Warming up a little

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.

Supposed to be working!

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.

An ode to soap

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.

I.T. Withdrawals

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.


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

Cooking fall harvest on the wood stove

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!

Recovered Personhood

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.

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.