Well, after the long wait, we now have a floor…
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Here it is…
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Monthly Archives: March 2007
Pink Eggs
So a month or so back we had a pink egg in our bunch (did I mention this?). I thought that maybe one of the chickens may have just started laying a little late. But, since then, nothing. So, I figured it was just an egg without as much pigment. Well, yesterday we got another pink egg! Today, I went looking in the boxes and we has 2 blue and 3 dark brown. I left them all in there to see if we could actually have a 6 egg day (never had all the chickens lay in one day yet). Lo and behold, Faye jumps up in there and lays another pink egg! So, it looks like I have found the culprit. Faye is a pink egg layer and has only layed 3 eggs so far! I wonder if she just got a really late start and is finally getting going because of the warm weather. What ever it is, I really like the color of the eggs!!
Spring has sprung!
I can’t believe the weather around here right now! It has been in the 70′s for the past week and we have kept our windows open at night! NICE!
With the warm, clear weather, we were able to move ~20 tons of gravel (by hand, with a shovel and wheel barrel!) into the house. It is put down over the leveled ground. On top of the gravel we now have insulation, water proofing, wire mesh, and radiant floor tubing. (A friend of mine makes orgonite, so I may throw some of that in there too, before we pour the concrete. I don’t know much about it, but it sounds cool and it can’t hurt to incorporate some crystals into the house, right?) Tomorrow we hope to have the inspections (for the foundation and for the mechanics of the radiant flooring), then the slab will be poured on Friday!!! Wahoo!!! We are having the color mixed directly into the concrete and then we will put a sealant on top so it will by kinda shiny. I can’t wait!!
Oh, I just posted the first Viriditas newsletter. It has a nice Nettles recipe if you are interested.
This weekend we are hosting a Maya Abdominal Massage Self-Care class based on the teachings of Rosita Arvigo (and Don Elijio Panti, a mayan healer). I can’t wait! This is something I have been wanting to do for a while! In May, I head up to NH for a professional training class. Then I can offer this to my clients. The basis for this massage is that it helps to strengthen muscles and ligaments in the abdomen so that the organs ‘fit’ in the right places. For example, if your uterus is ‘retroverted’ (tilted backwards) this may cause bowel pressure, chronic constipation, painful cramping during menses, old blood to be held in the uterus, infertility… the list goes on. So, this massage helps to get things back in place and relieve symptoms. As I see it, it also increases effective blood and energy flow so that the herbs I give to my clients can get to where they need to go. (No point in giving my clients uterine herbs if the blood flow to the uterus is lacking or bowel herbs if there is decreased energy flow there, right).
Here’s a bunch of pictures–
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Hitting the big time :-)
Check this out! One of my ‘fun’ products made it into the regional paper! This is something I put together for fun and everyone loved it. So, I bottled it up for sale. Someone from the paper came by last week to see if we had any cool products to feature in the paper and I gave her a bottle of this to try. She loved it and it got front page of the ‘Living’ section! Cool, eh? I sound like a ditz in my quote, but I pretty much said all of it 
The only thing was that it says our store is located in Biltmore Village, but we aren’t. Hopefully that won’t deter too many people from finding us!
Large Marge
I think there were 20 times this past week where I said to myself, “oh, I should blog about this…” and now I can’t remember what those things are!
Oohhh, I remember one! Ok, so two nights ago, we were all in bed sleeping when Toby bounces out of bed yelling (well, he may not have been yelling, but to a completely asleep me, it seemed like yelling) “Someone is coming up our driveway!” Now this may not seem like a big deal to you, but we are the last house at the end of the last road on the end of a larger road, and no one comes up our drive at night unless they are looking for trouble. So, I look out the window and see this mass of lights coming up the road to us and spot lights moving all around! At this point, I had really only been out of dream state for ~10 seconds and my first thought is “OH MY GOD! IT’S A UFO!” I felt like I was still dreaming, but all I could think of was protecting my family! I followed Toby downstairs and grabbed my phone and dialed 911. I held my finger on the ‘send’ button while Toby went outside to investigate the lights, which were by now directly in front of our house. My heart was pounding and I was trying to think of how we were going to survive (remember, all of this happened within ~40 seconds, so I’m still a little loopy from being asleep). Within a minute, Toby was back in the house giving me the low down. Turns out it was the power company (with their huge truck with lots of lights, a crane, and spot lights on top. (It sure looked like a UFO!) They said the power was out on our street and how could we not have noticed?? (It was only 11:30, even though we thought it was 4 in the morning.) Toby didn’t mention to him that we only have a couple of lights and only just got electricity this past month. Toby headed back out with a flash light to try to help them locate the tree that brought the power lines down while I headed back upstairs to try to calm down. Still, I waited at the window until Toby came back inside, cause all I could think about was that part in PeeWee’s Big Adventure when he gets out of the semi-trailer and the truck driver says “tell ‘em Large Marge sent ya’” and it turns out she has been dead for two years (you remember that?). Whew, what a night!
Oh, so it turns out we may have some new neighbors… in ol’ Junk Man’s place. The land has been for sale for a while, but we met two ladies who have it under contract and hope to close on it next week! They are very sweet, friendly and love canning! I’m excited!!
Today, T, K, and I headed up to the land above us that is under contract (that I think is going to be mass developed) and dug up some lilac and elder plants. I wish we could dig them all up and move them to our land so they won’t be plowed under! At least we will save some of them!
Faye is doing great, by the way. Pretty much back to normal.
Toby shaved off his bushy beard and cut his hair!! I love it!! (I’m not a facial hair kinda girl) I think I might wax my legs in response
Not so helpful dog
3/8–Two nights ago, we came home to find Faye (our speckled sussex chicken) injured in front of the house. She had gotten out of the coop and Suki (our dog who has learned not to kill chickens, retrieved her for us and brought her to the house. Unfortunately, in the process, Faye was severely injured. Her back was moist from where Suki had held her. But, when I lifted the feathers, her skin came right off. There was a 6×4 inch strip between her wings that could lift off of her back. I pretty much thought she would die that night. But, I made a tea with everything I could think of (chamomile, yarrow, echinacea, goldenseal…) to help cleanse and heal the wound. We bathed her injury and kept her in the house the first night. I sent a frantic email to Rosemoon, who called me up and gave me some hope (THANKS!) Faye was eating and had a good amount of energy for such a nasty wound. She made it through the first night, so we put her out in the pen for the day, blocked off from the other chickens, so they wouldn’t peck at her. But when we came home, she had weaseled her way into the main area and was sleeping in one of the nesting boxes. She made it through another night. I’ve been adding garlic to their feed and all the chickens have been drinking an herbal tea for healing (since everyone eats the same thing). She slept most of today in her coop, but came out in the evening to peck a little. You can tell movement causes her a lot of pain, but she is trying so hard. The next few days will tell us a lot. If she doesn’t seem to be improving, we will have to put her down. Suki will no longer be allowed off lead when the chickens are out (we thought it would be ok as we had thought we’d solved the problem of them getting out of the coop…) I want to get a dog that protects livestock, not one that likes to carry them around!
3/9-Faye has been out of the coop a lot more today. Sweetie (the smartest chicken alive!), has been staying beside Faye, kicking up bugs for her, and being a bit of a chicken nurse!
3/10–Faye hopped out of the coop early this morning and has been holding her own, pecking for food most of the day! I really can’t believe the is alive. That was a really nasty wound!!
Here’s Kaia standing where her bedroom will be.
here is the North wall, which will have soil half way up. The white reflection is from the surface bond material that was put on the concrete blocks.
This is most of the house footprint. The water proof membrane and insulation has been put on the external north wall, and most of the french drain is in. The plumbers will be out on Wed to start laying the lines, before we pour the foundation.
Herbs and Gas
No, this post does not have to do with herbs giving you gas …
We had another mini snow on our land. It seems that weather always hits our mountain harder than anywhere else around here. When it is windy, the wind blows harder on us. When it rains, we get an inch more. When it snows, it will have melted everywhere else and we will still have 2 inches on our ground. So, this whole winter, Toby and I have talked about getting a 4-wheel drive to be able to manage the road up to the house. Now, it’s almost spring and we may have made it through the worst of it. Still those subarus are tempting. I really didn’t want to get a gas car, ’cause it feels like going backwards. We run both of our vehicles off of bio-diesel, and straight vegetable oil when we can. Then I thought, well, if we got a subaru, we could run it off of ethanol. Still, if we look at the even bigger picture, even if ethanol is ‘better for the environment’ pollution-wise, it is still made from big business, mono-crop, pesticide infused corn. And even if Biodiesel is less polluting, it is still made from big business GMO, mono-crop, pesticide infused Soy. So, what is the best way to travel distances (if walking and biking aren’t an option)? I may look into a solar car in the future. At least for around town.
I’ve got two classes to teach this week. One is at the herb school. We have a 6 week “intro to herbs” class going right now and I am teaching the section on Women’s health. I’m also teaching a class for the Asheville Garden Club! I’m really excited about this one. They want me to come and talk for 30-45 minutes about my favorite herbs to grow in the garden and make teas with!! I’ve really gotten to enjoy teaching, but this will be a fun and welcome break for teaching A&P, and advanced herbalism. I want to do this again in the summer when we can actually get out in the garden and see, smell, and taste the herbs.
The weather around here, other than the snow today, has been amazingly warm. In the 50′s and 60′s and sunny! So, I took a walk around the land to see what has started peeking out of the ground, and guess what… I found the nettles that I planted last year. I didn’t think it made it through the summer. Not only did it make it, but it repopulated a large area of my stream bank!! I’m so excited! I can’t wait until it gets big enough to make some nettle casserole! I also found my comfrey, valerian, and some mushrooms peeking out. Yay for spring! It’s almost here!!
Hey, have any of you gotten into that new NBC show ‘HEROES’? Toby downloaded the first few episodes and now we are hooked!!