Category Archives: Sustainable Living

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!!

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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!

Newest pics

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OK, so here are the most recent pictures of our little cabin. If you walk in the front door you will look into our living room:

If you walk across the room to the futon and turn around, you will see our kitchen:

If you turn your head just slightly to the left, you can see the dining area:

If you climb up the stairs and look you see our bedroom (the bed is up on a platform so that we have lots of storage underneath):

Turn your head slightly to the left and you will be in Kaia’s room (her bed is on a platform too. The rooms are seperated by a large bookshelf):

If you walk into Kaia’s room and turn around, you will see the closet and my office space, as well as the stairs (behind the bureau).

This is a picture of the outhouse we are building… Still not done yet, but our first party is tomorrow night, so it has to be done by then! Kaia wants to paint it purple with sparkles… anyone know if a good source of purple, sparkly paint?? 🙂

We had been keeping track of all our expenses on a spreadsheet to figure out how much this house has cost us, but a magnet go dropped on our computer and erased the hard drive… SO, my best guesstimate is that this hosue has cost us somewhere between $2K – 3,500 to build (depending on if you include the lost wages for Toby going to collect wood from arkansas and all that jazz.) Of course there is also the cost of the land and the road being built, but that will also be repaid to us as we sell off spots for the ‘community’ we build. Not too bad, eh?

Yes, I’m still here!

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Hey there!! Long time no blog! I know, I know… I need to post more pictures! So, if any of you dedicated readers out there are are really that excited to see our progress, I invite you to come on out and set up some solar panels and a satellite system so that we can get internet out here! Otherwise… you’ll have to wait for the big installment. 🙂

Things are chugging right along here at Dandelion Homstead! We are finally starting to feel like we are home. We have a week of parties this week, so we have to get things in order… at least a little. Wed. night some friends are coming over for a little Summer Solstice celebration. Thursday night, I am having a bunch of herbies up there, including Matthew Wood (who is teaching a weekend class in Asheville this weekend! woohoo!) for a Solstice celebration. Then, Saturday, Kaia will be 3 and we are having our 3rd Annual Mid-Summer’s Day KaiaFest! The cool thing is that everyone knows we have no power, no water (our well pump died last Saturday), and just a bucket to poop in. So, I don’t feel like I have to host this huge shindig. All the parties will be laid back and go-with-the-flow.

We have put in a little kitchen and found a two-burner gas stove top that will fit perfectly in our small space. The closet has been built up stairs. We have decided to go with “pallet” shingles for the exterior siding. We’ve found lots of pallets (free) and are cutting up the wood to make shingles. Then we dip them in stain and put them up. It’s going to be SOOO CUTE!! I will post pictures once we get that started. We have also started (and will finish tomorrow) the ‘out house’ It is close to the compost pile so you don’t have to carry the buckets too far. (Yes, I will put a crescent moon on the door!)

The day old chicks are set to arrive on the 26th! I can’t wait to get them set up! I haven’t seen the coop we are getting yet (toby’s brother is giving us one) but I hear it is pretty swank 🙂 I got Juliete di Bairacli Levy’s book on herbal care of farm animals and it is fantastic! It has a section on Bee care and chickens (like how to use elder branches to splint a broken chicken leg!)

The bees are ok. One hive, the one with the laying worker, died. Toby added a new package of bees to the hive and they seem to be doing well. The other hive is without a queen (the one that hatched a queen with a missing wing). So, we got some brood from Toby’s Bro. and put it in the hive to give them a chance to grow another queen. So far, no dice… so we may need to buy a new queen for that hive.

Shesh, what else has been going on??? OH, we were out for a walk the other day and noticed all these squashed, red berries on the ground. They looked like cherries but I didn’t see a tree anywhere, until I looked up… way up!!! This cherry tree has to be at least 50 feet tall, and full of cherries!! Unfortunately, we can’t reach any of them! I may go throw some bed sheets out there and see if I can catch any! Oh, and we just began getting our first black raspberries from a little vine by the pond.

The garden is doing really well considering I have put absolutely no effort into it since I planted the seedlings. Our tomatos have blooms, the squash is growing, we are eating kale, chard, pea sprouts, lambs quarters, plantain, and other yummies almost daily. The strawberries are done for this season, but we got a ton out of them for their first year in the ground!

School is going great! Only 6 weeks left until I can officially call myself a “clinical herbalist”. I have started seeing clients at school and it feels really good. I am going to try to have my paper (on proving myself as an herbalist) published about the same time I graduate to see if I can drum up some new clients that way. I have also decided to use my tattoo design as my logo (tree of life with a moon behind it and a spirit in the tree). I think that goes well with the name “Sacred Forest Herbals”.

Update

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Things at the house are going pretty well. We had planned on being fully moved by now, but, well we all know about the best-laid plans… We do have the little house mostly set up, and we are living there now. We still have some stuff at the apartment but hope to finish the move tomorrow. K got really sick this past week and spent 6 days with a high fever. Even with Tylenol, her fever would come right back up. It’s scary how helpless Toby and I felt! I know the stress of the move didn’t help any of us either! Kaia is doing better now and we are all settling into the new place. We have so many projects ahead of us, we aren’t sure what to do next, but it will be one of the following: set up some water system for the house, set up a bathroom, set up a solar system, clean out that big tub I got so we can take baths (outdoors:-)), clean up the extra lumber from the front yard, begin finalizing the ‘big’ house plans, build a deck, move the chicken coop to the land…and more. Wow, living a simply life is complicated!

I spent yesterday at the Medicines from the Earth conference put on every year by Gaia Herbs. It was awesome! The conference lasts for 4 days, but I only went today (too much to do at home). I went to talks about Herb/Nutrient Combinations by Bill Mitchell, Medicinal/Invasive Herbs to use for Energy Production by James Duke, and one on the mind/body connection in relation to illness and stress by Omar Cruz. All amazing talks!

“Eat Shit and Die”

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I heard a statement in the news the other day that makes me want to scream!! Generation Y, the young kids today (which includes my baby) are predicted to be the first generation to die before their parents! You know why? Because of all the shit we feed them! Kids under 20 are already starting to have problems with obesity, diabetes, cholesterol, and other illnesses that we aren’t supposed to see until old age (if we see them at all). So here’s what I know… in the 1920’s people were eating fresh, whole foods; foods that were produced by the farmer next door. In the 1940’s all the men went to war, all the women went to work in the factories for the war. New chemicals were developed in these factories… chemicals that include pesticides and preservatives. It was an effort to produce more food and make it last longer. A good thought… unfortunately, they couldn’t have predicted the repercussions! In the past 3 generations, we have seen the invention of processed foods, preservatives, pesticides, herbicides, chemical hormones, food colorings and other additives. Not to mention the invention of the TV that we veg out in front of to eat these processed chemical foods! In the past 3 generations, we have also seen an increase of cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity, reproductive issues, and inflammatory diseases. I wholeheartedly believe that it is directly related to what we are eating. As a society we are over fed but under nourished! No, I cannot sit here and tell you that I cook every meal from my garden, or that I don’t get that box of Mac and Cheese on occasion. But, as of this moment, I am making it my duty to be damn sure that my daughter doesn’t die before I do because of what I fed her! I challenge all the parents out there to do the same! Let’s start eating more whole foods, unprocessed foods, foods that haven’t been chemically altered! Let’s start buying foods locally, that aren’t adulterated with preservatives, or hormones. I know it takes more effort to eat this way. Believe me… I know! I guilt myself every time I pour my daughter that bowl of processed, high sugar cereal. But, what could be more worth the effort of healthy, whole food eating than the life of your children?? If you need a good place to start, I would recommend Sally Fallon’s book “Nourishing Traditions”, or any other whole foods cook book (any other recommendations?)

Chickens

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We are going to be ordering some chickens with some friends of ours. They will be our ‘foster care’ for the chicks until they are ready to be outside full time (since we don’t have electricity right now for a heat lamp). Here are the breeds I am looking at: Buff Orpington, Sussex, Rhode Island, Ameraucana, Black Australorp, and Delaware. I’d love to hear your thoughts on any of these breeds (we want generally good layers, but definitely gentle/”good with kids” breeds). Also, any books you might recommend for raising free-range chickens?

This Weekends Progress

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Just got back from the land a little while ago. We are pretty much on schedule… and exhausted! We put up lots of insulation this weekend, and I am so itchy! I hate that stuff! We also have all the tar paper up, and I painted the doors and primed the windows. (We put a door on both floors so that once we move from the ‘little house’ to the big house and convert the little house into offices, we will both have seperate entrances.)

The garden is going well. I think we will have some red strawberries sometime in the next week or two! This weekend I planted tomatoes, eggplant, squash, melons, peppers, basil, oregano, onions, skullcap, mullein, and chamomile – all from the organic gardening class I was taking. And the oats, vetch, peas, and clover that I seeded the garden field with are all coming up.

One of our neighbors was trying to take down some of the trees we put over the dirt bike paths on our land so that he could ride. I went down to talk with him to ask him not to ride in that area since there are endangered plants there (the lady slippers patch is right where he keeps trying to ride!). He was very abrupt and informed me (while riding away) that it was his buddy’s property and not ours and we need to check out the “blue prints” and stay on our own property and he will stay on his. Well, “Porky” (yes, that is what he told me to call him!), I checked out the ‘blue prints’ and that is our property!! So, now Toby is going to go have a talk with him and walk the property line so he knows exactly where it is (and so do we), so that there won’t be any questions. I think he was really abrupt because he knew he had just been caught doing something he shouldn’t have! But, man, I hate it when people blow me off like that and make want to go beat them upside the head with a wooden spoon!!

On a doggie note, we let Suki run around off-leash this weekend to see how she would do (she is not good with listening to commands and likes to run off). Well, she took little morning jaunts and then stayed around with us almost the whole time. She even came with me on a walk Sat. evening! It was pretty cool. But, this evening, when I went down to talk with “porky”, Suki discovered that the neighbors have two little girls and kept trying to go back over to play with them. I don’t think their mom, or her yappy Pomeranian cared for that!

Oh, and I’m not sure what is going on with our bees. One hive looks like it may have a laying worker bee, ’cause there are a ton of drones but few workers (a laying worker bee may take over if there is no queen to lay eggs, but all they can lay are drones… so there are no bees to work the hive.) The other hive was the one that swarmed, so they have a new queen, but we found her ourside of the hive yesterday, unable to fly because part of one wing was missing. We think it was the new queen on her maiden/mating flight and she couldn’t fly. So, both hives are in trouble. We are going to give them a little more time to see if they can fix the situation.

Preparing for simple living

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I had just put Kaia down for her nap and was thinking of taking a few minutes to myself to read. But, I didn’t have anything interesting laying around. Then, there was a knock at the door… UPS with a package for me! Inside was an early Mother’s Day gift. Build Your Own Earth Oven and The Humanure Handbook! Cool, Eh?? So, I have started reading the Humanure book, ’cause I think that will apply before the oven book 🙂 I’m already thinking about the design of our cob oven though… maybe a dragon, with the chimney being his ‘fire breathing mouth’ and his tail curving around to make a seat???

too tired…

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So tired…. can’t type…. arms too sore…. must sleep…

The upstairs walls go up


The roofing begins


The roof is almost done (No thanks to all the rain today!!)


Most of the sheathing on the first floor is up.

We are soooo tired!


The bees have a new home too.

Herb walk

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My class came up to the land today for an herb walk. We identified lots of beautiful plants, but check out what we found!!

Huge Morels!!

Spotting more morels

I love this picture! Patrick is such a forest man!


And we found a little patch of baby ginseng. There should have been a mama somewhere… The land is perfect for ginseng, but I think it has been totally harvested out and is now just starting to repopulate.

Oh the homefront, we moved the bees to the land and they seem to be doing fine. We have 4 hives now! Our most active hive had to be split once because it was so full, and then it still swarmed, but we caught it!!

We hope to have all the walls and tin roof up by the end of this weekend!

The most wonderful day!

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I woke up early yesterday, knowing we had a long day of building ahead of us, and went out to take a walk. I decided to walk around the land to places I hadn’t gone before. So, down the hill I go into the rhododendron area thinking, “what am I going to find here? Nothing grows around the rhododendron.” But then, the flora changed and the forest opened up and I saw her… Pink Lady Slipper! Then… I saw another! And another! (I have never found more than 9 lady slippers at one site. She was severely over harvested in the 1900’s for medicine, and has never recovered. She has a symbiotic relationship with the microbes in the soil and only grows in specific areas and is extremely hard to transplant.) So, I began bawling when my count got to over 160 lady slippers, and I decided to stop counting and just enjoy!! There were so many that I had to watch where I stepped so as not to step on them! I can’t begin to explain the feeling I had yesterday morning walking on this amazing, sacred land! I am pretty dure that I am going to change my herb consultations name from “Dandelion Forest Herbals” to Sacred Forest Botanicals”. Good thing I haven’t gotten business cards yet 🙂


Anyone know what this one is??? I have heard that there are still wild, but rare, cannabis species around… and I think I have one growing in my new garden!! It sure looks and smells like it… or so I’m told 🙂

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.

Happy weekend!

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Graduation was this past week and we had sooo much fun! All the students and some of the teachers had a camp out at this great house in the boonies. We stayed up until 3am, had a lazy morning cooking and playing (I brought my hoops and got almost everyone hooked, and there was a trampoline there too) and had a wonderful ceremony. One of our teachers (she specialized in energetic herbalism) conducted a hand-fasting for each student and a chosen plant. For the next year, we are to learn more about the plant we were hand-fasted to, in every way we can. She said that when she meditated on me, Rock Rose (Cistus ladaniferus) came to her. So, for the next year I will make this plant my ally. I’m excited, first because this is so cool, and second because I know nothing about this plant except that it is one of the main ingredients in the flower essence “Rescue Remedy“. I ordered the essential oil so that I can work with that too.

Here’s a picture of my class and some of the teachers. All of us but one are going on to level three (and that’s only because one student just had a baby and is taking some time off).

Some of you have asked about the school I go to…
There are three official herb schools, and many others that hold classes, in Western North Carolina. This area really attracts healers, so there are all kinds of alternative education programs around here. The school that I go to, and teach for, is the Mountain Spirit School of Herbalism (MSSH) (We just changed our name from the Southeast Center for Herbal Healing, so don’t get confused by the web page). I took my first classes in 1999 at the North Carolina School of Natural Healing, which was being run by another herbalist at the time. I went on to open Full Circle Herbs, but kept it very small. This past September, I met up with Mimi Middleton, who is the director at MSSH. She was one of the first graduating classes from Tai Sophia with her Masters in Herbal Medicine. (Tai Sophia is the only school in the US that is approved to give Master’s degrees in Herbal Medicine). Anyway, she is an amazing woman to talk with and a fantastic teacher. She asked me if I would be interested in teaching some basic classes for the school, but I didn’t feel confident or competent enough to teach. So, instead, I decided to take the Level 2 class that was about to start, and I am so glad I did. Though some of the stuff was review, most of it was absolutely amazing and educational and stimulating! So, now, I have decided to go on to level 3. This is the final level and I will begin seeing clients in the clinical setting as an herbalist. I’m really excited about this! I have seen clients before, but I have never had a course like this and I think it will be extremely helpful. My plan, when I am done, is to see clients part-time out on the land. I will have a small apothacary out there and a great big herb garden. I am also about to begin teaching for the school. The next level one course is beginning next week and I will be teaching a few classes. All of this is really amazing, especially since I never thought I would find a place as an herbalist when we moved back to Asheville.

Now, for those of you who could care less about herbs, and are only checking this blog to see how my Chia Heads are doing, well, here you go:

Check it out!!! The roots grew through the panty hose without a problem, but the little sprouts couldn’t. So, I had to do a little brain surgery and cut a hole in the top. I love how the hair style changes depending on the angle of the sun :-) Kaia and I will probably plant them for the Equinox on Monday. We also plan to dye eggs and plant some flower seeds. What are you all planning for Ostara?

Purple, sparkly fairy dress

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Last week, I promised K that I would make her a “purple, sparkly fairy dress” when she got over the chicken pox. So, yesterday, we went to the fabric store and she picked out what she wanted for her dress, and I spent the afternoon sewing. I have to say that I am very impressed with what resulted, ’cause I don’t know how to sew! I took the basic idea from another dress that K has and came up with this:

Isn’t that awesome!! If I thought I could even come close to repeating it, I would make one for myself too!! :-) And K likes pockets, so I made two in the front for her:

And here are her wings in the back. They are held on by a button, so she can take them off if she doesn’t feel like flying:

This week is also graduation for my herb school! Then, in one month, I will start the clinical preceptorship and begin seeing clients. I have seen clients before, but taking an ‘official’ course makes me feel more confident in my skills and more qualified to teach other herb students. I will be teaching Male and Female Anatomy and Physiology, Respiratory A&P, and select herbs to go along with those to the first level students that are beginning school in two weeks!

Oh, and on the beekeeping front, both of our hives made it through the winter and seem to be holding strong! We hope to move them up to our new land soon so that they can take advantage of all the Tulip poplars out there during blooming season!

Oh (again), and the Chia heads are growing!!

pox and such

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Well, I think we are over the rough part of chicken pox with K. She developed full blown symptoms last Thursday (fever and some small spots) and has had a rough weekend. But she is such a trooper! She loves taking her oatmeal baths and she helped me make a lotion to soothe her spots. She is even using visualization to help! (I told her to imagine a purple, sparkly sunshine just outside of her body and that when she takes a deep breath, the sunshine goes into her body and warms her up and helps her feel better. She was so cute… taking deep breaths and trying to concentrate on the purple sunshine.)
Here she is taking a little break on the couch:

Today, K helped me make some home-made chia pets. I don’t know how they will work, but it was fun anyway. We took old panty hose and put a layer of red clover seeds on the bottom. Then we stuffed it with seed starting soil and the end of a wick (I used some yarn since I didn’t have a real ‘wick’). Then, we tied up the ‘head’ and stiched on some buttons for eyes, nose and mouth. Then I dunked the whole thing in water and for a minute and placed it over a jar with water and am letting it sit in the window. I’ll let you know if it works. I think the hose may be to tightly woven and the seeds won’t be able to break through…

We also went up to the land this weekend. We had hoped to camp, but with K feeling under the weather, we decided against it. Still waiting on the Atty. to finish the paper work before we can close. Hopefully, next week.

SCORE!

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A friend of ours clued us in to some free house stuff in a local warehouse. We just came back from there with our car loaded down with brand new tile and double paned windows (just the glass. We will still need to frame it, but still, it’s free!) There are ~50 more double paned glass panels left, we just didn’t have the room for them in the car. So, hopefully we can go back and get more!!

Oh, and this friend also has an almost new chicken coop to give us. It was at a house in the city limits and the neighbors complained about the chickens. So, now it’s ours. We just have to have a way to haul it to the land, and hope that JA’s (that stand for Jerk Asses! They are no longer Jerk Butts, I have upgraded them to official asses!) don’t destroy it. Maybe we will keep it off of the land until we get the steel gate up. I can’t wait to see them try to pull that thing down!