Category Archives: Sustainable Living

Chicken Pox

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Well, K may be getting chicken pox sometime soon. One of the friends she plays with just came down with it. His doctor said it was the first case she has had in her office in over 2 years. WOW! I know a lot of kids are vaccinated against it now, but in our community where so many families don’t vaccinate, you’d think there would be more cases. A bunch of parents have already asked me if their kids can come over and try to get it through natural exposure if K gets it. So, maybe we will throw a Chicken Pox Party. Anyway, in preparation I wrote up a little herbal info for dealing with chicken pox.

Natural Therapies To Support Our Children Through Chicken Pox

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Bright idea!!

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You guys have got to check Kenny Luna out! He and his students are trying to get Oprah Winfrey to help give every student in America one compact fluorescent light bulb. If this is done, he says it will “help fight global warming by reducing our carbon emissions from electric power plants, save Americans AT LEAST $2.3 BILLION in electricity costs, and help put America on the path to environmental sustainability.” Get all the info at his blog and support the cause!

I’ve sent my letter!

Another Year Younger!

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So, yesterday was my 32nd birthday! I woke up to breakfast in bed (blueberry pancakes) and some snuggle time with the whole family in the bed (well, except the dog 🙂 Today, Toby is throwing me a birthday bash complete with a karaoke machine!! I will be sure to get lots of pictures and maybe some video. Until then, I’ll leave you with the recipe for “root soda” that I made for tonight:

  • 2 oz Sassafras Root
  • 1 oz Sarsaparilla Root
  • 1/2 oz each of Burdock Root, Dandelion Root, Fresh Ginger Root, and Licorice Root

If you don’t have some of these, substitute with other nice roots, like astragalus, but the sassafras and sarsaparilla are key ingredients for the flavor.

Put the roots in ~1 gallon of water and bring to a boil. Then simmer for 30 minutes. Take off the heat and let cool. Strain out herbs and add sweetener to taste (I ended up adding ~1 cup of brown sugar). Then add enough carbonated water to make it fizz. It should remind you of a gentle root beer.

This makes a bunch, so scale it back if you don’t want a ton in your fridge.

Land Plans

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Thanks for all the well wishes! We now have a signed contract on the land!! The plan, once we close, is to get out there immediately and start building. Toby is going to go part time at work and we will build a 12 x 16 temporary structure to live in. It will have a loft and a big covered (possibly screened-in) porch for a kitchen and all in all be ~ 300 sq ft inside with ~190 feet outside. This will be practice for us since neither of us have much building experience at all. It will later be my herb shack/office. We have all that material from the house that Toby helped take down back in Sept. and we hope to use mostly local or recycled materials to build. At first, there will be no electricity, running water and just a bucket to poop in. But, I think it will be a lot of fun for all of us to experience that for a while. In the main house that we build, we hope to have water (from the welll, or catchment system maybe), solar electricity and a composting toilet.

One other possibility is that Toby’s mom really loves Deltec homes and we may help her build a little one of those on our land first, that will give us some building experience and a place to live while we build our main house.

The garden will probably wait until next year. It would just be too much to build a house and start a big garden all at the same time. I will probably throw out some field peas, oats and vetch just to cover the large muddy area, bring some nitrogen to the soil, and I love the taste of the pea shoots! And we will still probably do a few tomatoes and stuff, but noting like the big circle garden of last year, at least not yet!

Land ho!

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Hey all! Sorry I’ve been so lax in posting and commenting. My head has been elsewhere lately. BUT it looks like we are going to be putting in an offer on some land!! Friends of ours turned us on to this 25 acres that isn’t on the market (yet). Friends of theirs own it and have been looking to sell. Anyway, it is ~15 minutes from down town, to the NW of Asheville, rolling woods. It looks like it hasn’t been logged in a long time. The trees are huge! There is a pond, a well, at least one spring (we think there may be more), a cleared area for gardening, some nice rock landscaping. And I’ve found pipsissewa, usnea, chickweed, rattlesnake plantain, the local version of reishi mushrooms, possibly some hawthorne trees… I can’t wait until the spring when I can really see what is out there. It also has some perfect spots for planting ginseng, goldenseal, and other more rare medicinal herbs. The only downside is the surrounding neighbors. They keep riding their 4-wheelers and baja’s up there and tearing up the land! They pay no head to the locked gates at the bottom of the land… just cut the chain! We hope that they will lay off once we are out there and that we don’t have to deal with trespassing issues. I have absolutely no problem with someone being on the land as long as they are respectful to the land and the other people there. The price of the land is insanely cheap compared to what other things are going for around here, but we are still going to have to subdivide and sell some off. Our hope is to buy all of it and get situated out there, then bring out friends who are interested in similar lifestyles (sustainable living, homesteading…) and start a community. It’s a lot to think about! OH, and I will probably be without a computer for a good while!

The other land, the acres in town that I mentioned a while ago, well the family that owns it is fantastic and has tried really hard to make it work so that we could buy from them, but their land is nothing like the 25 acres that we have decided to buy. So, we passed on the in town stuff.

Hey, also, I know my herb reviews have slowed down, but I am still hoping to do them and would love to hear about any herbs that would like discussed.

Sweet Rosemary!

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“I know if I excrete from any of my holes that I can take an oak leaf and make a tea.”
-Rosemary Gladstar, discussing the astringent effects of tannins in plants

Rosemary Gladstar came into town this weekend for a talk on the United Plant Savers and women’s health. This is the first time I have seen her talk and she is a blast!! Aside from all the years of experience she has as an herbalist, she is just so down to earth, genuine and fun. My good friend Jill Frink-Thompson was her apprentice this past year, so she asked Rosemary to come and talk. The NC-AHG helped with some of the advertising for the talk, so as a thank you, Jill invited us all to a little party on Friday night. My first herb teacher, Peggy Ellis, was a student of Rosemary’s in the early 80’s. Peggy was also at the party, which was a total suprise. So, there ended up being 4 ‘generations’ of herbalists there, and with all of our “root soda” and home made mead and herb wine, we had a great time, as you can see!

We are very lucky to have such an amazing community of herbalists in this area!

This one is just of me on the right, Peggy in the middle and Rosemary on the left. I think we were talking about how her mother use to make Filo dough from scratch!!

Sorry I can’t post more, but I am feeling a bit cruddy!

NAIS thought

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It is not mandatory in NC to register your animals… yet. But, if I go to the North Carolina NAIS site I find this question:

Q. If a Person Raises Animals for His or Her Own Use and the Animals Never Leave the Owner’s Property, Do They Need to be Identified?
A. Under the current plan, animals that never leave a premises do not need to be identified. However, animal owners are encouraged to identify their animals and their premises, regardless of the number of animals present, since many animal diseases may be spread whether an animal leaves its home premises or not. Examples of such diseases include West Nile virus, foot.?d.?uth disease, vesicular stomatitus, and equine infectious anemia.

So, I’m an animal, right? Maybe I should start sending in a letter everytime I get a cold, or go out to the bakery and stuff! I mean, I could really transmit some serious gottalittlesniffle disease at that bakery and the government needs to know about all the people I will infect by leaving my premises! Don’t you think? And for that matter, I think I am going to have a sign in sheet at my front door so you can all let the govn’t know that you came to visit, just in case you are contagious. I mean, really, us animal ‘people’ go a-visiting a whole lot more than goats and chickens do. We spread a whole lot more illness! Maybe it would be more beneficial to the govn’t to track all of us! (Maybe I shouldn’t give ’em any ideas, eh?)

Carmella

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Listen to this!! I found out some more about my great-grandmother! Not only was she an herbalist, but before that, when she was still living in Italy, she was a nurse!! When she moved to the US she began working as an herbalist! How wierd is that?? My degree is in Nursing, but I stopped to become an herbalist. I spoke with my cousin, who is in his 50’s and who was raised where Carmella lived, and he remembers picking herbs and squeezing out the alcohol. He said she started the business in 1928 and got special permission from the government to buy, use and sell alcohol during prohibition. The document says she can use alcohol for her “patent medicines used for the stomach”. (He also thinks that many people just bought her medicine so that they could get the alcohol.) 🙂 Her company was actually called Aro-Stoma Tonic Company and he found records of one remedy that was actually Trademarked called “erba-ruta”, which in English is the herb Ruta graveolens or Herb of Grace. She must have had a tincture with Rue in it that she trademarked.

Ok, so here’s something else. A few years ago I met this woman who was learning to do past life regressions. I don’t know what I think about all of that, but she said she would do one for free, so I said, what the hell. Anyway, it was pretty uneventful and I felt like I was just making up this story or something, but at the end she asked if any of my ancestors had any messages for me. The first person who popped into my head was my great-grandma Carmella. I pictured us in a kitchen together and she was giving me a plant. I didn’t know what it was by site, but I said it was a rutabega. The woman doing the regression looked at me with a sad face, like I was messing with her. But really, that is what I saw in my minds eye. Now, I learn she was an herbalist, and maybe it was a ruta, and not a rutabega that she was trying to give me. I am definitely going to plant some of this in next years garden!!

I wish I had know this woman. She sounds like she was pretty cool! My dad died when I was 14, but I vividly remember the stories he use to tell about her. She raised him from an infant after his mom got sick. He said she was a very large italian woman and her breasts were so big that she would knock out a door frame if she turned around in one. He also said he use to come home from school and all his clothes would be gone. When he asked Carmella about it, she would say that he had the clothes on his back and there were poor children out there who needed the other clothes more than he did. 🙂

Land??!! Maybe…

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OK, we may have found some land! I am trying not to get my hopes up too much, but it is hard when the search has been so fruitless so far! Instead of trying to find land that is already up for sale, I went onto the city mapping system and just searched for property that looked like it might be a good place to live. Then I sent out ~16 letters to people asking if any of them would be interested in selling some land. I got one phone call with a “No”. So, I decided to call some people up and after a bunch of “no’s” got one guy who said “actually, we’ve been thinking about it. Why don’t you come out and take a walk around and we’ll talk” So, we went out to his property on Saturday to look. He owns 22 acres. Most of it is wooded. They have a small farm and house, which they will keep. The property has a beautiful stream, a mix of hardwoods and pine trees, it’s rolling land, and it backs up to a 180 acre wilderness/park owned by the city (which is bordered by the French Broad River!). And it is a 10 minute bike ride for Toby to get to work. It’s basically just outside of the downtown city! It would be absolutely perfect!! It’s an older couple and he wasn’t feeling well when we were there, so we told them to think about how much land they would want to part with and at what price and we will call them in the next few days. I really hope this works! I can already see where the chicken coop will go, how the picnic table will sit right by the stream, blah, blah, blah….. Oh, I need to stop day dreaming until I know this is for sure! Wish me luck!

Great Grandma Carmella

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Have I mentioned that my great-grandmother was an herbalist? I found out a few years ago after I had already begun my herb business. Since we moved away from the family when I was 2 and my father died when I was 14, I haven’t had much contact with my father’s side of the family. So, I didn’t know much about my great-grandmother. Anyway, it turns out she came over to the US in the early 1900’s with her family. She started an herb garden and had a small vineyard. She would harvest her herbs and make tinctures, then use the grape press to extract the alcohol when the tinctures were ready. She ran a company called the Aerostromo Tonic Company. (I know aero is air in italian, but I don’t know what the whole name means). People would show up at her door for her medicine. Cool, eh? I talked to my uncle today and he said he is going to try to find any paperwork that there might be left so that I can have it. I’m not getting my hopes up, but wouldn’t that be amazing if there were old recipe books with her formulas??!! Oh, and her name was Carmella Tromentozzi Cedrone. Isn’t that at awesome name!

Three things…

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Ok, first – watch the david letterman show tonight at 11:30! My good friend’s brother’s band, We Are Scientists, is going to be on there! Cool, eh?

Second, I am trying to get into the habit of saying ‘thanks’ before eating a meal. I want K to learn this ritual as a way to calm down before eating and to thank the earth for the food. A friend of mine taught me this great little blessing and I really like it:

Ths silver rain, the shining sun, and fields where scarlet poppies run
and all the ripples of the wheat are in the bread that we do eat.
So, when we sit at every meal, with thankful hearts we always feel
that we are eating rain and sun in fields where scarlet poppies run.

Isn’t that sweet!!

Third, I tried this amazing tea the other night by Tazo called Passion!! It is this fantastic mix of flowers and sweet roots and barks. Anyway, I had to figure out how to make it and I think I have got it. So, give it a try and let me know how you like it!

6 parts Hibiscus flower
3 parts Orange peel
3 parts Licorice Root
3 parts Cinnamon bark
3 parts Rose hips
2 parts Lemongrass
2 parts Food Grade Citric Acid (which you can get at some health food stores, or online)
(a part is by weight measurement, like ounces or grams. So, if you use one ounce of Hibiscus, you would use 1/2 ounce of the rest, except Lemongrass which is 1/3 ounce.)

Use 1 teaspoon per cup of water. Boil the herbs in the water for 15 minutes, strain out the herbs and add honey. After tasting this tea, you will be prone to saying “MMMmmmmmm, OOOOoohhh, that’s gooooood” in a somewhat orgasmic way!

Parties and Pageants

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Last Sunday, the North Carolina Chapter of the American Herbalists Guild had a holiday party and fundraiser. The party was great! We had live music, lots of amazing donations for the silent auction, and drew in a bunch of great people! We raised well over $400! Now we just have to think of what herby things we want to do with the money!

Also on Sunday, K’s preschool had a little Christmas pageant. We didn’t get the greatest footage, but it is pretty funny. I was proud of them for doing a little skit on the history of Christmas customs, and I think it’s pretty funny that I know of at least 4 pagan-y types who have their kids in playschool there. I think it’s because they don’t push religion down your throught. (If you don’t have Quicktime on your machine, it’s pretty easy to download it from the site.)

Chai Elixer

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Since I have been remiss (is that how you spell it?) in my Herb Review duties, I have decided to publish a recipe for a Hot Chai Elixer! I am lovin’ this stuff! (It’s from Teresa Boardwine’s Cordially Yours:
2 cups of fresh ginger root
1/2 cup of cinnamon chips
1/4 cup of cloves
2 Tbsp. Cardamom pods
Place all of this in 20 oz. of Rum (I like Spiced Rum), and let sit for 2 weeks, shaking daily.

After 2 weeks, strain out the herbs and add 4 oz of Honey and 4 oz of Maple Syrup. Mix well, bottle it and add a couple of Almonds to the bottle to scent it.

You can drink it straight, heated up like a hot totty, put in in tea, or coffee, or how I like it is to heat up a cup of milk (rice, soy, cow, whatever) and put in a tsp. or two of the chai elixer. MMMMmmmm, Yummy!! It’s great for bitter, cold winter days!

Hemp car

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Did you know that some cars of the 1920’s didn’t only run on Hemp oil, but were actually made of hemp fiber!! Yes, that is Henry Ford beating his Hemp car with a crowbar to prove how sturdy it is!!

Until today, I had no idea how important hemp was to our world history and how many uses it has had before it became to be just a recreational drug!!

And I had absolutely no idea that hemp seeds were even edible, much less so extremely good for you. They are very high in digestible protein, Essential Fatty acids and amino acids. And I didn’t realize that Hemp has no THC in it. So, you can actually buy the seeds from our local health food store. They are legal cause you can’t get high off of them! Wierd, eh??

Ideas please!

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OK, guys and gals! I have to come up with an idea for a 1000 word (minimum) paper by next week. It has to be related to herbs. I am having a mental block. I can’t think of anything to write about. The paper has the chance of being published, too, so I want it to be a good, interesting topic. Please, feel free to throw out any ideas that pop into your head!!!

Chocolate!

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Hey! Sorry most of my posts have just been my herb reviews lately. Things have been really busy around here and I haven’t had much chance to catch up on the blogging. I did, however, have time to try to make a little chocolate! I ordered cocoa nibs from Chocolate Alchemy and roasted them Sat. morning. Then I put them through my champion juicer to try to make a liquor, but it just seemed to be grinding it up and making them into a paste. Then, the juicer started to smoke, so I thought it might be a good idea to move on to another appliance. So, I put it all in my Vita-mix blender and added a little grain alchohol and maple syrup (thinking I could make a tincture for “chocolate medicine!”). Then, I poured it all into a bottle. But, when I checked it this morning, most of the cocoa seed pieces have expanded to take on the liquid and now it is a thick paste stuck in the bottle!! SO, I am going to let it soak there for a few weeks and then either try to scrape it out (it’s a narrow neck liter bottle!), or cut the glass in half!! I am not throwing my chocolate away!!!

I still have a pound and a half of the nibs left. I don’t know what I am going to do with those yet.

roasted nibs

ground nibs

Exciting news!

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I just went out to look at my shitake logs to see if they are getting too dry, and found 3 mushrooms growing! And the logs all look like the are about to bust open with more!! yay!! My first ‘shrooms! Now I need a good recipe. I can’t let them go to waste! Maybe the rain we get this weekend will help bring on more! (Let’s see how many more exclamation points I can use in this post!?!!)

Yummy Yummy,

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Oh, and only 1 gram of fat per serving!

Baked Sweet Potato Fries
1 1/2 pound sweet potato, scrubed and peeled
2 Tbsp. Soy Sauce or Tamari
1 tsp. Veg. oil
2 Garlic cloves, minced
1 Tbsp. Brown Sugar

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Cut potatoes into 1/4 inch strips. Whisk together Soy Sauce, Garlic, Oil, and Sugar. Toss Potatoes into the liquid mixture. Lightly oil a baking sheet and place the potato slices in a single layer on the sheet. Cook for ~20 minutes, stirring once at 10 minutes, or until golden brown and crispy. ~4 servings.

I cut up a ton extra and tossed it in the liquid mix, then put it in baggies in the freezer. We’ll see how they turn out after they have been frozen.

Me… a professor… kind of…

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Well, after this weekend at the herb conference, so much has happened. First, I brought some of my products to one of the natural food stores here, Greenlife, and they are interested in some of my stuff. Yay! After my meeting at Greenlife, I went to another meeting with some other area herbalists. The North Carolina Chapter of the American Herbalist Guild has just been started here and I am now an official member. It’s very exciting! The conference this weekend really helped me see what an amazing area this is for herbalism. I am very lucky to be here in the middle of this ‘herbal revolution’! Then, just today, I got a call from the directer of the Southeast School for Herbal Healing and was asked to become a teacher with them!! I am extremely excited!!! Of course, being me, I am also very intimidated, it gives me heart palpitations 🙂 Well, my first classes will be on herb/drug interactions and running an herb business (this will be for the 2nd year students). Then in the spring, I will be teaching some basic courses (materia medica, medicine making…) to the first year students. Cool eh!! She (the director) and I met this weekend at the conference, but I am going out to the school next week for an official tour and stuff. AND, as if that weren’t enough. I just found out about this fantastic course (distance ed.) that Aviva Romm (very well known herbalist!) is teaching in which I could get certified as a Women’s Herbal Educator. I emailed her about it and she said I would “make a wonderful student”. So, I will probably start the course this fall (if I can find the funds!)! It will be a great refresher of basics, as well as lots of advanced herbalism that I need. The only thing that is lacking is actual clinical experience, which I hope to get with one of the local school this coming spring! WOW! I am feeling very blessed and a little overwhelmed. Now… when am I supposed to start homeschooling???

SE

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I just spent the past three days at the first annual South East Women’s Herbal Conference and I had a blast!! There were classes Friday, Saturday and Sunday about anything you can think of related to herbs! It was held at Camp Merri-mac, which is a beautiful camp set in woods ~15 minutes from Asheville. Susun Weed was the Keynote speaker, but I wasn’t as impressed with her as I was some of the other herbalist/speakers. I mean, she is very vibrant and fun to watch, but I could see all these people just drinking in what she was saying without even questioning it, just because she is Susun Weed, Goddess Herbalist. Like, ok, she talked about being a Wise Woman herbalist, and claims to have ‘discovered’ this tradition. Um, no, there have been shaman and granny herbalists for thousands of years! I am truly happy that she is helping to give herbalists a name and all, but she is not the founder of the wise-woman tradition. She says that being a wise woman is all about being flexible, being able to adapt to the situation, use your intuition and that there is no set of hard and fast rules. Yet, then she totally contradicted herself by saying that flower essences and essential oils are crap and should never be used by a good herbalist. (wait… isn’t that a rule??) Anyway, her talk was enjoyable for the most part. She is known for being a very wise herbalist but also a hard ass, and I could see both of those as she spoke. But, I did enjoy the talk.

I also went to talks by a local herbalist friend of mine, Lauren Connell, about Flower Essences, and a local midwife who discussed homeopathics. Then I heard talks on Menopause, the Endocrine System, and Winter Immune Strenthening given by Kathleen Maier, who is a very knowledgable herbalist and fantastic speaker! The highlight of the weekend, though, had to be the talks given by Sheri Winston, a reknowned “Certified Pussy Professional” and “Pelvic Priestess”. I took the class on Vaginal Ecology and the one called “Maps of the Clitoris” and I have to say they were awesome! Not only is she a very vibrant speaker, but it was just in-your-face stuff that we all should have been taught about ourselves when we got our first periods!

The food was fabulous (I think I gained a few pounds!). Friday night, there was a girls band called the Buckarettes, and Sat. night was Baraka Mundi a belly dancing troupe. I camped out and spent the whole weekend there, which was wonderful! It was also very hard, cause I missed K a lot! But, she and Toby did just fine and had some good bonding time!

Wild ride!

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I have to say, I am kind of glad that this weekend is almost over and maybe we can start fresh tomorrow. Aside from the house coming out of contract (they just decided they didn’t want it anymore!!) Toby started having trouble breathing and had to go to the ER. Turns out he has costochondritis, inflammation of the joints in between the ribs and the sternum. It’s usually caused by stressing that area too much. (We think this may have happened in the move). It’s like throwing out your back, except it’s your front. I’ve got him on all kinds of herbs for inflammation and pain, and he is taking prescriptions if needed. Poor thing! In the middle of it all, K and I are full of snot with a nice cool weather change cold. But, on the bright side of it all, K has decided (at barely 27 months of age) that she will no longer wear diapers. She has been in her “big girl panties” for the past week, including at night, and hasn’t had an accident! I am floored! I thought she would be at least 3 before this happened!! She’s so awesome! Today, when I was putting her to sleep she said “mama, K has a little butt, and mommy and daddy have big butts”. How true!

OK, I’m off to bed to recuperate!

Oh, here are a few pictures of our evening play. We are taking all the kernels off of the indian corn and are going to make them into necklaces in celebration of the equinox next week. You just soak them in water for a few hours and then thread a string through them. Then, when you have the right length necklace, you lay them out to dry. and Voila!



mama’s play time!

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Well, I just dropped K off at her first day of play school! I am still struggling with the “I can do everything and still get a nice dinner on the table” mama attitude, and have realized that in order to keep (or get back) my sanity, I need a break! So, I found this great place just down the street (literally 5 houses down) that has a Tuesday/Thursday play school from 8-11:30!! So, K gets some time to play with friends and learn more than just my 5 song repertoire, and I get time to work on Full Circle Herbs. I am still planning on home schooling, but I think this will be very good for both of us.

So, I am hoping to use some of this free time to start doing an “Herb of the Week” write up. I figure it will be a good way to refresh myself! I will post it on this site.

What else… Oh, we have a contract on the house in Chapel Hill!!! We never did have to put it on the market! And we should close by the end of this month!! So, we went to Chapel Hill again this weekend and did all the final touch ups and trash removal. We were also able to pack up the bees and bring them to Asheville. (At night, when they have gone into their hives, you put a piece of screen over the entrance and strap the hives together so nothing moves. Then put them on the truck and away you go) They are hanging out on my brother-in-laws property where he has a little more space than we do. I hope to get over there at least every other week to do a mite count. That is about all I do now for the bees. Toby does everything else. I am kind of freaked out about getting stung again. After the last sting (which I think was a yellow jacket, but still), my leg swelled up so big you could bounce a dime off of it. And it took a few weeks to resolve. SO, I figure, I should probably stay away from the bees just in case the stings keep getting worse.

Out for a drive

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I took a drive this morning to go look at some land that a friend has for sale. I puttered along in my biodiesel/vegetable oil car thinking how I have been paying $3-3.50/gallon of biodiesel for a year now (when we can’t make our own) and gas has finally reached the same price. I think everyone has felt that this was coming, no matter what the cause of price increase might be. I realize that most people in this country are totally dependant on gasoline to help run their daily lives (myself included), but I can’t say that I am not glad that the prices of gas are so high. Maybe it is just what this country needs to make a change for the better. We have traded in our souls for the ‘convenience’ of a system of travel that cannot go on indefinitely. And Biodiesel isn’t the answer either. We would just be putting a bandaid on the wound and not really dealing with the problem. I realize that I am preaching to the choir here, but I feel it must be said again… we have got to start supporting our communities!!! If we bought locally produced food and clothing, if we rode our bikes, walked, or car pooled, if we lived more sustainable lifestyles in harmony with earth and her cycles, if we were all a little more present, we wouldn’t be in this mess. Change must happen! So, here is the challenge:
1- grow just one plant your house that produced some food (think tomato, lemon, potato, herbs, banana, whatever!) and then share that food with your neighbors!
2 – If you are going to eat out, eat at the local mom and pop restaurants instead of the chains, and hound them to buy their food from local farmers (then, no trucks needing gas to haul our food from California).
3 – buy recycled clothing or make your own (there is nothing wrong with a thrift store special!)
4 – get out and walk or ride your bikes as much as possible. If this just can’t be done, than extend a hand to a neighbor and offer to carpool (to work, for errands…). Or try to get all your erands done in one outing instead of multiple trips.
I know there is so much more that can be listed here, but I think this is a good start!

Clarifying

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For some time now, I have been trying to figure out what avenue I want to travel down with this herbalist thing. With my website and the stores that offer my products, it seems like I am heading towards being a business woman herbalist. But, I know that’s not how I want it. I have been hemming and hawing over whether or not to put my stuff in Earthfare. And at first, I thought it was the money commitment (buying liability insurance and UPC codes would cost $2000 just for this year). But, I think, the more I clarify my desires, the more I realize that I don’t want to be that type of herbalist. I don’t want to be spending more time in my office and on my computer than I do in my garden. I don’t want this business to grow so big that I have to hire other people to play with the plants while I do administrative stuff. I have felt out of touch with the plants and I think that’s why… not enough plant time and too much computer. Right now, a lot of my income (which is really not an income, more like pocket change) comes from the internet sales. But, even that gives me reservations. Though I love to think about my products touching people in California and even France, when I think about the pollution it took to truck/fly my box of goodies out to that person, I feel bad. If every community had and supported their local herbalists, we would all be healthy and well taken care of and no one would need to mass produce and ship their stuff. So, I think I am getting a little clearer about my vision. I like the feeling I get when I think about being a community herbalist. Someone that people can come to when they are ill, or healthy and want to stay that way. I want to talk to people about slowing down their fast paced lives, eating healthy foods and treating each other and the earth with kindness. I want to have a garden full of herbs that I hand harvest and make into medicines myself. I want my relationship with the plants to go deeper than it is now. Be more spiritual. That makes me feel good! I can maybe even see a small herbal apothecary carrying the products of the local herbalists, along with some local herbs. I don’t know…

So, for now, I will hold off on growing this business. If my products are in any stores, they will be local and definitely not chains. I will hold off on printing the T-Shirts. I fill focus on opening up to my neighbors and friends, and listening to the plants.

Argh!!

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I’m not sure what that title is about… I think I am tired of thinking and that is what came out.

So, how come, the more I just want a simple, relaxed life the busier it gets. I feel like there are so many things happening right now. So many details to keep track of in my head and crap, that I can’t turn my brain off for a second to relax! I can’t remember the last time I sat down and read a book for pure enjoyment and not for the sake of learning something new. (That will all change on the 16th when the next Harry Potter book comes out!!!)

Anyway, enough bitching…

Here’s what K and I did this morning:

First we made a sling for her little bear that she has been carrying all around lately. She loves the sling. She only took it off to sleep!

We also made playdough this morning. Here are K and her bear (still in the sling) learning how to “mash da paydow”:

Here’s the recipe for the playdough. It was really simple. We made blue and pink. (It takes lots of food coloring to make a vibrant color)
1 cup water
1 Tbsp oil
1/2 c salt
1 Tbsp cream of tartar
food coloring
mix all of this in a sauce pan and heat until warm (and most of the salt is dissolved). Take off the heat and add 1 cup of flour. Stir, then knead until smooth. Keep in an airtight container.