Update from Falcon Creek

Rectangle panes of broken grass

2011-07-11T15:25:00.000-07:00


Self Heal


Self heal filling the "Herb Circle" garden - which is a space where the trees form a circle. This area is where we currently live till the house is built


Butterfly weed & Black eyed Susan

We've been learning to grow using perma-culture and are reading "Gaia's Garden" by Toby Hemenway. We are growing organically, but want to eliminate organic bug sprays and fertilizers. The plants in the first bed haven't needed any organic bug spray, but we did have to pick off some horn worms - not an overwhelming amount and none for a while. But the potatoes, beans and brassicas just were not in the right place at the right time. When you go into healthy woods, you rarely see plants destroyed by bugs, it's in balance. Nature knows how to grow plants without our help and people that study those systems have learned to come close to mimicking nature in many ways in the garden. A balanced garden in a balanced place shouldn't need to worry about pest control - organic or otherwise.

We planted the first of the food forests with things like golden currants, hazelnuts, walnuts, and about a dozen other varieties of nuts and fruit and native medicinal herbs. Even though it'll take years to build up the soil through composting and get important perennial plants and trees established, this year was an experiment and a good start. The bottom pasture has pathways mowed and the rest is gardens and wild areas. A plant that came up and hugs the gardens is a magnet for Japanese beetles. I'm trying to find it's name, but may have to wait till it blooms. There is no Japanese beetle damage in the garden just a few feet away. They are all on this mystery plant.


Plant Japanese beetles LOVE

Instead of rectangle panes of broken grass, the gardens are surrounded by a field of Queen Anne's lace, red and white clover, mullien, plantain, lemon sorrel, several types of thistle, comfrey, self-heal, butterfly weed, American bell flower, roses, elderberry, and many plants that haven't been identified yet.


Bottom land with Queen Anne's Lace


Tomatoes, peppers, basil and okra in the first bed

The oldest no till plot is doing the best because the soil was ready and is surrounded by so many wildflowers. The straw had broken down to a nice dark crumbly medium. The last no-till bed I put in was intended for next year, but I had no where to put the potatoes and beans, so they went in there. They aren't doing too well and poison ivy is growing everywhere. After the beans are done, I think I'll cover the whole thing again with straw, seed with red clover, just let it be and keep reading and learning. The second no-till bed I put in has volunteer red clover growing in big bunches and the plants that are near the clover are doing much better than the plants that are not.


Cabbage with red clover


Cabbage without clover about 15 feet away

So with our first baby step towards perma-culture, I can see that it will only get better from here. I hope one day to have one of those wild, mixed-up gardens I've seen in photographs that are so lush, abundant, healthy and in balance.


Big sunflower

Finally a house update

2011-06-29T16:32:00.000-07:00

I have wanted to do a "real" update on the house for a while, with information to help anyone thinking of using the dry stack building method. But with the actual work of building, getting gardens in, a booth at the Farmer's Market and trying to run a small business, there hasn't been anytime. There is already a lot of written information on this subject though and I'll share that, along with our personal experience with you.

Here are some things we ran into while building with concrete block. Concrete may not seem like a "green" building choice, but it will withstand extreme weather and the weight of building up around it with earth, or earth-berming. It also has a great deal of mass, which will greatly reduce the heating and cooling effort. Therefore less spewing pollution into the atmosphere and less work bringing in wood in our old age. Thermal mass in a house in the form of walls or floor will pull the heat out of the room in the summer and in the winter will store heat and give off slowly overnight night.

We originally were going to use the dry stack concrete block building method. Actually, really early on we were going to do slip form concrete method that Tom Elpel teaches. But the dry stack method was supposed to be easier and perfect for the novice.

After reading more about slip form, we also thought the rebar requirements would be too labor intensive, block seemed easier.   But after working with rebar, we found that bending the longer pieces isn't hard at all w/out a bending tool. I would like to build something with the slip form method now to compare.

Rob Roy's book "Earth-Sheltered Houses" is a good overview and detail of house building and one of the methods highlighted is the dry stack method. Like any one book though, you can't build a house after reading it alone. It was about the best book for starting out for us and from there we got more detailed books on plumbing, framing and roofing, plaster, solar power etc. His book is tattered and pages are falling out of the binding we've referred to it so much.

The USDA has a brochure on the dry stack method which is brief step by step.

There are videos and a rather poorly put together book at this site on dry stack method. We purchased all his materials and learned a few good tricks. He has created a better chart for block length and height than provided by the USDA, because he accommodates and teaches about wall growth. If you locate blocks that are square and uniform in size and want to build with this method, I begrudgingly suggest you purchase this over priced material. I think the price is ridiculously high for the book because it's so poorly written, more expensive than professionally written bound books and can't be sold used since it's in electric format only. I will admit he did have a few good tips in there that I didn't find anywhere else. If we were going to use this method for our house (we are currently building my mother-in-law's house), I wanted to try writing a better book and shoot a longer video that would take you from underground to roof.   If you've never done it before, you will not be able to build a house watching his videos or reading his book alone.

We were not impressed with the dry stack method however and dropped it. For us, it was much easier just to mortar blocks. I've since spoken with several people who have the same opinion, they tried it, but it's more trouble than it's worth if you can't find uniform blocks. However, the dry stack wall is supposed to be much stronger when surface bonding cement is applied than a standard mortared wall.

To start building with this method, you have to clean and sort each block by size. This entails either dragging them back and forth across the blocks below them on the pallet or using a broken piece of concrete block and knocking off the high spots, or as in the video mentioned above - using power tools. If you don't, of course the blocks won't lay level because you don't have mortar. The cleaning wasn't that hard, but took time.

Then we had to sort by size since you can only dry stack a similar size per row. Otherwise you'll end up with a space in that row that will drop the block in the above course down creating a chain reaction of un-levelness. There were 4 average block sizes in our total order. It is not easy to sort by size since the blocks are a different height depending on what part of block you are measuring. We measured blocks at the only two locations available for purchase in our area and the blocks were just as bad at both locations. The blocks we purchased were not remotely square, straight or the same height from one end of the block to the next. This was our biggest problem.

Metal shims do not easily bring your block to level as reported. Using sand to level was even worse as there was always that one big piece of "sand" to throw off level and you have to literally pick sand particles up, put the block down - nope still not level - repeat over and over. After trying two rows of the dry stack method, which took an excruciatingly long time, mortar seemed almost magical in it's ease and speed. After one row of mortaring, I got the hang of it and we started going much faster with laying block.

We watched mortaring videos on youtube over and over. This is one of the best videos I found. The first time through is too fast, but I would watch it after I mortared and picked up a nuance each time.

In addition to the difficulty of trying to get blocks level using the dry stack method, we ran into problems with the line levels themselves. After we kept running into problems with our elevation from one day to the next, we tested the levels. Two of the line levels were not accurate and two were. We also tried using a water level and that was not accurate enough either. We bought a transit that wouldn't "zoom" in far enough so that you could not even see to the other side of a small house and then borrowed a transit that would move up or down, changing the measurement greatly, when bringing it into focus (yes even with the screws being tight). So equipment tripped us up for a while till we discovered they were faulty and bought or borrowed tools that worked.

After laying block up to the 7th course, we hired some help that had scaffolding and with all those hands we finished. They were kind enough to leave the scaffolding behind so we can apply the surface bonding. Since some of the courses are dry stacked and some are not, we decided to go ahead and apply surface bonding to the walls. This will ensure their strength against the weight of the dirt that will back-fill the house to make it earth-bermed. With so many hands helping though, we forgot to put in a transom I wanted for the bathroom - oh well.

Here is a progression:

Jeffrey has just finished framing the south wall using a combination of old timbers we picked up at auction and new material. Some of the windows will be those we also picked up at auction.

Right now we are cleaning a big straight log we found down in the woods. It will be used as a vertical support post and will be beautiful between the kitchen and living room. Our neighbor is a woodworker and let us borrow his draw knife to clean off the sap wood. We are getting close to the heart wood and it's such a beautiful redish color. We are learning a lot about wood from him. He came over tonight and helped just about finish it. So this beauty is about ready to place.

We are trying to figure out what sort of horizontal support beam to use right now and are going back and forth. We are also debating on what to do about the floor. Originally we were going to do an earthen floor. A good bit of dirt for the floor has already been screened. However, my mother in law is paying rent and utilities and it can take several months to lay an earthen floor. I love earthen floors and will definitely have one in our house, but the money hemorrhage has to stop. Since we are so over due on building this house for her, we need to make a tough decision about the floor.

The interior walls will provide a good bit of mass and it's a small house. So I hope we aren't going to loose too much by not putting in an earthen floor. We are currently trying to find quicker methods of installing an earthen floor, but we may end up just putting in a traditional floor, perhaps using tile for a wee bit of mass.

In other news, the tomatoes, peppers and herbs look GREAT! The sunflowers are gigantic as are the jerusalem artichoke. Brassicas, potatoes and beans are fair to midland. Fruit trees and young elder trees took a beating from the 13 year cicadas, but my friend found a mature blooming elderberry on the bottom land. The wild oregano is in bloom everywhere and I've been trying to harvest a hand full of leaves when I pass the patch. We cleared a new path to a beautiful area of the creek with a natural water bowl and beach, and that will help make it easier to water the garden this summer. We've have learned to cook with arugula, I just planted it because it was supposed to be good for the carrots. The carrots didn't come up, but the arugula went crazy - and we are crazy about it. I am successfully growing gladiolus, my favorite flower, for the first time.

We've been learning all we can about perma-culture and setting up our systems. This is a good forum for that. I've been planting comfrey for chop and drop and left the area around the garden surrounded by queen anne's lace and all sorts of other wild flowers, clover, roses, butterfly weed etc. I"m learning about planting guilds and building up the soil. Trying to learn the difference between organic farming and permaculture. I think we are probably several years from a good permaculture influenced system, but we are going that direction.

Here is a video ideo with Helen Atthowe that I thought was nice. According to Paul Wheaton of permies.com, she is right up there on the permaculture pedestal with Sepp Holzer and Masanobu Fukuoka.

On a personal note... I am trying to get an herbal website going. I am stuck on the paypal shopping cart thing. If anyone would like to help me, I can trade herbal preparations or can teach about making them.

Bobcat Fever in cats

2011-05-23T11:26:00.000-07:00

We have lost two cats to Bobcat fever so we started doing all the research we could about this disease. Even though we prefer all natural solutions, we hadn’t found a way to keep ticks off of our animals. We tried several natural remedies but they didn’t work well or were too expensive to keep up with since we have so many animals. We tried apple cider vinegar in their water, but some refuse to drink it. Being in Missouri with lots of ticks and in an area known to have Bobcat fever, we reluctantly used topical drops while we kept researching.

We found out that Frontline drops do not repel ticks. They kill ticks after 48 hours and we were still pulling several ticks off of our cats a week. Bobcat fever, according to Oklahoma State University and Kansas State University (which have both been researching the disease), can be transmitted from a tick bite within 2-10 hours. So using topical flea and tick drops to prevent this disease will not necessarily work.

I’ve also read about a woman who had her cat on Frontline and kept the cat indoors in a major city (Kansas City), and somehow the cat still contracted the disease. So just keeping your cat indoors isn’t a guarantee that your cat will not get this disease if it’s in the area.

Bobcat fever, is a horrible disease that kills very quickly. From the website www.projecthelios.org

“The cat becomes depressed, withdrawn, relatively motionless, runs a very high fever (103 -107 F), & refuses to eat. The clinical description of “hemolytic crisis”, “tissue microphages with production of schizonts & invasive merozoites” & other academic jargon, basically means that while the cat burns with fever, becoming anemic & dehydrated, the disease rages through the body attacking blood vessels in all organs; heart, lungs, liver, kidney, spleen. Under such systematic attack the liver & kidneys quickly overload with damaged blood cells & the body becomes jaundiced. In the end phase, the cat begins to vocalize frequently & at greater & greater length, a heart-rending agonal cry, hemorrhages, & dies.”

After realizing that even the expensive drops weren’t protecting our animals, we really worked as hard as we could to find a solution. This is what we’ve been doing the last few months and so far it’s working better than Frontline.

The first thing we did was get chickens and they at least keep the ticks out of the immediate area. But our cats travel far and they go much further than the chickens.

At the door we keep a spray bottle filled with half Braggs unfiltered Apple cider vinegar and half water. Also at the door we keep a mason jar of Diatomacious earth. Every day before they go outside, they are treated with one of those. It may sound like it takes too much time, but it literally only takes seconds.

I put about 8 shots of the spray in my hand and rub the vinegar water down the cat’s back, wipe very carefully around their ears and near their eyes, under their chin, the belly and arm pits and most importantly on their hind end. Then I do a few more shots in my hand and wipe again. Most of the ticks we were finding were in the short, thinner hairs between their ears and eyes, on their rear end and in their arm pits. Wiping them down by hand only takes a few seconds and it’s better than outright spraying them, which they hate. They still aren’t too thrilled with the wipe down – but they are getting used to it.

Then at least twice a week, we apply the diatomaceous earth (D.E.). To keep a cloud of dust out of their lungs, I straddle over them and take out a pinch at a time and rub it in. Focusing on the same areas as I did with the spray. This also doesn’t take any time at all. It helps if you keep the D.E. jar full so you can easily grab a pinch with one hand and have the other hand free to hold the cat.

Every night, we check them thoroughly for any ticks. When I decided to use a bottle of cheap filtered apple cider vinegar that someone accidentally bought for me, we found a lot of ticks. As soon as I switched back to the “good stuff”, the tick count dropped again. When we pet them, we are doing a “love check” and check all the areas they typically get ticks. If we see them outside we rub them in those areas, we take any opportunity we can to check them.

The cats are getting used to being “man handled” everyday and are being much more cooperative. I did a lot of reading about what other people have done to deal with Bobcat fever when it strikes. I thought I’d share what I found. If we see the symptoms in our cats again, this is the protocol we’ll use.

When we lost our first cat to Bobcat fever, we learned what signs to look for. At first the cat was just a little lazy and didn’t want to eat, which wasn’t like him. The next day it was obvious something was really wrong. We took him to the vet and found out some of the signs to look for. These may be signs for other diseases, but in this area where Bobcat fever is known, if we see these signs in one of our cats again, we’re going to assume the worst and treat for Bobcat fever immediately.

Pull the eye lids back slightly until you can see the white of the their eyes, look for the eye to be bloodshot. You will be able to see the blood vessels on the underside of the eyelids, so make sure you are looking at the eyeball. They will be lethargic and not want to eat. Feel the ear for a fever. We don’t have a thermometer to check for a fever, but it’s pretty obvious when you hold the inside of their ear if they have one.

I found several people online that have successfully treated this disease. We started the protocol when the second cat got sick and she started to get well by the next day. Technically it was my mother in law’s cat and she wanted to take her to the vet, so we did. By the time we got there, Gracie was feeling so much better, she fought the vet so hard they couldn’t get her temperature. They wanted to keep her there and run tests. So we left her there. I hate to say it, but when we picked her up about 6 hours later, she couldn’t stand or hold up her head and was dead about an hour after we got home. Never again! Next time we’ll start the protocol and not give up on it. I should have stayed at the vets office with her to continue the treatment.

The most common successful treatment is using high doses of Monolaurin, an easy to obtain coconut derivative, which we now keep on hand at all times. It’s an anti-viral supplement that works directly on the virus by disrupting the conformation of the lipid bilayer, preventing adsorption to host cells. The supplement comes in capsules and 300 mg is added to 4 CCs of cat’s “Just born” milk replacement and/ or water and given every 1 – 2 hours for the first day and night. Some continue this for 3 days or until the cat is fighting horribly and obviously better.

I have read many cases that have successfully been treated using this method, some in conjunction with herbs mentioned below. The treatment regimens are slightly different from case to case and some have dropped the dosage to every 2-4 hours by the 2nd or 3rd day as improvement is seen.

Some also give an herbal anti-parasitic twice daily (made with 5 drops black walnut shell, 3 drops wormwood, 2 drops cloves -- all tinctures). Or some have used "Cat's Claw" glycerin extract along with the hourly doses of Monolaurin and a blend called Recovazon for nutritional support. Cat's claw inhibits TNFalpha production and scavenges free radicals: a role in cytoprotection. Herbal extracts can be obtained in vegetable glycerine form so it’s safe for animals. Next time, we will work with Cat’s claw and Monolaurin and alternating with the “just born” cat’s milk and water.

If necessary, we'll make a trip to the vet for IV fluids and antibiotics such as Doxycycline or Baytril while continuing the natural treatment. After the cat recovers, most put them on a vitamin-mineral cat supplement, such as Pet-tinic, to build up their blood.

Dr. Ashley Allen at the University of Florida Small Animal Hospital has successfully treated this disease in a different way. First she used diuretics to rid the cat of fluid in their lungs and administered oxygen for two days. The cat became anemic and experienced severe gastrointestinal bleeding that resulted in two blood transfusions during his weeklong hospital stay. The cat had a low white cell count, probably due to infection. Treatment with antiprotozoal drugs, antibiotics and nutrition administered through a feeding tube continued until the cat improved. The protocol UF veterinarians used to treat the animal were reported at the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine’s annual meeting during a presentation.

I’ve also read of other vets whose treatment consists of IV fluids and antibiotics for secondary infections, as well as a blood thinner for DIC ("Disseminated Intravascular Coagulation"), a complication of the disease.

If anyone has come up with a better method of keeping the ticks off of cats, please share.

Since this month has been horrible for ticks, I wanted to pass this information along. I usually make a dusting sock with sulfur powder and baby powder to keep the chiggers off of me, but I’ve replaced the baby powder with D.E. and hope this dusting powder will help keep the ticks off of us as well. I put this powder in an old sock and pat on my ankles and underwear line, then dress and dust my socks and clothes, then dust my shoes as well. I’ll let you know if this works for us.

I’ll be doing a house update soon, but in a nutshell, we’re still working on it ;-)

Fear of a date

2011-01-19T14:06:00.000-08:00

December 21, 2012, a date that strikes fear in the heart of so many people, prepared and unprepared. There is a danger in being afraid of a date. Wanting to be self-sufficient is certainly a life style choice and one that shouldn't be taken up in the spirit of fear. When that date comes and goes, and nothing happens, then what?

Who said the world will end on 12-21-12? The archeologists? It certainly isn't the Mayan elders. Ten minutes online will tell you that. From my research, they say that the date marks an astrological event. Their prophecy of the changing of the world, the world ending as we currently know it, or the time of the new sun, is a time period that spans many years. Some say the end of which could even be as late as 2020. They prophecy a change of times, along with some upheaval, but one where humans come out for the better on the other end.

Regardless of the predictions of the Mayans, or the countless others, shouldn't we just live the way humans should live? Not out of fear of punishment from an angry God or fear of catastrophe. Though it is a good motivator ;-) I do feel more motivated to work faster because of the state of the world these days, but am excited about being alive during an event that only happens every 5,200 years.

We homestead because we don't want to be dependent, period. We live in the safest and most affordable place we can because we want to build something that will last and we'd like to be around to see our old age. The closer we get to self-sufficiency (and we are still a waaaaays off), the more freeing life becomes. When that date comes and goes, nothing changes for us. We'll still keep working towards that goal.

A big volcano could erupt, meteors could bombard the planet, an earthquake could swallow us up, or the poles could shift and all our preparations wouldn't matter. However, the freedom and security that comes from having food stored, productive gardens, not being financially obligated to anyone and a secure home covers many other scenarios. Much of that is still a dream for us, but we hold it, look at it and work towards it every day.


California State Univ. Permaculture garden

Do I personally think there will be a major natural or governmental disaster in my lifetime? I have to say yes, but when - who knows? Meanwhile, lets just work towards being the best humans we can be, feed ourselves with good organic home grown (or traded) food that we store for winter and a rainy day, cause no harm, use only what we really need, take care of the land, and wisely take precautions to protect ourselves - but all with a spirit of community and hope for a better future for everyone. Even if one day we have to wade through dust together while it settles.

Cattle panel shelters

2011-01-07T19:07:00.001-08:00

This weather has been incredible and we've been working on getting garden plots ready, getting supplies for temporary greenhouses and building shelters. We have a lot of glass won at an auction for "permanent" greenhouses, but for now we need to keep it simple and quick to be ready to get back to house building, but be ready for seed starting at the same time.

As soon as it's not freezing at night, we'll be able to lay the first course of blocks for Judy's house in mortar - which can't freeze at night. There are things you can do to keep the mortar from freezing, but there is other important work to do to, so we'll just wait a couple of weeks and get back to it. Everything is square and the "dry run" row of blocks looks good.

We took cattle panels and tarps to build a shelter over the door at the RV and used the same method to build a small shelter for some equipment. We tied the cattle panels to the luggage rack and arched it over the door/ fridge/ battery box area. Rebar ties were used to tie the tarp to the cattle panels. So far that is working well. When it's windy out though, the metal of the rebar ties sliding across the metal of the tarp rivets grating the metal of the cattle panels is quite the noise! Something is going on with my camera besides it no longer zooming and the photo of the new awning is gone.

We'll do the same basic thing, except with carpenters plastic, for a temporary greenhouse till the one of glass can be built.

Here is the little equipment shelter we built today though. The way it's built, we can pull the garden tractor and trailer straight in, then pull straight out.

Joys and hardships of starting from scratch

2010-12-13T10:12:00.000-08:00

The dream of building a simple homestead meets up every day with reality. In the dream, equipment starts, when things get done they stay done, our bodies have sufficient energy and learning from a book is all that is required to make something happen. In the dream, I would make herbal preparations to bring in a little income to the homestead and how hard can it be to build a website with a shopping cart?

In reality, equipment breaks at a regular pace and we're not mechanics, we get tired and sore, and not everything is covered in the books. In reality I don't have time to spend on online marketing and building a website is about to make me pull my hair out. Food and shelter have to be the top priority. So every day I have to think about what needs to be done to accomplish those goals and squeezing in everything else at the end of a long day.

I thought I'd try affiliate marketing on our blog, other homesteaders bring a little money home that way. There are many ethical businesses out there that we've used and I like. But do I spend time learning affiliate marketing, or do I learn more about seed saving and how to keep heirlooms from cross pollinating? Do I learn this shopping cart software or more about adobe plaster?

I gave learning to build a website a good old college try and the front page looks pretty good. But it's not connected to anything and now other bigger projects won't wait. It was not fun at all, so I'm putting it down for a while. Maybe when the garden prep work is done and it's too cold to build, I'll take it back up.

Taking up this life has been and is so rewarding and I wouldn't' trade it for anything. Some days it would be nice though if we weren't doing re-work or fixing things that were already fixed.

It was much cheaper and easier to bring in a local concrete truck for the footers instead of mixing 200 bags by hand. The weight of the concrete truck snapped our footer and gray-water drain lines and they have to be dug up and re-done.

The lines to the spring are frozen and blocked even though we thought they were drained. Just last night we heard a pop and now the water pump in the RV doesn't work. We had no running hot water, now we have no running cold water either.

Fortunately, the spring water comes out of the hill is about 55 degrees or so and doesn't freeze. We haul water by hand anyway, because I didn't want to drink water that flowed through a plastic pipe, now we'll just bring back more for dishwashing and such.

Sometimes I think that we are so slow and it takes forever to get something accomplished. Then I think about the day to day life of ancient man. They had to roll with the punches and things weren't that "instant" for them either. Progress is made eventually though and the rewards are great.

Winter won't last and spring will be here in the blink of an eye. Some of the no-till garden beds are ready and we'll keep building more. I love the idea of food forests, so anything that is shade tolerant will be started in the woods. It's been fun the last few days to get the seeds organized and I'll work on mapping today.

Like most people, we have such a handicap trying to start a self-sufficient life. My father didn't teach me how to build a house out of the surrounding materials because his father didn't teach him and and his father didn't teach him. My mother didn't teach me how to preserve food without canning because her mother didn't teach her and her mother didn't teach her. We don't have family around us all day to help with big projects like building a house, because people live in nuclear families now and go away from the home to work all day.

"Nobody has ever before asked the nuclear family to live all by itself in a box the way we do. With no relatives, no support, we've put it in an impossible situation." ~Margaret Mead

"The lack of emotional security of our American young people is due, I believe, to their isolation from the larger family unit. No two people - no mere father and mother - as I have often said, are enough to provide emotional security for a child. He needs to feel himself one in a world of kinfolk, persons of variety in age and temperament, and yet allied to himself by an indissoluble bond which he cannot break if he could, for nature has welded him into it before he was born." ~Pearl S. Buck

So now in our 40's, we're trying to learn everything that ancient man knew as a teenager and doing it mostly by ourselves. Thankfully we do have some great neighbors. We'll be glad when the house is built though so we can focus more on food production and the day to day tasks that go into this life.

The cistern is finally parged, so we'll have water at the house site and stored water that won't freeze. The blocks have arrived and we'll start laying up the walls for Judy's house very soon. We're just doing our best and that's all anyone can ever hope for.

The joy though is that it's so beautiful outside, to look up at the stars in a dark sky and the tall evergreens. Listen to the owls and coyotes, taste raw living water, smell fresh air and feel the warmth in our muscles from a good day's work.
We're trying to build something that will last and that can be passed down, that takes time. Infusing that time mindfully with joy, means when I'm old I can look back and remember happy moments. When I touch the wall, it'll be touching the happy time spent building that wall. It's easy to forget to be joyful when things don't work the way I want them to, but I'm trying hard to remind myself to get back to that place every day.

I hope you all have a safe, warm and happy winter.

The photos are some ice ribbons that formed recently.

Footers for dry stack block, earth sheltered house

2010-11-17T17:43:00.000-08:00

Lots of rainbows this week!

We poured footers for Judy's house today. Putting in the rebar and insulation were a breeze a few days ago. The insulation board was perforated by chance for our size footer (17"x9")! Snapping them in parts and laying them on the bottom and outside of the footer was easy. To the outside, it lined up perfectly with the footer form.

We ran 3 pieces of rebar, 3 " from the bottom and sides. They wrapped at least a foot around the corners and ran around the outside on the corners. Long pieces of 1/2 " rebar is easy to bend without a bender (cutting is another matter). Just put it on the ground, put your foot in the middle and push. On short pieces, we used the trailer hitch on the truck. Inexpensive little metal chairs were used to keep the rebar 3" from the bottom.

My mother in law tied the rebar together at each connection with a little $4 tool and a cheap roll of rebar ties. Funny, we didn't build using the slip form method because of the extensive rebar requirements and it's been one of the easiest things to do.

We screwed scrap wood to the tops of the footers to act as whalers, or additional support for the forms to prevent blow out. It should be interesting trying to get these off.

Old, long nails were put into the board insulation around where the rebar lay horizontally. The heads were to the outside of the insulation. This was done so that when the forms are removed, the nails are in the concrete and the insulation doesn't fall off the footer. Or so we've been told ;-) We'll find out maybe tomorrow or the next day.

Using foam board insulation around the footers is a compromise. We are balancing each step between energy efficiency and all natural materials. Not having to have the expense and maintenance of traditional air conditioner and heating system in a home is worth it. Under the floor however, it'll be easy and affordable to insulate with a layer of straw and clay since we're building an earthen floor.

I marked along the top of the footer form (big mistake) where the concrete block holes would be for 3 feet out from each corner and then every 4 feet. I made a template out of a piece of wood for 3 concrete blocks side by side so that I could quickly mark the forms.

We read about using keyways in the footer as a water stop and to lock the first row of blocks to the footer. This was to resist lateral pressure of the earth on the bermed walls (the walls back-filled with dirt). We riped 2x4's in half and beveled them to the outside. Drilled holes for the rebar to go through and marked on the footer where to lay the keyway forms so that the rebar holes lined up with the rebar marks.

Keyways were horrible! It was hard keeping them in place when screeding over them, which you are supposed to do, so the holes kept moving. It was impossible to keep concrete out of the holes for rebar, so getting the keyway off might be hard. The keyways would NOT stay level with the forms and kept floating up, making the footer be slightly bowed on top. That would not be good for trying to lay flat blocks.

After laying keyways for one wall, we decided to stop. We ended up laying extra boards periodically across the footer forms and putting a concrete block on it to hold the keyway down. One guy online drags a 2x4 through the concrete to make the keyways, but that would make for bumpy ridges and the blocks wouldn't lay flat. So you'd end up having to chip off all the excess.

We vote for just filling the bottom first or second course of concrete blocks with concrete, on the bermed side, to resist lateral load.

Another mistake was marking rebar and J bolt locations on TOP of the footer forms. They should have been to the side. Screeding the concrete, covered the tops of the footer forms with concrete and I couldn't see the marks. So we had to use a pump sprayer and wash the form boards, going back over it with shop rags trying to find the marks. I know we missed marks because there was rebar left over.

We'll do much better on our forms.

Lasagna or no-till gardening

2010-11-11T20:00:00.000-08:00

Oh fall has been glorious!!!

This year we tested out a no-till or lasagna garden patch. It seemed easy and required less money and effort than a typical tilled garden with equipment and gas considered. Not only that, it's much better for the soil and the micro-organisms that live there. A small patch was started in March with just paper in some places, cardboard in others and really old hay. That's all we could get for the first patch and the hay was very old. Should have used straw. Not a "by the book" start, but with no real compost yet and little time, it's all we could muster. After 7 months, the soil looks great! Dark and crumbly already and we've done a second planting.

Fist small test plot:

The dirt after 7 months:

It is absolutely amazing. You are also supposed to add a layer of compost, but I'm still working on the compost pile and it's not ready. When it is, I'll layer that on as well. I also add thin layers of wood ash as I have it. Since it's fall, leaves are going on thickly. I planted some roots recently and it was a breeze. I just pulled back a top layer of hay, put the root into this rich brown earth and covered. There are several books on lasagna, no-till gardening, one of the most popular being "Lasagna Gardening" by Patricia Lanza. It's not rocket science though.

Around the outside of the first plot I planted a band of flowering medicinal herbs to encourage the good bugs. Then close by a butterfly garden with milk weed and jerusalem artichoke. Beyond that I planted a winter mulch garden to build up the soil over the winter and planted things such as snow peas and vetch. In these bug gardens I didn't till either and just pushed the seed into the ground or sprinkled the seeds on top and walked around to push the seeds into the dirt. Another much larger no-till plot was just created with a generous donation of cardboard from a neighbor and after finally finding a good source for cheap straw.

Here is a pretty good video of the no till method, but I didn't do the dig down first step. After 7 months our soil is ready. We saw no need to get a jump start by tilling. He mentions what tilling does to the soil and then uses that as his first step? Still worth a watch though..

If you have any interest in getting a garden going, but don't want to till, try it. Just start small, you don't have to do it all at once. Get boxes when you are at the store, take the tape off, open it up and put rocks on it if you have to till you can find straw. Or use leaves or get creative. We've built up our second plot a little here and there is it has really grown. Layer your garden with leaves, compost, sand, ash, straw, and manure (some manure needs to age a bit first unless you are going to let it sit a long time like we have). For the second plot we had more straw bales than cardboard, so we just stacked the bales together around the plot to start killing off the grass.

I was curious how to start seeds in the no-till garden because I did not want to have to do starters for every plant. In reading and watching videos, I found that people just pull the top layer back and plant the seeds in the crumbly earth. When the seedlings come up and are big enough, then pull the straw back towards them. Since our compost pile will be ready by next planting time, I was also thinking about pulling the straw back, putting in a row of compost and putting the seeds in that. We shall see.

In an area that used to be a burn pile, I pushed snow peas in the ground to build up the soil. The plants are coming up big and strong, and are about 10 times the size of the same snow peas planted in the winter mulch garden. The burn pile snow peas are almost to my knees and the winter mulch garden they are barely to my ankles. Really shows what ash will do for the garden! What is amazing is there has been almost no rain for weeks on end, maybe 5 weeks with a break of only 2 hours recently. The peas are still doing great and we've not watered them. We do have a very hearty dew in the morning though.

Here is a photo of the new and larger no-till garden we've been working on. It increased again by a third today. Yes there are few rocks on top from the neighbors manure pile, those were picked out. Also since this photo, we've started adding leaves.

The giant snow peas growing from the burn pile

Footer forms

2010-11-11T06:34:00.000-08:00

In this picture, the primary interior mass wall footer is not shown. The house building is moving at a slow steady pace. There have been equipment problems, but we are back on track and the weather has been wonderful. We're at the footer stage. I made a drawing outlining and numbering each board length for the inside and outside track of the footers. While Jeffrey made sure the rubble trench foundation, that the footers will sit on top, was well tamped; I cut and numbered each board for the footers. I used 4x6's laying side by side on the ground to lay the wood on for cutting and made sure the end being cut off could fall freely to the ground so as not to bunch up the blade. Thanks to my friend Anastasia for showing me that I could get over my fear of power tools that can cut off body parts.

The top of the footer forms have to be the same level or elevation all the way around to form a level base for the concrete blocks. That is easier said than done. Our forms are old and slightly warped so we did the best we could and will fix the rest with the mortar that goes under the first and 7th course of blocks. There are different ways to setup the footer forms so that the building is square. There is the 3, 4, 5 method, batter boards and the pytagoras formula I found on p. 52 of "Earth Sheltered Houses". Having tried the math solution before when getting the lines square for the trench excavation, we thought we'd try another method. Just put up the corners and see if we can get it right by chance. We'd resort to math if we had to. So we formed the corners of the outter footer form track, put them generally in the right place and moved them around till their diagonal measurement from one corner, across the house to the other corner, was the same. That worked for us! Then we staked them with rebar so they didn't move around as we screwed the remaining boards together.

We hammered in short lengths of rebar about an 8th of an inch from each corner and ran string so that it would be easier to get the forms straight. Using a transit is so incredibly easy and a fun job. We originally tried getting each piece of wood at the correct elevation, then screwed the next board in - thinking that the whole run would be too heavy to lift repeatedly. That didn't work so well, screwing in the next board almost always changed the height of the prior board. Having the whole footer form track, outer track first, screwed together then lifting (or digging down as the case may be) each section we were working on was much easier.

We've seen where people have attached rebar to a footer form with nails and moved the rebar up or down to get it to the desired height. Maybe it's just our very rocky sub-base, but that didn't work at all for us. Pounding the rebar into the ground for one was incredibly hard and for two made getting the form to an exact height almost impossible. It also almost always messed up our square or elevation. Using different sized rocks which are all over was much easier to temporarily get the inner and outer tracks to their correct height. We also used little wooden legs in some areas. Then we jammed rocks in under big spaces under the forms all around the track. Since we made sure the pad where the footers are was basically level first, there weren't any huge gaps under the forms. We did this by using the transit and shooting all around the pad and correcting before the footers were put up.

After the outer track was at the same height all the way around, we could use the level to get the inner track close to the correct height. We then did shoot the inner track with the transit to double check. It's better that the footer forms be level with each other for a nice flat base. So using the level, I'd hold the board of the inner track up till the bubble read level with the outer track, then would lift it up a hair more than I needed to. Jeffrey would screw on little wooden legs (or we'd use rocks). When done and I let go of the board, it would read level.

To brace the footer forms against the weight of the concrete that will be poured in, we pounded rebar a couple of feet from each corner and every place two boards join together. We are using 2 foot length rebar pieces so that they can be pounded down below the top of the forms. Pounding that rebar in was not done in one day, this was very labor intensive. Having the rebar below the forms (in most cases) will make it easier to use the top of the forms to screed off the concrete.

Some pieces of rebar would just not go down anymore and we'll just work around that. We may do some additional bracing, however pounding wooden braces into the ground as is suggested in the books just isn't happening at our site. If thin rebar doesn't want to go in, there is no way wooden stakes are going in. We'll use boards and concrete blocks at ground level. We thought about putting a bunch of dirt around the forms, but then it would all have to be removed to install the footer drains.

In the drawings, the house is symmetrical with an interior mass wall being exactly in the middle and two sheer walls on either side of the house lining up exactly, I've learned that exact and perfect are two words I need to let go of on this project. They are all close enough. The footer has plenty of room on either side of where the blocks will go to make minor corrections.

Next we'll pound rebar in vertically where the cavity of the concrete blocks will be and lay 3 courses of rebar horizontally. That will be another post.

Back from my Woodstock

2010-09-21T21:28:00.000-07:00

I"m back from the Traditions in Western Herbalism conference and still processing the experience of my Woodstock. Gladly it lacked many things from the original Woodstock, but had the healing and transformative qualities to make it something I will always remember and cherish. It wasn't just the conference and the tremendous amount of information that was available. It was the landscape and the people. No cliques and every type of age, sex, color, background and knowledge level were there. Many grandmothers and young families. I saw amazing couples where the husband came with the wife and hung out in this beautiful place with the kids, playing; while mom and sometimes another child took classes. My husband says he wants to go next year and just hang out at Ghost Ranch. I saw spouses and kids during the day as I walked from class to class or took a quick break at camp; playing ball, Frisbee and drawing in the dirt. There were beautiful young people with bright faces, Grandmothers with long silver braids, hippies and homesteaders. All knowledge levels were represented by people who knew nothing and came after seeing the flyer and grandmothers and grandfathers who had been teaching for years. People were cooking at their sites with passers by stopping in for hot water, a bite to eat and conversation. We didn't have a huge time between classes if we wanted to take all of them possible, so we sort of made friends where ever we happened to be for break. I ate with different people and felt free to walk up to any table either at camp or dining hall, sit and join in - even the "cool" table ;-) I think everyone said Hi and smiled as we passed on the trails. I kept doing it on the road as made stops on the way home - how fun!

There were huge cottonwood trees that you couldn't get your arms around and all the adobe structures I could inspect to get ides for my upcoming adobe project. As I walked up to the the adobe bathhouse at night, I could feel a noticeable warmth from being in the sun all day. Their camp ground was full with our large conference, other campers and a teen group. I never had to wait for a shower or toilet though, the accommodations were nice. I met a cool artist, Hannah Shook and her husband that I thought were there for the conference when I asked to sit at their fire and warm my cold morning toes.

Breakfast was one of my favorite times hanging out with my site neighbors, four awesome ladies of every age group. Next year, if I'm able to go, I'll eat more, if not all, of my food at the campsite. It'll be much more fun, more affordable and will taste better ;-) The walks to the classes were lined in huge beautiful trees, a breathtaking view, a grassy field with an old horse munching, abobe buildings, and sometimes groups of people laying outside in the grass under the trees at the dining hall. The people! Smiles, laughter, debate, conversation, pointing, thinking, painting, writing, documenting, hugging and studying.

Almost all of the classes I took were amazing. Rosemary Gladstar is a rockstar goddess and taught me more than I have even processed yet. Howie Brounstein and Jim McDonald are hysterically funny and kept us interested the whole class. Someone mentioned on facebook that the two of them and Sevensong should go on an herbal comedy tour. Each speaker and the musicans that performed at night were taking classes and hanging out with everyone else. I met all of them just about and got Rosemary to myself twice! I had imagined things I would ask her if we met and not one of them came to mind on our walk to our next class. Many of the classes were outside on the lawn under a tree, it was so beautiful out there.

The music was incredible and these woman played everynight. I remember once looking around and noticing several people drying their cheeks. Saturday night though they rocked the house!! Rising appalachia from New Orleans are amazing and their harmony vibrates into your bones. From their site:"Rising Appalachia is a genre-bending force of sound that uses vocal harmony, lyrical prowess and diverse artistic collaborations to defy cultural clichés and ignite a musical revolution". The band "Tina and her Pony" also played and were really good too. "FlamencoWorldCompany" was incredibly moving. The Grandmother's traditional dancing was so beautiful, I had to ask her for a hug when I saw her next.

Rising Appalachia started playing some rythmic banjo music and we all wanted to dance. It was hard to sit in your seats when your feet wanted to move, especially after having sat down a good part of the last two days. So they said if you want to dance move the seats - it didn't take long! Some of the teachers and grandmothers were on the front row from the presentation just before and were now suddenly in the middle of the dance floor. Everyone was dancing, claping and singing and large doors to the long house were open to the outside so the wind blew through and danced with us too. They announced that it was getting time to shut down, so I left before the last song to walk back by myself. I wanted to process my day on the walk back to the camp.

I walked off in a bright moon and could hear the harmony ringing out from the long house, bouncing off the canyon walls. Then riotous laughter from a large group of children and adults so far away I couldn't see their lights through the trees on the other side of the field. The laughter of the children in my right ear and harmony in my left. I thought how happy the trees and mountains must have been at that moment.

The most amazing thing were the children herbalists. Little kids wanting to go to the classes, taking notes and asking questions. I think some of the kids there knew more than me. One little boy around 4 was waiting with his mom for our herb walk. He kept showing this yellow flower, sort of dancing around and saying "Duck Duck Rubber Duck Rubber Duck". I thought he was being cute. The herb walk started and that plant was named Duck something - don't know where my notes are right now. Another cute 7 year old little girl in my class gave the thumbs up and huge smile to the lady next to her when her "favorite plant" cat's tail (I think) was being discussed. The same little herbalist cracked us all up later when she was hamming it up with our teacher Sevensong on our beautiful and educational herb walk. He runs a school in Ithaca very close to where I used to live and I wish I had taken his classes, what a great teacher.

I got the new book by Timothy Scott "Invasive Plant Medicine" and met the author. Very nice man and great book so far. There is a chapter in there on the amazing things the South could be doing with Kudzu! It's edible for livestock and humans and it helps clean petroleum contamination and other toxins from the environment. There is certainly plenty of it. I look forward to reading the rest of the book.

I learned so much and still have so much information to go through. The notes from most classes were provided since there were 3 or so classes to choose from at one time slot. It was almost impossible to choose sometimes and in one case I changed my mind three times on the way to the next class. Kiva and Wolf from the Anima lifeways and Herbal school did an incredible job organizing the days and were both so friendly and available.

When I left to go to the conference I felt like we were sort of alone in what we are trying to do here. One of the reasons we bought this place is to plant a large medicinal native herb garden and also return them to their habitat throughout our property. A college within 60 miles has a native species herbal plant garden and I'd really like to work with them. Ater listening to Rosemary's presentation, I learned so much about United Plant savers and never thought of them as a resource. I looked through their critical plant list before, compared it to a native species list to find Black Cohosh as a match and that was about it. I need to spend some time reading through thier site, but it sounds like I'll be able to learn a lot. Herbmentor was there filming and I had never thought at using them as a resource either. The president/ cameraman gave me some great tips about a camera and computer problem I've been struggling with. I really want to check out his herbal videos though! I left feeling like we have a support system in this project, more information and more resources.

I can't get pictures to post yet but maybe tomorrow. Tonight I go to sleep and dream about my week.

Tony Chachere cajun spice

2010-09-13T13:51:00.001-07:00

Here is a scaled down version with no salt and no MSG:

3 Tbl Black pepper
4 Tbl Red pepper
2 Tbl garlic powder
2 Tbl Chili powder

Enjoy!

Food time!

2010-09-11T10:46:00.000-07:00

It's too wet to do too much of anything so I thought I'd post some delicious recipes I've tried lately and clarify something about my last post.

A friend thought that I started and hand dug the septic trench by hand. Sorry if I didn't make that clear. The backhoe driver roughed out the black water trench but couldn't get it to proper slope because of the rocks. If he had dug any deeper to get the big rocks out, there would have been huge gaping holes that we would have had to fill later and all the excavation we paid for previously to get the house grade (the level part) would have been destroyed. So we had to hand hammer, dig and chip the trenches to slope properly. It took so long that several times it rained and slumped dirt back into the trenches we had already dug out causing us to re-dig and re-dig. I don't think it would have been possible to start the trench out by hand because of the rocks. Now if we hadn't gone down so deep maybe?

Right now it's VERY wet outside and I can't screen dirt or do much at the site. The clay dam finally broke from all the rains and the paths to the spring are littered with huge trees that have fallen. So today I've been planting trees and getting ready for the herbal conference next week. Here are two AWESOME recipes that you must try!

I used to love Pappadeaux's crawfish bisque and for any special occasion, when I lived in Houston, that is what I wanted. Recently I found a recipe for Corn and Quinoa chowder. So I mixed the two recipes together (sort of) and came up with:

Corn and Quinoa Bisque

3/4 C Rinsed and drained quinoa
(some) Cumino (recipe called for Cumin seeds but I never have those handy)
1 - 1/2 tbs olive oil
2 - 1/2 C fresh or frozen corn kernels
1 large red potato diced
4 small green onions chopped (orig. recipe calls for shallots)
4 C vegetable broth
1 pint heavy whipping cream (orig. recipe calls for 3 C, but I only had a pint - came out fine) (second recipe called for soy milk)
Small can tomato paste
1 large bell pepper diced (orig recipe calls for red, but I used green)
1/4 jalapeno (I added that, nothing better than corn and jalapeno)
2 oz brandy
1 stick butter (I only had 3/4 stick, was fine)
1 C flour (I reduced to 3/4 C flour)
Chopped cilantro

Toast Quinoa and cumino in pot over medium heat 3-4 minutes stirring constantly. Transfer to bowl.

Heat oil in pot (good sized soup pot or dutch oven). Add corn, potato, onions and jalapeno. Sautee 5 minutes or till onion is translucent. Add Broth, cream and tomato paste. Bring to a boil.

While broth mix is coming up to boil in another small pot, heat butter. When melted add flour and stir. Do not let roux darken, cook 2 min. Made sort of a thick paste. Add to broth mixture and add brandy too.

When broth mix is boiling, add quinoa, reduce heat to medium low, cover and simmer 10 minutes. Stir in bell pepper, cover and simmer 5 more minutes or till veggies are tender. I actually cooked it maybe 5 minutes on top of that.

Serve in bowl and put 1/2 handful of chopped cilantro on top. Sprinkle with home made Tony Chachere's (that's a must, really knocked it out of the ball park) or cajun spice. I make this recipe with no salt or MSG and in much smaller quantities. I can't currently find my sheet where I have it figured out, but when I do, I'll publish.

The recipe did need a little extra salt

Found the Tony's recipe scaled down
~~~~~~~~~

The other recipe was for Avocado Chimichurri Bruschetta

2 Tbs. lemon juice
2 Tbs. red wine vinegar
3 cloves garlic, minced (1 Tbs.)
¾ tsp. salt
½ tsp. red pepper flakes
½ tsp. dried oregano
¼ tsp. ground black pepper
¼ cup olive oil
¼ cup chopped cilantro
¼ cup chopped fresh parsley
2 avocados, peeled, pitted, and cubed
6 ½-inch-thick slices whole-grain or ciabatta bread, toasted

Combine lemon juice, vinegar, garlic, salt, red pepper flakes, oregano, and black pepper in small bowl. Whisk in oil, then stir in cilantro and parsley. Fold in avocado cubes. Spoon avocado mixture onto toast slices, and serve.

We didn't have thick bread and used regular toast - it was fine. I also substituted the red wine vinegar for 1 Tbl Dandelion vinegar and 1/2 Tbl Red Wine Vinaigrette (all I had on hand). I included 1/4 jalapeno and a fresh basil leaf. I substituted the lemon juice for the juice of 1 fresh lime. The recipe I posted made 4 pieces of toast. The next time we went to town we got 5 avocados, doubled the recipe and stuffed ourselves!

I hope you try these. They are on our top recipe list now!

Trench warfare

2010-09-01T14:00:00.000-07:00

An Earth sheltered home has many benefits. The house stays cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter, heating and cooling cost are minimized or removed all together. The walls that are bermed, or have dirt up next to them, do not have extensive foundation requirements since there is no risk of frost heave. Other than a footer for the walls to have a stable base, there is no need to dig below the frost line to keep the walls from heaving. Frost depth is 2 feet in our area and we have to consider that for the non-bermed walls. Most earth sheltered homes typically have the Southern wall exposed for solar gain and on our walls that are exposed, we decided on a rubble trench foundation.

Frank Lloyd Wright used the rubble trench extensively in the early 20th century. This method has been called the Volkswagon of foundations and we found it much more affordable than the typical poured concrete foundation wall. The rubble trench has two functions, it provides a solid load-bearing base for the walls and drainage. Basically a trench is dug, a base of gravel laid for a 4" perforated drain pipe (tile), the pipe is wrapped in a filtering cloth, covered with washed gravel and compacted.

There was a bit more to it than that as we discovered when you have very rocky soil. The trench has to be sloped 1" per every 8 feet and we chose to drain to daylight. Our biggest delay in building has been caused by deciding to excavate the house site to 4 feet. We thought that was about 1/2 of the height of the house and we would berm up the rest, or create a hill up to the roof. In hindsight, 2 feet site excavation would have been much easier and maybe we could have started on the walls already. After excavation for the house, you still have to dig down to the frost depth for the rubble trenches on the non-bermed sides. On top of that the waste pipe had to be dug into this rocky soil at a slope of 1" per 4 feet and drain to a septic tank that is even lower. The depth was just too much when added all together. Off topic, but in a state like Missouri, the septic tank laws are not as strict. We were able to go with a much cheaper, non-typical tank. There is plenty of info on line about making your own tanks or other things you can use when you live in a state with few building codes (there are stricter building codes in Missouri if you live in a city or certain counties obviously).

The excavator had a very hard time with the boulders and we had a hard time hammering at rocks in the trenches with a sledgehammer for the last few weeks (or has it been months) to get the slope right. After a lot of hammering, there is then a lot of filling in. To get the proper slope we always tried picking the pipe up where we could and laying something under it in one place to avoid hammering down in another. There were delays with the weather, equipment failure (digging out boulders is hard on a machine) and the trenches filling with water causing us to have to dig all the slumped mud out to get the slope back. Though our operator used a 24" bucket, there are few places where the trench was 24". Digging out big rocks and boulders means a trench with a wide and wiggly border, which equals more cost for gravel. You can't dump a rock that weighs possibly tons back into your trench on top of the drain pipe. So that all has to filled back in with gravel. By the time we worked on the last trench to the septic tank and the hole for the septic tank itself, our arms were (and still are) exhausted with pounding rock.

I did find though that a really heavy, long handled sledgehammer worked much better for me than a pick axe. It also worked better than the jackhammer we rented trying to finish the septic tank hole. Being a woman of slighter build you might have people tell you (like a neighbor recently said to me) that you can't do this or "your not made for this type of work". Hogwash, this isn't something that only men or people with big muscles can do. If you do have to do this yourself, make sure to cover up as much of your body as you can, wear safety glasses and stretch out your muscles every day. No matter how frustrated you get, keep good form. Breathe out with every strike, be mindful of your stance and how you hold the hammer. Even then, prepare for your face to be showered with rock flecks and wearing thick pants still won't keep the pain away when a big piece goes flying. It's best to strike the rock with a glancing blow being mindful of your shins. Sometimes I had to hit directly on top for a while to get a fracture going. If we had only excavated the house site to 2 feet, I wonder if we would have had to do any pounding at all? The top few layers of our soil is wonderful here which isn't always easy to come by in Southern Missouri.

I think we started digging the trenches in July and they were basically filled at the end of August. But on top of the delays at the site, we also had to get the RV levelled, water and solar power going, build a barn, outhouse and animal housing and the thousands of other things that go into making a homestead. Of course I imagined the trenches taking a few weeks - hahaha.

The excavator also dug gray water trenches. These gray water trenches met up with the rubble trench's drain to daylight trench and are shared. The fresh air pipe for the woodstove was also laid in the same trench.

Using a transit made checking the slope of the trenches quick work. Fortunately the backhoe operator is also a neighbor and we've had his transit on long term loan. It was a lot of fun learning how to use one and surprisingly easy. All these years seeing them used on the side of the roads and at construction sites, I assumed it was a complicated machine. Basically just binoculars on a tripod and I learned to use it for our needs in about 5 minutes. Now remembering that the bigger the numbers are means you are going deeper for some reason took me a while longer ;-)

If you are interested in rubble trench foundations, there is a wonderful article in "The best of Fine Homebuilding - Foundations and Concrete work" book. After everything else that we've read, this was the best overall summary and includes drawings and photos. The trench needs to be wide enough to accommodate your footer which in turn needs to be a specific size based on your walls. All of this information was easily found in the great books we've read on home building such as Rob Roy's "Earth-Sheltered Houses". We have 2 dozen or more books on home building, but these two books were referred to over and over again.

We probably could have skipped the rubble trench foundation, built the footers on grade and used a sheet of extruded polystyrene insulation extending outwards laterally and slightly down to protect the walls from frost heave since frost will only penetrate at a 45 degree angle. We didn't want to do this at the time because we didn't want to run the risk of something damaging this sheet and therefore putting our walls at risk of heave. It didn't seem as permanent or as solid of a protection as the rubble trench. Rob Roy calls this an insulation curtain and in his book there is information on how this would work.

If we had known how much work was to come with rock pounding, we may have done that instead.

Here is a drawing of our wall with the rubble trench for the South side. There are a few mistakes on this drawing, like I called the finished floor the subfloor and I drew the footer too big. All will be corrected as these drawings change frequently. We are also going with 3" of gravel under the floor now since our site is very well drained.

Next up is to finish roughing out the plumbing that didn't have to be buried. Over half of that is done. The trenches need to be tamped and Jeffrey found a used tamper online for under $180. All the trenches and the floor need to be tamped. Since there is much tamping to do, it was more econmical to buy instead of rent. Permanent drainage around the perimeter of the site using french drains is one of the next top priorities. The shallow drainage ditch we have now is working pretty well as a temporary fix. It is pouring rain outside right now and it was wonderful to see for the first time water pouring out of the foundation drain pipe instead of watching the trench fill up! We still need to cover the end of the pipe, but there is one more graywater line coming and they'll be covered at the same time.

There are flies in paradise

2010-08-21T18:29:00.000-07:00

Partridge Pea

(P.S. I don't know why blogger is mushing all the paragraphs together and tired of trying to figure it out!)

Sometimes it feels like we're making progress and other times it feels like we are so behind. Trying to be simple can be hard at times, but this is where we want to be. Once we get systems set up though, like being able to pump water, things sure get easier and sometimes it seems easier than the "normal" way of doing things. It is taking a lot longer to get to the footer stage than we expected. If we had not made the house so deep into the earth, it would have been a lot simpler and easier. The depth we are working at for the foundation rubble trench has been labor intensive. It takes a lot of time to get the trench to the right slope, sometimes with a sledgehammer - but as often as we can, we try to fill in and go up instead of digging down. The time it takes to slope the trench and get the plumbing in has led to delays and then we'll get an unexpected shower that fills the trenches with water and mud. There is a shallow drainage trench now around the site which helps a great deal with run off, but thankfully the ground drains very fast. There are obviously a lot of things we could have done better. The forecast calls for sun all week and we bought our black line tank today. The rest of the water will go through gray water lines that feed to mulch beds around the trees South of the house.

So much has been done though. Water can be pumped by solar panels, we have power from solar for a fridge and a little window unit A.C. that we've used a few times when the temps and heat index are over 100 degrees, there is wood for cooking, and a barn and chicken coop made out of used and affordable materials. Small trails that meander around trees have been cut for everywhere we need to go and we hardly ever get ticks now because of the chickens. I haven't had any serious outbreaks of poison ivy or chiggers in quite a while either. It's so beautiful and is a dream that this is how I spend my day. I enjoy the physical movement and time with my own thoughts when shoveling and hoeing, tending water and food bowls, turning the compost pile, getting water, work on building the house and the many other things that make up day to day life out here. We have never built a house before, but I think with the good books we've read and lots of advice from people who have been there - we should have something that keeps us dry and warm.

Our solar panels were all used and bought in groups of usually 2 or 4. It took a few years of search on Craigslist to get them all. I thought some people have been able to hook mix-matched solar panels to a single charge controller, but we haven't figured it out. Each set is on their own charge controller for now. They all share the same batteries though and that was our biggest expense. For some small things, 1 or 2 panels and a single battery are able to operate it without hooking to the main system. We run the water pump and stereo in the barn off of their own panels and batteries for now since, without a house, there isn't much need for all the panels or batteries at the RV. From what we understand, the batteries all work together and a mix-matched set with an old battery that doesn't hold much charge will bring down the other batteries that it's hooked to. These should last us 10 years if cared for properly and maybe by then, there will be cheaper energy storage options, or we will have figured out wind or some other source. If we ever have to do without power, of course we could. It is a nice luxury though to have the internet and a fridge.

Rob Roy helped us figure out that we could reduce the cost of our roof by removing about 1/2 the weight and therefore not needing to buy so much lumber. On the drawings, we've removed the gravel drainage layer and replaced it with a 1 ounce per sq ft weight Inkadrain drainage cloth/mat. The soil has been reduced from 6" to 3". The plan was to plant sedum and chives and other shallow rooted herbs on the roof anyway so 3" should be sufficient.

We might reduce more cost by cutting the drainage layer of the earthen floor in half from 6" of gravel to 3". Some books use 6" - 12" of gravel as a drainage layer for earthen floors. Other books say much less is fine and is recommended. Our soil is so well drained that I don't think reducing to 3" would be a problem. We can also cut more costs and be greener by replacing the foam board insulation under the earthen floor with a layer of straw and clay. There is tons of clay dirt from the excavation. The waterproofing layer for the floor is recommended by some, and we have it in our drawings, but it is highly NOT recommended by other authors. So I have a lot of thinking and more learning to do in relation to the floors. I'm hoping an earthen floor expert will make themselves available to us and help us figure this out. It seems we are able to find someone more knowledgeable when we need to.

I've fallen in love with a book called "Mehndi" by Loretta Roome. I love the art of Mehendi and have been looking for ideas for designs to scribe into the floor. I saw the book at the library and thought if nothing else, I'd like to use up a tube of Mehendi I have. The photos are incredible as are the explanations of the symbols. Page 54 talks about the art of Mandana for drawing on the floor in a similar fashion as on the body. Wonderful! A new word and something new to learn about for the floors. I haven't been able to find the book used and affordable yet, so I might have to check it out again when it's time to do the floor - or zerox a lot of pages. It's going on the home library wish list.

The first jewel has been planted in the herb garden. A lady with a crazy, wild, weedy, gorgeous and enviable garden lives about 20 minutes away and gave me a huge pot of mature elderberry. The chickens benefited from the berries this year. My neighbor gave me a basil plant and I dug up purslane from another neighbor's garden. I planted the three of them together in the middle of the herb garden area and will work out from there. When I see it, it reminds me of what is to come. Herb and vegetable gardens! Food and medicine!

The work can be hard, but we're out exercising much of the day, getting sunshine. I've never felt stronger or in better shape. I see dozens if not hundreds of butterflies everyday along with hummingbirds and all sorts of wildlife. The road to our house has to be driven slowly so the butterflies will flutter away. We get to hang out with our animals and our work is for us, not someone else. I used to hate my office job so much I'd say "I'd rather be out digging ditches" and I was right - I do enjoy it much more.

I wish I had known about this lifestyle a long time ago. There is still so much to learn. We are learning while we go, so we're slower than I imagine others are. My arms get too tired to type much at night which is why I haven't posted in a while. Today though, with the rain delay and the chicken coop being 99% done - it's a wonderful afternoon to take off, recover and prepare for the big week.

Chicken coop. Tomorrow will finish wrapping base in hardware cloth.

Here is a beautiful song I've been enjoying by Brandie Carlisle

Have You Ever :
Have you ever wandered lonely through the woods?
And everything there feels just as it should
You're part of the life there
You're part of something good
If you've ever wandered lonely through the woods
if you've ever wandered lonlely through the woods

Have you ever stared into a starry sky?
Lying on your back you're asking why
What's the purpose I wonder who am I
If you've ever stared into a starry sky
Have you ever stared into a starry sky

Have you ever been out walking in the snow?
Tried to get back to where you were before
You always end up not knowing where to go
If you've ever been out walking in the snow
If you'd ever been out walking you would know

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coyMHk2LTnc&feature=av2e

Trenches are partially dug

2010-07-18T12:55:00.000-07:00

The building process is slow, but we are working hard every day. It's hot out, so we put 4 posts outside of the RV and strung up a tarp to cover it like a big circus tent. It's not as easy to string a big tarp over an RV as you would think. It makes it livable though and about 15 degrees cooler. The tarp is stretching out and we don't know how long it will last. Sometimes when it's really hot we run errands, go to the creek or to my mother-in-law's (Judy) house about 6 miles away. Otherwise we try to work in the shade. Judy's house is on top of a beautiful hill here in the Ozarks, big shade trees and a good breeze most of the time. She keeps us in cold fruit and it's a nice place to hang clothes! Judy is taking good care of us and it is so much easier with 3 people than with 2. We have help with almost everything we do and she always looks out for ways to help the most. She has stacked and sorted all the wood I use and today she worked on preparing the area for the cistern and root cellar. Did I mention she's 72?!

We've met 15 families in about a 6 mile radius since we've been here and I don't think I've ever known that many "neighbors". Many have offered to let us come cool down at their home in the middle of the day and it's so nice when they stop by. This is a great area and the people here are hard workers. When we see each other, we all have on the common uniform - sweat soaked and dirty clothes from working outside and that slightly melted look. I love it.

We can now pump water from our source to a 20 gallon tank near the RV. We still only have one solar panel hooked up, but it's working so well there hasn't been a rush to hook up the rest. Jeffrey's been working on that here and there and we'll have more power soon . The water tank has a splitter on the spigot with a garden hose nozzle on one side for washing with dirty hands (I can use my elbow to turn it on) and the other side a lever that will turn the water on and let it run. The tank sits on a pallet on an old Adirondack chair. It makes a great table for water filled 1 gallon vinegar jugs, plants, toothbrushes, soap, towels etc and is in a nice area for showering. My friend Kathy at Solarbaby taught me how easy it is to heat water in the sun and how hot it gets. It is a wonderful temperature for dish washing and showers. I like the used vinegar jugs because they are very sturdy, much more so than water jugs. In the morning I make sure there are at least 2 full gallons sitting on the side that gets sun and when I need the water that afternoon or evening, it's hot or warm enough. Two gallons is more than enough for our hot water needs. The water station along with having an outhouse, means there is no bathroom to clean! I never thought I'd love an outhouse, but I love mine. A little lid wipe down and sweep, all done.

The outdoor kitchen area is about as done as it will get for a while. There is a rock table that doesn't look that level from the side, but when you put a big cutting board full of ingredients and supplies on it; it's level enough. The two big bumps on top of the rock are level with each other to make it level for the cutting board. It's also a great place to sit at night and look at the stars. Dirt/clay from the excavation site mixed with water to make mud was used to level the stones. There is so much dirt and rocks from the excavation that will be left over and I'd like to use them to build a little cabin after the house is done.

We have chickens now and they are so cute. They are bug eating machines! They like to hang out with us during the day and when it's time to roost at night. Every night I have to carry them to their temporary coop that our neighbor let us borrow. I wish I could get them to go in there on their own, but nothing I do has worked. They don't like hopping up to the top of the chicken tractor to get down inside. They keep looking for a way directly in. Jeffrey is working on a fine coop for them and put the roof on today. So soon there will be a door they can go strait in.

On a sad note, we learned a very hard lesson about ticks here. One of our most precious cats died from Bobcat fever. It took him so fast. At first we thought he just wasn't feeling that well. Had to take him to the vet after 2 days and they thought it was respiratory infection. The next day they found it was Bobcat fever and the day after that, he was dead. The tick process we had in place didn't work. I did a lot of research and we are working harder than ever to do what we can so that ticks do not bite them. They are on a good program now and I'll write about that later. In the mean time, we've taken all the animals to Judy's house till we can get the tick population under control (hence the chickens). We aren't finding them on us much anymore and I think we're at the point we could bring the cats back here, but it's so hot and much more pleasant for them at Judy's. Maybe when it cools off, but Oooo I miss my kitties!

Every day the routine gets a little easier. I now almost always have dry wood and water handy. Getting up early and working before it gets hot helps, took a while to get trained to do that though. We are no where near where we thought we'd be, but we are learning as we go and that takes up quite a bit of time. Plus things just take longer than you'd think because life has to be worked in there too. There is more to creating a homestead than just building a house. What is required for day to day life stretches and warps our plans.

The trench for the main plumbing line and the gray water lines are dug. It made a complete mess of our level house site and my lines for the internal stuff like wet walls, sinks etc. So that will all have to be mapped out again and hand dug. It's 90% rocks out there and that doesn't make for easy work. There isn't a clean or straight trench out there, it was impossible, but it's good enough and there is enough wiggle room to make it work. Some rocks (aka boulders) will not budge at all, so my morning was spent busting up rocks with a sledgehammer that are in the trench and too high for the proper slope. I imagined that since the house site was so nice and level, the trenches would be done and we'd lay pipe, cover and BAM move on. I don't know how long it'll be now, but we're plugging (hacking and chipping) away at it. There were some pretty cool features in the first few house plans which have all been tossed to simplify and because of the rocky nature of our site. The plans are now as simple as I know how to make them and we hope to have a roof over our heads by winter.

Some of our neighbors have a PhD in finding deals and have really helped us out with supplies. We could probably have made it out here without them, but I wouldn't want to imagine it. Their generous friendships have made it better on so many levels. It's not just the stuff they've given us, or deals they've pointed to; it's their offer of friendship and checking in on us when it's really hot or just to see how we are doing that really cheers us up on a hot day or one with a lot of setbacks. But they all have setbacks too and we share. Thankfully there are also successes to share.

There's a lot to do and not much time for the computer lately. I find new flowers every few weeks it seems and I've tried to at least identify and use what I can, it'll be amazing to work here with them more after the house is done.

Excavation is all done

2010-06-22T12:40:00.000-07:00

The excavation is done. Next we'll lay the site out again for the outline of the foundation walls and get some trenches dug for the rubble trench foundation.

The temporary dam I built at the spring out of clay is still holding. I've had to patch a couple of small holes but that only takes a few seconds. We have a good 2 feet of drop where the pipe is now. With a longer pipe we could get 3 feet of drop and use a ram pump to get the water up to a holding tank on top of the hill the spring comes from. Then from there it would be down hill to the house site. Gravity might get it there.

It's pretty hot out today but I am REALLY loving the cold infused rose petal tea. I hate heating the RV up boiling water for a hot infusion so this has been a real treat. I finished making the grill for the outdoor kitchen and am almost finished with a stone table next to it. Off to the creek now to cool off for a while.

Posts and Spring

2010-06-19T18:11:00.000-07:00

Today we started on a cover for the grill area using cedar posts. We're going to try lashing top posts to hold some sort of cover. And I have the blocks for the grill ready to go tomorrow.

We stuck a rock in the "spout" of the spring's "bowl". There is a ton of clay dirt around from the excavation, so we packed it around the rock and a pipe that extends the waters flow to a lower area where I can put a bottle. I laid rocks in the soft mud for a little walk way and the water continues on it's flow down the wet weather creek. I know it's probably very temporary, but it was fun and just an experiment. We'll see how long it lasts. The pipe angle in this picture was wrong. We changed it and really increased the flow. A bucket of clay was left for repairs. I can't wait to see how long this will last.

Roses

2010-06-16T16:20:00.000-07:00

If you are outside a good bit of the day; the sun, bugs and poison rashes can make this part of the year challenging. Look around and you'll find plant neighbors that our great-grandparents formed a partnership with to help make this season more enjoyable.

Right now the Swamp Roses (Rosa palustris) are in full bloom. Those are the pretty, pink 5 petal roses you see growing wild in arches along old fence rows and homesteads. If you are fortunate enough to find these beautiful flowers away from cars and where pesticides and herbicides have not been sprayed, then it's harvest time. Rose buds and hips are a good source of vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, Niacin, Bioflavanoids, K, E, polyphenols, pectin and Selenium. This is great for energy and combating fatigue during the hot summer. Rose petals contain as much antioxidants as green tea, making them a healthy, caffeine-free beverage (instructions below).

Diluted Rose petal vinegar can be used to pull the heat out of sunburns and a vinegar from any or all parts of the plant can relieve eczema, hives and poison ivy. The vinegar is so versatile, it can also be used to make salad dressings. Rose leaf spit poultices can be used as relief for bug bites, cuts and scratches.

For any of the herbal recipes listed here, do not wash the rose petals, leaves or hips. To make Rose petal Vinegar, fill a glass jar to the top with any type of fresh rose petals (or fill half way if dried), then fill to the top with unfiltered Apple Cider Vinegar such as Braggs, tightly close with a plastic cap (if metal lid must be used, line lid with plastic wrap) and let sit for 2 - 6 weeks on a cloth or plate. Shake daily, strain with a cloth and store the vinegar where it will be handy during hot summer days.

Dilute 1 part vinegar to 7 parts water, soak a cloth and place on the forehead for headaches (especially those caused by the heat) or use to wash bites and heat rashes. For sunburns mix 1/3 Cup of Rose petal vinegar with several cups of water. Dip in an absorbent cloth, lightly wring and put cloth on affected areas till the cloth becomes hot. Keep re-applying till the skin is no longer hot to the touch and repeat every several hours letting air dry between. Apply real aloe vera gel at night. If the burns are severe or at risk of becoming infected, seek medical attention.

To make a spit poultice for bites, cuts or scratches; pick several leaves and chew with your front teeth till you have a liquid mash. Apply the mash to the affected area and tie a strip of cloth around to hold it in place if you like. If you hold still long enough for the plant material to slightly dry, sometimes it will stay put on it's own for a time depending on the wound. Some weepy wounds tend to grab and hold on to the poultice.

Eat raw Rose petals for B vitamins, flavonoids and vitamin C, as well as polyphenols and other heart-healthy compounds. Throw them on a salad or pick and eat as you are walking by. Eating the whole rose, including the pollen, has helped many with allergies.

A delicious, healthy summer treat is Rose petal honey. Fill any jar to the top with rose petals, cover with honey, stirring as needed to remove air bubbles, until the jar is full. Cap securely and label. Wait for at least a week before eating, but if you wait for 6 weeks it'll taste even better. This can be strained with a sieve and a cloth or left alone and eaten with the petals right out of the jar. If you leave the petals in the jar, but don't' like their taste, you can tip the jar sideways to access the honey under the petals floating on the top and dip out with a spoon. You can make Rose Hip Honey the same way; be sure to remove all the seeds and hairs from the rose hips before putting them in a jar and adding honey (instructions below). Rose petal or rose hip honey can be used any way you would normally use honey, as a topping for bread, fruit, yogurt, ice cream; or taken by the spoonful to soothe a sore throat. If you feel a cold coming on, put a tablespoon of rose honey in a cup with the juice of half a lemon, then fill the cup with hot water.

The smaller Sweetbrier rose (Rosa rubiginosa) that I find wild has now lost it's petals, but the hips, the fruit of the plant, are forming. Hips of all roses are a rich source of Vitamin C, but this variety has a high content and is harvested commercially for processing into rose hip syrups. In the fall, pick the hips that are vivid red and slightly soft. The best time to harvest rose hips is after the first frost, it helps sweeten the flavor. They can taste unpleasant though if allowed to freeze solid, then thaw and soften. A rose hip is filled with tiny seeds covered with silky hairs. The food value is found in the skin of the hip and is similar to the taste of an apple. To encourage your roses to develop rose hips, don’t trim the rose blossoms and leave them to naturally fade and fall.

To remove the hairs from dried hips, grind them up a bit in the food processor then shake the batch in a sieve, the hairs will fall loose OR cut in half and shake or scrape out seeds, but this takes the longest time. You could also cover fresh hips with water and simmer, then rub through a sieve and use the puree.

To make a refreshing Rose petal beverage with more essential oils than a hot brewed tea, steep the petals in cold water and cover for 12 hours. This is my absolute favorite way to drink it. When working in intense heat, I have a cup of cold steeped rose petal tea with rose honey and iced down. It takes that core of hotness away from your breastplate area. You'll still be hot outside, but won't feel like all your energy is being drained away.

For a highly nutritious drink that will also help promote the cooling down of the body temperature during the summer, you can make an infusion by pouring boiling water over a jar full of petals and leaves, cover and steep for 30 minutes, strain with a cloth and refrigerate. Steeping much longer may result in a puckering taste because it will extract more tannins (an astringent) from the petals. This way of brewing the tea gives it a more traditional "tea" taste. Use within 3 days. I like mine iced down and with a little rose honey. An infusion of just the leaves and/or rose hips can be made, but for those steep for 4 hours for maximum benefit.

To make a vitamin rich rose hip juice for use in jams and jellies, wash the hips, remove the blossom ends and stems, cover with water and simmer for 15 minutes. Then steep (let sit in hot water), covered, for 24 hours and strain. Use the strained juice immediately or freeze it for as long as a year.

A Rose hip jam can be prepared by first deseeding and drying the hips or buy already dried and deseeded rose hips. After they have dried, cover with fresh apple juice and let soak overnight. The next day it's ready to eat and is jam consistency. Cinnamon and other spices can be added if necessary, but is good as is.

Rose petals are slightly astringent and can be made into a refreshing, cooling skin toner. Fill a glass jar with dried or fresh rose petals and cover with distilled witchhazel. Use a chopstick or butter knife to stir the mixture to remove any air bubbles, then top off the jar so all petals are covered. The petals float to the top and if they are not covered with liquid, they will go brown within a couple of hours. Screw on lid, label and date. Leave the jar to infuse in a cool, dark place for a couple of weeks. Strain and pour back into the original dark glass witchhazel bottles. Use on face with cotton pads or after shaving.

The Rose family has anti-inflammatory and sedative properties so a liniment is good externally for insect bites, to stop spasms, reduce heat locally, increase circulation, can be rubbed on overexerted muscles or a sore back. A liniment can be made with rubbing alcohol and ONLY used externally. A tincture can be made with vodka or brandy and rubbed on externally like a liniment or a few drops can be taken internally with a little sip of water. To make either a liniment or tincture, fill a jar with rose petals, fill with your choice of either 100 proof vodka, brandy or rubbing alcohol; cap tightly and set on a rag or plate (they can weep). Top off again the next day and allow to sit for 6 weeks. Shake daily or as often as you think of it. Strain with a cloth, bottle and store.

A rose petal elixir is excellent for sore throat, as well as other types of inflammation, including digestive inflammation. It is also a good remedy for heart palpitations. Taken in small amounts (like Rescue Remedy) for anxiety and fatigue or used externally for bug bites.

Rose Petal Elixir (from Kiva Rose)

Ingredients:
1 pint Mason jar
Fresh wild or domestic rose petals to fill your jar
A little less than 1 pint of good quality brandy (vodka willl also work)
Approximately 1/3 pint of raw honey

Directions:
Fill jar with fresh rose petals. They don’t have to be packed down, but they should fill the jar so that there isn’t a lot of empty space. If you don’t have enough rose petals to fill the jar, bee balm petals, chopped fresh ginger, zest of orange, lime, or lemon, etc. can be added. Next, add honey to coat the rose petals and fill about 1/3 of the jar. Add brandy or other alcohol to the top of the jar. Use plastic lid or place plastic wrap over the top and then screw on your metal lid. Allow to sit in a cool, dark place for 3-6 weeks before using.

Enjoy your summer and making your own rose recipes. Let me know if you have any other great remedies using roses!

Note: The information here is intended for entertainment and educational purposes only, and not as any form of medical advice. You should not use the information contained herein for diagnosing or treating a health problem or disease. If you have or suspect you have a medical problem, contact your health care provider.

Sources:
Various writings by the herbalists: Susun Weed, Kiva Rose, Rosemary Gladstar, Karen Vaughan, Tammy Herring, Winnie Abramson and Henriette's herbals.

Update on burdock

2010-06-15T10:41:00.001-07:00

I'm playing with these burdock vinegar wraps. Burdock poultice is good for poison ivy, like I said, but I didn't have any around. All I had were the wraps. When I applied the vinegar wraps the the older poison ivy on my arm, it felt great.

I have new patches coming up though and I wrapped them for a long time with the burdock leaves. The new poison ivy was irritated by that. Not too much, but enough I won't do that again. So I went to the creek and chewed up a bunch of violet leaves to put on there and we're back to normal again. Well normal for someone with poison ivy.

I hate to say it, but it's "good" that I'm getting poison ivy. I had it for so many years and had to use steroids and other prescription and over the counter remedies. With that experience I'm learning better what works and what doesn't on which phase of the poison ivy.

Ooooo Rose tea with rose honey, thank you for cooling me down in this heat. It sort of takes that core of hotness at the breastplate away. Even though I'm still hot, my core isn't drained like it normally is in this sort of heat. I'll be publishing my rose recipes soon.

We're getting there.

2010-06-13T04:41:00.000-07:00

We've been living in the RV full time for over a month now, I think, and the biggest lesson we've learned about this project is that it takes much longer to finish a step than we ever thought. By now we thought we'd have the site excavated already. Using those old beams for the barn slowed us down quite a bit, but the barn is finished enough to called done. The only things left now are an interior wall, more shelving, a little bit of floor and a door.

Equipment breaks down quite a bit and so has our truck. I'd say Murphy and his law book moved here with us, but that's not accurate either. Some big stuff has broken down and the weather hasn't always cooperated, but overall we make more progress every day and our bodies are holding up to the daily work and heat.

We have internet and enough power for the laptop. Jeffrey is about done with the outhouse, we have guests coming soon and that was a top priority. The build site is cleared and we were able to move things around to accommodate trees and a large raspberry patch.

Our sun danzer chest fridge showed up this week. We don't have the power to run it yet, but it's great as a big ice chest. Two bags of ice lasted almost two days in there and the temp was at around 0-5 Celsius.

I really like my last design for the house, but with as long as everything is taking, some of the complicated things are going to be scaled back. The root cellar and cistern are no longer right at the house so that the back North wall is now clean and simple. We have a good sized storage room in the house, so I won't have to get into the root cellar every day anyway. The root cellar would have to have been at a deeper excavation level than the house, it sticking out of the excavation site would have blocked the equipment getting in (so more trees would be taken out) and the drainage was going to be rather complicated to keep the house protected from the cistern and from water accumulating where the root cellar and house were going to meet. The animal house was going to be accessed from a door in our storage room so I could feed the animals easily during bad weather. Got rid of that too. That posed drainage and other grade complications so it's now also detached.

Seeing how long everything was taking, we explored the idea of having the walls poured instead of stacking blocks. We thought everything in Missouri has been so cheap so far, so why not check it out. When we got some of the over the phone preliminary quotes we were so excited. Then when we had contractors come out and give us a real quote, well that was quite different.

It would be close to $11,000 for poured walls. It would save us a huge amount of time, but eat into too much of our budget. We're back to dry stacked block with surface bonding. As a compromise, we contacted a few local people to help us stack. So we'll be moving along a lot quicker with help.

Originally we were going to use 12" block for the walls that would come in contact with berm. We're not digging into a hillside though so there is no back pressure to deal with. We are excavating to about 3-4 feet and then we'll back fill to the roof. Every 4th core will be concrete and rebar filled as well as 3 feet of every corner. We talked to Rob Roy and other contractors who have built basements (this is basically a basement house) about our specific project. With the size of the house and other considerations, 8" block will be fine. Thank goodness because that is a good bit lighter than 12" block!

We've been following the thread of an owner-builder and he's doing basically the same thing. His photos are great and he's not hidden his mistakes. So there's been a lot to learn. I have to get all the drawings for the house re-done as soon as possible because we are excavating Monday and there have been so many changes. I also made sure that the length and height of all the interior and exterior walls are the size of the block (actual dimensions) so that we don't have complications of having to create forms for the gaps. If it works out like I hope, each wall ends at a full block or half block. I had to move all the interior walls around in the design, but not by much more than a few inches.

Not all the work is hard and I am really enjoying the wonderful plants here. The swamp roses are in bloom now and I'm watching the hips on the Sweet Brier roses. I've enjoyed harvesting the petals and making all sorts of things. I've started writing about the many wonderful things you can do with roses and I'll post when the vinegar and other experiments are done. The raspberries are everywhere and we've been snacking on them every day. The self-heal grows like crazy and you'd think we were drunk mowing as we are cutting paths and swerve to avoid patches of flowers.

I got a touch of poison ivy on my forearms, but I've been hand clearing all the spots so that big equipment wouldn't come through and bull doze down everything, so it's to be expected. I still have jewelweed broth cubes in Judy's freezer from last year, but over did it with the cubes and was applying every time I felt an itch. That has dried my skin out a bit and last night when I itched, I wrapped my arms instead in burdock leaves that are stored in vinegar. Ahhhh. The redness on my skin that was around the poison ivy is gone and so was the itching. So I can now reduce the amount of Jewelweed that I use and hopefully my skin won't be so dry.

The burdock wraps also instantly took the sting out of a wasp sting that Jeffrey received and then one I got on the bottom of my foot a few days later. It's a great first aid treatment and we keep it on the counter. To make some, pick large burdock leaves, you probably have some around your yard or house, roll up and stick in a quart jar. Fill with organic, unfiltered apple cider vinegar and set out so you can quickly grab in case of a "knuckle buster" as Susun Weed calls it, or a sting or some poison ivy relief. It wraps around ankles and forearms so nicely!

I'll try to update when the excavation is done. For now, back to work on re-doing those drawings.

Here is the before photo of the excavation site.

Yellow and Purple

2010-04-19T12:48:00.000-07:00

Right now the fallow field is a sea of yellow dandelion and purple violet flowers! Oh what you miss when you mow. I picked a basket of dandelion and violet leaves for diner tonight and will saute them in oil with some onion and garlic. They are both highly nutritious and the only cost was the little bit of time it took to pick them. About 3 1/2 ounces of the fresh violet leaf has 264 mg of ascorbic acid and 20,000 I.U. of Vitamin A! The little flowers provide a little bit of Vitamin C and are very pretty in a salad. I filled a small jar with the flowers and covered them with oil. They'll sit for about 6 weeks and after straining it, I'll use as ear oil for tinnitus. When I came in with the harvest, I took a little of each out of the basket and set it in front of Little Mama Lucille. She's down with a hurt foot. She snatched those violet blossoms out of my hand before they hit her pillow! So I gave her more and she acted like I was giving her a piece of raw meat. She also loved the violet leaves.

I also picked enough violet leaves to 3/4 fill a mason jar, chopped and poured boiling water over them and capped. That will sit an hour and I'll strain. The result is a very beneficial infusion and the strained material can be used for a poultice. According to Susun Weed's book " Healing wise", violet leaf infusion is wonderful for all sorts of things such as fibrocystic breast disease, swollen glands, cancer, liver and gall bladder issues, skin issues, and helps the bladder and kidneys.

If the "health care" system we have today STARTED with plants like these and only used pharmaceuticals as a last resort, then I may feel completely different about this mandatory Health insurance coverage issue. We do not have a health care system managed by insurance companies, we have a disease management program run by companies that are invested in the fast food industry which cause much of the disease and support the pharmaceutical companies. I was an Employee Benefits Manager for many years and after that worked on the software that health insurance companies use. It's all about the money, not about your health. It's a system full of lobbyist and ridiculous regulations that employ highly trained professionals who spend most of their time dispensing pills.

I used to be a very, very sick person and if I added up all the time I've spent in Doctor's offices and hospitals, I'm sure it would reflect years of my life. In that time not one of those highly trained professionals showed me the simple things that ultimately healed me. They gave me pills that caused more problems, more illness, more symptoms. I spent thousands and thousand of dollars and have only in the last few years gotten out of debt. When I decided to stop all the pills, I met very good Doctors that were interested in what I was doing and supported me, some taking notes on what I did and were fascinated. One even commented that he wished he had learned about this in medical school. But they should have been the teachers, they could have saved me years of misery and a lot of money. It's just not the system they are part of. There are great Doctors and nurses out there, but why weren't most trained in the basics of human health care that has been on this planet for thousands of years and right below our feet?

So do I want to be mandated to pay into a system that starts with pharmaceuticals and the knife; a system that sticks people into hospitals- the least hospitable place for healing; a system where overwhelmed Doctors aren't taught how to teach people to properly care for them selves at home, leaving their offices for the most critical cases; a system set up on dependence - "If this pill doesn't work, come back and we'll try another."; or a system that is not at all out war with the fast food industry, the cause of much of the ill health in this country? No, not really. This isn't a political issue to me, it's the right of every human being to know some of the most basic health practices they can take care of at home and the teaching should be coming from health care providers.

If I buy property I understand I have to pay taxes, if I want to drive my car on the road I have to pay insurance; but just for being alive I'm now going to be obligated to pay into a corrupt system that most certainly does NOT promote health, makes money on people terrified to let their coverage lapse for even one month and makes the corrupt pharmaceutical companies rich. Watch "The Constant Gardener" for just a glimpse of what this industry is like.

People have asked me many "what if" questions. What if you are in an accident, what if you get cancer, on and on - the hospital would have to treat you and we, the taxpayers, would be stuck with your bill. "Our system may not be perfect, but it's better than nothing." IF I have some critical care issue that requires having to use this system, then I'd do what I could to work out a payment plan. I haven't been to a Dr.'s office in so many years I can't remember the name of my last primary care physician. I'd say I've saved enough in health insurance premiums to cover several accidents.

If someone was in a relationship where they were abused routinely, physically and financially and you advised the person to get out of the relationship - what if they said it was the best they'd ever do, their partner may not be much but it's all they have. What would you think? It's not an excuse and not acceptable. This system has a lot of house cleaning to do and needs to seriously rethink it's whole direction before we'll ever see a change in the health of the citizens of this country. Sorry for the soap box.

Well we've been working hard at Falcon creek and have the start of a barn going. We discovered that trying to use the used timbers we won at auction was a big mistake. We wasted several days because even the ones that look straight really weren't. Most were warped and bowed and for most, no amount of pulling on the twisty tool (Ok so I don't know the name) would straighten them out. It was great that we learned this lesson on the barn and not the house. We know now we can not use them for our roof as we had hoped.

Our next project is building a cistern for water and there is plenty there to use. We'll also use the roof of the barn to collect rain water for the herb garden on top of the hill. There are huge amazing dogwoods in bloom right now and all sorts of flowering trees and plants. Lovely.

Link to USDA bulletin Surface Bonding

2010-03-23T09:56:00.000-07:00

The link to the "Construction with Surface Bonding" link is broken on the USDA page. I contacted them and they said they would fix. Meanwhile, they provided a link that works:

http://naldr.nal.usda.gov/exe/zynet.exe/document.txt?ZyActionD=ZyDocument&Client=National%20Agricultural%20Library%20Digital%20Repository&Index=AH|AH2|AIB|BIC|Books|Circ|ERS|FB|FVMNR|HGB|JAR|LFLT|MP|NFC|ROS|Rural|TB|TB1|TB2|USDA_Div_Bulletin|WPC|YOA1|YOA2&Query=&Time=&EndTime=&SearchMethod=1&TocRestrict=&Toc=&TocEntry=&QField=Accession^CAT87210094&QFieldYear=&QFieldMonth=&QFieldDay=&UseQField=Accession&IntQFieldOp=1&ExtQFieldOp=1&File=&User=anonymous&Password=anonymous&SortMethod=h|-&MaximumDocuments=15&FuzzyDegree=0&ImageQuality=r85g16/r85g16/x150y150g16/i500&Display=hpfrw&DefSeekPage=f&SearchBack=ZyActionL&Back=ZyActionS&BackDesc=Results%20page&MaximumPages=1&ZyEntry=1&SeekPage=f&Rank=1

With dial up I had trouble downloading this document, so she also emailed it to me as a PDF. If anyone else has this problem, email me and I will forward the PDF to you.

Eat your carrots

2010-03-21T10:42:00.000-07:00

It's hard to make out in the photo, but this is the old logging road.

These last few days have been the first time we've been to Falcon since it's warmed up. I was glad to get down there, to be in the country air and think about my grandparents when they would go to their land every summer and we'd go to play. After working most of the day, I'd stand looking up at the trees and try to figure out the best place to put everything. I've been staring at the house drawings for so long now I can really see it in my head. This was the first time I've been able to see where everything can fit without taking out trees of size in most cases. The house site itself will loose just a few trees, but it's the spot with the least amount of trees, the medium sized ones are good and straight and can be used in building, and most of the growth is new. The land was logged some years ago and we're trying to use the spots that they hit the most. The places for the RV's, shed, herb garden, and main garden will loose no trees other than saplings. The driveway is an old logging road and as it continues past where we'll build the house, that will be the little yard for Rufus the pig. From Judy's bedroom window there will be a huge Sycamore and Juniper tree.

We followed the logging road on top of the hill as far as it would go and found it ends up on a path at the bottom of the hill where the path from the garden comes out. When standing on the path on the bottom land, we couldn't see this road up the hill at all. It's so gradual that I told Jeffrey I could take my Hover-round down that thing when I''m old.

A neighbor told us that some "old man" they know, knew where there was a good year round spring on our property and gave us a general description. We had no idea!! So we followed his directions and found a lot of swales and then hit a nice wet weather creek bed with water seeping out of it's ledge. All Right we have a spring! So we followed the wet weather creek to see where it lead and Guacamole! we found a fantastic dripping spring with rock out cropping and a short fall till it hits rock below. Of course I didn't have my camera with me. I think it's far from the house site (we'll need to figure that out), but we can build a little holding box for good drinking water we can carry back to the house and it would be a nice place for a little guest cabin. We found 4 springs total and are going to look for one close to the house site based on vegetation indicators.

The idea in this article on milking water from the hills is good and I like the idea of a pounded well, but I think we're just going to start with rain capturing and water from the creek stored in a cistern. I'll see how far the spring is so we can consider whether or not we want to do something like this article describes. We bought a big berkey water filter a few months ago and it's fantastic. We don't like the water at the rent house and this makes it taste great! For anyone that buys it, this would replace the need for bottled water in the house when the tap water is unpleasant, plus it saves you from drinking out of plastic bottles. "BERKEY doesn't require water pipes or electricity. Pour creek, pond, or stagnant ditch water in the BERKEY water purifier and your family has good tasting, clean, clear water, purified to 99.99999%."

Jeffrey's always on the prowl for used solar stuff and found a solar installer less than a mile from our new place! How awesome to find people that like the same thing so close. We met them a few days ago and had a good time talking about different building methods and all sorts of things. It'll be nice having them so close.

Part of our delay in getting back to work on the land was a severe case of sciatica. I treated it using Mullein tincture and St. John's wort flower oil topically and Mullein tincture and St. John's wort tincture internally. The topical treatment was several drops of Mullein tincture rubbed in to the painful low back area and when evaporated a generous amount of St. John's oil massaged in. We alternated with cold and hot applications using frozen corn and a heating pad, about 20 minutes each and laying on the floor. After a few days, sitting up on the floor was added for a light stretch, some walking and warm soaks in the bath with St. John's wort oil. Within about 5 days, normal stretching was possible. It cleared up pretty fast I think and is 100% better now. It was originally better in 3 days, but then not taking it easy brought it right back on. With a few more days of treatment, the pain was gone. I've been using the same oil and tincture treatment for an injured ankle and heel. The results are much slower but it is improving.

We don't have time for much of a garden this year because we have to have 4 walls, a floor and roof over our heads if possible before winter. We did start a small garden spot a couple of days ago though. We picked up as much as we wanted of ruined and partially composted hay on a tip from a neighbor. Hopefully the pile heated enough to kill the seeds, but if not well it is what it is. I've been wanting to try the lasagna garden method and this is a good test patch for that. We put paper down on the spot and covered it thickly with this broken down hay (should have used straw). We tried to find ruined straw but weren't able to. Some of our seeds are started at home and when they are big enough and it's time, I'll use a bulb planter and poke holes in the mulch, down into the earth, put the seedling in and see how it goes. The garden will get better in time and the compost pile bigger. I wish we could have brought the 3 large compost piles when we moved and our garden, but the new owner will use it. No the house still hasn't closed yet. Was supposed to close last Friday and more delays. They say it will be this week for sure, seems like this is taking forever.

In case I haven't mentioned it yet, after studying the slip form method for the last two years, we decided to change to dry stack - surface bonded method of building. We have little time and the rebar requirements for the slip form method seem overwhelming. I still love the idea of slip form and I'll use it for other things. The dry stack surface bonded blocks are stronger than mortar and blocks especially when they are filled. We found a local man that sells the blocks for not quite half the price of Lowe's. I'll post more on that later as soon as the drawings are all done and the plans finalized.

"For complete information on the technique, I strongly recommend Construction With Surface Bonding, a USDA information bulletin available for 45¢ from the Superintendent of Documents, Dept. TMEN, Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. 20402. Ask for Stock Number 001-000-03340-9." - http://www.daycreek.com/DC/html/TMEN_No67.htm

This doesn't fit in anywhere, but I have a funny nephew story. My brother and his wife were staying at my other brother's house with their kids. They took a walk down to the pond and my sister-in-law put my 3 year old nephew Charlie on a low to the ground branch and was moving it a little for him. She said she was going to sit on it too and my nephew cried out and shook his hands "No Aunt Pam, you'll break it!!" She said "Are you calling me fat?!" He said "No, your not fat...you just ate all your carrots and got big bones." It was all said in that cute 3 year old speak, he is a riot!

My sweet Grandfather, the Music Man

2010-03-15T08:23:00.003-07:00

Maurice "Tim" Tyler
1921 - 2010

My grandfather died March 9, 2010. He was the strength and heart of our family. There is more to say about him than I could possibly put here and one day I will try. I still am not quite ready to get back on the computer too much. My mother had these lyrics printed and displayed at the service, they say it all. He taught us the love of music, how to dance and how important family is.

Dan Fogelberg Leader Of The Band

The leader of the band is tired
And his eyes are growing old
But his blood runs thru' my instrument
And his song is in my soul
My life has been a poor attempt
To imitate the man
I'm just a living legacy
To the leader of the band

~~~

My brothers found another song that describes his life perfectly. My grandmother listened to this song over and over. I stayed the night with her after the funeral and she wanted to listen to it again, so we sat and listened to music together for a while. It is a night I will always cherish.

Jamey Johnson "In Color"
I said, Grandpa what’s this picture here
It’s all black and white and ain’t real clear
Is that you there, he said, yeah I was eleven
Times were tough back in thirty-five
That’s me and Uncle Joe just tryin’ to survive
A cotton farm in the Great Depression

And if it looks like we were scared to death
Like a couple of kids just trying to save each other
You should have seen it in color

This one here was taken overseas
In the middle of hell in nineteen forty-three
In the winter time you can almost see my breath
That was my tail gunner ole’ Johnny McGee
He was a high school teacher from New Orleans
And he had my back right through the day we left

And if it looks like we were scared to death
Like a couple of kids just trying to save each other
You should have seen it in color

A picture’s worth a thousand words
But you can’t see what those shades of gray keep covered
You should have seen it in color

This one is my favorite one
This is me and grandma in the summer sun
All dressed up the day we said our vows
You can’t tell it here but it was hot that June
That rose was red and her eyes were blue
And just look at that smile I was so proud

That’s the story of my life
Right there in black and white

And if it looks like we were scared to death
Like a couple of kids just trying to save each other
You should have seen it in color

A picture’s worth a thousand words
But you can’t see what those shades of gray keep covered
You should have seen it in color

Portable Petroglyphs

2010-02-09T08:55:00.000-08:00

My friend Steve is a wonderful artist/ teacher and is the type that reaches out, ready to help people as a mentor with his years of knowledge of natural things. That's why I wanted to share his fantastic artwork with you. Here is some information on his hand made pendants that I am proud to wear. Pendants range from $30.00 t0 $50.00 depending on what kind of stone it is and the complexity of the design. They are mailed in a flate rate envelope.

Steve Lee's Portable Petroglyphs.

All of my stone pendants are hand crafted without the use of power tools using either local river stones or various types of soft carvable stones such as catlinite, soapstone, wonderstone etc. I create the designs on the majority of my pieces using a combination of engraving and micro-pecking which provides a contrast of depth, tone and texture allowing the design to stand out. I'm always pleased when my pieces find a home with someone who will appreciate them, both for their beauty and the many hours of skill and labor which goes into the crafting. Thanks.

Shalama, Aloha

If you would like to inquire about one of his pendants, email him:
stevelee13@gmail.com

Link to "homeless" pendants:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2001940&id=1467825642&l=059a1826fe

Jewelweed and Poison Ivy

2010-01-07T19:13:00.000-08:00

(photo from http://www.loudounwildlife.org/HHJewelweed.htm)

Earlier this fall I found a huge patch of Jewelweed in full bloom wrapping along the base of 3 small hills. It lays right along the path of a wet weather creek. Being already fall, I didn't think there was really need for poison ivy relief and the stalks were already a little tough. When I cut them open there wasn't much juice. There were so many flowers though, I decided to go ahead and make a broth. With snipers and a grateful heart, I harvested a basket full by cutting the stalk at an easy to carry length, leaving on the leaves and flowers. I randomly cut a stalk here and there, because I don't like to harvest too much of anything from one spot. When inside, I chopped the stalks coarsely and put in a pot of water. The Jewelweed was brought to a boil and simmered till the liquid was a dark orange (about 30 min) and then left to cool. Then the whole brew was strained (I used a large cotton cloth that I use to strain large batches). There was sooo much, I made way to much. But I filled ice cube trays with the strained liquid and while they were freezing, the extra broth was stored in the fridge and the strained material put into the compost pile. Eventually all the broth was frozen, cubed and stored in freezer bags. Argh I do hate to use plastic. Maybe wide mouth mason jar would work? The cubes stick together a little and in the bag I can give it a light drop on the counter, so I dunno. The neighbors received few bags of the ice cubes because it took up too much space in the freezer and we were grateful for all the tomatoes they gave us this year. It was nice having something to give away.

Not long after making the Jewelweed ice cubes, my leg was lashed with poison ivy 3 times in a row. It also visited my waist even though I was bundled up! At first I thought I had 3 spider bites so I treated it with Plantain Salve, then it exploded into a horrible rash behind my knee and down my calf. The Plantain salve kept the skin from breathing and that's what a poison ivy rash on the skin needs to do.

I figured my work long johns and good pair of work pants were contaminated and I can't swear by this but the broth may also have gotten the oil off of my clothes. After getting it three times, I rubbed a cube over the inside of the pants leg near the area I was getting infected from, let it sit for a few minutes, then washed the clothes alone in hot water. I didn't get it again. Could have just been the hot water. I'm sure there will be years to experiment with these little jewels.

When I had my Texas property, anyone can tell you I was tortured with poison ivy all summer, every year. Back in the day when I'd go to the Dr and get steroids, it came to a point where he told me he couldn't prescribe it to me anymore. So I am very familiar with poison ivy, the steroid pill packs and prescription creams.

The first time I tried one of the Jewelweed ice cubes it was pure heaven on the skin. Almost worth getting poison ivy just to feel how wonderful this is - ALMOST. I'd take a cube from the freezer and while it was still a cube, apply with the leg over the bathtub. The cube drips and leaves orange drips on the floor (doesn't stain though if you just wipe it right up). So I learned to put my foot on the soap tray in the tub and rub the cube on the rash, letting it drip into the tub. INSTANT relief, magical stomach flipping relief. All itching stopped immediately. Each application takes very little of the cube, so I'd keep the rest in a cup in the fridge. It eventually melts and is a bit easier to apply (though when in a frozen cube, it does feel oh so good). When melted, just dip two fingers into the cold liquid and pat on to the rash or let it drip off of your fingers. For me, the rash heals faster with the Jewelweed than with steroids and provides itch relief. So all around it's a much better cure.

Jewelweed is easy to identify. Use it fresh on rashes or poison ivy by breaking open the stalk and putting the juice on the skin AND also boil up some of the brew. When the blooms outside are gone and the stalks are tough, use the broth cubes for all sorts of skin irritations, not just poison ivy.

For a few days at the end of getting it for the third time, the ankle on that leg became swollen. After consulting with some herbalist friends, I started on chickweed tincture and the swelling was gone very quickly.

On top of getting poison ivy, my hands and forearms tend to get cut up with briars while out working the new property. The Jewelweed provides instant relief for that too. I keep an ice cube in a small jelly jar in our ice chest to make sure we always had some when out working at Falcon creek. I still have a freezer full and will try to never be out of them!

When the rash was bad, I'd take a soothing semi-warm oatmeal bath. It's easy to prepare at home and pre-packaged, expensive oatmeal bath powder isn't necessary. Cook 1/2 cup of non-instant, regular oatmeal for the normal amount of cooking time, along with 4 cups of water total. Pour the water and cooked oatmeal into a strainer that is sitting on top of a big bowl. Save the liquid. This next part can be a hair on the messy side, but when I started using a flour scoop it did get easier. Take an old tube sock (one with loose elastic is easier) and scoop the strained oatmeal into the sock. I found it a bit less messier to fold down the sock leg about an 1-1/2" from the top before starting. That way if the scooper touched the sock, any oatmeal that stuck would be inside of the sock when I folded it back up. The less oatmeal in your bathtub the better. When done fold the top back up and tie a knot at the top. Pour the reserved liquid into your bath water and put the sock in as well. You can skip doing the sock and just use the liquid if it's too big of a pain. I believe I got this recipe from Rosmary Gladstar's "Herbal Recipes for Vibrant Health" book.

It's fun to squeeze the water-logged sock right over the rash and let the goo ooze over the irritated skin. If you're used to hot baths, try to avoid the temptation. I've found that when I have poison ivy (or chiggers), really hot water hurts and irritates the skin (even though I've read it recommended to bathe in hot water). I just make the water warm enough so that I'm comfortable and not the least bit cold. I also put in a good amount of baking soda when bathing towards the beginning of the rash cycle.

~~~~~~

From Gov Deals, Jeffrey was able to get a ton of timber beams and other lumber at a ridiculously low price. We were supposed to pick up all the beams within 10 days, but sill have some there and it's been well over 10 days. I believe it's been several weeks now. We bought ours from the Department of Transportation and they've so far been very flexible with us.

We thought we'd knock it out in three days! Ha! We made 4 trips over three long days and had to quit from exhaustion. The pile was huge and the beams are incredibly heavy. Then we tried again after resting up. After getting about the same amount of wood as the last time, we were again bested by our bodies. There is about 1/3 of the pile left and if that's all we get, then we still have gotten one incredible deal. The clutch is now going out on our truck and I think it's from towing the trailer with all that heavy wood. Right now it's too cold and snowy to do this sort of work outside, but as soon as we can, we're going to make another attempt to get the rest. These should be all the beams we'll need to build sheds, cabins, and berm retaining walls. It was a pretty exciting find and we saved a lot of money.

On Craigslist, he also found 13 free interior doors and the pick up was local. We don't need that many interior doors, but there is lot we can do with them. I think we only need 3 interior doors between the two houses, so the rest will be shed walls or something or other.

When I first started drawing the design for the houses, it was very simple. Then I changed it a million times and a few weeks ago came up with a compound sort of design to save money by sharing walls. The workshop sharing a wall with the back of my mother-in-law's house and so on. That just left too much of our homes without berm. So I've decided to start over again, hopefully for the last time for a while, and just make two simple cabins close enough to share a common patio, root cellar, laundry room and freezer. That will leave much of the North side bermed with earth to keep a cozy blanket of dirt on the cold side. Trying to draw the North side to look like a Hobbit house has still been pretty difficult for me, but as long as we both know what we are doing I guess it doesn't really matter. The last time I was in Houston, I sat with my grandmother and she helped me with drawing technique some. She is a wonderful artist and teacher and I wish I had taken lessons from her when I lived there.

My Grandmother almost always paints with oils, but here is a photo of two sketches she did. The one on the left is of my brother Jacob and to the right my Grandfather (Jacob got his middle name from my grandfather).

~~~~
Jeffrey has started making beer and it's fantastic! He's calling it Falcon Creek beer. Since we moved to Missouri, he's been picking up carboy's here and there at resale and antique shops. He found some books on half.com and learned enough about the process to give it a go. The guys at the beer supply place were helpful with questions too. You really can learn just about anything you need to out of a book! We have a couple of rooms that are unheated so his beer is now sharing a room with my herbal brews.

I'm still making herbal oils and extracts. My latest and so far favorite, was the infused Juniper oil. I made it to use for routine breast massage which encourages breast health. My mother just found that warmed and on a cotton ball knocked out her earache. It has my favorite smell and I love to just cup my oiled hands over my nose and breeeeeeeathe it in. Mmmmm woods.

Stay warm everyone!

Dandelion woodstove enchiladas

2009-11-30T11:30:00.001-08:00

This is a delicious way to eat dandelion greens. Pick the dandelion greens, wash and blanch for 5 minutes then discard the water.

Sautee peppers, onion, and garlic in olive oil. Add greens and a little broth and cook 5 more minutes or until most of the liquid is gone.

Grate about 2 cups of pepper jack cheese or whatever cheese strikes your fancy.

Soften corn tortillas on a dry skillet for about 10 seconds on one side and 8 seconds on the other.

Put home made or store bought enchilada sauce in the bottom of a dutch oven cast iron pot. Make sure the bottom is completely covered, be generous. Lay 2 corn tortillas in the bottom of the dutch oven on top of the sauce. They will over lap in the middle and they will not completely cover the bottom of the pot on the sides.

Layer with dandelion mixture, cheese and more tortillas until you are out of ingredients. I'm typically out after about 3 1/2 to 4 inches high. Put a layer of cheese on last. Put the lid on.

Place on the top of your wood heat stove. The top of our woodstove is flat cast iron. There is no precise cooking time for the woodstove and things will not burn within minutes like a traditional stove. After about an hour I check to see if it's bubbly. I typically will leave it on for longer than that but after several hours, the bottom layer will get hard. It's delicious!

Mineral Rich Vinegar

2009-11-29T17:42:00.000-08:00

I notice more and more how herbs and wild plants feel in my body. It's an experience you don't get with vitamins. They've entered my dreams with their roots moving through the muscles and organs and their flowers blooming from the skin. When eating freshly picked wild Dandelion simmered in a soup, the leaf melts on your teeth like chocolate, coating your them with a microscopic yumminess that my teeth craved for 3 more days after the first time. My gall-bladder makes this little squirt noise that feels so nice and my stomach and colon chime in with happy gurgles when I'm eating a nutritious soup.

This photo by Missouri artist Virginia Harold represents to me what it feels like when the roots of the plant "grow" inside you and their energy, their fire lap out.

More than masking symptoms or artificially propping you up, creating dependency; using herbs and wild plants restore and build up the body. It's part of the human - plant experience that should not be missed.

People have used Vinegar to extract and preserve nutrients from herbs for thousands of years. "Those of the ancient world quickly learned to combine vinegar with beneficial plants for maximum medicinal value. "

"Infused vinegar is mineral rich, due to its ability to extract the minerals from plants Not only is the vinegar transformed into a mineral rich liquid, but because vinegar can increase calcium and other mineral absorption by as much as 1/3, the minerals from the plants become more bio-available. One tablespoon of an herbal vinegar.. can deliver 300 mg or more of easily absorbed calcium. "

My favorite mineral rich vinegar right now is Self-heal (Prunella Vulgaris). It's loaded with minerals, especially calcium. For a drink that helps kick start my day, I put 2 tsps of Self-heal vinegar in a glass of water with a little sprinkle of Tumeric and a spoon coated with molasses. Here is a nice article about the benefits of herbal vinegars and how easy it is to make them by Prodigal Gardens. Another great way to use vinegar is in salad dressings, cooking beans or how ever you'd normally use vinegar in your cooking.

Self heal is a common herb (weed) and easy to identify. Check out these links and maybe you have some growing in your yard. Pick the self-heal flowers from an area that hasn't been sprayed with pesticides and isn't near cars or the road. The links above show how easy it is to make a vinegar but it's basically chop herb, put in a jar, fill with vinegar, let it sit 6 weeks, shaking daily and strain.

http://plants.usda.gov/java/profile?symbol=PRVU
http://www.altnature.com/gallery/healall.htm

Here is another site on Dandelion vinegar:
http://crowsdaughtersherbs.blogspot.com/2008/01/dandelion-has-been-potent-ally-of-mine.html

The earthen roof that will cover the earth-bermed house that we are going to build this Spring will be covered in low maintenance and highly beneficial herbs such as dandelion, plantain, chickweed, and self heal. It will be so fun to pick the greens and flowers by walking out of the kitchen door and onto the green roof sloping to the ground.

I imagine the North side of the house to look like a Hobbit House, but am having great difficulty drawing it. The elevations and floor plans that are done with ruler and on graph paper look good, but the North side is giving me fits. There aren't many drawings of Hobbit houses online that I can find and with the berm being most of that side, I find that the soft lines in my imagination aren't coming across on paper.

If you like to draw Hobbit houses and might want to help for fun or trade, please contact me.

Menopause Summit 2009

2009-10-27T06:47:00.000-07:00

"Free teleseminar series with the best and brightest experts in menopause, middle-age and transitioning life in positive ways! Starting in October, hold on to your hot flash, we're going to have some fun!

The Menopause Summit 2009 will present exciting speakers, teachers and mentors who may help you gain great insight, tips and guidance in making this the best time of your life!

We have a great opportunity in menopause. Thoughts affect our hormones and our hormones change drastically when we begin the menopause journey. Our emotions are the guidance we need to grow, change and become centered, healthy and whole. The emotions that feel good are guiding us toward health, peace and connection with Spirit, while the emotions that feel bad are getting our attention in order for us to change either our perceptions or our behaviors."

http://www.nicotinesolutions.com/summit09/index.html

The new Crooked Creek

2009-10-13T07:47:00.000-07:00

Here is a photo of the creek at the new property. After a good bit of rain, the creek was nice and full. We sat by the creek while we ate our lunch and it sounds so beautiful. We've been working hard to make an area for the old RV to arrive and next will be the outdoor kitchen. We found replacement BBQ grates on clearance and there are plenty of rocks on the property to build with.

Check out the new site for Little Mama's Herbals:

www.littlemamasherbals.blogspot.com

Revenge of the chigger king & the new homestead

2009-10-01T09:24:00.000-07:00

I spent a few days with my family in Galveston this summer. My niece and I were at the beach together at sunset and she made this beautiful drawing for me.

My last post was brought to the attention of the Chigger King. He was very displeased by such disregard - claiming that with casual effort, I could thwart his teaming army. Looking for property hours and hours from home didn't lend itself to a shower within 4 hours of being outside. So I was attacked over and over, it was bad. When out picking herbs here at the house I really got sick of showering after coming in, so many days I'd convince myself that it wasn't necessary. I was wrong. I did find that a dry rag or bandanna for a dry scrub helped a lot. Then I found out about Sulfur Powder.

Combining the dry skin scrub when not near a shower (or just not wanting to shower) along with Sulfur powder was the magic key. Sulfur powder, or Flowers of Sulfur or Elemental Sulfur, is an old time solution to not only chigger problems but also for things like lice, ticks, and mites. Some old timers used to burn a pan of it when moving into a new house to clear out the bugs and would sprinkle sulfur powder around the base of the house. Sort like a bug bomb I'd guess. Some used to take a spoon of it mixed with molasses to "clean out what ails ya", though I'm not sure I'd go that far. Some people even ate dried fruit with Sulfur Powder on it for keeping ticks off. I can't find anything bad about Sulfur powder yet and it is a natural product. The books I've checked say to not use kitchen utensils for mixing and to wash your hands after use, so I don't think I'll be ingesting any soon.

In a mixing bowl, combine sulfur powder and talcum powder, about 1/2 and 1/2. Scoop this into an old sock. I found an old flour scoop worked well for this. Then pat your feet, socks, legs, cuffs, boots, waist line etc with the powder as a great chigger and tick repellent. I keep the sock in a zip lock back on the porch and usually pat my feet and lower legs down before I go out. Without the talcum powder, the "chunky" sulfur powder will not go through the sock fibers. It also doesn't work with pantyhose, tried it. When we were looking for property, we had to walk through chest high fallow fields and thick woods in the heat of the summer. Using the Sulfur Powder reduced my average bites per field trip from 20-40 down to 1 (and sometimes zero).

Pharmacies used to carry Sulfur Powder for treating acne and other skin problems, but I found it difficult to locate one that didn't say "We used to carry it, but we don't anymore." I found the local feed store carried it in 50lb bags for around $25.

Since we grow organically, the 50 pounds of the powder will come in handy. Not only for pest control, but to lower the Ph of the soil if it needs it. In "Growing Edge" by Tom Alexander, Amy Knutson, Matt Harrington; they recommend Sulfur Powder as an effective preventative fungicide for dipping corms and bulbs before storage. Here are some sites that show additional uses for sulfur powder:

www.oisat.org/control_methods/other_substances/sulfur.html
http://organicgardens.suite101.com/article.cfm/kill_spider_mites_in_the_garden
http://www.a-garden-diary.com/organic.htm

If you have used sulfur powder, let me know!

We finally bought land in Missouri. It took 9 months of looking and driving to pick one. The photo is the small bottom pasture with a little cleared. Ultimately we found the best deals, and the best land, was advertised as big acreage such as 200-300 acres. When we called, many of them said they would break out a 20-30 acre parcel for us and this is how we found the property that was ultimately purchased. There is a year round creek, a small bottom land pasture with great looking soil, a small south facing hill that we'll build on top of and a bigger pasture on top of the small hill. There is a big wooded hill that provides a nice buffer between us and the road and it's one property away from a National Forest. I've spotted some herbs there already, but look forward to really getting out there and looking for more.

The land closed on Tuesday and we started to work yesterday clearing the massive debris pile left behind years ago by the prior owner. We bought an old RV to live in while we built in NY and thankfully the old gal made it to Missouri. It broke down on the move here and is being stored about 30 minutes from the property, boy is that handy. So with a little effort, it'll make it to the property next week and we can avoid the 2 1/2 hour commute from the rent house. We'll probably stay out there a few days a week till it gets too cold to work.

The first project is going to be a root cellar so we'll have somewhere safe in case of a weather event and then the outdoor kitchen. We cleared a spot for each already. The weather is great for this kind of work and we're so happy to get going after such a long delay.

This summer hasn't been a waste though. The property at the rent house has provided medicinal herbs in abundance and I've been making salves, herbal oils, elixirs and extracts. When I first started making salve by eyeballing it, it was nice and soft. Then I started using recipes, like the one I posted last time (6 parts oil to 1 part wax) and haven't been very happy with that lately. The last batch of Plantain salve that I made I ended up adding 10 additional ounces of oil to the already 16 ounces and it still wasn't as nice and soft as those first few batches. When you are making salve, test it by putting some on a spoon and setting that on a plate in the freezer for a few minutes. Then if it's too stiff, just add more oil. If it's too soft, add more wax (though that has never happened, it can't be too soft for me).

My mother-in-law Judy has moved in and it's been wonderful. Sometimes we'd get back so late at night after looking at land all day. The animals were all taken care of and she usually had something ready for us to eat. If any dirty dishes were left in the rush to get out the door for the long road trip, more often than not, they'd be washed. We're all sharing expenses and labor. Our animals are all getting along after a bit of a bumpy start and Rufus the pig has decided it's OK for her to brush him. He does take a while to warm up to someone.

Join me at the Traditions in Western Herbalism conference September 17-19, 2010.
http://traditionsinwesternherbalism.org/

Chicks and Tiggers

2009-07-03T08:25:00.000-07:00

We didn't buy that property we came to see the last time I posted. There were topography and creek issues. We did just move to Missouri though a few weeks ago and are renting a house w/ gorgeous woods and pastures. The heat was pretty extreme the first week and there was no A.C. but that's been fixed. The woods have ticks and chiggers and I guess anyone that has woods and tall grasses are feeling their bite this time of year.

Having ticks is new to me, I didn't have them at my place in Texas. It was hard not to freak out when I saw the first tick on my skin. Now I keep a cup of soapy water and tweasers at the door to pull ticks off the dogs. It's easy to catch the ticks on us before they bite and they go right into the toilet if possible. When I come in from being outside I just really check closely and pick them off with my fingers. There haven't been that many and it's almost getting rare to find one.

Texas had a ton of chiggers though and my first experience with them I had over 200 bites just on my legs and my nephew got eaten up as well. He missed almost a week of school and I was so sick. I felt horrible and guilty, so I read everything I could about chiggers.

I read that they take 4 hours to locate a spot to bite but I can't find that link again. Since I've gone under that assumption however, along with some basic treatment that I'll tell you about later, chiggers don't bother me anymore. I guess everyone knows by now it's not the chigger under your skin that itches. Once you start to itch, the chigger is gone. What causes the itch is the little tube that is left under your skin formed by their saliva that liquefies your tissue and your body's reaction to the saliva by hardening the surrounding area. The itch from this bite can last for weeks and after constant scratching can become infected. I used to use finger nail polish, chiger-rid, the pink stuff, oatmeal baths and anything else I could find to relieve the itching. There is a much better way.

First, the obvious prevention (which I don't really follow anymore unless I'm going deep into the woods) is tucking your pants into your socks (some even add a rubber band around the sock line), wearing mud boots sprayed with Off and spraying your pant legs with off. I don't really bother with that too much anymore.

The trick is the shower. I used to keep several sets of work clothes in the bathroom and would come in every 3-4 hours, throw my possible chigger infested clothes right into the washing machine, and head for the shower. Scrub well with a soapy rag focusing on areas where there were clothes fit tighter like waist, sock, underwear and bra bands and really scrub the belly. That will get rid of most of the problem right there. If you are in a remote location with no access to water, I've read that you can use a dry cloth and scrub down. I usually wear loose fitting clothes, as few tight fitting articles of clothing possible and don't wear socks; that is, again, if I'm not going deep in the woods.

We have gotten a few bites since we've been here but most are from when we first arrived, walked the woods and then just began unpacking the moving truck. I didn't shower till it was too late. I don't think I've gotten any new bites since I make sure to shower after being outside. After the shower I apply Plaintain (Plantago major) salve to any existing chigger bites. That's it, the chigger bites don't itch, they don't get infected and I don't think about them for hours and hours, sometimes all day. When I can feel the bite "waking up", I just put on some more and that's it. I had to fly to NY to pick up the car we left behind and couldn't take the salve with me. The bites didn't itch till the next day and it wasn't even bad! If you've ever had bad chigger bites and tried all the over the counter stuff, this stuff seems truly magical. I made the salve for my dog and had it handy when we first got here. I tried it, but knowing how badly chigger bites itch, I didn't really think it would work. It's almost instant and I haven't had even one episode of crazy itch that chigger bites have always put me through even with all the over the counter remedies.

I had two other bites from when we first arrived, I think fire ant and a giant mosquito or spider bite on my forehead. The salve didn't work as magically on them, but quelled the itching some and all the bites are very tiny now and almost completely healed. I ended up using a poultice on the big bite on my forehead and that fixed it right up.

The salve is very easy and fun to make. It's good to keep on hand not only for chigger bites, but cuts, scratches, aches, burns and I could just go on and on. You almost certainly have Plantain growing nearby. For the bites that the plantain didn't work as well on, a poultice of plantain did work. There are many websites written by people much more qualified than me about salves, oils and poultices. So if you have any interest, do a little research and you'll find so much information.

Here is what I did though. First locate the plantain (Plantago)not the banana looking fruit. It will be where you walk a lot and it's nick name is "white man's walk". Don't pick plantain that has been sprayed with pesticides, near the road or has possibly had a car parked over it. When I've pointed it out to people they almost always say something like "that's just yard junk" or "that's just a weed." It's one of the easiest plants to identify. In most photos of it online, the plant is big with a seed stalk. However if you mow your yard, the leaf will be much smaller. This is a nice plantain patch at our new rent house.

Make an infused Oil -
Pick the leaves on a dry day and don't wash. If there is dirt, you can scrub off with a brush. If you just have to wash, you can get a shallow bowl and lightly swish the leaf in it a bit, but that's not preferred. I've read to semi-dry the herb and I've read to put it in the oil fresh. I like to leave it out for a day or two on a towel, but I think I won't do that next time. Coarsely chop it up and put in a completely dry glass jar, I use a quart mason jar. Poke it down (I use a chop stick) and add olive oil to the top. Label it and let it sit room temp for 6 weeks. Write on the label when the 6 weeks are up. Strain small batches through a cotton cloth and squeeze to extract any oil. Let the oil sit a few days and see if there is any water separated from the oil. If so, carefully pour the oil into another container and discard the water. You can use the oil at this point. Store in a cool room.

Salve
Warm (plantain infused)oil to 150 in a double boiler. To approx 6 parts oil, add 1 parts beeswax. You can also add 5 parts vegetable glycerin, but I haven't done that yet. It takes quite a bit of heat to melt beeswax and I did it on the woodstove. When the beeswax has melted into the oil, pour into your container (I use short glass wide mouth jars) and let it sit to cool. When I've put it near an open window to cool quickly, the center tends to cave in (which is fine, but a gift I didn't like the appearance). After it cools, if it's not stiff enough, heat it up again and add more beeswax. If it's too stiff, heat again and add more oil.

Poultice
For the bites that the salve wouldn't work on (or if you don't have salve), the poultice did work wonderfully. Find the plantain, chew it, spit it out onto your hands, put it on the bite or sore, and cover with a band aid or somethign to keep it from falling off. The first time I did it, of course I had to wash the plant and barely chewed it with my front teeth thinking it would be gross. I waited for the gross taste to kick in and it never did. It was good, like salad, and I ate some more just for the heck of it. A wet, well chewed gob makes the best poultice. You might think having green spit on you is disgusting, but when you get total relief from a bite that is driving you crazy from a plant that tastes like salad; it's not so disgusting anymore. Stop buying that pink stuff.

~~~~~~~~
In the evening, the babies and I have been sitting outside in some shade. The tail gate of the truck makes a nice bench to see a patch of phlox and tiger lilies in full bloom growing near by. The kittens run up and down the trees and when the sun is setting they try to catch the fireflies. Dorothy the Queen cat perches royally nearby on the trailer observing all the nonsensical play, but lately she's just happened to sit in the grass close to the kittens who have included her in their play. I think she must be enjoying herself, but would never admit it. Lucille, Lollipop, Barney, Vincent and the neighbor's dog John John that we are babysitting, sit in the shade with me watching the kittens play and sometime Lolli just can't help herself and will run after them stopping short before they whack her.

Rufus the pig sleeps under the deck in a cool bed of sand with some straw placed where he wants it. It's right under our bedroom window though and he snores. So that's been funny on some nights.

Since we've been here, very close up I've seen a fox who paused on the path to look at me and a falcon that swooped down. It's so beautiful here.

On a sad note, my most special cat companion Mazie Grace died the week before we moved. She was hit by a car. Her death has been the hardest to cope with and I'm still in the "it's not fair" and "why her?!" mode. She was my walking buddy and I imagined her and I walking the woods at our new place to find plants . When I go walking the other animals come, but it's just not the same without her. She would sit behind me in the evening and "groom" this spot on my head that always feels weird and would bury her face in my hair. Her twin brother Eicky is a constant reminder that she's not here.

Heading out

2009-05-17T07:02:00.000-07:00

We may have found a place in Missouri and it's time to go see it and finalize the contract. This weekend we had a garage sale and are packing as much as we can into our vehicles so we can head out on another long road trip. We're going to leave what we take in storage until we get back next month for the official move. Unless this place has wild zombies roaming freely and toxic waste bubbling up from the ground, I think we'll take it.

We brought back 2 kittens with us from South Carolina that needed a home. They have extra toes! Their names are Bin and Bon.

Gravy

2009-04-10T18:52:00.000-07:00

Here are photos of my niece and nephew. My nephew caught his first fish. Aren't they beautiful?

I got an email the other day from a recruiter looking to fill a position. It was a form letter and different categories relating to a job were answered yes or no. This was the first half of the form letter. I believe I could do this job!

Ability to Follow-up No
Ability to meet deadlines No
Ability to Work Independently No
Ability to Work with Others No
Analyzing and synthesizing qualitative data No
Communication Skills No
High Level Analytical Ability No
Multi-tasking No
Team Player No

Since my last post, we went to Missouri to look for land while Jeffrey worked. Then a few weeks later he had to go back out to work and looked again. We haven't found anything yet. Plus, but the sale on our property here hasn't closed. Any day now the lawyers say.

Crazy maple syrup time is over. It's not hard, but it has it's moments of being time consuming. There are a lot of amber bottles back in cold storage that made it all worthwhile. It hit while Jeffrey was away working, so I was a little pooped. That should keep us for a while and a few gifts to boot. I want to re-write the maple syrup post because it's hard to follow and I've found a few ways to simplify it. I was able to make more this year and I was by myself.

The good thing about maple syrup sugaring time is that it's SPRING. Holy cow this has been a long cold winter. Someone said the 12th worst on record. At the end of sugaring it was raining and wonderfully warm. All the windows were open with towels underneath catching the splashes. Sometimes the heat from the wood stove and the cooler outside air would swirl by independently and was a treat for the face and feet. I tried to keep it under 76 in here but it was hard when it was 50 degrees outside and the woodstove was going all day.

We've been making a little money these last few weeks selling our stuff. Buying all our furniture cheap and used (but nice) and selling it for about the same or more is a great system. That's free furniture and it gets better. The stuff that doesn't sell, I donate, photograph and write it off later on my taxes as charity. I love resale shops especially Thrifty Shopper in Cortland (though not for their furniture, we've gotten all of that from other resale shops).

I'm trying to find ways to simplify my day, I'd like more time to read. By about 8pm the eyes are crossing and it's very hard. The life of the self-sufficient should also be about more time for leisure. I think the area I could cut the most in is the amount of time I cook. I do make big meals so we'll have left overs, but I'm still in there too much. I really like to cook, but I could stand to streamline it a bit. So I'm going to work on that.

I know a woman that cooks once a month. She comes up with several recipes that use the same base ingredients or stock. For me that would be beans, rice and vegetable soup. I want to come up with a list of recipes for the month and try it out. Take a day and go shopping early, come home and cook all day or till I get done. I guess the recipe sheet will need a summary of about how much quantity I'll need.

I hate frozen soup , but I could easily can it. A good base soup can be vegetable soup one meal, a different type of veggie soup another meal with the addition of a few more veggies and some left over rice or pasta, for another day add a tablespoon or two tom yum paste and you have a wonderful Thai soup; a few tablespoons of miso paste and there's your traditional Japanese soup with healthy fermented soy. Miso is on the list of things to make at home one day. Greens like Collards can be chopped and heated 5 minutes with the soup.

Most basic ingredients can be bought and stored a long time in bulk like beans, rice, wheat berries (cook like brown chewy rice or grind into flour), a variety of grains, flour, sugar, salt, and oil etc. It really reduces trips to, money and time at the grocery store. My once a month cooking would include mass quantities of beans and rice that can be turned into all sorts of things. I think I've posted before about bulk buying from health food stores. You don't have to join a bulk club to buy in bulk and it's easy to find locations online. There are wonderful books out there on food storage but to start, for just rice and beans all you need are a couple of metal trash cans. It's also nice to have emergency food on hand.

I've debated about posting this for a while. A lot of people are hurting financially right now and this is a great way to save money for those of you that use flea drops and heartgard type medication. There are a lot of alternatives like pyrethrum powder, marigold spray, and additions to their diet. Check out www.petshed.com and www.equine-megastore.com for flea drops and heartgard (I used the generic heart medication. It's not in a chewy treat, but it's cheap.) You don't need a vets prescription either. I'm don't remember where petshed is located, but I know equine mega-store is in New Zealand. On equine megastore, the money is in Australian Dollars with the U.S. dollars showing. When you check out, your total is in A.U.D. and you'll think for a moment you have just paid way too much. They have a conversion table, so don't panic. I used both of these companies for years and I'm not getting paid by them. They are the cheapest I've found anywhere and you get your orders very quickly.

For vaccines, except for Rabies, I used Omaha Vaccines. This was a few years ago, but when I needed help learning how to do it; the company vet called me and walked me through it. I ended up talking to her 3 times. By the last call I know she thought I was a big dummy, but I did it. You can even get the little vaccine card and use them when the animals go to the vet. The vaccines come in little ice chests and are still cold when they arrive. I re-used the igloos camping for tent air conditioning and all sorts of things. Tent A.C. is a story for another time - but basically cut notch in the top, fill with chest w/ ice, insert fan in notch, rock on lid, instant A.C., brrr turn off fan.

~~~
Tempeh "tips" and noodles

We're getting off of tofu, soy sauce and any other non-fermented soy products because of health concerns. Here's another link. The link was easy to share, but most of the herbalist I've been working with and books I've read state the same concern. One of my favorite meals that my mother used to make was beef tips and noodles. She helped me change it around so that it's vegetarian and I used tempeh. It was delicious. You can buy tempeh in the store or make it at home:

I didn't make nearly enough gravy the first time, so last night I made the gravy again for another recipe and doubled the water. That was enough gravy.

Marinade:
1/4 C Tamari (or soy sauce)
2 Tbl lemon juice
2 tsp chili powder (or Cumin or both)
2 tsp Olive Oil (to start, keep the bottle handy)
1/4 tsp black pepper
couple dashes liquid smoke
1-2 garlic cloves minced
1-2 Cup of liquid (I used broth). 2 cups of liquid if you want a lot of gravy

Cube Tempeh into small pieces and marinade 30 min - 2 hours
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Onion
Marinaded Tempeh
1 tsp Gravy Master
Flour
Egg Noodles
oil

Start water to cook Egg noodles. Cut up 1/4 - 1/2 onion (I like purple). Saute onion in oil with salt and pepper. When onions are translucent remove to a plate. Add more oil to pan if necessary and put tempeh in, use slotted spoon or tongs to remove from marinade. Save marinade to the side. Dust tempeh while in the pan with flour and fry 2 minutes on one side. Flip over pieces and dust the other side w/ flour. Fry 2 more minutes, adding more oil if needed (I use a ton of olive oil and freely dump in more as needed). Add some of the reserved marinade to keep moist. Remove tempeh & put on plate with onions.

Gravy: Add more oil to pan if you need it for gravy (I like mine oily) and put in 2-4 tablespoons of flour. Stir till lightly browned. Pour left over marinade in the pan and stir. Let it cook slowly till gravy is desired thickness.

When done, I put the onions and tempeh back in the pan with gravy to heat and mix it all up. Serve over egg noodles.

The gravy was so good that I might use it for enchilada sauce. I made the gravy again to serve over Polenta and I just loved it. I had never had polenta before and it couldn't be any easier to make. Its just corn meal, water, salt and butter. Here is a nice video and recipe. This is another great staple that I'm going to try to find more ways to use. After I made it and it cooled, I tasted it for the first time. It was bland, but satisfying. I ended up nibbling through 2 slabs of polenta while preparing the rest of the meal, it was addictive.

I did not use the tomato sauce and cheese like this recipe recommends. I cut 1/2" slabs of the corn polenta shaped by the buttered bread loaf pan, fried them in olive oil and poured gravy over it. How much more American can you get?

P.S. from my friend Garo:
Home made vanilla extract, how cool is that!

2009-02-22T16:49:00.000-08:00

Dorothy bored on a cold day

This afternoon Jeffrey took me to a banjo concert at a library about an hour away. The weather wasn't that great and snow was coming down, very overcast and thick out. The scenery was pretty much the same the whole drive. Two lane winding county roads; up, around and over hills; snow blowing like powder over the tall snow banks lining the roads, snow covered fields with the tops of dried yellow corn stalks lined up in rows sticking out, old farm houses and barns, some falling down. Then BAM! Out of no where a giant, slow-turning blade filled the entire windshield and all of my vision. It must have been 15 stories tall and looked like it was right on us. We were passing a wind farm and the massive blades were down enough on a hill that when we were close enough to see them through the snow, they were eye level. The visibility was so bad we didn't see them till the last second. "Oh Lord!" I hollered. I told Jeffrey I thought we were about to be abducted by aliens or a plane was about to crash into us. They were so tall, looking at them made me think about dinosaurs.

We got a signed contract about a week and a half ago, and the earnest money on the property. I think it's been about a month since we put it up for sale. So far we have a pretty good record of being able to sell properties pretty quickly. We just use Craigslist, local papers, and for two of our sales - one month of Land and Farm. I setup a free blog site and posted all the good pictures from all the different seasons. The times to the airport, stores, and gas stations, along with photos of the area were posted. I kept deleting and re-posting the Craigslist ads every few days to keep it on top. Soon after the Craigslist ad was posted and people saw the photos, we got a lot of interest from all over the country. The only thing that held anyone back from coming to look at it for two weeks was the weather.

When I'm not selling everything I can to get ready for the move, I'm spending a good part of my day looking for land in Missouri and now know why we got so much interest in our property. There is only a dribble of information on these properties and any land you have even a faint interest in requires an email, phone call or in the worst cases, having to register at one of their sites to contact them. Is this top secret information? How much money do you get paid to post 5 words and no photo on an ad to sell a piece of land? A few places will have one photo, but it's usually just from the road. Most ads have very little information. A few ads had several photos, but even those for the most part still had little info. I would guess on about 60 properties, maybe 3 or 4 have a decent ad. It has just been such an unnecessary waste of time. There should be at least a minimum amount of information and photos for each property with a brief description.

I had to call most and ask my list of questions. The first is always, is there a creek or a spring? Then, are there woods, if so how much? You would not believe how many of these properties have year round springs and are not advertising it. I still have a stack of properties I emailed for info on and have no response after days. It would just seem that they'd be a lot less busy having to return phone calls, if they'd spend the time up front putting all the detail they can about properties online. They probably answer the same questions about the properties over and over, what a waste of everyone's time. Urgh what a game.

I think I've been through every online real estate site and online news papers for Missouri and have found 5 places that look like they might work. They're in our price range, have a spring and woods. It would be good to have fresh water and firewood on the land.

A shocking number of properties have just been cleared by people selling their timber before the property sells. Is this normal? I get this image of massive swaths of Missouri being cleared as we speak. Maybe these properties are routinely timbered, this has happened for years and are set aside for it? It's just been very sad that so many of the properties that would otherwise be perfect have been cleared of all their timber.

Jeffrey has to work in Missouri in March so we're going to drive out together. I called a farm sitter from an ad I've had on the fridge for probably a year, called her references and we're all set up. I'm so nervous about leaving the animals, but I get to take little mama Lucille with me. This will be the most excitement she's gotten in a while. She hasn't been able to go to the property with us when we take the dogs because she's only about an inch off the ground.

While he's working there, I'll try to find land. The area we've been looking in will have good soil I think, but I'll poke around in the dirt when I get there. I looked at tornado maps and these properties aren't in the high or highest danger zone.

There are a few things we have to work on to get ready for the trip and to sell the house. Jeffrey's been working on finishing up the remodeling so we can put the house up for sale. Since I lost my job, we aren't able to fix it up the way we wanted to. We're just trying to finish it as cheaply as possible so we can sell it and go. The money we have to buy property and build a simple house is very fixed. The homestead we are going to build has to be our top priority and we can't eat into that money. Still though, the bathroom looks great so far.

We're getting ready to go for sugaring season too. This might be our last batch of Maple syrup. I will really miss these beautiful old maple trees. We only do 3 taps in two of the giants in the backyard.

Since the property search is mostly done, I guess I'll get back to the stone building books. Right now, I"m on the highly recommended "Build your own stone house" by Karl and Sue Schwenke. So far so good! I got so side tracked with the Missouri move, that I let the house building project slide. It'll be good to get back on track. Doing everything we can to quickly get a small, efficient house built and gardens going is the top priority. I don't know how reliable money in the bank is, but a roof over our heads and the tools to put food in our belly is something we can put our hands on.

On a completely unrelated note, I was unfortunate enough to watch an episode of Survivor recently. I think that's the wrong name for the show. To win the first trial, they had to very quickly unload supplies from a truck and walk miles and miles to a camp. They were to immediately cast someone out of their group before ever speaking to them, though the whole point of the game is to get rid of everyone. That sounds more like a Victim than a Survivor. For supplies and other rewards, they participate in games, running like rats in a maze for a piece of cheese and cast a ridiculous shadow on some of the most pristine places on earth. They are out in the middle of the beautiful jungle in Basil (I think it is) and are running over man-made dunes to get blue puzzle pieces on floaties out of the water to build a hulking puzzle bridge. The whole while, they are making fake alliances and seeing who they can remove next. In my opinion, what a waste of breath and energy.

For a show about survivors highlighting different places on the planet, why not take them there and let local people teach them to survive in their environment for a week or so? Show them surviving through knowledge of the environment and building a community. Reward points on who finds the most edible roots for the tribe, have competitions of who can gather the most water for everyone and build friendships. Wouldn't people like to know how to survive without supplies out of a truck and eating cold termites, maybe how to build a self-sustaining community?

I read a very interesting article recently that said

"Most people in society today live in artificial worlds defined by indoor lighting, air conditioning, processed foods, chemical medicines, artificial wood furniture, television programming and online social networking. None of these have anything to do with reality.

Reality is the soil, the rivers, the air, sunlight, plants and seeds. It is found in the animals, microbes, forests and aquatic ecosystems. Reality cannot be negotiated with, nor bargained with, nor put off. Reality is shaped by our decisions and actions, and what we see unfolding in the world right now -- global warming, chemical contamination, depletion of fossil fuels -- is merely a reflection of the destructive actions being mindlessly taken by people living today."

Sorry, more snow photos

2009-01-29T14:49:00.000-08:00

Sorry to post more snow pictures, I've just never seen this much snow. For perspective here is my dog Barney, though he is short and the swing set out back. The snow is level with the lowest swing and just goes forever in every direction. Notice the 3 colors of old paint on the swing seats! The creek looks like a dent in the landscape. The bent fence photo is the small raised bed garden. It looks like a snowy cemetery and some of the beds can't even be distinguished. The fence was just temporary chicken wire to keep Rufus out (he doesn't challenge fencing) and wasn't really attached to the posts in many places.

I've been going through everything we own and making more cuts. Our small seed room is about 1/2 full, I hope it all fits in the car. Every move I seem to sell or donate a huge amount, so how did I still have so much to give away this time? I guess I bought some winter clothes from resale shops here, my favorite being Thrify Shopper in Cortland. We probably go every time we are there. We don't always buy something, but we have stuff we are always keeping our eye out for and sometimes we just find it there. I was watching the morning news the other day and they had some guest on talking about thrift store shopping, they had 2 kids up there that looked great. There are a lot of people out there who have known about the great stuff that others throw away for years. If you are patient and keep a wish list with you all the time, eventually you will probably find most of what you are looking for in a resale shop. Good quality and sometimes old made in the U.S. stuff. Sure there is a lot of junk and a billion yellow shirts; but we've found most, if not all, of our furniture and clothes through resale shops and I think it all looks pretty good.

For anyone with the password to my photos link (look in the right margin), I've uploaded more pictures.

whiteness

2009-01-28T16:21:00.000-08:00

(Can you see Dorothy kitty looking out the window at the snow?)

So there's nothing but whiteness outside. It's so white and bright that you have to sort of stare at the ground to see it 3 dimensionally. All angles are rounded and all pathways hidden again. We are above the ice line so just a lot of other types of white crunchy precip is coming down.

There are several people interested in the property we've put up for sale, a lot more than we expected. The weather has really been a hindrance though. No one wants to get out in it and neither do we. The one day it was above freezing, I took the dogs over there, but I'm so out of shape that I was really out of breathe after walking with them through the snow. They were pretty pooped too.

I got this great email from a friend and thought I'd share:

A boat docked in a tiny Mexican village. An American tourist complimented the Mexican fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took him to catch them.

"Not very long," answered the Mexican.
But then, why didn't you stay out longer and catch more?" asked the American.
The Mexican explained that his small catch was sufficient to meet his needs and those of his family
The American asked, "But what do you do with the rest of your time?"

"I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, and take a siesta with my wife. In the evenings, I go into the village to see my friends, have a few drinks, play the guitar, and sing a few songs. I have a full life."

The American interrupted, "I have an MBA from Harvard and I can help you! You should start by fishing longer every day. You can then sell the extra fish you catch. With the extra revenue, you can buy a bigger boat."

"And after that?" asked the Mexican.

"With the extra money the larger boat will bring, you can buy a second one and a third one and so on until you have an entire fleet of trawlers. Instead of selling your fish to a middle man, you can then negotiate directly with the processing plants and maybe even open your own plant. You can then leave this little village and move to Mexico City, Los Angeles, or even New York City! From there you can direct your huge new enterprise."

"How long would that take?" asked the Mexican.
"Twenty, perhaps twenty-five years," replied the American.
"And after that?"
"Afterwards? Well my friend, that's when it gets really interesting," answered the American, laughing. "When your business gets really big, you can start buying and selling stocks and make millions!"
"Millions? Really? And after that?" asked the Mexican.

"After that you'll be able to retire, live in a tiny village near the coast, sleep late, play with your children, catch a few fish, take a siesta with your wife and spend your evenings drinking and enjoying your friends."

And the moral of this story is: .........
Know where you're going in life... You may already be there.

Movin on

2009-01-21T15:26:00.000-08:00

(photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/tristanbrand/)
I'm not a political person, but was excited to watch the inauguration. I couldn't quite make out the words to the last speaker during the inauguration, we were getting ready to take Jeffrey to the airport and running around. The little parts I caught were beautiful I thought. I found the transcript online. There were pieces in Dr. Joseph Lowery's Benediction that just sparkled. The phrases rolled and landed perfectly. I wonder if he wrote the first part himself or if he was quoting, I thought it was the most beautiful. It hasn't mattered enough for me to research it though.

"God of our weary years, God of our silent tears, thou who has brought us thus far along the way, thou who has by thy might led us into the light, keep us forever in the path, we pray, lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met thee, lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget thee. Shadowed beneath thy hand may we forever stand -- true to thee, O God, and true to our native land."

This last part of his poetic prayer, conjured images of childhood day-dreams of a perfect world and summed up perfectly what the majority of people on this planet want in their hearts.

"Help us then, now, Lord, to work for that day when nation shall not lift up sword against nation, when tanks will be beaten into tractors, when every man and every woman shall sit under his or her own vine and fig tree, and none shall be afraid; when justice will roll down like waters and righteousness as a mighty stream.

Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get back, when brown can stick around -- (laughter) -- when yellow will be mellow -- (laughter) -- when the red man can get ahead, man -- (laughter) -- and when white will embrace what is right."

That same above link also has the lyrics to the song that the very last part was taken from. Some friends are elated and some I know said this was a depressing day for them. I don't put my trust in any politician and we'll have to see what he's able to accomplish - if he's a walker or a talker. But his speeches were inspiring and I hope he's able to help the country even some. So many people were happy and have felt hope for these last two days. People cried, danced, sang and celebrated; one big world wide party. Like a wedding, there will be a honey moon phase and right now so many people are in that euphoric state. Like any marriage, lets all hope that things work out for the good like they sometimes do. Shouldn't it make everyone smile a little more, even for one day, that so many people around the world feel happy and hopeful? Being negative about this day, is like being "depressed" that a tsunami of happy was rolling around hitting millions. I enjoyed watching the happiness of others and wonder what changes are coming.

Like Dr.Lowery said in his benediction, we're trying to find our vine and fig tree to sit under. Since I lost my job, our perspective on money has changed proportionally. With a job, our taxes didn't seem that big of a deal. As we worked on the house building project this winter, we made it as small as possible for our needs to keep the taxes lower. Then the tax bill came just for the property and we looked at what we owe for January 31st. We can pay the bill, but suddenly it just seems so high now. I have indirect income in the amount of money I save us, but that's all we might have from me for a while.

Jeffrey works in Missouri a few times a year, but could pick up more casual income if we were closer. We're still going to focus on gardening and building a homestead as our primary "income". So for fun we looked at the property taxes there in an area that was a few hours away. They were less than 2% of our current taxes. Plus the growing season is longer and I'd cut my commute to family and friends in half which means no more airplanes! It made sense to look into moving. So we've worked on that the last few weeks.

During that time the winter has gotten hard. Some days are better than others, but Rufus (the pig) refuses to go outside. He's miserable and grouchy. We'd turn the garage heater on for a little, while he ate on the coldest days. But the propane tank keeps freezing up this week so that's out now. He'd be much happier in a warmer climate and we sure would get outside more. After about 30 minutes working in this, no amount of thermal keeps my toes warm. Jeffrey's mother will be living with us when we build and it'll be easier on her. The locals are a little sick of this too and everyone is hoping for a January thaw soon.

As an added benefit to moving to Missouri, the price per acre is less. I really missed living in the woods too, so we're going to find a place that is at least partially wooded. The icing on the cake is that the building codes are much more flexible there and we won't have to make as much of a case, if any, to code enforcement. We're still going to get an engineer to approve it first though. We've never designed a house before and need one more set of eyes.

We had so much fun here in NY, met some cool people and learned a lot more about medicinal herbs, gardening, self-sufficiency and building. 2008 was one of the best years of my life. But we are flexible and if it makes more sense to go somewhere else to live simply and affordably; then that's what we're going to do. I also have an uncle there and a friend we met here that is probably going to move there one day.

It's not easy to move and it sure makes you examine your load. Every move I get rid of more and more stuff. That's what I'm working on this evening, sitting quietly going through old things and smiling at the happy people in the world. So I will say goodnight. To all you happy humans out there, smile on.

Warming up a little

2008-12-29T07:06:00.000-08:00

This has been the season of books for me. Since I'm unemployed, my job is learning and reading. I really needed a few more books to help fill in the gaps. My sister-in-law sent me "Herbal Recipes" by Rosemary Gladstar. It had a recipe I needed at the right time and I've been using the treatment since I found it in the book. It's one of those wonderful books that stays open on the counter and lays flat. The pictures are so beautiful, the one on page 22 is what I hope my herb storage will look like and there is even a section on henna! When I saw the two page highlight on Tasha Tudor, I knew that Ms. Gladstar was OK with me.

A few years ago, my mom bought me a VHS video about Tasha Tudor called "Take Joy". Tasha's take on things was eye opening and it is an amazing video. My dream was changed a little after watching it. I wish I could give one to everyone. She will really put a smile on your face. She has a tree with forget-me-nots all around, right out of a story book and her life has a fairy tale quality. A living one though and why not? When I heard Tasha quote Thoreau - in that amazing voice, I really sat and thought about it. What an inspiring statement, it was the first time I had heard it. I've tried to live by it ever since and it's been true for me:

"If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."

For my birthday, I got a gift certificate from my sweetest friends and finished out the library for the house building! I needed a few books on stone masonry and slip form. I got "Living Homes" by Thomas Elpel which is what I'm reading now and "The Stonebuilder's Primer" by Charles Long. I've only flipped through that last book and don't know if it'll apply to this project, but I think it will for others if nothing else. I even had enough on the gift certificate to get books on water storage and root cellars which was a bonus. I can't wait to get through them. We really have a good home building library built up from years of picking up books we find through half.com, used book stores and other places. I hope when we're done, we can loan these out to other people.

In other news, Jeffrey got me a banjo. I've always wanted one and every time we go to a music store I ogle them. It just made me cry I was so moved, surprised and just plain excited about seeing a banjo in my lap. Then Saturday morning he told me we had to go pick something up. We all loaded into the car and headed down the road. He kept making fake turns so I would guess the wrong place. Finally he pulled in front of a little diner down the street run by our neighbor. Ahhh, he was taking me to lunch. We went in and there were my friends from my online forum! Also there was a new friend that just joined the forum, but we hadn't yet met face to face. I thought I would faint I was so surprised. Jeffrey invited them over to the house after lunch and I had the best time. I really like the new lady from the group, we have so much in common and she's pretty close to our place too. With one of our friends we talked about how to build the roof, with two others I talked about the root cellar. It's nice knowing people who have already built these types of homes or are working on them.

I stopped drawing for a few days to try to get through the slip-form book. I really like it so far. You can really learn so much just by getting some used books online, watching videos and getting your hands dirty. Of course there is nothing like hands on experience. Jeffrey has a lot more than I do, but we're going to make a small structure first before starting on the house. We'll have some help too and people we can ask questions of if we get stuck. An engineer is going to review the plans to make sure they are structurally sound though. I don't want the roof falling in on my head. The engineer might tell me I'm dead wrong about our plans, but we're taking our shot with as much as we can. We'll be right on somethings and I know there will be things that are wrong or need to be changed.

A couple found us online and are building the same type of house we are (passive solar with slip-form stone masony and earth bermed). They are only about 2 hours away and know of another couple near them building a similar house next year also. We are going to try to work together some how. I hope we can all help each other with questions, tips, finding bargains on supplies and some helping arms when we all need it. I know putting the roof on we're all going to need many hands. We have three friends I am pretty sure can make it up next year. There is an online building group we'll post on when we have some dates and I saw on Steve Elpel's site you can post asking for volunteers. We might also post in the local paper.

Recently, I found a few websites by other people who have built slip form stone masonry homes. This is a good one I've been reading, but there are a lot of good ones out there. http://www.hollowtop.com/cls_html/Rehl_Stone_House.htm

This was an amazing story about a woman who built a three story house by herself using slip form with her older father helping by mixing concrete:
http://www.hollowtop.com/cls_html/stone_home.htm

Our house will be so tiny compared to these though. One thing I learned from most owner-builder websites and testimonials is keep it a reasonable size. So many of their houses were just too big for our taste, budget and time.

The overhangs on the solar passive house are very important. I thought I had it figured out correctly, but wasn't 100% sure. A website I found last week called "Sustainable by Design" has a cool overhang calculator that lets you see how much sun will come in during the summer and winter. I set the overhangs to what I had already calculated and then moved through the calendar feature. I decided to go a little smaller to let in more of the early Spring sun.

We were talking about roof insulation and beams vs trusses with our friend that came over this weekend. Jeffrey and I have both gone back and forth on this. We want the look of just beams and I want to hang things from them to dry. We also have to think about what would be best environmentally and the cost. The house is open and there is a big span in the middle. Trusses would have to be covered with some sort of sheathing but could easily make that span. Beams may not work and they are expensive. We could put posts in the middle of the floor if we have to, but would rather not. Putting beams on the ceiling just for aesthetics is waste of money. So I hope we can find some affordable and green way to use beams structurally. We talked about moving some interior walls around to reduce the span and maybe put a little more room in the storage room and bedroom. We mapped the newest house plans out in the snow today with string, a wheel barrow, plywood, rakes, sticks etc. and the bedroom seems really small. Those interior walls are thermal mass walls, pretty thick, so they would be good at bearing the load of the roof. That might be a good solution and I might just move some of the walls around.

Another consideration is insulation. Even though I don't think we need the amount of insulation code requires since it's an earth bermed house, we still need that certificate of occupancy. So if they say R-33 (or whatever code is, still can't pin that down yet), we have to either see what it would take to get the requirement reviewed, maybe there's an exception. Otherwise we have to pay a good sum for the amount of blueboard insulation it would take to insulate the roof to code if we used exposed beams. If we used trusses though, we could use the cheaper traditional batt insulation. We're just going to have to price it all out. I'm afraid my beams might loose.

I've been trying to find incentives or tax breaks for this project. But we're not going to be grid tied, not in a city of over a million, didn't pay sales tax since it was used (not being new is also a problem), not having an installer put it in, and the property value won't go up as a result of the installation; so there's really nothing to write off that I can find. I went through all of the DSIRE programs and none apply. That was a lot of boring reading, but at least there were summaries and not legal type text. Here are some websites though in case it might help someone else:
http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=products.pr_tax_credits#s1
http://www.builditsolar.com/References/energyincentivesrs.htm
http://www.thestreet.com/story/10440929/1/congress-finally-gives-solar-industry-policy-certainty.html

We had about a foot or more of snow on the ground this week. Then yesterday there was a little bit of a rain and the temperature got up to 54! Most of the snow melted in the sunny spots and the ground was slushy. We went to the property to see where the sun was setting on the hill. On the way there, we walked towards the bottom land to see the creek. You could hear it raging from far away, they are all so full right now. There were small patches of fog moving around on the snow where the sun is blocked all day by the tall, dark, North facing cliff on the other side of the creek. The fog formed over the creek and it's high bank and the cliff held it in place till it spilled over the bank and on to the bottom land. It moved fast for fog over the churning water; curling and swirling up and over the snow bank, diffusing into a large mass and then straight up till it melted in the sky overhead.

Supposed to be working!

2008-12-15T07:46:00.001-08:00

I've been working on the drawings we need for the house. The elevation drawings look so easy in the book, but I didn't realize how much thought had to go into them. Where is the bedroom wall in on the inside of the house so I know just where to put the windows on the outside? What pitch does the roof have to slope? If I put the root cellar right next to the house, how will I do the berm? How thick are the North and South walls so I know how long the roof will be? I spent probably 3 hours yesterday just trying to figure out the best way for the retention wall to go so that the root cellar is totally covered in Earth, but the berm doesn't stick out too far. We have limited space on the hill and still have to find room for a workshop. Every time I thought I had all the answers and started to put pencil to paper, I'd have to stop because there was some other minor detail I hadn't thought about. Plus my drawing skills are pretty lacking, I apparently didn't inherit any of my grandmother's talent.

I did figure out a way to draw two buildings side by side at an angle. I took two tea boxes and set them up as the house and the root cellar. Then I took a picture of them, printed it and traced over it! I couldn't find any paper thin enough to see through and trace, so I just put a piece of graph paper under the printed photo and traced over the building lines with a very heavy hand. Then I took the graph paper and drew over the gouge marks in the paper. All in all, I think they aren't too bad but I won't win any contests with them that's for sure!

Well the old root pit was only half a success. The cabbage was covered with slugs and were turned into nothing but holes. The carrots and other root crops did GREAT and were in perfect condition when I took them out, so that was the successful part. We abandoned the root pit when we had quite a bit of ice and snow covering it. It was very difficult to get the door open. I should have used the method where you bury a trash can and put a wooden door on it at an angle so the snow could be brushed off. My door was laying on the ground with the full weight of the season. It was a good experiment and next year we'll do better. We had so few vegetables to store and we are down to the last of our carrots already. We ran out of onions and garlic long ago.

Speaking of carrots, I found a wonderful recipe. I have never liked carrot salad especially if it had raisins in it. I would only put carrots in soups or if grated finely, I would tolerate them in salads just because they are good for you. I have never been one to seek out or crave a carrot. With this recipe though, I was just devouring them. So here it is...

4 medium carrots grated
2 Tbs lemon juice ( and I have been putting in a little extra)
1 Tbs olive oil (again, I dump in a little extra)
handful of chopped red onion
Salt & pepper

The other day I really wanted to make curry, but had no coconut milk. I really hate buying coconut milk because it's not somethign I could create on the homestead, so I want to start weening us. I found a recipe I think called "water curry" where they just used water.

I sauteed onions and vegetables in olive oil
created a little pocket in the middle and dumped in a tablespoon of curry paste to fry
Then put 1/4 C water and thinned out the fried curry paste
little ground corriander
salt
1/2 tsp tumeric
dash chili pepper
1 tsp garam masala

Mmm it was delicious! I never thought to put water in a stir fry, but it really was fantastic so much so that I cooked it two nights in a row.

I'd better get back to work!

Here's a picture of Little Mama modeling her new sweater I crocheted.

An ode to soap

2008-11-29T13:42:00.000-08:00

Jeffrey and I have both been reading and re-reading the books we have on home building. Our friend also loaned us some of his including his Earthship series. Wow those are great. Most of the books are geared towards green building methods. The most helpful book has been "Earth-sheltered Houses" by Rob Roy. We keep coming back to it over and over. There used to be about 2 dozen slips of paper marking important pages, but my butter fingers dropped the book and most fell out! Now I have a 3 ring binder on each house building topic and have been taking pretty good notes; writing down which book has the best instructions, photos or drawings on that topic.

We want to get started this Spring and need to get some serious planning done. Some earth sheltered homes have a concrete monolithic wall poured for the North side (sometimes the East and West sides too). Concrete has a high embodied energy just to get it to the site so that was a big turn off, but it does provide thermal mass to hold the heat. We have mounds and mounds of rock which will work just as well for thermal mass. The slipform walls built of stone really interest me because it's something that I'm physically capable of doing. We have to get "permission" from the code enforcement officer first though. To have the walls poured would mean hiring someone with big equipment to come in but it would be done very fast. To build the wall of concrete blocks would mean picking up those heavy beasts and that doesn't seem appealing. If we are allowed to do a slipform rock wall, we'll just do the East, West and North walls. The South wall will be a typical framed wall since it will be mostly windows. I might mortar in some cosmetic stones on the south side in between the windows one day.

The slipform method is so appealing because you setup a form that is only a few feet high, place the stone in the form along with rebar or whatever else you need that row, and fill in the rest with concrete by coffee can full. The forms are just moved up the wall when the prior row has sufficiently setup. Of course there is a little more to it than that, but that's the gist of it. I may not have brute strength, but I do have stamina and believe we can do this. We'd still be using concrete, but not nearly as much and would also be using all that wonderful building material we have laying around. The slip form stone method also creates a beautiful looking wall. Since we are required to have insulation, we'd have to sandwich foam board insulation in between rocks and concrete. So there will be a layer of rocks on the exterior, then concrete, then foam board, more concrete and rocks on the interior wall. It will probably take a long time, but we have more time than money. There are at least 7 months of the year we'll probably be able to build so even if it takes a month or two to do the walls, we'll still have time to get the roof on. We rented a video by Thomas J. Elpel on slipform stone masonry from Smartflix.com and watched it several times which helped visualize the project. You can also get the video here:
http://www.hopspress.com/Videos/Stone_Masonry_Video.htm

Here is a website with his work: http://www.hollowtop.com/cls_html/masonry.htm After putting each stone into place by hand, we'll really get to know the house well and will have a lot of mental down time for daydreaming.

After two years of playing around with a floor plan, we finally came up with one that I think will work. Most of the house is an open rectangle. There is a good-sized kitchen and storage room for processing food and the bedroom is open to the main part of the house and has only 3 walls. There aren't any doors in the house except to the bathroom and outside. There will be glass transoms up towards the ceiling of the interior walls that will allow light and heat to flow. The area between the bedroom and the living room will be closed off with an expandable wall or curtain if we need to close it off for some reason. The back of the bedroom wall that is shared with the bathroom will be an extra thick thermal mass wall that runs East/West to soak up heat on sunny days and radiate it back out into the room at night. The walls will be covered with earthen plaster and I hope the dirt on the build site has what I need for that. I love working with earthen plaster, it is so beautiful, feels wonderful in your hands and was easy to make. The floor is going to be earthen and will also act as thermal mass. The poured adobe method for the floors looks like it will be easiest for me (I'm in charge of the floors). I've been trying to think of a design to put into the floor before it's finished, but can't make up my mind. There is still plenty of time for that. The "Earthen Floors" book by Athena and Bill Steen is a very small almost booklet and is a great summary of how it's done. This is my favorite earthen floor photo, but I'm going to make mine much smoother than this. You can make it all sorts of textures, colors and designs. We never made it to one of the Steen's Canelo project classes because they were just too far and expensive. They said they'd work with us on the cost, but the distance is still too great.

In Earthship vol. II, there are instructions on building an earthen bathtub! It's so warm and inviting. You can of course make it any shape and height. I'd like one with high sides that my arms would rest on and in a comfortable shape for the back. I hope I'm not being too ambitious, but I think a hand formed tub would be much more satisfying than a pre-formed one, I'll need to see which way is cheaper though. The Earthship book also showed a built in solar cooker into the south wall. One side of the solar cooker is just outside the South side wall and is glass, it goes through the wall and it's door is inside the kitchen. I love my solar cooker and as soon as I saw that design, I knew I had to include it. When you aren't using it to bake, you can make distilled water with it and it's a very simple design! How cool is that?!

We just picked up 4 more used solar panels and added to the other 4 used panels we bought, that should be plenty. Jeffrey did the analysis on all the electric powered items we use and if 8 panels aren't enough, then we'll just get rid of something. Our current power bill is around $45 a month now and that is with an electric tank hot water heater so I'm pretty sure we'll have enough juice. The batteries and inverter are going to be our big expense. Plus I think we shouldn't be so focused on recreating the same amount of power we use here, but work on using less power.

So the plan is to put together a package for the code enforcement officer on each non-traditional method for him to consider. There is a ton of information available on all these methods, so it has been relatively easy to find what we are looking for. I have a lot of drawings to do and need to turn my chicken scratch into something a little more presentable. Well that's all the house news.

A few weeks ago, I made liquid soap from some soap scraps using online instructions that said to put hot boiling water and soap scraps in the blender. What a mess!! My left hand was on the lid and with my right hand I turned on the blender. The lid literally exploded off the blender sending hot boiling soap water all over the place. Somehow I managed not to get burned. Left in the blender was a thick mass of foam that was still there the next day. Thankfully some online friends told me to take the foam blob and heat it on the stove which worked like a charm. So from now on, I'll just melt the soap scraps down on the stove with water. There are a lot of recipes online for making liquid hand soap from bar soap scraps, I'd just suggest making it on the stove and watching it. I also added some honey and glycerin that I happened to have, but those aren't necessary. After wasting a good bit of the soap on the counter, I was still able to fill a 4 pound peanut butter jar with liquid soap made with only about 2 palm fulls of bar soap scraps. I keep the scraps in an old jelly jar in the bathroom. When I decided to stop using liquid soap, I kept the last pump container so I could use the soap scraps. To refill the pump bottle, I reheat a little bit of liquid soap from the 4 lb refill jar first since it gets a little thick from just sitting there.

Bar soap is a wonderful thing though. It comes in very little packaging and most have very few ingredients. After the house is built, I plan on making my own and have the oils and ideas ready to go. Liquid soap and liquid body wash is mostly water. It comes in plastic packaging that you then have to recycle, find a use for, or throw away and it's more expensive. It just seems like you get a lot more for your money from bar soap. When I switched to only bar soap (except for the liquid that I make from the scraps), I wasn't' sure what to do about the dogs. All the dog shampoo I had seen was liquid and in plastic containers. Then I found "Earthbath" oatmeal shampoo bar by "Earthwhile Endeavors". It's in minimal packaging and the bar lasted for an extremely long time, at least two years and I have 4 dogs (3 of whom aren't bathed often though). It dries well and clean without cracking or curling up at the sides. I just keep it in a zip lock bag after it's dry, but I could easily store it in a cloth (actually I think I'll do that). I found it pretty cheap online and the bars are really thick, almost an 1-1/2". Then after I started using it, I found out it was actually easier to wash the dogs with bar soap instead of liquid shampoo. You can drop the bar in the water and it's no big deal, you don't have to balance the open, wet shampoo bottle on the edge of the tub and you don't have to clean up a sticky plastic bottle when you're done. Plus it's only an inch and half thick so it's easy to store. The dog shampoo bottles are tall and harder to store in the bathroom. It's great for little mamma Lucille since she can't groom herself and has to get bathed more than the other dogs. The oatmeal, aloe vera and oils in the soap is easy on her skin.

I know it sounds silly, but doing something as simple as washing with a bar of soap can be a connection to tradition and a simpler way of life. Things like bathing and drinking tea used to have more meaning. Holding a simple bar of soap in your hands is an ancient tactile and fragrant experience, unlike the farting plastic bottles that squeeze a gob of goo into your hands. Then I did away with the plastic mesh shower scrubby and switched to a bar of natural soap with scrubbing flecks. Ahhh no water being slung into my eye by the shower scrubby rope when I wash my arms, no lost soap down into the interior of the scrubby, no more thinking of the "ickyness" that must be left in the fibers and no more feeling plastic mesh on my skin. Just a plain 'ole bar of soap, so simple, so wonderful.

I.T. Withdrawals

2008-11-01T14:37:00.000-07:00

Here are the dogs enjoying the cabbage scraps I threw out for Rufus (the pig). Rufus licked it and moved on, so the dogs moved right in.

Ahhhhh! I have figured out how to get video to the computer! Wow that was a hard thing for me to get the will power to do. It was easy enough to do, but I just didn't have any desire to do computer stuff other than journaling, checking my forums and email. Fixing broken parts or having to read online documentation, then having to figure it out and do it - blech. It takes me forever because it's revolting and I get up way too much. It's been a year since I bought this camera. I tried to read the online doc and I didn't get far. I just have no idea what this jibbidy- jab is and don't care to. My friends at work always told me what to do in 5 minutes. If I'm going to learn how to make videos for my family though, I need to just learn it and then it'll be over. The fun will begin! ~~ Maybe I'll see if a friend can just teach me.

I found this really nice article the other day when I was looking at root cellars online. It's a man's memory of his grandfather building a root pit/cellar. It was a beautiful story and I could almost see it. http://www.masterjules.net/rootcell.htm

I like thinking about how my root cellar will be. About it's wooden door that leads to dark, cool field stone floors and walls. Old wooden timber shelves lined with jars and storage sacks in a rainbow of colors and shapes. Wooden bins on pallets holding root crops nested in field cut and dried hay or sand.

I think tonight I'm going to work on the house design some. Right now it's a very chicken scratch drawing. Over the last few years, ideas have popped into our heads on how to make it easier to build and a more efficient design. We had a pretty good detailed drawing of our last idea, but we recently came up with an easier way to build and rearranged the whole thing. So it's just the rough outline again, I think this is a keeper!

But back to what I have. In the cold storage room here, I want to start storing soups this winter. The wood stove will keep the water hot, so less propane to can it. Plus it'll heat the house and we can cut back on our wood use on canning days.

My sister-in-law is a stay at home mom to two awesome kids. She made home made baby-food for the last little one and I was so amazed at what this kid would eat and that she made it. Such healthy vegetables! He'd even devour cantaloupe! She's tried to reduce the family's meat consumption without having to cook two meals. She's been working with recipes for quite a while coming up with some vegetarian, hearty foods that her whole family will eat and also recipes that she could easily leave the meat off for herself. Here is a great one she sent me.

"(Everyone) likes this, and there's no meat. It's pretty good. This bean recipe is Cuban. I came across it awhile back when I bought pretty much every kind of dried bean I could find and was looking for recipes. Black beans were a little difficult for me at first because by themselves their flavor is a little different.

* 1 cup chopped onion
* 1 cup chopped green bell pepper (I don't use green bell peppers,
because I can't stand the way they taste anymore. I use a package
of the little red and yellow baby bell peppers instead)
* 2 teaspoons chopped garlic
* 1-1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
* 1 teaspoon dried thyme leaves
* 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper (I never add this)
* 1 bay leaf
* 1 Tablespoon olive oil
* 1 cup rice
* 1 can rotel
* 1 can 15 oz black beans or 1-1/2 cups cooked dry-packaged black
beans rinsed, drained (I always use black beans I cooked in the
crockpot. I typically make a big batch with just a little salt for
seasoning and freeze what I don't use)
* 2 cups water
* 1 Tablespoon apple cider vinegar
* 1/2 to 1 teaspoon salt (optional)
* 1/2 teaspoon black pepper

Saute onion, bell pepper,garlic, cumin, thyme, crushed red pepper, and bay leaf in olive oil until onion is tender, about 5 minutes.

Stir in rice, rotel, black beans, water, vinegar, salt and pepper
Heat to boiling. Reduce heat and simmer, covered, until rice is tender, about 20 minutes. Let stand 5 minutes before serving.

I grate cracker barrel cheese over it all."

Cooking fall harvest on the wood stove

2008-10-24T17:06:00.000-07:00

It smells like something grandma would cook in here and the cinnamon sweetness puts a smile on my face. Since the wood stove is going today, I decided to use the heat to cook some butternut squash. This is the recipe I used and it smelled as good as it would if there were an apple pie baking. I left the potatoes out of the squash soup recipe so it would freeze better, then forgot to make a big batch. I followed the recipe except for that and it only made enough for about 2 1/2 bowls. Next time I'll make a lot more as a matter of fact, I'm pulling the baked squash out of the freezer and making it up tomorrow! It is so delicious it's going in the top 5!

A few more pans squeezed on the wood stove top to bake 2 more butternut squash to freeze for later. To bake them, I greased pans and lay the peeled and de-seeded butternut face down 30 minutes then face up about 40-50 more minutes. My wood stove doesn't get that hot on top and it always takes longer to cook, but that's OK. The soup recipe called for white wine, but I never have any in the house. I have an ancient bottle of Vermouth from some hallucination that I was going to drink Martinis once upon a time. I found online that some people who don't drink white wine get Vermouth to cook with because it last much longer. The flavor was outstanding. Yesterday I made a vegetable soup on the wood stove that was nice and warm after working outside a good bit of the day.

The sun went down behind the clouds this afternoon so when the squash for freezing was done baking, the granola took it's place on the wood stove. I did leave the granola on a little too long for some pans (30 min) and burned right at the bottom. The rest of the batch I finished by putting a stove burner grill under the pan and it was fantastic. I had a bowl of that granola cereal for an appetizer tonight.

This morning I woke up going on day 3 of a funk. Doing just enough to get through the day but not really wanting to do anything. I've been like this since I got back from my trip to Houston. The grand opening of the yoga studio was wonderful, but it's just so bad and stressful for some others down there and I wish I could have done more to help. This little bit of a depression these last few days has been a good reminder of how immobilizing it is. I needed to get my blood pumping and get some real work done around here today. To get the energy to get going, I made my favorite energy drink. I usually put 2 tablespoons of Bragg's Apple Cider Vinegar and 2 tbl of maple syrup in a glass of water. I've been using the motherwort herbal vinegar that I made this summer in my drinks lately though. Oh it just tastes so good. I never would have thought something so simple would taste that great.

To make the Motherwort vinegar, I harvested some of the leaves, stems and flowers of a flowering Motherwort. Chopped it all up and put it loosely in a quart jar. Then I filled the jar with organic apple cider vinegar and let it sit in a cool dark place for at least 6 weeks. Occasionally I'd turn the bottles up and down when I thought about it. When I was ready to use it, I strained it through a cloth and transferred to a smaller bottle. I use the vinegar in our salad dressings and my drinks. I learned about so many health benefits of this herb by reading Susun Weed's menopause book and a friend pointed it out in the yard. I read everything I could find about the herb.

The maple syrup was easy to make last season. I thought I talked about it already, but I checked the journal and I haven't. When we saw that our neighbors had taped their maple trees in March, we bought some used metal syrup buckets and taps at the hardware store. There was also a little book there about sugaring and we read that and whatever else we could find online. I didn't want to build some elaborate contraption to reduce the sap this year or sit outside with it all day. I was focusing on the garden so I just used what I had. When the metal buckets outside were full of sap, I poured it into a 5 gallon bucket. When the bucket was full, it would go on a giant soup pot that went on the wood stove. I didn't keep topping it off with more sap as it reduced and would let each individual pot reduce enough on the wood stove till it would fit in a medium pot to finish. I didn't want to keep cooking the same sap and heating and cooling it. It helped me too by getting into a routine and not getting more sap and syrup going than I could handle. The sap that didn't fit on the stove stayed covered outside with a towel on a table in the unheated tool room so it could stay cool. Sap is like milk and will go bad if not kept cool. I was told that if there is ice on top of the sap, toss it since it's mostly water. We didn't do that this year, but might next.

I'd start a big pot if I could first thing in the morning. During the day I'd check it and skim any foam off the top with a little strainer basket. I kept a bowl for the strainer basket on a nearby table. It does put moisture in the room so don't do it if you have wall paper near the wood stove. A couple of times we cracked the window when there was too much moisture on the windows and it was just fine. Then when I transferred the syrup from the big pot to the smaller one, I'd rinse and dry the big soup pot and start another batch. The syrup that was just poured into the smaller pot stayed on the wood stove till it reduced just a little longer and was covered with a wire mesh strainer. When it had gone down about and inch or two in the finishing pot, then it went covered with the mesh strainer to the cook stove and I finally had to pay to finish it off. Before using the propane on the stove to finish it, the syrup was just reduced by heat that was already there heating the house! If the syrup is left uncovered, little sugar crystals will be stuck to everything around the pot and burner on the stove. You don't see it happening, but when you finish up there they are. The little strainer basket fits perfectly on top of the pot.

When the sap is on the wood stove, you can ignore is most of the day. If I put it on in the morning, it wouldn't be ready to go to the cook stove till around 4pm. At the finishing stage you want the syrup 7 degrees above the temperature of boiling water. That was 212 degrees for me. Watch the little bubbles on the top of the syrup. At some point they will start to get very tiny like it's going to boil over and then in a flash it will. I boiled over twice, what a mess. You have to watch the first pot closely for a while till you can tell how much smaller the bubbles get till it's about to boil over. As soon as the bubbles start quickly climbing the walls of the pot, just take it off the fire. My candy thermometer broke partway through the sugaring season, so I would just watch it till it was about to boil over and it was ready enough. After a few batches I knew just when to take it off. The large covered pot in this photo is water, it must have been towards then end of the day and I didn't want to get another big pot of syrup going. When reducing the syrup in the big pots on the stove, of course it has to be uncovered.

I did buy one sheet of a wool filter and I only ended up using the same 2 small cut out pieces over and over washing it between each use by soaking. Before the syrup is ready, I'd get the filter a little wet and use my fist to fit it to the inside of a vegetable steamer basket that was held in a bowl shape by clothespins and also get 2 towels ready. This steamer basket fit perfectly over a copper fondue pot that is normally used as a hot water dipper. This beautiful pot was found for next to nothing at a resale shop. As soon as the syrup is ready and while it's still hot, pour immediately into the filter that is sitting over a pot. Have a bowl handy to set the filter on top of when the pot looks full enough to fill your jars. I used all sorts of used jars from old honey and hotsauce jars to standard canning jars. I did need help a few times when it came to filling jars that didn't take a standard canning funnel. As soon as the jar is full, cap it. I didn't always make enough syrup that day to fill the jars I had ready, but I capped them anyway while they were hot. Then tilt the jar upside down to coat inside the lid and set it on a towel slightly tilted against a wall. Then cover it with the other towel to slowly cool. I believe that's all there was to it, though it was April the last time I made some.

I did make a batch of maple caramel once by over cooking it and it was so thick it wouldn't go through the filter. Someone else has called it Maple sand, it is very sandy and I threw it out. Well more like soaked it out. I bet some people know what to do with that but I didn't. The taps froze a few times but it was really a lot of fun. I still have 2 small jars left for pancakes and tea. As the season starts winding down, the syrup will get darker and darker till it's almost black. When it's black, the season is over. When I first made the syrup, it seemed like we had so much. I baked and cooked with it all the time. Then as I saw how quickly it was being used up, I started to ration it a bit. Next year we'll make more!

Here is a photo of some of the jars lined up in order by color to show how it changes as the season goes on.

Getting a small book about sugaring would be a good idea because you need to know how many taps can go into your trees and there are other tips that I may have forgotten. I just want you to know that you don't have to have a professional setup to make syrup for your family.

The root pit and cold dry storage is working so far. There has been rain but the veggies were dry and fine. The squash was in perfect condition in the dry storage and so was the cabbage, carrots and turnips from the root pit. I thought I show what the doors look like open. I have the rope tied up somewhere high so when there is snow I can find the cord. Pull on it and a piece of wood lifts up the thick hay. There is a board under the "door" to prop it open with. I bring a knee pad so I don't get my pants wet and a basket. I can't wait to see how it does when there is snow and freezing conditions. I hope it works OK otherwise, I'll just go back and learn more about them. The prop keeps the door open enough for me to lean in and the rope pulls up the hay great (so far).

Recovered Personhood

2008-10-14T17:48:00.000-07:00

Everybody is thinking about the economy. The generic advice from experts is all aimed it seems at keeping everyone dependent on the system that is creating their pain. "Work any job, make looking for a job your full time job, buy generic food at the grocery store, if you are not going to retire for 10 or more years, just leave the money alone...lets go to a commercial." Where is the real advice for people seriously hurting and needing to make change?

There are so many issues. How about some advice from the experts like plant a garden, get into a bulk buying club or a local coop, completely change your relationship to grocery stores and gas stations, and learn how to setup long term food storage. If the government wants to help people, how about start by letting neighborhoods use abandoned property for community gardens and teaching kids and families self-sufficiency. As a basic human right I wish everyone would focus more attention on learning how to not be dependent for everything from someone else. But we are the product of what? 5 trillion dollars of advertising I think, or is it 5 billion? Either way, we have been taught dependency and the "ease" of buying everything in a store.

For the people that look at buying things as the only way to reward themselves and to feed this addiction they are buried in debt, shouldn't the issue of addiction and happiness be addressed also? Just saying "don't buy stuff" isn't going to help these people. They are missing something crucial and need to look for that. I saw an interview with one woman who had a closet full of clothes with tags on them, bought a new outfit to come on the show and they are drowning in debt. The husband was just as bad, garage full of expensive stuff he never used. The reason she bought a new outfit, "I deserved it." You deserve putting your family in debt and being miserable? That's mixed up thinking. It really is true that the things you own, end up owning you. Putting these people on a budget and having them sell a good bit of their stuff is certainly a place to start. That isn't a long term solution though. Won't they just have a big hole that they don't know how to fill? I think if people would just try finding something outside, in Nature, to throw themselves into they might find some answers. The problem is just so huge and has so many faces. For me, the answer isn't inside, it isn't in an office, it's gadgets at a mall, it's not at the bank. The answer for me us is carving out a life from real things right here where we are, learning something new every week to go one step further, it's as much freedom from dependence as can be figured out and it's beautiful simplicity in the abundance of free things right outside the door. We have just as far to go as many people do, but we going in a good direction I think. Maybe with money being tighter than ever, people will find comfort and a different direction in their landscapes:

"That landscape has been described in a thousand different yet subtly related ways. And the experience it delivered to those who approached it correctly has also always been this experience of wholeness - of recovered personhood." - Ptolemy Tompkins

This year to reduce grocery bills and some of the dependency on grocery stores, we grew our basic spices. Peppers, oregano, basil, dill, thyme, rosemary and many others were easy and cheap to grow and dry. We also don't buy expensive cleaning agents and pre-packaged meals. For household cleaning, we mostly use a huge box of baking soda and a gallon jug of vinegar. Most cleaning needs I have are met by one of those two or both. My old boots were moldy, wiped them down with vinegar and problem solved. We keep a water pitcher near the kitchen sink and when running the hot water for washing dishes (when the wood stove is off during the summer), we capture the cold water before it turns hot. We use that water for the animals and for cleaning. When cleaning the toilet, I just pour water into the toilet till it flushes and the bowl doesn't fill back up. Sprinkle with baking soda, drizzle with vinegar and it will bubble just like expensive cleaners for you. Clean with the toilet brush and flush the next time you need to. We use vinegar for fabric softener, for cutting the baking soda after cleaning the stove, and many other things. There are a few other natural cleaners that are used such as salt and lemon juice. There are so many books and online resources about this. Carla Emery's book has a nice little section on cleaning with these basic "ingredients". Not buying expensive sprays, foams and chemicals has saved us money and kept us healthier. Sorry if I've mentioned this before, I can't remember.

Another way is to get rid of expensive boxed foods, cereal being one of those. It is so easy to make granola in the solar cooker. It just takes a day but I don't do anything but pop it in and make sure it is in the sun. I spend about 10 minutes mixing it up. The granola we like is around $4 a box in the store. I don't know what mine costs, but I know its dramatically cheaper to make it. We buy the ingredients like oatmeal in bulk and save a ton.

Well the garden is winding down some. I covered the garlic and have been doing clean up. Pulled the cabbage and they were put in the root pit. I ended up changing the root pit around. I put a door in at the other end too so that I could get to the full length of the pit easier. The door is just a piece of scrap wood with a rope in it laying on top of the sticks and under the hay. I found another burlap sack and filled it with carrots. We thought the carrots weren't going to do so well, but we were happily surprised when we pulled them up a few days ago. They are only about 5" long, but they are fat little things. With the soil we had, the carrots weren't expected to be that long this first year. It was a nice haul and will keep Rufus the pig well snacked this winter. I've been shelling the dried beans that have been hanging upstairs. There aren't a ton of beans, but I've never planted beans before and didn't know what to expect. I learned I need to plant a lot more beans and they need to go in much earlier if they are going to be stored. They are beautiful to look at though and I'm sure they are delicious. The cilantro/ coriander did very well, it really surprised me that it has gone through several frosts. It finally mostly died, but survived the first two frosts completely. I would have had much more coriander to harvest if I had planted it earlier and on time.

We grew coffee chicory this year and I processed them before I found the right instructions. One website said to bake them and they came out rubbery in the middle and burned on the ends. Then I found this website http://www.ehow.com/how_4482021_herbal-roasted-coffee-substitute.html
and decided I should have dried them first. I had the solar cooker going making a batch of vanilla granola so I chopped up the rubbery, burned coffee chicory and threw it in. After they dried for the afternoon I tried them in a cup of hot water. Hey not bad!!! Totally decent. It was very week, but I really liked it. I could grind it if I wanted to, but just don't see the need for the extra effort. Then I tried the same with the Sugar Chicory because I hated the greens, but blech the sugar chicory root was bad, in the compost. So next year I will air dry the coffee chicory, chop them up and roast them on a low heat till brown and toasted. Can't wait. Unfortunately I grew very little Coffee Chicory this year and experimented with the entire harvest. We'll put a lot more in next year because I could easily stop drinking decaf and just drink this.

I have learned so much about Mullein and Coltsfoot lately. They are amazing herbs and so abundant here. Smokers can smoke the semi-dried leaves to help with lung problems, or a tea can also be made, though for the Coltsfoot you can only drink the tea for 4-6 weeks a year. It was amazing to learn that for people that are already smokers, an herbal smoke could actually relieve symptoms and has been used for ages for the treatment of all sorts of lung and throat problems. Infusions and tinctures can be easily made with just hot water for the former and 50 proof alcohol for the later. The Mullein root has been used to support urinary tract health, specifically to strengthen the trigonol muscle at the base of the bladder, leading to improved bladder control and potentially some relief from interstitial cystitis. "Coltsfoot, in a mixture of Chinese herbs, has been evaluated in 66 cases of convalescent asthmatics and found useful in decreasing airway obstruction".

Growing our own herbs (culinary as well as medicinal) is a great way to save money and improve health. The most beneficial and abundant herbs I've encountered so far have been free and growing right in front of my face incognito as weeds. Here are some useful links I found on Mullein, this is an extremely easy herb to identify. Before you use it, make sure you can also identify lamb's ear and foxglove.

http://plant-species.suite101.com/article.cfm/mullein_verbascum_thapsus
http://smokeplants.com/SmokeTips.html
http://www.nzhealth.net.nz/herbs/mullien.shtml
http://www.herbaleducator.com/herbs_mullein.html
http://www.meadowsweet-herbs.com/articles/mullein.htm
http://www.botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/m/mulgre63.html
http://www.altnature.com/gallery/mullien.htm
http://www.wildmanstevebrill.com/Plants.Folder/Mullein.html
http://plant-species.suite101.com/article.cfm/mullein_verbascum_thapsus
http://home.teleport.com/~howieb/smoking/smoke5.html
http://wildforager.survivalistssite.com/hrblsmkart.html
http://www.henriettesherbal.com/archives/best/1994/smoke-1.html

Though on harvesting herbs, I've always worried about picking too much. I take very little from each plant. To make the amount of herbal infusions and tinctures equal to what some people drink would require a lot more harvesting than I'm doing. It seems like it would be difficult to pick that much and still have an abundant supply in nature every year. It also seems to me a lot to consume and I wonder if ancient women consumed these large quantities. I'm uneducated, maybe they did. I'm sure I will learn soon enough. With more and more people learning about the abundance of wild herbs free for the taking, I hope people are conscious not to take too much and leave more than enough. When I was researching this topic, somehow I came across this website about a book "Family Herbal" . It looks like a great book, but unfortunately I'll have to wait till I find one cheaper than $50 for a used book.

Jeffrey learned to replace windows and has been replacing our single pane windows with double pane to keep the heat in. I didn't realize how much work went into that job. Maybe it's just more difficult because this is an old house and the walls are really thick. Plus he's replacing them with much bigger windows for more light. There are so many layers of stuff in there and it is nice to see what the old house was made of, I imagine it was beautiful. Getting anything level and looking level in this wacky house has been a big challenge. We love all the extra light the bigger south facing window lets in. We noticed a new house going up recently and they have very little window presence on the South side, guess they didn't think of that.

Jeffrey played a concert recently. We got dressed up and had a free night out. Anyone that has the password for the photos, there's finally one on there of me dressed up. Jeffrey hadn't changed clothes yet though. I also posted a picture a friend took of me with my Scythe and several other new ones.

I had a lot written about yogurt, but it looks like I never posted it. Maybe next time. If I haven't heard from you in a while, I'd love to. I miss knowing what is going on with everyone.

2008-09-27T07:31:00.001-07:00

Our beautiful cat Benjamin died sometime this morning. He was named after Benny Goodman. Jeffrey found him where he sleeps on top of Rufus' house in the garage. Last night he and I fell asleep on the couch together and I'm so glad that I spent his last evening with him. He wouldn't climb on your lap fully like most cats. We took to calling him "half on half off kitty" because that's how he would get on you; front paws on, back paws off. He loved laundry and if you couldn't find him anywhere, all you had to do was start hanging laundry and he would appear. He'd roll on is back and purr under the hanging clothes and some days would stay out there a good part of the day lazing in the smells of fresh laundry. He had a soft unique mew that sounded like a whispered brrrrrrreeeet, with a trilled r. He loved being brushed so much, sometimes he would drool uncontrollably. Lately he's enjoyed the company of a lone, tall Mullein plant in bloom. He'd stare at it, sit next to it and would take naps near it. We buried him this morning on the hill under the tree next to Mr. Hobbs. We'll miss this sweet, gentle boy. I won't post another picture of him since I just posted one yesterday.

2008-09-26T11:14:00.000-07:00

The weather here is fantastic right now. Maybe it's the weather, but Benjamin the cat (who is normally found at the clothes line) has fallen in love with a Mullein plant. During the day he sits in front of it and stares and yesterday I found him asleep in front of it. I like to appreciate the Mullein in the morning when I take Lucille out to potty. It's usually covered with dew, since it seems we've had fog every day this summer in the early morning. Yesterday we took some back roads to town to see the leaves changing and to enjoy the weather a little longer. There is a reason people come here every year to see these beautiful leaves exploding into fireworks.

Winter is coming and we are getting as much out of the garden as possible and learning what to do with it all. Our last load from the big garden filled the bed of the truck which was surprising! Most of the haul was beans, but there were all sorts of goodies like turnips and beets. I was able to can and freeze 18 quarts of tomatoes, not a world record but I"m happy. We built a root pit for the damp/cold storage, but aren't sure if we did it exactly right because the only other person I know that has one has such a tremendous ego, it's difficult to even be in their company. We did the best we could based on no experience and just what we've read and seen. For the dry/cold storage for things like winter squash, onions, garlic and pumpkins, we decided to leave the coldest room unheated by keeping the door closed and are using the shelves in there to put the produce on. I'm also storing the tinctures and herbal vinegars I made there since it's dark and cool. The house at Crooked Creek will have a root cellar and that will keep the vegetables fresh longer and be easier to get into.

For the root pit, Jeffrey dug a 2 foot deep trench and mounded the dirt up on the sides. Then I put in burlap sacks I picked up for free from a coffee roaster. I covered the pit with sturdy sticks that were set on the dirt mounds on either side of the pit. I covered the sticks with burlap and laid a small piece of plywood with a rope attached in the "door" area. Then I covered the whole thing with a little over a foot of hay and extended the hay out a foot past the pit. The rope attached to the plywood comes out of the hay and tied to a pole high up above where snow might be. I had about 1/2 a bale of hay left so I just put the flakes on the top to keep the cats from digging around in it. I covered the whole thing with a small tarp, though that wasn't necessary. I just didn't want to dig through wet, cold, snowy hay to get into it. So I pull on the rope and it lifts the wood and hay up enough for me to get into the pit and pull the burlap sack up. It's easy enough now, we'll see how it goes when there is 2 feet of snow on the ground.

The St. Anne beans are drying upstairs along with the dill, soybeans and stevia. We didn't have to take the leaves off the bean plants, but there was limited room to hang them and I need to get around the room so we took most of the leaves off. The endive roots we pulled will stay in the root pit till around November. Then they'll go into buckets of sand and will be watered when we want Belgian Endive. We'll keep the buckets in the basement for the Endive to grow in the dark as long as it doesn't get too cold. If it does, I'll just move them into the cold room in the house. I don't know if we are doing this all correctly or not, this was all pieced together with information from here and there.

I am probably repeating myself, but I feel like such a child barely knowing anything about so little of what there is to know. With each passing generation we get closer and closer to losing so much knowledge on how to live, how to be human. The skills that were so basic 5,000 or even 100 years ago, now belong to so few living people and are being passed on to even fewer. If I were born into an indigenous tribe 400 years ago, I would know how a human goes about caring for themselves naturally. I'd have a group of people to sit around the fire with and listen to stories and advice, sing, dance and cry. Though there have almost certainly been evil men as long as there have been men and not all old times were good, I grieve the knowledge and saturation of nature that was lost and that we are loosing.

Are we the only animal on the planet where the majority are completely incapable of self-sufficiency? During the hurricane coverage, one of the broadcasters said "I know everyone is anxiously waiting for the gas stations and grocery stores to open so they can be self-sufficient." I couldn't believe my ears. We've lived our entire lives on this planet, but how many of us can identify the simplest foods that grow wild or how to prepare them? Other than the obvious fruits and berries, I can probalby only pick few. How many know how to treat illness or injury from the overflowing medicine chest outside? I've been a student of self-sufficiency for several years, but still rely on power to preserve some of our day to day food in the fridge and most of the time cook with propane. I still drive my truck to the store. People lived just fine for thousands of years without a store or cars. How did we become so dependent on them so that it's part of the fabric of our life? We have so much to learn before the utilities going out or an economic crisis would barely register on our radar. Like most, we are still so dependent, though working hard to ween ourselves.

It takes time to learn the basic skills each step of the way, but it takes no time to marvel at the beautiful simplicity when those skills are learned and to get a fire in your belly to share them with everyone that will listen. Few are interested though and it's a tragedy because these are skills that have been essential to survival for most of our history.

"In Nature, human markers fade, lose significance. It takes a while to learn the old markers again, to see the path that ancient humans took before us. In kindness, learn how to comfort yourself, to hold yourself as you would a child that is afraid of the light... For on this journey, you mostly have yourself for company.

In the beginning
it it helps if you become your own best friend
and find out what is true about all this for yourself.
Open the door and take a look around outside.
The air is shining there,
and there are wonders,
more wonderful than words can tell." - Stephen Harrod Buhner "The Secret Teachings of Plants"

Root pit

Cook top built from scrap bricks. Cooking home made vegetarian sausage and stir fry from the garden.

Benjamin's Mullein

Hurricane Ike

2008-09-16T14:29:00.001-07:00

Hurricane Ike tore into South Texas with larger-than-life size and tidal surge last Saturday morning. I lived most of my life in South East Texas and the landscapes that were riped apart have deeply rooted memories. Most of my friends and all of my family live there. The reporters have more than covered the details, but this storm and that place are more than just statistics.

It was an unusual storm and those of us that know the Gulf Coast, don't remember one like this. It was massively wide at over 900 miles, the eye was enormous and though it was "only" a Cat 2, it surged like a 4. The powerful force from Africa that drove the winds and rain didn't just stop at Texas. Sunday night I felt the winds on my skin moved by that same energy that has killed so many and destroyed so much. Life was extinguished from Cuba to the mid-western United states. Hurricanes aren't just a coastal threat, though they are hit the hardest. Our friend said, "I live in St. Louis and I've been hit by 2 hurricanes this year!"

One of the hardest hit was Bolivar. No, a barrier island protecting a shoreline is not a good place for a permanent residence and people should not have stayed. That doesn't take away from the fact that there is real suffering, real loss, and a lot of people still in a state of shock. There is no excuse for them to have stayed, but so many of the hurricane warnings are false alarms for that area. Projecting their path is not a science (though they like to think it is). Many of the people that live there have lived in that area most of their lives and have never seen a category 2 storm project this amount of change. Normally the wind blows, the water comes up some, you loose a few trees, no power for a few days and maybe loose the stuff under your house. Things are different now, the weather is more extreme and there are so many more people with their buildings. Each storm is so different and this one hit them head on.

Until hurricane Ike, I didn't realize that my loved ones were in a straight vertical line in relation to each other. That became clear to me while watching the final projected path, they all lived on that line. First my best friend, then my brother Jared and his family, a little further north my parents, grandparents and an aunt, continuing North to East Texas my other brother, his family and my other Aunt. I didn't loose anyone and that has been the greatest sense of relief. I tried not to imagine loosing everyone I love the most, but it was very hard to get that image out of my mind. I know worry is an unhealthy emotion to hold on to, but I found it impossible to let go the day before the storm hit. That was the day I had to go pick up milk and it was good to get out of the house. A beautiful little brown fox trotting at a medium speed came out of the corn field on one side of the road. As it was making it's way to the corn field on the other side, it turned it's head and looked straight at me for 2-3 seconds moving it's head while going by so as not to loose eye contact. Instantly I felt better, though I'm not sure why. The better feeling didn't last long though as I sunk back into worry only a short time later. When I closed my eyes Friday night trying to sleep, I thought about all my friends and family staying up bracing for the worst and I thought about the little fox that surprised me.

One of my brothers is a fireman and was on duty at the time. He worked 4 days straight. Firemen are so underpaid. His home made it with little damage. My mother and aunt are staying with my grandparents and my father decided to ride it out at their house. My parents live on a river that does flood when there is a tremendous amount of rain north of them, but with the speed of the hurricane, no one expected the river to flood like it can with a tropical depression. The surge pushed water in from the opposite direction, the South, much further North than the mouth of the river. I finally was able to speak to my father yesterday and it sounds like riding out the storm in a house 12 feet in the air was a frightening experience. There is only one road into their neighborhood and it may be a few more days before anyone can get to him. There is no water, power or phone service. Since there are only 100 homes in their neighborhood and they are at the end of the line, it will probably be 4-6 weeks before it's restored. We hope the water will have gone down enough tomorrow for a cousin with a truck to get in to bring him supplies. My father's truck was ruined during the surge. At my grandparents house, they are low on gas for the generator, but have gas to cook with. It is very difficult to get in touch with anyone on the phone because circuits are busy or the calls just aren't going through.

Until this morning, I watched the news too much and am saturated with the horrible images. One website displays the four major Houston TV stations simultaneously. I have been hoping to catch a glimpse of my parents home, my fireman brother or anything recognizable. Unfortunately many of the images were of places I recognized.

Here are some links related to Bolivar, one of the hardest hit areas:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1037614/hurricane_ike_devastates_the_bolivar.html?cat=49

http://jakeabby.com/cb/

http://ngs.woc.noaa.gov/ike/IKE0000.HTM

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/09/the_short_but_eventful_life_of.html

I took pictures from these and other websites to make a personal Ike album of the photos that moved me the most. If you would like the password, please email me using the subscription address above or my personal email address. http://s114.photobucket.com/albums/n258/quntmphscs/Hurrican%20IKE/

A friend's teenager son has several friends missing that were on Bolivar at the time. There were 18 of them that thought they would ride the storm out together. At some point they decided to try to get to safety and tied themselves to each other in groups of 2 and 3. Five of them haven't been seen since. This is only one of thousands of sad stories.

Many of the older neighborhoods along the Texas coast and waterways, like the ones that were hit, have a certain casual uniqueness about them. Like New Orleans, it would be very hard to recreate them somewhere else. Something about the landscape lends itself to the atmosphere that many people created there. These places are Blues, Zydeco, and Rock and Roll; Cameros, motorcycles and pickup trucks; BBQ, beer and margaritas; mowing the grass in your bathing suit, watching boats go by, tie dyes, flip flops and big dogs. I hope the survivors can find somewhere else to build that will keep them from getting too homesick. For many, this place will always hold their heart.

A week before the storm hit, I was anxious and out of sorts. I put it off as either being absorbed by a personal issue that I have no control over or maybe it was winter setting in. My distraction and unhealthy anxiety increased a little each day. When the meteorologist projected Houston and the path made a straight line through those that are my heart, those unshakable feelings were cemented. Deep down, I didn't think they would die in the storm, it wasn't going to be good though. One afternoon last week as I was washing dishes, Jeffrey came in from working and tried to cheer me a little, "would you like me to put in a CD for you?" "Yes how about the Beatles". The song "Let it Be" played and though I've heard that song a hundred times, I don't think I ever paid attention to the words. Worry is not only unhealthy, but it blocks solutions. When I think of "let it be", it reminds me to put the worry down. It became my mantra that week:

When I find myself in times of trouble, mother Mary comes to me,
speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
And in my hour of darkness she is standing right in front of me,
speaking words of wisdom, let it be.

Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be.
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be.

And when the broken hearted people living in the world agree,
there will be an answer, let it be.
For though they may be parted there is still a chance that they will see,
there will be an answer. let it be.

Let it be, let it be, .....

And when the night is cloudy, there is still a light, that shines on me,
shine until tomorrow, let it be.
I wake up to the sound of music, mother Mary comes to me,
there will be no sorrow, let it be.

Let it be, let it be, .....

Beautiful Broccoli

2008-08-31T17:25:00.000-07:00

Tonight I'm thinking about my family and friends in Texas and Louisianna while we wait to see the outcome of Hurricane Gustav. I have been checking all day and talking to my mother who is family message relay central. She has gotten 2 households ready for this hurricane and has the worry of my brothers and their extended families all along the Gulf Coast and East Texas. My parents live on the river so we know what storms can do. They are as prepared as they can be and she and my aunt have my grandparents home ready as well. They also have bug out bags ready if the storm turns so they can ride it out with my Grandparents. Tonight my Grandmother wanted to know why I didn't write a story about the broccoli. So Grandmother, here is your story...

This is the first time we've ever grown broccoli. Several people told us they heard you couldn't grow big heads here. We figured we'd at least get something from it and love it, so in it went.

We grew it organically and without blood or bone meal. It was pretty easy to grow actually. I did direct sow in the garden since there was limited shelf space for starter plants. There were some Japanese Beetles, but they are easy to pick off and spot. Jeffrey is also grand champion of spotting worms curled under leaves. So with little organic bug control, we are eating pretty well out of the small garden here at the house. We did recently buy Rotenone dust for the garden at crooked creek to help with a pest problem for the Cabbage there, but it is organic.

The beautiful 3 year old compost from dear friends, good amount of rain this season and frequent bug checking were probably the key reasons. The garden had full sun about 6 hours and was shaded during the late after noon heat. Certain vegetables seem to be thriving in these conditions, like the broccoli and tomatoes. The peppers are small and carrot tops are relatively few and small though. We had row covers on the carrots and there were a lot more carrot tops in that bed the last time we checked. I thought the carrot tops were pushing on the row cover and noticed that the other bed of carrots without row cover was doing fine, so decided to take it off. The green tops pushing the row cover were weeds and a good amount of carrots seem to be missing. I have no idea what happened to them. Next year, we'll not cover them and try to get them in more sun.

The row covers really seem to be more trouble than they are worth for some of the plants, but squash did well with them. The row covers were removed from the plants when they flowered. They were big, green, full of blossoms and beautiful. The sound coming from the bed was amazing as the loud buzzing of little wings surrounded us. The squash blossoms never lacked for attention from her suitors. Her leaves were beaten down pretty badly in the storm. We waited and hoped for the best. They were tended to the best we could by removing shattered leaves so the plant would have one wound to heal instead of a shattered leaf and stem with a great surface area of damage. I don't' know if that was right or wrong to do, I just felt I had to do something to help the plants. There are new leaves, new flowers and her suitors are back. The pumpkin plants are also showing an amazing amount of life after the beating and have a good number of blossoms. The corn has almost completely recovered, though you can still see where the lower leaves took damage.

Today I dried herbs in the Solar cooker Jeffrey built for me from super sturdy foam box packing material donated from our friend Steve and an old window from our neighbor's garage sale for $1 I believe. He attached a rope to the foam box and the window so that I wouldn't have to remove the window, I can just open and close it like a lid. It is hollowed out, glued together and lined with cardboard and aluminum foil. He tilted the box on a wood pile so that the sun would go directly into it until he can make the reflector that goes on top. I was having difficulty figuring out how to use it since it was at an angle for now. Today I worked on an outdoor cooking surface with some bricks we found on the property and it gave me an idea. I put bricks in the bottom corner to make a level surface. I picked oregano out of the garden, washed it, put it in bread pans and put in the solar cooker. When I checked about two hours later and it was crispity crunchity as I like to say. The leaves that have been upstairs on screens for 2 weeks aren't this dry. I think I actually "over cooked" them and will dry them for less time next. The pans were so hot, I needed potholders. All for FREE!!! Thank you Steve for showing us your solar cooker, donating material, loaning us books and answering questions!

Tomatoes at Crooked Creek a few weeks before the hail:

Same plants a week after the hail and picking up all the beaten off leaves and tomatoes. These plants were tall, strong and loaded with tomatoes. I was able to leave some tomatoes after the storm, these were the best that were left.

Gratitude and humility

2008-08-22T07:51:00.001-07:00

I had a post ready to publish and it is below. I wanted to post about this morning first though:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mr. Hobbs kitty died sometime this morning. We found him on the porch which the cats all used for their lounge. He was a big handsome boy, a gentle giant. Everyone that met Mr. Hobbs loved him. I remember when my nephews stayed with me once, Mr. Hobbs would let Sebastian lug him around like a sack of potatoes and wherever Sebastian was, Mr. Hobbs was close by. We always joked that he was wearing his best suit when someone would come to visit since his markings looked like a tuxedo. He would get so nervous walking through doorways and his tail would twitch.

He joined my household in October 2001 as tiny little kitten. It was cold outside and I could hear little kittens crying. I looked and looked and couldn't find them. It was really cold that night and I hoped they would be OK. The next night, I hear an insistent kitten. I went outside with the flash light and there he was at the fence crying to get in. No sign of his mother or the other kitten that had been crying with him the night before. So I hopped the fence to bring him inside and he's been with me since.

We buried him this morning on top of the hill under a tree and covered the spot with the stones. I'm grateful that this unique little person was part of my life

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After my last post, I was going to do a garden gush. The corn was getting tall, the tomatoes loaded down and beautiful and most of the rest of the garden doing well too. I was cutting the bottom land for mulch, everything was tied and tended. A spot had been cleared near the highway for the farm stand and we decided it's size.

Last Sunday, a 20 minute hail storm hit the big garden at Crooked Creek and we thought wiped out most of the garden for sure. In the last week, some of the plants are showing signs of recovery, but it sure didn't look hopeful when the damage was discovered. Here at the house it just rained like usual. We didn't know there was hail in the area. After our garden was hit we went to town and found out many were hit. People reported foot and half piles of hail off the roof line. Snow plows were used on one stretch. On the way out of town and back to the house we saw the worst. The damage we have sustained seemed slight and trivial. Acres and acres of corn shredded like wispy grass. Just as many soy fields destroyed beyond recognition. A neighbor told us further North, the corn stalks were stripped completely. It is a good time to reflect on humility.

Some neighbors to the Crooked Creek property stopped by a few days after the storm. They are in their 70's, have lived here their whole life and said they have never seen anything like it. She was on the front porch with the front door open when the storm started. She heard loud noise in the kitchen and said "Who is rattling around in my kitchen!!" She went inside to investigate and found that the hail storm had just started at the back of the house and she could hear it hitting the roof.

Most of the area crops that were destroyed were bearing produce since they were planted on time. Farm stands are already up with corn. Our big garden went in very late since we didn't decide to put it in until I was laid off in May. I am so grateful for that. The tomatoes will probably not recover enough to sell any, but some might be edible. The "delicate" crops of dill and cilantro did just fine. The cilantro is going to seed for Coriander and had already developed a stronger center stem. The Stevia plant looks like it must have gone on vacation and slipped back in the garden untouched, but I only have 2 of them. The corn was shredded so badly I didn't think it would recover, but in the last few days the newer leaves look good. The squash was badly beaten but some of the blossoms look OK. I don't know if the watermelon will recover, most of the leaves are gone. Overall, I feel we fared better than we would have if we had been on time. We won't be doing a farm stand this year, but we will probably be able to have produce for ourselves.

In the meantime, I have completely immersed myself in learning about healing herbs. These last few weeks, I have only felt like listening and doing; not typing. Before the garden was hit by hail, I had a severe hot flash probably with a low blood pressure and/or blood sugar drop with varying degrees of symptoms over a 20 minute period. My knees gave out from under me, I felt drunk, my head caught on fire and then I was freezing. I could barely see and it was hard to talk. It was frightening to have no control over my body. I did some deep breathing and relaxed while it passed.

I have always been interested in healing herbs and plants. Last month some time I found Susun Weed's website. After my introduction to menopause, 2 other friends also suggested her. When the garden was pulverized, I dove into reading her site and free info. I bought one of her books and am devouring it. I have made a few quarts of herbal tinctures and vinegars. From another source I learned about herbal oils and made plantain oil to put into beeswax if I find some, but just the oil may be sufficient.

We decided not to mow the yard and I just scythe when I feel like it and keep the paths up some. When the student is ready, the teacher arrives. Our friend that makes the jewelry (and recommended Susun Weed) showed me Mother's Wort growing on the property. I immediately read all I could about the plant. It is mentioned frequently in the herbal book I am reading. It's also an herb to help with menopause symptoms, along with many others and is for men too. There is also a lot of plantain going to seed here near the house. The tinctures, vinegars and oil were made from the herbs right here growing in the yard. I will be able to try them in 5 weeks. I am blessed with two friends that know a lot about herbs and wild edibles and have gotten me swiftly to this point. The other day, he went to Crooked Creek with us and his field guide (I am waiting for the used one I bought online to arrive). We had so much fun learning about the plants that live there. For me, the jewelweed was the most fun with it's popping seed pack.

I read that Plantain seeds are a great EFA source and my patch of Plaintain that has remained unmowed for a long time has tall, gorgeous riping seed stems. I"ve been running my finger down the stem to grab the seeds as I pass by. Wait till the seeds easily come off the stem, 1 - 2 Tablespoons per day. I really encourage everyone to get a field guide and let part of your yard "go" and just see what pops up. Might be something you need!

During the herbal reading, I discovered that vinegar is a good hair rinse. Since I wash my hair with soap, I thought I'd give it a try. Use 2 Tablespoons to 1 Cup of warm water. It worked wonderfully. They say it can help dandruff and other hair problems and is a natural de-tangler. I used Apple Cider Vinegar and my scalp very lightly tingled and it was easier to comb out. It can be rinsed out of the hair, but it's better to leave it in. The smell will dissipate. A health food store went out of business and a friend of ours gave us big bags of herbs. One of those bags was nettle. I've had it sitting around since she gave it to me a few months ago unsure what to do with it. During the hair rinse reading, I found a recipe for nettle hair rinse. Loosely fill a glass jar to 3/4 with dried stinging nettle. Fill jar with apple cider and let it sit for a week or two and strain. I tried it today and just love it. It smells a bit strong undiluted, but give it a shot.

Our friend said something like "the plants growing in your yard are the ones you need." It's getting harder and harder to mow when I recognize the herbal paradise I have growing under my feet fertilized by Rufus the pig as he nibbles during the day. They now feel like friends I'm getting to know.

The friend that has been teaching me so much and that I have referred to often here, made for me a "wise woman" necklace. It is symbolic for me from the material to the design and is something I have been looking for, an outward reflection of my inner direction. A physical reminder what is important. It's stone has a perfect weight and feel to it. When I wear it, I'm reminded to take my studies seriously, not stressfully. There is so much that I don't know and so much free knowledge for the taking and I should not treat it as if it's cheap. This is invaluable, priceless information and I can't wait to read and learn all I can about plants.

We were recently taught about the fireless cooker, also called the "Wooden Wife from Wyoming". Jeffrey built a simple one for us to use. It's just a box with a lid on it. Here are the instructions that I copied.

"Take a double armful of alfalfa hay. Take a pail of water. Take a straight-sided kettle, and a wooden box like an ammunition box. Wet the hay, handfuls at a time, and tamp a layer firm and flat in the bottom of the box (from another source, about 4-5 inches). Place the kettle on the hay, and pack wet hay all around between the kettle and the box. Then set the whole affair aside for about a week, until the tightly packed hay dries out (I would suggest a sunny place, ours wasn't fully dry left on the cooler porch). Then the kettle will slip in and out of its hay nest next perfectly.

Now, if you are in a hunters' camp, fix up a stew in the kettle. Bring it to a boil over the fire, and then put it in it's hay nest. Leave it all day, and it will simmer and cook for hours. cowboys and sheepherders used to do this when they wanted a good warm meal waiting for them after a day in the saddle. They called this contraption the "Wooden Wife from Wyoming", and when they returned they would find it had cooked their eveing meal for them!"

Another article said to line the sides and bottom with heavy paper. They also suggested making a hay pillow for the top. I took an old pillow case and stuffed it with hay so that the space between the pot and the lid were filled. If you are going to try this, make sure to bring your food to a boil first and let it cook for 10-20 minutes over a fire or on the stove first (depends on what you are cooking). Some people also use a heating stone for the bottom. I have a sheet of cooking times and ours takes longer. I think we don't have it insulated well enough or should try lining it with thick paper as was suggested. I cook pinto beans in mine and just let it sit overnight. Here are some sample cook times.

Beet greens, boil 10 min on stove, 3 hours in fireless cooker
Dried beans (I soak ours first overnight), boil 20 minutes, overnight in fireless cooker
Cabbage, boil 15 min on stove, 5 hours in fireless cooker
Asparagus, boil 5 min on stove, 14 hours in cooker
Rice 1 cupful, 4 cups of water, 5 min boiling, 3 hours in cooker
Okra Gumbo, 20 min on stove, 6 hours in cooker

The garden here at the house looks great. Here is a shot of the tomatoes.

FDA Globalization Act

2008-08-04T11:33:00.000-07:00

Still haven't had time to do a "real" post yet about what is going on, but I'm working on it. I did want to post this though from my favorite little soap company:

"Congress is considering legislation that would force many small businesses like Cindi's Goatique to close. The regulations in the FDA Globalization Act of 2008 would force us to pay thousands of dollars in fees just for the privilege to sell our products, and require us to submit paperwork each time we create a new product or add an ingredient to our existing products. Small companies such as ours would cease to exist, and your choices would be limited to larger corporations that could allocate funds and hours to compliance with these new laws. Please visit the sites below and contact your legislators to ask them to oppose these new regulations. Thank you!

Indie Business Blog

YouTube video that explains the Act

Little Football

2008-08-01T16:25:00.000-07:00

Lucille burrowed into a pile of drying grass near the garden trying to "get it". She never finds what is in there. That is as far as she goes and then stays there doing the dogs version of "breath of fire". It was a good day today. There is a lot going on and so much to tell. I'll post the update soon.

New space and beauty tips

2008-07-24T07:53:00.000-07:00

While I was visiting my family, Jeffrey finished up a room for us to move into. We've wanted to move upstairs right over the wood stove since we put it in. It'll be a warm and soothing - cat free, dog free and construction free space! Usually when we go into town for groceries, we'll stop at the resale shops or garage sales along the way. We picked up some pretty decent solid wood end tables for $5, the dresser for I think $20. Jeffrey found the window at a discount building supply place and did all the trim himself out of pine. The quilt was made from a lady a mile down the road that runs the diner and the little pine picture frame with handmade dried onion flowers is from my friend Mary Ann as a going away present. It matches the window frame perfectly. The painting to the left was a gift from my grandmother. It was in the scrap pile and I found it a few years ago when I lived there. She hated it and wouldn't let me take it like that. She lightened the sky and added some details. The sky was ominous dark and purple and I loved it, but she wouldn't let me have it without the yellow in the sky and lights in the windows. The yellow in that sky matches the paint that Jeffrey covered the room with and I really love it, insurance paid for that. We are really trying to fix up this place and hope to sell it to pay for part of the build of the new earth sheltered house. If we have to keep this one for a while though, we'll have some nice space to live in till we can sell it. If Jeffrey's mother moves up here with us there will be plenty of room.

Two days before my trip to Houston, I put old sunblock on my face. A few days before that, I noticed some light brown spots on my forehead from some ancient sun damage and I wanted more coverage than just the hat. Making my own sunblock is not too far down on the to-do list and there are some great websites out there to help, but i hadn't gotten to it yet. In the mean time I made the mistake of using the old sunblock. My face broke out with light, itchy, lumpy splotches all over my cheeks. Oh no!!!! I gave my niece a natural beauty care kit for her birthday and I didn't want her to see me like this! It took 2 weeks for my face to start looking and feeling normal again. The last week of it, my skin was dry, patchy and itchy. I haven't used anything but goats milk soap, some occasional Cetaphil face soap and Hazelnut oil for the last 7 months or so. I bought the Cetaphil before I stopped using most beauty products and the bar just never slims down. I keep it on a ceramic soap dish under the sink, wet my facial scrub pad and wipe the top of the bar only a few times. That soap lasts forever that way. When I run out, I need to figure out a better all-natural soap to use on my face. I only use it a few times a week though. Most of the time, I just use the goats milk soap. My face has never looked better or been so clear. I almost always had something going on with my skin.

The goats milk soap must have a lot of butter fat in it because I also use it for my shampoo and conditioner. I tried it as shampoo for an experiment with no additional conditioner and loved how my hair came out. Then I tried it with Ivory and then a seaweed soap, my hair was impossible to comb out with my fingers. I haven't tried it with any other natural soaps yet, but have a few lying in wait. So I'll try it with the others too. I tossed all the lipstick and started using Burt's Bees lip gloss for a while, but now I'm very happy with just goats milk lip balm. I used to put lipstick on all day long. Now that craving is gone since I've started using just the lip balm and my lips have stopped peeling.

I also stopped using face, hand and body lotion. After the shower I dry normally but just lightly pat my face, forearms and hands dry leaving plenty of moisture. Then I put a dime size amount of hazelnut oil in the palm of my hands, coat my wet hands with it and rub up to my elbows using the water on my skin like it was body lotion. Then I pat my cheeks, neck & forehead with my palms, comb out my hair with my oiled fingers making sure to rub the end of my hair and finally drying my hands by wiping them on any dry body part like my knees or heels. I use Hazelnut oil when the oil is going on my face because it has astringent properties. When I'm just washing my hands or have washed dishes, I usually only shake the excess water from my hands. Then I put a little olive or almond oil on them and rub the water and oil on my arms. There is a homemade face mask and lotion that I occasionally use but there really isn't much of a need for that. The face mask is just a tablespoon of goats milk (you can use any type of milk) with a little flour. It was suggested that I should use besan flour (chickpea), but I can't find it here so I've just been using the lightest flour I have. Make it very thin and apply very thinly to the face. When it dries, I put a warm wet washcloth on my face for a few seconds and then rinse off. I follow with hazelnut oil. I was told to rub it off with my hands, but I have never gotten that to work. I'm sure I am not doing something right. Then a few times a month before bed, I sometimes put a little all natural body butter on my hands and feet. That is the extent of my beauty regimen. My skin is really thriving with this treatment and my toiletries bag on my flight was an empty film canister 1/4 full of hazelnut oil, 1/2 a bar of goats milk soap, a toothbrush and a toothpaste sample from an old dentist visit. I want to start brushing with baking soda, but I can't get over the taste yet. I hate the taste of baking soda! I am saving a ton of money and my skin has never looked better.

On my trip before last to Houston, I sat with my friend Sonali's mother, Swapna. She was visiting from India to see her new grand-daughter. When I found out she was coming to town, I asked Sonali if her mother could teach me some homemade beauty care. They invited me over for lunch and Sonali translated Bengali from the lips of this beautiful woman wrapped in a sari. She taught me the simple face masks and skin care. Maybe one day I'll see if she'll let me share more of these lovely recipes. Sonali has the creamiest, clearest skin of anyone I have ever met. I asked her about it last year and she gave me one of her mother's recipes for face lotion using milk. I loved it! So when I found she was coming in town, I had to meet her. She cooked lunch for me and I made homemade granola for her. When I arrived and gave her the granola, she smiled and loved the decorated mason jar. Then we sat for lunch, she cooked chicken. I'm allergic to chicken so I couldn't eat it. She laughed because she's diabetic and couldn't eat the granola because of the sugar and butterscotch chips. She quickly cooked up something else and along with all the side-dishes and naan, I was happily stuffed to the gills. She gave the baby a massage with almond oil from head to toe. Every day the baby received a warm bath and an oil massage right after. It would put her right to sleep. The baby's hair was so beautiful and her eyelashes gave hint to the budding large "Betty Davis" eyes. These she got from her mother Sonali who has incredibly deep, large eyes that would make anyone jealous. Then Swapna explained several beauty tips to me and answered all my questions. After a while she sat and crocheted and I sat on the floor at the end table and kept asking her more questions. Then it dawned on me I was learning at her skirt hem as women have done for thousands of years. So I thank Swapna for teaching me this incredibly valuable lesson that I will keep with me always. I hope to share it with as many people as will listen and Sonali for letting me in on her beauty treatment.

Some makeup companies have a pink ribbon on their products and in their campaigns to bring awareness to cancer. In my opinion, it's highly likely that it's their ingredients that are partly if not fully to blame in breast cancer and in who knows how many other health and skin problems. Some people have switched to mineral make up. My friend has rosacea and uses all natural mineral makeup. Now though, with so many companies getting in on it, you have to be careful with mineral makeup as well. "Recent UK studies advise of strong health risks when using Titanium Dioxide (TiO2) in nano particle form in powdered mineral makeup" . There are all natural mineral makeup companies that do not use nano particles and they are easy to find online.

I just decided not to use any makeup at all. I won't use anything that has parabens and it's almost impossible to find anything that goes on your skin that doesn't have parabens. There is so much garbage in these lotions and creams. Makeup companies spend a whole lot of money trying to make women feel that they really need their products and it has become the norm to use chemical filled makeup and lotions on the largest organ of the body. People have been decorating and beautifying themselves for thousands of years all over the world with natural ingredients. I doubt if our ancestors used an ingredient called methyl or propylparaben. They used oils, fruits, natural dyes and paints. There are numerous all-natural makeup and beauty products online to choose from and websites available about making your own beauty products at home.

The last two times I died my hair, I used henna and it was a deep red. It was beautiful. My friend Samyu uses henna and on her thick dark hair, it adds a rich, red deepness. There is a residual henna perfume coming from your hair for a few days. It is a hair dye that conditions your hair and dyes it without harmful chemicals. There are many ingredients you can add to the henna paste depending on the desired shade and conditioning level. I don't use commercially produced and boxed henna hair dye and just use henna powder. A tea is made with the powder along with egg, yogurt and lemon following a recipe from my friend Samyu. If I could put my hands on her recipe right now, I would share it. There are many others to be found online. "It has been recorded historically that ancient civilizations dyed their hair using plants. Some of the most well known are henna, indigo, Cassia obovata, senna, turmeric and amla. Others include katam, black walnut hulls, and leeks ^[6]." - from Wiki

Several friends that we made here are also working on making home made soaps and lotions with goats milk. It's somethign I am trying to actively learn, but there hasn't been a big rush since I'm happy with what I'm using now. I know it's going to run out though, and I need to learn from my friends soon. It's amazing how many people I know are working on the same things that I am working on. We all seem to be in cheese and soap making mode with the abundance of goats milk. Even at the diner this morning, one of the farmers that happened to try the same pruning method on his tomatoes that I'm trying this year was asking me about goats milk cheese. He's trying to learn to make it too and we've both already made cottage cheese. So we talked about rennet for a while. Going for breakfast down the road once a week is a lifeline to this area. You find out what everyone is working on and many times, there is someone around to answer any sort of question you can throw out. I learn more from one of these weekly meetings than I ever did at the "weakly" corporate company meetings.

Solar Panels arrive!

2008-07-22T11:40:00.000-07:00

Last night, we picked up 4 solar panels at approximately 1/2 the regular price. Jeffrey found them used on Craigslist. They are only 2 years old and came from a solar company, we have a guarantee on them. This was a huge find. We've been able to find a solar hot water heater (that we had to sell before we moved) and have seen solar panels listed before, but that is rare. When we found them previously, the seller was either too far or the timing was bad. We've been looking and looking lately and there haven't been any. We thought it would be a good idea to go ahead and get started on solar out at Crooked Creek while we had some money and the need to start building out there. Then the day before yesterday they appeared on Craigslist and the man even met us closer in so we wouldn't have to drive so far. We are going to build an animal house/ building supply storage/ Garden & power shed first. Since we aren't in a huge hurry, we can take our time and wait for the great deals and they are out there. It's amazing what people will get rid of. We already have roofing material from our old roof, some lumber left over from construction and other items we can used that we've picked up along the way. Now if only I could find a good, used grain/ flour grinder I've wanted!

A fierce, short storm blew through yesterday. A giant branch the size of a normal tree blew off of a big Locust. It fell right onto the highway blocking 75% of the road. The storm was still so fierce and the locust had branches to spare so we couldn't run right out to get it. It was too dangerous. I was afraid someone would hit it and they did, but just the tip and they were fine. The wind and rain were blowing so hard, most people were driving slowly. As soon as I could, I ran out to see if I could pull it out of the road while Jeffrey went to the garage to get something to cut it up. I pulled as hard as I could and the limb wouldn't budge. If a car had been passing under the tree when it fell, I believe it could have killed them. Then our neighbor showed up out of nowhere with equipment and pushed it off the road. A short while later our other neighbor came walking quickly down the highway pulling on his gloves to help. Sometimes it's great to have neighbors. It ripped the awning off of the RV.

My cell phone contract is finally expiring and I called to have it officially turned off as of August 16th. That will save a good bit of money every month. Since we still have to drive and are at the other property so much, I promised my mother I would get a cheap pay as you go phone. I did like getting the occasional quick text message from my brother Jared, but maybe I can get him to text to my email. I checked yesterday and I can get one for $10 and just put some minutes on the phone in case we need to give each other a quick call or there is an emergency. When I called to cancel today, it took 20 minutes and 2 "high pressure" service agents to get it done. Both "tempted" me with, "Would you be interested in an upgrade? We have some really cool phones out." Both read from the same script and I felt ridiculous having heard it, I can't imagine how ridiculous they felt reading scripted casual conversation. I had just told them that I never use my cell phone and am reducing all unnecessary household expenses, why would I want a new phone? Then she finally informed me that I would have to call back since the cancellation date was more than a month away. My contract expires August 16th, no Ma'am that is not more than a month away. She said they traditionally like to cancel service at the end of a service period which takes me to the end of August. I told her I went through 2 people and 20 minutes, no I am not calling back again later. I told her she could just figure out how to cancel it on the 16th. They canceled as of the date I requested and I'll be free of them soon.

Yesterday I received in the mail a fantastic card from my niece! There is a pink peony on the front. I just fell in love with them this year when I saw them for the first time as they bloomed from some prior owner's planting. Then she wrote me a note telling me she missed me and that this is her first drawing from her new drawing book. She made me two cutouts that I can use as bookmarks. One is a beautiful "Garden Talent Fairy" with flowers in her hair and purple wings that she made with a kids computer program and the next is where the fairy lives. I ALSO got a card from my Mom that says "Care and Kindness" on the front. This put a lightness in my heart and a huge smile on my face every time I look at them.

We've had to keep close watch on the garden for bugs every day. The collards and broccoli had some damage, but Jeffrey is out picking off bugs every day now. The tomatoes are doing great, though some on my forum are convinced that pruning so severely is a very bad idea. So, I'll see how they turn out. I was warned they may not be as sweet and will do more research on that. So far I can't find anything warning me that I'll loose sweetness. Right now the plants are full of healthy tomatoes and the leaves that are there look fantastic. They are sturdy and weathered well in yesterday's storm. The herbs were beaten down a bit and some of the pea plants, but they will make it. The Brown cappuchin or snow peas appear the same as they did before the storm, their tendrils held tightly to their string path. The Snap Bush Beans were knocked over some by the heavy rain, but will be fine.

I was doing a lot of bending over & looking down while putting the garden in and when I worked on a computer all day, I did a lot of the same. Now that I'm out scything more and the garden is in, I find I am doing a lot more looking up. Think about how many times you look up, we mostly look straight or down. I love to look up at the sky, birds, clouds, planes, spiderwebs, storms and stars. I think about the difference in my posture and how I hold my shoulders and neck when I look up, especially if I am walking. It tends to straighten me up. I've always fought slightly hunched shoulders and really work now to keep my back straight. When I'm outside I try to look up when can, especially when I'm walking slowly or right after I've cleared a path. Of course glancing down occasionally so as not to stumble. It seems to help and then when I look straight or down, it is easier to keep my shoulders straight for a while. So look up!

Here are a picture of the peas at the small garden and the card my niece made for me:

My trip to houston

2008-07-17T15:24:00.000-07:00

I'm back from my week long trip to Houston for my parents 40th anniversary. I was able to visit with my immediate family and many extended family members that I don't usually get to see. It was a bittersweet trip of laughter and tears; reminiscing and misunderstanding; joy and careless injury; youthful wisdom and energy. I will always be absolutely awestruck at the great blessing my nephews and nieces are. It brings tears to my eyes at how incredibly fortunate we are to have them. Their very births created joy and distraction during grief. Their childhood has been one of great flexibility and insight. They express their love for us without shame and truly enjoy listening to our "stories around the fire". They show amazement, excitement and sentimentality well beyond their years.

The familiar familial branches of interaction have been pruned back by time and experience and in the scared-over cut there is an unfamiliar void. With time and season, new growth is appearing and from the scar, growth will push through to form the new relationship direction of my family. In the Dineh tradition "All beings through their relationship with others hold a story at each node of connection." - Joan Halifax.

Our stories are changing and the direction is yet unknown. Interaction with each other will change us, even if in a seemingly imperceptible way. Metal sharpens metal so one man sharpens another, the more we interact love should increase love. We may have fiery disagreements, but there is always love. In time, more understanding & tolerance will come when - in still, quiet contemplation - the dust of graciousness & humility settle down over us and we weave together our new family tapestry stitch by stitch, person by person.

My parents received the gift they wanted most which was every person in the family being there, from the youngest (2 years old) to the oldest (86 years old); the person with the most time on their hands (me) to the ones with the least time (my two brothers). This was also a gift to my grandparents, especially my grandfather. He can't speak anymore without great effort and usually only leaves the house for Dr. appointments. They sat at the head of the circle surrounded by their legacy. Grandfather was able to laugh and grandmother was freed to visit with the many helping hands eager to sit with grandfather. My aunt "Goofy" basked in the extra love around all the children she influenced and she played with the children of the children she loves dearly.

On my trips through the airport I saw a tremendous amount of waste. On the plane suffocated food in cardboard tombs wrapped in plastic for sale. The waste weighed on me like a person walking through a war torn land, it was everywhere I looked. Artificial too-cold temperatures fueled by giant air conditioners. I watched the fans rotating at full speed to cool a jet way that wasn't to be used for another hour. Mountains of trash per second created by constantly eating and drinking travelers with no recycling in sight. Houston makes it very difficult to recycle.

Overall it was a good trip. While I was away the garden grew and tomatoes and peppers have formed. I looked forward to getting back to work today. Last night we enjoyed the peaceful silence and watched a giant bright moon rise just above the thick fog that created islands in the night sky of the hilltops.

It's a hot one today

2008-07-08T12:57:00.000-07:00

It was so hot today. The desire to finish though is greater than reason that creates balance and I think our brains baked a little too long in the heat today. More of the seeds that need to go in for July were planted this morning and the remainder will go in this afternoon. Then the next planting will be for August 1st and before that some succession planting. The RV is now on top of the hill and has provided tremendous relief from the hot sun for us and the dogs. The weather forcasted 85 degrees today and I believe it hit that while I was planting Kale. After I watered the seeds, 3 small solid yellow butterflies and one larger, darker yellow butterfly "fluttered by" and all around us landing on the freshly watered soil. I tried desperately to get photos of them, but they were bashful today. I managed to snap 2 of them together.

We visited several friends lately. There are three families that live very close together, so when we need to see one and there is time, we'll stop to see the rest if they are around. First we stopped by to visit Kathy, Larry and Jeff. They live off grid surrounded by state forest. Their spectacular and enviable gardens are tall, dark, cool greens and lush crumbly chocolate brown dirt under mottled sun and bordered by moss covered rocks and aged wood. It's not the biggest garden I've ever seen, it's the perfect size for them; but it is one of the most beautiful I've seen. It's always a joy to see them. We had an animated conversation about solar, something we are all passionate about, while walking through a tree filled yard full of life, sounds and fragrant smells. They always have projects in various stages of completion and it seems every time we go there's yet another one complete and one newly started to investigate. Then it was off to Cathy's house. Her place is an animal lover's paradise! There are baby goats, friendly turkeys, chickens and much more. All sorts of cuteness abounds! She is one amazing woman and has built so much on her own. I don't know how she does it. She's almost finished with a big shed and just finished building something that was genius! I wont' give it away since some of her other friends read this too, but it was remarkable and I can't wait to build one for myself. Both Cathy and Kathy have a great way to heat water with used green 2 liter bottles they pick up here and there and lay them in the sun. The water is hot and ready to go when you need it. I think it's a great idea. Then we headed to Donna's house. She is a single mom of a teenage daughter and another woman that seems to be able to do it all. She has a horse, milk goats, fiber sheep and rabbits, a garden and works full time! She's taught me so much already and I know I'm going to learn a lot more from her. We are going to work on making soap and I think cheese when I get back from my trip to Houston. Just like the rest of the people that we tend to be drawn to, she's animated and cracks us up on a regular basis. Her daughter's friend and boyfriend have been there helping a lot it seems. They must really appreciate what a wonderful person she is, because most teenagers I know would rather be off doing something else.

I'm off to Houston this week for my parents 40th anniversary. My day-glow white legs saw the sun for the first time today as I dusted off the shorts. If you saw a bright flash of light in the North, that was the unveiling of the legs as I stepped out of the truck this morning and the sun glanced off my skin blinding all around me. Everyone will be in their bathing suits at the party and I don't want to scare the children. So I thought I'd try to get a darker shade of ivory going. My farmer's tan will be quite comical to the kids as it is. My brother Jared, his partner Pam and I have been planning the party for quite a while, although it is going to be very simple. We haven't been able to visit with my other brother Justin for a while because for the last few years, he always seems to get a new job or get promoted the week before we get together. So he can't make it or comes after work right as it's ending and everyone is tired and on the way home. After a phone call last night I learned that it will probably be the same for this gathering. We're happy that he's moving up, but can't wait for the day to come when he'll be able to take a day off just to visit with us. This really is a dream come true for him, so we're happy through our sadness of not getting to see him much. He deserves all the happiness in the world and if this is what he wants and how he wants to go about it; then I support him. With a family, a house and years of taking care of them ahead; he is working as hard as he can now to make up for the bygone lean years when he couldn't do for them like he wanted. If we don't get to see him this time, there's always next time I suppose.

I routinely see a man walking to the post office. We saw him last week on a hot day walking to town and picked him up. He also believes in living simply and told us about the yurt he built himself (not from a kit) and has lived in for many years, maybe 18. He invited us up to see it. He lives very close to us, so the other night we headed up the hill to see his place. He has 6 older solar panels that work just fine and built the support deck for them himself. He has made an ingenious, simple water capturing system out of used sheet metal and built a substantial bracing setup. It looks like a chute coming off the hill. He made walkways and platforms from discarded wood. There is an extra large old bus (I love old buses!) that he has turned into a huge workshop by removing the benches and building shelving down the length of it. The yurt was cozy and warm in the winter, but he said it has been a bit hot with these 80+ degree days we've had lately. There is a breezy, comfortable, shaded sitting area right outside the front door with a bench he made himself and some chairs that were creatively repaired with old blue jeans. He used to teach survival training and seems to be a jack of all trades. I noticed some interesting carvings and wood work all around and asked about it. We found out he's an artist and makes fantastic carved stone jewelry. He showed us his sketch book with dozens of drawings for jewelery. He uses a manual method to tap out stone leaving the design to stand out. The color of the stone was a warm red and I couldn't stop "petting" it. It felt wonderful in the hand and I know if I wore one, I would probably play with it all the time. He doesn't sell on ebay or anywhere else regularly. He carries his jewelry with him while out walking and people that know his work will sometimes stop him to see the latest. One of his friends has offered to put his work on ebay for him when he gets a bigger inventory. It's very time consuming work. He described himself as blessed and told the story of how he came to live rent free on this beautiful hill with spectacular views. We are very glad we decided to give him a lift that day and that our paths have crossed with another like minded individual. He is helping a friend that lives even further up the hill from him build a cabin and having lived in this area for many years knows other homesteading types around here.

On a side note, I've been replacing things as they run out with home made. I used to use store bought packaged taco/burrito seasoning. My Mom found a great recipe and I will not buy it pre-packaged anymore. We're vegetarians and I soak TVP in hot bean juice first, for my pound of "meat". Now that I know it has the right taste, I'm going to make a bunch of the spice mix after I get my chili in bulk. So, per 1lb of meat:

2 tsp chili powder
1 tsp paprika
1 1/2 tsp cumin
2 tsp parsley flakes (I never have this on hand so used home made dried cilantro instead)
1 tsp onion powder (I also never have this on hand, so skipped it)
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp Mexican oregano (i tried regular oregano and didn't like it, so I'll try the Mexican next time)

I always fry onion and soaked TVP in a good bit of oil first, then I add the spices and more oil if the TVP has soaked it all up. After the spices and oil have coated the TVP well, then I add a little more bean juice to get the consistency I like.

Here is a picture of 2 of today's butterflies and also a picture of Jeffrey's fly swatter holder. We hate killing the flies, but it's almost impossible to work with these "friendly" flies swarming all over us like an old horror movie. They are swarming in response to the enormous amount of forest tent caterpillars on the trees. Also I've included a photo of Lucille at her post with Dorothy visiting.