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.

Day of Adventure

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Kaia and I and two of our friends met a bunch of other homeschoolers on a goat farm tour today.  We drove ~1 hour to the farm and planned on having the afternoon to play.  But, soon after getting there I started feeling light headed and had to sit down.  I broke into a cold sweat and the world around me started getting dark.  Some of the mamas, and the farm owner helped me inside to the couch and got me some cold rags.  I laid down, drank water, munched on some crackers and fruit and started feeling better.  So, after ~15 minutes I got back up to join the grew.  I hadn’t walked too far when it started again.  I was having trouble walking in a straight line.  So I went to lay down in their small shop store and the farm owner (who also happens to be an ICU nurse) took my BP (which was fine) and offered me some gateraide and ice cold cloths.  I felt totally fine when I was laying down… I’m not pregnant, I don’t have a virus, it wasn’t heat exhaustion, it wasn’t my blood sugar… the only thing I can think is that it was vertigo.  I never had any issues with vertigo until a month ago when I was at my Maya Abdominal Massage class and I started getting dizzy when I laid down.  Supposedly, there are particles moving around in my inner ear and they cause dizziness with a change of posture.  So, I wonder if with all the hills we went over and all the turning my head and neck to deal with the girls in the back of the car that maybe some of the particles moved and made the vertigo worse.  Either way, the girls had a blast milking the mama goats and feeding the babies, and my friend was nice enough to take pictures for me.  On the way back we ran into a tremendous rain/hail storm that was amazing.

here are some pics:

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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.

When the cat’s away, the mouse will clean!

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Why is it that when Toby goes out of town I get things done?  Maybe it’s that I don’t expect to have help with anything, so I do what ever needs to be done.  Which, in this case was:

  • Get the car completely detailed as it hasn’t been washed in ~4 years
  • Wash the dishes
  • Deep clean the kitchen
  • Clean Kaia’s room
  • Put away Kaia’s winter clothes and tidy her clothing drawers
  • Tidy/organize the whole house!
  • Organize the front porch
  • Take everything out of the house downstairs, sweep and mop the floors
  • Bring all the food compost scraps covering the kitchen counter to the compost bin
  • Bring the dead snake (thanks Suki) and the bird carcass (again, thanks suki) to the compost bin
  • Take off all the recycling and trash
  • Strain the kefir
  • Spend the afternoon with Kaia at a school picnic
  • There’s more, but I can’t remember it all!

And that was just today!!!

Tomorrow, we have a birthday party, hiking, maybe we will start planting her flower garden…

If I just had a little help (to lift the big beams), I could have the new house done by the time he comes home! 🙂

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…”

second floor

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Toby was hard at work while I was away this past week. Here’s the engineering feat he has been constructing:
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here you can see the beginning of the joists that will hold up the second floor.

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this is the view from the inside! The flooring will go on top of these joists, so the will be an exposed part of our first floor ceiling. Does that make sense?
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this is looking down on the girders from the second floor, right above the main post.

progress

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Here is this weeks progress.  All but two rafters are up on the first floor.  Next, the floor joists for the second floor (which will come up from the smaller inner circle).

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All the blue stuff is insulation that is a part of the living roof.

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!!

Fridgidare, you rock!

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After a 4 foot nose dive onto a concrete statue, our fridge still works!!! So, I spent the greater part of yesterday evening cleaning out the egg, dirt and ash (it also fell into our wood stove ash bucket) and now everything is back in. Then Toby and I had ‘a good ol’fashioned outhouse raising’, cleaned it up and staked it into the ground! No more tipping over! We also strapped the fridge to the porch and staked the chicken coop down too…. just in case!

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!

Pink Eggs

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So a month or so back we had a pink egg in our bunch (did I mention this?).  I thought that maybe one of the chickens may have just started laying a little late.  But, since then, nothing.  So, I figured it was just an egg without as much pigment.  Well, yesterday we got another pink egg!  Today, I went looking in the boxes and we has 2 blue and 3 dark brown.  I left them all in there to see if we could actually have a 6 egg day (never had all the chickens lay in one day yet).  Lo and behold, Faye jumps up in there and lays another pink egg!  So, it looks like I have found the culprit.  Faye is a pink egg layer and has only layed 3 eggs so far!  I wonder if she just got a really late start and is finally getting going because of the warm weather.  What ever it is, I really like the color of the eggs!!

Spring has sprung!

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I can’t believe the weather around here right now! It has been in the 70’s for the past week and we have kept our windows open at night! NICE!

With the warm, clear weather, we were able to move ~20 tons of gravel (by hand, with a shovel and wheel barrel!) into the house. It is put down over the leveled ground. On top of the gravel we now have insulation, water proofing, wire mesh, and radiant floor tubing. (A friend of mine makes orgonite, so I may throw some of that in there too, before we pour the concrete. I don’t know much about it, but it sounds cool and it can’t hurt to incorporate some crystals into the house, right?) Tomorrow we hope to have the inspections (for the foundation and for the mechanics of the radiant flooring), then the slab will be poured on Friday!!! Wahoo!!! We are having the color mixed directly into the concrete and then we will put a sealant on top so it will by kinda shiny. I can’t wait!!

Oh, I just posted the first Viriditas newsletter. It has a nice Nettles recipe if you are interested.

This weekend we are hosting a Maya Abdominal Massage Self-Care class based on the teachings of Rosita Arvigo (and Don Elijio Panti, a mayan healer). I can’t wait! This is something I have been wanting to do for a while! In May, I head up to NH for a professional training class. Then I can offer this to my clients. The basis for this massage is that it helps to strengthen muscles and ligaments in the abdomen so that the organs ‘fit’ in the right places. For example, if your uterus is ‘retroverted’ (tilted backwards) this may cause bowel pressure, chronic constipation, painful cramping during menses, old blood to be held in the uterus, infertility… the list goes on. So, this massage helps to get things back in place and relieve symptoms. As I see it, it also increases effective blood and energy flow so that the herbs I give to my clients can get to where they need to go. (No point in giving my clients uterine herbs if the blood flow to the uterus is lacking or bowel herbs if there is decreased energy flow there, right).

Here’s a bunch of pictures–
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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!

Large Marge

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I think there were 20 times this past week where I said to myself, “oh, I should blog about this…” and now I can’t remember what those things are!

Oohhh, I remember one! Ok, so two nights ago, we were all in bed sleeping when Toby bounces out of bed yelling (well, he may not have been yelling, but to a completely asleep me, it seemed like yelling) “Someone is coming up our driveway!” Now this may not seem like a big deal to you, but we are the last house at the end of the last road on the end of a larger road, and no one comes up our drive at night unless they are looking for trouble. So, I look out the window and see this mass of lights coming up the road to us and spot lights moving all around! At this point, I had really only been out of dream state for ~10 seconds and my first thought is “OH MY GOD! IT’S A UFO!” I felt like I was still dreaming, but all I could think of was protecting my family! I followed Toby downstairs and grabbed my phone and dialed 911. I held my finger on the ‘send’ button while Toby went outside to investigate the lights, which were by now directly in front of our house. My heart was pounding and I was trying to think of how we were going to survive (remember, all of this happened within ~40 seconds, so I’m still a little loopy from being asleep). Within a minute, Toby was back in the house giving me the low down. Turns out it was the power company (with their huge truck with lots of lights, a crane, and spot lights on top. (It sure looked like a UFO!) They said the power was out on our street and how could we not have noticed?? (It was only 11:30, even though we thought it was 4 in the morning.) Toby didn’t mention to him that we only have a couple of lights and only just got electricity this past month. Toby headed back out with a flash light to try to help them locate the tree that brought the power lines down while I headed back upstairs to try to calm down. Still, I waited at the window until Toby came back inside, cause all I could think about was that part in PeeWee’s Big Adventure when he gets out of the semi-trailer and the truck driver says “tell ‘em Large Marge sent ya’” and it turns out she has been dead for two years (you remember that?). Whew, what a night!

Oh, so it turns out we may have some new neighbors… in ol’ Junk Man’s place. The land has been for sale for a while, but we met two ladies who have it under contract and hope to close on it next week! They are very sweet, friendly and love canning! I’m excited!!

Today, T, K, and I headed up to the land above us that is under contract (that I think is going to be mass developed) and dug up some lilac and elder plants. I wish we could dig them all up and move them to our land so they won’t be plowed under! At least we will save some of them!

Faye is doing great, by the way. Pretty much back to normal.

Toby shaved off his bushy beard and cut his hair!! I love it!! (I’m not a facial hair kinda girl) I think I might wax my legs in response 🙂

Not so helpful dog

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3/8–Two nights ago, we came home to find Faye (our speckled sussex chicken) injured in front of the house. She had gotten out of the coop and Suki (our dog who has learned not to kill chickens, retrieved her for us and brought her to the house. Unfortunately, in the process, Faye was severely injured. Her back was moist from where Suki had held her. But, when I lifted the feathers, her skin came right off. There was a 6×4 inch strip between her wings that could lift off of her back. I pretty much thought she would die that night. But, I made a tea with everything I could think of (chamomile, yarrow, echinacea, goldenseal…) to help cleanse and heal the wound. We bathed her injury and kept her in the house the first night. I sent a frantic email to Rosemoon, who called me up and gave me some hope (THANKS!) Faye was eating and had a good amount of energy for such a nasty wound. She made it through the first night, so we put her out in the pen for the day, blocked off from the other chickens, so they wouldn’t peck at her. But when we came home, she had weaseled her way into the main area and was sleeping in one of the nesting boxes. She made it through another night. I’ve been adding garlic to their feed and all the chickens have been drinking an herbal tea for healing (since everyone eats the same thing). She slept most of today in her coop, but came out in the evening to peck a little. You can tell movement causes her a lot of pain, but she is trying so hard. The next few days will tell us a lot. If she doesn’t seem to be improving, we will have to put her down. Suki will no longer be allowed off lead when the chickens are out (we thought it would be ok as we had thought we’d solved the problem of them getting out of the coop…) I want to get a dog that protects livestock, not one that likes to carry them around!

3/9-Faye has been out of the coop a lot more today. Sweetie (the smartest chicken alive!), has been staying beside Faye, kicking up bugs for her, and being a bit of a chicken nurse!

3/10–Faye hopped out of the coop early this morning and has been holding her own, pecking for food most of the day! I really can’t believe the is alive. That was a really nasty wound!!
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Here’s Kaia standing where her bedroom will be.

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here is the North wall, which will have soil half way up. The white reflection is from the surface bond material that was put on the concrete blocks.

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This is most of the house footprint. The water proof membrane and insulation has been put on the external north wall, and most of the french drain is in. The plumbers will be out on Wed to start laying the lines, before we pour the foundation.

Herbs and Gas

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No, this post does not have to do with herbs giving you gas 🙂 …

We had another mini snow on our land. It seems that weather always hits our mountain harder than anywhere else around here. When it is windy, the wind blows harder on us. When it rains, we get an inch more. When it snows, it will have melted everywhere else and we will still have 2 inches on our ground. So, this whole winter, Toby and I have talked about getting a 4-wheel drive to be able to manage the road up to the house. Now, it’s almost spring and we may have made it through the worst of it. Still those subarus are tempting. I really didn’t want to get a gas car, ’cause it feels like going backwards. We run both of our vehicles off of bio-diesel, and straight vegetable oil when we can. Then I thought, well, if we got a subaru, we could run it off of ethanol. Still, if we look at the even bigger picture, even if ethanol is ‘better for the environment’ pollution-wise, it is still made from big business, mono-crop, pesticide infused corn. And even if Biodiesel is less polluting, it is still made from big business GMO, mono-crop, pesticide infused Soy. So, what is the best way to travel distances (if walking and biking aren’t an option)? I may look into a solar car in the future. At least for around town.

I’ve got two classes to teach this week. One is at the herb school. We have a 6 week “intro to herbs” class going right now and I am teaching the section on Women’s health. I’m also teaching a class for the Asheville Garden Club! I’m really excited about this one. They want me to come and talk for 30-45 minutes about my favorite herbs to grow in the garden and make teas with!! I’ve really gotten to enjoy teaching, but this will be a fun and welcome break for teaching A&P, and advanced herbalism. I want to do this again in the summer when we can actually get out in the garden and see, smell, and taste the herbs.

The weather around here, other than the snow today, has been amazingly warm. In the 50’s and 60’s and sunny! So, I took a walk around the land to see what has started peeking out of the ground, and guess what… I found the nettles that I planted last year. I didn’t think it made it through the summer. Not only did it make it, but it repopulated a large area of my stream bank!! I’m so excited! I can’t wait until it gets big enough to make some nettle casserole! I also found my comfrey, valerian, and some mushrooms peeking out. Yay for spring! It’s almost here!!

Hey, have any of you gotten into that new NBC show ‘HEROES’? Toby downloaded the first few episodes and now we are hooked!!

“GOOD JOB, MOMMY!!”

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That’s what Kaia screamed into the phone when I called her on the way home from the college. I had a total blast teaching at AB Tech. on Tuesday night! There were ~60 people there to learn about Ginger, Saw Palmetto, and Valerian! I never thought I would be teaching, much less to this number of people! I was nervous all day, but when I got there, I felt cool, calm, and collected (maybe it was all the valerian in my tea 🙂 ) There were men and women from 20 to 80 years old. They asked lots questioned, seemed genuinely interested, and they laughed at all my jokes! I made this kick-ass power point presentation too! And here’s the best part: I actually got paid well!! That’s almost unheard of for an herbalist 🙂 When the coordinator said, “do you think this is fair compensation?” I had to completely contain myself so I could get out “yes, that seems fair” before hanging up the phone and dancing around the room! WOW! Now, I know that money isn’t everything, but it sure is nice to be compensated for all the work I have done!

Our chickens are still laying up a storm! 4 to 5 eggs a day from 6 chickens. The funny thing is that we always get equal amounts of blue to brown eggs… we have 2 blue layers and 4 brown layers! Hmmm…

House stuff is going well. I can’t tell you how nice it is to have lights in the house!! I’ve even felt a little like cooking again (I lost all interest in cooking when we moved into the little house with the 4×2 kitchen). Toby should have all the block laid today. Then the foundation process starts (gravel, plumbing, laying radiant floor tubes, pouring the concrete, etc…) Very Exciting!

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!!

Grand Opening was grand!

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Whew!! Finally done, and I’m beat! Friday, we had a Ribbon Cutting with the Asheville Chamber of Commerce and about a dozen people showed. Then Saturday, we had our official grand opening and lots of people came. I didn’t realize how exhausted I was until I finally sat down and felt my feet pounding. But, it all went fantastic. Everyone gave great reviews of the place and were amazed at what we have done so far. It feels really good in here!

lots of pictures to follow Continue reading »

Weekly Herb Review #23 – Valerian

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‘Men who begin to fight and when you wish to stop them, give to them the juice of Amantilla id est Valeriana and peace will be made immediately.’ – Annonymus, 14th Century

Common Names: Valerian (all-heal, set-well, English valerian, Belgian valerian, common valerian, German valerian, wild valerian, heliotrope, garden heliotrope, fragrant valerian, vandal root, phu (Galen), amantilla, capon’s tail)

Scientific Name: Valeriana officinalis

Family: Valerianaceae Continue reading »

Prof. Maria

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Thanks everyone, for your concern about Kaia. She is totally fine! She was over and done with her fever within 24 hours and asking to go back to school! Her immune system is amazing! I’m really liking Boneset, by the way, for how quickly it seems to help with cold/flu-y symptoms.

House-wise, we have the new footings poured… 30 feet from the old one. We have all the concrete blocks ready to go (north side wall), but the ground has been frozen, so we are on hold until it warms up a little.

Hey, I’ve been asked to start teaching at the local community college! Well, I’m covering a class for another herbalist, but that’s a start right? Asheville-Buncombe Technical College has community classes about herbs, and will soon have Continuing Education classes for nurses (herb related). Right now, I’m going to do a 2 hour Materia Medica class covering Valerian, Ginger, and Saw Palmetto (3 of the top 10 selling herbs). And I am helping to set up the CE classes. Pay is nice too! 🙂

So, tomorrow is my birthday! Toby’s mom took Kaia to play for the weekend. So, tonight, Toby and I are heading to the local hot springs for a soak. Tomorrow, I get a day at the spa, followed by a nice diner and maybe a movie!!! Wooohoooo!

house woes

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I’ve spent a little time off the blog for fear of saying nasty words that should not be typed. But, now that I am feeling a little better, I shall vent.

Well, we finally got the soil engineer out there to take a look at the last footer that we needed to pour so that he could tell us to dig it a little wider so we could finish pouring. Well, he told up that we need to move the whole house!!!! Yep, that’s what he told us! The footer, it seems, is over old fill dirt that was never compacted correctly and we would have to build an enormous retaining wall if we wanted to keep the house in the same spot. It looks like it will be cheaper to just move the whole dang thing ~25 feet to the east. So, we keep going and will hopefully pour the footer (again) this week or next. Bye-bye bank account!
On another land front, I got a call from this guy who said he is under contract to buy 130 acres east and south of us and he plans on developing it. He wanted to know if we wanted to sell!! I have to say, I thought about it for a second, and then I remembered the promise that I made to this land to try to preserve it. So, I am trying to look on the bright side. Hopefully, he will build without tearing the mountains apart, we will get a good road to our house, and we will have some nice, new neighbors.

We all spent the night wide awake last night while kaia hallucinated through her high fever. She does that when she gets sick. She is totally fine one minute and then, BAM, she has a fever of 104! We put potato slices and some yarrow essential oil on her feet, which brought the fever down for a while. Then it went up again. I gave her some herbs and a tea, which brought it down for a while. Then it went up again. Finally, when she woke me up with her laughing at the “movie” (aka hallucination) she was watching on our window about a “tiny little flying black man who was stuck in glue and blueberry jelly”, I decided to pull out the motrin and knock it out for a few hours so she could get some sleep. She’s running around right now like nothing happened last night. Her immune system amazes me! Hopefully she is over the worst of it. I’m at the clinic right now getting some boneset and elder flower in case it happens again.