Medicine Making in Transition

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  two Apothecary pages: the Inventory of Medicines and an Inventory of Live Medicinal Plants in the garden.

Bee Inspection

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.


Amie’s Cello Recital

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!

One Pound of Strawberries

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 Karma of the Escalade

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.

Riot for Austerity – Months 30-31

I calculated the last Riot on April 5, so this is two months worth. Our first year’s averages were calculated here, our second year’s averages can be found here.

Gasoline. Same as usual. Activism (paradoxically) involves a lot more driving around.

10.6 gallons per person pp. per month

25% of the US National Average

Electricity. The calculator reckons per household, not per person.  As usual, April  is a high electrical consumption month, with the heat mat and the lights on 16 hours a day to keep my seedlings growing.

606 KWH (all wind) in April, 342 KWH in  May = 474 on average

14% of the US National Average

Heating Oil and Warm Water. This too is calculated for the entire household, not per person.   Going down…

13.6 9.1 gallons

19% 14.6% of the US National Average

{UPDATE} 3 Jan 2012: The way I have been calculating our heating oil consumption is by reading off the furnace how many hours it ran, then multiplying it by .85 because that’s the amount of gallons of oil I *thought* it used. Now DH just told me that our furnace is more efficient than that and the correct number is .65. Hence the correction

Trash. After recycling and composting this usually comes down to mainly food wrappers.

10 lbs. pp per month

7% of the US National Average

Water. Up from last month because we’re watering grass seed and showering more after hard work in the garden.

603.3 gallons pp.  in April, 688 gallons pp in May

22% of the US National Average

A Barn / Hoop House Raising, Part 2

Saturday started with a sprinkle of rain and thunder, then cleared up for a big turnout for our planned hoop house raising. Ten people came, friends, acquaintances and strangers (i.e., new friends) alike.

First up was dismantling the structure and moving it from the summer to the winter position.

Then everyone got to witness how fence piping is bent to form a hoop.  That’s the Lost Creek hoop bender.

Then they got to do it themselves. We ran into an issue with the pipe connections. They fit into each other and are held together by a self-drilling metal screw. All looked fine, until once installed over the rebar, 70% of these connectors did this:

No amount of extra bending could remedy this. No amount of hanging off them either:

Well, at least we know those ribs are sturdy! As the problem is not structural but a matter of sharp edges tearing the hoop house plastic, it was easily fixed by duct taping foam pipe  insulator  around them.

We talked about gardening, compost tea, bees and herbal medicine while sipping cold mint tea and oat straw infusion.  One  friends also gave us a fascinating primer about drip irrigation. Seeing all those parts and connectors and pumps lit up DH’s eyes! Mine too, since I don’t want to kill myself watering my garden this Summer.

Some left with a head or two of lettuce and the plans for their own barn raising. Some stayed on for an impromptu vegetarian grill dinner, a few items in which (lettuce, parsley) came straight from the garden.

A successful first barn raising and hopefully one of many to come in our community!

The day after that DH and finished off the structure by installing the plastic.  It is much tighter now, since the ribs are a little larger than the end walls – which hadn’t been the case with the pvc piping.  Since we used the clips again there is still the possibility of taking it apart and moving it. We’ll see over the summer if that’s what we want to, or if we want it there permanently. I really like the possibility of starting the winter harvest in outside beds while the tomatoes are still going strong inside the hoop house, and then moving the structure when the tomatoes are done and it gets colds enough for the winter harvest to need extra protection. Also, it would be another reasons for a bunch of friends to get together over meaningful work and homegrown food.

I gave the inside of the end walls a coat of exterior white to aid the reflection of the light. After being exposed to the snow and rain for months, they were pretty grubby and dark. It’s not the best paint job (should’ve done it before we put the cover on, then I wouldn’t have had to worry about getting pain on the plastic), but it’s not like anyone is going to live in there. I write that one downs as LAL – Live And Learn!

I also transplanted the 50 tomato plants, each with their own cut worm collar.  Took me four hours!

There is one bed left for lima and garbanzo beans.

Next time, join us!

A Barn Raising!

The garden is about 90% planted.

peas and poles for the pole beans. compost in background

Today I sowed all the dry beans, green beans and pole beans – first year I’m growing these – and the squashes, zukes and cukes. Also watermelon, carrots and basil, and calendula, anise and chamomile (German), all from seed.

I have faith in a seed.

new bed in foreground (calendula, anise and chamomile), then parsley and basil, then broccoli and Brussels sprouts, lastly monster rhubarb.

Once my hoop house is moved, I’ll transplant  the tomatoes, peppers and eggplants and sow the lima and garbanzo beans (which like it hot).

seedlings

All the trees, bushes and live plants I put in at the beginning of April are doing fine, except for the Wild Ginger. The currants, gooseberries and strawberries that were planted last year are thriving. Not so the hazels, which got stripped in one day by the nasty caterpillars. I hope they come back (the hazels, not the caterpillars). And none of the asparagus ever came back: it seems like some critter ate the roots (which animal would eat those?).

new bed with medicinals

I harvested mint and it’s steeping. The kitchen smells divine. Also rhubarb. Those plants are monsters!

potatoes!

The hoop house is moving on Saturday. “Moving” is not the right word — being moved. Though the hoop house is movable because it’s modular, some of its pieces are darn heavy. DH and I moved it once, just the two of us, and we nearly broke our backs and our (t)rusty Radio Flyer.

celery, carrots, green beans, garlic, rhubarb

So I’m going to invite everyone I can think of who’s near and will call it a  barn raising!

In return for their help, I promise that “you’ll learn about hoop house construction, what to do and what not to do (yup, that too), what you can grow in it, and how these hoop benders work – and if you want one for yourself, use ours (it’s part of the tool pool). You’ll see what is growing in the garden, I can introduce you to the bees, and I hope you will take home a lettuce or two because we’re swimming in them. And when the time comes for you to do a barn raising, I’ll be there!”

It’s about time we started doing it like that!

Want to come? There will be lettuce and rhubarb…

{UPDATE} What happened?

A Room of One’s Own – A Common Space for Communities

This is an attempt to reboot my reporting.  I am discovering a lot about the world, others, and myself, at record speed. Gotta write it all down! And I’m going to need some new Categories. Here’s where the blog undergoes its next transformation.

~

In our town, where can a group of people go where they feel at home? Not just “welcome”, but at home. That is, where can they just show up on the spur of the moment, without having to “book” the place, pay a deposit or a fee, sign a disclaimer, or wait on a waiting list, and feel safe and comfortable?

The “community” or “meeting rooms” at the Town Building?  They cost money, they have gatekeepers, schedules, waiting lists. The library? The room is free, but for the rest it’s the same as with town buildings. The public parks come nearest,  but we’re really looking for a place that is warm and sheltered.

So much for the public spaces.

Religious places are private, and usually very welcoming to community gatherings, especially when they’re about Care for People and Care for the Earth. But cost or entry may depend on membership. Strapped for cash, they sometimes charge over $400 an hour if they believe yours is a “function”. Even if they charge a little just to cover the sexton’s efforts to clean up after you (a tip off, as we’ll soon see).

The only place in our town where we can drop in at a whim and make ourselves (relatively) comfortable is the local coffee shop, a Starbucks. Only during opening hours, of course, and it’s only polite to consume at least one cup of coffee, and not to bring your own.  When Starbucks is closed, or if the group is too large for the small space, the only place we can go is…. the mall in the next town over! Seriously, it’s where the Girl Scouts have to hang out: the mall, or Friendly’s, neither of which is within walking distance. These places are  commercial spaces and artificial, soul-sucking environments.

That Starbucks with its sit-down-have-one-drink-and-stay-as-long-as-you-like policy is so popular and public (free) libraries are so overbooked, illustrates the demand for, and the lack of, a common space in our town.

I see it as one of Transition Wayland’s projects to start a conversation about this, to poll the need for it and to find out, together, how we can make it happen.

One of the issues people bring up when I go off on a rant about common spaces is: who will take care of it?

I read somewhere that of all the kinds of spaces – public, private, commercial, common – it is the common space that is often the most cared-for. That’s because it’s where we make ourselves home, and we feel a fondness for it that demands that we keep it clean, much like our own houses. If a common space is well-defined, well-organized and well-loved, we won’t feel the need to delegate its care to the sexton, the barista, the anonymous cleaning crews at the mall or those who keep the Town Hall clean on our tax dollars – all paid people. It’s ours, we feel responsible for it, so we’ll take care of it for free.

As for rules? Some rules are necessary, of course, but they will flow from common decency and common sense. It is under those rules that everyone who enters and uses this space are equal. Indeed, common space may yet be the only space where equality is possible.

Who will pay for it? What about liability? Who will hold the key and is a key even necessary? All questions worth asking. So let’s ask them!

Does your town have a common space? Tell us about it!