So, it's getting really damn green around here.
Mike and I went to Penland (the school of crafts, about 40 mins from here), with Zach and Molly last Wednesday to see Bread and Puppet from Vermont perform for free. It's really good to see people playing multiple instruments, making weird noises, and using basic puppetry to make the story-telling more powerful. I really liked it, and afterward there was a cheap art sale, which was mainly prints with words like Resist with a block-print of a carrot, or the word Rise with a print of a stalk of wheat. They served homemade sourdough before and after the show with a really nice garlic sauce and goose wine, making everyone think they were drunk on water. I'm hoping we'll get to the circus on Wednesday in Asheville.
We also got out to the Asheville Herb Festival yesterday on a beautiful mountain spring day with the sun out and shining through all the new vibrant spring green leaves still moist from mornings thunderstorm. I picked up wasabi, dang gui, a slippery elm tree, gotu kola and siberian motherwort from Joe Hollis, and rosa rugosa, archangelica and wormwood from my friend and land-mate, Katie's herb teacher, and a pennyroyal that was screaming to me, as well as a celandine poppy and some wild irises. The slippery elm, dang gui, rosa rugosa, celandine poppies, and wild irises are for around the cabin that Mike built.
O, the cabin! It's so beautiful, there's a loft 7ft from the ground floor, and because the walls slope outward it is ridiculously big for only covering half the ground floor. You can stand up in it, I think the peak is 7ft, and Mike put in a vertical window that's about 10in wide and double insulated in the middle below the peak. The north wall doesn't have windows outside of that window, so it's sort of a compromise window to let in some light. It's really great. Our bed is right in the center of the loft, and we look out the completely uncovered front of the cabin, the side without a wall and there's a white pine that lines up perfectly with the peak. It's a special place, and now we have room to share sleeping space with visitors, like my big sister who came last summer and had nowhere decent to sleep. It's quiet, and you can hear the birds and the rain falling on the tin roof. It makes me very happy to sleep up there, even if the bed is just made of some old foam. Jason essentially bought us a water pump to bring water up from the springbox- he found a guy who's living off the land, farming and selling water pumps out of his garage in the spare time, and this guy needed his generator's circuit board repaired. So Jason fixed a circuit board and we got our pump made from plastic produced down the road from the guy who makes the pump. Hurray! Mike salvaged a deep cast iron and ceramic sink from the abandoned houses by Joe's, so he's planning to hook that up before heading back to the Springfield for his summer break.
The field below the shop house here has been totally tilled and cleared of the sod, and Mike is halfway through putting up the new fences for the goats, chickens, and around the garden. Over a hunderd onions are in the ground, with 2 or 3 hundred more to go, and there's a 50 pound bag of potatoes just cut up and dried off for our planting pleasure. We're going to plant also in the new field corn, squash and beans. I'm excited because I started watermelons and cantaloupes, and they're germinating under the lights- also lots of morning glories for covering up the giant rain barrels Jason hooked up the other day. The corn and melon varieties I've chosen have really short growth periods, and the melons produce lots of small melons, so we should get some good eating this summer. :D
Good night and enjoy,
Abby
Mike and I went to Penland (the school of crafts, about 40 mins from here), with Zach and Molly last Wednesday to see Bread and Puppet from Vermont perform for free. It's really good to see people playing multiple instruments, making weird noises, and using basic puppetry to make the story-telling more powerful. I really liked it, and afterward there was a cheap art sale, which was mainly prints with words like Resist with a block-print of a carrot, or the word Rise with a print of a stalk of wheat. They served homemade sourdough before and after the show with a really nice garlic sauce and goose wine, making everyone think they were drunk on water. I'm hoping we'll get to the circus on Wednesday in Asheville.
We also got out to the Asheville Herb Festival yesterday on a beautiful mountain spring day with the sun out and shining through all the new vibrant spring green leaves still moist from mornings thunderstorm. I picked up wasabi, dang gui, a slippery elm tree, gotu kola and siberian motherwort from Joe Hollis, and rosa rugosa, archangelica and wormwood from my friend and land-mate, Katie's herb teacher, and a pennyroyal that was screaming to me, as well as a celandine poppy and some wild irises. The slippery elm, dang gui, rosa rugosa, celandine poppies, and wild irises are for around the cabin that Mike built.
O, the cabin! It's so beautiful, there's a loft 7ft from the ground floor, and because the walls slope outward it is ridiculously big for only covering half the ground floor. You can stand up in it, I think the peak is 7ft, and Mike put in a vertical window that's about 10in wide and double insulated in the middle below the peak. The north wall doesn't have windows outside of that window, so it's sort of a compromise window to let in some light. It's really great. Our bed is right in the center of the loft, and we look out the completely uncovered front of the cabin, the side without a wall and there's a white pine that lines up perfectly with the peak. It's a special place, and now we have room to share sleeping space with visitors, like my big sister who came last summer and had nowhere decent to sleep. It's quiet, and you can hear the birds and the rain falling on the tin roof. It makes me very happy to sleep up there, even if the bed is just made of some old foam. Jason essentially bought us a water pump to bring water up from the springbox- he found a guy who's living off the land, farming and selling water pumps out of his garage in the spare time, and this guy needed his generator's circuit board repaired. So Jason fixed a circuit board and we got our pump made from plastic produced down the road from the guy who makes the pump. Hurray! Mike salvaged a deep cast iron and ceramic sink from the abandoned houses by Joe's, so he's planning to hook that up before heading back to the Springfield for his summer break.
The field below the shop house here has been totally tilled and cleared of the sod, and Mike is halfway through putting up the new fences for the goats, chickens, and around the garden. Over a hunderd onions are in the ground, with 2 or 3 hundred more to go, and there's a 50 pound bag of potatoes just cut up and dried off for our planting pleasure. We're going to plant also in the new field corn, squash and beans. I'm excited because I started watermelons and cantaloupes, and they're germinating under the lights- also lots of morning glories for covering up the giant rain barrels Jason hooked up the other day. The corn and melon varieties I've chosen have really short growth periods, and the melons produce lots of small melons, so we should get some good eating this summer. :D
Good night and enjoy,
Abby
2 comments:
Hey there stranger, Its Phill. It sounds absolutly beautifull there. And I envy you for living on the land like you are. So, How have you been? Its been along time hasent it? I'm doing ok, I'm single now. Tyger and I broke up in April and she took the kids to Jacksonville to live with her ex (hanna's biological father). However I am enjoying the freedom when I'm not deeply missing the kids. Anyhow how has life been treating you? I hope better then me. Heh.. So, I have a myspace with some pics of me and the kids if you get a chance to check it out please do. And great pics by the way. I gotta go cook some supper, Hit me up sometime. Phill
So, when was Mike coming back for summer break? We could use some bioshelter advice ...
Are you sure YOU don't want to come back to Springfield, Abby?! Heh. Kaleigh will have to send virtual hug assaults.
Post a Comment