Mineral Rich Vinegar

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.

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.

Gratitude and humility

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.