Beans, the Magical Fruit

We live in a primarily vegetarian household, which often puts protein on my mind. Humans need complex carbohydrates to live well, but a certain lesser amount of quality protein is vital for tissue growth, immune system support, and hormone synthesis required for the body's countless chemical reactions. There are several ways to include plenty of protein in the diet without meat products, but my favorite by far is with beans. Beans eaten with about twice as much grain is an appropriate and delicious way to ensure you're getting a complete protein easiest for the body to use.

Combining grain and beans with varied seasonal vegetables and fruits provides a high-fiber, nutrient-dense diet linked with much improved digestive, cardiovascular, and immune system health. There is one caveat with increased bean consumption when moving from a diet with a majority of refined and processed foods to a diet consisting of whole foods, including beans: flatulence! When a body has become used to a lack of fiber, as in most western diets, it can have a healing reaction when high-fiber foods are introduced. My recommendation is to start small, increasing your consumption gradually, making sure to soak beans overnight and to include the seaweed kombu in small amounts to increase the digestibility of your non-pressure-cooked bean meal!

I am now very happy to share my three very favorite bean and grain meals! These meals are almost always accompanied in our home by several condiments the value of which cannot be underestimated in my opinion. These include: Ume Plum Vinegar, a salty delight; Jalapeño Vinegar, a mild spicy vinegar that I make by pouring apple cider vinegar over a jar of jalapeños and let sit for as long as it takes to get a little hot, then decant into a separate jar: an added benefit to this process is the preservation of the jalapenos which I pick out to use in two of the following recipes; Nutritional Yeast containing b-complex vitamins that tastes a little like popcorn or butter; Dulce flakes, a slightly salty seaweed packed with protein, and lastly hormone- and antibiotic-free (often found only as organic) sour cream. It just kinda blends the flavors sweetly.

On to the food! My southern influence shines through in my love of cornbread, tex-mex, and creole-style flavors. Oh, and butter! To best enjoy these meals, be sure to soak beans overnight to reduce gas and cooking time and simmer with a chopped up piece of kombu.

Black-Eyed Peas and Corn Bread

-Preheat oven to 350 for the corn bread and start on peas.

-In a medium sized pot, put peas on to heat and cover with water. Bring to a gentle boil, skim the surface foam and reduce to a simmer with lid on.

Chop or dice:

1 onion

several cloves of garlic

1 jalapeño

2-3 stalks of celery

2-3 carrots (optional)

½-1 bell pepper (optional)

1 6-in piece of kombu in pieces

-Add carrot, celery, and kombu to pot with peas.

-In olive or unrefined sesame oil, sauté onions until translucent, add garlic, jalapeño, and bell pepper if desired and cook until onions begin to brown. Add all to pea pot.

-Spices can be included at this point, but not much is required. I often add cayenne made from chipotle peppers, but wait until peas are almost done to add salt and pepper. Black-eyed peas are done in about 20 minutes, but can stand 5 or 10 more to blend flavors.

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All right! Now for the corn bread.

-Place 6 TBS of butter in a deep baking pan or cast-iron skillet and stick it in the oven until it melts.

In a bowl, combine:

1 cup cornmeal

1 cup unbleached or whole wheat flour

2 tsp baking powder

¼ tsp salt

a pinch of cinnamon

In another, combine:

¼ C maple syrup (sugar may be substituted, just add to dry ingredients)

1 C milk, yogurt or water

1 or 2 beaten eggs

-When butter is melted, remove pan from oven. Combine wet and dry ingredients, stir well, and then add the melted butter. Stir until pretty well incorporated and dump the whole thing back into the baking pan or skillet, which should be pretty well lubricated from the melted butter.

-Bake 20 minutes or until the top is golden brown and the edges pull away from the sides of the pan.

Red Beans and Rice

-Prepare rice by bringing to a boil twice as much water as rice, then add rice, allow to return to a boil, then reduce the heat as low as possible on your stove. Will be done when you smell the rice – a cup of brown rice will cook in about 40 minutes, a cup of white will be ready in about 20 minutes. To be sure, remove lid close to time and gently tilt pot forward – if there is still water in the pot, cover and allow to cook until water is completely absorbed.

-While rice cooks, add red beans to pot and cover with water. Allow to come to a gentle boil, skim surface foam, cover with lid and reduce to a simmer.

Similar to black-eyed peas, chop or dice:

1 onion

several cloves of garlic

1-2 carrots

2-3 stalks of celery

1-2 bell peppers

1 jalapeño (optional)

1 6-in piece kombu

-Just like with black-eyed peas, saute onions in olive or unrefined sesame oil until translucent, add garlic, bell peppers, and jalapeño and cook until onion begins to brown, then add to pot with beans. Add carrots, kombu and celery. Spice with about ½ tsp dried oregano. Stir occasionally – usually done shortly after brown rice has finished if started before the beans.

-Be sure to taste test beans to make sure they're cooked through. Add salt to taste. This is definitely a meal that tastes best with sour cream!

Black Beans and Quinoa

-Add black beans to pot and cover with water. Bring to a gentle boil, skim surface foam, reduce to a simmer and cover with a lid. Allow black beans to cook for a half-hour or so before continuing. They generally take longer than most other beans.

As with most beans, chop or dice:

1 onion

several cloves of garlic

1-2 carrots

2-3 stalks of celery

1 6-in piece of kombu

-Saute onions until translucent, then add garlic and cook until onion begins to brown. Add this to bean pot along with carrots, celery and kombu. Spice with roughly ½ tsp oregano, ½ tsp cumin seed and ½ tsp coriander seed. Ready when beans are cooked through, make sure to taste test several to make sure.

-As beans finish, bring to a boil twice as much water as quinoa, add quinoa, cover with a lid and reduce heat to a simmer. Should be finished in about 15 or 20 minutes.

I especially like this last one as it has a sort of pineapple flavor that I find inexplicable and incredibly delightful. The best part about beans is their ability to absorb the flavors of surrounding vegetables and spices. It's hard to mess them up, and they are always hearty and filling. Just make sure they're cooked, or you'll pay for it at the table and in your gut!

With love,

Abigail

Mother Elder!

Elder (Sambucus nigra) is one of my favorite plants for its plethora of delightful uses, for its incredible beauty in flower and fruit, and for its helpful and healthful relationship with garden plants in general, it "teaches them where to go and what to do." It's a tree of magic in european lore, being a guardian tree along with the Rowan. We chose to plant our Elder shrubs somewhat away from the fence to avoid it traveling and coming up in the fence, next to the drainage from the gutter. A few days later I noticed a shrub totally out of line with the staggered row we planted. This new elder was naturally occuring and coming up inside the fence - our neighbor whacked the part on his side and it started to grow lightning fast out in five directions toward our yard!

All parts of elder can be used for medicine or play. The older stems and branches can be cut and hollowed to make flutes and pea-chutes. Young Elder leaves can be dried and infused in oil to be made into salve that lightens freckles, brightens skin tone, acts as a moisturizer for chapped and cracked skin by helping the cells to bind, and is used for sprains and bruising. Elder flowers can be used as tea or tincture to encourage sweating at the beginning of colds and flus. This action of the hot tea with flowers or hot bath with tincture is effective if you get right under blankets. It causes viral infections to be eliminated directly through the pores, calms the nerves and brings up congestion. The most delicious ways to eat Elder berries are in wine left to age an entire year, jelly, and syrup - you can also dry the berries (they're tiny and can be dried in the sun) to enjoy throughout the winter sauteed with a little water and sugar and eaten over pancakes or baked right into muffins and cookies.

You can't go wrong using at least the fruit from this especially abundant lady plant. They're packed with procyanidins, flavonoids known to inhibit abnormal cell growth like cancer, to increase immune response, and to strengthen cell membranes against viral attacks. They are also potent sources of vitamin A and C, particularly important for long winters without fresh fruits and vegetables.

"... the tree itself is 'sambuca' - the pipe of Pan - and it is his spirit blowing through this most sacred tree that enters the world (and the sick body) to heal and teach humankind. In fact, elder is viewed in all ancient texts as a panacea, a cure-all. Pan is the sacred power of forest and animal, the Lord of the Hunt, Guardian of Forest and Animal. The exact meaning of panacea is 'to be healed or cured by Pan, the deepest sacred power of forest.' When the tree is used for medicine the sacred power of Pan is evoked through this, his most sacred healing plant. It has been set down in all ancient oral traditions that those who truly use the power of the elder for their medicine shall all grow old, becoming in their turn an elder, that, in fact, it will cure all ills that humankind encounters if one calls on its power properly." -- Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers, Stephen Harrod Buhner

OK, so now you're so psyched about the amazing medicinal powers of Elder that you want to make something to preserve and use the Elder Mother throughout the late summer and all winter long. Awesome! First step, go find some! This can be tricky at first without some knowledge of the plant's look - make sure you correctly identify her by looking at photos and comparing the leaves and bark to them. Fortunately, once you know what she looks like, you'll spot Elder all over the place! Elder grows in poor soils (avoid roadsides up to 6 ft and ditches along them), along edges and in areas where water flows. The berries hang down in sometimes HUGE clusters that begin green, then become purple, and at peak ripeness are basically black. Clip the clusters, fill a few bags or a bucket, de-stem the berries (this year I watched the series Heroes for 4 hours and cultivated my inner hero healer while de-stemming), and you'll end up with a bunch of beautiful berries and purple fingers. The next step is to wash the berries by putting small amounts in water and skim off the floating stuff until they're all clean. From here you can either press the berries with a potato masher and strain for raw juice or smash and simmer for 10 minutes to soften them and make it a little easier to express the juice. You can also do this with purchased dried berries, allowing them to rehydrate in cool water and then simmering.

At this point, you have something so intense in color that you'll feel really good about all this effort and you might start to think about the incredible thing you're doing by taking part in keeping yourself well, and by limiting the cost of what you spend on cough syrups and time out of work this winter. You just might start pondering color and its ability to indicate density of nutrition from bright yellows and oranges to deep reds and purples, and maybe you'll imagine the healing photons entering your body through this medicinal concoction you're making for yourself and those you love. Maybe you'll feel, as I often do while making medicine, a deep and profound reverence for all the lives that will be assisted through this process, for the life of the plant and the earth who is ally to all these lives.

All right! Feeling good now, you'll want to decide what you want to make with this juice. We had a huge harvest this year (Fox Bridge Rd, northeast side of Bunn Park, untreated and up away from the road), so along with what I've put up in the freezer, I made jelly and syrup. Jelly is made with the addition of sugar and pectin, to varying degrees - I've seen recipes including half apples or crab-apples for pectin, and also sumac flowers to cut down the cloying sweetness of the finished elder product. For now, let's think about syrup because it can be made with honey if kept below 110 degrees F. First simmer the juice without a lid until it's reduced by half. Meanwhile, gather honey and clean jars for bottling and canning (if necessary). You'll need twice as much honey as juice by volume, preferably from bees several miles from GMO crops and never heated above 110 as this denatures the honey. If you've got 2 cups of juice, you'll need 4 cups of honey. Once the juice is reduced, add the honey and stir continuously over a low flame until the whole batch is dissolved and mixed. Ladle the syrup into jars, wipe tops, screw on sealing mason lids and process in a pot of boiling water for 10 minutes (or more at higher elevations). The canning part is unneccesary if stored in a refrigerator.

That's it! Now you have a incredibly special addition to pancakes, waffles, ice cream, or anything that requires a subtle flavor and a dose of sweetness. Send thanks to the Elder every time you and your loved ones enjoy this medicinal delight! Also enjoy the photos of the process by clicking on the photos at right!

<3

SURPRISE

:insert cowgirl galloping into town to save the day tune here:

So, hey. How's it goin'? Good, I'm imagining, and hopefully you're sitting in a stream of sunshine as well. Things here are going pretty well, we're about ready to fix up the bathroom, and initial kitchen imaginings are forming as well. Not the most important news, but for me these things take one of my main mental stages. Another is occupied by the yard, which is looking fine indeed!

A couple of weeks ago we went to a native tree sale and picked up a couple of persimmons, an american plum (later reading they are not the best thing to plant... pfft), a witchhazel that Eli ate and I hope will one day return to us, a chokeberry, a serviceberry, and a river birch (betula nigra, hopefully this will produce those delicioso twigs). Also, for the land we picked up a couple of hazelnut shrubs, a weeping willow and a bald cyprus. In addition, we've put in a row of Elder where our gutters flow out, several peonies to distract from the little A/C unit, and our friends helped put in some raspberries from that lady Carey who is one of our lifetime allies and beautiful buddies. and! Yesterday I was cutting the hackberry and mulberry from our fenceline (too bad they haven't yet started growing In the yard where I could leave them!), and I found big thornless blackberry canes from our neighbors on the side of our garage that was nearly impossible to get to before the my hacking, and a wild grape vine with lovely new leaves growing up the fence on the alley side.

Yeah, the yard. It's nice-ish. It's a lot nicer now that I planted up the first Actual garden bed with broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage, two kinds of motherwort and wild dagga for smoking mixes and bitter tinctures, some bronze fennel for beneficial insects, and garlic chives around the edges. I'm stoked to get to the next bed! Unfortunately I exhausted our supply of broken up concrete, so I may have to start lining the beds with artfully stacked red bricks. Should be interesting! I'm thinking of planting a lot of my little hopi red dye amaranths pretty much directly into the ground around the yard, hopefully causing it to self-seed and return FOREVER!! Ha HA! Food, beauty, grace, carbon, and dyestuff. Life is giving.

OK, so that's the yard update, the land is less clear. M thinks he could make a little house on our piece of property, but I'm afraid. I'm OK with the idea of a little house facing the woods, but unfortunately Springfield isn't the abundant forest of a place that I imagine in my fancy thinking. Plus, doing things to city code is laaaame. We'll see how that goes, we're in a slight transition mode at the moment, while attempting to maintain our foothold here. Nothing unusual.

Time for beets and eggs from the ladies!

with a body full of love, as usual,
abby

new photos and spring is here!

Spring is in full effect, except that the trees are JUST on the virge of blooming. It's delightful every day to see something new flowering and leafing out. M and I have been cleaning/clearing for some time now, always more to do, but we're getting O, so close to getting most of what is least useful out of our house and garage previously packed to the gills with "antiques." I think we're hitting a stable point, though, now that most of the garbage is out. Our yard only very vaguely reminds me of a garbage dump at this point. :D

Our new additions, the araucana hens, are doing splendidly. Eli still wants to eat them sometimes, but he's coming around. It's hard to name them because they don't currently respond to a whole lot. I might just continue to call them by whistles and clucks. They're laying pretty regular, now, 2 or 3 eggs each day. It's the easiest of chores to collect them and care for the ladies. There's a good reason everyone used to keep at least a few. We're getting together a chicken tractor, or a moveable pen to keep them in with a raised laying box that we can just reach into. The idea is put the hens on one spot of earth for a month or more while adding straw (carbon to balance the nitrogen in their poop/fertilizer), or to wheel the whole structure to a new spot each day for them to essentially mow down new growth and lay richer eggs than they can on feed alone. M's particularly interested in raising bugs for hen food. :) If we can get enough worm production going on in the basement, I suspect we could feed them those little red wigglers pretty regularly.

M got himself a Hammond organ a week or so ago that plays beautifully, and he is highly enthusiastic about it. He likes to break it down in the garage. Now that the garage is a little clear, there's plenty of room for it, but I suspect it's going down to the basement sometime in the near future. I wonder what the neighbors think, and I think it's enriching the neighborhood.

We went on a nice prairie hike at the Sugar Grove in Funk's Grove yesterday to make our trip to buy maple syrup more worthwhile. I think it's a large preserve with a bid sanctuary and lots of ... prairie, but also lots of trees. The forests were filled with ramps, which are sort of like green onions crossed with garlic. Delicious! We didn't have digging knives with us to cut through the black, wet, clayey earth, but maybe we'll find some in the woods near our land. We did collect a couple cups of beautiful new purple and deep green stinging nettles, which I put into a rice and goat cheese casserole today YUM. They are incredibly sturdy and strengthening plants and one of the best herbs for eating. I read this morning they used to be tithed because of their multitude of uses from every part of the plant.

Well, that's about all for now!
love, Abby

spring.

I've been thankful that the bus goes up and down 13th and 15th Sts and not mine, in the middle. I'm thankful today because I've come to realize that my neighborhood is ALIVE and vibrant, filled with people and pretty delightful. It's spring, and I'm starting to understand an experience I had upon my very first temperate spring. I moved in with my brother on Cape Cod one summer when I was 17 and had my first winter there. That's also when I walked up my first hill, acutely feeling it the backs of my legs. That first snowy winter I learned some things, like how great it is to watch movies at night and that you cannot expect much from an umbrella in a snow storm. In the spring I moved in with a boy who had grown up in Houston and Phoenix, and we had our first Grand Thaw together. The strangest thing happened that spring- in March, everyone had sour looks and many layers of warm clothes, but in April, one day, all of a sudden, EVERYone was outside in t-shirts. It was weird.

A few years have passed, and I've experienced springs in a few more places, after a few more winters. I'm reminded today of my bewilderment at the extreme and sudden change that first spring because today is that extreme and sudden day in my neighborhood. Sure, yesterday was pretty warm, and I bet a lot of folks were outside, but today it is almost 5pm and above 50F. It's Spring. :) I also saw a bunny hopping around in the field across from the house, just hopping, like it was frisky. The cherries and pears are beginning to make colorful buds, and M is getting worked up about co-op business ventures. The sap is on the move.

with love,
Abigail

holding a feeling

I'm pretty much a mega-fan of making plans and deviating at the first branch. Looking at some of my choices, it looks a little like I might be obsessed with changing the plan. I love and fear and hate the plan, it makes me feel safe, but I fear the possibility of stagnancy and spiritual degradation and hate the feeling of being stuck. My charts are filled with water. :) Within Mayan astrology the boy and I have multiple hands in our charts. The hand is the sign of magic, it is the manipulator, the ability to give form and shape to ideas and elements. It's the holy damn spirit with a thumb. I consider myself different forms of water, a lot of times I feel like the middle of the oceans with the moon overhead. I can readily identify with the sky goddess Nut or Nuit, fantastically blue and covered in stars, stretching everywhere. I feel dark and wet and expansive, very kaphic.

So I need a little earth sometimes, and this is that, far away from the ocean or the mountain streams and close to the ground. It's something I've been afraid of committing to, but it's better to deal with the feelings that come up from all this - I feel like whatever and everything I do here in Springfield will make future endeavors richer. Gardening, building soil, being immersed in normal, everyday, repeating cycles, these are what nourish me. They make me feel delight and joy and the heart-like pulse of living beings. This is the feeling of home, and I carry it with me, but it has unfolded exponentially inside this new house where M and I live together.

OK, enough about that, happy birthday to me! A quarter-century tomorrow! Thanks mom, glad I came out easy and early on you! I'm afraid this means you're getting old, though. :D I'm going to have a french pastry and remember the story of the day I was born as told by my sister who ate ice cream with my brothers and dad and loves to tell the tale. I've always associated my birthday with my mom's because hers is in 2 days and my grandpa always bought a cake for us to share. To Abby(/ie) and Patty. :)


love, as always and usual,
Abigail

overjoyed! how I came to know beauty,

and the spiritually progressive struggle to live with her in Springfield. :)

So! I'm really excited to share some photos of the house, which should become available shortly through the flickr page linked on the side there. -->
There should be more as soon as the sun comes back out, haven't seen it in 4 or 5 days. :/

I've mentioned my obsession with the new house, here in Springfield, with M and Eli, to a few friends. However, I need to let everyone know how thoroughly engrossed I am with this house. My compartmentalizing and always working brain knows most corners in and out. It's interesting that before I fell asleep in St Pete, (after we'd been through the house for about 25 minutes or so and looked around and put in the offer and went on down to Florida) I would run through everything I remembered of the house. Anyway, that's my house story for the moment. We have successfully gotten everything off the walls, the million knick-knacks the 97-yr old lady who lived here left us, changed the kitchen faucet, added a fancy under-counter water filter, and pulled up the carpets to find the beautiful, almost perfect oak hardwood floors. It feels so much cleaner with the old carpet up. It appeared on first glance to be beige, and then I pulled up a sill-plate or something and saw the color it was at installation. It surely was beige, but it was clearly gray where previously it had appeared beige. Ew. :)

I'm increasingly excited about a) getting out my books, b) setting up the kitchen in the basement, and c) cooking more and more. Lately we've had plenty of soup, something I have previously made infrequently, but something about hearing my brother-in-law's mama made soup all the time in the old country spurred me on this economical soup frenzy. It's brilliant- you add some potatoes and carrots and onion and celery (how the hell else do you use celery?) and What Ever else, and it's soup! I've been adding a handful or two or quinoa, and it gets stew-y, it's delightful. Miso is also a staple of late, have a ton of mung bean sprouts to throw in tomorrow. I feel relieved when I don't have to think too much about cooking, and soup is just so... immediate and warming and delicious. Thanks mama!

Thinking a lot about friends, life partners, family, after the trip south to my family and the return to friends and a couple of life partners. Keeping relationships in general fruitful and useful seems like a very delicate balancing act, connecting, reconnecting, and disconnecting. all three seem ultimately necessary and appropriate at different times. This seems clear to me at most times, but really, it is delicate, like hollow glass chess pieces on a marble board, maybe. I really think about it within the context of the garden, where each plant is a hugely complex and inter-connected being, where you decide which little beings you wish to assist to thrive, where the grass is also a million living beings, and the weeds (which are often such nourishing and sometimes potent medicine) also have to be thinned and/or removed- but! Everything in the garden is composted, which is returned to the garden to help all the other plants thrive! So these things are very mixed up in my brain, which I like.


with love, and more soon,
abby

Feb 19 1985

I was born on a new moon on the first day of Mardi Gras, the last day of the Chinese year of the Rat, and the first day of Pisces. My birth number is 8, which is interchangeable with 11, and I gravitate toward opposites, like Virgos and otherwise generally incompatible persons/situations. Interesting.

the state where I live

M and I are somehow addicted to anchors, what with the acre and now, on the 7th, a little 2-bedroom brick beauty about 5 blocks away from it. It has a nice little fenced yard for Eli and a long garage for M's jewelry tools. It has a second kitchen and toilet in the mostly finished basement, a toolbench, and a bar, as well as a ringer washer! I don't think the old lady who lived there ever used a modern washer.

So that's an update. For now we are living in my older sister's home with her husband and 13-year-old daughter. It's going well, and I'm hoping to get out into the yard very soon. Saturday we'll be out at the community garden hopefully putting little babies in the ground or tending what is already there, or helping install another garden across the road. I'm not sure what we'll be doing exactly, but I'm looking forward to working outside, considering it's mid-70's out there. We've actually had to run the air conditioner! It's amazing. There are great big culverts along the roads to take away water from the rain, and there are tropical-y birds in parking lots and along the roads. It's fun to look at all the plants that grow here in the sun, all the citrus and beautiful big tropical-y plants. I'm not sure when we're leaving here, sometime I suppose, to get back to the little house.

I'm getting into this Ursula LeGuin novel called the Beginning Place that I found at one of my favorite stores called Prairie Archives back in Springfield. It's about two troubled youths who are barely holding it together, but who emotionally support their mothers in the "real" world, but who somehow find, separately, a path between elder bushes into a mountain creek that runs up to a little mountain town. It's pretty good, and I love Ms. LeGuin. I bought some cheap secondhand copies of a couple of her paperbacks today. Yay books! Every time I read a good fantasy book I feel like I need to never stop, like I'm watching a good show on TV without the eye strain.

It often occurs to me that I can't really write about interpersonal relations, which are what make my world go 'round, which is I suppose why I don't write here more often. I feel like the world is a richer place without rehashing it, for sure.

from my heart,
abby

one acre

1.05 acre in Springfield, IL, never built on, never farmed- connected to an unnamed woods with an unnamed tributary with an unrecognized yellow-colored liquid dripping down one slope into said unnamed tributary and eventually down into the cement overflow structure that leads deep under the surface of the land.

OK, so the good part is there is tons of space to grow food and medicine and trees, plenty of open space and wooded space within the acre M will own officially in a few days. It's exciting! We have a cherry tree, a pear tree, a crabapple, a hickory tree, and I don't even know what else because all the leaves have fallen, and my tree identification skills are limited. It's exciting, though, as it's near to some of our dear friends with whom I am very excited to better develop relations. It's also exciting because it does back up to the woods with a water source running through, with owls, birds, possoms, foxes, rabbits, cats and dogs, PLUS. I suspect it will not be hard to draw people to the scene to help and enjoy our quiet, end of the road location. It will definitely be a project in permaculture, considering we don't entirely plan to build a home there. M is excited to put up a storage shed/birdhouse with open space, and I keep thinking how great the wood-fired hot tub will be. I imagine prairie and flowering trees and shrubs all along the road, with more fruit and nut trees and so many haws!

In any case, this is the update. We'll be heading to FL early next week with a stop at our buddy's place in Birmingham- exciting! I'm happy to see my folks and grandma and sisters, and the weather just turned November yesterday. It was a happy accident that we were able to pick up two truck loads of composted manure and unload them on Saturday when the weather was balmy and hard to believe. Now it is icey-cold rain and greygreygrey skies. Yay snowbirding!

with love,
Abigail

Medicine is Magic

As reminder to myself:

Magic is transformation, and in that sense our food is medicine and therefore magic, and all the air and water and emotions and electronic radiation are all medicine/magic/transformative. The words we speak effect our bodies and the bodies of other critical beings who comprehend and utilize the words as triggers and instruction for transformative acts, consciously or unconsciously. In this thinking space, the Good Word takes on an entirely new meaning.

puppy and change of plans

Today M and I drove outside of town to a conglomeration of farm houses and every kind of animal milling about- peacocks on the porch, chickens in the drive, goats and cows munching on maturing thorn apples, and kittens lurking while a family of blue heelers panted around, going from one person to the next to be petted and loved on. We went all the way out there because, well, the other night we were drinking a bottle of wine in our bedroom suite here (it was so rainy and dreary, and you can't watch episodes of this American Life every night). Well, so, then we started looking at photos, banksy graffiti, and a tent overflowing with polyurethane foam as an art piece, etc, when I decided I wanted to look at craigslist in the farm and garden section. Turns out we got the last pup in the litter born on August 9, so he's been weaned and socialized out on the farm with mom, dad, and a year-older sibling. His mom is from Australia, has a naturally bobbed tail, and this may be his 12-year old dad's last season. The old farmer guy selling them has been raising them for a long time, and his daughter and granddaughter were there helping us out, granddaughter remembering when they last were wormed while grandpa remembered wrong. He's a beautiful little puppy, 12 weeks old today, so he got a lot of good farm time in. He's like a little little kid, hasn't slept all day, keeps waking himself up and grumbling at me. He likes to be physically connected, and he won't take his sleepy head off the crook of my arm. :)

He's our Halloween dog. Maybe we should give him a name reminiscent of the occasion. It's hard to name another being, and that's the first thing you're supposed to do for training I guess, and everyone asks that first. Blue Heelers are so sweet. They're super smart, love working and playing, have tons of energy, are super friendly, and they're cute as a button I think. This guy likes to be outside (duh), and he LOVES eating. and not once has he nipped at anyone.

On to the change of plans- well! The boy and I are leaning toward a little house of our own in the ghetto of Springfield, right between our friends at the real Little House ( lhintheghetto.blogspot.com ) and our newest Springfield friends, a couple who are really interested in living more sustainably in their $2000 tax-auction little house. That would mean a whole community of folks within a few blocks, including the guys formerly haunting the main LH and now living it up a couple blocks away. I don't know anywhere else where you can pick up a $6000 house in the middle of an OK and mostly habited neighborhood and be spitting distance from plenty of friends. It's like a little village in town. Besides, the pup needs a yard to run around, and we need a space to plant and tend chickens. M's pretty excited to have a footprint in his hometown, besides. I think that's really what made him want this pup so bad.

So, yeah, still heading down to the FL for the warmth and holidays, looking forward to that. The plan to move to NC is still tentatively on for a slightly later date, it's just important that we throw down some roots and make a place for ourselves here, since we end up here all the time. It will help my sanity here. :)

with love, and help me think of a good puppy name,
Abby

future thoughts

It's been quite some time since I updated with anything significant here. It's a matter of the end of summer, a return to the harvest of the corn fields in central Illinois (my unlikely second home), and an odd mixture of stagnation/liberation. I'm doing OK, learning from and adjusting to... everything. :)

At the very beginning of October we drove down to NC for me to attend the SE Women's Herbal Conference, and he to pack up our remaining Stuff from the summer cabin. I had a fantastic time work-exchanging the $300 cost for the lovely ladies who put on the event from Thursday until Sunday evening. I camped out, ate beautiful and lovingly concocted local and organic foods, connected with about 600 incredible and brilliant women, and learned more than I can incorporate into a blog post at this time. :) There we were, intelligent, creative, passionate, brilliant women all in a lovely camp setting with the fall leaves beginning to change color in the mountains surrounding us around a 20-acre lake. I camped next to a dripping dam and shared the campsite with some great ladies. There were all ages, from tiny babies breast-feeding everywhere to old great-grandmas keeping pace with all the lively inter-actions. Everyone wanted to connect, there was zero catty-ness, everything flowed beautifully, and I had a free massage, acupuncture, and an herbal consultation which basically confirmed my own conclusions as far as an sustained health regime for myself. I went on an edible/medicinal mushroom walk, took a class on abdominal massage, listened to Susun Weed tell stories to a room of 500, and generally felt like a whole person for a full weekend. I feel particularly fond of this event because it ripples out, our interactions with each other, and our ability to communicate across so many supposed barriers. We who attended will share this information, this beauty, this healthful growing appetite for sustaining all the incredible bounty we've been blessed with for the future, for our children and their children for ever after. It was hard to feel bad about the future of our planet or our species in the company of these women.

The boy and I are looking at land in and around Madison county North Carolina, which is relatively close to Asheville, a thriving and beautiful mountain big city. It's a big city that acts as a crossroads for many kinds of people, especially those interesting in sustaining life on the planet and encouraging growth. Our goals are to build a similar cabin to the one that M built this summer in NC to live in while we build a fiber-adobe structure. First wood, then earth.

My hope is to go to herb school from March to October outside of Asheville, which is a big deal in my world. There is no legal accreditation for herbalists, except to earn your PhD and then to go back to school for herbs. While that doesn't seem even half-way reasonable to me in my life, I am very keen to learn more specifics and continue in the environment of the western NC mountains, a very bio-diverse and incredible place. One of my very good lady friends attended a particular herb school this year (http://www.chesnutherbs.com), and I was so compelled by studying with her on a few occasions that I realized I need to know more. This particular herb school meets twice a week for 8 hours each day, has multiple teachers, spends most of its time outdoors with three week-long camping field trips, and it studies anatomy & physiology, wildcrafting plants, nutrition, cross-tradition studies, botany, ecology, wild foods and medicine-making. It's a $4ooo course, but my hope is to work-exchange at least half of that amount. We'll see what mother God provides for the other half. :)

So, that's the deal for next year, but before that! I'll be re-connecting with my parents and sisters in FL for a few months, helping my older sister with her new home gardens and repairs while Mky gets back into silversmithing. Another goal is building his jewelry business, building stock, taking more and better photos, and making his etsy site better, as well as building relationships with retail sellers.

I'm excited. It's taken some time to even get around to approaching the "real world" from an angle that suits us both and doesn't seem completely insane. We've both had to keep learning, growing, adjusting, and shedding what doesn't work. It's all coming around, and for the first time in a long time we have almost everything we own in one room. We have to figure how to fit it all in a car, though! :D

Enjoy &
With love, I go now to feed my increasingly loud belly,
Abby <3>

Swine Flu

Some really good information and advice regarding our newest pandemic:
http://www.areturntohealing.com/blog/node/6

Don't worry, here are the recommendations:

SWINE FLU PREVENTIVE MEASURES FOR CHILDREN AND ADULTS
Dr. Lansman has had excellent results in preventing and managing flu symptoms with a range of vitamins, supplements, herbs, and homeopathic preparations. Her basic recommendations include 1000 IUs of vitamin D each day for infants and toddlers, 1 teaspon of cod liver oil/day for all kids, and 2500 IU daily for older children. She also recommends Elderberry once daily and one dose of homeopathic Oscillococinnum each month.

Dr. Saputo’s recommendations for adults include the following:
• Adopt a healthy lifestyle: adequate sleep, good diet, regular exercise, avoid stress
• Get plenty of sunshine, or supplement to keep vitamin D levels adequate
• Wash your hands frequently with water
• Consider boosting immunity with vitamin C, beta glucans, echinacea, vitamin A, maitake and shitake mushroom extracts, minerals such as selenium and zinc, certain herbs such as olive leaf extract and garlic, and homeopathic remedies.

"Resistance to Tyranny is Obedience to God"

*from Susan B. Anthony at the close of the court case caused by her attempt to vote

a gentle southern rain

What better way to spend a Sunday morning than quietly appreciating the almost silent falling of rain from the seldom darkened sky. This may be one of the last warm rains this region gets before the autumn air sets in. At least, this is what I imagine, though in reality the cold could linger north and west of here into October. Winter is coming, and it makes my heart ache just a little, especially considering there is no solid space assigned it for the coming months. Mk and I are driving back to North Carolina from Illinois next weekend, approximately one week from today. I need to be in Asheville for the herb conference I've been mentioning. I'll leave my hopes and fears up in the air as much as possible until that day gets here.

Springfield is a spiritually moving place for me. I almost without fail find myself depressed after a short time in this place. First I'm bored, then irritable, then sort of empty feeling. It's not that there aren't wonderful people here with whom I'm bonded and for whom I care greatly. Somehow there is just not enough for me to do here. I pretty actively avoid taking buses or walking around cars/barking dogs, and I don't know where exactly I'd go or what I'd enjoy on those walks. My body tells me to do nothing because there's nothing exciting for it to do. I feel very connected with a general American feeling when I'm here. Anyway, I think this is somehow a good thing for me to experience, accept, and from which to generate some new feelings. It helps to appreciate more the beauty of where I live the rest of the time to come here and drown in corn and cars. I'm experiencing what I absolutely do not like in hopes that those things I do like will surface and be genuinely recognizable. This is in general how it's always happened. Thank momma god for her wild and chaotic sense of reason. :)

One more thing, I wanted to talk about coming to know a little better what my mission/purpose/career path could be. Whatever is in the future, I hope it involves keeping stock of something dynamic, something that changes with inter-action. I hope it keeps my body occupied most of the time, 'cause movement is what a body craves. I see these benefits in herbalism, or in growing, tending, harvesting, and preparing plants. Working with plants opens me to the dynamic and intense nature of life on this planet. It helps me to better see all that is sick or dying in my parts of the world. It also gives me a much more cohesive understanding of how what is sick and dying interacts with and forms every new life. I think I'll work and live with plants for my life, considering they are everywhere, even in this urban center- decay is bringing new life to every part of this place.

with love,
Abby

red clover, red clover, send it right over

I am a really lucky gal. It's hard to explain, but it's true and pretty unbelievable.

Turns out that 95% of the bras in department stores are shaped like perfect round things with strange squashy bottoms that are more than a little disingenuous. 80% have hard plastic curves inside that push up the body they are "supporting." I had trouble finding a camisole with a piece of elastic inside for use in lieu of the bra. It was almost impossible to find anything not unspeakably tight and nylon. It's over now; I'm 3 pairs of half-bamboo underwear richer and about 3 1/2 hours older.

Just 3 weeks, now, until the Southeast Women's Herb Conference. I'm psyched to try to go to the session on Uterine Massage. I've been really interested in this Mayan uterine ligament massage that Rosita Arvigo has sort of made re-popular since she moved to Belize and studied with an old Indio down abouts. She wrote a book called Sastun about her apprenticeship and homesteading in the rainforest that's pretty danged good. I almost went to visit while I was down there! But I didn't. Also, Susun Weed's supposed to keynote the weekend, and I'm really happy about work trading the whole cost of the event and getting to know the ladies who run it a little bit. Also, my good good lady friend's herb school teacher is giving a workshop on medicinal herb gardening that I'm Really excited to attend. Those classes and being surrounded by beautiful, intense, brilliant women make me feel really good about going. I'm also trying to go to herb school with my gal-buddy for a coupla days after the conference. I'm redirecting my energy into dreaming about these events until they happen. Work is pretty un-stimulating to my brain, but o so needed for my body. I kinda have muscles now!

I also miss my home in the mountains. I just feel better down there. The air is different, the water is cleaner, the people think a little more, the trees grow a little more. I'm recognizing how things feel different and what helps guide my body to rest. It's difficult to figure what's worth commitment in this transient land. Even sedentary folk are able to go anywhere at all over their televisions and computers. That's what I do, too, and it doesn't help my brain make any decisions! I think perhaps our options are unlimited in theory, and it's our job to realize what's truly possible for ourselves in our own lives.

More on that at an earlier hour.

Love and enjoy,
Abby

urbana

City life is interesting. It fills your time while you do nothing. That doesn't sound particularly good, and who is to say if it is or not. In short, I'm enjoying myself while not being terribly busy. I've been especially happy to spend time with my friend Carey, who remains peculiarly noble in this strange city. Lately she's been growing in profound ways, and I can't really articulate how that's helped me, but somehow it does. That's the thing about people you love and with whom you are connected- when they grow, you share the opportunity for growth. Equally, if they stagnate, you share that opportunity as well. I think that's something most of us seem to have trouble with in relationships (friends, lovers, children), sharing the opportunities for growth and transformation. May that be the ultimate goal of all relations in our lives.

This afternoon I spent a very pleasant few hours a little outside of Springfield on one of the only natural organic farms 'round these parts. I've been buying produce from these guys for three years now, odd as that seems to me when quantified. The gal-friend of Mike's brother and I went on out there to weed in exchange for produce, and it was good to talk with the two guys who grow there. They use 2.5 acres within a family's 22 acres, exchanging produce for rent and getting fresh goat and cow milks and cheeses from the family who live there. It's a really awesome set-up, and I'm glad to spend time there helping out. It's shocking how little of this there is going on in the midwest, but it feels great where it's happening.

So, yes, time has been passing with a few hours here and there doing some clean-up work for M's mama, hanging out with friends and generally relaxing, thinking of the future, dreaming of a future that is inclusive of all the beauty and friends here and everywhere.

with my heart,

abigail

love, it's who you know

We're having a little Berry Bonus Time the last few days. It's been an interesting week. The boy and I started out last Monday south toward Nantahala National Forest in the more southerly section of western North Carolina. We've been living in the Pisgah where the highest US mountain east of the Mississippi is located, in what's considered the highlands. We wanted to get a better look at the rest of the NC mountains, so down we went south of the Smokies to check out the mountain towns that live in an ocean of protected forest. About two hours into our trip the old '84 Benz wagon started making a terrible sound from the back, and long story short we ended up in Franklin at a lube shop where a very kind lady told us our engine might be cracked. It really helped that she was so visibly distraught about telling us, somehow made it a lot easier to consider the car being wrecked.

In any case, we got a hotel room and put the car in the shop the next morning. They did fix the fuel leak we had, unfortunately they didn't lift the car to notice the rear axle (the Benz is rear-wheel driven) had completely worn out. This was the cause of our horrible sounds. We didn't discover the problem wasn't fixed until just turning into Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest, an hour from the repair shop and out of cell range. To wrap this up, we somehow made it back down to Franklin and a 40-year Benz mechanic, stayed a total of three nights in two hotels, had a great time aside from the money spent and the hotel-confinement, and tomorrow the car should be all fixed up and ready to go. Joyce Kilmer was fantastic with huge old-growth poplars and newly dead hemlocks from the adelgid bug, just barely making it through the logging all around them to be purchased by the US gov't at a ridiculously high price. The car stuff was bothersome on the hike, but something about the partridgeberries, harvesting blue cohosh seeds and usnea on fallen trees, stretching a hundred different ways on the walk, and being in the middle of a vast expanse of wilderness was really quite healing.

Illinoise is next, and gosh it's been a while. I'm a little bit excited to be in a different space, just for the refresher, but I can't imagine I'll be too excited by the sound of cars at night or the streetlights for that matter. Those are two pretty big problems in the city, you know? The hotels reminded me.

Just an update for interested parties.

with my love,

abby

I was saved by the fire, it just took a while.

It's funny that every few months Mike and I are mobilized by our brain commanders, simply pushed forward to the next place. So here we go, meandering back up north by way of mountain roads, scoping out land, locations, elevations, waterways, etc etc.

There's a quote from the Secret Teachings of Plants by Thoreau, something like one who simply goes into the woods will never see so much as the one who goes intentionally to see. I'm vibing strongly on those words, feeling especially glad to have come to this place in my life of being able to follow the plants and weeds, to know them at infancy, at middle age, and as they go to seed. I feel very centered and grounded knowing these beings, and it very easily translates in my mind to children, especially as the years pass and the little ones I know and have known grow another year, another year, another year. Time has become a very long-term thing (if anything at all). It's funny to remember so vividly what happened years ago, and it seems to happen more and more as I've become more connected to my surroundings. I can remember all these plants as tiny babies, and here they are so enormous and falling over. Somehow growing the plants causes me to be grown, making me feel so much more capable of relating to others, plant, animal and so many beautiful humans (most every one). My eyes are opened more to the complexity, to the beautifully infinite ways we all inter-act and assist, to the very hallucinogenic property of life in general. My buddy on the couch just now reminded me of something I said about death, roughly that our bodies have many methods of perception, hearing, seeing, touching, etc, and when we die all of those perceivers fall away and return to the earth while our spirit(s) are released from them and are again able to un-realize themselves, to become again what they always are. The land has a way of telling you these things without even needing hallucinogens (though they certainly don't hurt:).

On the agenda for today is rivering at the river, soaking up some sun in the privacy of the mountain stream. Must rack off mead, gather dewberries, tuck up around the cabin, pickle some chard, and delight in the day while the sun is out. We've had visions of fall the last few days with cold-ish nights, moreso than usual, and crispness in the air while the first leaves begin to fall from the maples and all the trees turn yellower and yellower. I feel like we've had maybe 3 weeks of strong summer so far in between all the rain. It's an interesting weather pattern, very moist, very moldy to anything enclosed, very dank. Most of the peaches have brown rot from so much moisture. It's an ideal place for being internal most of the year. I'm not sure I could handle it much into to the winter, when the wind returns.

Well! Time for master chef Mike's banana buckwheat cakes!

and again, as before,

with all my love,

abigail