A Mountain Hearth

Mountain Woman Haircut

2012-02-07T09:19:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, you just have to do something wild.

Whether it comes from an inner sense of artistic expression, or just because it's something you've always wanted to do, from time to time it's good to go with the idea. It makes for a good story. Although this one is slightly old news, for those folks that know me, I finally got the photographs from a friend and couldn't help but share. This Fall, I felt like doing something wild to let go of the old. I did not want a tattoo, or a piercing, or a new hair color. I just wanted to cut my hair with an axe. I wanted to be able to tell my grandchildren one day that it was something I had done. They could then tell their grandchildren the story of the time great great great grandma Colley got a wild hair to cut her hair with an axe. Now mind you, my braids were very long, long enough where I knew I had a lot of safe distance to work with, thus, this idea held up to my safety standards after lengthy consideration. I also had my friend do it who can throw an axe dead on target at 40 feet, so I knew close range chopping would be precise. I told him I did not want to end up like Vincent VanGogh. I'm not quite that artistic, and that would make for a much gorier story than I had in mind.

So, on a crisp Fall afternoon my friend said, "How about that haircut you've been talking about?" and the rest is life history. Ultimately, it was a hatchet and not an axe that did the job, and it took a few whacks on the chopping block to cut through this thick hair of mine, but it lived up to my expectations. When it was all said and done, the whole thing was quick, painless, way cheaper than a tattoo, and the makings of family legend. I've got a bit shorter hair now which is much more manageable and I can live with that until it grows back out, which really won't take too long.

And I've got a hell of a good story.

Imbolc Light Garden

2012-02-02T09:15:00.000-08:00

As the wheel of the year turns once again, we mark the shift in the seasons by celebrating Imbolc, an ancient holiday honoring the first stirrings of the seeds beneath the rich, dark earth and the slow but sure return of longer days. This year, my children and I had a very simple celebration with a delicious dinner of shepherd's pie, earthy carob cake with cocoa nib "seeds", and our traditional light garden filled with the seeds of dreams, goals and things we wish to grow in the coming year.

My daughter went out in the orchard and filled a pan with dark brown, crumbly soil. Then we took turns writing out the things we want to sprout and grow onto little scraps of paper. When my children were younger, it worked well to have them draw out little pictures. As each one was written out, we crumpled the scraps up into tiny "seeds" and planted them in the pan of soil, lighting a beeswax candle and planting it above each one. The house smelled lovely as we watched the candles burn down to mere stubs and go out.

When we start working a garden space in the coming weeks, we will turn the pan of soil with all the little "seeds" into the beds so that they may sprout and grow along with our vegetables, further fostering a connection with the piece of land we're living on. It's a good feeling to know Spring and another growing season are just around the corner, with all the unfolding of plans and dreams it brings.

Hibernation Coffee Cake

2012-01-19T09:32:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite breakfast treats when I was growing up was my mother's coffee cake. Who knows whether it's the crumbly texture, the rich buttery goodness or the little crunchy bits of streusel with nuts on top that make it such a wonderful morning treat, but it is wonderful indeed. I woke up on a slushy winter morning this week with a load of firewood to stack, and decided the occasion called for a coffee cake. However, no ordinary coffee cake would do. I wanted something where I could honestly say, "This is not your mother's coffee cake," so I got out my cookbooks and got inventive. I modified a recipe from The Joy of Cooking by adding frozen cherries and lots of bits of chopped up chocolate I had around. Then I even went so far as to add cocoa nibs. It was decadent. It was wild. It was the perfect thing to come inside to from stacking wood in the slush and snow.

Here I will share the recipe for those of you needing a Winter hibernation treat

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and butter a 8X8 pan.

Sift the following ingredients in a mixing bowl:

2 cups wheat flour

2/3 cup sugar

¾ tsp baking powder

¾ tsp baking soda

½ Tsp salt

½ tsp nutmeg

1 tsp cinnamon

¼ tsp mace

Combine in another bowl:

½ cup melted butter

1 beaten egg

½ cup yoghurt

1/3 cup brown rice syrup

½ cup frozen cherries

Stir together until just blended and spread into the pan.

Then mix up your streusel topping by blending until crumbly:

4 tbsp rice flour

4 tbsp butter

10 tbsp brown sugar

Stir in:

½ tsp cinnamon

½ cup chopped up chocolate

¼ cup cocoa nibs

Spread streusel over the top and bake 35 minutes.

Curl up by a warm stove with a big square topped in melting butter and enjoy!

First Snow

2012-01-17T17:16:00.000-08:00

We finally woke up to some white winter mornings this week that were so silent and still you could hear a crow's call clear as a bell from across the fields. As soon as the sun would peek up over the hills it all began to sparkle like thousands of little diamonds. This is one of my favorite parts of Winter that we only seem to get a little taste of around here. It's important to appreciate it while it lasts, because often by the time the sun climbs to late morning, it's all melted away and gone. These are good mornings to light beeswax candles, curl up by a warm fire and eat blueberry pancake breakfasts.

On this occasion, my children and I enjoyed the first snow of the new year in a new home. On New Year's Eve I moved into a little farm cottage on a twenty-acre orchard just down the road from the permaculture farm where I spent this Fall as an intern. My new home is a cozy little cottage above a farm shed with windows all around looking out at the farm, the fruit trees and a large pond visited regularly by water fowl. My son said it feels like living in a fire lookout tower. We often see jays and squirrels romping and chattering in the tree branches right outside the windows, and I wonder if they're looking in at us to watch the people show for the day.

The most exciting thing about the place, even above all I've mentioned, is the sturdy little Jotul cast-iron woodstove. It's very much like the one I left behind at my farmhouse that I loved so dearly, only smaller and appropriately sized to heat the space. I hadn't realized how much my life had centered around my woodstove until this Winter rolled in and I was living without it. It was quite literally at the center of my home, providing warmth, light, comfort, cheer on dark grey days and a place to dry things and keep fermenting foods warm. Without it, my life was missing a hearth. So, you can imagine my sheer delight at having a woodstove in the center of my home once again. The Winter suddenly does not feel quite so long anymore.

With 20 acres to run wild on, my kids are already heading out for a lot of expeditions. Between the pond, the orchard, the patch of woods and an impressively dense bamboo forest, adventures in nature abound. My daughter and her best friend have already laid out grand schemes to backpack off to a corner of the property and camp out this summer. I feel like they're finally getting a taste of the spaciousness I had in my childhood home on five acres bordering hundreds of acres of timber land. It's a good feeling when you're a child to be able to just wander off on your own adventure in the outdoors. Having already observed ducks, deer and nutria from my kitchen window, I think there will be plenty of opportunities here for wildlife encounters to shape the lives of young naturalists.

We wasted no time getting our little fairy houses set up in a whole elaborate village around a tiny pond by the long stairway leading up the hillside to the front door of the cottage. It couldn't have been a more perfect spot with all the rocks and nooks and crannies around it, and I don't think we've ever set up such a fine fairy village before. I must say that it looked rather magical covered with the light dusting of snow.

So, as Winter goes along I am settling into this new life and tending a new hearth. I'm still missing my homestead, but am managing to create a life for myself that looks as close to what I'm wanting as possible, and there's a lot there to be happy about. Seasons will keep changing, I'll keep growing, life will keep unfolding and my dreams will keep on being discovered and realized. Right now in the still of winter, it's a good time to think and reflect about all of these things so that we can see what new things emerge in the Spring. The coming seasons are brimming with possibilities.

Thoreau on Winter

2011-12-29T07:50:00.000-08:00

"We sleep, and at length awake to the still reality of a winter morning. The snow lies warm as cotton or down upon the window-sill; the broadened sash and frosted panes admit a dim and private light, which enhances the snug cheer within. The stillness of the morning is impressive... From the eaves and fences hang stalactites of snow, and in the yard stand stalagmites covering some concealed core. The trees and shrubs rear white arms to the sky on every side; and where were walls and fences we see fantastic forms stretching in the frolic gambols across the dusky landscape, as if nature had strewn her fresh designs over the fields by night as models for man's art."

"While the earth has slumbered, all the air has been alive with feathery flakes descending, as if some northern Ceres reigned, showering her silvery grain over all the fields."

"Why do you flee so soon, sir, to the theaters, lecture-rooms, and museums of the city? If you will stay here awhile I will promise you strange sights. You shall walk on water; all these brooks and rivers and ponds shall be your highway. You shall see the whole earth covered a foot or more deep with purest white crystals . . . and all the trees and stubble glittering in icy armor."

"Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each."

I always enjoy reading Henry David Thoreau's naturalist musings on winter this time of year. It's good material to curl up with on a cold night, or to read aloud with friends and hot drinks. For my fellow Thoreau enthusiasts out there, I stumbled across this blog last year called "The Blog of Henry David Thoreau" where entries from his journals are posted on the same calendar date of the year they were written. The selections are good, and with there being such a massive volume of work in his journals, there's plenty of material to keep it interesting: http://blogthoreau.blogspot.com/. Happy reading.

Buche de Noel

2011-12-22T10:19:00.000-08:00

For our Winter Solstice celebration this year, we went all out and made a Buche de Noel (Yule log cake) complete with homemade marzipan elves, fig "acorns", meringue mushrooms, pistachio marzipan leaves and chocolate bark. I had been dreaming of making this cake for years, so it was quite the exciting endeavor.

The meringue mushrooms were decorated with homemade white and dark chocolate gills, looked very convincingly real, and they literally melted in your mouth.

The cake itself was a fluffy, spongy sort of cake with walnuts and lots of egg. It only called for two tablespoons of flour, so we were able to make it gluten-free. The filling was a luscious orange mascarpone chocolate mixture. We got so carried away tasting it, that we ran out and had to make up some ganache to secure the chocolate bark to the log. The kids spent an afternoon sculpting all the little elves and faeries with colored bits of marzipan, and I made little acorn caps for the figs with cocoa powder colored marzipan textured with a cheese grater. The leaves we simply pressed into a chocolate mold. It was quite the cake, and just as fun to eat as it was to make.

Happy Solstice to all!

Chocolate, Chocolate Everywhere: Making truffles from scratch

2011-12-18T21:19:00.000-08:00

Handmade gift-giving is an important tradition I strive to always carry out. My do-it-yourself nature aside, I just plain like making things for people. However, running a small handcrafting business this time of year really motivates me to look for new ideas that have nothing to do with wool or acorn caps to create something to show appreciation to the people in my life. This year, I decided to make things out of chocolate. Specifically, truffles.

It all started with the cocoa beans my friend John imports with his business, Chocolate Alchemy. The beans were cracked in a Champion Juicer and winnowed in the Aether Winnower he invented and constructed this summer. The photo above shows the cracked and winnowed cocoa nibs, which were then ground into a powder.

The powdered nibs were added to cocoa butter and sugar in this fine machine called a melanger, which ran for about two days grinding it all into chocolatey loveliness with two hefty granite stones.

Then what we had was chocolate. The chocolate for these truffles was a melted down conglomeration of many test batches of chocolate made over the course of the Summer and Fall, many of which I helped to make. John said it was all just lying around anyway and needed to be used up. I could never imagine saying such a thing about chocolate, but he is also always says chocolate making is boring, mostly because it involves adding things to the melanger and letting it run. I will never understand how this is boring, but given that he does it all the time to test the beans he carries, I can see how it would become a regular occurrence, maybe commonplace...no, I still don't see it. Boring and chocolate are two ideas that just don't go together.

We mixed up truffle filling of cream, sugar, and various tasty flavorings mixed with chocolate. For this truffle making extravaganza, we decided on rum-rosemary, alder smoked Pacific sea salt, lavender, espresso-orange-cardamom, and hop-malt. Maybe it was a little ambitious, but heck, if you're going to make truffles, you might as well go for it.

We steeped the herbs like the rosemary, lavender and hops in the cream heated to boiling, and then carefully whisked the cream and sugar into the chocolate. Over-stirring here can cause it to separate, so one does need to be a bit delicate.

After these fillings sat out in the garage at cold temperatures for a few hours, we began rolling truffles.

And then we coated them in liquid chocolate.

And then rolled them in the cocoa powder coatings, many containing the same powdered herbs as the fillings.

After topping them with identifying bits of plant material, coffee beans, etc, we had around 350 handmade chocolate truffles completely from scratch. All together, it was quite an impressive spread. I have concluded from this project that I thoroughly enjoy making things out of chocolate, and might need to start percolating some ideas around this. Who knows, maybe there will be a selection of wild mountain woman chocolates coming soon.

On a Cold and Frosty Morning

2011-12-15T14:24:00.000-08:00

There have been some cold, white mornings this past week. With snow being such a rare occurrence in these parts, hard frosts are responsible for many of our memorable Winter landscapes. I found some amazing ice crystal formations I couldn't resist capturing some photos of before they melted away.

Frost covered spider's lace.

Jack Frost's barbed wire.

A frosty fence post.

A magical, sparkling ice forest.

The fog lifted later in the morning and I caught a peek of Mount Pisgah rising up above the white fields and trees. What a beautiful Winter morning it was!

Winter on the Farm

2011-12-10T16:00:00.000-08:00

We've been waking up to some cold, frosty mornings around here, and I decided all of Queen Winter's marvelous artwork need not go un-noticed. I also figured it was high time I wrote a post about the permaculture farm where I currently reside. I've been here for about three months, and between farm work, parenting, a job coordinating volunteers at the kids' school, and orders for my handcrafting business, writing time has been more scarce. Somehow, I've managed to find a few minutes here to show you some highlights of the farm I call home and the chickens I live with.

Many of these mornings have found the fields socked in with thick fog, so thick you can hardly see the cows out there in the neighbor's pasture. The lower garden here is pretty much put to bed at this point with piles of leaves, coffee grounds from local espresso stands and coffee shops, cover crop, and the chickens invited in to scratch and till it all up.

The greens in the upper garden have been covered in a white, sparkly coating of ice crystals. I love seeing the bright green of the kale and the rainbow hues of chard stems catching my eye against the backdrop of gray, winter fog.

I'm really loving chard right now. It is quite the cheerful winter vegetable.

Friendly the rooster greeted me in the chicken coop when I let him and all his girls out in the morning. He likes to try to round everyone up over at the scrap feeding pile for breakfast.

One of the coops is made entirely of re-purposed doors from the local recycled building supply store. I like the very artistic one in the middle.

The chicken feeding system here is very impressively resourceful, with local restaurants and health food stores saving their scraps in totes for the farmer to pick up on a weekly basis. All kinds of good greens, veggie peels, pastas, salads, breads, and leftover scrapings make it into the mix. This gives the chickens a well-rounded, diverse diet and saves on the cost of chicken scratch.

I wash the totes to return to the restaurants every week in an old clawfoot tub with graywater from the washing machine.

This three-tank graywater system holds all the water from loads of washing and gets used for everything from washing chicken feeding totes to watering the garden and compost piles in the summer.

It all makes for some very happy chickens and lots of delicious eggs. If you ever really wanted chickens and worried over the cost of keeping them, I suggest you talk to some local restaurants and see how they would feel about keeping a kitchen tote for you. Chickens can be kept for nearly nothing, they produce eggs which you can eat and sell, and they produce fertilizer for the garden. They will even turn your compost piles for you, and they make good friends!

I think everyone needs chickens.

The world would be a much better place.

Goodbye to the Homestead

2011-11-14T22:56:00.000-08:00

Reading the passage in Little House on the Prairie where Laura Ingalls Wilder recounts leaving in the wagon and watching out the back as their homestead grows smaller and smaller, becoming a tiny speck in the distance has always had a profound impact on me. When I read it as a girl, it seemed more tragic than the ending of Old Yeller. When I read it as an adult, it blew me away that they had built a cabin and homestead on the open prairie with their own hands, and then had to pack up and leave it behind. How did they do it? All I could explain it with is that we all do what we have to do in life, and just go on from there. They must have done just that.

At the beginning of September, I moved off of my own homestead. This post has been a couple months delayed, and for those readers who have been wondering where the blog posts went for so long, life has been busy. In early Summer, my husband of ten years and I parted ways after trying for a long time and realizing it was just not going to work. We needed to not be sharing a life and homestead together. It was as simple and as complicated as that. This was a weighty decision not taken lightly for me, not just because of the impact on our children, but because I had gotten to where I was doing exactly what I wanted to be doing in life. Homesteading and homemaking were the dreams I had built a life around and I was at a point where I had to let go of that. It seems that letting go was meant to be the theme and major life lesson for these past few months. So, I shifted gears and redirected my energy from running a homestead to looking for a job and figuring out where I was going from there. Let me tell you, job-hunting after being a homemaker for the better part of ten years is frustrating. My college degree and work experience from a decade ago could only be stretched in so many creative ways, and in the middle of this economic downturn, jobs are far from abundant. In the meantime, I kept watering, harvesting and caring for my homestead knowing I would be saying goodbye soon, and gradually preparing the kids for all the changes ahead. I don't know that I could even describe the ways in which these parts of the summer were hard. The upside to things was that in the midst of upheavel, I endeavored to do everything I could think of to fortify myself for weathering the transition. I backpacked more than I had in years, I taught myself the banjo, I took up weightlifting with a friend to get in solid farm shape, I picked berries, I caught wildcrafted crawdaddy dinners, I dug out my old target throwing axe from College and found my axe-throwing aim was still fairly true, I worked on my storytelling skills, I went on expeditions through the wilds in search of rare carnivorous pitcher plants, I ate bear for breakfast, I made time for reading again, and found many ways to get to the center of who I am and cope with difficulty. While letting go of all the aspects of my life I enjoyed but couldn't take with me off of that homestead, I made darn sure to gather all the ones that I could take wherever I went.

Late in the summer, and opportunity came along to become a live-in farm intern at an intensive small-scale permaculture homestead in the area, and I jumped on it. I visited the farm, worked some mornings with the farmer, and we all decided it was a good fit. I figured that if 80 chickens to tend, bountiful permaculture gardens to work in, and breathtaking views of fields with grazing cows weren't enough to help see me through the transition off my own homestead, I didn't know what was. I packed up what would fit into my small but cozy new living quarters in the back of my friend's truck, and drove away watching my homestead grow smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror. It was the height of the growing season, with crops in the field, berries on the vine, fruit trees taking off in their second year of growth, and chickens peacefully scratching for bugs. It was the perfect image of a dream realized, and will always stand in my mind as one of my greater accomplishments. I watched it disappear in the distance and had to let it go.

Time has fairly flown by since then, and I find myself settling into the rhythms of the seasons on this farm where I live and work and this new life I am creating for myself. I am both enjoying and navigating through the challenges of my half of the time as a single parent, and the other half of my time as a single individual. It is filled with much that is different, much that is the same, far less old stresses, a few new stresses, joys, losses, exciting adventures, and quiet moments all to myself. I can honestly say that life is good, but I would be lying if I said it was easy. Sometimes I miss my homestead terribly, and it hits me at the most surprising times like in the middle of preparing a garlic bed, helping with a chicken butchering workshop or turning compost. Farm work, however, is a very therapeutic endeavor for a displaced homesteader such as myself, and every time I clean a chicken coop or plant a cover crop, I feel a little better. I'm literally working through it. I have no doubt in my mind that I will have my own place to homestead again one day. That may sound like a very grandiose dream considering where I'm at right now, but I got there once somehow, so I'm sure that I can do it again. Whatever twists, turns and adventures life has in store for me, I know I am ultimately headed in that direction and it will be a good day when I arrive.

One evening when the kids were with me this past week, we had some friends coming over for a playdate, and decided to throw an impromptu Martinmas lantern walk at our new place. I spent the afternoon cooking some hearty food, baking a pecan pie and gluten-free brownies and mulling hot cider, and we gathered up all our lanterns from past Martinmas celebrations at our Waldorf school. We lit little candles all over the house, ate by candlelight and walked all over the property serenading the chickens and next-door goats with our lantern songs. When I was pouring up the hot cider, my son told me in a very serious manner that it felt like home now. I had to agree with him. It really did.

Home is such a complex thing to define, yet we know it when we feel it. I suppose when it comes down to it, home is where you eat your meals, raise your children and lay your head down to rest at night. That must be what it's all about when they say "Home is where you hang your hat." I would venture to say that homesteading is a similar sort of term. When you consider that it's really about self-sufficiency and leading a life made by hand, you start to get the sense that one really can be a homesteader without a homestead to call their own. I think the important part lies in the way we live, more so than where we live. With that in mind, I'll just keep on being a homesteader, and when the day comes along that I arrive on my own homestead, I'll be ready.

Mushroom Madness

2011-11-11T14:29:00.000-08:00

Fall has really set in around here with foggy mornings, flying leaves and a fair amount of drizzly weather. All these mark the beginning of my favorite wildcrafting expeditions of the year, mushroom hunting. Getting out in the woods as things are winding down for the Winter to gather up baskets full of succulent, tasty fungi is a treat all on its own, not to mention the wide array of culinary possibilities that await upon returning home with the bounty. It's also a favorite wildcrafting adventure for my children, who after complaining about the enforced labor of berry picking by the time Summer is over, run about shouting with glee as they find fiery orange chanterelles, violet hued pig's ears, and creamy colored hedgehog mushrooms emerging from the moss and duff of the forest floor. Think Easter egg hunt in November, and you've got the idea. It's a good time.

The last two months have been a little drier than last year, so mushroom season has gotten a slow start, but I figured it was time to visit some of my favorite spots and see what could be found. My daughter and I brought along some friends who had never been, and although I could tell the season hadn't yet gotten into full swing, our rainy afternoon of scouring some nearby Forest Service lands yielded a respectable haul. Being the natural keen-eyed gatherers that they are, the kids managed to find more chanterelles than the adults. I'm not even sure that they're big fans of eating them, but the fun was in the finding.

Since then I've been enjoying such delights as gourmet chanterelle pizza, chanterelle scramble, Chinese stir fry with chanterelles, and beer cheese soup with chanterelles and artichoke hearts. I try to spend a few minutes everyday brainstorming mushroom recipe ideas, lest I run out of ideas before I run out of mushrooms. Since I only found chanterelles on this excursion, I'm thinking another is in order for some hedgehogs and hopefully a cauliflower mushroom if I'm lucky.

Fall is delicious.

Pumpkins all Aglow

2011-11-01T22:17:00.000-07:00

As far back as I can remember, Halloween has been my favorite night of the year. While life has gone along, and the magic and delight of many childhood pastimes have faded in their awe, Halloween night has never dulled. The fun of dressing up as whatever you want to be for an evening, seeing all the amazing costumes other folks think up, the comforting glow of jack-o-lanterns on front steps and porches driving away the dark and damp of the chilly Autumn night, the array of tasty treats (especially cupcakes), and observing Nature winding down into the slumber of Winter are all things worthy of eager anticipation and thorough enjoyment. At the center of it all stands the tradition of creating temporary art out of garden vegetables. Halloween is my idea of fun.

This year, I discovered pumpkin carving tools, and it expanded into a new found outlet of creative expression. I started with my traditional pumpkin fairy house I do every year and went from there. I found that with various sizes of woodworking chisels, you can make stars and swirls, and all manner of designs carved into the skin giving different levels of light. This, I realized, was a whole world of pumpkin carving fun I had been missing out on all my life.

The thick pumpkin walls and glowing candlelight keep away all the little hobgoblins lurking about in the night, so the fairy inhabitants can sleep safe and sound.

This pumpkin was my favorite. It depicted the story of a wild mountain woman who wrestled bears beneath the starry sky.

After carving this one, I had an inspiration to carve "story pumpkins" with folk tales etched on the sides in pictures. I'm already cooking up ideas for next year.

With it being that time of year and all, I have mushroom hunting on the brain once again, so of course there had to be a jack-o-lantern adorned with an array of my favorite woodland morsels.

Which leads to my costume.

I really wanted to be something scary for once. I thought for a long time about what really makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, and as a wildcrafter with mushrooms on the brain, the deadly poisonous Destroying Angel came to mind. I needlefelted a wool cap with gills, which I stretched over a straw hat for a frame, donned some white clothing, had a friend do my face up in white makeup and yet more gills, and wore a tag that read "Amanita ocreata" so there would me no mistaking what specimen of mushroom I was supposed to be. When I got a look at myself in the mirror, I felt thoroughly scary. I wouldn't have wanted to run across myself in the woods. I'd say it was a costume success.

From here, we move around the wheel of the year towards late Fall carrying with us the festive glow lit in all those pumpkin luminaries on All Hallows Eve. As the days grow shorter and we see less and less of the sun, there will be lantern walks, festivals of light, gatherings of friends, and warm meals to share around our tables to keep that glow fortified. While the rain and cold may be on their way, there is also much to look forward to.

Camping 101

2011-08-25T16:03:00.000-07:00

My "Camping 101" article is up and published in the current issue of Mom Magazine if you want to give it a peek at this link here: http://www.mommag.com/media/158121/Eug_outdoor%20mom.pdf.

It's a quick rundown of tips and ideas for camping with children, whether it's been awhile or it's a new experience altogether, to help get folks back in the tent again.

Happy camping!

August on the Homestead

2011-08-11T17:31:00.000-07:00

Life has gotten a bit hectic lately, as it seems to do from time to time, and I realized it has been a while since I've written a blog post. I thought it was time to give a homestead update. Summer is moving along, the days are hot and dry, and things are ripening on the vine. There has been plenty of adventuring, camping, swimming, cooking, banjo picking, backpacking and life happening along the way, so sitting down to write about it all has taken a back burner on the proverbial kitchen stove. I'm sure you all understand how that goes.

I'll begin with the field, which is certainly growing, with a few more weeds than I had planned. I decided as long as food is still coming out of it, I'm not going to lose sleep over it. There are pumpkins, there are onions and potatoes, there are all manners of squash, and there are some beans. Maybe there will be corn. Sometimes there are weeds. Such is life.

I harvested about 200 heads of Nootka Rose garlic last week, ending up with more than enough for the coming year, which was my garlic goal. Many nice thick garlic braids are now hanging in the pantry and from the kitchen ceiling rack. Some are even decorated with lavender and bright blue bachelor's buttons. It's my absolute favorite variety, hands down, so I am looking forward to eating a lot of it this year.

And there are potatoes. So many potatoes of so many varieties that I go out and dig great bowls full and still don't make a dent. Many are still small and coming along, so I'm holding off the big harvest for next month, but right now there are all the fresh potatoes I could ever want. It's a good feeling to have abundant potatoes.

My three large blueberry bushes out front ended up producing this month, so I have been going out and munching on them while I water in the morning. I still made a trip out to a nearby blueberry farm for berries to freeze, but it's a real treat to have a handful fresh off the bush here and there.

I decided to start a few more flowers this year from seed, and they are all creating a very colorful display in my herb beds and front garden. I have lavender, echinacea, calendula, cosmos, bachelor's buttons, nasturtiums, and all sorts of vibrant blooms. The volunteer sunflowers that came up this year are HUGE, some of them at least 15 feet tall! I have to point out that white vehicle in the background too, which is the wonderful housebus that some friends are temporarily parking on the homestead. Having lived in one some years ago, and missing it from time to time, it's nice to be able to go and just sit in the quite little house on wheels for a few moments and enjoy it.

I wish I could describe the fragrance of these heirloom sweet peas and do them any sort of justice. I planted them all along the front fence and they have climbed up and covered it quite nicely. Their delicious aroma wafts around as you walk through the front gate or sit on the front porch on hot evenings.

My mammoth dill is certainly living up to its name, but with the poor cucumber germination I experienced this summer, I'm not sure yet what I'm going to pickle with it. The green beans could still really pull through, making dilly beans a good possibility. We shall see.

This pretty much sums up the goings on around the farm right now. There are some big changes on the horizon for this family and this homestead, and I'm not sure how much of it I'll write about or not, but knowing that there is always food to be grown and gathered, adventures to be had, and outdoor places to explore, there will be plenty of tales and ideas to share, and this blog will keep on going with whatever path it all takes. As the poet, William Wordsworth once said, "The earth is all before me." I'll conclude with that for now and wish you all an abundant summer harvest.

Having Fun With the Pits

2011-07-28T15:26:00.000-07:00

After many years of spending hours with a handheld cherry pitter, I listened with great interest whenever I heard tales of the cast-iron hand cranked cherry stoners of days gone by. Where were these contraptions to be found and why wasn't everyone using them today? The idea of simply feeding in cherries and turning a crank to separate fruit from stone made much more sense than hours of punching the little hand-squeezed utensil with sticky, slippery cherry juice covered fingers. There was no sense in it as far as I could see. So, imagine my excitement one day when a friend offered to let me borrow an antique cherry stoner they had dug out while cleaning their shop. It was in fine working order, and only needed minor cleaning up, so I went out and got busy picking on a neighbor's cherry trees.

While trying to figure out exactly how to work this miraculous piece of kitchen equipment, we stumbled across an excellent article by Lucie Snodgrass which I have to say is a must-read: My Curvaceous Cast-Iron Beauty . This saucy nickname for the cherry stoner stuck, and I will forever refer to it as such. I took that beauty home, clamped it onto my front porch rail so the chute for the pits pointed out into the garden, and got a wooden bowl set up underneath to catch the fruit. I got the crank spinning forward and began feeding in cherries and watching the pits shoot out into the garden bed below.

I have to report that it was really as simple as it seemed. Nothing about it was too good to be true. The cherries did come out a bit less whole and perfect then when I've hand pitted them in years past, but that was a small price to pay for the speed and efficiency. Two quarts took a mere five minutes! I could have easily done pounds upon pounds of cherries without eating up the entire day.

Cherry pitting just got a whole lot easier.

Where oh where has this curvaceous cast-iron beauty been all my life?

First Sunflower

2011-07-26T12:33:00.000-07:00

Sittin' on Top of the World: Musings on Camping in Fire Lookout Towers

2011-07-18T12:08:00.000-07:00

I discovered my first fire lookout tower when I was on a road trip the summer after I graduated high school. My best friend and I were driving around on forest service roads outside Hamilton Montana, looking for a place to spend the night camping in my van, when we arrived at the summit of a mountain and discovered what seemed to us like a magical cabin on top of the world. I had heard of fire lookout towers before in some of the writings of Gary Snyder and Jack Kerouac, but had never really beheld one in all its glory. This lookout was currently vacant, but locked, so we camped out next to it that night and watched the sunset from the balcony. I vowed after that night that I would one day spend some time staying in a lookout. I would hire on with the Forest Service, or do whatever it took, but I was going to rest my head in a bed high above a mountain top before I could call my life complete.

I can't even begin to describe how excited I was the day I discovered the book, How to Rent a Fire Lookout Tower in the Pacific Northwest, by Tim McFadden and Tom Foley. I took it home and poured through the pages, delighted to find that my lofty dream was easily attainable. With the advance of technology in wildland fire management, many lookout towers had been de-commissioned over the years, and were now available for overnight rental at a rate far more economical than a hotel room. By this time my children were old enough to be safe with heights, so I got on the website for Recreation Rentals of the Pacific Northwest: http://www.fs.fed.us/r6/recreation/rentals/, and booked a weekend in September at Bald Knob Lookout in the Rogue-Siskiyou National Forest.

We set off on our adventure following the Coquille River through the mountains to the small town of Powers, and headed up the winding gravel roads to the top of Bald Knob, passing through the locked gate with the combination given to us at the Powers Ranger Station, and coming around the bend to behold the very impressive 16 X 16' cabin sitting 20 feet up in the air. We wasted no time climbing up the three flights of steep stairs to the catwalk, and just stood there taking in the view. From there, we looked out at the Rogue River winding through a roadless wilderness area below, and the rolling blue silhouettes of mountain peaks as far as the eye could see. The Autumn air was warm, gentle breezes carried the smell of dry fir needles, and it was so still and quiet you could almost hear your own heartbeat interrupted only by the occasional cry of a far-off hawk.

The cabin was cozy and well-maintained with a small kitchen area including a propane stove for cooking and heat, and a small propane mini-fridge. The sink was plumbed to drain below, but water had to be hauled in and brought up. We were no strangers to dry camping, so this wasn't any sort of a big deal. There was a small bed and fold-out futon, a table and an Osborne Fire Finder in the center with a map and instruments to identify mountain peaks and their distances. The walls were entirely made of windows all the way around, providing a complete view of the surrounding coastal mountain range. It was the stuff mountain dreams are made of.

We spent a lot of time that weekend just sitting on the catwalk looking at the view below, reading in the warm sunshine, trying our hand at the Osborne Fire Finder, and enjoying the sunsets. I have to say that there is no sunset watching experience quite you'll find in a fire lookout tower. It's so spectacular, that it tends to make subsequent sunsets pale in comparison. We spent the 4th of July weekend at the same lookout the following year with the idea that we would observe all the small town fireworks displays for miles, but realized quickly just how remote a spot it was, and settled instead for beautiful sunsets which rivaled any fireworks display I've seen.

More fire lookout adventures followed over the years, including Indian Ridge in the Willamette National Forest a ways above Cougar Reservoir, Green Ridge Lookout Tower in the Deschutes National Forest outside of Sisters (this one was the least tall and most kid-friendly, sitting above the Metolius River Valley and looking straight out and Mt. Jefferson and the surrounding peaks), and Quail Prairie Lookout in the Rogue-Siskiyou National Forest looking out at the Kalmiopsis Wilderness (this one topped them all at 52 feet, and makes a good adult getaway - no children under 12 allowed.) I highly recommend all of these, and some, like Green Ridge are so popular that you should think about making reservations 6 months out to ensure finding an open weekend. The dead of Winter is a really good time to start dreaming and scheming such Summertime plans anyway.

Staying in these lookouts is very much like camping in that you bring your bedding, cooking supplies and food, water, firewood, etc. But you can leave the tent behind and get nice and toasty with the propane stove if the night gets chilly. Most of the lookouts have a campfire ring and picnic table below, making it very much a camping experience with a little extra luxury. And breathtaking views if you're okay with heights.

I'll end with this photo of a sunrise over a low-lying cloud bank at Quail Prairie Lookout, from 52 feet up in the air. It's quite the feeling to sit and look out at the tops of clouds, rather like sitting on top of the world.

Gone to Flower

2011-07-06T13:18:00.000-07:00

Unless there is some avid seed saving going on, many gardeners strive to harvest and eat their vegetables before they go to flower or bolt. Oftentimes the desired edible portion of the plant will turn bitter or woody as the energy is directed towards flower and seed production, which translates for many into a total waste of the food we worked so hard to grow. When you think about gardening from an aesthetic standpoint, however, and all the energy and money folks put into growing flowers and various annuals, it can shed a whole new light on vegetables gone to flower. Having such a large garden and odd growing season this year, more things are flowering in my vegetable patch than usual, and I have found I am enjoying it almost as much as I would have all those fresh veggies harvested at the right time. I am starting to think that these vegetable blooms get overlooked far too often, and are deserving of some due appreciation.

Behold the mustard flowers. I'm sure you have noticed these growing wild along roadsides and out in fields and appreciated all those bright, sunny yellow blooms. They're quite cheery. I'm really enjoying just looking out at them in my garden, and hoping I'll get some mustard seeds out of the situation.

This particular patch of radishes I allowed to bolt on purpose. Rat tail radishes are grown for their spicy seed pods that make excellent pickles. They also produce lovely purple and white flowers that make great cut arrangements in mason jars.

Parsley flowers are quite a sight to behold, plus the seeds are great for cooking, so you really can't go wrong with letting your parsley go wild.

I have been really loving all the potato flowers this year. With all the varieties I planted, I'm seeing a great assortment of colors out there.

So, that's my unconventional gardening tip for the day. Try to look at those unruly areas of your vegetable patch in a new way, and you might just discover you had a knack for growing flowers all along. Sometimes it's good to just sit back, relax and let a few things go to flower. You may be delighted by what unfolds.

A Girl and Her Banjo is a Beautiful Thing

2011-06-27T20:12:00.000-07:00

I've got a confession to make here. I'm madly in love, and I'm going to tell the whole world about it. After twelve years of waiting, I finally got a banjo, and I've been smitten ever since. I don't remember exactly when the banjo fever took hold of me, but when I was about 18, I started entertaining visions of sitting out on the back porch picking away. College kept me pretty busy, and then children, and somehow twelve years slipped by without that dream being pursued. Life rolled along, the dream wove into my subconscious, and I just kept listening to more and more old-time banjo music. One day I found myself pretending to pick banjo strings in the air while singing along. This was starting to get serious, folks. Then Jenna Woginrich over at Cold Antler Farm really stirred things up with her Banjo Equinox post this Spring, making old-time banjo sound so darn easy to learn, that I just couldn't deny it any longer. I needed a banjo in a real bad way.

I decided my birthday was as good a time as any. I scrimped, I saved and the Hobo Bean Blossom arrived via UPS the day after my birthday. I just took it out of the box and stared at it for a while. I couldn't even believe it was my very own. Finally I picked it up and plucked at a string, and that sound was sweet music to my ears. Since the book I was planning to learn with, Wayne Erbsen's Clawhammer Banjo for the Complete Ignoramus was on back order, I decided to find some You-tube videos on tuning and get started with the basics. I studied banjo diagrams and fiddled around with my electronic tuner until I had Double C tuning figured out, as well as tuning the banjo to itself. Keeping to my 15 minute per day commitment, pretty soon I moved along to clawhammer picking, and even picking out a simple tune by ear. This week I started on my first tune, "Old Molly Hare" reading tablature. The lyrics involve bear hunting and some wild woman who smokes cigars, so it's really my kind of music. That's where I'm at now. Working my way through the book at 15 minutes a day minimum, and getting the hang of it as I go along. It's good to teach yourself something new every so often in life, just so you remember that you can.

So, there you have it, a banjo and a dream. One of these days soon I'll be sitting in that old rocking chair on the front porch, picking away at old-time mountain tunes on hot summer evenings with some sort of frothy, delicious beverage in a glass. Life will keep rolling on, good things will come and go, but I know I'll have my banjo. We've got a good thing going.

June on the Homestead

2011-06-23T08:45:00.000-07:00

June has been a busy month around here. The garden is all planted, tomatoes and peppers are growing in the hothouse, chickens are getting fat and sassy, seeds are germinating and strawberries are hanging red and ripe. I do love June. There has been enough precipitation to keep me from having to water all the time, so the kids' first week out of school felt like a real summer break. We hiked, we skipped stones on the river and just played. Food is starting to come on out in the garden and the earth is seeming more and more bountiful. I wanted to share a few scenes of bounty from around the farm, so here's a little tour in photographs.

The first week of June brought back our weekly CSA boxes from Groundwork Organics! This first one had ripe strawberries, green garlic, out-of-this-world arugula and many other organic, locally grown treats. You may be wondering why we would get a CSA when we're growing all this food. The answer would be hoop houses. Groundwork Organics farm has enough hoop houses to keep food production going June through Thanksgiving, and we just can't do that here. So, some weeks we end up with more of something than we need, but generally I try to keep our production geared towards canning and food storage crops. It all evens out pretty well.

The field is all planted and filled with potatoes, onions, pumpkins, squash, melons, corn, tomatoes, beans and cucumbers. By moving around a couple of sprinklers with hoses, I think watering is going to be much more manageable this year.

The garden by the house is growing radishes, mustard, carrots, peas, lettuces, eggplants, peppers, cabbage, broccoli, kale, tomatillos, basil and New Zealand spinach. I'm already tired of radishes, which I never thought was possible. Even the French breakfast ones. Too much of a good thing I suppose.

Here's that New Zealand spinach. I haven't grown it for a few years, but I remember how good it was and how long it lasted. You can just keep harvesting off of it until November, and it doesn't bolt.

I'm proud of my potato patch this year. There are about 6 different varieties, and all the plants look very unique. The goal is enough potatoes for the year, and this is looking like a whole lot of potatoes, so we'll see how that goes.

A big, beautiful poppy plant came up in the herb bed from some seeds I saved last Fall. It's been catching my eye every morning when I'm watering the carrot bed.

On sunny days, I've been able to use my clothes line again. One of my favorite things in the world is hanging clothes to dry on the line. I love the fresh air smell they have when you take them down, and there's something very poetic about all your clothes flapping in the breeze like colorful flags.

Summertime around here means backyard camp outs underneath the apple tree. It's good to see the old canvas tent out there again.

My one and only complaint are the Cornish Cross meat birds. Enticed by the promise of fat, juicy roasted chickens, I gave them a try this year, and I can say with certainty that I will never do it again. They are just not like normal chickens, and that really bothers me. Impaired walking aside, they don't act quite right. They don't scratch or forage, they rush at me when I come into the chicken yard as though they plan on devouring me, and they smell repulsive. The next time I raise meat birds, it will be Dark Cornish, and they can take their time growing as slow as they please.

Silkie and her chick are doing quite well, sneaking out of the chicken yard and wandering around the homestead scratching for bugs. They even hung around near the picnic table during a pot luck with friends, right in the middle of all the excitement. Silkie is a very sociable little bird.

These are the goings on of June on the homestead. Things are growing, things are changing, and the wheel of the year just keeps on turning around. It's a wonderful thing to see all your hard work beginning to take shape into something visible that literally feeds you. So, on we grow into summer.

Summer Solstice

2011-06-21T11:26:00.000-07:00

In honor of the Summer Solstice today, I thought I'd share a fairy passage from William Shakespeare's

"A Midsummer Night's Dream":

Over hill, over dale,

Thorough bush, thorough briar,

Over park, over pale,

Thorough flood, thorough fire,

I do wander everywhere,

Swifter than the moon's sphere;

And I serve the fairy queen,

To dew her orbs upon the green.

The cowslips tall her pensioners be;

In their gold coats, spots you see;

Those be rubies, fairy favours,

In their freckles live our savours.

I must go seek some dew-drops here,

And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.

Farewell, thou lob of spirits, I'll be gone;

My queen and all her elves come here anon!

How About That Honey Cow

2011-06-16T21:04:00.000-07:00

It can't be denied, I've had bees on the brain all Spring. The neighbor's honeybees buzzing over to pollinate the flowers in my garden are helpful and lovely, but I couldn't help but pine away for a hive of my own. There are those times in life where pining pays off, and this was one of them. For my birthday last week, my husband and son surprised me with a handmade honey cow. Maybe it was all those links I sent out about this simple design for a do-it-yourself top bar bee hive that motivated this excellent gift, or maybe it was the promise of farm fresh honey. Whatever the case, I was very happy to receive it. This is my kind of birthday present. Right up there with farm equipment and manure.

I saw this design on one of my favorite places to go for homesteading inspiration, Jenna Woginrich's Cold Antler Farm blog, and decided after watching the instructional video that we could absolutely build this with materials around our place. For this particular design, a rain barrel would have to be sacrificed, but all for a good cause. Rain barrels come and rain barrels go.

This type of hive is over a thousand years old, and is thought to have originally began as woven baskets with sticks laid across the top as the bars. Today they are commonly found in non-industrialized nations and areas where resources are limited because of the low cost to build and ease of construction. It is also a very manageable way to keep bees, thus an excellent way for backyard farmers and beginning beekeepers like myself to get started. Since this is a top bar bee hive, there are no frames, foundations, or excluders involved. The bees simply build their combs hanging from the top bar, just as they would naturally in a fallen log. This design allows for better ventilation and pest control and makes for a less intrusive way to check on the combs, which also benefits the bees. Since the combs can't be centrifuged to extract the honey and re-used, honey production may be lower, but the quality is higher and in-comb honey is just way more fun.

For those of you who are interested in taking up beekeeping yourself, or just plain curious, here's that instructional video that Jenna shared on Cold Antler Farm:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-your-own-Honey-Cow-Top-Bar-Bee-Hive/

And here's a materials and tools list from that site:

55 gallon plastic barrel, preferably food grade (makes two hives)

22 feet of 1”x2” nominal lumber

46 feet of 1½”x1” lumber

2 X 8 foot of 2”x4” nominal lumber

A 3 feet by 4 feet piece of tin

20 - 1½” wood screws

10 - 2” wood screws

8 - ½ “ screws

Bungee Cord or tie wire

45 feet thin moulding OR natural fiber string and beeswax

TOOLS

circular or jig saw

drill

tin snips

tape measure and marker

That's it! I hope this helps some folks out there to bee inspired!

Sneaky Chickens

2011-06-10T14:49:00.000-07:00

A lesson learned: When a cute little bantam chicken comes out to keep you company while you hoe and plant corn and bean rows, do not say to yourself "Awww, isn't that sweet" and allow it to hang around. You might just look out your window later to find the same little chicken scratching up and munching all the corn seeds, thinking all the while you left such delicious hidden treats, while discarding those not-so-tasty bean seeds neatly beside each mound.

Chickens are much more sly than they look.

No matter how cute and friendly they may seem, it's best to just send them on their way out of the garden to scratch around somewhere else.

Invite Someone Wild to Dinner

2011-06-06T16:08:00.000-07:00

Tis' the season of wild edible greens, and lately I've been finding the makings for salads and steamed side dishes in my backyard. There's something fun about going out in the evening to forage up a wild dinner guest. With all the warm (and not so warm) rainy days of Springtime, emerging greens are tender, mild and chalk full of nutrients after a long Winter. It's also a time of year and economic trend when food is just plain expensive, so rounding out your food budget with wildcrafting can make a big difference.

A favorite of mine right now is Curly Dock (Rumex crispus.) It grows in abundance around here, especially in disturbed soils, and when steamed it has a distinctive lemon flavor. It's a great source of protein, vitamin A, iron and potassium. Because it is so high in oxalic acid, which gives it that tart flavor, it should be consumed in moderation to avoid risk of kidney stone formation. Truly, all things are best in moderation, so don't be afraid to try this plant. You'll find it's quite delicious. The root is also useful as a blood purifier and a means to bind and flush heavy metals from the body.

Oxeye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare) is one of my favorite wild salad greens. When picked this time of year before the white flowers bloom, it has a mild, nutty flavor. The unopened flower buds may also be used as a substitute for capers. I transplanted this one into my garden where it is growing quite vigorously with all the good soil and watering, because I just couldn't get enough of it. Historically, the flowers are associated with the old prose saying "He loves me, he loves me not."

The wildest name award goes out to nipplewort (Lapsana communis), whose name dates back to nursing mothers of the British Isles using the leaves for a poultice to relieve discomfort from breastfeeding. It is an abundant weed in the garden this time of year, and delicious raw in salads, as well as boiled, steamed or sauteed.

Many folks spend a lot of time getting rid of their dandelions (Taraxacum officinale), without realizing they have an abundant food source right there in their lawn. The bitter greens are great steamed, in a soup, or in a salad, and the flowers make delicious fritters cooked in tempura or beer batter. They are high in vitamin A, vitamin C, and contain more iron and calcium than spinach. The root has a wide array of medicinal uses, including a ground coffee substitute, a liver tonic, and a diuretic to name a few. The milky substance in the stem can be used as a mosquito repellant and folk treatment for warts. Think about spending your time harvesting these rather than spraying them.

I transplanted some oxalis (Oxalis oregana) into my yard last year, and it is thriving underneath a large fern in the damp shade. It has a delicious tart flavor, and makes for a tasty nibble. This plant is high in vitamin C, and has been used historically to prevent scurvy. With high levels of oxalic acid, this is another one to eat in moderation, but the consensus among scientists is that toxicity of oxalic acid in persons of normal kidney function is highly unlikely, so don't be swayed from trying this as a delicious salad or snack.

If you are wanting more ideas on recipes and creative ways to prepare your wild greens, I highly reccommend this book by my wild foods instrutor, John Kallas, called Edible Wild Plants: Wild Foods from Dirt to Plate. You can find it on his Wild Food Adventures website, and it's a great resource for the field and the kitchen. Happy harvesting!

Wooly Moss Roots Giveaway Winner!

2011-06-06T15:45:00.000-07:00

Congratulations Tracey! And thank you to everyone who left so many wonderful comments on the creations of Mystic Orb, and Taryn's blog, Wooly Moss Roots. I know that they appreciate all the heartfelt feedback. If you still have the giveaway bug and just can't wait to enter another, I will be doing another one soon with one of my blog sponsors, Moon Root Soaps, so keep your eyes out folks.

Draft Horse Field Trip

2011-06-03T11:20:00.000-07:00

The third grade school year is drawing to a close for my children at our local Waldorf school, and they have been busy measuring, digging, and always learning. For those of you unfamiliar with the Waldorf education model, the third grade curriculum focuses on living on the earth, covering such things as shelter, building, farming, cooking, and working with fibers. Reading this, you probably thought right away that this would be right up this homesteader's alley, and you would be absolutely right! This week, our class went on a field trip to Ruby and Amber's Organic Oasis out in Dorena to learn about draft horse powered farming, and since I'm always up for meeting a local farmer and touring their farm, I was thrilled to tag along.

I had the job of coordinating the field trip with the farmer, Kris Woolhouse, and we spent a lot of time re-scheduling due to rain. This is a very wet Spring, and for farmers in the Willamette Valley, it is causing much difficulty with getting fields plowed and crops planted. The original plan for our field trip was to watch draft horse plowing in action, but by the time we re-scheduled to our last possible date, it was still going to be too wet. Thus, it became a "meet the farm animals" field trip, which none of the kids minded one bit.

The first thing that caught my eye and my fancy upon arrival was the chicken coop. Having lived in a school bus once, I will never look upon them with anything less than wistful appreciation again, and seeing one inhabited by chickens just sent my heart aflutter. It was genius. It was mobile. It was moving. It was a fine example of re-purposing in this modern throw-away world and pure poultry poetry.

I took way too many pictures, this one being my favorite.

After snack time, Kris led us over to meet the bees. I was excited to discover they had a top bar bee hive! I have had top bar bee hives on the brain this Spring, ever since a friend had a wild swarm land in his yard on Beltane and I contemplated bringing them home. They flew off before I was able to get a home set up for them, but I discovered that I have all the supplies on hand to build a simple top bar hive called a "Honey Cow", which I intend to build for next Spring. I was glad the children got to see something different from the traditional Western honey production hives, and hear about how top bar hives mimic natural conditions for the bees to build their honeycombs.

We learned a lot about the art of beekeeping and how to behave around bees. The beehive had a little clear window, so we all got a look inside to see what was going on. The only timid one was my daughter, who was a little put off after two bees landed in her hair. I can see going to have some work to do with her around this before we set up our own colony, but I've got a little time.

Next, we headed out into the field to meet the draft horses. Ruby, half of the original team for which the farm was named, came out to greet us and spend some time being fawned over by all the children. She was one happy old horse.

We spent a lot of time petting and brushing the horses.

There was some all out horse snuggling going on.

Then the farmers put all the plowing tack on this team named Tom and Jerry, and the children got to take turns driving them up and down the road. It was pouring rain by this point, but nobody minded. We were having too much farm fun.

We met a couple of other lovely farm residents too.

The big, pregnant sows were happy to meet all the children, and to get an apple from Kris. We got to hear a little about pig midwifery and how to take care of newborn piglets. Apparently great care has to be taken so their mama doesn't roll over on them, until they develop enough agility to move out of the way.

We ate our lunch at the big farm kitchen table and drank hot tea while the rain kept pouring outside. The farrier arrived while we were eating, so we got to watch him work on those giant hooves for a little bit. After one last visit with the horses in the pasture, we said our goodbyes and headed out. I almost didn't want our visit at the farm to end, but we were on our way to one last stop at the Pacific Yurts showroom outside of Cottage Grove to see the three different models they have set up. That stop was brief, but fun. I like to pop in there when I'm in that neck of the woods, just to imagine for a few minutes that I live in one of those spacious 30' yurts out in the wilderness somewhere. The kids were getting a little restless by that point, but I think it was a good rounding out for their block on shelter. If I haven't mentioned it enough yet, I am so grateful that my children are receiving a Waldorf education. Sure, most schools take kids on field trips, and many visit farms, but watching our class I was very aware of all the rich things they learned that tied in with this experience. They truly are learning about living on the earth and how to appreciate and engage with it. Even if they never plow a field of their own, these kids know where their food comes from and how they are connected to it. The future looks promising.

May on the Homestead

2011-05-31T10:22:00.000-07:00

As the month of May draws to a close, I thought I'd give an update on happenings around the homestead. It didn't feel like there was much to report this month with all the rain. I started a lot of seedlings, got a lot of potatoes and onions planted, and had the neighbor come over with his tractor to plow the field again. I spent a lot of time waiting for the rain to stop. This last weekend of May, however, things really started happening. We hauled two loads of manure from a dairy with the help of our friend's old Forest Service truck, and I finally got to drive one which was a life goal realized (although I always thought it would be in conjunction with working for the Forest Service.) We hoed up a lot of rows and planted a lot of starts out in the field, and fed ourselves at the end of those long days with kale, mustard greens, lettuce and radishes from the garden. Salad days are here again!

Everywhere you look, seedlings are germinating and popping up all over the garden. I planted a lot of flowers this year, and it will be exciting to have the neighborhood honeybees come over and enjoy them all Summer long.

The greenhouse is a happenin' place right now. I took a lot of things out to plant in the field and garden beds this weekend. As soon as the rest of the seedlings are out in the field, these beds will be planted in tomatoes and peppers.

When I was pulling little weeds out of the garden beds, I checked on my Easter egg radishes and found some the size of golf balls! I really love fresh radishes, so for me this was as exciting as...well, an Easter egg hunt! Just look at all those colors.

A bird's eye view of the field and half of the garden taken from the roof. This was before we got going with planting on Sunday.

The potatoes are coming along nicely. There are three long rows with 5 varieties, and hopefully enough potatoes to last the year. From the looks of it now, there should be a whole lot of potatoes.

My husband spent a lot of time out there hoeing and planting rows. We got the last of the storage onions in, the gourds, the pumpkins, the melons, the cucumbers and the tomatoes. It looks like the corn, beans and squash are going in together out of necessity, because we're running out of room out there! I hear they grow well in that configuration, so it should work out nicely.

Not to brag, but here's my nettle patch. All right, it's shameless nettle bragging. I think the manure from the chicken coop seeps out and fertilizes them. They're taller than my children!

And speaking of those chickens, here are some of the Spring pullets enjoying the sunshine. With my dream of having chickens all over the place finally realized, I can say that I've made it in life.

Last but not least, the kids got out last year's scarecrow and got him all fixed up for his post out in the field. He got new straw stuffing, his lost glove was returned, and some fancy new chicken feathers were tucked in his hat. Now all he has to do is stand out there watching the crops grow, and looking menacing to marauding birds. I'd say that Scarecrow has a pretty good life, wouldn't you?

Mystic Orb Giveaway!

2011-05-28T06:49:00.000-07:00

I am pleased to introduce you to my friends, Jeff and Taryn, artists of Mystic Orb and give my readers an opportunity to win a set of these wonderful sassafras buttons. I met Jeff and Taryn through fellow crafters and Saturday Market friends a couple of years ago, and I am so glad that I did! These folks are modern day homesteaders, living out on the Siuslaw River with their beautiful baby boy, Bracken, and a whole passel of creatures including goats, ducks and dogs. They are by far some of the most inspiring people around, and they are always striving to find and feed the Joy in life. You can read more about them here in this interview I did with Taryn last year:

An Interview With Taryn Kae Wilson, Modern Homesteader of the Siuslaw River.

Now I'll let Taryn introduce herself and this giveaway in her own words:

"Hello! We are The Wilson Family- Taryn, Jeff and Bracken. We live on a small mountain homestead in Oregon and make a living from our home business, Mystic Orb.

We sell our art on our online Etsy Shop and at the Eugene Saturday Market. We offer jewelry made from reclaimed wood and other natural materials. We also offer buttons, spoons, kitchen stirring utensils, bookmarks, signs, and whatever other inspiration comes through that day. We love to create with our hands and we love to share those creations with others. Our motto is "Feeding The Joy... naturally" and that is our intention. We are so grateful to live in the forest and we want to share a piece of that magic in everything we make.

Whether you are in the city, town or country, it feels good to carry the energy of the woods with you.

For the giveaway, we are offering a set of 6 buttons made in reclaimed sassafras wood. Our buttons are great for so many creative endeavors. We've seen them used on knitted sweaters, sewn jackets, and on vintage coats to give them a fresh new look.

In Jeff's words:
"These are not your ordinary flat wood buttons. I start by selecting the most beautiful woods, slicing them, then doing a special process to keep the bark on. Then sand each on 100, 220, 400, 600, 30 micron grit. Then spray with a natural shellac, to help waterproof it, then buff on two different wheels, finishing with a buffing compound used on the surface of eyeglasses to get the glass like finish. Each one lovingly handmade."

To enter, visit their Etsy shop at: http://www.mysticorb.etsy.com/ and leave a comment saying what your favorites are. You can also get yourself a second entry by becoming a follower on Taryn's blog, http://woolymossroots.blogspot.com/. As a special deal to accompany this giveaway, you can also use the coupon code WOOLYMOSSROOTS and save 10% on their ETSY shop this week!
That's it! I look forward to hearing from you!

Although I'm not entering, I want to share my favorite item, Jeff's wooden paddles. He started out making these gorgeous wooden paddles with Celtic love knots for Valentine's day, and we came up with the fun name, "Love Paddles" while I was out visiting. It was a big hit, and Jeff got included in a lot of really interesting Etsy treasuries with those. Now he also makes them with beautiful carved trees and Celtic knot designs from many beautiful kinds of wood. I love them.

Fun With Rabbits

2011-05-27T07:25:00.000-07:00

It's been a busy time of year, and in the shuffle I forgot to introduce two new additions to the homestead. Micke Fleur and Sanna Blossom the Netherland Dwarf rabbits were given to us by some friends in my childrens' class in interest of giving them a life out in the country. While my children are excited about having two new pets, I've got one thing on my mind. Manure. I had been long wishing I had animals on the property that would produce some manure I could put directly in the garden for nutrients. Chicken poop just takes time. So, I was delighted when we were offered these two little poop machines. Isn't it great when things in life work out like that?

Unfortunately, the dogs were way more excited about the rabbits than we were. I don't even think excited is quite the word. They are obsessed with the rabbits. The day we brought the hutch home and set it up on our front porch, the dogs started climbing over the new front fence to get up close to the objects of their obsession and try to knock the hutch over to set them free.

So, my husband constructed this snazzy outer pen for the rabbit hutch. It's moveable, dog-proof and tall enough for an adult to stand up in while cleaning the hutch. The dogs still sit outside staring at the rabbits and barking a good part of the day, but I'm hoping the novelty will wear off with time.

The rabbits spend their days munching hay, hopping around and pooping. It seems a very Zen existence in its simplicity. In the mean time, I am enjoying the added compost for the garden and it's keeping the dogs out of other trouble. I guess you know you're a homesteader when you get all excited over rabbit poop.

Stripped Down Patchwork

2011-05-26T08:00:00.000-07:00

I would like to introduce you to my friend and great inspiration, Erin Gilday, the amazing woman behind Patchwork Underground. Erin is a fiber artist, crafts instructor, freelance writer and pattern designer from Portland, OR. Her sewing patterns and craft culture pieces have appeared in Stitch, Sew News, Quilts and More, Threads, SewStylish, The Quilt Life, Piecework, Sew Hip and Curve magazines. When she's not sewing, she's busy blogging about craft, listening to Top 40 Country radio, whipping up vegan treats in the kitchen, caring for her bunny and kitty, playing banjo, thrift shopping or cruising the crafts section of her local library. Like I said, she's amazing. I had the pleasure of interviewing her last year about her life as a craftswoman and adventures in her handmade housebus. You can read that interview here at: An Interview with Erin Gilday, Craftswoman and Urban Bus Pioneer.

Erin is stopping by my blog as a part of her online tour for her new book, Stripped Down Patchwork: 12 Modern Projects Featuring Seminole Patchwork. When we talked about the project over the past months, my questions often gravitated towards the history behind the technique. Being a fellow crafter with a thing for history, she had a wealth of information to share about this patchwork with a past. Intrigued? Read on, and look for her book at: http://patchworkunderground.com/blog/my-book, and get your copy directly from the publisher for 15% off here: http://www.leisurearts.com/stripped-down-patchwork.html.

So, without any further ado, here's the interview with the seamstress extraordinaire herself!

Your book includes these 12 modern projects based on traditional Seminole Patchwork, tell us more about the history of this patchwork technique.

Erin: Seminole patchwork was invented by women seamstresses of the Seminole Tribe of Florida just as they gained access to the first hand-crank sewing machines in the 1880s. The amazing thing about this revolutionary technique is that it was invented at a time and place of awesome adversity.

Here's the backstory: As Native Americans across the country suffered displacement, extermination and disease at the hand of white settlers, many different culturally related tribes of what is now known as Florida joined forces with escaped slaves to resist colonization and, specifically, the Indian Removal Act of 1830. ("The Seminoles" are now a thoroughly organized, official tribe but before white settlers united them in struggle, there were many different bands of indigenous peoples in the areas now recognized as "Seminole land"...they shared a common branch of language but there were many different dialects and cultural differences...it's a long story, you can read it here: http://www.semtribe.com/.) Suffice it say, the indigenous peoples of the greater Florida area did not want to be removed from their lands. Though they were totally outnumbered, they used guerrilla tactics, community alliances and a superior knowledge of the terrain to drag the war on for decades – from 1817 to 1858. Many, many Seminoles and escaped slaves died in this war. When their numbers finally fell to a few hundred survivors, the Seminole Tribe of Florida hid out in remote camps in the swamplands of the Everglades. The only contact they had with the outside world was an occasional visit to a trading post, where they might trade with outsiders for things like cloth. It's assumed that their first hand-crank sewing machines arrived via canoe.

One of the first pages covers a little of the history of the Seminole Tribe and how they were the only tribe to never sign a peace treaty with the U.S Government. Can you tell us a little about how their history and lifestyle influenced the development of their technique?

Erin: Yeah, they never signed a peace treaty to this day. They were the only ones to successfully resist compromise with the United States government in that way, which is pretty remarkable. Because there is no documentation of the creation of the Seminole patchwork technique (that I know of) all you really have is speculation about how and why it was created. They know that it was women who did the sewing, so it's safe to say that a woman (or a group of women) made it up. It's obviously not a technique that makes sense with hand sewing so we know it was always done on the sewing machine. Some people suggest that it was borne out of necessity – a thrifty way to use up ever little bit of fabric and create whole cloth out of small strips. I haven't actually seen this backed up with any hard evidence, though. I mean, the seam allowances use up a lot of fabric, too, especially in some of the more intricate designs. When it was made up originally, Seminoles used the technique for making clothing – "big shirts" for men and skirts for women. Of course, clothing made out of cloth isn't "traditional." Before white settlers came, Seminoles wore grass skirts and/or no clothes at all. (If you've ever been, you know why - Florida is hot and humid!) But the patchwork skirts and "long shirts" or "Seminole jackets" became traditional. They made new traditions in response to the changing times.

As pollution and industrialization forced Seminoles out of their camps, one of the most viable ways for Seminoles to make a living was by selling their culture to tourists. That's when the patchwork really took off and became super-intricate. I think Seminole patchwork is a great example of how slippery "culture" is. Culture never exists in a vacuum – it's not like there is tradition on the one hand and non-tradition on the other. We are constantly making our traditions.

You mention that this is the only technique that was always meant to be done on a sewing machine, can you tell me more about that?

Erin: Yup, Seminole patchwork was the first and only "traditional" patchwork technique always meant to be executed on the sewing machine. If you've ever tried to sew a whole full length dress by hand then you know that sewing machines are awesome! Not only does the sewing go faster, but when you intersect a seam with another seam you lock that first seam in place. Seminole patchwork totally relies on this fact. See, when you cut out the strip sets, you have unbackstitched seams just waiting to unravel. But, when you sew those strip sets together, you lock those seams in place with the intersecting seam. And then, when you chop off the "triangles" and insert the band into your finished project, you lock those seams in place with the final insertion seam. AMAZING! Hand sewing can't readily replicate that element of the technique – you never want to cut into a hand sewn seam, ever.

One of the first things I noticed about the book is how simple and approachable the technique sounds for beginners. Being on the sewing challenged side myself, I would love for you to share with our readers a few encouraging words about trying these projects.

Erin: I made all the projects with beginners in mind! The instructions take you from step #1 all the way to the end and assume that you know very little about sewing. The thing about Seminole patchwork is it looks crazy intricate but its actually very, very easy to get good-looking results in a short amount of time, even for people who aren't expert seamstresses. There are no curvy, complicated seams to goof up – if you can sew in a straight line, then you can do this!

Want to read more about this crafty lady? Here's the blog tour itinerary for you to follow along with:

• Leisure Arts Blog – http://leisureartsblog.blogspot.com/ - Monday, May 16
• Sew Daily – http://www.sewdaily.com - Tuesday, May 17
• Craftzine – http://craftzine.com/ - Wednesday, May 18
• Craftypod – http://www.craftypod.com/ - Thursday, May 19
• Whipup.net – http://www.whipup.net/ - Friday, May 20
• Burdastyle – http://www.burdastyle.com/ - Saturday, May 21
• Pink Pinguin - http://ayumills.blogspot.com/ - Sunday, May 22
• A Green Banana – http://agreenbanana.wordpress.com/ - Monday, May 23
• I Think Sew – http://xstreetgirl.blogspot.com/ - Tuesday, May 24
• Happy Zombie – http://thehappyzombie.com/ - Wednesday, May 25
• A Mountain Hearth - Thursday, May 26
• Sew News - http://www.sewnews.com/blogs/sewing/ - Friday, May 27
• Pat Sloan’s Blog – http://patsloan.typepad.com/ - Saturday, May 28

Hot Stuff!

2011-05-25T12:21:00.000-07:00

You may have noticed these snazzy new tags on my blog giveaways, in my Mountain Hearth Handcrafts Etsy shop, or in my booth at recent festivals. This is my idea turned into reality through my husband's artistic abilities. I have often said that I write because I can't draw or paint, so it's a good thing knowing an artist of that sort. For some time now, I have been stitching these cast-iron skillet grabbers for some time now from re-purposed wool sweaters. I really love cast-iron (read more about this kitchenware love affair here: Cast-Iron: Not Just Your Grandmother's Frying Pan!), and there is nothing else I would rather cook with, but the heat conductivity where handling is concerned is really an issue. Many issues can be solved with creativity and crafting, however, and I think these wool grabbers are a great solution.

I'm going to shamelessly advertise here and tell you to head on over to my Etsy shop and check them out:

http://www.etsy.com/listing/69144651/cast-iron-skillet-grabber

I ended up taking this idea one step further with another common homestead kitchen item complete with its own set of issues. Mason jars are so essential and so abundant in homes where food is produced and preserved, that there always seems to be one on hand. You can read my ode to the canning jar here: A Canner's Inheritance. I use them for canning, dried food storage, herbs and spices, drinking glasses, vases, you name it. Since they're made to withstand boiling temperatures, they make excellent cups for tea, coffee and hot soup, and with the lid, you've got a to-go container with no potential leaching issues like plastic or metal. The problem, again, is heat conductivity. You don't want to grab one of these full of hot liquids. So, re-purposed wool sweaters save the day again. The sleeves make perfect mason jar warmers, and keep your drink hot and your hand cool. My husband helped out with another artistic sketch for the tag, making it a fun little gift.

More shameless advertising, check these out at my Etsy shop:

http://www.etsy.com/listing/73691302/mason-jar-warmer?ref=ss_listing

What can I say? Cast-iron and canning jars are just plain hot!

Fields of Blue

2011-05-23T13:46:00.000-07:00

One of the first things I fell in love with during my first Spring in the Willamette Valley was the camas. Lining roadsides, in patches along trails and natural areas, in many folks back yards, and in waving masses of blue out in the fields and wetlands, this plant is a beautiful sight to behold. Camas (Camassia sp.) belongs to the lily family, and posesses a rich history as one of the most important root foods (a bulb to be more exact) of indigenous peoples of western North America. Families maintained their own camas patches, year after year through the generations, using fire to manage the grasslands and increase yields, removing patches of the top sod layer either before or right after blooming, and digging the bulbs out with forked digging sticks. Then they roasted the bulbs in pits for days to break down the undigestable inulin compounds and enjoyed it as a starchy staple. Often it was dried into cakes for consumption throughout the Winter months.

Camas prefers an ephemeral habitat drying out at the end of the Spring, such as prairies, meadows, wet hillsides, stream corridors, and floodplains. Unfortunately, the type of habitats favorable to camas are also favorable for growing crops, and much of this plant's habitat has been converted to farmland. I have heard it said that when Lewis and Clark came over a crest of mountains and beheld their first view of a vast camas prairie rippling in the breeze like waves, they mistakenly thought they had reached the ocean and recorded this in their journals. I like to imagine what that must have looked like.

Knowing it once grew all over our wet, marshy grasslands and forests in this area, I have long held a desire to re-introduce it onto our property. It grows in our neighbor's back field, so I know we are definitely in the native habitat. I didn't get the timing right to gather and broadcast some seeds, so this last Fall I put in a few bulbs out in our field and in the garden beds around the house. In the past week or so, I was thrilled to see camas blooming in my garden and to spot one bright blue flower stalk rising up out of the tall grass behind our house. We keep some portions of the yard both mowed and un-mowed, and I could have planned a little better with camas locations, but at least this one made it! I hope that its seeds will scatter far and wide, creating a whole patch next year.

For more information on our native camas, you can read this great USDA fact sheet at:

http://plants.usda.gov/plantguide/pdf/cs_caqub2.pdf

Be sure to educate yourself before harvesting any bulbs as to protected areas, ethical wildcrafting practices, proper preparation and the look-alike death camas. With the vast reduction in habitat, most camas harvest nowadays is done with permits in salvage operations. I still have yet to harvest any myself for all the complexitites I've listed above, but one day I hope to add it to my wild food experiences. For the time being, I'll just add it to my yard!

A Foraging Lesson

2011-05-18T21:33:00.000-07:00

Have you ever heard the phrase, "Feeling like a Spring chicken" and wondered what that must feel like? Well, watching all our little chicks out in the barnyard has answered that question in my mind. It looks like an awful lot of fun being a Spring chicken. You might remember Silkie, the determined little hen from my earlier post, One Proud Mama Chicken. As things turned out, one egg didn't hatch and one chick didn't make it, but she has two healthy little offspring following her around wherever she goes. Neither one hatched from her own eggs, but I don't think she's ever noticed or would think anything of it if she did.

Lately, I've noticed her efforts focused on foraging lessons. She goes over to a spot where there's some grain, a worm or a little bug, and makes a series of fast clucking sounds to call the chicks over. She scratches, they scratch and then they feast. I've seen her feed them a worm or two from her beak, but I think they're really getting the hang of it on their own.

Everywhere she goes, those chicks aren't far behind.

They've got following their mama down.

Silkie is such a good mother in fact, that other chickens wish they were her baby. This little brown silkie chick with a crossed beak deformation has decided to adopt itself into the family. Every time Silkie clucks the food call, this one comes running over and eats along with the chicks. Sometimes she chases it away, but usually she is okay with sharing.

I have to say these chicks are really getting their foraging technique down. When I threw out the cracked corn this morning, they were right there, scratching and pecking along with the best of them (all 62), and doing their mama proud.

62 chickens. I really am a crazy chicken lady now, or a farmer. It's a fine line.

Blog Giveaway Winners!

2011-05-17T16:52:00.000-07:00

The names are drawn, the results are in, and we have three winners for my 100th Blog follower giveaway! I heard from readers all the way from Mapleton, Oregon to Victoria, Australia and I loved reading all your responses. I heard about such an array of wonderful homesteading endeavors and dreams of backyard bees, canning, growing food, chickens, goats, alpacas, mulching, fruit trees, blueberries, fiber animals, spinning, herbal remedies, solar power, and celebrating the seasons as they go around. I also heard a lot of thanks for offering up inspiration, and I want to thank you all back for your inspiration. Hearing about other folks out there doing and dreaming about the same things really spurs me onward in my own work on the land.

I wanted to tell you a little about my three winners and what they're up to. Laurie, winner of the handmade bird's nest is trying to incorporate more of the Wheel of the Year and celebration of the seasons in her life, so I hope the nest brings a little Spring into her home. Aubrey, who will be receiving a cast-iron skillet grabber is an urban homesteader with dreams of a forever piece of land in the future and a fellow fan of Alaskan homesteading documentaries! Rachael, winner of the mason jar warmer, is a homesteader, fiber artist, spinner and canner renting a small portion of a working dairy farm with her husband in northwestern Pennsylvania. She currently raises chickens, angora rabbits and alpaca, with dreams in the future of more fiber animals and more foraging for wild edibles.

Congratulations Laurie, Aubrey and Rachael! Please contact me via email at mountainhearth@gmail.com with your addresses, and I will send your packages to you!

If you missed this giveaway and want another chance to win, head over to my friend Taryn's blog, Wooly Moss Roots to enter the drawing for another cast-iron skillet grabber and mason jar warmer.

Here's the link:

http://woolymossroots.blogspot.com/2011/05/mountain-hearth-handcraftsgiveaway_17.html

In Oregon, We're Covered in Moss

2011-05-15T17:58:00.000-07:00

With all the rain we have out here in Oregon, we also have a lot of moss. It carpets forest floors, grows in marshes, hangs from trees, engulfs boulders, and grows on our roofs. It's a wonder it doesn't grow on Oregonians. Having grown up in the Pacific Northwest, it's a familiar and fond flora to me, and this Spring I have enjoyed observing some of the different kinds. Apparently there are many. I took a series of close-up shots to show off the variety in color and texture of this often overlooked member of the plant kingdom. If you take the time to stoop down and really look, you'll find a whole miniature world down there on the ground.

Mosses are marvelous!

This last one is not a moss, but a Lungwort Lichen (Lobaria pulmonaria.)

I threw it in for the intricate texture, and because I think that lungworts are lovely.

100th Blog Follower Giveaway

2011-05-09T15:14:00.000-07:00

To celebrate my blog reaching 100 official followers this week, I decided it's time for a giveaway. It's my way of saying "Thank You" to all of my readers out there. There will be three winners, each receiving a gift from my Mountain Hearth Handcrafts Etsy shop at http://www.mountainhearth.etsy.com/. I have been amazed since I started up this writing project at how many folks out there are following along. While I have 100 regular readers through Google, there are also many more out there to thank. I discovered the "stats" button a little while back, and realized I have readers all over the world, around 200 site visits a day, and over 34,000 site visits in all! I am humbled and filled with gratitude to be sharing my ideas, adventures and musings on this life with so many others, many whom I have never met. Creating something that you can share makes it just so much more fun. Thank you for your visits, comments and support of my business through the Etsy shop!

One winner will receive one of my handmade bird's nests with felted wool eggs. I make these out of the invasive European Beach Grass roots that are encroaching on our local sand dune ecosystem, doing my part to combine art and invasive species control. They make a nice year-round decoration, but are especially nice on Spring season tables and tucked into the boughs of your tree for the Winter holidays.

I've also got some homestead goods to give away. Another winner will receive on of my handcrafted cast iron skillet grabbers made from recycled wool sweaters. They will save your hand from some nasty burns, and come in very handy around the kitchen. Someone recently pointed out that they're also the right size to hold cel phones! My husband lent his artistic skills to make these fun tags, that read, "Cast Iron: The hottest thing since long john underwear." So very true.

And the other winner will receive one of my handcrafted mason jar warmers also made of recycled wool sweaters. They keep your hands comfortable and your tea or soup hot when putting all those extra mason jars around the kitchen to use. This one comes with another of my husband's tag creations.

To enter, simply leave a comment on this post introducing yourself, sharing a little about your homesteading activities or aspirations if you'd like, and how you came to read my blog. I want this to be an opportunity to meet my readers! If you aren't signed up with a Google account to leave comments, you can leave one on my Mountain Hearth Handcrafts Facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Mountain-Hearth-Handcrafts/290968424339?ref=ts. And then there's also good old fashioned e-mail at: mountainhearth@gmail.com. I will close the giveway in one week, on Monday, May 16, and put all the entries into a hat from which the three winners will be randomly drawn. Then I will contact the winners and send them their gift.

I look forward to hearing from you!

May Faire

2011-05-08T08:24:00.000-07:00

With Spring here at long last, it was time for our Waldorf School's annual May Faire. Year after year, rain or shine, the community puts a lot of work and a lot of love into creating a festival in honor of the season. This year, in spite of a little early morning rain, we all gathered around the May Pole and shared in beautiful music, dancing, homemade food, art and games. The day was a kaleidoscope of vibrant colors, sounds, flavors and aromas.

I was there with my Mountain Hearth Handcrafts booth selling art, and with the way things worked out with the weather and some re-arranging, I ended up looking right out at the May Pole. Just as I was finishing setting up, the bagpiper came down along the path through the playground, leading smiling children and parents in a May procession to finally circle around.

The fourth grade class came out in their flower garlands and each took their colorful ribbon at the base of the pole.

A duo of parent musicians started up an ancient May Pole song, and the intricate circle dance began.

Ribbons wove in and out, creating some amazing temporary art at the top of the pole, with the shining faces of our school community standing all around and the school building as a backdrop. I couldn't help but think that those ribbons were so much like our lives, all separate strands woven together to create something beautiful and cohesive. Even though I go there every day, sometimes more than once, seeing so many friends and appreciating the community, seeing everyone gathered around the May Pole this morning was particularly moving. I was grateful to be a part of it.

The children danced and skipped around and around, weaving in and out of one another's path.

As quickly as the ribbons were wound, the dance reversed and they were unwound. Then it was time for the festivities to begin.

I spent the day in my booth, with many smiling faces coming by to chat and purchase my handcrafted goods.

I think I was even visited by a Spring Sprite or two.

While my son spent the afternoon at the bubble booth and winning fun prizes like rocks, shells, crystals, charms and little gnomes; my daughter and her best friend headed over to the Queen's Boudoir to get their hair done up with ribbons and flowers by the beloved gardening teacher, Tracie Jo.

There were Spring beauties everywhere you looked!

At the end of the day, the May Faire was packed up and vanished, like a gathering of faeries disappearing into the wood. I packed up my booth, gathered up my flower garlands and headed home to a warm crock pot supper. As I went to sleep exhausted, as I'm sure many other folks from our school did, the day stayed with me, and I remembered all the things I love about our community, why I've gone through so many struggles to see that my children go there, how lucky we are to be a part of it, and how it is all worth it. As we weave our ribbons in and out, around and through, it's good to stand back every now and then to gain a greater perspective and appreciation for what is being created, and a reminder that our daily endeavors are being woven into something beautiful.

A Gardening Song for Living on the Earth

2011-05-06T13:08:00.000-07:00

Today is the 40th Birthday of Alicia Bay Laurel's artistic homesteading manual, Living on the Earth. So many of my childhood homesteading dreams were fueled by my parents copy of this wonderful book that I was delighted to discover an accompanying folk album she recorded called Music for Living on the Earth. It's an earthy collection of songs about waking up early, going about your chores, growing food and pondering the meaning of it all.

This gardener's song often goes through my head when I'm out planting seedlings and turning soil.

Chard and Chives

by Alicia Bay Laurel

I’m going out to do a dance in the garden

I’ve got a space cleared out to plant a gift of love to everyone

The garden—I hope it feeds everyone

But, in the meantime, it gets me out in the sun.

Each little seed I planted with a sweet love song

Each little weed I killed I hoped it came back as a fruiting tree

Oh garden—please pardon my ignorance

I’m a city girl just learning to listen to plants.

All of the pits and peels that went into the compost

Come back as comfrey, kale and carrots, a row of beans and mustard greens

And lettuce—be thankful for garlic, chard and chives

May our salad days last the rest of our lives

Whenever I’m down and blue I go to my garden

And soon I’ll be singing and acting goofy as a girl in love for the very first time

Oh garden—I love the way you set me free

Hope I grow for you the way you grow for me. "

Garden Fairy Houses

2011-05-04T11:28:00.000-07:00

Making miniature homes for wee folk is a wonderful pastime for folks young and old. At our last house, we built a whole fairy house village all throughout our garden under the big old shrubs. We made little houses, roads, gardens, ponds and a dance hall. Interspersed throughout were delicate little plants like Irish Moss, violets, and ferns. It was a great outlet for imaginative play, and always a fun ongoing project. Then we got dogs, and the fairy house fun was all over. I am sorry to report that dogs love to eat fairy houses. It's just what they do.

This Spring we got wise and fenced off a large part of our front yard and garden from the dogs, and we were finally able to build the resident faeries some more permanent homes.

The kids helped me gather up branches from trimming the mulberry tree one day, and we had a little fairy house making party on our front porch while it rained (it tends to do that around here.) We used florists's wire to hold them together and set them up with lots of moss, rocks, shells and little tiny cups and dishes for pools. We recovered a few ribbons and beads from the old houses and used them for further adornment.

We tracked down some ivy from an old abandoned homestead so my son could use his basketry skills from the Coyote Kids after school program to make a woven hut. It looked right at home tucked between the artichokes and calendula. My daughter made hers into a little Buddhist temple with a smiling Buddha garden statue. She has been scattering flower petals around it when she finds them around the yard. We have already been so lucky as to find wee folk inhabiting one of the houses, a small tree frog napping under the moss.

I can't say enough what an absolute treasure and inspiration Barry and Tracy Kane's book, Fairy Houses...Everywhere is. If you've never looked through this one, check out the website through the link, or find it at your local library and let the construction begin!

The Magic Rattle

2011-05-02T11:06:00.000-07:00

If you can think back and remember the first time in your life you wanted something so badly you saved up all your pennies, birthday money from relatives, lawnmowing wages, and stray quarters picked up off the sidewalk until you attained the object of your heart's desire, I'll bet you treasure it among your gems of character-building childhood memories. These early lessons in the power of our dreams and will stay with us throughout our lives, and inspire many a folk tale and children's story. "Where the Red Fern Grows," for example, takes such a well-loved place among children's literature today because Wilson Rawls put these lessons at the heart of it. Well beyond being a touching dog story, it's the story of Billy Coleman's dreams, and it forces us to ask ourselves, if a young boy growing up in poverty in the Ozark hills can scrimp and save to buy a pair of hound pups and help fulfill his family's dreams, what's holding us back from our own?

For the last three years, my son River has been saving up all his money for one thing. One of our favorite artists at the local Saturday Market, Raven Moon, makes these beautiful rattles called Shapeshifters in the form of magical creatures, eggs, and masks out of herbs and natural materials all encrusted in gemstone chips, crystals and little treasures. They are beautiful, functional works of local art. My kids have been getting each other little rattles as gifts for the last few years, and over that time, my son developed an artistic connection with the Raven Moon, and an unwavering certainty that he was going to save up all his money to buy the giant frog rattle. The realist in me said he might be able to by the time he was a teenager, but would likely change his mind before then. The dreamer in me, however, said that this was an excellent opportunity to teach him about economics, the value of art, the power of our dreams, and the importance of pursuing them with determination and purpose. I told him to start saving.

Every trip to Saturday Market, Holiday Market or the Oregon Country Faire, we stopped by to check in on the rattle. It sold a few times and new ones were made, but my son didn't mind. He was saving up for just the right one. He always inspected the new one, talked to Raven Moon about it, and kept on saving. In three years, he never spent his money on a single thing. He put it all away in his piggy bank, and jumped on the chance to do any chore where someone offered him a couple of dollars in compensation. This winter, when I took the kids to open their first bank accounts, I was amazed to discover that he had saved up all the money! I told him that when Saturday Market started back up in the Spring, he could go and buy his giant frog rattle.

We made our big trip to the Market on a sunny Saturday, and headed straight to Raven Moon's booth. Right away, River found the giant green frog rattle that was meant to be his. He got out his wallet, and asked how much it would be, and Raven said he had been thinking about it a lot and wanted to give him a special deal. My son held out the full amount, but still he insisted on sending him home with something to put back in the bank. He said to just come by and let him know what he decided to name it. It was a beautiful moment watching all the pride, joy and empowerment shining on my son's face as he picked up the rattle in his arms like a precious baby and just stared at it. He had made his dream into reality.

This was a proud moment for me in my journey of raising children. I do my best to impart the values to them that I find most important as we go along, like being a good person, being a real person, taking good care of yourself and the earth, working hard, appreciating beauty and art, and so forth. In this instance, I was especially pleased that I had helped my child learn firsthand about dreams. We need our dreams to feed and fuel us as we go through life, and if we can start out believing that we posses the power to make them come true, it opens up a world of possibility ahead of us. A child's dream like this one may seem unattainable and frivolous at first assessment, but when you look past the dream itself to the path towards it and all the lessons to be gained, it is absolutely worth giving them your blessing and support. I can't wait to see what his next dream will be.

"If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams,

and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined,

he will meet with success unexpected in common hours."

~Henry David Thoreau

Beltane in Bloom

2011-05-01T19:10:00.000-07:00

The merry month of May has arrived at long last! Today the sun was shining, a soft breeze was blowing, birds were courting, and bees were humming all around. It was a productive day. I got my potatoes planted and seedlings started. My mama chicken came out of her nest to scratch around with her three little chicks. A friend of mine had a swarm of honeybees move into his backyard over the weekend that I'm wishing I could bring home. Calendula, borage, rosemary, and violas are flowering in my garden. It was a good day to open one's eyes and notice all the things blooming in life.

I spent the morning reading a book in the garden at the Zendo Buddhist temple while my daughter and her friends made flower garlands in the children's program there. Every so often, I paused to look up at the apple blossoms and ponder life, flowers, and what it means to bloom. Here I will share a few of the flowers I've noticed unfolding in the garden, and some words by other folks who have pondered such things.

"Each flower is a soul blossoming out to nature." ~Gerard De Nerval

"Be like the flower, turn your face to the sun." ~Kahlil Gibran

"The earth laughs in flowers." ~e.e. cummings

"Earth is a flower, and it's pollinating." ~Neil Young

Camping at Cape Blanco

2011-04-29T14:09:00.000-07:00

Last weekend we set farm work aside to get out for an April camping trip at Cape Blanco State Park. It's a favorite spot of our family's, near Port Orford on the Oregon Coast, and we've gone there the past couple of years to enjoy warm Spring days on the beach. This was not quite the case this year, but we still found plenty to do in the rain. You can read my blog post about last year's fair weather trip on this link here: To the Lighthouse.

We spent one morning exploring the Sixes River. We stopped at a Fish and Wildlife gravel bar access, where we found abundant signs of wild occupants, like beaver...

And raccoon!

We found several active mining claims farther up the river with little campsites at each one. Always on the lookout for good future campsites, we stopped to check some of them out. This one had an old chimney from a miner's shack of days gone by, surrounded by vinca and ivy. This looked like a great spot to have a campfire! They all had signs up saying don't take rocks. This was very hard for me, but I stayed on my best behavior.

We hiked around the New River Wildlife Area south of Bandon, and found this covered bird watching blind on Muddy Lake.

We stopped there for a rest, welcoming shelter from the drizzly skies.

We saw some strange plants beneath the shore pines.

I was pleased to find this Bearberry (Arctostaphylos uva-ursi) in fruit. The little red berries were beautiful against the shiny green foliage.

Of course, we took some time to play in the mud at the Bandon Marsh National Wildlife Refuge. The kids invented a new activity called "mud skating." I think it has the makings of a great spectator sport.

In spite of being a little drizzly and chilly, it was nice to spend a little time down on the Southern Oregon Coast again. With the green, hilly sheep pastures by the ocean, cranberry bogs, and sparsely populated rural landscape, it's almost like travelling to some faraway place without even leaving Oregon. I'm so intent on putting roots down on this little acre and a half of land that faraway travel has lost much of its appeal for me. I'd take a campfire on the shores of Wickiup Reservoir over a trip to the Bahamas any day. I must say, however, that modern homesteading and camping make for an interesting balancing act. Sometimes it feels like I'm trying to do two completely opposite things all at once. So, with 50+ chickens and chicks, a half-plowed field and a garden to start planting, I am thankful for nearby adventures.

Cute Kids and Blueberry Miracles

2011-04-28T07:46:00.000-07:00

On our way home from this past weekend's camping trip (more about soon) we stopped to see our friends Jeff and Taryn on their Siuslaw River homestead and meet all their baby goats. Let me tell you, those were some cute kids all around, and it was hard to resist taking some home with us. We all fell in love with the runt. There's something about tiny little goats that just pulls on your heartstrings I guess.

We all got our goat snuggles.

Spencer really wanted to take that goat home, but we're at capacity with chickens right now.

Taryn had been telling me for a while about her dream to find abundant mature blueberry plants to put all over their sunny hillside. Jeff and Taryn love blueberries more than any folks I've ever known. They were needing to find homes for all these little goats and some of the mamas, and I had made a suggestion they trade their goats for a yurt, which gave her the idea to trade goats for blueberry plants. This morning, I found out that a blueberry miracle had occurred, and they now have 23 blueberry plants that are 3-5 years old! You can read about it on her blog: Miracles Happen! The story of a Blueberry Miracle!

One Proud Mama Chicken

2011-04-27T11:06:00.000-07:00

Our little Silkie Bantam hen, aptly named Silkie, has wanted to be a mama for a while now. Over the past year, she went broody about four times, and never at a really good time of year for chicks. We kept taking her eggs because we needed them to eat, but that didn't stop her a bit. She just sat right down on the other hens eggs with ruffled feathers and surly pecks at any hands that came near to collect them. She didn't care whose eggs they were, she was going to hatch out some babies! Sometimes we worried about her when she was broody for a while, not eating, just sitting and looking rather melancholy. Eventually with some cracked corn and coaxing, she always came back around, but we did have one bantam hen give up and die once after a long stint of un-successful broodiness, so we worried about this determined little bird.

Last month, when Silkie went broody again, I said the heck with it, and let her sit on four eggs. I'm not sure whose eggs they were, or what sort of odd breed they would turn out to be with the chicken menagerie we have around here, but Silkie didn't care. She was going to be a mama chicken.

This morning when my son went out to feed the chickens, he found this little face peeking out from under her ruffled feathers. Two chicks had hatched and two more were working on it. Silkie was just sitting there looking proud as a mother hen can be, clucking away and puffing out her soft white feathers. I moved her and her brood into a big dog carrier with food and water to keep the chicks safe from the bigger chickens until they got a little farther along in life. From the looks of it, she's got a Black Australorp chick and an Ameraucana, and one of those eggs looks like it came from our White-crested Black Polish bantam, so it will be a surprise to see what we end up with.

Even chicken dreams come true.

April Showers

2011-04-26T15:02:00.000-07:00

April showers are not just the stuff of old sayings this year, and I have been working away on the garden in stolen moments between downpours, and trying not to get too impatient for the field to dry out. I've never checked the weather report so often in my life. I even made it a tab on my browser.

We did manage to work one section on two dry days last week, and I started getting those potato rows hoed before more rain came. As this point, I am planning on getting them planted this weekend rain or shine, soil structure be damned. Potatoes are tough, so hopefully they can take it.

The garden area next to the house is ready to go, and already there are radishes, carrots, kale, New Zealand spinach, beets, broccoli and cabbages coming up.

Pepper seedlings are growing in the makeshift clothes rack/seedling shelf by the window.

Several varieties of tomatoes are soaking up the sunshine in the laundry room.

The greenhouse is filled with salad greens and seedlings.

All the fruit trees are coming along nicely with leaves and blooms. I'm dreaming of fresh, juicy Asian pears every time I spy this one across the yard.

Our 14 meat birds are getting fat and happy in their little brooder bin. It's the first time I've raised Cornish Cross, and these little guys are absolute butterballs!

The "teenager chickens" are out in the pen with the others now, and enjoying scratching around in the straw and congregating at the watering hole. The pecking order seems to be going smoothly, with our tiny white-crested black Polish hen, Lucy, being the only antagonizer. With the even match in size, I'm not too worried about the chicks holding their own.

There are some colorful characters in this bunch. I'm crossing my fingers that there won't be many roosters in this batch of straight-run bantams. Especially this little gray silkie. I really want to keep it.

And all this time my two little farmers have been doing what country kids do; climbing trees, making mud pies, getting into shenanigans and lending a hand from time to time. I think my son is just about as impatient to plant those potatoes as I am. He asks about it daily. Growing food must be in his genes.

I'm glad to see the Winter passing and jump back into the busy pace of the growing season. It feels really good to apply yourself wholeheartedly to such practical work. Sometimes it gets hectic and crazy, and I wonder what on earth I'm doing, but when I put my own food on the table at the end of the day, it is absolutely worth it.

I'm looking forward to those May flowers.

Ode to the Skunk Cabbage

2011-04-20T12:46:00.000-07:00

"Methinks the first obvious evidence of spring is the pushing out of the swamp willow catkins…then the pushing up of the skunk-cabbage spathes…" ~Henry David Thoreau (Journal; March 10, 1853)

If you can get past associating its pungent odor with an unpleasant smelling critter, our Western Skunk Cabbage, Lysichiton americanus, is quite the striking beauty in the springtime woods. Otherwise known as Yellow Skunk Cabbage, Swamp Lantern or Fairy Lanterns, this plant grows in marshy areas along the coast from Alaska to California, and as far inland as Wyoming. This is a plant of many clever qualities, among which are the distinctive strong smell acting as a lure to attract pollinators, and the blooming stem which actually produces enough heat to melt the snow around it. Unfortunately, skunk cabbage has little wild food value with the sharp calcium oxalate crystals causing severe irritation to the mouth, throat and digestive system, but it has a rich history of use as berry baskets, salmon baking wraps, food storage containers and medicine by native peoples. It also makes a good medicinal food for bears, who like to eat the rhizomes upon emerging from hibernation as a laxative.

I don't know about you, but I'm really enjoying this idea of Fairy Lanterns. When their bright yellow flash of color catches your eye on a rainy evening, it isn't hard to imagine that they are little lanterns lighting pathways around the swamp for all the faeries and forest folk.

Custard Pie

2011-04-17T19:47:00.000-07:00

Spring brings so many wonderful things, but few can rival the egg. With modern marvels like lights on timers, we can enjoy farm fresh eggs all year, but the Spring is when we look forward to an egg-stravaganza! This is when all those egg recipes come out, and egg salad sandwiches make their way into lunch baskets. As egg production really picks up, we can look forward to selling them and sharing the enjoyment of those dark yellow, free range yolks.

I'm not sure I had ever had custard pie, or given it much thought until I was listening to Led Zeppelin one day and thought that "Custard Pie" sounded like a good thing to make with the extra eggs I had in the fridge. There's the power of suggestion for you. It was such a big hit, that I have been making custard pie as a Springtime treat ever since. Besides being delicious, with all those eggs in it, one can easily justify it as a breakfast option the next day.

Here's the recipe I use from "The Joy of Cooking." I made a gluten-free almond pie crust, but any old pie crust will do. You might want to make two of these, because they go fast!

Custard Pie

Pie crust

3 eggs

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 tsp salt

2 cups milk or coconut milk

1 tsp vanilla

1/4 tsp nutmeg

Bake pie crust in the oven at 450 degrees for 10 minutes.

Beat eggs, add sugar, salt, milk and vanilla.

Pour into pie crust, and sprinkle with nutmeg.

Reduce heat to 325 degrees and bake about 30 minutes or until firm.

Gluten-Free Almond Pie Crust

(from Nourishing Traditions)

1 cup almonds

3/4 cup arrowroot starch

3/8 cups butter softened

1/4 cup sugar

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp vanilla

Place almonds in food processor and grind to a meal.

Add remaining ingredients and process until smooth.

Press into a well buttered pie pan.

Here's a little something to rock out to in the kitchen while you try making this recipe.

The song that inspired my culinary curiosity: "Custard Pie" by Led Zeppelin.

Wildwood Flower

2011-04-14T19:41:00.000-07:00

Here are a few of the Spring beauties I've spied out in the forest lately...

Pacific Trillium

(Trillium ovatum)

Red-flowering Currant

(Ribes sanguineum)

Round-leaf Violet

(Viola orbiculata )

Indian Plum

(Oemleria cerasiformis)

Snow Queen

(Synthyris reniformis)

Salmonberry

(Rubus spectabilis)

Pacific Trillium, petals faded pink with age.

Back in the Tent Again

2011-04-13T19:17:00.000-07:00

After many weekends of having our plans thwarted by the weather, we finally made it out for our first tent camping trip of the season. Our yurt camping trips in the winter months are a lot of fun, and get us out to the woods and beaches year-round, but there's something about off-pavement camping that feeds the soul in a greater way. No campgrounds, no neighbors, no cars driving by, just a little spot off of a gravel road in the mountains, and the sounds of a crackling campfire, rushing river and singing frogs. There was one such spot down on the Smith River that my husband had in mind, so we packed it up after a busy Saturday around the farm and headed up into the hills. We didn't even leave until 5 o'clock, but we were just happy to be going out camping.

With the Spring runoff, the water level was much higher than we had seen it in this spot before. We watched the churning, swift river for a while, and decided that it looked like quite a force to be reckoned with, so the kids agreed to stay back from the edges, and play on the big flat sandstone rock just below the campsite.

My daughter occupied herself with the doll family she brought along, setting them up with a little campsite and building a tiny campfire.

We found several of these orange bellied newts by the riverside and many hours were spent building a newt habitat for them in a little tributary stream.

We burned up all our firewood in the evening fire, forgetting that we planned on open-fire cooking for breakfast, which provided an excellent opportunity to call on our collective fire building survival skills. Our kids have been in this great after school program called Coyote Kids, where they learn all about nature awareness, survival skills, lost proofing, wildlife tracking and all sorts of useful things. Even though the woods were wet from the previous days rain, we were not deterred. My husband went out and snapped off some low branches at the bottom of trees with dense canopies and my son talked him through how to set up the charred remnants of the nighttime fire with the dry twigs. I remembered a good friend's advice to look for standing dead alder trees, and after knocking a couple of them over, we had dry firewood and a roaring morning fire.

It was great to spend a night out in the woods and wake up in the morning to all the green leaves unfolding and woodland flowers blooming. Aside from a light sprinkling in the night, the weather held out beautifully and temperatures were comfortable. After breakfast and coffee cooked over our campfire, we spent some time scouting for other campsites along the river. We found a few good future possibilities and at one we encountered a huge Barred Owl. It flew out across the road and landed up in a tree where it sat looking at us for a long time. Having only run across owls in the woods a couple of times, this was a real treat.

We headed for home feeling refreshed and rejuvenated, and glad that camping season has come around again. I have no doubt that it will be another busy season around our little farm, with much to do on the weekends, but we will just do our best to get out in the wilds as much as possible. Those nights spent off-pavement are where it's at.

Chicken Crossing

2011-04-12T17:31:00.000-07:00

Goin' to the Hootenanny

2011-04-11T12:16:00.000-07:00

Sometimes we all just need to kick up our heels and dance, and that is exactly what we did this last Thursday and Friday. Deadwood Revival, a four-piece, progressive old-time jamgrass ensemble from my hometown came travelling through last week, playing one night at a local watering hole and one night at the civic center in a nearby town. Since moving out into the country, evening cultural activities have definitely taken a back burner in life, which I can accept. I would take quiet mornings and songbirds in my field over living in town and taking in more concerts and shows any day. However, I do love live music, and there are some bands I just won't miss a chance to see. This is one of them. We went both nights.

Deadwood Revival is made up of Jason Mogi on guitar and clawhammer banjo, Kim Trennery on guitar, Julie Campbell on fiddle and Ches Ferguson on bass ukulele. They play a variety of old-time tunes, folk songs, hoedowns, original works and Grateful Dead covers woven together with string band jams in between. Whether they're playing "Cotton Eyed Joe" or "Brown Eyed Women," they always get people up and dancing. The Friday night show out in the little town of Drain was all ages, so our kids got to dance the evening away with us. The dance floor was a great mix of all those ages, and an old-timer was kind enough to show my son some happenin', foot-stomping moves!

Here they are playing a favorite of mine, "Red Rocking Chair" at the Axe and Fiddle in Cottage Grove.

And a handful of links to a few more favorites: Cold Rain and Snow, Little Maggie, and

Fire on the Mountain.

Now, these are some folks who know how to put on a real hootenanny. In case you're wondering exactly what that is, Hootenanny, as defined by Wikipedia means, "an Appalachian colloquialism that was used in early twentieth century America to refer to things whose names were forgotten or unknown. In this usage it was synonymous with thingamajig or whatchamacallit, as in "hand me that hootenanny." Hootenanny was also an old country word for "party". Now, most commonly, it refers to a folk-music party." Since this band does such an excellent job of reclaiming old-time folk and Appalachian tunes and "digging them out of the mud" as they say, I think their shows deserve some fitting terminology. So, I am happily reclaiming the word "hootenanny." Go on and say it. It's a rollicking good time, folks.

Braving Alaska: Food for Adventuresome Thought

2011-04-09T10:40:00.000-07:00

I will start of by saying that I've had Alaska on the brain for a very long time. Often I wonder what it is about this far-flung state to the north that captures my imagination so. In my mind, it stands as the last frontier; a rugged, sparsely populated, beautiful and harsh wilderness. I can't help being fascinated by such a place, and I couldn't tell you how many times my husband and I have said, "Let's just move away to the wilds of Alaska and leave it all behind." The more I hear and read about the harsh and extreme realities of Alaskan living, I wonder whether we're cut out of the right stuff, but one day, we might just decide we're tough enough to go for it. I'm not through with big adventures yet, and you really never know where life may lead.

Recently I discovered the documentary selection on Netflix, which has opened up a whole new world of possibilities for family movie nights and stay-in date nights with my husband. A few weeks ago, we found a gem called "Braving Alaska". I knew it was going to be good when I saw that it was directed by Mark Stouffer, brother of Marty Stouffer, our wildlife documentary hero. This 1993 National Geographic documentary narrated by Martin Sheen follows four modern-day homesteading families in the remote Alaskan bush, highlighting the ups and downs, and realities of their rugged lives. I found it fascinating, inspiring and cautionary all at the same time.

Here's a brief summary from a movie website: "Imagine living hundreds of miles from your nearest neighbor or grocery store and having mail delivered by airplane a few times each year, and battling the long, harsh winters with temperatures that plummet to -51 degrees Celsius. Such are the living conditions chosen by the hearty few who inhabit America's last frontier: the Alaskan bush-a spectacular land of rivers and mountains so remote that you'll enter the lives of four families who have turned their backs on civilization to fulfill their dreams of living off the land. Join the modern day pioneers as they face the daily challenges of survival-hunting for food, staying warm, and fending off grizzlies. You'll experience America's pioneering spirit through these remarkable people who are Braving Alaska!" How could you resist with a description like that?

So, look for it at your library, or on Netflix, or wherever you find your movies. It can also be found in a four-DVD boxed set called "Alaska: Into the Wilderness" which also contains three other Alaskan documentaries. This is a must-see for any homesteader, or wilderness enthusiast out there, right along with "Alone in the Wilderness", also an excellent documentary about Dick Proenneke, modern-day Alaskan homesteader, produced by Bob Swerer. You can read my post about it here: Alone in the Wilderness: The Inspiring True Story of a Modern-Day Mountain Man.

We all need to feed our dreams of adventure, and if yours involves Alaska, this is some mighty good fuel.

Bone Broth: A Homesteader's Staple

2011-04-07T15:02:00.000-07:00

The question that has challenged mothers everywhere for centuries; How does one feed a family healthy, nourishing food on a budget? While this is a complicated question that involves many pieces like where to shop, growing your own food, family budgeting, and so on, I would say that which meals are regularly cooked is of great importance. In our single income household, soup plays a key role. I make a big pot of soup once or twice a week and re-heat the leftovers for dinner the following night. We even get lunches for myself and my husband out of it a couple times a week too. While any old tap water will do as a base, I have found that a good broth lays the foundation for soup excellence. When I got my hands on the Nourishing Traditions Cookbook by Sally Fallon last year, I was intrigued by the concept of bone broths. By cooking soup bones down for 2-3 days, all the marrow and calcium are extracted and you are left with a nutrient rich, hearty soup base. Soup bones and stew meat are some of the cheapest cuts you can find out there, since they are considered the scraps, so it's a very economical and sustainable choice for omnivores like myself. Additionally, with two kids who can't handle dairy, it's a good way to give them much-needed calcium.

Soup bones can be found at any grocery store meat counter or butcher shop for a very modest price per pound. I go to the organic, grass-fed farm down the road every couple of months and buy some lamb and beef leg bone slices to stick in the freezer. Sometimes they come individually packaged like in the photo above, and sometimes I just get a big bag of them. We also got some elk leg bones from a neighbor that worked beautifully, but my attempts at making pork bone broth from our yearly half pig did not turn out so well. The flavor was just not happening for me. I'd love to hear from anyone who has successful pork bone broth stories and see if it was something I did wrong there. I also use the carcass any time we roast a chicken, and cook it down the same way for a chicken stock. It has a different quality than the other bone broths, but is equally nutritious.

So, you take your 1-2 Lbs of sliced up bones and put them in a crock pot full of water. Simmer it on low for two to three days. I check it frequently and add more water to top it off as it evaporates out. It fills the house with a delicious aroma while it bubbles away. This is one of those recipes that takes very little work on my part, so I have grown to love it dearly. When soup night rolls around once a week, I pour the broth into a pot on the stove and add lots of diced veggies and beans, lentils, rice, and maybe some sausages or stew meat if it's in the budget that week. I have also had good luck with coconut milk, which you can read about on one of my previous posts: Soup Secrets.

There you have it. Bone broths are the best! Delicious soup for dinner..and lunch...and dinner again!

How to Make Yourself a Damn Fine Cup of Coffee

2011-04-05T13:32:00.000-07:00

Every morning, a cup of coffee is my simple pleasure in the middle of the morning hustle and bustle. After getting two nine-year-olds out of bed, fed, coached through getting clothed and presentable, reminded to do their chores, equipped with lunch baskets and hopefully out the door on time (while I'm multi-tasking like mad and doing more chores), that cup of coffee is like a small vacation. Heck, sometimes I end up having to take it with me in the car, and then it even more closely resembles a small vacation because I'm going somewhere. Now, I'm a do-it-yourself-er and with all the other things I make from scratch, it's a wonder I never attempted to take more of the coffee making process into my own hands. There were always too many other things taking priority, and I thought the set-up would be too expensive. We always bought locally roasted, fair-trade coffee, and I made sure to only grind about a week's worth at a time in the store's grinder, but by the end of the bag, the coffee was needing more and more sprucing up with honey and cream.

Well, dear readers, this week that all changed. A friend of ours runs a home-based chocolate wholesale business, Chocolate Alchemy, where you can order all your cocoa beans and get set up to make chocolate at home. I had the very good fortune of getting a tour of John's set-up and sampling some chocolate while I was picking up my daughter from a playdate with his daughter, and we got to talking coffee. John's a chemist by training and former profession, so he's really gotten down to the nitty gritty of coffee making. He starts with the green coffee beans, roasts them in his homemade roaster, grinds it up in a heavy-duty hand grinder and makes himself some damn fine coffee in a french press. I got to help out with a demonstration of roasting in two of his different contraptions, and was sent home with fresh roasted coffee beans. He said he would be happy to help get us set up at home, and I was more than happy to take him up on the offer.

So, the next time he came to pick up his daughter from our house, he came bearing gifts of coffee beans. I am all about developing as close a relationship as possible with my food and beverages, and while I can't grow my own coffee, seeing these beans in their raw form gave me a whole new understanding of that black cup of brew I savor every morning. While I knew my cup of coffee was once a plant, now I had two bags of these beans, one from Ethiopia and one from Costa Rica. John gets all his beans from Sweet Maria's, a coffee bean and home roasting supplier with a huge selection of green coffee beans from all over the world and detailed information on each one. They sell organic, fair trade, and "Farm Gate" coffee which is a direct trade program that pays coffee producers 50% over fair trade prices. You can read more about that here at Farm Gate, if you are so inclined.

In addition to the gift of beans, we got one of John's inventions on loan. He made this roaster out of a re-purposed popcorn popper, a soup can, and a thermometer. After thorough instruction, assurance there would be no combustion if I was vigilant, and a couple of run-throughs, I was roasting my own beans.

I practiced a medium roast (left) and a darker roast (right). He explained that the darker roasts get more black and oily, and that "scorched" taste is often what folks associate with coffee. I actually hadn't cared much for that taste to begin with, which was why I was adding honey and cream to cover up the flavor and make my coffee more palatable. I have to say that the complexity in flavors of a fresh roasted coffee is well worth the effort, and really shifts the focus of this morning ritual from function to enjoyment.

The next step involved this wonderful little contraption, which I had been wanting for quite some time. I thought hand coffee grinders were going to be wildly expensive, but as I found out, Trosser and Zassenhouse are two German brands of coffee grinders that can be found second hand and hold up splendidly over time. I found a vintage Trosser grinder for 9.99 on Ebay, and it happened to arrive the same day as my roasting lesson took place. My son is happy to volunteer every day filling the top with beans and grinding them to fill the little wooden drawer in the bottom. I was looking forward to the daily ritual of coffee grinding, but turning a child away from a chore they volunteered happily to do seems like a bad idea. I've got plenty of years ahead of me to grind coffee.

Here we have the final product. A damn fine cup of coffee.

Garden Beds Exposed!

2011-04-04T20:16:00.000-07:00

This weekend it finally dried out just enough to run the rototiller over the garden and start adding manure. After weeks of rain, this was a much anticipated event. We switched from rows to something more like a keyhole design to maximize garden space, and I think it's going to work out nicely. Uncovering all that rich, dark soil is sure a treat to the eye! Now we just need it to dry out a bit more so we can plow the field and plant potatoes. I'm hopeful that all this rain isn't going to delay us too much this year, but I have to remind myself how much more set up we are than this time last year.

I also seized the opportunity of a sunny day to weed the herb beds around the house. Plants are popping up all over that I forgot I even had. All that mint I put in when I built the beds and they were looking so bare has now spread and taken over a lot of the space. I felt funny pulling up all that mint as if it were a weed, but the chickens didn't mind the treat, so it still went to good use. Speaking of birds, I also hung the hummingbird feeders and watched all our tiny feathered friends come back. I noticed one hanging around the usual feeder spot earlier in the week, so I knew it was time to put out the free buffet.

The peas I direct sowed are coming up, now accompanied by my starts from the greenhouse to stagger Spring pea harvest.

The rhubarb is fanning out and looking fantastic.

All my cabbage, onions, broccoli and cilantro are coming up in the greenhouse, and from here on out I'll be starting new seeds almost every week.

My little bed of lettuce, kale and mustard is coming up in there too. My hope is to harvest it by the time I need to fill up the space with all those May starts.

We celebrated a weekend of farm work with our first homegrown salad of the year. Some little lettuces overwintered from September, and started growing again this month. They made a nice bitter salad tossed with oil, vinegar and Dijon mustard. The taste of small-scale farming may not always be sweet, but it sure is rewarding.

When the World is Mud-Luscious

2011-03-31T10:19:00.000-07:00

in Just-

in Just-

spring when the world is mud-

luscious the little

lame baloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddieandbill come

running from marbles and

piracies and it's

spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer

old baloonman whistles

far and wee

and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's

spring

and

the

goat-footed

baloonMan whistles

far

and

wee

~e.e. cummings (1894-1962)

Barnyard Bath House

2011-03-29T13:55:00.000-07:00

Ever wondered how chickens take a bath?

Yesterday we let the ladies out to roam around our place, and a group of them made a beeline for the dry spot beneath the eaves of the house. I figured there must have been something really exciting going on over there to compete with all the bugs and tender little weeds out in the field, so I went over to check it out.

They all lined up like they were waiting their turn for a facial at the salon.

Pretty soon one, then another started rolling around and ruffling their feathers.

It was an all-out dust bath extravaganza.

"Excuse me!" "Pardon me!" "Don't mind if I roll over on you?"

These girls really know how to kick up their heels!

Bringing the Seasons into Your Home

2011-03-27T15:54:00.000-07:00

With the increasingly indoor lives us modern folks are living, bringing a little of the outdoors in can really help us tune in to the natural world. I have always been the sort of person who fills up my house with rocks, sticks, feathers, nests, pinecones and whatever little things I collect on my walks and adventures. When my kids were little, I got the idea for a nature table somewhere, and I went with it enthusiastically. We started keeping a little low table where we put seasonal treasures from nature, and little things to remind us to welcome Spring, Summer, Winter and Fall into our lives.

When I first visited our local Waldorf school, I was drawn to the seasons tables right away. They were elaborate and incorporated whimsical little faeries and elemental beings associated with that season. I loved how soft silks and wool in the colors of the seasons were used as backdrops, and little stones, flowers and pinecones were lovingly displayed like little works of art. The importance of rhythm is a huge part of Waldorf education, and the idea is that strengthening a child's connection to the rhythms of the seasons and the days is very healthy for their development. It's reassuring to know what is coming next, and potentially unsettling to always wonder. I adopted many of the Waldorf seasons table ideas right away, and got a little carried away with a giant driftwood gnome village that took up most of our living room. We scaled back with our move to this old farmhouse, but I still have little nooks and crannies that are changed out every season.

I wanted to share some ideas on how to bring the wheel of the year into the home and lives of our children. The more we can connect them to the outside world, the more they will be drawn out into it, to enjoy it and feel responsible as caretakers of the earth.

This is a tiny season table I made for the kids in Kindergarten. I felted them some little bunnies and chicks from wool, and we made little Spring gnomes. I put small vases of budding branches and daffodils out that I refreshed every few days or so. They really loved it, and looked forward to changing it for each season. I noticed them talking a lot more about what was going on in the natural world.

This is our Spring seasons table from last year with a Lady Spring and baby chicks I needlefelted from wool, vases of pussy willow branches, abandoned birds'' nests I collected, a wooden bird, a hatched out goose egg we found camping by a lake, pictures of rabbits, and pale green silks to match the colors outside this time of year.

Here is a Fall seasons display with a needlefelted wool harvest maiden I made, some vases of wheat, vine maple branches, little pumpkins and kernels of colorful Indian corn.

In the Fall I like to collect bright colored leaves and hang them up around the house. Our candle chandelier above the dining room table has always been a good spot. In college a friend showed me how to make strings of pressed dried leaves to hang above doorways, and I've always had fun going on leaf gathering walks to make these. I like to put branches of vine maple leaves from up in the mountains in vases, and I do the same things with pussy willow branches in the Spring. I try to snag a few handfuls of dried wheat stalks from the edge of fields on late summer travels and these make nice arrangements around the house during harvest season.

Another seasonal thing we change throughout the year is the kids fairy treehouse. I saw one in the Magic Cabin Dolls catalogue that I really wanted, but couldn't afford, and my creative father built us one as a gift. I made little seasonal flower fairies to live in it for each of the four seasons, and we started changing out our little toy animals to ones we would see around for that time of year.

We used dyed wool roving and budding branches or fall leaves to make the tree look like the right season.

We also set up a little scene down below with a river and waterfall of blue silk. A couple of wooden trees added a very nice woodsy feel. Faeries dined on Fimo clay foods we made at their little branch table and chairs and their little animal friends joined them.

Here's part of the Spring fairy house scene with a daffodil fairy watching over a lamb. We made a lot of different sizes and colors of eggs from Fimo clay and put those around in little baskets. This is also the time we got out all our little toy rabbits and birds and put them all around.

Another thing I like to do is put out a seasonal selection of books on the Montessori style bookshelf my father-in-law built for the kids. I like how it's a forward facing shelf, displaying the cover art, so we can showcase the books that have to do with that time of year. I just changed it out for Spring with some of my son's new books about eggs and birds, and of course, gnomes.

You will find that it's very easy to find little ways to reflect the seasons in the home when you get in the habit of it. Just identify a few spots in your house that will change with the seasons, and collect a few little things from nature that appear with the time of year. Kids are naturals at this, and placing these treasures in a special place in your home gives them the message that nature is something to be treasured and treated with care. As you bring more of the outdoors in, you might just find yourself getting out of the indoors more often.

To an Early Daffodil

2011-03-24T11:30:00.000-07:00

To an Early Daffodil

Thou yellow trumpeter of laggard Spring!

Thou herald of rich Summer's myriad flowers!

The climbing sun with new recovered powers

Does warm thee into being, through the ring

Of rich, brown earth he woos thee, makes thee fling

Thy green shoots up, inheriting the dowers

Of bending sky and sudden, sweeping showers,

Till ripe and blossoming thou art a thing

To make all nature glad, thou art so gay;

To fill the lonely with a joy untold;
Nodding at every gust of wind to-day,

To-morrow jewelled with raindrops. Always bold

To stand erect, full in the dazzling play

Of April's sun, for thou hast caught his gold.

~Amy Lowell

World Water Day and A Few Thoughts on News and Stewardship

2011-03-22T11:55:00.000-07:00

Today is international World Water Day, and all over the world there are celebrations and people raising awareness for the appreciation and care of one of our most important natural resources. Wherever you are and whatever your day holds, I encourage you to think about water and your relationship to water. What does it mean to you? Is there a favorite river, beach or lake that you have fond memories of or strong ties to? What can we do to take care of it and keep it clean?

In the wake of recent disasters both natural and man-made, I did something very out of character for me, which was tuning in to the news for a week. In letting the news into my life, there came along with it a lot of concern and sadness for the people of Japan, and for our earth as nuclear power plants were melting down and releasing radiation. The consequences of pursuing nuclear energy weighed heavily on my mind. A lot of worry crept in also, over things I heard about the possibility of nuclear drift and fallout reaching the West coast. It took a lot of energy to sift through all of the information and circle around the question of what I could do with it.

I will be the first to admit that I live under a rock. I don't have television, I don't get a newspaper, but I do have the radio and Internet, which can be as good a place as any to find out what's going on in the world if you're up for a little research and checking out the sources. The barrier I run into here, however, is that the news can be a lot for me personally to take in and process. I get so overwhelmed with the weight of all the troubling things going on around this wide world of ours that I find it very difficult to stop thinking about them and go on about my day. Thus, I have fallen out of keeping up-to-date on the news. I feel very strongly, however, that it is important for us human beings to strive towards creating positive changes in this world, so this creates quite a dilemma for me. How does one achieve a balance between staying informed and allowing in what we can handle? In pondering this, I realize that my news comes from conversations with friends and folks I run into around town, which is how news would have traditionally been spread amongst people for hundreds of years before radio and television came onto the scene. But is it enough in our modern world? I am still figuring this out.

What I have found I can do is work away at making a positive impact (and reduce my impact) on this little piece of ground I'm living on, teaching my kids to take good care of the world they live in, and do my part as one person. Simple things like talking about water and the part it plays in our lives and our ecosystem may seem small, but just like tiny streams grow into larger rivers, so do our ideas and actions. When we break it down into our own piece, we can accomplish so much more than when we get bogged down in trying to take it all on. I will always have to work at keeping myself informed on a national and international level, but in the meantime I'm doing what I can to be of use right here.

In closing, here is a fitting song about environmental stewardship, a sort of conversation with the earth, by my favorite folk musician, May Erlewine. I gather a lot of inspiration from it when thinking about these things.

"I said what can I do?

I am only just me.

She said don't do it all,

just do something,

Please."

~May Erlewine

Look Ma! It's a Double-Yolker!

2011-03-21T11:29:00.000-07:00

To my utter amazement this past week, one of our hens layed this! Now, I've seen plenty of double-yolkers in my day, but this one was downright HUGE.

Note how much larger it is than this other egg, and my son's hand!

And it cooked up very nicely too. Nothing like a fried egg to start the day out right.