Lots of Life in One Place

Chips, Crackers, Crepes

2012-02-18T13:17:00.000-08:00

Buckwheat chips/crackers/crepes.

Buying overpackaged foods is something that entices experiments in making them on your own - in your own kitchen, with the ingredients that you can control, and the process totally at your finger tips. Chips and crackers are possibly the worst when it comes to costs, packaging and the ingredients. Finding crackers without sugar (or other sweeteners) is really hard.
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Herbs for Dental Health!

2012-02-14T08:16:00.000-08:00

A great discovery of my year - this DVD by wilderness man Doug Simmons, talking about his experience in using herbs for healing cavities, maintaining dental health (needless to point out - he does this without dentists and their invasive mechanical methods) - and about so much more related to our use of herbs and plants and body wisdom to stay fit.

Handfull of herbs - for teeth, gums, cavity restoration

Doug Simons is telling his story.

Organic Seeds, Heirloom Seeds

2012-01-17T04:58:00.000-08:00

There is a time in winter, when it seems like outdoors has very little to offer. Time slows down, daylight a little more present. Cold, wind, frozen ground, everyone seemingly buying time until spring breath reaches us. It is also time for garden dreams, with magazines, books, seed catalogs piling up by the fire place. This year's find is Baker's Creek Heirloom Seeds, www.rareseeds.com - a business of amazing integrity that offers vegetables of unique quality, biodiversity, and beauty.

Winter Life with Beeswax Candle Light

2012-01-12T09:22:00.000-08:00

Christmastide is over and the spring dreams rush in the void left by the end of the holiday season. The lull of the season, January and February are quite uneventful in our cold climate. The daily rhythm is composed of making fire, feeding goats, harvesting eggs, collecting firewood, and filling bird feeders. The ground is hard frozen, and sheep's bellies are swelling with lambs. In late evenings and early mornings and at meal times we use tall beeswax candles, to transition us to and from the darkness of the night and to offer its warm delicate glow.

Toddler at work, washing dishes in early evening.

All Souls Day, Firewood and Tea

2011-10-15T19:37:00.000-07:00

With Halloween and All Souls Day upon us, we think about dear ones that are no longer with us, about their experiences in life, about their understanding of nature, seasons, life forces, and life realities. Though Grandmother was an educated woman who insisted on wearing matching gloves and shoes, she knew more about workings of nature that most of people interested in sustainable living in my generation. She knew how to brine seemingly random mushrooms that Grandfather brought from the forest each fall. She knew how to put up enough food to last us all winter - in an urban apartment size of a postage stamp. She mended clothes, washed them by hand, sewn her own dresses and managed to serve a hot meal made from scratch three times per day while working full time away from home.
Though not enticing at the time of my youth, her skills took hold in me. I thank her for it every day. And I wonder what stories she would tell me now, if she could.
Grandfather was an avid mushroomer, of a quiet kind, did not teach me much with words, but just simply took me in the forest, with a large duffel bag - a strange choice for mushroom hunting, but still! We walked, looked for mushrooms, and then he would make a little fire and cook a small meal of fried bread and meat - using wood sticks, not some camping gear, to do so.
Each Fall, I take out photo albums and we look at their faces, and arrange new photographs that accumulated in our house over the course of the year - Fall is our time for thinking about ancestors.

Can it be that going into cold, dark and long winter our ancestors knew that some people would not make it? That rigors of harvesting firewood, keeping the home warm, and the pantry full, and animals nourished may be too much for some? That long dark nights are best spent in a house that is full of warmth of family, and not alone (or with a TV) as it is for so many of our elders today? Fall is time to wonder what it was like to face the winter in the days past, and time to think how we can face it in our times - how we keep our pantry full, our house warm, or community thriving and helpful.
Besides all other land and garden chores of the season, Fall is when we (my three-year old son and I) spend an hour or so each day harvesting our own firewood. With all the trees around, there is plenty of brush and old wood that can be collected without the use of chainsaw or wood splitters or other such extreme apparatuses. A small Japanese prunning saw is all that is needed, and it can be used by a three-year old child with some instruction and initial supervision (in fact he started using it around 18 months of age and figured it out very fast). With focus on collecting dead wood, we can break it into kindling by hand, working fast and efficient - and carry 1-2 loads home each time. The kindling pile is growing, with each day - just as trees loose their leaves and garden dresses in brown colors of mulch instead of greenery of plants.
Thus we are building not only our winter fire wood supply, but forging the connection between trees, our masonry oven, our own work, the seasons, the All Souls Day, the old photos in the album, the home and the hearth. At the last day of October we will take a bundle of old peach tree twigs to the fire circle near our small cemetery, located here on the land - and we will add wood that our friends will collect in their yards and parks, and farms and urban lots - and light a fire to shine on our faces and tell stories about departed ones - and make some tea over the heat of the fire, and think about winter, and darkness and what dead twig firewood tells us about life.

Sustainble Living in October - Replenishing

2011-10-15T14:00:00.000-07:00

The air ringing with blue and golden light, first frost on its way - and harvest is all around us. And what we take from the land, must be returned and replenished - so as squashes, tomatoes, tomatillos, beets and potatoes are leaving the ground, compost and mulch are coming it. In gardening we depend on animals to bring fertility to the soil - and it is impossible to maintain fertile soils sustainably otherwise. Manure and feathers bring nitrogen and phosphorus and other micro-elements needed in soil. Organic matter comes from animal bedding. What comes out after cleaning the shed goes in the garden - mostly in the fall and winter months, to have a good long time to decompose and integrate in the soil in time for the growing season. For those who live without animals, it is worth figuring out how to bring in an occasional load of goat (or lama/sheep/rabbit) manure - other manures may be very weedy (i.e. horse manure) or event contain salt (i.e. commercial cow manure is quite toxic to soil). Attracting song birds to your garden is another approach, though of course their contribution to manuring your garden will be rather small.
Worms are good creatures to have, of course, and to encourage worms we occasionally put our kitchen waste under the mulch in the garden, cover it with large metal lid (such as trash can lid) and place a heavy rock on top - to discourage skunks and racoons from exploring. Earth worms get a very good in-situ meal that way, and all nutrients are delivered directly to the garden, none are lost to leaching like they are in a typical compost pile.

Storing garden bounty is another seasonal challenge - and we just happily converted a vacant corner in the well house to root cellar. Not an ideal setting, but good enough with stable temperatures (currently in the low 50-s) and moderate humidity (70%) it is adequate for potatoes, squash, pumpkins, onions and garlic. A bucket of water is readily available so it can poured on the cement floor to increase humidity to a more desirable 80+%
Now is also busy time for knitting and sewing - all the warm things needed for winter, especially for children! Woolens, a European invention, lovely, very pricey, oh-so-wonderful warm and thin - this year are to be home-made from scratch using merino wool fabric - a project a bit too ambitious but hopefully doable. Sweaters for early morning forays to the goats, to the wetlands, to the clothes line... Mittens, felted for added warmth - and knitted thick wool pants to keep the little one shielded from the wind and nippy temperatures. A wealth of free patterns for knitters from Drops Design; including wonderfully warm and practical children patterns.

Parenting and Sustainable Living

2011-09-24T14:39:00.000-07:00

Gardening, canning, harvesting.... knitting, sewing, building.... working, taking care of the land, animals, plants... keeping creativity flowing, making things and meeting needs. From such creativity arises the basic knowledge on how to live life independently from manufactured objects. Life happily disconnected from much shopping, from looking outside of one's microcosm for fixes such as new toys, new things. Creativity and work keep us able to meet our needs with what is available, what is around us, making our own world "enough".

Sustainable Living in August - Natural Cleaners at Home

2011-08-23T15:26:00.000-07:00

A realization long overdue - lots of things bought in the store out of habit and tradition can be made at home, from scratch - from pancakes, to cosmetics and cleaning products. The benefits? Better quality, fresher product, control over the ingredients and, to some degree, over their manufacturing process, reduced costs, reduced ecological footprint (less transportation, less packaging, less dependency on someone else for basics) - and the intangible joys of participation in your own life, more fully. The last one, of course is something very subjective, after all we all derive joys from very different things, and give Meaning on very different activities as well.
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Sustainable Living in July - Laundry Goes Outdoors

2011-07-14T15:22:00.000-07:00

A recycled double sink, an old outdoor-appropriate shelf, a nice location in shade of an olive tree, a drain to the garden - and voila, a garden laundromat is borne! The decision to wash by hand at least some portion of our clothes came when our three year old son developed a fondness for mud and water play. There is no way his clothes could go inside of the house, much less directly into the washing machine! At the same time it became abundantly clear that most of this clothes (and some of ours) don't really need any kind of vigorous, best-performed-by-highly-specialized-and-very-professional washing machine wash. A good number of things needs simple refreshing or spot cleaning.

Eating from the Garden

2011-07-10T22:38:00.000-07:00

Part of growing a good garden, naturally, is harvest - at time of strangest things, or things that sound good in theory but may be a bit hard to fit in an established routine of cooking and consuming familiar dishes. Cooking from a garden is a subject of its own, with lamb's quarters, garlic scapes, beet greens, cilantro flowers, Jerusalem artichoke roots, zucchini flowers, purslane, dandelion leaves, parsnip roots, day lily flowers and much more to please the palate and to challenge our under-developed capacity to eat new foods. Of course new foods don't stay new for long and soon become as familiar as a store-bought carrot.
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Sustainable Living in June - Drying Herbs for Tea

2011-06-06T17:01:00.000-07:00

Quite a famous plant, the Stinging Nettle, known for its wonderful medicinal properties, for its strong sting, and invasive behavior in gardens. It is indeed quite a plant to have around! It thrives in dry hot weather just as much as it does in cool shady setting, and its sting seems to be heightened as temperatures climb.

Sustainable Living in May - Planting, Planting, Planting

2011-05-05T10:25:00.000-07:00


A small addition to the table - young beets planted in February in a protected spot

So much in permaculture is about growing food, working with the land, that it is frequently confused with some type of gardening technique. Naturally, permaculture has lots to offer in that aspect, in addition to such subjects like green building, water harvesting, community building, restoration of diminished landscapes and more. In the month of May, so lovely with its display of life and blossom, our lives revolve around gardening no matter where we live - either though active work with the land, or through passive enjoyment of greenery for those not engaged in planting and yard work.

Greens on the Windowsill

2011-03-02T12:51:00.000-08:00

A lovely gardening season warm-up for all level gardeners - sprouting green onions on your windowsill. You have noticed perhaps that your onions have sensed spring long before our own senses deliver the merry news to us - the life force is rising, the pull of the sun is felt across the living world and the awakening is starting.

Day One: Fun and games finding pretty water jars + adding onions

Candlemas, Imbolc - Life Force is Rising! (Making Beeswax Candles)

2011-02-02T19:55:00.000-08:00

Hard to believe on this -18F (-27C) night that transition from winter to spring has begun. We have to trust our ancestors, who saw the signs much more clearly than we can, with our senses protected and dulled by running hot water, central heating systems, space-age fabrics and such. Because our ancestors saw that on this day, February 2nd, a struggle between winter and spring, old and new, death and life took a definite turn towards rebirth and restoration of life force.

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Creative Children's Clothing - 2

2011-01-28T15:43:00.000-08:00

Another life for an old wool sweater - children's pants + vest. Try buying pure wool pants for your child and you find the price tag at around $45-50. Wool is not only warm but it is water resistant - a good option for snow play, or active outdoor time in cold weather.
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Greenhouse in a Swimming Pool - Winter Harvest

2011-01-27T20:23:00.000-08:00

Salad greens, chives and braising greens thrive in this winter growing space, a greenhouse converted from an old swimming pool. Outside temperatures dipped down as low as 3F (-17C); yet this space remains productive without any additional heat. It is heated by the sun during the day, and stays relatively warm (around 32F (0C)) on coldest of nights. Plants are happy and harvest is in full swing.
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Eggs, Greens, Milk - Winter Harvest

2011-01-18T12:47:00.000-08:00

Every day, just at dusk, we milk one of our two dairy goats that is still able to produce milk in this cold weather. She does not give much, just about 1/2 gallon (2 liters) per day - enough for us.

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Dried Things - Winter Harvest

2011-01-18T12:31:00.000-08:00

What else winter brings to a table? Dried foods of all kinds, full of concentrated flavor and nourishment, just as they must be to fill the need for good food when it is cold and dark outside.

Creative Children's Clothing

2011-01-11T11:52:00.000-08:00

Ever thought about how many items of clothing each young child has, between all the gifts and purchases from inspired loving parents? Lots and lots. Multiply that by number of children nationwide, and an image of a very, very large mountain of clothing may emerge in your mind's eye. All of that stuff needs shipping (think carbon footprint), storage (think pesticide applications), packaging (all new materials) and handling (at minimum wage).
Solutions? Buy used, make your own, pass it on. Pictured above is a second-hand woman's lamb's wool sweater, size Small on a 2.5 year old child. Wind protection - check. Water-resistant - check. Butt covered from cold air - check. Space to grow - check. Natural material - check. Can be put over and under other things - check. It even has a hood!

Eating In Season - Green Living in January

2011-01-08T19:43:00.000-08:00

What is January all about if we want to live in tune with nature? What lessons would you learn in this season when earth is resting and life is nearly invisible? Staying warm, staying connected with our tribe/ our family, staying well fed, acknowledging dark and light - no matter what era it is, these elements define our lives in the cold and dark months of winter time. And how do we create green living in January?
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Herbal Teas - Winter Harvest

2011-01-05T20:00:00.000-08:00

Hot tea, anybody? Not the dry mix that sat in some warehouse and was shipped around the world, packaged and stored, and handled. (Photo left to right: homegrown mint, lemon balm, horsetail, stinging nettle)

Herbs are easy to grow even in smallest of places, and with minimal gardening experience. Planting a batch of herbs makes a good first step in learning to grown your own food. It does not take too many plants to produce enough fresh leaves for herbal teas - even a balcony-sized garden can be quite productive; and those of us with more sizable gardens can produce enough to make fresh aromatic teas that last until the next season.

Disconnecting - Whole Life Redesign (Part Two)

2011-01-02T19:37:00.000-08:00

A boy of seven years age came by to visit. We made a fire in my Russian stove and sat there watching it burn. "Burning trees is polluting to the environment", he said. "But I think it is still better than the other, regular, way to heat your house". Why young children are burdened with this information at an age when they don't have the power to do anything, to make decisions or implement changes in their lives, I don't know. Perhaps it makes parents feel good to have these politically correct conversations with their children.

Is there a better way to introduce sustainability/ ecology/ environmentalism into your life; such as through real practice?

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Disconnecting - Whole Life Redesign

2010-12-29T11:54:00.000-08:00

This post opens a series about finding simple and effective ways to disconnect from habits that keep us on the path of continuing destruction of the environment. There is more to this undertaking than actually has to do with connecting to the natural world and restoring skills known to our predecessors. The decision to disconnect leads us on the path of whole life redesign - a protracted careful look at how we can do things differently to create a more sustainable and fulfilling life.

Goat Cheese - Winter Harvest!

2010-12-23T19:50:00.000-08:00

Mozarella (pictured above) is a good summer cheese - easy to make, fast and highly enjoyable with all the stretchy cheese strings and braided designs. It tastes great with tomatoes, and basil - and I have already written on this blog about my profound realization that many of our beloved classic dishes are actually made not just with components that go well together, but these ingredients actually occur in nature at the same time!

Mozarella-basil-tomato salad is one of those dishes that speaks about a particular moment in the season, ripe tomatoes, juicy basil leaves, and of course lots and lots of fresh sweet milk.

In the winter, a much more appropriate cheese is a hard wheel of Gouda, Monterrey Jack, or Cheddar - cheeses that take months to ripen.

Sauer Kraut Recipe

2010-12-18T14:05:00.000-08:00

Classic recipe for small batch fermenting -

Christmas as Archetype

2010-12-15T21:51:00.000-08:00

Here I wish to share something that has inspired me for several years; in fact it made me want to understand and experience this holiday as such - holy, special day of the year. Enjoy.
Christmas as archetype by Matthew Fox

Calm and Quiet Work – Living Green in December

2010-12-15T21:16:00.000-08:00

How do we meet the cold and the dark of the year in a permaculture way; what goes on with ourselves and our gardens, houses, kitchens and landscapes?

This dark time of year commands slowing down, nesting and conserving energy. The soils are resting under the thick blanket of mulch, leaves and twigs that were brought to the garden earlier. Orchards silently receive weak sunshine and strong night frosts. There are hardly any eggs in the chicken house, and goats are giving less milk.
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Small Batch Sauerkraut

2010-12-02T12:57:00.000-08:00

I am clear now that "small batch" is the way to go when making fermented foods. Typically kraut is made in large crocks (10 gallons or so), I guess because during harvest all the cabbage comes in at once; or maybe this tradition was invented by people with large families - either way it seems to be done in large amounts.
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Pumpkin Fairy

2010-09-30T19:55:00.001-07:00

Dinner tonight was served by the light of my very own home-made candle - bees' wax from the hives next door; diligently dipped two candles at the time with my toddler drifting in and out of the kitchen.
Herbal tea from alfalfa blossoms, nettle leaf and strawberry clover, served cold. Bread fresh from the oven, dough mixed by my 2 year old son.
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Herbal Goat Medicine Against Parasites

2010-05-28T13:00:00.000-07:00

I am giving this post a long boring name to get it show up on search engines. My own searches brought next to nothing on the subject, unless you count vague statements that such and such herb aids in parasite control without any details on quantities etc. I got my favorite book by Juliette of the Herbs "The Complete Herbal for Farm and Stable", read the chapter on using garlic and went to work. Juliette recommends one full plant of garlic, leaves and all, chopped up and mixed with oat bran, pumpkin seed and molasses. I happen to have all the ingredients in either my garden or my pantry, so after a short time dedicated to chopping and mixing I got the aromatic goo delivered to my two princesses, Katia and Rosa.
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Bee Cemetery

2010-05-17T12:26:00.000-07:00

"Lovely honey combs" - say my friends coming to visit the house, once they see the line up on the kitchen table. The smell is honey-heavenly, but these are not honey combs but empty combs from my dead topbar hives. (you would not place combs full of honey on your table... some is bound to leak!) -
I assume some contained honey that bees ate trying to survive hungry winter; some were housing for their larvae, some cells are full of pollen. There is a thick layer of dead bees in the bottom of the hives, strange sight. They are dead and and the spring is quiet, one can just pull the hive apart and there is nobody there. Tiny native bees are working the flowers, and orchards are full of fruit, so life goes on - but the our little honey collectors are not involved in the spring chores. I hear, the US lost nearly 80% of honey bees in 2009.

I collected the combs to melt them for wax, to make candles. Broken combs are placed in cookie sheets in the sun, covered with a single layer of glass - slowly melting, with impurities that color the combs in darker hues rising and clean yellow wax on the lower end - or so it will be once they warm up. So far the melting process is very slow and I am not observing any separation of impurities. As always, the ways of living on the land and off the land sound oh-so-simple, anyone-can-do-this-without-trouble, and in reality there more questions than answers; and for sure I have not made a single candle yet! Not to mention honey harvest by the gallon.
Sometimes I wonder if people "out there" think that they can always change gears, plant a garden, grow their own food, meet their own needs - easy - while in reality the learning curve is steep and long and I definitely suggest if you are thinking about starting, start now - see you along the way!

Natural Dyes, Easter 2010

2010-05-02T14:42:00.001-07:00

Dyed with geranium petals, black-berry juice, marigold petal tea, onion skins tea - these eggs are edible and lovely. Shine is created by rubbing with a little olive oil.

Sorrel Soup, Fresh

2010-04-27T20:37:00.000-07:00

Finally there are some things to eat besides eggs (not that I have only been eating eggs of course!) - these are fresh asparagus, French sorrel, dandelions, stinging nettle and armfuls of chives, garlic chives and onion greens. My ancestors made some great dishes out of above-mentioned ingredients which I am now replicating with gratitude and delight.
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Broom Making!

2010-01-06T13:37:00.000-08:00

I made a broom! Short introduction - my son likes to copy everything I do and sweeping is one of the favorite things for many toddlers. Most commercial brooms are too big, and some are even dangerous (http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml07/07309.html - look here for children gardening toys recall due to lead content violations). In addition I am really sick to keep shopping every time I identify a need or desire! I found some "eco-friendly" brooms - those made with appealing materials by some appealing people, with high price tags and which need to be shipped (read - a large UPS truck in our driveway, driving who knows how many extra miles to get here). Or else I can drive to town and spend 3-4 hrs combing large box-stores in search of lead-free (ha!) child-friendly brooms.
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Cooking in the Masonry Woodburning Stove

2009-12-31T20:02:00.000-08:00

This is not a very practical post - not too many houses feature masonry (or also known as Russian) stoves. The masonry stove is a large, very heavy stove made out of stone, which absorbs and holds (and radiates) heat very efficiently. They were first designed and finessed in Europe after it was deforested twice over for firewood and wood in general... You can a Russian Masonry stove from our house in the picture above, right.
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Freezing Food... in Glass!

2009-11-18T08:19:00.000-08:00

This post was long on my mind - after spending days searching the internet for ways to store food in any other containers besides plastic. It seems nuts to go through the effort of growing or buying locally grown fabulous produce and then package it in such unhealthy containers as plastic - be it bags or trays or jugs. I never though about it before, but now it dawned on me that time is ripe for change. An abundant harvest of apples in our little home orchard prompted a long-wished-for purchase of an apple press. That is one fine pricey toy!

Several years ago we determined that we prefer to convert money into things one can eat or ones that produce energy, value-added product, or decrease our dependence on industrial agriculture. Thus the press arrived and is sitting on our porch in its elegant glory. The apples were harvested, books consulted, friends invited for a juicing party when the question of how to contain all that liquid gold has arrived. We don't heat process our juice - i.e. it is "raw" with all its vitamins and enzymes and nutrients. Thus have to freeze it to keep it. My research and conversations with those in the know yielded one answer - square plastic bottles are the best. They stack well, they don't burst, they are reusable. Plastic???? We have been systematically converting everything in our house and lives into "non-plastic" - I still remember the high school organic chemistry lessons about plastic, the wonderful material with its fantastic qualities - one of them was that it did not react with its contents. That was not that long ago, when even my chemistry teacher believed in this fairy tale! Plastics leach all sorts of substances and even BPA-free containers (widely available now) are still made out of all sorts of unsavory substances! Why would I mix my organic, homegrown, raw apple juice with plastic?
Online searches for freezing food in glass yielded nothing, except for some fleeting mention that Ball/Kerr canning jars are actually made for both extreme hot and extreme cold temperatures and may be suitable for freezing liquids in. The official Ball website was mum on the subject - but the seed was planted. I consulted other sources, my common sense and arrived to the following template for using glass for freezing:
1. Quarts (1/4 gallon) wide mouth jars are the best - the volume is not too large so it allows for fast freezing and more even expansion which could possibly damage the container. Wide mouth leaves more space for expansion. I left 2" head space in my jars.
2. The item to be frozen must be chilled to the lowest temperature possible before going into the freezer. I put my juice in large (1/2 gallon) glass jugs and placed them in ice water bath for several hours. Then I poured cold juice into quarts which allowed me to keep the jars dry, and placed them into the freezer, one layer high. I added layers later once I was sure all jars froze without any problems - i.e. they were frozen in batches.
3. I did not use lid bands on my jars, lids only - to allow for more space is somehow juice expanded more than the head space I left. You can put bands on the jars later, once they are frozen.
4. I stacked jars in the original cardboard boxes, which keeps them together and avoids any banging or movement when I rummage in the freezer.

I am proud to report 100% success rate with this method and am glad to be free of plastic in my freezer. Now I need to figure out how to store grated zucchini & apple and all other smaller staff that fits nicely in zipper bags but really does not belong there!

Gardening and New Motherhood

2009-07-20T13:34:00.000-07:00

well... it is not as easy as I pictured before I had a baby. He is one year old now, and things are still not getting done in the garden, orchard, or various other places including kitchen, house, office etc. This morning I had him in my sling and got some lavender harvested; yesterday I turned him loose in the garden while I pulled the garlic (onions are still there, ready to be harvested). Peaches he grabs from the tree on his own! I love that he knows to look in trees for food - such a natural hunter-gatherer - especially after a month and a half of eating mulberries from a kiddy-size tree. He walks now.
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Potato Baskets

2009-04-26T20:27:00.000-07:00

My garden is too small for planting any reasonable quantity of potatoes, plus they need a lot of cultivation, plus they exhaust the soil - so when I saw a solution for growing a few spuds sustainably, I knew it! Mary Zemach, a local permaculture legend, figured this out.

1. Take old leaves (ideally you stashed several bag-fulls last fall when your neighbors where removing these from their lawns and gardens with enthusiastic fervor. Maybe you came by and kindly offered your place as a depository for the neatly bagged leaves. Neighbors were thrilled and delivered their bags). If you don't have leaves, look around for some other soft biomass that may be laying around - the whole idea is to convert something unwanted into something wanted - pure alchemy in fact! Straw and chunky compost will work.

2.Take a black plastic trash bag and cut off the bottom. Open it in out in a circle and lay on the ground. No soil preparation underneath is needed. In fact you can place your future potato tower on top of weeds, but ideally you cover weeds with a thick layer of newspaper to smother them. Fill the bottom portion of the bag with about 6" leaves and some soil and/or compost; fold the rest of the bag for now. The exact combination of filler mixture will vary from climate to climate, so treat this as a learning experiment - you will need to adjust amount of soil, water and work on all other variables. One thing stays constant - potatoes produce new tubers above mother tuber, that is why they take so much work if you grow them in the ground. By using tower you are going up and work with the plant!

3. Place your potato(s) in the mix - I think I will go with three per basket. Cover them and wait for emerging leaves. Keep adding leaves and soil/compost mix as your plants grow, raising the soil level and lifting the plastic bag. Your wire basket will keep the whole tower stable. When the season is over, pull up or open your tower and gently tip it. The leaves (now magically partially converted to potatoes) will spill into your garden, potatoes will come out easy and without digging and you can re-use the whole contraption next spring! You can also plant other things in the tower once it reached its height. Below is a photo of Mary's tower mid-season - it is at its full height and is also providing home for an eggplant.

Other gardening ideas from Mary: grow your horse radish in plastic perforated tubes, stashed in a wire tower filled with straw - the filler keeps the root zone cool and moist, and tubes make it easy to pull otherwise very deep root of this plant.
END OF SEASON WISDOM: (new insight) - potatoes like cool soils - ours did not produce well in the baskets because the soil was too warm - next time I will either use TIRES, or create a way to keep the soil bag shaded and cool

2009-02-02T08:28:00.000-08:00

"First Lawn? First Lunch!" is the motto on the home page of the EatTheView.org website of the White House organic garden campaign. "Eat the View!" is a campaign urging the Obama's to replant a large organic Victory Garden on the First Lawn with the produce going to the White House kitchen and to local food pantries.

This campaign was envisioned by Maine-based Kitchen Gardens International, a network of thousands of gardeners inspired to teach more people to grow their own food. The founder of this organization, Roger Doiron, posted the idea of “Eat the View!” on the OnDayOne.org contest where citizens are helping set a positive global agenda for president-elect Obama. It is a sign of an amazing positive change, that this proposal has won the Grand Prize of the popular vote on OnDayOne.org

The season is in its limbo days - the light is returning, yet the life juices of the land are far from awakening. Our spirits are, however, entering the state of the delicious dreaming of spring land-based activities - so consider including some Lawn-to-Lunch theme in your by-the-fireplace cozy dreams. As we say in permaculture, start small and let your success propel you forward; but dream big - and have Slow Food start its non-speedy advance from your outdoors into your indoors!
Bon appetite!

From the Dark Place

2009-01-02T21:30:00.000-08:00

In the past few weeks we lost electricity several times. This loss of light has instantly put many things in perspective – first, how disturbing a sudden quiet and calm can be; how pleasant it becomes after a few candles are found and lit; and how much one’s focus, naturally, drifts towards wanting some time with friends… Once all electrically powered devices cease to function, the need for a warm circle of friends, for a good conversation, or for a great story grows stronger.

Spending a few hours in the dark also reminded me of the true meaning of this season – the time of short days, very dark and long nights, with cold quieting everything to suspension… time of multiple holidays, family visits, gift exchange, lots of food and partying.

I made this story for myself this winter:

Imagine, a long time ago people first noticed the changing of the seasons – this was probably because they were migrating from much warmer tropical climates, where there is not much difference between day and night length – and seasonal changes must have been a very frightening thing to experience. After a while, the elders began watching with much more attention, growing more and more concerned with the continuing shortening of the day light – until there came a point when no more change was noticeable and the time became still, quiet, cold, dark. Then, after a few days, they saw a few minutes of extra light push the darkness away. What a relief that was for everyone, to realize that the sun and life were returning, minute by minute extending the day, and reviving the life force in trees, soil, animals. The gain in daylight at first is so minute, that it takes several days to notice a change – and as a result, people felt the need to call in the sun, the life force, the creator during these dark ambiguous days – with food, libations, fires, lights, gatherings, and warm times with family. How else would you explain that in many parts of Europe the year’s turn/ the light’s return is celebrated for two weeks?; That traditionally there should be enough food stored in the house from the last year’s harvest to feed anybody and everybody for two weeks without much additional shopping or procurement?; That all of us, despite different life styles, health concerns, or creeds tend to put on a few extra pounds during these two weeks – as if there is some biological explanation for this, and not just unending feasting causing a heightened appetite.

While our bodies expand a little, our minds go inward, sleepy and dreamy. Wishes and resolutions are made out of this state of mind; and visions come while watching the fire, or swirling hot apple cider. Dreams of new gardens, home improvements, relationship healing, for making new friends, for restoring the health of oneself and the environment around us, for the continuous privilege of living a simple, happy, uncomplicated life in a warm house filled with a child’s laughter, with a beloved, with a few fruit trees to bear fruit and keep bees happy, with a peaceful sky, clean air and water, homegrown food, normal global climate, a multitude of birds and creatures sharing the bounty, in an unpolluted healthy world with its life force returning – out of a dark place.

A Meal Made of Thanks

2008-11-17T19:19:00.000-08:00

The holiday season is sneaking up on me this year. I am a new mother learning to fill my new shoes and navigate this breathtaking reality. Meanwhile my perceptions of the time and the calendar are oddly skewed. The cycles of my new life are defined by sunset and sunrise and followed by the vague but joyful awareness of days, weeks and, months. When it comes to dressing the little one for a walk, the concept of seasons is still with me, but not much beyond that; the calendar is just an assembly of little blue squares on the wall that my son loves to stare at.

The life cycles of surrounding land is what keeps me informed in my mommy-haze. The harvest is over; frosts wiped out our garden; the great horned owl has begun its by-nightly winter visits to the chicken house; fall garlic planting took place; the freezer is full of home-grown food. The year is winding down.

One of my greatest joys comes from being able to cook more often with the foods we grow. When I first started gardening 11 years ago, I was satisfied to see a few handfuls of tomatoes and an occasional zucchini. After a few seasons I realized we were still only making very few meals with our own vegetables; I changed my planning approach, and my gardening style, as I became more confident and experienced. Now I plant with my eye on the meals we will prepare long after the frosts of early winter, and then gather our extended family together to pay tribute to the richness of our land.

These meals I call the Meals Made of Thanks; they fill my heart with pride and gratitude for the gifts that come from the good land. Thanks be to the savory pumpkin soup made with spinach, onions, goat milk and a touch of garlic; to the goat cheese with dill weed and sundried tomatoes; to the fresh salads out of the greenhouse; to the sautéed winter greens served with Jerusalem artichoke roots; to the omelets slathered in tomato salsa; to the fresh goat milk and dried apples in my morning cereal; to zucchini pancakes with prickly pear syrup; to the pumpkin bread; to the goat stew.

As we will sit down for a meal to celebrate this holiday season, each bite will remind us of the wonderful gifts the earth has given us. Remember, how our Mama Turkey sat on someone else’s clutch and hatched eleven baby guineas? Or how the goat kids used to make a terrible ruckus every evening at milking time, protesting the loss of what was theirs? Or how a horned owl moved in and took away two guineas? And our pumpkin patch that actually formed a patch for a change, instead of a few skimpy plants – and how good the scalloped pumpkins taste with a rack of ribs? To all of them - plants and animals – we thank you at every meal, because every meal means more to all of us now, after we raised our food and shared our stories.

Pumpkin Abundance

2008-10-26T21:35:00.000-07:00

ok, I am getting better and better at this stuff. Despite being VERY pregnant for the entire planting and weeding seasons, somehow I managed the garden this year, with a very serious help from friends (thank you all so much!) - so as the frost is here, I am trying to find time away from my 4-months old Blessing-of-a-new-baby to can, freeze, bake.
Read more »

Circle of Life

2008-07-28T21:58:00.000-07:00

Arrived this summer: my son Alexander Rumi - on solstice; two baby goats Annika and Santiago - one month afterwards; and a hive of bees - yesterday.

Annual, Perennial

2008-07-15T15:06:00.000-07:00

Tall and fragrant, white flowers are reaching out to the sky filled with promise of more rain. Shaped like little umbrellas, these are carrot flowers, beautiful and stately enough to celebrate a wedding or birth. A cloud of tiny beneficial wasps is working the blossoms, pollinating them into future carrot seeds. Come September, the flowers will turn dark brown, with thousands of seeds spilling over onto the ground, ready for next year’s sunlight and moisture, repeating the cycle of procreation.

prayer flags (my cloth line)

2008-07-10T17:46:00.000-07:00

Much Mulch

2008-06-08T20:50:00.000-07:00

Even though it has been a cool and relatively moist spring in our otherwise arid territory, mulching is an activity high on my list. My big vegetable garden is one solid blanket of mulch. I learned to coerce the neighbors into bringing all of their fall leaves to my garden beds, plus all that free shredded wood available at our local recycling station is spread over all the pathways, and straw mulch is covering whatever is left exposed to the sun. There are remarcably few weeds, and soil is cool and moist - a definate plus for a climate where overexposure to heat and dry air is a concern.
Another garden (my husband points out - "this is not a garden, this is our front yard") - that place where we grow onions, kitchen herbs, cooking greens and lots of asparagus - yes in our front yard, so we can see the progress every day! - had not been mulched much. The problem has been in keeping our chickens under control. Despite a very high fence, they still manage to get in and dig up my garden beds like they are in heaven, searching for left-over seeds in straw, and bugs that love to hide under any mulch layer. So we have not been mulching much, until now. A racoon got into the coop and reduced our chicken population to a desperate number of three (3!) birds. That is unheard of at our farm, but for a number of reasons we will be not getting more hens, therefore at least the mulching can begin.

Heavy use of mulch was popularized by Ruth Stout, a slightly eccentric Quaker gardener who wrote the “Ruth Stout No Work Garden Book”. Ruth described her method as the “no dig, no work” method. It was to simply place 18” of moldy hay or straw on top of the garden soil and then plant into that mulch. So much the better if you tucked your kitchen scrapes underneath the straw cover. Her articles written in the fifties and sixties for the Rodale magazine “Organic Gardening” were very popular and her techniques widely practiced. Permaculture took her methodology one step further and added a layer of weed-suppressing material – cardboard, newspaper or old fabric; this was laid directly on the ground and covered up with a mix of manure and organic mulches. This mix works well in majority of climates, with the possible exception of the high desert where biomass tends to fossilize at high temperatures and low humidity unless shaded or otherwise protected. Sheet mulching suppresses a majority of weeds, keeps the soils cool and moist, and creates a favorable growing environment for plants and soil biota. It also offers an elegant way of recycling carbon back into the soil, by using paper, cardboard, straw, brush or wood chips as part of your mulching techniques.

Read some of Ruth’s answers about mulching here:
http://www.organicgardening.com/feature/0,7518,s1-5-19-189,00.html and
www.homestead.org/Gardening/Ruth%20Stout%20-%20The%20No-Dig%20Duchess.htm

2008-05-08T11:29:00.000-07:00

When I first started gardening in the "permaculture way" I was pleased to have something from the garden for a few weeks in August - this is just how it works with gardens - lots of waiting, caring and then some fast fading results. Then I began to realize, that a few weeks in August are a far way away from actually sustaining oneself with food - somehow that took a few years to comprehend! (I guess starting to garden was a big change to beging with, so the analytical thinking did not kick in until some experience was accumulated!) -

Things have changed since then. With a small greenhouse and a few hens I got into making an occasional all-home-grown meal (aka omelette) year around.

Then our young fruit trees kicked in and now we have fresh fruit to eat from June (peaches, mulberries, currants, gooseberries) to October (Asian Pears, apples, late-season peaches). These are also canned and dried, to last even longer.

Then the goats came (against my husbands wishes, he is still at best lukewarm towards them.... for an unknown reason. I am the one taking care of them!). The goats really moved us to the next level. Milk for 10 months out of the year, plus meat that lasts for as long. Now we actually eat most of our meals made with home grown ingredients: cheeses, yogurts, canned chutneys or salsas, eggs, greens, dried or canned fruit. I learned to use the vegetable garden with more efficiency so we harvest from it more frequently.

Next year our asparagus will come into production. There are 80 roots I planted before I ran out of energy and enthusiasm. And this year we added 50 raspberries. So we will see how all this turns out!

Making Changes - by Scott Pittman

2008-04-10T07:42:00.001-07:00

With the spectre of peak oil, global climate change, loss of biodiversity, political tensions surrounding access to natural resources, world-wide epidemics and poverty we as a nation and a species are forced to look at our behavior and how it impacts our world.

Many of the solutions being presented by our political leaders are compounding the problems. The whole rush to the biofuels "solution" proposed by both Al Gore and George H. Bush are good political examples of how to turn a problem into a disaster. The proposed use of our most fertile cropland to provide fuel from the most energy-intensive plants (corn, sorghum, soy, and sugar cane) creates a food deficit, further destroys remnant native ecosystems, while at the same time accelerates the use of fossil fuels to create biofuels. Fertilizer, after all, is a byproduct of gas and oil. Behind these quasi-solutions to peak oil lies the greed for more profits at the expense of the natural world. In virtually every instance the only road to sustainability is the one paved with the bricks of individual life style change. We are past the age of the technological fix and are faced with the need of social fixes.

Most of the changes that we must make are not really that onerous but are simply inconvenient. Taking the time to discover what food is grown locally and purchasing that rather than our current eating habits that represent 1500 miles of transportation per bite; we could be supporting the local farmers in our community by eating close to home and at the same time decrease fuel use and CO2 emissions.

Learning to garden, to grow at least few things to reduce the need to rip out some distant mountain side or a valley for a monoculture of a commercial cropland has some significant beneficial effect, locally and globally. Developing our homes toward energy-efficiency and resource conservation by harvesting rainwater, planting edible plants, and using the sun for space and water heating are simple to accomplish and in the current political climate may provide you with tax benefits. Carpooling, using a bus, switching to a bike all allow us to meet our neighbors, get in shape and reduces not only our financial overhead, but our ecological footprint.
(Photo by Jennifer Esperanza)

The latest technological fix is of course going to be trialed in Africa - if no one noticed the starvation of millions during the "green revolution", perhaps they won't notice the introduction of genetically modified seed (gmo) being promoted by Bill Gates and the Rockefeller Brothers. They have managed to get Kofi Annan to shill for them and Monsanto is footing the bill for Kenyan agricultural extention agents. All of this in the name of saving Africans from starvation. Heard of any of this in anyones presidential platform?

How does one fight such financial behemoths as Bill Gates, Rockefeller Brothers, Monsanto, and Archer Daniels Midland, especially if you are African? This is the slimey underbelly of a capitalist system gone mad and it is totally hidden from view. It makes it very difficult to get too concerned with whether Obama is more elitist than Hillary or McCaine.

Who will save the traditional seeds of Africa, where is Nikolai Vavilov when we need him? How did it happen that African scientists and farmers have no say in their future? The same way it happened that we elected George Bush for two terms. It seems to me that we have perhaps passed many of the dreaded tipping points and it is time to plant a garden (open pollinated seeds of course), and get to know our neighbors. It is after all spring!

The City Chicken, The Country Chicken

2008-02-25T17:42:00.000-08:00

If the idea of getting a few chickens has been on your mind, now is a good time for making preparations and starting on your back yard poultry project. Keeping chickens is fun and easy, and it is not against the law in many urban areas. To see a partial list of US cities and towns and their respective laws on keeping farm animals within the city limits, visit http://home.centurytel.net/thecitychicken/chickenlaws.html

In many ways, keeping chickens in a city is much easier than at a farm. There are far less predators around, which is the main consideration when erecting shelter and fencing for your little flock. In the country side, housing ends up being a major fortress, to keep coyotes, raccoons, weasels, skunks and neighbors’ dogs out. Locking up our chicken flock at night, my husband says: “Everyone loves chicken meat” – but in the urban situation all that is needed for protection is typically just a little house for hens to sleep and lay eggs in; most of my urban friends don’t need to lock up their flock at night. At our farm a door to the coop left unlocked spells major problems the following morning.

Two to three hens are all you need for a family of three people. Depending on their breed you will be getting anywhere from four to six eggs per week from each chicken, for about 8-10 months per year. There is no need to have a rooster, although some chicken-rights activists point out that a rooster makes for happier hens, and I find it hard to argue about. Whether or not your neighbors will embrace crowing at the onset of each new fabulous day is something to explore before it occurs! The sound is really rather wonderful and great to wake up to, but this is a clear case of the beauty that is in the eye of the beholder.

There are many breeds available through the local feed stores, but I would caution you about purchasing any of the so-called single purpose breeds, such as chickens that are bred to be layers only. If you go this route you will end up with an over-bred hen, who is cranking out low-quality eggs and the expense of her own health! Most of these breeds are developed for commercial use and as such they will also require a very hefty diet of grain, be less resistant to diseases and natural challenges such as cold, wind or predators. They also don’t make good moms and will never set their own eggs; and they are not very smart – which will mean more work for you, ultimately. Stick to the good old heirloom breeds, also called as dual-purpose or multi-purpose breeds. While you may not be interested in your heirloom hens as meat birds, dual-purpose breeds will grow at a slower and more sustainable rate, eat less, be more alert and exhibit by far a more pleasant attitude and stronger health. They will lay fewer eggs, but they taste better. Some good breeds to consider are Americana (Araukana), Dominique, Wyandotte and all kinds of bantam chickens. Banties are small (size of a parrot), do not require a lot of space and they lay slightly smaller eggs with bright yolks; they are a great choice for small backyards. Breeds to stay away from are the Rhode Island Red and White. These are too over-bred for their own good. A good local source of baby chicks is Privett Hatchery from Portales, NM; another one is McMurry Hatchery. They sell many heirloom and traditional breeds which can be purchased by mail order. The only drawback is that you have to buy a certain number of chicks, and therefore it is best done by teaming up with several friends, or else requesting that your local feed store consider buying the breed you are interested in.

Besides laying eggs, chickens can help you around the yard with gardening tasks – from turning the compost pile, to conditioning the soil in your vegetable garden, or under the fruit trees, to fertilizing. To allow them to do the best job, you will have to learn to manage their natural inclinations and work with them, rather then against them. All chickens scratch, which is a great thing for a veggie bed in the winter, but is very annoying to find a hole on a garden path mulched with wood chips. Aerated and turned compost pile is also a wonderful thing to have, but if it spills over the compost enclosure it is much less fun to contend with. So the trick is to learn to work with your flock. You can make small chicken runs to confine your hens to garden beds only; moving them every few days to cultivate new territories. You can place the chicken house in such a way as to allow for rotation from place to place – perhaps some days are spent working on the compost pile, and other days spent eating fallen fruit from under the trees or cultivating a portion of the garden for next season’s planting. The options are many.
A great learning tool for aspiring and experienced chicken owners is TheCityChicken.com website – it features poultry house designs, answers questions, provides directions for incorporating hens into your garden routine, and much more. On my website, http://www.permaculture.org/nm/index.php/site/Heirloom-Poultry-Pasture/ I also have a list of plants that can be added to anyone’s gardens to offer chickens more options for feeding themselves in your yard.

Spring Dreams

2008-02-19T20:12:00.000-08:00

Despite continuing cold weather, there is something in the air spelling spring and another magical bountiful season. Of course between now and then in NM there is allergy season, an event that dampens my enthusiasm and seriously diminishes my ability to do much work outdoors. However, this time around I will (I hope!) be better prepared to handle the pollen storm by eating local honey to build my tolerance; by taking some local herbal tinctures to assist my body in keeping up with the assault; and by sticking with simple foods to nurture me. So with this recognition of the junipers’ right to procreate out of the way, what else is there in the air, spelling spring?

The buds on the trees are still small, but more prominent. The great horned owl that lives in the 60-year old spruce near our house has won the war with a pair of crows over their nest and is now busily nesting, announcing her presence with hooting day and night. The days are clearly longer. Our backyard chickens started laying their delectable eggs, with bright orange yolks, so flavorful that no store-bought egg can compete with it in taste or looks. In fact the ones in the store always look bleached to me, stripped of their taste, color and essence, and they are! I feel lucky that we only have to buy eggs two-three times per year, when our hens are resting. The difference is so striking!

Guineas are chasing each other around, feathers flying - amorous Spring frenzy. They also talk to each other all night long when roosting on the old apricot tree. I wonder how their vocal cords can sustain this endless conversation? What is it about? Does it go like this: "Is all well?" - "All is well!" - "Are you sure?" - "I am sure!" repeated until sunrise?

My lettuce patch in the cold frame is in the full swing, having waited out the coldest and darkest days of the year. Longer days are encouraging for lettuce and other cold-weather plants (chard, kale, cabbage, spinach). Mine are growing happily. Now is a good time to plant some seeds in a cold frame if you have not done so earlier in the season – they will reward you with a crop in about 40 days. Onion sets can go in the ground any day now (if the soil is workable, which it is).

Home, Plants, Sun, Water

2008-01-25T18:43:00.000-08:00

I am constantly amazed how warm and cozy our solar house is, my appreciation for its pleasant ambiance is growing with each passing year. My husband, Scott Pittman, designed it back in the day when I still could barely understand how solar homes worked. For a long while I took it for granted. But as I see other homes, answer questions of our visitors, I am beginning to understand that we are truly living in a miraculous house. It "knows" how to absorb a very significant amount of sun's energy in the bitter cold winters, cooling off only slightly into the next morning, needing very little additional heat from our masonry stove to keep it at 68 Degrees even through the single digits frosts.

Our house "knows" how to provide enough light for the 600 sf interior greenhouse on the hottest summer day without overheating the house in the slightest. It is a large house, kind of embarrassingly large, nearly 2400 sf - but a large portion of it is interior is a waste water treatment greenhouse, which you can see on the photos above. All of our water (I mean ALL of it) goes into this very simple pumice bed which has some light soil on top. There, without any contraptions or moving parts, or energy inputs, it is being processed by bacteria into nutrients for our plants. The plants, besides being very lovely, also cleanse our home from any pollutants, they transpire the moisture from the pumice bed underneath and make our home a little more humid in the typically low (10-20%) humidity of our arid environment. Some are food producing too, although one cannot count on it for survival!

Our interior walls are made with bales of straw, creating a very quiet home, which is also very good at keeping constant interior temperatures. In the summer it is cool (the window and roof overhangs are designed to keep the sun out of the house); in the winter all of our absorptive surfaces (walls and floors) are awash in the sunshine, warming up with each hour. For heat we use a Russian (masonry) oven, which is very heavy with its incredibly thick masonry walls. It takes a while to get it hot, but once it is hot, it takes a while for it to cool off - making it into a very efficient device! An added benefit - it can be fueled with twigs, which allows us to be self-sufficient using just dead wood from our small woodlot. The more I think about all of this, the more I realize - this is a truly fabulous house we built!

Giving Gifts, Giving Thanks

2007-11-30T12:45:00.000-08:00

As the holiday season sets in, we turn our eyes toward home, hearth, family, and our inner circle. Akin to other seasonal migrants, we travel to other places or open our own dwelling for gatherings, story telling, gift giving, and meal sharing – revisiting the familiar rituals that revive the meaning of this time of the year.

This celebratory season starts with the remembrance of our dead, of the ancestors; then the celebration of life, of harvest, abundance and giving follows, concluded by the observation of rebirth. We decorate our homes with symbols of light and life, symbols that often have been transplanted here by other cultures. Their representation is very powerful, yet it begs the question – what is the meaning of this season for this land, for this people? What is the ritual, the story, the tradition that is uniquely distinct and meaningful for this land?

What gifts and food stuffs really come from this land and our hearts, not from the store – that is the question that come to my mind every holiday season. With each year I take it a little bit further – with a commitment now to only give hand-made gifts. Our extended family is diverse and varied in its preferences when it comes to gift giving, so it is hard to figure out at times how to meet expectations and stay on track, but I am getting better at it!

My gift making began in early July, with garlic harvest and braiding, and packing peach chutney and preserves in pretty little jars

This went on for the few months of summer, as my collection of edibles grew. Then I got some yarn from a local spinner, and started knitting – toys & clothing for the kids, scarves for adults,a couple of dearly loved but no longer needed books will be re-gifted, a fabulous baby blanket made of recycled fabrics and antique lace for the youngest in the family.

My husband Scott has made a few simple but very cute bird feeders out of scrap wood; he is also finishing up a hand bound version of his travel journal for this year. Some of our artisan home-made goat cheeses will be given away, or served. We are not against shopping, so a few exotic items will make it in the mix, but for sure there will be no buying “something” just to mark off a name on the list of family and friends.

Somehow making gifts and decorating our home with our own hands allows us to instill a little of our love and gratefulness to friends and family; it is a very special gift to very special people.

(almost) Thanksgiving Meal

2007-11-11T14:47:00.000-08:00

Last week I took our young male goats to a butcher – an end of a short and eventful era on our farm. The butcher, Mark Padilla of Arroyo Seco, is exactly the kind of a person one would want to help with the task. Mark moves slowly, he just exudes kindness and comfort, and he handled our two upset wethers with calm respect. I did not stay at Mark’s to watch. He called five days later and told me to come and pick up the meat. Two boxes full of home raised meat, with cuts wrapped in nice white paper was what remained of Jesús and Moses.

All summer long, as the kids were frolicking in the pasture, I have been receiving various suggestions regarding how to raise meat goats best. Most of the advice had nothing to do with their nutrition, but rather focused on how to protect myself emotionally from the fact they were born to finish their lives under a butcher’s knife; that their destination was to nurture us with food.

Don’t name them, don’t pet them, don’t touch them, don’t get attached to them – was a litany of clever tricks. For a fleeting moment, I considered these ideas. One day, the kids got wet in a torrential summer downpour. As I was sitting in the barn, trying to comfort frightened and whimpering kids, both on my lap, I realized that I would be robbing myself and them from a relationship in which they are recognized by names, hugged, petted, loved and treated as if they really exist! This was a turning point. I did not make house pets out of them, nor have I subjected them to an unnamed, somewhat mechanical upkeep without acknowledgement. In fact it felt important that I may experience emotional discomfort when the time comes to let go. That sadness became part of the payment for their sweet, goofy lives that they gifted to us.

As I looked at the boxes filled with their meat, I wondered – which one is Jesús, which one is Moses? Why would it matter I don’t know, except to acknowledge one more time – thank you, Moses – you were a simple-minded sweet creature, you only cared about food and a good belly rub, and you were very handsome with your pink nose and salt-and-pepper ears. Thank you, Jesús – you were very smart, and inventive of new tricks, you loved freedom, and you too were very handsome!

I live in a small co-housing community in Jacona, NM. Next week, my husband Scott and I and our neighbors will all sit down for a goat stew meal to celebrate this summer, with its stories of the wonderful things animal and plant worlds offered to us. Remember, how our Mama Turkey sat on someone else’s clutch and hatched eleven baby guineas? Or how we got oyster mushrooms growing on an old cottonwood stump? Or how the goat kids used to make a terrible ruckus every evening at milking time, protesting the loss of what was theirs? Or how a horned owl moved in and tried to take away a chicken? Or how our tomato plants just kept producing until we did not know what to do with the fruit? To all of them, plants and animals, our thanks go with every meal, because every meal means more to all of us now, after we told our summer stories and said good bye to two goofy, beautiful and joyful goat kids.

Fall Bees

2007-10-14T07:13:00.000-07:00

In the fall, the job of beekeeper is done. The faint yellowing of leaves was the first harbinger of fall, and now the blackening of basil and tomato leaves no longer allows our denial that another lush and bountiful summer is drawing to a close. We see the nectar hunting bees with less and less choice in their final search for winter stores.

But for those wanting to get into beekeeping, fall is the beginning of the cycle - time to get ready, design and figure out your future beeyard, perhaps even start planting pollination hedges or gardens to offer some easy snack for your furry tribe; get into the network of local beekeepers and line up your hive purchase. In our cold climate, the bees need to arrive around mid to late March, when the season begins with pollen harvest from elm, Russian Olive and Tamarisk.

I don't keep bees, although knowing how beneficial they are to ecosystems in general it’s difficult to imagine a permaculture food forest, backyard or homestead without them. But I am lucky, I have friends that keep bees on each side of our farm, and they trade honey with me for goat's milk and cheese. I like this trade agreement, and keep planting pollinators' hedges and gardens where "their" bees come to harvest nectar. I like the fact that my role is more focused on building an ecosystem for bees and other pollinators, rather then on keeping them. You can see some of my plant lists for bees and beneficial insects & pollinators here: http://www.permaculture.org/nm/index.php/site/At-Home/.

I also organize beekeeping classes and workshops http://www.permaculture.org/nm/index.php/site/Beekeeping/ which attract people nationwide, since our focus is on less known and more ecologically sound Topbar Beekeeping.

No matter where you are, beekeeping is a great way to get in touch with the spirit of place, akin to farming and vineyard keeping, but significantly less labor intensive.

Local Foods from my permaculture garden

2007-09-16T14:51:00.000-07:00

fRuiTs oF my LaBor ~ HomE laNd seCurITy

peach compote, chipotle salsa, pickled onion

pickled beets, native plum jam, sweet bread-and-butter pickle

not photographed: sauerkraut, refrigerator dill pickle, eggplant caviar, plum sauce, cherry jam, peach chutney, pears in calvados, sundried tomatoes, grape jelly, apple sauce etc.