Partying with the Neighbors!

Posted on May 18, 2011 by shiva

Had a great time yesterday at a Beltaine celebration at Earthaven Ecovillage. There was a maypole and a ritual lighting of the “belfire”. Traditionally all the fires in a village would be put out and a community fire lit. Then everyone would bring back to their home a chunk of coal to light their home fires from. I love celebrating the cycle of seasons….any excuse to have  a party!

Mainly it was great to go to this celebration with 90% of the attendees in walking distance to where I am living. In most places I have lived in the past I and everyone else would have to drive to meet up like that.

In the future I believe that we will all be living much more locally. Driving around was no problem at all when gas was below 99 cents as it was for most of my life. Now it’s $4/gallon and I plan to trips to town more carefully…what will happen when it’s $12 or $16  a gallon? We will be making friends with our neighbors as people have for as long as history has been recorded.

Traveling around like what we do is a very recent idea. Since we have all grown up with this as a natural part of our lives we take it for granted. This is a main part of our cultures problem. People will hop in the car and drive for 2o minutes to buy a pack of cigarettes. If people realized the implications of having a finite supply of oil, we would be using it much more carefully and we could enjoy the ease of life that oil gives us for so much longer.

For myself in the future I plan on building a social life up in the mountains where I live (with plenty of cool neighbors). I can also work up there now (got internet access at a friends place) and I will go to town perhaps twice a week for food and fun. Definitely a change of pace for me, but I think I will enjoy the change.

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Weaving Community Connections, Mushrooms and Rope!

Posted on May 11, 2011 by kala
  • This past weekend we took a short trip over to our local ecovillage.  We spent a wonderful day with community and learned more skills that will help us on our homesteadin’ path.
  • First, along with about fifteen others, we helped inoculate hemlock logs with Reishi mushroom spores.  This was done by drilling holes in four foot sections of hemlock, inserting the mushroom spores and then covering the spores with beeswax.  Then the logs were staggered on a hillside to wait for the hungry spores to eat the rotting wood and grow in the wet climate of rain forest Western North Carolina.  The spores would take about a year to “blossom” into the wonderful medicinal Reishi.
  • Next we wandered back to the community center where under an awning, we learned how to make cordage from local natural fibers.  I particularly enjoyed learning this skill.  Perhaps it speaks to my lineage of women weavers.  My French Canadian ancestor, one of the first settlers of Quebec, spun flax so long ago in what was then a virgin forest.
  • The natural fiber we used was the inner bark of the tulip poplar which is abundant in this area.  I had the opportunity after learning this skill to gather my own tulip poplar bark while walking two days ago.   As I was walking the path in Hidden Valley, my way was barred by a branch that had broken off and lay across my path.  I looked at the bark and recognized the stringy inner layer of bark as tulip poplar.  I gathered as much bark as I could by stripping it from the branch.  When I got home I soaked the bark in water until it became pliable.  Then I twisted and turned it into a long strand of cord.
  • How satisfying to learn this skill so easily and be able to practice the entire process right away.  Cordage is strong and long lasting and can be used for a variety of purposes: to tie fences, for rope for climbing plants, for clothing, baskets, just about anything that rope is used for.   As I am an artist, I am thinking about how to utilize this for art projects or body adornment.
  • What a wonderful day I had and what useful and fun skills I learned.  The best part of it all being that I got to be with a group of wonderful and like-minded people who are truly walking the walk toward a self sustainable world.  I feel so blessed to be in a place where I can walk over to the neighbors and find such people gathered together to work and learn and grow.

 

 

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Learning to Eat Locally

Posted on May 10, 2011 by shiva

As part of my lifestyle change I am learning to be a locavore….this means shopping for food that has been locally grown and  not been shipped vast distances.  Luckily Asheville is a wonderful place for locavore eating. Even many of  the restaurants advertise that their food is organic and local.

However this does come with challenges. I have been trying to stay on a mostly raw food diet. In the past for me to do this comfortably I would eat plenty of shipped in food….coconuts, mangoes, olives, olive oil, oranges, superfoods like maca and cacao…. and plenty more…none of these are locally grown…

I have come to the conclusion that ultimately I must alter my diet…this means eating more raw food in the summer and early fall when it is available and perhaps less in the winter (we do plan on building a solarium and some cold frames to be able to grow at least some even in the winter).  I have also altered my diet to eat  raw goat dairy products (milk/cheese/yogurt) that is gotten directly from my awesome neighbors.

I have also started to eat fish once a week. There is a stream flowing through our property that used to spill out into a pond. The dam holding the water in has been broken so the pond is very low as most of the water spills out. I have pondered repairing the damn and restocking the pond with fish which would give us a fresh supply of free food year round.  I am rather averse to building dams, so likely it would be a partial dam (that is it would still spill over to allow the creek to continue).

Luckily the growing season is very long here (April – November) and can be extended easily with some cold frames so we are looking at only a couple of months where we can’t grow…and in those months we can do live food through both root vegetables and ferments like sauerkraut and kimchi.  This past year we ate some wonderful white sweet potatoes all winter long that we bought from our neighbors.  They made awesome soups, but I liked them especially well with coconut oil (yikes nonlocal!) and salt n pepper. They are quite amazing and we got some potato tops from them last month and have started growing some of our own for this year. Looking forward to the harvest! But this year I would like to find a local source of oil….

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A Letter Sent

Posted on May 9, 2011 by shiva

“That doesn’t mean that we’re all going to move into cozy lifeboat ecovillages, or any of the other green-painted Levittowns that fill so much space in so many middle class fantasies today. It means, rather, that in the decades ahead of us, something like half the American population will most likely end up in shantytowns on the model of Latin America’s favelas, without electricity, running water or sewers, caught up in a scramble for survival that many of them will inevitably lose. It means that most of the others will likely face a reduction in their standards of living to levels not too different from the one that the poorest Americans experience today, while the rich of that time, if they’re smart, ruthless, and lucky, may be able to scrape together some of the luxuries a middle class American family can count on today, and may even be able to hold onto them for a while.” – Archdruid

Damn,  Archdruid got all dark this week, but this is a post definitely worth checking out. America these days is like when Wiley Coyote has run off a cliff and is running in mid-air before he realizes there is a very long drop below him.  Last week I sent a letter about my views on collapse out to a bunch of my friends (the ones I had their emails) and also posted on my facebook (you can read it by clicking here).  I was expecting a rather muted reaction as bringing up a subject like this is mostly not a very socially acceptable thing to do.  And although I got a lot of no answers, I was happy to get a lot of positive reactions to it too.

I didn’t write the post to gain any social points. If I wanted that I would post up some funny videos of talking dogs or something. Everyone loves talking dogs and cute kitties!

I actually wrote the letter because it has been bothering me for some time that I CAN’T discuss these matters with many of my friends.  Many of them live far away from me and even when I lived closer and saw them more often it feels like a social faux-pas to bring up. It seems that no one really wants to hear about it. We’re all supposed to be POSITIVE THINKERS right?

And so I thought to myself…what if everything really does crash out and I never told so-and-so…I would feel terrible. So I guess I felt a bit of a duty to bring it to their attention and so I did. I guess I hope that this letter will inspire at least some into action.

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Having Fun Inexpensively

Posted on May 8, 2011 by shiva

As most of my income is going into building our homestead we have had to radically cut back on our expenditures…the first thing to go is spending money on recreation..for us this means less eating out, less traveling and  far fewer concerts, workshops and other paid social events. If it costs money we pretty much don’t do it.

But as anyone who knows us can attest we enjoy life quite a bit!  Here is a list of some of the ways we have found to have fun cheaply:

- I have been relearning my love of reading. Luckily, the library system around here allows you to access to about 10 different libraries including the well stocked asheville library. At any given time we will have out 15-20 books.  After years of non-fiction reading, I am reading mostly fiction for my leisure, but definitely lots on permaculture and such.

- Netflix! At $10 a month you can drop your cable and have an unlimited supply of movies and tv shows. I also occasionally shell out the $10 for a hotfile account and download blu-ray quality movies for free (try searching for hotfile 720p..the internet is loaded with ripped movies)

- Games. Me and my son love to play games.  I left typical board games (monopoly, etc) a long time ago. Now I focus on buying really well designed games. I check reviews on Board Game Geek before buying one.  Some of our favorites are Knightmare Chess, Magic the Gathering, Stone Age and Forbidden Island. I find that a good game although they cost $40 and up are excellent investments as they give so much entertainment. Plus I can get away with buying them for my sons birthday, christmas etc. :-)

- Dinner with friends – Free outside of the cost of food which you have to buy anyway

Gardening – Yes this can be fun!

- Hiking – Now that the warm weather is here we are spending lots more time outdoors.

- Art – Both me and Kala love to paint. Though paints are not cheap this is still an inexpensive hobby..especially if you can be creative about what you are painting. For example, we found a ton of tiles leftover from the previous tenant and have painted many of these.

- Looking for reasons to party…full moon circles, beltaine, birthdays and more.

There are so many other free things you can do..learn to cook, learn to play an instrument, fishing. If you are homestead or considering it learn to spend less money on your entertainment and you will have more money to build your place!

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Loving the Freecycle

Posted on May 6, 2011 by shiva

I have a new hobby: getting stuff on freecycle.

Freecycle is an online list where people give away thing for free. To find one near you google “freecycle, your town”. They are set up kind of clunky using yahoo groups, but they are a great resource. Last week I got 21 windows! They are single pane, so I will use them to build a solarium onto our house. For our future house I have also found 2 doors, rubber piping, a glass french door (wow!) and other goodies.

I have found that in order to be successful you usually need to respond to an ad within minutes of it being posted, particularly if it is something good. Here is my system: In my gmail I have created a label “freecycle”. Freecycle has a particular system for titling entries such as “OFFERED: A Lamp” or “TAKEN: Canning Jars”.  So I have created a series of gmail filters so that only the OFFERED emails make it in there and the rest  get deleted.

Here is what you do (edit the asheville freecycle to whatever email address your freecycle comes from):

1) In gmail create a label called freecycle

2) Create the following labels:
- if subject has the word “offer” and the from has the words “list:(<Asheville-Freecycle.yahoogroups.com>)”  then skip the inbox and apply the label “freecycle”

- if subject has the word “wanted” and the “from” has the word “list:(<Asheville-Freecycle.yahoogroups.com>)” then delete it

- if subject has the word “taken” and the “from” has the word “list:(<Asheville-Freecycle.yahoogroups.com>)” then delete it

- if subject has the word “received” and the “from” has the word “list:(<Asheville-Freecycle.yahoogroups.com>)” then delete it

Now you just have to get in the habit of checking it regularly. Whenever I login to freecycle I just hit that label. Since I am online anyway for my job I just check the freecycle label every 1/2 hour or so and respond to anything I like. Even then I only get maybe 25% of things I respond to, but it is still well worth it.

I also use the local craigslist “free” section and have gotten stuff off of there too. I keep the shortcut to it at the top of my browser. So if you are a homesteader of just like to get free stuff, I highly recommend using this resource.

Posted in Frugal Livng | 2 Comments

Getting Ready to Plant!

Posted on May 4, 2011 by shiva

This year we are going for it with our garden. In the past I have lived in temporary places that I knew that I would not stay at so I was never inspired to build the soil and infrastructure of a garden.  Now we have a piece of land that we are homesteading at so we are very excited about digging into it.

Our land has not been seriously gardened in over 50 years and then it was likely not done with any kind of permaculture principles so we are starting from scratch. There was thin layer of topsoil and under that it is rather clayish/silty earth.

We started by double digging four 5′ x 5′ beds. Double digging means digging out one whole shovels worth deep, then digging in again and turning the earth over, then replacing the soil from step one. This is important as you want the soil to be very loose for the plants roots to dig into. It also makes it so that the beds can hold much more water when it rains. In the process we added lime, peat moss, vermiculite, plenty of compost, manure,  triple phosphate and a few other ingredients.

Finally, we covered it with cardboard. This not only prevents plants from coming up in the beds before we plant but it helps keep moisture in. We throw water on all of the beds regularly to keep them moist. When I pull the cardboard up, there are tons of millipedes, earthworms, spiders and other insects. This is great as these are all little workers helping to turn our soil into rich topsoil!

We have about 150 or so seedlings ready to go. They are very healthy and happy, but getting too large for their little containers. We are planning on planting in a couple of days. The spring weather here can be tumultuous so we are watching the forecast and putting them in when we are supposed to get 4-5 days of temperate weather.

So exciting!

~shiva

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Powertools!

Posted on May 3, 2011 by shiva

A friend was visiting the area and had his chainsaw with him. We agreed to do a work exchange and he helped me in clearing out some of the trees to make room for our yurt which we will be moving down here soon. You have to be extra careful with a yurt that no trees can drop on it…A tree falling on a house can be disastrous but in a yurt it can be fatal!

We had been clearing the young forest on part of our land to make room for our garden. We did this all with handtools. Lots of work but it felt good. I am always very reluctant to bring in powertools, but for these big trees it is simply the way to go. Nonetheless I felt like we were seriously disturbing the land and wildlife with the extreme noise and pollution of the chainsaw.

The day before we cut, Kala and I went out to the land and walked around talking to the trees a bit. We burnt some sage and thanked the land for providing for us and promised that we would use all the wood wisely. I guess this sounds pretty hippy-dippy to some, but we believe that it is very important a respect for the land and an attitude that the earth is a real living entity.

It took two full days to clear out enough space for the yurt and was very very hard work. I am still sore two days later! Although we have to finish cutting and splitting the fallen trees, we will have enough cordwood for several years!

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The Promise of Permaculture

Posted on April 16, 2011 by shiva

We’ve started working on our land regularly and it is HARD work!! Easily the hardest work that I’ve ever done..but it feels good. I’m getting in shape and I know that everything I do to improve the place is something that I will be able to enjoy for years to come. We’ve double-dug four 5′ x 5′ garden beds…we’re working with the “square foot gardening” method. We’ve also been cutting down trees and clearing brush…clearing a large section of the land for perennials, herbs and flowers.

Although it’s hard work to start up, the promise of permaculture is that it gets easier with each passing year. With a focus on perennials, permaculture means less to plant every year. Sure, I will still plant annuals but even that won’t be so much work as the old farming methods. This year we are staring out with very dense clayish soil…although I have added many soil amendments (lime, phosphate, peat moss, etc), it will take some years for this to turn into truly great soil. In the old days, people would farm in one patch until the soil was depleted. Then they would clear another section. Through permaculture techniques like sheet mulching and cover crops, your soil grows better and better each year with minimal effort.

People think of farming as hard work and it is..but it doesn’t have to be as grueling as it was in the past.  By working intelligently with the natural processes of nature I am looking forward to working less and less each year while my little space we are  caretaking grows into a lush Garden of Eden!

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Moved to North Carolina!

Posted on April 13, 2011 by shiva

Well it has been far too long since this site was updated, but I’m going to make a go of it in trying to keep it more updated. We’ve moved to a small town near Asheville, NC and really digging it. Our yurt has not made it down here yet. We are currently living in two small cabins owned by a friend. We are way up on a mountain! It is so so so very quiet up there (well when our neighbors freakin’ dog isn’t barking!).  We’re about a 7 minute drive down a dirt road from the “main” road (which is still a little backwoods road). It’s about a 25 minute drive to town and a 35 minute drive to Asheville. Not bad. Since both me and Kala are “reclusive artist” types, we don’t mind at all being in the woods.

The woods here are absolutely gorgeous.  We really enjoyed the short mild winter after so many years in New England. It started getting warm in February! And there wasn’t many days when I couldn’t go for a walk in the woods (yeah I know you can get snowshoes and “gear” to do that in the snowy realms but man it’s nice to not have to!!)

The art and culture around here is impressive. Most of our neighbors are very eco-conscious and friendly. Asheville is a wonderful town for arts and music. Always plenty to do.

Our big project is turning our piece of land into a homestead. We’ve been working hard clearing out space for our gardens..Will post pics soon!

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