MamaStories

It’s my mood these days.

I feel like I am saying goodbye to something, like I’m on the verge of something saying goodbye to me – I can’t make out. It’s a good, bittersweet kind of nostalgia, the kind that makes me extra sensitive to kind and beautiful things.

A tip-off to what is at the bottom of this is the music that appeals to me these days, like this beautiful music, and this (thanks, Jenna). Some of what it means for me to live in this place is in this music (and in Ritter’s music, for instance, “Roll on”). Roaming, moving on and leaving behind, wandering, drifting. Having to leave, wanting to leave, wanting to stay…

It is strange but on second thought only makes sense that  as I get more rooted in this place, as I consciously and conscientiously put my roots down, here, that this wanderlust sets in. I’ve known for some time now that if I didn’t have a husband and child I’d be a drifter.  I would not have known it five years ago, I didn’t have the maturity back then to know myself so well. It’s ironic that I have my husband and my daughter to thank for that maturity.

I’m not leaving. I’m making myself at home, but it is in this country of leaving, of having left.

I know, I know. This post is neither here nor there…

While participating in the Training for Transition I came to a profound realization. One of the most powerful exercises in Transition is the positive visioning. People sit in two circles, one inside the other, facing each other so everyone is paired up. The people on the outside are the elders of the future, who have  lived through Transition (the time of change). The people on the inside are young people, who did not live through it, and they ask three questions of their Elder, and listen. At the end, the pairs exchange seats and the circles rotate.

One of the questions is: what is your role in this (Transitioned) world?

Many people see themselves working with food. That’s only to be expected: besides air, water and shelter, what is more important than healthy, nutritious food? So people talk about how they tend the fields, teach others how to grow, scout out places to grow more crops, etc. People talk lovingly about being post-carbon farmers (farmers without oil), about farming together, and the more leisurely pace of life, with many conversations with neighbors, and kids roaming free, and nothing but the blue sky above and the dirt in their hands.

Wonderful visions.

This exercise invites only positive visioning, and some have trouble with this. That’s why we do the exercise. We need to practice hoping. Especially for those who seek Transition, those who have studied up and faced the truth, it’s hard. And thus, powerful.

So here it was my turn as the Elder to answer that question.

“I grow medicine. In the post-carbon world there are no pharmaceuticals, or if there are, there is no easy, quick and affordable way to get the medicine to where it is needed. There are no stockpiles of antibiotics or analgesics. Medicine is homemade.  I am someone who grows this medicine. I found the best spots in the town for growing marshmallow, or motherwort, or even ginger. I grow it, and teach and supervise the growing of it by others. I keep the inventory of the living plants. I harvest them at their appropriate times and with appropriate thanks for their abundance. I then bring them home and dry them and make them into medicine. I keep the apothecary. I don’t diagnose, I don’t heal. I don’t feel ready for that yet. I hope someone else can do that. If not, I’ll help, but humbly.”

I was silent for a second, surprised by my vision. Usually I am a farmer of unspecified crops. Usually I feed people. And beyond my surprise there was more to be said. So I said it:

“It’s hard in this world because we Elders remember the old medicine and health care. It wasn’t all good – the side effects, the addiction, the arrogance and entitlement. But diseases were cured, or held at bay, and lives were lengthened. Now we don’t have it so easy anymore. An infection that would have been treated with a shot can now kill.  We need to be vigilant all the time, grow whole, resilient bodies. Life is no longer prolonged – or rather, death is no longer postponed. We die at our appointed times. It is sad, sometimes, to think that an old drug could have postponed it. But, on the other hand, people now die at home, surrounded by their loved ones and communities. That’s better. That’s better.”

So there we are, that is what I want to do in the future, when I grow up, when the world grows up.

This is the marc of the echinacea root I tinctured and pressed yesterday.

It is what is left of the plant when it has given all it has to give.

Thank you.

~

I’ve added  a page called the Apothecary Inventory

Karen, a friend I met through the Training for Transition, came for a visit and we talked homesteading, gardening and… bees. This was her first time at a hive opening.

The bees are doing better, but their population growth is still not what I would expect. There were grubs in there, as you can see in the photos, and many young worker bees (some still very pale), so there’s a mated queen in there laying fertilized eggs. Maybe she just needs a little more time to ramp it up. If not, if she’s weak, the bees will replace her.

Here’s me peering into the top box.  You don’t often see me doing this because there’s usually no one there to take a picture – thank you, Karen! I definitely prefer the hat and veil over the vest in Summer. Karen wore the vest and it’s like a sauna, but for her first time she felt safer in it.

The bees filled up about half of the top box with honey. When I lifted it, after wedging it off the bottom box,  it was pretty heavy.  I’m happy my honey supers are mediums, not deeps. The bees in the following photo are either disgorging fresh honey into the cells, or capping the filled cells. The white stuff is all honey cappings. It’s the newest and thus purest (and thus whitest) wax in the hive.

When I took off the top box I ripped off comb the bees had in built between the frames and exposed some grubs. The bees surrounded these grubs, trying  to do I don’t know what. The grubs are doomed, of course, so suddenly exposed to the light and heat. I’m very slow and probably overly cautious when inspecting the hive, but this still happens. Good news: no mites on the grubs!

Finding grubs at that spot means of course that the bees bringing the broodnest up into the second box instead of expanding it horizontally. Well, they know what they’re doing!

The comb in the next picture is browner: it’s brood comb. No brood in it yet. These bees were cleaning it out.

I had gone in with the intent of seeing how they’re doing. I ordered the Apiguard mite treatment – it will arrive early next week. By then I should have done a mite fall count. The Apiguard is natural but it might still interrupt the brood cycle, so I should only do it if necessary. Also, it will postpone the supering for a couple of weeks, because you don’t want the thymol essential oil that this treatment is based on getting into the harvest honey.

There used to be a time when this was a mommy blog. Then it became a garden blog. Now it’s becoming an activist blog (of sorts). But today we’re paying homage to the blog’s first form, and  we’re going to enjoy some music.

Here is Amie’s first recital, a few weeks ago. Enjoy!

By the way, in case you were wondering, I think playing a musical instrument is one of those crucial skills we all need to learn again. Hand and homemade entertainment is vastly superior to the tinned junk piped in through the cables we’re hooked up to. Also, no ads!

Amie and friends pick strawberries

We harvested our first strawberries yesterday, a whole pound of them. I’ve started a new little harvest booklet, which I keep next to my scale in the kitchen and in which I record everything that comes in. “Don’t eat that yet! I haven’t weighed it!” The berries are scrumptious: sweet and tart and juicy. They’re Honeoye (anyone know how to pronounce that?).  Today we went back for another picking: half a pound! It’s not going to last, of course. I have only 25  plants there and they’re not ever-bearing.

It’s a seasonal harvest. Once they’re done, we’ll move on to the next variety of food, just like we moved on to the strawberries when we got sick of eating the rhubarb. And if they happen to overlap, there will be rhubarb-strawberry pie.

It has been really hot of late. The mercury reached 95F today. My 5 rain barrels are almost empty. I’ll have enough to water the veg garden tomorrow, but not to irrigate the perennials the day after. One rain storm and they’ll fill up, though. Those sudden downpours aren’t good for irrigating the fields, because the soil can’t absorb that much water in such a short time and so most of it runs off. But if you have a rain water catchment system…

I still need to transplant the peppers and eggplants. I’ve been busy with Transition. We had a booth at the Whole Foods Local Day on Sunday. Amie came along for four hours and was mostly happy. She went from one booth to another, chatted with the representatives, and collected their documentation – each and every piece of documentation. And she (wo)manned the table!

The other day picking up my daughter from school I was preceded by a Cadillac Escalade. For those not in the know, it is the largest SUV on the market. Its numberplate read:

KHARMA

I am trying not to judge. I’m not judging.  I have decided not to judge.  It’s hazardous, anyway, to judge behavior without knowing the causes of it, the wounds behind it, or the joys.

But… is laughing judging?

I laughed because, really now, it was funny.

But I admit it, I did shake my head, just a little.

Under threat of thunder and hail, a bear and a tornado.

Schematic overview (green = planted)