Well apparently I have not been what is the word I am looking for....attentive to this blog.  It sort of figures I seem to be always doing something else or running errands or working or what ever but sitting and writing not so much time for.

This last few months though it seems to be all about herbs.  I am gathering poplar buds, willow bark, dandelion blossoms, and now that spring is starting it is not going to stop...

whimper

I have four outstanding formulations to figure out for people 

and orders for about fifty count em fifty jars of pain brew.  I will have to gather three times as much willow oil I will need at least three gallons to get me thru the amount that these guys seems to want.  I still have more plant material to add to the brew as well arnica, yarrow, bearberry,  among others.  Now the ointment for vaginal atrophy for one of the girls I work with, and I still think I might add calendula oil, as well.  


I need to do more research on Lyme disease.  I have been approached by three different directions to address that illness.  The other is dry cracked skin,   premenstrual cramping,  and I don't do this......

back to the books
Bina

plans for pow wow

Well the plans for pow wow are in sorta high pace, it won't be as elaborate as usual but a lot of paper and a lot of parts and examples.  I want to do more by hand, real hand. I will have two victims to corrupt my great nephews.  We are going to camp with the "Indians at the Pow Wow" and if you can't behave and I cannot trust you to behave....you won't go. 
I had a case of perfect timing.  I phoned in the middle of one of those major dressing downs that define a child's upbringing and basically said if they can't behave for the parents...not going to get to sleep in the middle of the teepees in my "little blue car".  Lots of sleeping bags, pillows, and Muskol
and we should be fine a four and a six year old boys. I raised four boys, I do boys great....they are too little for sling shots, but there if I take the three boys my nephew of the heart will be there as well and pick up what we need for crafts and fun....bubbles with hula hoops anyone....
I  want to take four miniature pallets out with colored print outs as to what pallets can become. With only hand tools, why do we always need power, why can we not do things by hand.....It may not be fancy but I think it's hand tools, parts, paper and the corruption of minors...and then I got an invite to convergence...to hang out with the kids.

the hand that rocks the cradle shapes the world. 

the worst food deserts are those that exist within first nations communities.

this is number one
Naheed Nemshi has said that we all need to do three things to make our world a better place

number one, talking about food security with aboriginal and other peoples at the Rocky Mtn House pow wow.

number two building a food not lawns piece of green paradise in my mind in my little 50 x 150 foot little patch of earth. 

number three I don't know, I will think about it.

This was taken at the Rocky Mountain House Pow Wow the first time that I went.  It was also the first time in over a century that they had been allowed to have their ceremonies at the Fort.  The three days that I spend there every summer have been wonderful.  I have also learned a lot about my ancestors from them.  We still look at somethings from very different views, but at least there is the beginning of some friendships.
I help demonstrate the basics of self sustainability, gardens, global buckets, canning, smoking, herbs, and this year pallet gardens.  I  also am going to try bringing some old school hand tools the meat grinder with the different plates for different things like nut butters, meat, and the sausage stuffer.  I have taken apple butters, and taught the method for that, pumpkin jams, I take heirloom seeds and every book and magazine and picture that adds to the message of we can do this, we used to do this.
As for my little one yard revolution it continues, as the next couple shots will show. I love the way it is evolving and what it is evolving into.

This is my neighbors little boy, he's picking the last of the summer's strawberries from the community strip of garden in the front yard. It is full of herbs, onions, strawberries, lilies, and pumpkins the neighborhood children adore it.  The little apple tree produced a few apples one of them had teeth marks put in it at about the two inch mark after I explained how apples grew and no if we picked them now they would never get to be big apples for pie.

T

This is a dream and I have so many other projects on the go, and it will never ever fit...but.  I love the scheming and dreaming the looking out my window and looking for the picture.  That little piece of beauty, the bright reds of the docks, and the chard against the limey greens of lettuce or later on the yellows of the calendula.
Today it was the first salad picked from the garden with three kinds of lettuce, dill weed, mustard greens, violet flowers, chive flowers, and a few pea sprouts. With a blue cheese dressing it was spectacular and came from fifteen feet from the front door of my house.  We had organic eggs from one of the girls that I work with for supper to make burritos.  It is the kind of supper that we should be eating more of local, and low on the chain.
I read a ton of things about the food deserts that have been created by the modern profit consumer corporate, commercial driven societies.  There are places in my modern country that have no access.  In large cities, in rural communities, there is no access and what there is is outrageously priced.  I have heard of fifteen dollar a gallon milk...can you afford that I can't.
We have all this upheaval in the world.  It all seems to boil down to dollars but very little sense. I wish we could make a few more gardens, and a whole lot less food banks.

busy spring

It has been a busy busy spring. Global buckets and six new raised beds, a seminar by Mel Bartholomew about square foot gardens, vegetable seedlings from seed, new varieties of tomato from the farmers market. A cold grey spring have left the plants on the small side my peas are only a foot high, and

earth oven

So the spring of year two is finally sorta here. I have doubled the number of raised beds that I had last year from five up to 11, maybe I will get my five hundred pounds of food out of my yard that would be so nice. Purple carrots, white tomatoes, eggplants, blue peas, mushroom flavoured beans and

food security

This picture of the dessert badlands of the southwestern US makes me think about food security. It makes me question what kind of a lifeboat I can build/plan to combat a dessert like this. When I know that global warming and carbon output are messing with climate world wide, not to mention things like soil depletion, water shortages, and seed stock contamination by GMO's......there are days I am surprised the whole world doesn't look like this.
I have been looking into "Growing Green Neighbours" and possibly volunteering with them. The little flyer that I recieved talks about growing food security but I don't know if that is what they are doing. I don't know if this is along the lines of what I think of food security, and permaculture and food forests and CSA, and urban agriculture, or what exactly they are doing.
I will have to see what comes of it there is a dinner in May??? I don't know why a dinner unless it is one of those potlucks that they seem to talk about on the community notices board....That seems awfully late in the season, to be getting together. Okay I guess at least I should have all of my garden in by then and possible at least the pergola completed. That should also give me a chance to also get a couple of the double buckets set up and functioning which might be something they might be interested in if they are geared towards urban ag. I don't know if they will want to see my garden or if I will have to agree to allowing people in my garden....I don't know if I am quite ready for that.
I don't even know if I will join. I don't want to do the board thing at this point, get my hands dirty helping out no problem, sit on a board no way. I really have no idea what these folks are actually doing, the flyer that I have talks about community gardens, learning how to garden, but also about local food, food banks, community kitchens, grow a row, and "working in partnership to build community capacity" whatever that means.
I do know that the more that I feel about it the more I think that it's this harvest that it starts. That I really have to remember there are 5 priorities and everything else is just stuff......
food, water, shelter, heat and security those are the only things that truly matter.
I keep getting the feeling that the sands are running out and that there is a sense of urgency in what I am doing. Water barrels, window farms, global buckets, bake ovens, wood heat, seeds saved, good hand tools, vegetables planted, fruit planted, medicinal herbs planted, culinary herbs planted, pantries stocked, soils built up, and plans sketched out......
I hope this group is more about Gaia permaculture, food forests, and urban agriculture than about communities in bloom, it seems to be. I really hope this is a good group and nothing too political or with too many personalities because I love to garden but I am getting a little lonely doing it all by myself in my backyard. There have to be other people out there that feel the sands running too, and are trying to set up a framework that will help provide the tools for the people within this community and the farmers who live around us to succeed in building a secure network of safe food. A network that will survive peak oil, population pressures and climate change.

spring is in the air

Spring is in the air with birds singing all around me while I build my gardens. I got two raised beds built over the last couple of days with the bean trellises in place and they're filled and I can fit the other beds in and my darling Darrell is going to try and pull that old block apart so it will flatten out. Then I will get the last three beds knocked together and at least lined and the pathways covered with cardboard, and the straw on the paths. It is coming together beautifully and is turning into one of those dream type vegie gardens. My lovely man just digs the heavy stuff for me and smiles just like I listen to him explain sports to me and I smile.
The whole vision is coming together just the way I want it to with the raised beds two more to pick up the wood for and an apple tree to move real quick this spring closer to the house and then all the beds are in. The apple eventually it will shade the bedrooms and the smell of apple blossoms in the spring will make it lovely in the back of the house.
I still want to pull out the sidewalk blocks and use them for either the water barrels at the back or at the front. Then the bakeoven construction begins in earnest pretty quick which means I better finalize all my plans....room for a rack ?two levels a hot and a warm, and a rack strong enough to put stone on to cook on repurpose the ones out of the oven, holes for a spit to go through, as well as the bake oven large enough for at least a couple of pizzas or loaves of bread. Claybakers, pizza peel, wood fire, great clay, carvings of dragons, flames on mica flakes and quartz crystals, this is the next part of the vision. Along with the pergola and the trellis for the grapes, Jay's tree, etc the garden is going to be beautiful.