Category Archives: Sustainable Living

Today’s Haul

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Toby and I headed out today to pick up the shower and some wood for exterior (upstairs) siding.  On the way, we stopped by the Habitat store to see if there was anything new and got a great haul!  We picked up another antique door (this one for our bedroom) for $25, a cast iron kitchen sink in great condition for $75 (retails new for $400), and a jenn-air gas convection oven for $125!!!  The oven is between 6 and 9 years old, but is in great condition.  We found similar models on the internet for ~$2000!!!  Wahooo!!

Right now, I’m enjoying a little popcorn snack that I’ll share with you, since you asked…

Pop up some popcorn in a little olive oil (we use the stove instead of a microwave).  Then add a splash of tamari (enough to get some flavor but not so much as to really wet the popcorn).  Sprinkle on some nutritional yeast (I like lots… add it to your taste), and a dash of spirulina.  A really yummy treat with lots of minerals and B-vitamins!  (Well, Toby thinks it’s gross, but I love it!!)

Cordwood!! Wild foods and Chickens.

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Toby laid down our first cordwood pieces today! Very Exciting!! Here he is, putting in the first piece!!
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This is our friend Eden who has started helping us build. She is working with the mortar here. It is a mix hydrated lime, water, and sand, and should be a nice white once it is dry. That will help to brighten things up inside (as opposed to a dark gray mortar). this wall will be a part of the mechanical/mud/laundry room.

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Here is the same wall from the outside.

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I also ground down all the plants that I harvested a couple of weeks ago. I don’t know if it is worth the effort. The Lamb’s Quarters only made 6.5 ounces of flour, the Aster 5.5, and the Yellow Dock ~4.5 ounces. The Thistle I had to trash because I couldn’t grind it up fine enough and I was worried about getting little sharp thistle pieces in our food. So, for all the effort in gathering, drying, and grinding them, I think it may be a better idea to gather a little each year and use the wild green flours to supplement and increase the nutrients in the ones we buy.

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Have I mentioned that Suki (the dog) and Sweetie (the Houdini chicken) have come to an agreement? I don’t know how or why it happened, but Sweetie, who continues to escape her coop, roams all around the yard and Suki doesn’t bother her. She hops back into the coop to lay her eggs and then gets out again! So, we decided to try to just open up the coop, during the day while we are here, and let all the chickens roam around. Suki seems to be fine with it. She will occasionally give chase to one of the chickens, but there have been no casualties and the chickens love it! In fact, when we don’t open the coop up early enough, all the chickens are trying (and often succeeding) to get out! They have even been going back to their boxes in their coop house to lay their eggs! Crazy chickens!

Score!

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Toby and I had to drive both trucks out to the Habitat store today for their half off all doors and windows sale!  We were able to pick up a front door (with a nice big window), back door, 4 interior room doors (antique looking!), all of the closet doors, and 4 big windows for $144!!!!!  The antique doors are solid 1920’s looking doors that had an old price tag on them of $150 each (we paid $5 each!).  Under one coat of peeling paint is a beautiful dark reddish wood!  So, we’ll sand them down and see what we get.  We also got two triangle shaped windows that will fit together to make a square, and one large trapezoid.  We’re going to try to do something artistic with them 🙂

I have occasionally written herbal articles for a regional paper called New Life Journal.  Each month they do an article on green building going on in the area.  Usually the houses, that they feature, though beautiful, are fairly large and expensive.  So, I mentioned our home project to the managing editor and she said she would be interested in doing a feature on our house when it is done!  We haven’t done the calculations yet, but I think we will have it all done (including solar stuff) for under 100K (maybe well under that, but we’ll see).

So, today is day 11 of the fast.  Physically, I’m still doing fine, but I really want some flavor in my life!  Everything makes me drool… Watching Kaia eat her animal crackers… Smelling a BBQ… anything.  Only 3 days left.  We’ll, then all I get is orange juice for a day and a half while I get my digestion going again… THEN, I will make a delicious, scrumptious, nutritious, vege, seaweed, miso soup! MMmmmm, I’m drooling again!

Today’s harvest

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As part of this fast, I want to start not just eating healthier, but more sustainably. Both Toby and I have talked about wanting to harvest as much as possible from our land. So, I got this fantastic book “From Crabgrass Muffins to Pine Needle Tea” by Linda Runyon. She lived in the Adirondack Mountains for 13 years without electricity or running water. She learned how to feed her family by harvesting, cooking, and preserving the wild foods that grew on her land. The book talks about lots of great plants, how to find them, along with recipes and nutritional values of the plants. (She’s coming out with a revision in a few weeks, so hold your horses if you want one.)

So, I’ve been inspired to harvest some of the foods on our land right now. Below are Lambs Quarters and Aster hanging up to dry.
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The top bag is Yellow Dock seed, and the bottom is Bull Thistle leaves. All of this stuff is going to be dried and ground into flour.
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Here are some steamed Bull Thistle Flowers. These I tossed in the freezer until I’m eating again.
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It’s interesting how I’m fasting to try to make food less of an issue in my life, yet all I think about when I’m fasting is food! Today (day 4) has been good. Yesterday I was sneezing my head off and very snotty. Today, my lymph is a little swollen and my head feels heavy. There’s lots of processing going on. 10 days to go…

Summer’s here!

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Happy (almost) first day of Summer everyone!! I always love the longest day of the year, but it also comes to me with some sadness. ‘Cause that means every day after it is getting shorter 🙁

Things are going well here at the homestead. The chickens are happy, Suki is enjoying time in the shade with her favorite bone. Unfortunately, our great friend and house-helper, Mattie, is moving back to Canada at the end of the month! He’s been an amazing help and support with the house so far and we will really miss him. Another friend may begin working for us in a few weeks. Plus, a few years ago, Toby helped install a veggie oil conversion kit in a school bus in Chapel Hill. Well, the woman who owns the school bus now lives near us and she wants to give a few days of work on our house to repay the favor!

Toby and I have started talking about whether or not we want to have another child. Part of me really wants to. I look at Kaia and I think “how could I not want another one. It’s so absolutely amazing to be a parent… to watch her grow and learn… the complete love I feel” and part of me is like “why would I ever want to put myself through that again?! The nausea of pregnancy, the immense weight gain, the pain and depression after the birth, the endless nights without sleep… ugh!!” So, you see, I am torn. Now that I finally have my energy and my sanity back (though unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll ever get my body back), it seems like having another child would be easy… ’cause I’m in a good place. But all that changes after not having slept in 2 years. Toby and I would both really like to adopt, but no one will approve us right now… you know – tiny cabin, out house, now shower, no money and all that. So, maybe in the future. Kaia is up for another child, without a doubt. She gives birth to some kind of pretend baby every day in preparation for the real thing 🙂

Baby or not, I’ve started trying to get a little more exercise. I’ve been getting up early to go out and hoop a little before Kaia wakes up. It’s been really nice hooping in the cool morning air. It puts me in a great mood for the rest of the day. I’ve also signed up for a workshop in July that I am really excited about. I hope it will get me into some sort of hooping routine! I continue to (slowly) get better, but I want more!! Here is a hooper doing some of the moves that we will be learning at the workshop.
Viriditas is going great! We are finally picking up! This week was booked. We have people from South Carolina, Eastern NC, and even a tourist from CT. coming in for the Maya Abdominal Massage. And Herb consultations have picked up too. Hopefully this is the start of something. Then maybe we can start paying off some business loans. Our Summer Newsletter is out if you want to see it.

Happy Solstice!

spaceship house

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Sorry for the long break! We’ve been a little busy (HA, like we ever have down time) 🙂

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Here is the house from afar… Second floor rafters are up! Woo Hoo!!

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This is a picture of the ceiling, looking up from the first floor near the center post.
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This is the sub floor of the second floor. We will be putting hardwood on top (we’ve gotten enough from the local hardwood floor dumpster to do the whole floor!! I have no idea why they throw out this great, perfect wood!)

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Looking down the stairwell into Kaia’s room.

make your own…

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Last week Kaia asked me why we didn’t chew gum. I told her it just wasn’t something we did. I was a huge gum addict when I was younger. I use to have a drawer in the fridge that I kept my gum in. My mom hated it! Mostly because it was chewed gum that I believed would regain it’s flavor if you cooled it down and then tried chewing it again. Anyway, at some point, I just stopped chewing gum. Now, with having Kaia, I think I didn’t want to get into it because I wasn’t ready to deal with gum in the hair, in the bed, stuck to furniture…

Anyway, last week when she went to play at her grandmother’s, Kaia came home with a pack of gum and she has been chomping on it for dear life. She loves it! Any chance she gets she asks me for another piece. And get this… She found a little corner in the fridge and stores it there… new and used gum! Now she wants to know how to blow bubbles (gum in the hair, here we come)!

So, looking at the ingredients in the gum (the pack she had was loaded with artificial sweeteners) I decided we were going to learn how to make our own and come up with our own special flavors. So, I ordered this and also got the ingredients to follow this recipe. We’ll see how they all turn out!  (Oh, by the way if you ever happen to get a wad of chewing gum stuck in your belly button, Q-tips work really well to get it out.  Just keep twisting it around and it will get it all out… 🙂
After looking up how to make gum, I got in the ‘makin’ mood. So, we decided to make some ice cream. Since we don’t have an ice cream maker, we followed both of these recipes for Pumpkin Ice Cream (also from the Leener’s site we got the gum recipe from… cool site!) and for Fruit Ice Cream (we used a frozen fruit mix at the end). They both turned out fantastic!!! Kaia is bouncing off the walls right now while Toby tries to get her into bed! (Mental note: no more ice cream right before bed!)

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Kaia, smiling like the nut she is, mixing the pumpkin ice cream.

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Here we are kneading the bags of fruit ice cream. Kaia has a cloth over hers to keep her hands from getting too cold. You can see the pink ice cream in the bag I am holding.

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Savoring the fruit ice cream. (No, she didn’t eat all of that! We put most of it back in the freezer.)

I think I am going to order her the “Play and Freeze” ice cream maker for her birthday.

OK,

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I also get furious about mandatory vaccinations.  I think we need to invest more money into education of the public and less into things like a mandatory HPV (herpes) vaccination for teen and preteen girls.  Especially when the results of the vaccination are like this:

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And we want this why????!!!

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It’s hard enough trying to fight the current stereotypes of todays world when trying to help my clients feel positive about their femininity and their monthly cycles… now we have this.  Tell me why I would want to stop myself from ever bleeding again, forcing my body to constantly think I am pregnant, and pretending that I don’t cycle with the moon?  And with research results like this, it sounds just peachy!

“Women who use Lybrel would not have a scheduled menstrual period, but will most likely have unplanned, breakthrough, unscheduled bleeding or spotting,” Shames said. The bleeding can last four to five days and may persist for a year…”

Mark your calendars

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Would everyone please mark you calendars to email me next year to make sure I get my butt into the woods the first week in May.  The woods are bustin’ out!!

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Kaia and I went to the annual WNC Herb Festival  today and shopped for 4 hours!  I gave her 25 one-dollar bill in a little purse so that she could buy the herbs she wanted in her garden and keep track of her money.  She did a great job, and so many of the vendors thought that she was so cute with her little purse, that they cave her stuff for free.  For her garden she got: Sweet Annie, Lavender, Wood Betony, Dill, Fennel, a roma tomato, a bottle gourd, and sweet grass.  For my garden, I got:  Stevia, Wood Betony, Two Tomatoes, basil, Feverfew, Rue, Marigolds, Blue Vervain, Motherwort, … I think that is it…  Oh, I also got a hops vine… but that will go in near the house once it is done.
Sunday I leave for a week of studying with Rosita Arvigo so I can learn (professional) Maya Abdominal Massage.  It won’t be in belize, unfortunately.  It’s in NH, but that will give me a chance to see relatives that I haven’t seen in many years!

Woo Hoo!

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Howdy!

Ok, so I wrote an article yesterday about harvesting herbs/weeds from your back yard that can help you with seasonal allergies and sent it in to BackHome Magazine to see if they might be interested in it. Today, I got an email back from the editor saying that they are interested and would like to publish it in their Sept/Oct issue!!! Woo Hoo!! I’m goin’ national, baby!! No, really, the biggest boost to the ego isn’t that I want to be famous, it’s that feeling “yeah, you know what… you do have something good to say that others might benefit from”. I’d better go renew my subscription!! 🙂

In other ‘big’ news, check out this mondo egg! The one on the left is our standard xtra large variety egg!! One of our Americaunas (poor thing) laid the one on the right. Toby had it for breakfast this morning and said it was a double yolker! Ouch!
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Here are the latest house pictures I’ve got. The first two are of the rafters that have been going up. The third is from our party this weekend when we had a center post raising! It weighed ~600 pounds, so we needed a bunch of hands! It’s so amazing to see this progress and to know that this will be our home and that so much friendship and love has gone into it!

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dinner

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This is what Kaia and I harvested for dinner last night.

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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!!

Dandelion Mead and broken fridge

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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.

……..

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!!

this weeks progress

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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 🙂

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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.

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Dreams

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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!

Hitting the big time :-)

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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!

Rejoice and Sing!

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Guess what I did yesterday???

I made Bread!!

With my Bread machine!

Which requires electricity!!

OH YEAHH!!

We have electricity! After 10 months living without electricity, we are finally wired up! (not to solar, unfortunately. But we will get there!) We have a pole out at the new house site so that we can run our electric tools and equipment. So, Toby wired the cabin for a few lights and outlets! It’s so nice only having to pull a string to turn the lights on! I can’t tell you how many times in the last 10 months I have mumbled to myself (or screamed out loud) “I am not a fucking pioneer!!” It’s amazing how different the house feels with lights (and the smell of bread baking)! Very exciting!!

Toby begins laying the block for some of the exterior (underground) walls tomorrow! We are expecting 50 and 60 degree weather this week!!

Back in the saddle again

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I’ve taken a little while to catch up after being gone last weekend! I spent 5 days in Boulder, CO at the American Herbalist’s Guild Symposium. It was fantastic!! My head was so full of information when I left that I had a hard time relaxing! The first day I went to an intensive with Rosita Arvigo and Shelley Torgove, about Maya abdominal massage for displaced uteri (is that the plural of uteruses?) Then I went to another intensive with Amanda McQuaid Crawford about Women’s Herbs. Both were outstanding, but Rosita’s left me wanting to get trained in Maya Abdominal Massage! (Uh oh, Toby… more schooling for me!)

For the next three days, I sat in talks with famous herbies like David Winston, Jonathan Treasure, Mary Bove, Aviva Romm, James Snow, Matthew Wood, Eric Yarnell, Leslie and Michael Tierra, Roy Upton, and many more. I felt like I was absorbing knowledge by just sitting there 🙂 I learned about Bringing Spiritual Practice into Clinical Practice, Pediatric Herbs, Eclectic Treatments for URI’s, and so much more! By the time the day was over, I wasn’t worth much and usually went back to the room to go to sleep. I did get out to see Boulder a little and enjoyed the city. It reminds me of Asheville, except it is much more brown (not a lot of lush green like I am use to).

There were 7 students from Aviva Romm’s Women’s Educator Course there. So we all got together for lunch on Sat. It was nice to finally meet Aviva in person and to meet some of the students behind the course.

On the shuttle from the hotel to the airport, I sat next to Mary Bove. We had a great time talking about cats, skiing, Eclectic herbalists, raising kids, and more. It was really neat to meet all of the people who wrote the books that I have learned a lot of my herbalism from, and whose books helped me through all of Kaia’s early illnesses.

At the airport I met up with Aviva and her family again. (Aviva’s husband, Tracy, and two of their daughters were also there. Really sweet family!) I have a great time talking with her. She is very easy-going, and she and her husband both have such warm, welcoming personalities. Oh, and they homeschooled all of their kids (they have 4), and are still alive and sane! So, I have hope 🙂

Speaking of Kaia, she is loving school. Sometime, I think too much! She goes there and learns how to behave like a ‘good girl’ then comes home and rebels. She is challenging my authority left and right! That perfect little angel who we have been able to take out to restaurants since the day she was born spit water on me the last time we went out for sushi!! She is also rebelling about the potty training thing. She concentrates so hard on what she is playing with that she refuses to stop and go potty. So, she ends up going in her pants way too often. We have finally resorted to the “sticker reward chart”. Everytime she tells us that she has to go to the bathroom and doesn’t go in her pants, she gets a sticker. After 10 (or what ever number we choose) stickers, she gets a treat (preferably not candy!). It’s working fairly well so far.

What else… no eggs from the chickens so far… they are 19 weeks old…

We turned our house plans into the county and they said we need to get them stamped by a structural engineer to prove they are sound. Toby is going to meet with one on Tuesday. If all that goes well, hopefully we will have ‘approval’ to start the building process.

The storage building is done and all of our stuff is moved in. I don’t have pictures yet, but it is really cute!

Girl time

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It’s been a fun filled few days! Toby is away at a wedding, so Kaia and I have taken the time alone to do anything but house projects! We have played, gone to the mall(!), snuggled up in bed and watched movies! It’s been really nice for both of us to have a little down time. I will be at the AHG symposium next week and I hope Toby takes the time for some down time too!

We did have a great find for the house though. Kaia and I visited a building that use to house a marble/granite cutting school. The school moved and left all of their granite… free for the taking. SO, we loaded up the Jetta with everything I could carry (probably enough to do a marble kitchen counter top and bathroom sink) and plan to head back there when Toby is in town so we can get the heavy stuff! There were some pieces that are 6ft by 9 ft in perfect condition! It’s just that it would take a crane to lift them and very strong truck to carry them. I can’t wait to see what this house looks like when it is done!

We tried to turn the house plans in for code approval on Thursday, but there was one paper we still needed to fill out. So, hopefully next week!

Today I attended a class on 5 phase theory and how to apply it to my clinical practice, as well as in my own life. For those of you that don’t know, 5 phase theory is Chinese based and stems from the belief that everything in this world is a part of the ‘one’. Broken into 5 non-stagnant phases there is Water, Wood, Fire, Earth, and Metal. They are all a part of us, and often times we may have imbalances in them. This class really helped me see how they all embody certain aspects of life and that they are in constant motion. Hard to explain in a blog, but really cool stuff!

A little Root with your sweets?

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Kaia and I spent today preparing for next weekends “RootsFest!” that I am helping with. In celebration of the first annual National Herb Day (Oct. 14th), we (the NC chapter of the American Herbalists Guild) are putting on a festival. I am working the kids booth for a little while and wanted to do more than just have them color or something. So, I made up some Ginger syrup, “root beer” syrup, and home-made marshmallows (with Marshmallow root). I am going to let the kids try all of them and talk a little about how marshmallows, ginger-ale, and root beer all use to be made from herb roots. I thought it would be fun. I will post the recipes when I type them up.

The storage building is going up much more quickly than the cabin did. It is also a 12×16′ structure. Last weekend Toby and Eric worked on the foundation.

This weekend, Toby and his dad worked on the walls. It’s ready for the roof and siding now! Yahoo!!

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We spent this weekend with some wonderful friends from Chapel Hill. They called last minute to see if they could come up, hang out, and help with the house! We really do have some amazing friends! We did a little of the siding, but Toby is getting really tired of it, so we decided to start on the storage building. We weren’t planning on building one, but Toby’s mom offered to help build one as Toby’s b-day gift. So, we figure, now we will have a space to keep our tools (which are getting rusty out in the elements), and put all of our stuff that we are currently paying to keep in storage. I’ll post pictures later. But for now, for your viewing pleasure, I have some lovely ladies who would like to say “hi!”


On the left is Faye, our Speckled Sussex. Ruby, the big ol’ mean Delaware is the white one


This is Honey, one of the Americaunas.


This is Sweety, the friendliest of our chickens, and the one who comes to get us when she wants to go to bed!


On the Left is Spike, our Buff Orpington, and Ruby again.
Missing are Rudy and Ralph, the black Australorps. They weren’t in a photographic mood.
Kaia said, and I quote, “We should name our Australorps ‘Black’ and ‘Black’, since they are black” 🙂

I went out for a walk the other evening and spotted some new mushrooms. The first one was under a dead tree in a large orange patch. I believe it is called an orange peel cup fungus (Aleuria aurantia), also called “orange fairy cups”. It’s supposed to be edible, but I am too chicken to try it.

I think this is a Pigskin Puffball

I don’t know what this one is. I think it is a polypore of some sort. It was growing out of a dead tree and most of them had no visible stem, or offset stems.

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??

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!!

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).