Author Archives: Maria

Ceremony and chickens

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I spent this past weekend at the South East Women’s Herb Conference and had a wonderful time. This was the second annual conference and had StarHawk as the keynote speaker. I’d never seen her speak before. In fact, I stayed away from her books when I was a kid because I got tired of everyone ‘witchy’ changing their names to things like Raven Silvermoon and Phoenix wild Fire. I just wanted to understand what different religions meant and got turned off by anything that seemed fake. Anyway, I really enjoyed StarHawk’s speaches and ended up buying her most recent book, The Earth Path. She seems like an amazing woman who has been able to bring about change in fantastic ways through reconnecting with the earth.

During the rest of the weekend I took classes on stuff like “digestive health”, “Cordials and Elixirs”, “fermented foods”, helped out at my School’s booth, and went swiming in a lake! It was really amazing and what always makes it so great is the strong sense of community that these ceremonial conferences have and the sense of sisterhood that is there. I wish there were something like this for men so that they could beging to reconnect! With all the male screw ups in higher ranking places, I think they could greatly use a sense of brotherhood, connection, and community!

On a silly note, one of our chickens is an escape artist, and also very friendly and smart. Sweety is an Ameraucana. She’s a little small compared to the rest of the chickens, too. Anyway, the other day it was starting to rain and I heard this annoyed ‘bocking’ sound. I figured Sweety was out again, cause she does that when she has gotten out and wants back in her run. So, when I looked out the door to see where she was (she always hangs out by the chicken run fence), she was headed my way, toward the house, up the steps over the porch, and to the door. She saw toby standing at the door and turned around and led him back to her coop. She then stood there for him to pick her up and put her back in. She was basically saying “look, I’ve been out all day and now it is raining and getting dark. I’m ready to go to bed. Can you help me out here?” It was so cool to see her waddling up the steps to come and get us! 🙂

The Mushroom

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Well, the mushroom is in the boletus family, but I can’t figure out which one. It looks like so many of them. It doesn’t bruise when broken, and the spores aren’t red, but it is somewhat bitter to the taste. So, I am not going to eat it until I figure out more about it.

I’ll let you know…

Addendum
OK, here it is: Bitter bolete. I spoke with the mushroom man here, and he says it is probably a ‘bitter bolete’. It is edible, just bitter in taste. Not poisonous. Maybe I will give one a try…

Picture update

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9/15 – Here are a few pictures of our latest accomplishments.
We are doing lots of design work on the main house and hope to pour the foundation next month. In the mean time, we are trying to finish up on the siding for the little house. It’s been taking forever ’cause it is usually just one person at a time working on it. But, if we can get a team of three, it goes really fast. So, I have put together a “work/party day” for Toby’s birthday. What he really wants the most is to have some of these projects done. So, tomorrow we are going to try to finish up some of the siding, winterize the house, and cut up more wood for the cord wood walls in the main house.

Kaia starts at a Montessori school (3 days a week) next week and we are all very excited. She has really been getting the shaft with all of our work and no play. So, we think school will be really good for her and give her some time to be a kid. We still hope to home school, but it’s just not feasible right now.

9/17 – OK, so we didn’t finish up the siding, but we did put in the stove chimney and enlarge the chicken run area (to ~1600 sqft!!!. So they are pretty much free range now. Hey, how do you get them to stop sleeping/pooping in their laying boxes?? I put up netting and they tore it down.) We also put up a porch yesterday!!!! Wahoo!! A bunch of people showed up to Toby’s “workin’ birthday”, so they decided to throw up a porch in an afternoon! It looks great and makes this place feel so much more like a ‘home’. We spent this morning relaxing on the porch and even hung up the hammock.



Kaia’s friend came over yesterday, so she was occupied the whole day while the working was going on. At one point, they both came out of the camper with huge smiles on their faces and not a stitch of clothes on! They collectively decided that it was nudey time. 🙂 The place was completely trashed, with toys everywhere. But, they had a blast and kept themselves very busy.

Here’s a little fairy house that Kaia decided to make. She wanted to see if she could entice them with yogurt covered raisins and chocolate peppermint.

And look who can write her name!!!

Here is an ity bity mushroom I found. I can’t identify it except that it is a polypore and looks like a porcini. I will have to bring it to my mushroom friend and see if it is edible.

Yay for Habitat!

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We hit the jackpot at the Habitat for Humanity Home Store yesterday. I have put it on my list to go by there and check as often as possible because they get in so many good home building supplies. Well, yesterday we took home 15 medium to large windows!! Brand new and low-E!! So, that brings our window total up to ~20. All for ~$150!! Yahoo! That should be enough to outfit the whole house!

After the rains…

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It’s been raining off and on for the last few weeks in large downpours. Last night was another one of those. So, now we are having a great mushroom bloom! I know some of these are edible, but I’m not daring enough to try them.






Roots Festival

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The herbalists here in Asheville are putting on a Roots Festival for National Herb Day on October 14th. We are making t-shirts that will say “Root Diggin’ Herbalist” on it and will have this picture (painted by one of our own!)

If anyone would like a t-shirt, let me know and I can order one for you. They are $18, and come in women’s and men’s styles and all sizes. I think they are going to look great!!!

Hey, are any of you out there going to the AHG Conference in Boulder this year??

Weekly Herb Review #20 – Sage

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“He that would live for aye, must eat Sage in May” – John Ray, 1678

Common Names: Sage, Garden Sage, Common Sage

Scientific Name: Salvia officinalis (salvia – “to heal” or “to be well”)

Family: Lamiaceae (Mint family)

sage Continue reading »

And life goes on…

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We had a little tragedy at our house yesterday. Suki killed Buffy, one of our Buff Orpingtons (and our favorite chicken who liked to sit on my lap, roost on my arm and climb on my shoulder!). I think she was near the fence sticking her head under for some food that rolled and Suki grabbed her out. When we screamed at Suki “NO!” she immediately dropped her, but by that time, Buffy’s neck was already broken. It was a good opportunity to talk with Kaia about the circle of life and death, but I was having a hard time not bawling! Kaia was consoling me! We had a little burial and said thanks to Buffy for the short time that she was with us. Now, we have to decide how to work this out with Suki. I am thinking that building her an enclosed space is the best option. No, that means she can’t have the run of the land, but will us wanting to have other folks up here who are also wanting to homestead, it’s probably a good idea for Suki to get use to having an enclosed space.

On a happier note, I have found a bunch of new herbs on the land… all volunteers in my garden!! I have found some Mullein, St. John’s Wort, what I think is a type of Lobelia, and a Reishi (Ganoderma Tsugai). Cool, eh?

The rain is also doing wonders for the garden and the shiitaki logs! This is a shot of a small shiitaki bloom. Right now, I have one log that has ~40 shiitaki growing!!!

And check out this Phallic tomato!

So far, I have put up only 4 quarts of tomato sauce, but I have many more quarts ahead of me!

My herbs are doing well too. I harvested some boneset to tincture and dry, as well as Holy Basil, Skullcap, and red clover. Doesn’t my herb corner look nice?

Things are also going well at my school. I have been asked to continue on as a core staff member and teach for the Level 2 herb students this winter!!

“Dee Flowers”

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OK, first of all, The Rebelles show was absolutely fantastic!!! I have already decided that I want to try out the next time they have auditions! My burlesque name will be “Dee Flowers” and I will be the hippie-hooping girl 🙂 It was so much fun! I went out the next morning and got my mom and dad tickets to the show this Friday! (I was almost hoping that they didn’t want to go so that Toby and I could go again!)

Anyway… it looks like the trashy trailer just below our land is about to be hauled off. There was a fairly nice, though slightly unstable guy who lived there and collected junk. Now, when I say collected junk, you may picture a few toys and cars in the yard… but, I’m talking a full acre of total crap in his yard: at least 50 tires, a 4 foot pile of vodka bottles, old roofing tin, broken “no-harm” animal traps… the list goes on. So, the land is owned by the mother of the guy who lives there. After a few fines by the county, she decided it was time to clean the place up and the only way to do that was to evict her son. So, hopefully the junk will go soon too!

The chickens are doing well, although we think our Delaware, Ruby, might be a boy. The comb on her head has gotten more pronounced recently and her chin is starting to get some color too it. We’ll see…. Their favorite foods to date: pineapple, mana bread, tomatos. Dislikes: Seaweed and comfrey (what’s wrong with them?)

Toby and I have a preliminary house design. It is a 16 sided cord wood house, ~40 feet in diameter. There will be a second story 8-sided structure above for the “master suite”, woo woo! Toby has also started taking down some poplar to cut up for the cord wood siding. The bark that comes off of the poplar is amazing! I am hoping to figure out how to make something out of it, like bark baskets or something. OH, we hope to have some pretty bottle designs in the house too. So, if you have any bottles with cool shapes or colors, please save them for us! (Red bottles are especially rare because they have to use gold to make the color, so save ’em!)

Weekly Herb Review #19 – Mullein

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‘Husbandmen of Kent do give it their cattle against the cough of the lungs, and I, therefore, mention it because cattle are also in some sort to be provided for in their diseases.’ Coles, 1657, in “Adam in Eden”

Common Names: Mullein, Natures Toilet Paper, Candlewick Plant, Velvet Dock, and many more

Scientific Name: Verbascum thapsus

Family: Scrophulariaceae (figwort family)

mullein

Parts Used: Leaf (Astringent) and Flower (the flower is more specific for the nervous system, and are more demulcent) Continue reading »

Woo Woo!

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Tomorrow night, Toby and I get a night out!! Kaia is sleeping over at her grandmother’s house, and we get to play! So, I got us tickets to go see a burlesque show 🙂 The group is called The Rebelles. I found out that the woman who plays Frau Von Lippenstift is an aquaintence of mine… so I have to go and check it out! It can’t wait. It looks like it will be a lot of light-hearted fun, which we are desperately in need of! Toby and I are burnt out already! It’s not easy to live this pioneering lifestyle. It seems like anytime we go to do anything, it takes 20 more steps than we expect! Our goals this month are to design the main house and get it into the code process. I am so ready to just be settled and not always have a mess to clean up or a project to do. We have moved 4 times in the last 3 years… It’s hard always being in the process, you know what I mean? Ugh!

Anyway… The Rebelles!! Fun!

Weekly Herb Review #17 – Hyssop

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I know, I am so far behind!! But, I am writing up some materia medica for a class. So, here is a new one…

Hyssop
“Purge me with Hyssop and I shall be clean”
psalm 51, verse 7

Common Names: Hyssop, Garden Hyssop

Scientific Name: Hyssopus officinalis (meaning “holy herb” “of the apothecary”)

Family: Lamiaceae (mint)

hyssop Continue reading »

Introducing…

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OK, here they all are, officially named by Kaia… From left to right we have:
Faye (Speckled Sussex; named after Kaia’s friend), Ruby (Delaware; again, kaia’s friend), Honey (Auracauna; so that you can say “Come here, Honey!”). Then from front to back: Sweetie (Auracauna; because she is sweet and likes to be held), Buffy (Buff Orpington, named after buffy the vampire slayer… I named this one), Rudy and Ralph (Black Australorps, named after two roosters in a story that Kaia loves), Spike (Buff Orpington; again, named from the Buffy show).

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!

Weekend progress

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We had a very productive weekend, despite the rain! We stayed up on the land in Toby’s mom’s camper, which was awesome! This was the first time we have actually been able to sleep out on the land! The night was cool and moist, the peeper frogs were singing their songs, and on Sat. night the stars were vibrant! Each morning we would wake up to a misty fog, and the rain has made everything so lush and green! It’s like living in a rainforest.

Here are some pics of this weekends progress: Continue reading »

Long days!

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Ooooh, the last few days have been long! We are spending every spare moment up at the land… What do you think about “Dandelion Homestead”? Is that what we should call the new place?

Anyway, yesterday I got those strawberries that I bartered some herbs for… there were supposed to be ~100 of them, right?? Well, the woman who dropped them off showed up with a 55 gallon bag full of them and there had to be ~600!!! I planted 150 yesterday morning and couldn’t find any more space! I hope they take!! Yum!! (Am I using enough exclamation points for you?) T has also layed out the site for the temporary house and dug the post holes.

Anyhoo, I taught my first class at the school yesterday; Male Anatomy & Physiology for the herbalist. I think it went really well. Sometimes I felt like I was just rambling on, but everyone seemed to be paying attention and asking questions. I also brought the extra strawberries and gave them to whoever would take them!

Right after I taught my class, I sat in on an organic gardening class. We are going to get to take home seedlings from this class, so I really need to get my raised beds going. I wasn’t planning on starting a garden this year since we have so much going on with building the house, but it looks like life has other gardening plans for me 🙂

Oh, and you know that class I am taking with Aviva Romm? Well, she has asked if she can use a personal story of mine in her next book. It may not happen, ’cause the book is alreay 1200 pages long, but still, isn’t that cool!

So many other things have happened in the last week, but my brain is fried, so I will go sleep first and write more later.

Sleep tight!

Full Circle Herbs, for sale?

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I have been thinking of selling Full Circle Herbs for a while now. I started the business in 1999 as a way to be able to keep my hands in the herbs while I got up the guts to become a clinical herbalist. I kept it really small because I never wanted to be a business woman. But, now I am getting more into teaching and clinical herbalism and I think it may be time to let go of the business. Instead of being happy when orders come in, I dread it. My time is so busy right now that the last thing I want to be doing in my spare moment is pack up another order. I’ve actually been trying really hard to keep it very small, but it keeps growing. Last year I made $1300. I know that doesn’t seem like much, but that was without any sort of advertising. I have a website, but that’s it. I think that this business could grow very well in the right hands, I just don’t have the desire to do it. So, how do I put a price on this??
I have an established business, established clients, logo and known business name (at least locally), a kick-ass website (thanks T!), a 1-800 #, already made products, and hundreds of herbs! Any thoughts? What would you pay for something like this if you really wanted to own an herb business?

Life in the Hollar

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We spent the morning on the land… I have to think of a better name for our new place… any suggestions? I was thinking about Dandelion Farm (since our address is Dandelion Drive) but that website is already taken 🙂

Anyway, we picked up more trash, built two raised beds for the strawberries, and took a great hike. I found some yarrow and mint (I think it is spearmint) where they might have been a garden before, along with some strawberries! Then, as we got into the woods, I started seeing some Blood Root… and then more Blood Root, and then I realized that I couldn’t step anywhere without having to dodge the Blood Root! There is so much of it it is insane! I think I may have also spotted some lady’s slipper starting to come up, some edible berries (raspberry maybe), possibly some Elder, Rue Anemone, and this little dainty plant that looked like a marijuana leaf… maybe a cutleaf toothwort?

We also met one of the neighbors who lives down the street. He came slowly walking up the hill to check us out. Odell is probably about 75, but who knows. He told us that he has had 6 bypass surgeries, so he may only be 50 and in bad shape. Seemed like a nice guy though. We talked for a while and he offered any help he could give. Then, as he turned to go, I noticed the Mother of Pearl six shooter sticking out of his pocket! I guess he takes it with him when he goes out for his walks!! Yikes.

Beautiful day in the neighborhood

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Well, we closed without a hitch! We are now caretakers of 25 beautiful acres! We went up there today for a trash pick up… we go two large boxes full of beer cans and bottles, two 55 gallon bags of trash, and 260 pounds of scrap metal! And we didn’t get it all!! Tomorrow, we will try to finish with the trash and throw down some seed on the banks where the trucks have torn up the grass. Things are looking so lush up there. I found a weeping cherry, some blood root (Sanguinaria canadensis), lots of bulbs, and the dogwoods are blooming white and pink! Kaia decided that today she should have her first ‘nuddie in the creek’ experience. She ended up head-to-toe covered in mud!

On the bee front, both hives are doing well. One is going so strong that we had to split it ’cause they were about to swarm. I can’t wait to get the bees (and all of us for that matter) up to the land. Our lease ends at the end of May. So, we have 2 months to make ourselves comfortable up there and get started on the main house.
(And Kaia keeps saying she wants a baby sister!! Umm, I think we have enough on our hands:-)
FUN, FUN, FUN.