Greetings All!
My name is Cori, and my handle is Crescendo of Peace, which is also the name of our mini farm in rural Tennessee, and pretty much my mission in life since I was a kid.
I've been called a peacemaker since I was a child, have found myself in that role repeatedly within my family, my friends, my workplace and elsewhere, and although I am far from perfect in that regard, it is a natural part of my personality.
Yes, my buttons can be pushed, as anyone who knows me or follows me on FB can attest, but that is not the energy I choose to encourage in my own life or in others, nor do I wish to bring it here to Steemit. I really don't understand people who are combative by nature, much less abusive or dismissive of others, nor do I care to join them. I prefer to be mellow.
I was raised by parents who taught us not to judge others, but to accept them as they are, and as they present themselves. I do my best to follow that example, as it benefits me as much as it benefits others, and helps create a more peaceful world. Like the old song many of us learned as children - let there be peace on Earth, and let it begin with me.
My parents also taught us to read voraciously, to love learning, to be interested in and conversant in a wide variety of subjects, and to surround ourselves with just as interesting and wide a variety of people. This latter task has been tougher since we've been in rural Tennessee, as getting to know people here takes a whole lot more work than it does in a city setting. But we are blessed with wonderful friends and neighbors, and one of the things I love here is that the majority of Tennesseeans, whether native or moved here from elsewhere, default to politeness, which I would love to see spread more widely across our nation once again.
My parents had an amazing library as we were growing up, and many of my favorite books came from them, and from my sisters, as I was able to share equally amazing books with them later on. As a result, I am a lifelong learner, still interested in a vast variety of subjects, with real world experience in many of them.
As a small sampling, I have worked in a health food store and in a lumber company, as a property finder for a commercial real estate firm, as a ship-to-shore radio operator, as a stockbroker, as a municipal bond broker, as administrator in a publishing company, as a certified picture framer and gallery owner; and am or have been a sailboat racer, a long time SCUBA diver, photographer, researcher, writer and poet, artist, health advocate, traveler, animal lover, counselor and organic grower . . . and more.
It's been an interesting journey.
My primary focus these days is to teach people what I've learned along the way, including how to grow highly nutritious food in a small space easily and inexpensively, how to optimize health quickly with simple steps, how to grow, heal grief and past trauma, and come fully into our own as individuals, and much more to come.
I grew up in L.A. California, and lived in the Tampa Bay area for many years, so environmental and marine protection are longstanding passions of mine. I am an animal lover and advocate for wildlife, especially marine mammals, and for wilderness and threatened people and places the world over.
I am currently in Middle Tennessee, about an hour and a half from Nashville, on a small mini farm situated on the Calfkiller River, with my husband and our animals. We have roughly sixteen and a half acres, roughly twelve acres of which are diverse woods sloping down to our river frontage.
In the past six years, we have planted over a hundred fruit and nut trees and bushes, along with other perennials of many types, and we are making a bit of headway against the introduced invasive species that are outcompeting so many of our native species. My primary goal for our woods is to bring them, as much as is possible, back to the condition they would have been in prior to European discovery and the exploitation of this continent.
We are blessed that many of the original native trees and plants still grow here, some abundantly such as black walnut, native blackberries, red mulberries, various hickories and many oaks; while others are increasingly rare, either by overharvesting, such as American ginseng and goldenseal, or simply by being outcompeted for habitat and nutrients by invasive species.
Others are absent altogether, such as American chestnut, which was once the dominant species throughout the Appalachian Mountains, with fully one fourth of all trees being American chestnut. Literally one in four trees, throughout the region. The American chestnut, a majestic tree that provided abundant food and shelter for many species, and for the people who lived here, was all but wiped out by the introduction of chestnut blight from Chinese chestnut trees planted in the northeast for ornamental purposes.
The blight was first observed in 1904, and by the time of the Great Depression, in the 1930s, most of the great chestnuts were already dead or dying. Their loss destroyed an entire way of life, which is why the Depression hit so much harder in the South than elsewhere, because people had come to count upon the chestnut harvests for income, animal fodder and winter sustenance for many generations. Collateral damage indeed.
We initially planted three Dunstan chestnuts, in an effort to re-introduce chestnuts to our river habitat, and hopefully expanding out from ur place over time. The Dunstan chestnuts are supposed to be resistant to the blight, being a cross between American and Chinese chestnuts, then back-bred to American chestnut until their genetic makeup is mostly American.
Of our three trees, one failed the first winter, another died the following winter but came back from the roots, and a third was doing well until about a month ago, when one of our deer broke off the main trunk about halfway up. It has one branch that remained undamaged, and will probably resprout from the roots as well. I have little doubt that it will survive, but it underscores the need to fence our orchard and gardens against the deer, which, although we love them, are also immensely destructive. They did the same thing to one of our young pear trees, earlier this year, and broken and eaten branches and fruit are a regular and annoying occurrence.
Along with the chestnuts, we plan to reintroduce Allegheny chinkapins (a chestnut relative), elderberries, huckleberries, cranberries, service berries, American hazelnuts, and a whole host of medicinal and culinary herbs and mushrooms. We are doing our best to bring in as many of the rarer species as possible, with preference given to those that are food-bearing, medicinal, attractive to pollinators, attractive to beneficial insects, and/or provide food and habitat to wildlife.
My ultimate goal is for our property to serve as a seed bank, as animals and birds travel the length of the Calfkiller River and beyond, repopulating this part of Tennessee with the trees and plants that have disappeared or become all too rare. It is in all our best interests to protect the lands in our care, to improve them for wildlife and water retention, and to increase their value to future generations.
This is my way of making my own small corner of the world better than I found it, as this has been my personal motto for over a decade, and takes precedence over and above cleaning up the trash left by the previous owners. I hope in future to secure the rights to some of the devastated properties, left completely barren after mountain-top removal mining operations, and plant them in mixed chestnut, fruit, nut and herb habitats, dotted throughout the Appalachians, to serve as additional seed banks for our intertwined future.
It is my hope to ultimately host retreats and gatherings of like-minded souls who are willing to learn, to help us to bring this place back to what it once was, and to take what they have learned and apply it in their own lives, wherever that may take them.
I was greatly heartened last night, when I came across the post by @donkeypong, "Reforesting the Bald Spots: The Largest Amazon Reforestation Effort, Muvuca, and People Who Plant Trees." These are my people, this is my dream, and this is what I've been working toward in a myriad of ways for my entire adult life.
We also have several complementary businesses, but more about those later, as this is already too long a post.
For now welcome to our journey, which promises to meander into many varied and interesting places along the way!