Filling Jars for the apothecary. This is my good friend and business partner, Nikki, with the help for the herb fairy who was flying around our clinic.

Toby built us our fantastic apothecary shelves!

Here I am stocking the shelves… What a wonderful moment!!

And, the final shelves! We actually need more room, and may have to build more shelves… I mean, we have to have room for the vanilla beans and the cocoa nibs, right?

Oh, so at least two of the chickens are laying now… Rudy, and we think Faye, but Spike was in there squawking this morning and may be getting ready to pop one out!

Happy New Year to all of you!!!

Look!! We have eggs! Well, 3 so far, over the last 7 days. There was a white feather in the nest, so I think it may be Faye (the speckled sussex) who is laying. Hopefully the others will follow shortly. Here is a picture of the egg. It is the little one on the right. The one on the left is a store bought one. So, they are much smaller right now.

Here’s the egg being cooked. It’s the one in the middle. See how much darker the yolk is…

Here are a couple of pictures from holiday festivities. Kaia in her new fashion hat, and dressed as a butterfly, singing to her new slinky.

Well I talked with an expert chicken lady and she said that because we live on the north side of a mountain and the chickens are only getting ~10 hours of light a day, that we may not get eggs for another month…  She said that their ‘sisters’ are probably laying already because they live in town, probably get slightly longer days, and may even get a little laying stimulation from street lights.   Hmmm… I hadn’t thought about the difference in daylight times here vs where they came from.

The bees are still alive… Toby went into the hive the other day when it got in the 70′s here and they were hoppin’  Maybe we will actually get honey next year…

I’m having a hard time being at the house right now and sometimes I feel like just selling everything and moving to a house in the city.  I’m feeling pretty clastrophobic.  We’ve been in there for 6 months and I know we have another year+, but I have to admit to myself that I am not a pioneering, camping kinda girl.  I hoped I would be when we moved in there.  But, you know, for most of my life I’ve never lived in anything smaller than 1800 square feet!  (And the houses I grew up in were 3000 and 6000 square feet!!)  So, no matter how much stuff we had we always had room.  Now, we have dwindled our comfort living stuff down to very little, but we still have piles of stuff everywhere.  I feel like pushing the walls down just to get some breathing air.  I think Toby was hoping that this new office space would help ease some of these feelings, but now, all I really want to do is stay at the office.  There is hot water and a shower… lights that I can flick on with a switch instead of having to go out and refill them with gas and then listen to their constant, loud humm while they are on.  Everything I try to do doesn’t take twenty extra steps to complete it.  Kaia keeps asking to just sleep at the office so that we don’t have to go home.  I completely realize that compared to most of the world, I still lead a pretty cush life.  But, it is also a very foreign lifestyle to me and I am trying to figure out how to get myself through the next year without turning into a complete nut case.

So, I am looking for some hand made products to stock the small retail space we will have at Viriditas.  We hope to have soaps, herbal crafts and body care, slings, handmade journals, pottery, candles, art work, something like “blabla dolls” and handmade fairy wings would be nice too.  If any of you are doing stuff like this, email me!!  I would love to carry things from people I know… blog-wise…

I’ve always seen myself as a fairly laid back person, and I dream of the day when I can relax in my tub, or on my couch and just read a book or knit or something. But, I think I have to admit to myself that I am one of those people who never stops going! I love having projects to do! On that note, here’s a run down of our latest happenings.

Well, there’s Viriditas (www.viriditashealing.com). We have rented a house for our space and spent this past weekend painting the whole thing (white walls just won’t do:-)). We hope to open the doors in 2007 for herbal consultations, formulations, and education. We will also have some people renting space (probably a yoga instructor, energy healer, and massage therapists). Today, I put in an order for almost 100 pounds of herbs!! Yahoo!!

The house plans are going well. We marked the site this weekend and should be pouring the foundation in a few weeks. Toby officially quits his job as of Jan 1st and will work full time on the house. Toby is really excited about getting started!
The chickens aren’t laying yet! They are almost 25 weeks old, and I’ve told them that it will be into the fryer with them if they don’t start earning their keep. Not really, but I’m really excited about fresh eggs.

I know that doesn’t sound like a lot of stuff, but I feel like the energizer bunny right now!!