chicory is native to Kazakhstan but he credits Americans with developing tea from it, and Russ people are crazy about it.
The government takes a tough and severe stance on snow leopard poachers, unless that person is wealthy. He recalled Dagma, a German wildlife activist and journalist that he knew, who had to flee Kazakhstan after her house was burned down for taking a stand against the gondola at what is now the president’s ski resort.
Oleg wishes more Kazakhs cared about the apple forest. His dream is to bring more scouts here to get kids started on loving nature as young people, and to facilitate internationals coming to appreciate this national treasure.
Tanacetum vulgare, “tansy”
Asteraceae
Gosh this plant has so many uses. As a companion plant with potatoes to keep away or kill flee beetles, to kill worms in your intestines, as a flavoring, as a mosquito repellant, to induce abortions. If you just like pretty + morbid, this is the flower for you. A lot of history to dig into. Cool to see it growing prevelantly in apple habitat.
The essential oil has 1,8-cineole, trans-thujone, camphor and myrtenol, NOT chamazulene unfortunately.
Inula helenium, “elecampane”, “nine power”
Asteraceae
I first learned about this one from Bekki Shining Bearheart at Dragon Waters in 2012. And now I see it growing everywhere in openings of the Tian Shan apple forest of Kazakhstan! It’s good for skin disease; make a tea from roots and pour it in the bath and soak for 30 minutes, says Askar.
-BBJ
WebMD:
Elecampane is used for lung diseasesincluding asthma, bronchitis, and whooping cough. It is also used to prevent coughing, especially coughingcaused by tuberculosis; and as an expectorant to help loosen phlegm, so it can be coughed up more easily.
Wikipedia:
The plant’s specific name, helenium, derives from Helen of Troy; elecampane is said to have sprung up from where her tears fell. It was sacred to the ancient Celts, and once had the name “elfwort”.
In France and Switzerland it is used in the manufacture of absinthe.
The root was employed by the ancients, mentioned in Pliny, Natural History 19.29 both as a medicine and as a condiment.
Besides the storage polysaccharide inulin(C6H12O6[C6H10O5]n), a polymer of fructose, the root contains helenin (C15H20O2), a stearoptene, which may be prepared in white acicular crystals, insoluble in water, but freely soluble in alcohol.
Mentha asiatica, “Asian mint”
Lamiaceae
This species was prevalent in the apple forest and has a good, fairly strong minty flavor. It is the only Mentha in the Tian Shan flora I just stumbled across (the better picture is from there too). Distinctly whitish green foliage and whitish blue flowers. Surprised to see there are fewer than 20 Mentha sp.worldwide.
-BBJ
From Wikipedia:
Asian mint is a species of perennial herb that typically grows in full sun to partial shade. Asian mint prefers to grow in moist, adequate soil moisture retention year-round. It produces purple showy flowers that are fragrant. Unlike the other Laminace family plants, Mentha asiatica produces an unusual foliage color of leaves that are evergreen and opposites. Mentha asiatica is suitable for wintersowing and handles well with transplanting. They do not typically come true from seed, similar to other mentha mint species, because mint seeds are highly variable and some varieties are sterile. An easier way to propagate is from cuttings from root, division, or even runners (stolons) from fully grown plants.
Urtica urens, “annual nettle”
Urticaceae
This is a different but closely related nettle to the Eurasian perennial nettle we’re used to in the USA. Used much the same ways though, and very common in the Tian Shan apple forest. I got stung a bit, didn’t hurt or itch much but left a tingling that came back hours later.
-BBJ
From Plants for a Future:
Young leaves – cooked and used as a potherb. A very nutritious food, high in vitamins and minerals, it makes an excellent spinach substitute and can also be added to soups and stews. Only use the young leaves and wear stout gloves when harvesting them to prevent getting stung. Although the fresh leaves have stinging hairs, thoroughly drying or cooking them destroys these hairs. Nettle beer is brewed from the young shoots.
Nettles have a long history of use in the home as a herbal remedy. A tea made from the leaves has traditionally been used as a tonic and blood purifier. The whole plant is antiasthmatic, antidandruff, astringent, depurative, diuretic, galactogogue, haemostatic, hypoglycaemic and a stimulating tonic. An infusion of the plant is very valuable in stemming internal bleeding, it is also used to treat anaemia, excessive menstruation, haemorrhoids, arthritis, rheumatism and skin complaints, especially eczema. Externally, the plant is used to treat arthritic pain, gout, sciatica, neuralgia, haemorrhoids, hair problems etc. For medicinal purposes, the plant is best harvested in May or June as it is coming into flower and dried for later use. This species merits further study for possible uses against kidney and urinary system ailments. The juice of the nettle can be used as an antidote to stings from the leaves and an infusion of the fresh leaves is healing and soothing as a lotion for burns.
From Wikipedia:
It is reputed to sting more strongly than the perennial Common Nettle/Stinging Nettle.
Hippophae rhamnoides, “sea buckthorn”
Elaeagnaceae
Seen this growing wild near Tokmok, in well drained mesic soils near streams. Was surprised by how tall some of the older trees got!
Sea buckthorn “tea” is served at every cafe. Seems to be sweetened berry juice + leaf tea. It’s a nitrogen fixing shrub. 7 years before it produces berries. Cuttings root well in wet soil, according to Chris Smtlyth’s experience with it. Can grow in bad soil. To harvest berries from this spiky thing, cut half of it down and freeze it so you can shake the berries off.
-BBJ
From Wikipedia:
Different parts of sea buckthorn have been used as folk medicine. Berry oil, either taken orally as a dietary supplement or applied topically, is believed to be a skin softener. In Indian, Chinese and Tibetan traditional medicines, sea buckthorn fruit may be added to medications in the belief it provides treatments for diseases.
PS So I’m traveling in Almaty, Kazakhstan and I have to say, if you’re trying to keep costs down, maybe don’t go to the American cafes if you’re just wanting Wi-Fi- if you do, it’s good manners to get something simple to thank and compensate them for providing the service. If you’re trying to save money, go to native eateries and have your native friends negotiate payment if they’re eating with you, (even if you’re footing the bill) & for Wi-Fi be a free rider on Starbucks or Burger King or some other thriving behemoth.
^PS so if your native friends are with you, hospitality culture may dictate a battle of wills if you want to pay the bill. Otherwise a rapid return of a gift makes sense when people are relentlessly trying to treat you to lunch. One doesn’t want to lose face in some version of a fouled volley in gift culture volleyball/ping pong/tennis.
Artemisia absinthium, “wormwood”
Asteraceae
This one grows abundantly in certain parts of the apple forest and wild in orchards. My first gf at OU, Naomi Larson, was allergic to thujone and was borderline catatonic for 12 hours after drinking absinthe with Ginny and company XD (nobody knew before it happened!)
-BBJ
From Wikipedia:
It is an ingredient in the spirit absinthe, and is used for flavouring in some other spirits and wines, including bitters, vermouth and pelinkovac. As medicine, it is used for dyspepsia, as a bitter to counteract poor appetite, for various infectious diseases, Crohn’s disease, and IgA nephropathy.
In the Middle Ages, wormwood was used to spice mead, and in Morocco it is used with tea, called sheeba. In 18th century England, wormwood was sometimes used instead of hops in beer.
Nicholas Culpeper insisted that wormwood was the key to understanding his 1651 book The English Physitian. Richard Mabey describes Culpeper’s entry on this bitter-tasting plant as “stream-of-consciousness” and “unlike anything else in the herbal”, and states that it reads “like the ramblings of a drunk”. Culpeper biographer Benjamin Woolleysuggests the piece may be an allegory about bitterness, as Culpeper had spent his life fighting the Establishment, and had been imprisoned and seriously wounded in battle as a result.
William Shakespeare referred to wormwood in his famous play Romeo and Juliet: Act 1, Scene 3. Juliet’s childhood nurse said, “For I had then laid wormwood to my dug” meaning that the nurse had weaned Juliet, then aged three, by using the bitter taste of Wormwood on her nipple.
John Locke, in his 1689 book titled An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, used wormwood as an example of bitterness, writing that “For a child knows as certainly before it can speak the difference between the ideas of sweet and bitter (i.e. that sweet is not bitter), as it knows afterwards (when it comes to speak) that wormwood and sugarplums are not the same thing.”
In the Bible, the book of Revelation tells of a star named Wormwood that plummets to Earth and carries with it bitterness that poisons a third of all of the earth’s waters on The Day of the Lord.
Cannabis sativa, “marijuana”
Cannabaceae
Ditch weed growing on the roadsides East of Almaty. It grew increasingly common as we got farther from town. There is even more landrace C. sativa hiding in the Chui Valley. It’s supposed to be pretty fricking stiff in the THC department for ditchweed- perhaps it’s one of the populations that got a genetic shot in the arm from the Amazons that Susan Stoddard talks about. Need to look more deeply into it, only so much progress you can make per day when you’re jumping headfirst down multiple rabbit holes. Locals repeated the stories I’d heard about body hash being the preferred harvesting technique. It’s not my thing and never has been, but I’m very curious about the history, ethnobotany and chemistry of these species.
Day 4
Today we learned about how improvisational and spontaneous the culture of Kazakhstan often is. We stayed in the city to socialize and get a read on the vibe of the people who live in this former Soviet capital.
If you have open-ended plans with multiple parties that are weather dependent, figuring out when to pull the trigger on any particular contingency plan necessarily becomes part art part science. There is a balance between “hurry up and wait”; multiple parties of co-conspirators are on hold for whatever reason so you’re waiting to hear back, while self-entertaining because the unpredictably punctuated flow of coms with the other groups doesn’t lend itself to long, uninterrupted, deep diving convos with the people around you. Eventually your group or another may decide to take action rather than further delay and defer. You do exactly what you want to do next rather than wait for a consensus that won’t come in time to act efficiently on your time-sensitive day. The others will catch up or they won’t. That was the pattern of the day.
First Chris, Amy and I went to the Green Bazaar, which was full of surprises. Idk what was I was expecting, but it was like a department store, arranged as a flee market. So much flashy Chinese-American and eastern European style clothing, I was at a loss to find traditional Kazakh garb. There are several distinctive hats that go back to which Khanate hoard your people are from, and I’d like to get one of each, but it’s not going to happen in Almaty. There was also zero Soviet kitsch for sale. We heard tell the Russians are getting more and more into Red Army surplus as fashion. Even though young Kazakhs really love Russian culture and by and large want to be Russ they ain’t about that Soviet aesthetic AT ALL. As an aside that is worth circling back to, from our white American POV this idealization of Russ culture has the stink of internalized oppression and not so subtle white supremacy. Billboard models are mostly white though there is a majority Turkic-descended population in Almaty and Kazakhstan generally.
Caress and Brian and their kids came to visit from Astana, Kazakhstan’s new (1998) capitol. Caress is Chris’s family friend. She teaches poly sci at a new university, he teaches at an expat high school. We learned about many things from her, including a dawning realization that evangelical protestant expats definitely and local Muslims to some degree appear to have an edge in the social capital game in Almaty, because horizontally organized relationship networks are part of their religious identities. Older non-believers are often stuck in waiting for the hegemonic state which no longer exists to connect them with work that matches their skills and experience.
Later in the day I randomly was invited to an Agni Hotra down by the river, and hived off from my travel mates to go with the local friends. These days I prefer to share woo stuff on IG rather than FB, because I don’t enjoy having other people’s religion foisted upon me on this platform and want to extend the same courtesy in return. But, in short, it was a powerful & very positive prayer session. We prayed for the apple forest, the people and animals here, and for us to help the culture ripen, such that we would better default to supporting each other in taking care of this special place. I told people about why I was harvesting elderberries and taught them a few chants, and they fed me spiced eggplant and black tea.
Eventually our crew all struggled back and reunited at the flat and cooked our first meal. Well mostly it was Slava cooking and she wouldn’t have it any other way, so the rest of us started arguing about agroforestry. Ahem XD Among fellow idealists, I work to both explain realistic possibilities and keep people’s feet on the ground. Among pessimists I usually am singing songs about heaven (is a place on earth). These people can be a bit ungrounded. Was explaining about the need to root prune trees in alley cropping systems if you actually want to produce a reasonable yield of hay or grain between the rows, especially important in low moisture environments. “But we can just leave a 20 meter or 10 meter buffer unplanted on either side of trees”. “Yes you could, but then you’ve lost the improved yield/acre that economically justified to this more complex management plan in the first place.” What they really need here are windbreakes for their pasture. They wanted to know what species to use and I reminded them that Stalin’s people figured that out in the 50’s for their region, and the plant species I would suggest from the upper Midwest would be poor substitutes.
…
Day 5:
We headed to a cafe to meet some expat and tried sea buckthorn “tea” for the first time. That came in a French press and was very tasty.
Then we went in a gondola towards a mountaintop amusement park, because the kids wanted to check it out. Below us spread small houses, backyard orchards and nouveaux rich, gilded age McMansions that were already crumbling due to poor materials quality and seismic activity before they were even completed.
The carnival was interesting . You paid separately to go on every ride, which was a constant reminder of Capitalism but also allowed you to only pay for the experiences you wanted, which I liked. The only thing I paid for was snuggle time with two friendly cockatoo, pictured below. Caress was still with us, and she mentioned something to her grumpy kid that made me appreciate the negative liberty of being an adult and also not paying for a bunch of rides I didn’t want to go on: “We’re part of a group right now, and we have to decide together about what to do; you can’t always get to do exactly what you want when you’re in a group.” I love groups, but it pays to choose/create them carefully. This also seemed connected to the thread about religious people being better networked: how do you be contributing part of a group who benefits from membership, let’s say the permaculture community or an eco-village, without having to get sucked into drama caused by people’s painfully predictable distress patterns? My answer is to stay at the margins and do my thing, support the best leaders who present themselves, and if its a healthy and pleasing enough group, immediately or eventually put in my time as an organizer if the group dynamic is healthy and sophisticated enough to support me. Those are some big ifs!
There was one really awesome mini roller coaster, through a young apple orchard on the edge of a steep hill overlooking the city. Chinese licorice seeded in naturally to the drip-irrigated orchard. I was struck at how the natural apple forest, as opposed to these and other orchards, seems to occur mostly at a particular altitude, aspect and landscape position. Namely backslopes that are high enough to be in the fog but not covered in snow during any part of the late spring-fall.
Next we went to Andrey’s “Apport” variety apple orchard. I’m trying to plug Askar to team up with him, so he can quit his flight attendant job and take a deep dive into the horticulture of his bioregion. I hope to stay involved too, as I really want to see the Malus sieversii valued by the locals, and putting them in cider would be an economic way. Slow Food international cider drinkers would flock to drinking this, wouldn’t you?
The Apport really is a fine apple, and Andrey’s orchard was pretty nice. A lot of orchard grass, red clover, burdock and some elecampane and wild carrot in the understory. There were young Uzbek girls leading large cows around on ropes, so they could graze on the rich flood terrace sward but be kept from eating apple bark, which seemed like an imaginary problem to me but whatever. If cider for the export market is Andrey’s goal, I hope he capitalizes on the wild apple’s diverse taste profile because the Apport is too sweet to make really interesting cider. The guild of medicine plants ought to be tied into it also somehow. This #AppleGuild of fruit trees and medicinal herbs that I’ve observed is a great story and honestly is kind of a world treasure hidden in plane sight. I’m imagining an apple beverage of some kind infused with these herbs. Final thought on this, apparently they used to burn a special kind of grass under each apple tree for pest control back in the day. I wonder if it is Hierochloe odorata?
On the way to the orchard, Amy learned from Andrey that there have been Kazakhs who have been deported for social media journalism. And we learned also that Winnie the Pooh has become taboo in China, because the dictator for life over there looks like Pooh and gets his fee fees hurt if people throw up any kind of Hundred Acre Wood tag. Maybe if you’d stop disappearing dissidents we’d stop spamming you, dude.
Day 6:
We packed up for Bishkek and left our Air B and B flat (Samal 3, Bulding 12, Apartment 40) in Almaty. Living in a renovated Soviet-era highrise in the heart of downtown Almaty was fun. It had rained that night, and the air was washed clean of smog and revealed an even higher set of mountain peaks than had been visible before.
I love the car-sharing culture here. You’d see 20 people per mile in town, hitching rides from strangers without recourse to Uber or anything. Gas was about $1.20/gallon, and if you and your 3 friends got in somebody’s car to get around in town, you’d end up paying them for 2-3 gallons of gas ($2-3/car). If they were taking you to the edge of the city, it would be more like $8-10. Most car owners have bought their cars on credit, and are happy to share the expense.
We caught a taxi and for four hours headed West to Bishkek. We saw vast flat areas of steppe, which varied from okay quality bunchgrass habitat to virtually nothing living growing. It seemed to be a function of how far we were from the mountains. All roads had a windbreak planted along them, many windbreaks were in disrepair. They were the only trees around, and filled with large bird nests. Some windbreaks were 6 rows deep, and there were unplanted trees that had come up around those. An occasional massive herd of sheep and cow could be seen, flanked with a person on a horse. Smaller herds were left to wander. We couldn’t figure out where they were being watered, as we saw no watering devices anywhere. The only areas that were fenced off in the vast open space were Muslim cemetaries, which were individually fenced in mausoleums surrounded by a perimeter fence and topped with crescent moons. I wonder if something closer to reference conditions for the ecosystem could be found in some of the larger, older cemeteries? We didn’t have a chance to stop.
Besides making observations of the landscape and thinking about how we might try to make the area more productive if we had to farm it, we talked a bit about the history of Price Hill (a near West Side Cincinnati neighborhood, home of Chris and Amy and the Enright Ridge Urban Eco-Village). We discussed how difficult and important figuring out the “community question” is. How do we organize with people who are so profoundly hurt and confused as the ones who frequently show up in the organizing space? You do some kind of personal and community healing work to attend to the psychological wounds left by the oppressive society and get our rational minds back in the saddle, and show up better and differently as collaborators on radical projects. It’s very good to be traveling with these two. Our conversation turned to Price Hill history. I learned among other things that the person who was the model for Jay Gatsby in F. Scott Fitsgerald’s book was George Remus, a bootlegging lawyer whose former mansion and famous parties happened just a few lots down from Chris and Amy’s co-housing space. We also discussed Rees E. Price, founder of the Price Hill neighborhoods. Rees was a colorful eccentric, the son of a wealthy Welsh immigrant and himself very entrepreneurial, he became a general brigadier in the Ohio militia, worked on the Abolitionist cause, and was a Spiritualist, in addition to being a socialite in Protestant circles. His wife Sarah organized many seances at their house. After many years of service and leadership he eventually became a recluse.
We were headed to Bishkek, and this led us over a international border. We had no trouble with the guards or officials, except they made us erase photographs we took of the myriad anti-bribery signs that were posted everywhere.
Getting into Bishkek was a little disheartening. The air is so dirty that every surface that isn’t newly built or freshly washed has a veneer of condensed smog stuck to it. Amy had a headache, so Chris and I went out on a few walks around town, before and after dinner which was Russian Cafeteria style. Jessica asked about the food. For $3.50, I had tomato juice that was sitting waiting for me in a styrofoam cup, as well as a shreddded cucumber-lettuce-dill salad, toasted buckwheat groats with some kind of dressing, meatball soup with broth and rice, and a stirfry of white fish and vegetables. For $3 Chris had a burger, a mash potato-cheese-burger cassarole slice and something else.
As darkness fell, the city came more alive and felt much less dismal with the air quality out of sight and night club facades lit up. Chris and I noticed a park nearby on Google Maps whose paths were clearly laid out in an inverted pentagram, and decided to walk over to it. It was an amusement park, and a small bar as well as a giant ferris wheel were doing thriving business near the center of the star, which featured a massive fountain whose lights seemed to be keeping time with the EDM at nearby dance party. We laughed a good deal at all this and walked back to our Air B and B spot, but not before buying bottled water from a 24 hour market, marveling at their deli’s selection of roasted eggplant and sauteed oyster mushrooms as part of the cuisine.
If you’ve made it this far, I’ll also just add that shouting down survivors of sexual assault when they come forward makes you an easily identifiable asshole. I’m watching and this is not behavior I forget.
Day 7:
Darcy arrived in Bishkek early this morning. I woke up at 6:00 am without an alarm, checked my phone and lo! she had messaged me seconds before. Packed up my bags and headed out into the city to find her. It had been 4.5 months seen I’d seen this wonderful partner of five years. A lot of living had happened for both of us this summer and we felt eager to lay next to each other as she napped off the jet lag.
Bishkek was already up and bustling at 6am. On many a street corner, little old ladies were sitting behind a table, under a parasol, toting carboys. The carboys were full of carbonated milk and grain ferments, $0.90/L. Milk fermentation is serious business here. The word “Bishkek” designates the wooden stick used for churning mare’s milk for this sort of alcoholic kefir beverage “kumis”, which I have not tried.
Later, when Darcy was ready to rally, we sallied forth from her hostel to find Christopher and Amy. Bishkek is the capital city of Kyrgyzstan and with a population of just under one million, finding them without a working phone might have seemed tricky. But on the way to the Wi-Fi cafe to send them an email, we ran into them. It was at around this time that I would delightedly consume about a liter of the aforementioned red-bottled milky goodness from a street vendor, only to discover a misfire between the Kyrgyz microbes and my belly which was very upset with me for the rest of the day.
After relaxing with A, C and D at their flat we started walking down the city’s wide boulevards. The dirty air was dry and we noted that again the snow-covered front range of the Tian Shan was visible to the South of the city, just as it had been in Almaty. We headed to a very traditional Kyrgyz restaurant that had good reviews online. On the way we stopped to appreciate the narrow, deep (18+ inches) channels cut into the ground at the side of every road. These are made with concrete forms that click into place, and have regularly spaced holes that soak the water into ground at the foot of tall trees, mostly elm, Kyrgyz walnut and horse chestnut. Small metal sluices appear at intervals in these ditches. Presumably if one is the storefont operator can handcrank down a barrier to water moving past your trees when you’re catching the rain. So really these are irrigation canals. Idk why more Anglosphere cities aren’t doing this. Probably because it was a Soviet innovation.
The cafe ended up having a whole menu section devoted to different kinds of plain-flavored milk ferments. We had fatty mutton roast, a horse meat salad, the ubiquitous “plov” which is an oily rice pilaf, and tea with lemon
At 1am my stomach is feeling mostly better, so I wake up to take my medicine and write up our day during “the golden hour”. The golden hour comes around after my first few REM cycles if my schedule has enough ease and structure to support really waking up for a bit before bedding back down.
Day 8
Scene: unnamed (by Google) bazaar in western Bishkek. If everyone knows where it is, having a name that delineates its shifting boundaries might happen as an afterthought. We’re there following a few different threads. The level of hospitality we’re going to receive in Arslan-bob is supposed to be limited by how modest the women in our party are perceived to be, so dresses and kerchiefs are on the list. My nose picks up a whiff of aromatic foliage being burned, and I step out from the party to see if it is what I think it is. Sure enough, some traditionally dressed women are threading their way through the narrow aisles of the agora, smoke billowing from saucepans in their hands. As I watch, one cosmetics and soap vendor waves them over. The smoker walks into the stall and waves the saucepan around for a few seconds. Shopkeep thanks them and gives them a few coins. I smile at both people, and look down into the saucepan. It appears to be Juniperus, which surprises me- from the smell I was expecting Artemisia, which grows abundantly on the steppe. The mysterious woman told me not to photograph them and walked on. I waved Darcy over, who translated the shopkeep, who told me that the smoke drives away bad spirits from your place of business.
We walked on. I wanted a Kyrgyz hat for Grant Paris. I had only seen men age 50+ wearing them, younger urban Kyrgyz are not at all into traditional garb. We found a few hat vendors, but I didn’t like what I was seeing, and besides they were all too small. My father’s head is so big that his high school football helmet had to be specially made- fortunately we are big guys and it doesn’t look too disproportional. Earlier in the day, lapis lazuli had popped into my head. It is a talismanic rock that people wear for much the same reason as one might pay to fumigate their stalls- to avert the evil eye. Lapis is used to make “the most perfect color” of paint, a dark blue that has made it onto contemporary Kyrgyz and Kazakh mosque domes as well as the “haint blue” of bottle covered “spirit trees” in the American South. This information was all sloshing around in the back of my mind when I saw the biggest, bluest Al Kalpak I had seen yet. “That thing? 150 son ($2.15).” It fit like a charm. The rest of the day many, many older men and women looked at me with undisguised delight and giving me the thumbs up. Many young men looked at me completely flabbergasted. Many younger women giggled. With the extra large Am Kalpak I am a 7 feet tall white man, which may have something to do with it. But I think the older folks really got a kick out of someone from a younger generation rocking their style. Conversely, the younger guys seemed surprised that any younger guy would do such a thing. Judging by the gals’ positive response, I wonder if the guys could get away with it if they just owned it.
Chris was looking for a distinctive wool sweater to keep warm in the mountains and remember the trip by. There were none available for sale! We spoke with a woman who made wool socks and she said that there was no demand, due to American-style imports from China. Amy, who has worked in Haiti, reported to us how there was once a pretty distinctive local textile industry in Haiti, but during the Kennedy administration Haiti started getting hand-me-down t-shirt “aid”, which ended that industry. A t-shirt is still called a “Kennedy” in Haiti, apparently. Same thing happened to Haitian rice farmers with Korean rice aid after a recent hurricane. Maybe Christopher will find a sweater he likes in Osh.
On the way to lunch from the bazaar, a Kyrgyz man came up to us. He was obviously drunk, flicking a spot on his neck to indicate his drunkenness to us. Darcy reported that this goes back to a legend about a man who was of great service to the czar. He was offered one wish in exchange. “I want free vodka for life!”, the man said. So he was given a tattoo, on the neck, and any time he’d walk into a bar he’d point to the tattoo and the tab was on the Czar. Amy said that the lymph nodes on the throat take part of the brunt of the stress of processing alcohol, which is interesting.
Day 9
We woke up at 5am to head to Arslanbob. It felt like old times in a weird way. There have been so many times in my life when I wake up before dawn, leap out of bed and leave my partner to drive for 2-3 hours for work in the forest. It always feel like I’m cheating Death when I do this, because spending a long weekend in the city with a lover and then taking a week of solitude in nature while drawing a paycheck feels like I’ve hacked the system, like I’m drinking more deeply of the essence of life than anyone has a right to. It definitely constitutes “burning the candle at both ends”… This time Darcy and friends came with me to the forest, making the experience even more rich. Thank goodness they came with, too, because the decade-long emotional buildup to me visiting Arslanbob has engendered such excitement in me that I could faint!
We flew from Bishkek to Osh. The conveyor belt destroyed my backpack. Wanted a new one anyway.
Darcy and I went dress shopping for her in Osh, to satisfy our hosts and their conservative Uzbek sensibilities. She ended up getting one of the dashing unisex vests that are part of the national uniform. On the way back to the bus stop, we witnessed a lot of edible forest gardens in 300 sq ft front yards and productive grape arbors over every driveway. Walnuts, apples, elders, raspberry, Jerusalem artichokes, horseradish, lots of fragrant roses and chickens too.
We had to hop 3 standing room only buses to Arslanbob. Windbreaks at every edge of every field, cows tethered in harvested fields, at even spacing, to eat up the stubble and fertilize before the next planting. There was corn, cotton, rice, hay and alfalfa being rotated between small holdings. As we got deeper and higher into the mountains, buildings were increasingly made of cob and plaster. Living fences were pollarded for firewood and building materials. Many Kyrgyz around us, both the bus and on their donkeys and horses were on their phones, talking using WhatsApp.
We could tell Arslanbob was close because suddenly the deserty rangeland was getting shrubby oaks, more grassy forage and then walnut groves marching up the drainages.
We got dropped off in the main square and pointed to the CBT (community based tourism) office, where Hayat was waiting for us with a briefing. His take on the legend of the great paradise gardener Arslanbob, who planted this 40,000 acre food forest one thousand years ago, is that he was Persian. Others say he was an Arab, Hayat explained, but that didn’t make much sense to him as Arabs were mostly pastoralists back then but the Persians had a strong orcharding tradition.
The Quran hadn’t been translated into a local language here until the 90s, and people talked to trees, prayed to the lake and did commerce with a waterfall wizard up until that time. “When we got the Quran in Uzbek, we realized we’d made some mistakes,” he chuckled, “but that’s okay.” He said he had asked around for us about Sufis and shamans who might like to meet us. Apparently this was a highly unusual request but he had tracked a few down for us. His aunt had been a Kumalak master, actually, people came from far and wide to consult her oracle, but unfortunately she was recently dead. The Uzbeks don’t like shamans OR Sufis, he explained- they consider them no better than diabolists. But there are still a few around, keeping to themselves, and generally people don’t bother them because they’re part of the traditional culture here.
He directed us to stay at the farm of an English teacher, a devout Muslim who could tell us more about the eponymously named patron saint of the village. We spent awhile moseying around the place. Virtually every plant was recognizable from a textbook forest garden. Giant walnuts towered over us, with lemon balm, thornless blackberries, cherries, plums and pears growing between and underneath. The valley is one big forest garden, and sprawls into less tamed reaches further up for several miles. Our host tells us we brought this rainstorm, and thank you because it hadn’t rained in months and they needed it.
Plov for dinner again. The mutton is good but it gets stuck in my teeth.
We talked through the widespread permaculture fantasy of starting a retreat center, and decided that the virtue of hospitality and Air B and B are more reasonable and accessible for most of us.
HOLY SHIT what a day. We are staying a few extra days in Arslanbob, this place is off the hook! Will write about it in a bit. Also the only phone that works here doesn’t and can’t have WhatsApp or messenger, my apologies for being unusually unresponsive to texts, but email still works.
Day 10
We rose early and had breakfast with an older French lady and a thirty something British couple who were all staying at the same CBT homestay. I was full of energy and stretched and did 100 push-ups before I could sit down, then got frustrated because breakfast was pancakes and I couldn’t eat it and we had had this conversation with them last night. I went down the street and bought a liter of home made kefir for $0.30 and it was all good.
We climbed through the winding streets that quickly turned into footpaths. Winter squash were climbing up into the apple trees in some yards. Mountain streams roll down everywhere and are diverted for irrigation by pipes and swales but crisscross the road still many times. The clouds parted for a bit, and wow what a view! The mountains ahead were much larger than my Appalachian sensibilities are used to!
We descended into a gorge to bathe in the “small” waterfall (23 meters, quite large actually). Snowmelt pouring down will really give you freezer head. After I dried off the party climbed into the walnut “forest” proper.
We hiked through the walnut forest, learned about its history and management, and met the people who make it go.
Our guide’s name was Zair, a 26 year old farmer, tour guide and father. When he’s not guiding he is growing potatoes for his family, four kids. He got ahead of the curve financially on an abundant walnut harvest last year and has started building his family a house, currently they all live with his parents.
The forest is quite obviously and beautifully a massive anthropogenic silvopasture. Cows and horses were grazing in different paddocks under the shade of a Juglans regina overstory. Greek walnut, English walnut, Persian walnut, Carpathian walnut, its all the same, people just call it by whatever culture was kind enough to share it with them. The bark is white, like Juglans cinerea (American butternut). The walnuts we saw seemed to range from 80-300+ years old, though some of the older ones could be older as they bore the mark of being formerly pollarded, growing in humongous, bubbly basal trunks with normal sized mature tree trunks growing out of those. Apparently new saplings are planted all the time above the existing forest- climate change dictates moving up the mountain? Also, people make quite a lot of hay, cut by hand with scythes, and they explained rotating pasture into hat for five year stretches to allow trees to naturally reseed themselves and we saw some of that. There’s a patchy mid story of three species of apples as well as hawthorns, cherries and plums, all of which are added together to make fruit leather! I bought 6 sq yards of it from an orchardist who was making it onsite for $3, their asking price. The fences are metal strand between poles that are often pollarded (living and regularly pruned for firewood at breast height) black locust.
Zair told us that Arslan-bob means “like a tiger”, and that this Persian hero who they sometimes refer to as “the garden man” actually started another one of these massive fruit forests in Turkestan during his lifetime. He climbed 1500 meters to pray on a rock outcrop every morning and then would dig swales and plant trees. He was killed by his treacherous Pagan brother in law, a hunter who sniped him with an arrow while he was praying because he didn’t want the valley converted to Islam. That didn’t work, exactly, because they built him a mausoleum and named the town after him. Incidentally we visited his resting place, and it is awesome. People go to pray there on Fridays, and it is adorned with two half moons and in the middle a giant set of wild mountain sheep horns! Naturally I will have to investigate this other Arslanbob, Zair confirmed he had visited and that it is the same scene over there, trees planted by the garden man 1000 years ago and a culture that has co-evolved with it.
We got to a ridge and our jaw dropped. This artificial forest type that feeds the people just goes on and on as far as the eye can see. Zair said that if one valley has bad harvest, like his did this year, pickers go help harvest in other valleys. We passed women 50 feet up in the tree at eye level with our path, shaking nuts down to young children who picked them up. Packs of young girls roamed the pastures, picking up a kilo here and a kilo there to pay for their school supplies. On the way down I had another apple product from a lonely vendor by the waterfall, milled apple flour, which was quite tastey.
Other points of interest:
-Where the ground is flat, people sometimes interplant potatoes as a subsistence crop with the trees, but only if there are only smaller fruit trees and not walnuts. Allelopathy?
-people never cut down walnut trees
-it is recommended to drink black tea if you are a tourist and you want to eat the melon here. Central Asian melons are to die for, but I guess foreigners sometimes get upset stomachs if we eat them alone or while we drink water.
-Paganam harmala is the other incense they use for smudging…. hmmm……. that choice of species raises a lot of questions.
-these folks speak Uzbek and many wear Uzbek caps, which are smaller than the Kazakh and Kyrgyz hats we’ve talked about so far.
-after the first month of walnut harvest, landless people come glean what’s left
-I bought a kilogram of freshly cleaned nutmeats for $4. A homesite in the city is $350, and the population is expanding. A hectare of productive land is much more expensive, $36,000.
-They conspicuously weren’t growing Cannabis. They did until the collapse.
-the walnut harvest around Arslanbob is normally 150,000 tons. 50 tons only this year due to blizzard in May.
-they cook and heat their homes with wooden sticks, coal and yes, burning trash
-they grow these fast growing columnular poplars as street trees for dimensional lumber and firewood
Day 11
Short post. Today we hiked and changed homestays. Zair took us up to Holy Rock, a few thousand meters above the village. If the condition of the rangeland within the walnut silvopasture was better than expected, the open range above the current tree line was worse. Cows roamed everywhere, and there was hardly an insect or plant above 2 inches until we got far enough above town that grazing pressure diminished a bit. The cows are generally on their way down to eat hay in town, but there are enough springs up there that cows with wanderlust still drifted around on impossibly steep contour trails. A bit of bright green algae grew in the headwaters of the springs, and I decided not to dedicate the days of dysentery it might take to integrate the microbial community that the algae pointed to into my own microbiome.
An eagle 🦅 circled overhead as we pulled ourselves up on the giant, natural stone altar that The Garden Man used to pray on. Somehow it was much windier on that spot. We looked up at the deceptively far away peak, known as Babash-Ata (“the Head of the Garden”), from where the saint/Demi-God is said to have thrown the fruit nut seeds to plant the forest. Maybe that would work for wind-dispersed seeds like cottonwood, thistle or dandelion, but it would have been a Herculean task to throw walnut and apple seeds that far. From Holy Rock, we could see other walnut forest villages in other drainages, as well as a flat plateau that had been cleared for potato production. In anticipation of further global heating, government workers are planting the walnut fruit forest higher and higher into the area that currently is mostly treeless. The mostly treeless areas are not completely devoid of vegetation. You still see the occasional barberry dog rose and juniper. The type of agriculture matches what the landscape position and proximity to town can sustain. In retrospect (early 2024), I think this barberry may habe been Berberis nummularia, which has uses in TCM and has been found near Osh. The locals said they use the berries culinarily.
On the way down the mountain, we passed through homesteads with large gardens. At the first more urban style home (still made of cob and earth plaster, as are most of the houses and barns here), a eurobus pulled up. Many women in headscarves and female children poured out of the bus as Kyrgyz pop music blared from the speakers.
Day 12
As a slightly apocryphal version of a true story goes, Winston Churchill said “Ah-salaam alekum, comrade Stalin. Would you like some guns to fight the Nazis?” Rolls Royce had asked him to broker a deal with the Communists, specifically to trade guns for walnut burls from Arslan-bob. Walnut veneer is useful for paneling the interior of fancy cars. The Red Guard came and harvested all the walnut burls, and the Arslanbob agroforesters patted mud onto the wounds of the trees, which healed over nicely.
The people of this village have a long history of dodging the draft and otherwise sidestepping oppression. Alexander the Great came through nearby city of Markhamat, and they preemptively sent a load of walnuts to him to curry favor and avoid invasion. Alexander was satisfied. It was pointed out to us that if that story were true, then walnuts were already here 1000 years before the Garden Man. Perhaps this is where Juglans regia is originally from, our story teller reasoned. They then went on to argue that Arslanbob’s contribution to the landscape was digging swales to improve the productivity of the forest. Later, Alexander dumped his wounded soldiers in a nearby town “Jaradad”, assuming they’d die, and moved on. But they got better eating the walnuts and fruit and caught up with the main army and praised the walnut for saving their lives. Impressed at the walnut’s curative powers, Alexander dispatched some of the walnuts enthusiasts back to Arslanbob to take nuts and plant them in Greece. Hence the Russians and others know Juglans regia as Greek walnuts. Later, Chengis Kahn was moving through. The villagers got word that he was kidnapping all the women from other villages, so they built the “Maiden Refuge”. This was a second village further up the mountain, out of sight of Arslanbob. When the knights of the khanate rode through, the villagers said that the women had already been taken by raiders, and thus a generation of women was spared from slavery.
We got more details on the legend of the Garden Man by talking to Hayat. He was sent by the Prophet Muhammad to convert this village after a failure to launch by missionary Ibn Abbas. He lived to be 400 and was partially successful in this mission. His body was hard, like metal, and impervious to enemy arrows. Over the course of his life many people who favored Zoroastrianism over Islam tested this with assassination attempts. Somewhere between 1110 and 1120 ce, someone thought to bribe his wife with jewels to find out the hero’s hidden vulnerability. She asked her husband, and he said his body softened during morning prayer, which is finally where they got him.
As I write this, we listen as the loud music from an all-day wedding goes silent. The singsong call to evening prayer is heard. Eventually the wedding music started up again.
The wild ram horns that adorn the Garden Man’s tomb are a primary symbol of Zoroastrianism, incidentally, and it is very odd that they have been left to stand all this time. Hearing this detail, we thought back to yesterday when a smiling man in traditional dress appeared suddenly out of the bushes, by the tomb. Was he a guard against desecration of the gravesite? Yes actually, says Hayat. He let us peek inside the locked mausoleum… The grave site inside is covered in a white blanket or sheet.
We heard another take on the etymology of Arslan-Bob’s name. Arslan=lion, bob means gate or door, and is added to people’s names in these parts who have brought something new to humanity and brought us through a transition, or door.
Day 13
To learn more about the agricultural system here, we took a day hike to potato plateau in the morning. We hoofed it up a narrow foot path up the western side of the valley that annually sees thousands of cows, horses, sheep and goats led up and down it. Towards the top, it gets too steep for grazing animals except on the switchbacks, and the understory gets blessedly rank with grasses and forbs, many unknown (to me) species that I have learned to at least visually identify. Probably the closest to ecological reference conditions you could find anywhere for this forest type. A family of badgers is said to reside on that hill, and sharp shooters recently killed a pack of chicken-stealing hyenas there, en masse. The lower slope was the site of some failed coppice agroforestry efforts that would have supplied much needed fencing, thwarted as usual by free roaming cows, underfunding the forest rangers, lazy farmers and some crooked bureaucrats- institutional inertia, in a word.
Here are some numbers to help get your mind around what it’s like. There are 16000 people in this agricultural town and 20000 ruminants. People rent land for 1000 som/hectare (69 som/USD). There are 60,000 hectares of walnut-fruit silvopasture, and probably that much again in treeless pasture and potato field. There are also 3 smaller forest villages that are currently depopulating, as young people move to big cities, or to Arslanbob, where an industrious person can stitch together year after year of seasonal gigs in tourism, cob barn building, haying, potatoes, irrigation, mushroom picking, walnut harvesting, and shepherding. Tourism makes the difference. The air is cleaner and the scenery far more picturesque here than in Bishkek or the Fergana Valley cities, and there’s a fair number of 15 by 20 foot summer homes made of cob and round wood that people from Osh and Jalalabad stay in.
Everybody who lives here year round assists in harvesting or processing at least some nuts, it would seem. If you have a place to stash them and watch tv, you pick the nut meats yourself and wait a few months before selling so the price will go up. Turkish businessmen buy them that way. Chinese investors buy them en mass unprocessed to plant in orchards just across the border. These days the market wants the “soft walnut”, as opposed to the hard. Hard walnut phenotype grows tall and straight and has both a harder wood and harder nut shell than the soft walnut. You’d think those would be great qualities for veneer and dimensional lumber, but only the soft trees make burls and that’s where the veneer money is at. Plus the pickers obviously prefer soft nuts that you can crack and clean in your hands, without tools. And there’s a piece of furniture called a “marriage box” that couples sit in that is much easier to make out of softwood. And the poplar here grows much faster than walnut and very straight, making itcthe easy choice for roundwood, and people down in the Fergana Valley plant it everywhere as a windbreak too. Soooop hard walnut is out of style. Nobody’s cutting them down though, as that is both illegal and taboo.
Every silvopasture renter has to give a kg of soft nuts to the rangers for their reforestation efforts. They grow seedlings out in pots for three years, then plant them out two per hole. The rangers really need to fence these precious seedlings as cows defoliate them in late summer when they run low on other forage. So far, CBT (community based tourism, an awesome organization that I would like to volunteer for) has been unable to convince the rangers or farmers to fence new saplings. It comes down not just to money and importance, but prioritization. The rangers are also planting the wild apples and cherries, and mostly just the red cherries as there is a good market for juicing those, the yellow and green cherries not so much. The dog rose hips sell for 20 som/kg, economically hard to persuade American adults that these are worth picking. Note to self: any selected varieties of Rosa canis?
The potato plateau was more heterogeneous than I expected, with patches of pasture, walnuts and potatoes interspersed. For the non-walnut land there’s a 4-4 year rotation of potatoes, then grass and alfalfa. Back in the day, Russia would trade farmers cars for cows and potatoes, and the Soviets cleared the whole plateau for potatoes. Later they revisited that decision and terraced the steeper pieces with favorable aspect and put it back in walnut. We saw those trees, they had just come into production after 20-30 years. Back then, the rangers had helicopters and sprayed the orchards and forest to control gypsy moths (Lymantria dispar), now the underpaid rangers just wait for a big hatch and then light giant bonfires at night – “like a moth to a flame”, indeed.
A little more *garden man* lore. Arslan-Bob’s birth name was Solomon Farsi. And we were told that the mountain peak Babash-Ata actually meant “father of the gardener”, and Arslanbob was remembered as being strong like lion particularly for throwing seeds from the mountaintop, which seems ridiculous but what do I know. Athletes here will often say something like “Arslan-bob give me strength!” before starting a foot race or wrestling match, and believe it or not, every Eid the old timers from neighboring forest villages come and make animal sacrifices to Arslanbob at his tomb, instead of to Allah. The mullahs are none to fond of this, as you might imagine.
After the hike we had lunch. Despite the distance from Moscow, all these Turkic language cafeterias will serve you gretchka aka toasted buckwheat prepared like brown rice, if you prefer that to noodles, dumplings or white rice. I love that. There were five different styles of central Asian men’s hats represented by the patrons of the little restaurant, and at least that many patterns of head wrap for women. I must say all this head gear is growing on me. The women all look very fetching and the men look very dashing. Their myriad gold teeth complete the look.
We visited the NTFP (non-timber forest product) shop that CBT helped start. I bought some foraged tea of St. John’s Wort, Asian mint, some kind of white flower and a native species of colt’s foot. I also bought a bag of dried morels that I plan to rehydrate and fry with Kyrgyz garlic and foraged walnut oil. This I will cook for my friends at a “debriefing Central Asia party” in a few weeks in Athens. We also spoke with a shaman in the afternoon, but you’ll have to ask about that privately if you want to hear about it
Day 14
Simple travel day. Amy and Christopher have to head back to Cincinnati before too long, and we have some sites to visit up this way so we all hired a taxi to drive back to Bishkek. Before leaving Arslan-bob the driver was handed a 2 kg package of very carefully concealed “eggplant”, the handoff of which was accompanied by many furtive glances between everyone. After that it was 12 harrowing hours of aggressively cutting off truckers to the tune of Europop and Muslim boy bands. We came to a full stop many times for extensive herds of cows, sheep and cowboys. The herders have first dibs in walking down the highway, above and beyond even motorized interstate commerce. The route snaked through lowland ag fields flanked by walnut trees and wild Cannabis to windy passes threaded through snow capped peaks. I was singularly awestruck by these massive rocks at the roof of the world, somehow. Splashes of orange on the hillsides above the stream on the way down to Bishkek heralded my first wild sighting of sea buckthorn. I listened to the better part of Ian Bank’s “Surface Detail”, which is my second Culture novel
Now we are staying at a lovely air b and b on Manas in Bishkek, going to have to give them a bad review on the website though as they were dishonest about the number of beds and almost stood us up.
Day 15
Today was another travel day, but we managed to have an interesting experience in a Bishkek bazaar, and Darcy and I bade a pleasant farewell to Amy and Christopher in Almaty.
It should be noted that all of us have acclimated to the dirty air of Bishkek, and didn’t mind it nearly so much as before.
Christopher still wanted a sweater, or something, so we walked from our Air B and B to the bazaar before catching out taxi to Almaty. This was the same bazaar that I wrote about earlier, where we had seen those Ghostbuster ladies burning juniper. I was kind of hoping to find a lapis lazuli amulet, seeing as how we were not far from Afghanistan. I also had it on my mind to find maral root (Rhaponticum carthamoides) for Caty Crabb. I am always interested in understanding more adaptogens, and maral root has an international reputation. How interesting to find a respected adaptogen in Asteraceae!
After sifting through many stalls selling shoes, shirts, plastic toys and other stuff that didn’t hold any interest for me, I came across an herbalist’s table. They had a lot of wildcrafted, dried but colorful-looking vegetation laying out in plastic sacks. I caught sight of a bushel of Syrian rue bundles. Syrian rue (Peganum harmala) has so much folklore and speculation about it being the original Soma that when I learned that Central Asian shamans use it for incense, (not to mention the elicit use by American psychonauts), I had half a mind to seek it out. So I picked some up to try a tea of the foliage. So with Darcy translating, the pair of us good-naturedly haggled with the old grannies, because that’s what you do. In our experiences to date in the Bishkek bazaar, successful haggling consists of talking interestedly with the vendor about their product while remaining non-committal towards their asking price until they decide they like you, and offer to double the amount they give you for that same price.
At some point on during our conversation with the herbalist, I looked down at my tattered trail running shoes and saw a basket of roots. They were black, and had that look of a shallow, laterally growing root that has a series of evenly spaced stem scars on the upper side from successive years of aerial growth. Asking the herbalists what it was for, they said it was to make you strong, and smart, and would help a feeble person get well when they were sick. Sounded like maral root, and was the only root at the stall that I couldn’t otherwise positively ID. She gave me 350 g for 200 som, about $3, saying this was enough to make a gallon of vodka tincture and that this stuff was super strong. Optional side quest success, achievement unlocked.
We had 5 hour trip back to Almaty, and discussed many things. Chiefly among the day’s conversations were discussions of the methodologies and ethics of doing solidarity between our communities (American, anarchist, DIY, organic) with communities in the Global South, or maybe more specifically the Second World if that’s still a term that’s appropriate to use. Basically, inquire into the desire of people you want to help, to see what their needs and wants are, as well as the assets they have that you can leverage together to meet those desires. Make sure the materials and skills for whatever aid you’re sharing are already present in some form in the community, to avoid setting up a dependency on super-rich donors and to support their autonomy. And don’t do the work that they can do themselves. This conversation kept presenting itself because we have a strong and growing sense that we’ll all be back here, and that we’ll maybe help Arslan-bob peeps do a micro-hyrdro workshop (more than a thousand residents have said they want it, there are lots of cars and skilled mechanics who could manufacture such for themselves if they saw one functioning well, and were taught how). If after asking around people might be interested in a rocket mass heater and firewood pollarding workshop, using their own cob tech and the locust trees within the silvopasture’s fencerows, that would be fun and probably appropriate too. Arslan-bob people want more firewood and electricity than is legally and ecologically available, currently, so they’re burning coal and trash. Sharing this tech would be a way for us to pay homage to a place that we’ve come to dearly love. Also, we explored Darcy’s desire to build a better yurt platform at Black Locust or Little Canada in Meigs County, Ohio. Is there some way to incorporate a rocket mass heater into the design? And something Chris said sparked an alteration to my Lloyd Library research fellowship application- I think that if I get that proposal funded, I will work with Solomon Gamboa to develop his soil map-based ecological site descriptions for SW Ohio and SE Indiana, by filling out ground flora information in those profiles, to show landscapers and foresters and range management people what would be suitable to agroforestry management on these different ESD’s. Would still be doing the same research, basically just building on a worthy project that is already underway instead of mucking around with an independent demonstration site. Helping with terrestrial ecosystem classification and management recommendations for my home bioregion fun work.
In Almaty we checked in to the Nice Hostel, which is $5/night for something slightly nicer and more spacious than a Japanese pod hotel. We walked the wide boulevards of Querus rober (European white oak) and oil money-financed public art and took in the evening air. This was Amy and Christopher’s last 2018 night with us in Central Asia, and we had a tasty dinner and recapped the experience to date. We got rather giddy reflecting on our time together, and look forward to couch surfing each other’s places in the not too distant future.
Rhaponticum carthamoides, “maral root”
Asteraceae
Saw this at an herbalist’s table at the bazaar in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. They said they harvested it from around the famous and scenic alpine lake, Issyk Kul. They said if you needed more strength and concentration, this plant was very useful. 100 g in 1 L of vodka, left in the dark for three weeks, and a dropperful/day if you were well. If you were recovering from illness, stepping the dosage up by a dropper full/day every day until you reached 14-16 droppers full, and then stepping it down every day to nothing. Picked up a bit for Caty and myself to play with. Looking at pictures of the plant in the wild, it is bodacious- large, strong and beautiful looking. We didn’t turn out to have time for Issyk Kul on this trip so a picture of the root is alI got right now.
Malus sieversii, “yellow wild apple”
Rosaceae
Will be updated with more pics when CS gets a chance to upload them.
Lots of debate about apple systematics, but in Arslan-bob, the locals as well as the highly regarded NGO Flora and Fauna International deem Malus sieversii to be “the yellow one”. Growing from 12-35 feet tall. This decently sized, un-grafted apple tasted really good every time I picked one. There wasn’t the startling diversity in fruit quality I had been led to understand was the norm by Michael Pollan- I assume because the agroforesters cull all the ones people dislike the taste of to make room for more productive specimens, as well as walnuts and cherries. The M. sieversii didn’t produce fruit in Almaty this year due to a late freeze killing the flowers (a danger we advocates of perennials should probably discuss more imho), so we didn’t get to compare from the two systems- this time.
Peganum harmala, “Syrian rue”
Nitrariaceae
I picked up a bundle from the Kyrgyz herbalist’s table. She said you can make tea or a smudge/smoke bath out of the foliage. Pictured in bundles next to bundles of Juniperus, which are used similarly. Out of nowhere, a Russian hipster walked by and whispered “Did you know, you can make ayahuasca out of that? The seeds I mean.” “Yes, I suppose one could.” Some alkaloids of this species’ seeds are monoamine oxidase A inhibitors (MAOIs), and occur in unusually high concentrations. That’s one reason why some people like it- these alkaloids potentiate triptamines from mushrooms or whatever- and makes a “trip” last much longer. Sounds exhausting!
The seeds had already shattered on the bundle I left with. The herbalist said it is found abundantly in sub-alpine meadows and is finished growing for the year.
I am not familiar with this Nitriaceae family at all, so am very curious. My friends in the deserts out West are probably all too familiar with it.
Incidentally, I think this plant is referred to as growing in Jerusalem by Roman sell-out son-of-a-bitch Flavius Josephus. He refers to it as so powerful that you have to harvest it by tieing a dog to it and letting the dog pull it out, because if you uprooted the plant it would magically kill you. There’s probably a few layers of anti-Semitic, anti-Sicarii symbolism going on there, knowing that ass hat Josephus. Nobody digs the roots of the perennial Syrian rue in its native habitat, except to eliminate the medicine from the landscape.
-BBJ
From Wikipedia:
Its common English-language name came about because of a resemblance to rue (which is not related). The plant’s seeds are especially noteworthy because they have seen continual use for thousands of years in the rites of many cultures. The plant has remained a popular tool in both folk medicine and spiritual practices for so long that some historians believe the plant may be the ancient “soma” (a medicinal aid that is mentioned in a variety of ancient Indo Iranian texts but whose exact identity has been lost to history).
It was first planted in the United States in 1928 in New Mexico by a farmer wanting to manufacture the dye “Persian red” from its seeds. Since then, it has spread invasively to Arizona, California, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Texas and Washington. “Because it is so drought tolerant, African rue can displace the native saltbushes and grasses growing in the salt-desert shrub lands of the Western U.S.”
Juglans regia, “English/Persian/Greek/Arslan-bob walnut”
Juglandaceae
This post is a stub, I’ve spilled a lot of ink about it to date and will say more later. There are better pictures to come.
The people in Arslan-bob eat a modest amount of walnuts. I was warned that if I ate it the way people eat bread (as a big part of one’s diet) that I would get nosebleeds because it is “too strong”, and that it wasn’t good to eat them when you’re sick, because they would “feed the illness”. It was poorly translated, but the warnings suggested a sort of TCM vibe. Not sure I took anywhere near the full meaning, but this makes me think again about soaking nuts.
Quercus robur, “common oak”, “pedunculate oak”, “European oak”, “English oak”
Fagaceae
A common street tree in Almaty, Kazakhstan, this tree is native from the British Isles east to the Caucasus Mountains and south to the northern Mediterranean. It is a white oak that important for construction and furniture making. Highly symbolic to human cultural groups throughout its range. People are hired to sweep its prodigious acorns off the sidewalks here with long-grasses brooms.
From Wikipedia:
Grandinin/roburin E, castalagin/vescalagin, gallic acid, monogalloyl glucose (glucogallin) and valoneic acid dilactone, monogalloyl glucose, digalloyl glucose, trigalloyl glucose, rhamnose, quercitrin and ellagic acid are phenolic compounds found in Q. robur. The heartwood contains triterpene saponins.
There were two flavors of Quercus robur toothpaste available at our favorite, normal grocery store in Almaty.
Paradise Ecological Services 