Monthly Archives: July 2006

Buffy and Spike

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Well, I have to say, things are a bit overwhelming right now. It’s hot, and every project that we start seems to never get finished. Toby and I are both burning out quickly and we are trying to think of ways to obtain our goals without losing our sanity. I definitely think we need help on the building/house projects front! We are even talking about offering land in exchange for building help. We’ll see. That’s another project that keeps dragging along. We can’t seem to make any headway on how to split this land up. I think we need to write out our projects and then set time aside for each one instead of trying to tackle them all at once.

We do have chickens now (ack! Another project). Luckily, they are really cute! We ended up with 2 Buff Orpingtons (“Buffy” and “Spike”), 2 Auracaunas (not yet named), 2 Black Australorps (not named), 1 Speckled Sussux (not named), and 1 Delaware (“Ruby”, Kaia named her after a little girl she just net). They are 5 weeks old today. Suki is way to excited about them and is now on lead whenever she is outside. I am working on training her to ignore them. I reward her with treats whenever she sits and just looks at them. But, if she lunges, or starts to get excited around them she gets nuthin!


We were choosing out the chickens.


As you can see, they have already figured out how to get out of the coop!

So I graduated Friday night and wouldn’t you know it… someone “spiked” the brownies!! OH MY GOD! I have never felt like that before and I don’t think I really want to experience that again! I was in the middle of talking with one of the other faculty at the school when I realized that I couldn’t remember what I had just said and I wasn’t sure where I was going with my current sentence. A good friend of mine, who had also eaten the brownies, couldn’t stop talking about how she needed demulcents for her dry mouth and how she saw little people starting back at her from the pictures on the wall!! It was a wild night!
Here is a poem I wrote for school:

Lessons of the Green
Two roads diverged from a wood of green
One lined with plant friends who are ever so keen
To teach me their lessons of love, faith and healing
That I found myself falling onto the ground kneeling
Before them, yearning for their lessons.

I look through the green to the second road bare
Violently lacking of joy, life and care
Lined with concrete, harsh hatred and war
I wonder of our chances to stop this before
It takes over my road of green blessings.

So I sit on my road and ponder the fate
Between the power of love and the power of hate
It seems that the way to keep hatred at bay
Is to love all round us, to show us the way
To remind us we all have our worth.

So merge these two roads of green and concrete we must
To show others around us in the plants we should trust
Only love, faith and healing can open the doors
To lead us back to the peace in our hearts, at our core.
Back to tribe and our great Mother Earth.

On the Herb clinic front, we (myself and two other clinical herbalists and “wise women”) have found a two-room space that we will share with a massage therapist. We get the space 4 days a week and it is in Downtown Asheville. It’s a great spot! We are calling ourselves “Return to Wholeness Herbal Clinic & Apothecary”

Bock Bock

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Well, I think I am almost, almost done with the chicken coop! I’ve painted it, added laying boxes, put in a screened floor, screened in some of the windows, made a ramp, fenced in an area for the chicks, and cut myself numerous times! But, we are scheduled to go pick up the little ladies this sunday! I can’t wait! Monday they were 4 weeks old! Hopefully they will eat all the poison ivy first so that we can go and sit in the field with them without having to watch ourselves so much! Here is a link to the site our friends (who are currently raising the chicks) have.

On the herb front, I graduate this Thusday from my clinical program! Wahooooo!! My friend Nikki and I are thinking about getting an office in downtown Asheville to see clients in and make medicine a few days a week. I want it to be completely stress free, so we are only going to rent the place if everything feels good. The office is a two room place in a cool, renovated old building on a street in the middle of all the stores and restaurants. So, it would be a nice break from primative country life. (To bad it doesn’t have a shower:-) We would share it with a massage therapist who only uses the office a few days a week. It would also be a great place for me to study when I start up with Aviva’s course again. We’ll see…

Toby got back from NY this weekend. He was up at a cordwood conference and had a blast! We are hoping to have our house plans done and in the code process by the end of August. Building with cordwood takes a while because the wood has to dry for months before you can put it into the walls, but it is much cheaper than conventional methods, and it looks pretty cool. These pictures are from Toby’s adventure.


Here’s what a cordwood panel looks like. Toby and his dad worked on this section.


This is Toby’s dad.


Here is a finished house wall.


This is an inside corner with glass bottles in the wall


Here’s another outside shot.
Cool, eh?

I’ve been trying to use the solar shower up on the land, instead of going in to shower where Toby works. The shower gets hot enough, but I feel a litle, um, naked standing out there in the great wide open. Toby is going to build me a little enclosure to hang the solar shower in so I don’t feel so exposed. But, it was kind of nice sitting a few inches away from the Maple tree while I was trying to wash my hair 🙂

Our goals for August: Finish the house siding, design the house, and begin to tackle the “code” process.

Today’s recipe: Sumac “Lemonade”. Use fresh or dried ripe sumac berries (not poison sumac) and simmer them in water for ~20 minutes. Strain out the berries and add honey to taste. Pour over ice and enjoy! It’s that easy!!

Just a quick note

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Hey there! Lots has been going on, as usual, but I haven’t had any length of time to sit infront of the computer and write about it….

I did go to a mead making class this past week and it was great!!! Right now I have a gallon of Lemon Balm, Peppermint, Yarrow, Sumac Mead brewing. I plan on hitting the Brew supply store tomorrow to get more supplies!! It is really fun. Any Mead makers out there???

Also, check this out! It’s my new logo and beginning of my new website for my consulation business. Cool eh??? I designed it after my tattoo

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June asked about herbal books for house pets. Juliette Levy also has one on this subject. Haven’t read it, but I would bet it is good. I also have The Encyclopedia of Natural Pet Care and Dr. Pitcairn’s New Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs and Cats, both of which I like. There are a ton of other pet herbals out there, too.

Stella, I’m not sure what will happen after graduation. I definitely still want to do consultations. I may start by doing some at the school (you can rent out a room for $10). The only thing with that is that the rooms are made to be massage rooms, so they are dark, with no windows. So, I have been talking with a few herbie friends of mine about opening up an herbal clinic downtown… maybe having a free day once a month, and offering walk-in clinic time too. Once our main house is done, I could use some of the little house space as an office. But, I think people would be more inclined to make an appt. if they didn’t have to drive out of town.

Oh, and here is the finished outhouse. I forgot to post this picture earlier… it has been done for ~1 1/2 weeks and is going great so far. The main drawback is that I always have to get up and go pee first thing in the morning and I am too lazy to climb off of the bed, climb down the squeaky ladder, out the front door and across the yard to the outhouse. I end up trying to hold it and then when Kaia wakes up and has to go it ends up being a race to get us there! I think we are going to have to rig up an indoor system for this winter, definitely!



There is the bucket in use under the seat, and an empty bucket next to that one. Toby built a lid to fit over all of it and that lifts to take the buckets out. There is also a bucket with sawdust for covering up. We screened in the top and bottom to allow for airflow and cut down on any smells. But, so far, there have been no smells with the bucket/sawdust system! Cool, eh?
Kaia helped with the painting… can you tell?

A break in the chaos!

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Hey there! I’m getting a little break away from home life while I am on a little outing to the laundry mat (Yahoo!) Actually, it’s pretty nice… air-conditioning, nice benches to sit on… unfortunately, there is no internet connection, so I will have to go to the bakery/book shop after this to post this entry. I may even have to order something yummy!

Ok, well here are some pictures of the house siding. I think it looks awesome!!! I can’t wait until it is all up. We will stain it with a red stain and do the trim in a pale yellow. We are picking up pallets wherever we see them on the side of the road and cutting them up for the siding. There is a place near where Toby works that seems to throw away 10-20 pallets a week, so they are keeping us well supplied!!

The chicks should be coming home in a few weeks. They are only 6 days old in these pictures, but they are growing so fast!! We are going to try to haul the coop up to the land tomorrow and get everything set up. I can’t wait. (We found a great organic feed supplier that has a local seller!) I really hope that Suki gets along well with them! We have been trying to train her with the turtles that she keeps finding. Initially, she would find them and then start chewing on their shells. We got her to stop chewing on them by offering her treats when she would just stand by them without chewing. Now, she just brings us turtles and drops them at our feet:-)


We have been getting some black raspberries from a couple of plants I found. The black berries are all over the place and should be ready in the next month or so. I have also found St. Johns Wort (Hypericum punctatum) and Pleurisy Root (Asclepias tuberosa (which I love!)

I’ve been seeing clients in the clinic for a few weeks now and I really like it. It feels so natural. I will have my first child client next week. And I graduate on July 27th! I am so glad it is almost over (and I can’t believe it is almost over!) I have to teach a class to the level one students as part of a requirement for graduation. Since I am already teaching them so much science, I thought I would make it fun and do a class on “communicating with plants”. Lots of meditating, drawing and discussing. It should be fun.

Oh, and Full Circle Herbs officially sold this weekend! I met with one of the new owners (who was very sweet) and handed off all of my inventory and stuff. I have to say, I am glad to let it go. When I see other people in the area making a go of their home businesses, I feel a little twinge of jealousy, but really, I am glad that I have one less thing on my plate to try to juggle!