This is what Kaia and I harvested for dinner last night.
I also had some fresh nettles and green onions. So we fried up the nettles, morrels and onions in some butter and mead for dinner, and washed it down with a plantain/spearmint tea. It was delicious!
I love walking around the land and picking food from here or there! It’s such a great feeling to wild harvest foods and then such a healthy feeling to eat them!!
After a 4 foot nose dive onto a concrete statue, our fridge still works!!! So, I spent the greater part of yesterday evening cleaning out the egg, dirt and ash (it also fell into our wood stove ash bucket) and now everything is back in. Then Toby and I had ‘a good ol’fashioned outhouse raising’, cleaned it up and staked it into the ground! No more tipping over! We also strapped the fridge to the porch and staked the chicken coop down too…. just in case!
Once the Dandelions started flowering all around, I planned on making a dandelion mead. But, when I went out the other day to gather dandelion flowers, I also found a field full of violets, a wild patch of lemon balm, a huge amount of nettles, and a few other yumminesses. Above is a picture of the bottom of the 5 gallon that I brew my mead in (minus the nettles). Isn’t it pretty? I can’t wait to sample it!
I taught two herb classes this past week for the local school and felt completely drained. I love teaching community classes about herbalism to people who have no clue about it. Afterwards, I feel energized. But these 3 hour classes to aspiring herbalist just drain me. They make me think too much when I am teaching 
No, seriously, I feel like I am being pulled along by this wave of people who are all doing great herbal things, but may want to be ‘bigger’ herbalists than I do. Writing books, teaching at conferences… I wouldn’t mind being known and making good money, but it’s not a goal of mine. In fact, it stresses me out. I really just want to live simply, have time for playing with my family, and to be an effective healer. If I never taught another class or wrote another article, but had enough clients to keep me happily busy, I would be good with that. But, right now, I have to teach classes and write, etc. to get my name known to build clientele. I think lot of it is that I feel like I am teaching over my head. I mean, I know my herbs and all, but I don’t know all the constituents in Pipssissewa, and I don’t know all the drug/herb interactions for people on cardiac medications. And even when I am teaching anatomy and physiology, I am definitely not an expert and sometimes don’t even feel like I should be up there teaching. I don’t know what I am trying to say here… I guess, I am just remembering the whole reason that we are on this land and building our own house, and it’s not so that I can always be elsewhere trying to make a name for myself as an herbalist. My vision to be a part time herbalist and full time mom/wife/friend/land lover has somehow gotten to fulltime+ herbalist and on occassion mom/wife and even less time for friends and time on the land. Hmmmm… something needs to change.
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HOLY SHIT!! The Fridge just blew off the porch!!! The weather man predicted wind gust of up to 65mph for the next 2 days… and the brand new $600 fridge just blew off the porch and landed on a concrete statue! We had 20 eggs in the fridge and now there are only 2 left! The rest are plastered all over the inside of the fridge. Broken bottles everywhere… The whole thing is dented up and the light isn’t working. So we don’t know if the light is burnt out or if the whole fridge is broken. CRAP, CRAP, CRAP!!!
The out house is blown over now too! Major CRAP!! I’m not looking forward to cleaning that one up! Things are flying all over the place and I keep having visions of the whole house tipping over! I hope the chicken coop stays put!! And I really hope the tin stays on our roof! It is really insane here right now, and a tad bit scary!!
Here is what was accomplished this past Tuesday on the house! It feels like what I imagine standing in the middle of stonehenge to be like when you are in the house
And here is a beautiful dogwood flower! It is supposed to be 17 degrees this sat. night, so I hope they all make it through! My strawberries are covered with flowers, so I’ve covered all of my garden beds with floating row cover.
I have had some very vivid dreams in my life, but I have only recently started paying attention to them…
Two nights ago, I woke up to the doorbell. I sat up and looked over at Toby, who was sitting up too. I thought, “why would someone be coming out to see us at this hour??” Then I thought I heard someone opening the door and coming in. I looked back over at Toby and he had laid his head back down and was sleeping. So, I laid down and listened for a while but I didn’t hear anything more. I figured I was just hearing things. It wasn’t until the morning, when I was eating breakfast that I remembered that we don’t have a doorbell! Toby remembered none of this.
Then last night my dream was really wild!
I was somewhere outside with lots of people, and it was a damp cool night. Everyone was hanging out by the house, it was kind of like a party. I walked off into the woods/jungle, knowing I wasn’t supposed to be going to far. Very quickly I was by myself on a very peaceful, muddy, green trail. To my right side was a rocky wall with green plants and vines all over it. I walked past a beautiful blooming rose bush and thought about picking one. Then I thought maybe on the way back… Next, I saw a small red onion laying in a rocky area. It was about the size of a plum. I decided to take this instead of the rose. Then only a few feet further, there was an enormous shrine placed into the rock wall on my right. It went up about 20 feet and was covered with rose petals, red onions and other things that I can’t remember now. In the middle at the top was a statue of Mother Mary (I am not religious, so this is kind of weird for me) with a trickle of water running down this rock shrine. I saw one hole where an onion was missing and took mine and placed it on the shrine. Immediately water started flowing from the top of the wall, around all the rose petals and onions. I place my hands out and the water rushed over them. I splashed my face with the water, put it in my hair, and then drank some. It was very sweet and the smell of roses filled my body. I felt the water was a gift, telling me that now I was allowed/able to heal fully. Then, the water stopped as quickly as it started and I turned to walk on. Soon, I came to a ‘room’ on the path where the was a woman laying on her side facing away from me. I slowly approached wondering if this was a test I had to pass. I asked her if she was ok and she rolled over and told me her shoulder hurt. I place both my hands on her right shoulder and saw a ball of bright yellow light float from her body. Then I asked her if I could touch her stomach. She rolled to her back and I began massaging. I could feel that inside her uterus was up out of the pelvis and she was in immense pain. I remember her rolling around, and then I remember being surrounded by many other people while I was touching her. After that, it’s a blank…
I can’t wait to see what happens tonight!