Acorn Community

it’s been a few weeks since my last post. we’re still doing old-fashioned mondays, i still have a lot of crafty stuff to do. i still have laundry days and wash my things by hand (my clothes now, too, instead of just my cloth wipes), and we’ve had more snow since early december. here are a few photos from the past weeks.

orange and blue sunset

this beautiful horizon was  a nice surprise one evening as i went out back to bring my laundry in before dark. i love the silhoette of trees in the wintertime.

gloves from a cut up old sweater, fixed

i made these fingerless gloves in the winter of 2007 with two then-interns at acorn. we cut up a hole-ridden sweater from commie clothes and used dental floss to make gloves. i knew better than to attempt fingers with cut-up knitting. and now, two years later, the edges were getting awful ragged – and i finally had enough basic knitting skills to just pick up some of the hanging loops to keep it from unraveling further. other places required more creative measures.

i almost forgot! i meant to share a picture of our first snow. it was a lovely day – bad for driving, but great for staying in and sipping hot cocoa. i walked around late the next day to catch a few pictures. it was cold enough that even two days later patches of snow still lingered in the most shaded areas.

i grew up in rural pennsylvania, and really appreciate a good snowfall. i spent my elementary school years making forts in 5-foot snow drifts and sclupting snow turtles, tromping around in snow clothes knowing that Mom was waiting with hot chocolate when i got home. it’s nice to see snow come back to visit this year… i’ve been living in richmond and alabama for the past ten years, and the snow was… not plentiful, there, to say the least. i’m looking forward to hunkering down at acorn for a snowy winter.

here’s the wood pile outside of heartwood – we’re in the midst of a huge re-siding project, and this is the pile waiting to be de-nailed. needless to say, no de-nailing happened that day.

On September 12th,  Acorn’s seed business, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, will once again present the Heritage Harvest Festival at Monticello on Montalto, the “High Mountain” over-looking Thomas Jefferson’s historic gardens. In conjunction with the Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants, the day long festival will offer food tastings, a seed swap, and hands-on workshops and demonstrations.

PRESENTERS include:
Dr. Amy Goldman – Author of “The Heirloom Tomato” and Seed Savers Exchange Board President
William Woys Weaver – Food historian, author, contributing editor for Mother Earth News and curator of the Roughwood Seed Collection
Peter J. Hatch – Author of “The Fruits and Fruit Trees of Monticello,” “Thomas Jefferson and the Origins of American Horticulture,” and Monticello Director of Gardens and Grounds
Barbara Pleasant – Author of “The Complete Compost Gardening Guide,” and contributing editor for Mother Earth News
Dr. David Bradshaw – Naturalist, professor emeritus of horticulture at Clemson University, and collector of heirloom seeds and their stories
Dr. Jeanine Davis – Author, “Growing and Marketing Ginseng, Goldenseal and other Woodland Medicinals”
Peggy Cornett – Director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants
Kathleen Maier – Director of Sacred Plant Traditions and Co-founder of Virginia Plant Savers

For updates on the program, news and presenters click here.

We hope to swap seeds with you there!

Happy Birthdays went out to Ben, Gpaul and Emma Goldman (the lady not the commune) on Saturday. We feted these towering revolutionaries by sampling a variety of bourgie craft beers- though Puck lamented that we didn’t serve any of Ben’s homemade Mint Chocolate Stout.

Lots of Twin Oakers and friends- including Robert, Thea, Jonah and Gwen from Charlottesville and Cricket and Guido from Dixie Hollow Road. Afterwards, dancing at Twin Oaks. No one told us it was Shiloh’s birthday, too. Happy Birthday, Shiloh!

Last night we had a discussion of feminism at Acorn- it’s a complicated topic for us, for everybody. We call ourselves feminist in our propaganda, and we commit as members of the Federation of Egalitarian Communities to actively fight against oppression in all its forms. Do we do that? Are we feminist?

This took place in our Thursday night meeting- which is dedicated to weekly discussions of the larger issues, policies, and directions we want to take living at Acorn- in these meetings we discuss development, conflict, egalitarianism, the future of the business- one topic a week.

No one said in the meeting they were opposed to being feminist. But, as usual when you explore concepts, deviations arose between us concerning aims and means. What small, practical steps should we take? To what larger understandings should we commit?

One big question is our gender imbalance. We have more men than women members- though, in terms of interns, guests, visitors, and associates we’re pretty even in the number of men and women on the farm at any given time. This is a relatively new phenomenon at Acorn. Any group of small numbers can experience large statistical shifts because two or three people in a single demographic decide to leave- which is what happened here last year.

This is a big question for most communities- theories as to why abound. But, in general the working rule is men join communities much more quickly and in higher numbers than women. Nature, nurture, philosophical, political and social arguments can be made to explain, dispute or verify all of this. That’s not the point of this post.

The point is that we are talking about it. One participant in the discussion kept track of how many times men spoke and how many times women spoke in the meeting and found it proportional- men and women making room for each other, men differing with men, women differing with women, and topics ambling from gender politics to occupational opportunities, and from communication strategies to structural problems and recruitment realities.

Moving forward, we want to look at norms and policies changes, as well as to go deeper into the subject so we can come to a consensus on the main issue- that we are an actively feminist community, dedicated to listening to each other, seeing in ourselves our failings as others see them, and learning together ways out of old and destructive patterns.

We need to keep bringing this subject up- in our meetings, in our meal-time discussions, in the smoke shack, whenever someone feels shunted aside, or shut up by someone else. That’s the commitment we made last night.

Villages in the Sky, a festival in development, is using Acorn as a testbed for treehouse designs. According to the design blog, “The vision is to create a village of treehouses, in age appropriate loops- one for the adults and one for kids- to be enjoyed and played in by all.”  The Acorn project will work out the  kinks for a larger scale project for the week-long Villages in the Sky festival planned for the end of August 2010.

As described to us, Villages in the Sky seems to have three major goals- to be an “air” festival analogous to Burning Man (fire) and the Rainbow Gathering (earth); to promote wind energy as an alternative to nuclear and carbon fuel; and to move beyond the “leave no trace” ethic of those festivals by having a concrete impact- namely, leaving behind fun, attractive energy-generating wind structures.

Pilgrim, formerly of Twin Oaks and East Wind, has been directing a crew  clearing out debris from some old, fallen down trees and preparing the site in the woods behind Heartwood. Meanwhile, Gpaul, Ginger, Shal, and others are working up designs. We expect a lot of bustle this summer building the treehouses and getting ready for the Natural Building Workshop in October. And then a new seed office for SESE in 2010?

In the last year, a strong membership group has coalesced at Acorn in a way it hasn’t been able to boast since its founding. The current membership of fifteen has over a hundred-fifty years of community experience, gathering together former members of Twin Oaks, East Wind, the Catholic Worker, Dandelion, and Ganas. Many of us knew each other long before joining Acorn. We are excited by the expanding possibilities of a groovy seed business, our proximity to the increasing critical mass of the central Virginia communities movement, to the beautiful land, to our extended network of friends who live nearby, and to our previously existing strong personal bonds.

This is a quote from the interview Paul did with our friend Joanna for her senior project (a broad study for psychology of several secular intentional communities). It’s one member’s neat summation of “the essence of Acorn” or rather, one essence, since he himself claims a certain anti-essentialist temper:

Please tell a story about something that has happened here that you think illustrates the character of this community.

“Uh, I don’t know. For the past several months, I’ve decided what I want to do every day and then done it. So does everybody else. I don’t know, I’m not much into deciding what community is like in some sort of essential way. I guess the thing that sticks out most for me is that we’re a pretty self-directed group of individuals who then have conversations with each other in order to bring ourselves into alignment. And the best example of that is that everybody’s sort of doing what they think they need to do and then talking to each other about it and it keeps going. Like, the community keeps going. The things that need doing mostly get done. It’s been steadily improving. Progress. The business has been growing. You know, order’s arising out of chaos. Maybe that’s what Acorn is all about. Order arises out of chaos.”

Acorn will be the work site of a 3-day intensive workshop on straw bale construction the week-end of  October 23rd-25th organized by Twin Oaks.

Twin Oaks Community would like to invite you to attend a three day earth shelter workshop. Come learn about straw bale construction from expert instructors while experiencing our legendary hospitality. Our workshop will be a fun and informative experience you won’t soon forget!

We will present both hands-on experience opportunities and “classroom” style learning while we build and learn together. We will give you the explanations you need to understand not only what you are physically working on, but will also help you grasp the wider perspective on how to build as a whole, with an emphasis on natural building and green design, including passive solar.

Our instructors, Steve Kemble and Mollie Curry, are professional teachers and experts in the field of natural building design and construction. Together. they form a team where your learning style is respected, your questions get answered, and you have a good time learning effective ways of building energy- and material-efficient, beautiful, connected-feeling shelters!

In this workshop. you will come away with a solid introduction to the basics of straw bale building construction, earth plaster application and passive solar design.

Workshop features include:

August was full of tomatoes. We still have some ripening now - two buckets-full came in just before our first frost warning. They were happier in August, though. It was odd, actually, to see so many tomatoes being slaughtered. Tops and rot spots gutted, whole tomatoes quartered ruthlessly and thrown into buckets for seed processing, laid out onto trays for drying, sweltering in the heat of the oven or dehydrator... many made it straight to the serving bowl, perhaps paired with fresh Twin Oaks mozzarella and sweet Genovese basil, then to our mouths... ahh, so many tomato salads.

The lettuce is coming in waves now, but before it was tomatoes, more tomatoes, and how about another tomato salad? Delicious. I sure am okay with seasonal eating, let me tell you. I convinced some of the girls to have fun with their drying prep and this tomato-star was one result. Another tray ended up looking like red and yellow zebra stripes.

August was great for flowers. I planted dozens of sunflowers back in June, and they were real happy by the time I got back to the farm August 1st. The butterflies were happy, the Japanese beetles were happy... and my camera, too. There was one towering, massive, shoulder-leafed mammoth sunflower that nodded you down the driveway and provided a welcome shelter to dozens of beetles.

There were darker sunflowers, sultry and mysterious, brooding and deeply vibrant in their rich bronze tones. Some of the sunflowers were edible, and I'm sure the birds appreciated the gesture. The darker sunflowers are my Mom's favorite.

After so many weeks of summer and brilliance, the sunflowers were disced into the fields to provide nutrients to the soil for fall plantings and cover crops.

The first of the backorder updates - I threw a belly dance party at Acorn back in JUNE, and failed to share any pictures. Here's a good group pic, after everyone had been dressed up, paraded around, shimmied and shaken and left sweaty and smiling. The lesson went well, the lighting was ambient, the mood ridiculous and proud. Look how gorgeous we are!

I haven't been spending a lot of time on this blog lately. I wanted to issue a warning: I've been starting to rely on back-order posts - stuff that's been sitting around Waiting to be written about since (in some cases) over a month ago. Psh! That's horrible. You should have Up To Date adventures to read about!

So. As soon as I get some free time, I'm going to enter a Marathon posting session and get out All my recent pictures, stories and recipes to share with you.

I think I'm up to the challenge of keeping you current on what's happening around the farm and in my life leading up to my new home and land.

Thanks for your patience :)

Several weeks ago, as I was making my first batches of jam, Jon ventured into the woods after a heavy rain to hunt mushrooms. He came back one evening with a big haul - buckets full of chicken of the woods, and a basket full of oyster mushrooms. They took up a good quarter of the cutting block, and provided a feast for the eyes while Ryan and I finished making jam for the evening.

He also harvested a small bucket's worth of paw paws (a native fruit that tastes similar to banana and is more of a custard in consistency), though I'll report in on those later.

Needless to say, we enjoyed mushrooms for dinner that night. Afterward Jon dried much of the harvest to enjoy later. Yum!

I took fresh notes last night after re-reading a chapter of Gaia's Garden and found this information on nasturtiums:

-they produce a great abundance of mulch
-they ward off unwanted insects
-the leaves and flowers are edible and spicy additions to a salad

I can't believe I took so long to post a part 2! There are so many bugs to share :)

I stumbled upon this bug back in late May climbing through a brush pile near the orchard. It was about 2" long (Big!) and had a white splatter looking design on its back along with two vivid, outlined spots over what would be a person's shoulder blades.

I prepared this collage for your enjoyment :) If anyone knows what type of bug this is, let me know! It was sure fun to look at.

Living on a farm is great. It's a lot easier to appreciate vegetables when you eat them in context, and there's no pressure toward conventional dress - like shoes, for instance.

I love walking around barefoot, feeling the rich earth of the garden beds, or the dew on the grass in the morning - all the things that would normally be unpleasant just seem Invigorating. I know more deeply what time of year it is. Right now it's practically raining acorns, and I'm reminded of my Mom stepping on Legos scattered throughout my brothers' rooms back when we were kids. At least acorns are roundish. I can also feel the leaves shuffling under my feet, and the food that I'm eating raw isn't nearly as sweet as summer's produce.

Life isn't bad at all.

<3

Nasturtiums are awesome. They're incredibly beautiful, offer a vibrant color to the garden, the leaves look like they're floating above water, Both flower and leaf are edible and give a spicy Zip to salads, and they make a wonderful picture...

I also just read something about their use in permaculture gardens, but I can't remember what for the life of me. Instead, feast your eyes on this gorgeous image.

Another plant that brings fiery colors into the garden at this time of year is Roselle. In the hibiscus family, it's what puts the Zing in Red Zinger tea. The mature flowers are beautiful, but what's better is the immature flower setup - the green pod is surrounded by deep red calyxes that are Edible and have a complex and exciting flavor. The red parts of the plant at this immature stage can be used to make a yummy jam (keep an eye out for a recipe later), or (if you're me) you can just cut them off the plant and munch on them plain. Yum.

Hey folks. I'm not sure how many of you are out there, reading my blog now and then. For those of you keeping track, you may see a new name popping up pretty frequently. Right around the Heritage Harvest Festival I had the pleasure of meeting, mud-dancing, and falling in love with a beautiful woman called Nux, who's now staying at Acorn.

We're courting the idea of a springtime move out to Dancing Rabbit or Red Earth out in northeastern Missouri. We'd both like to build our own little eco-hobbit home and grow our own food and live without so much electricity and plastic. Don't worry - the blog won't die! I'll still want to share my adventures (which will multiply rapidly!) with you and keep you up to date on new delicious recipes and photos.

I'll keep you posted as we make plans. In the meantime, here are our beautiful, smiling faces. If you hear vague, starry-eyed references to "lady" "Nux" "my love" or the more conservative "partner" this is the gorgeous creature to whom I'm referring. And now back to our regularly scheduled program!

Hey friends,

The new Mercantile store at Dancing Rabbit (an incredible ecovillage focused on sustainable living) is a FINALIST in a competition to win $10,000 to help purchase wind and solar power for their store.

Please take a look at the link below and consider (quickly and easily) signing up for an Ideablob account so you can vote for them and help them win this money. Go to Ideablob to register and vote!

Please also pass this on to as many friends and family and coworkers as you can! They're up against a larger company, and we want to show 'em that our social network of community-friendly friends is bigger. Thanks for your help :)

Feel free to e-mail me if you need help signing up. I hope you'll help me support this great venture. I mean, who Wouldn't want a little general store nearby that's totally off the grid, and offers everything they need to be the most conscientious consumer possible?

Hope you're all having a great autumn.

Love,
Joan

Despite the chilling weather, our basil is still going strong. Luckily, a few lovely Acorners harvested heavily back on the same day that we harvested autumn olives.

Look at that delicious basket full of pre-pesto goodness! So many nutrients in there. A lot of it was made into pesto, as basil doesn't dry very well. Just recently I read that such herbs can be rinsed and dried off, then chopped up (or left whole, depending on their size) and mixed into oil or water and Poured Into Ice Cube Trays. What a way to enjoy good herbs during the winter! I'm not sure if any of that basil is left unprocessed, but I'm certainly going to check.

Another wonder of the day was part of a butterfly wing that was somehow pressed onto a basil leaf. It was beautiful, if sad, and I managed to capture it in a picture. Thank goodness for the macro function. How else could I even Approach the beauty that is life on a farm?

Ingredients:

-Long sleeve shirt
-Long pants
-Footwear
-Headgear
-Another long sleeve shirt
-GLOVES
-Everbearing/Fall producing raspberry

Directions:

Brandish gloves, don headgear. Bravely enter raspberry patch. Duck to avoid sultry bowing canes of delicious fruit. Remove gloves once in secure position to enjoy sweet, sweet fruits of fall. Tell no one.

Put gloves back on. Back out slowly, holding headgear as furious raspberries try to rip it from your skull. Gently pull arms back, hearing thorns pull at threads Unsuccessfully.

Walk away with a smile and red-stained lips. Great success.

It's starting to feel much more like Autumn. The Heritage Harvest Festival is finally over, and though we weathered a tropical storm to celebrate it, the turnout was still fantastic. I learned a lot about fruit trees, saw hundreds of people enjoying delicious heritage produce, and got to dance in really big mud puddles with a lovely lady named Nux. I forgot my camera, though. Instead, I've got another recent picture for you to enjoy.

Nux, Abby, Ryan and I had a harvest day yesterday. One of the things we worked on were our autumn olives, which are great for jam and grow near the road in Abundance. It was a beautiful thing to see them so wonderfully prolific, and to fill our baskets.

Don't you agree?

I walked outside the other day, in the middle of the afternoon, and it was cold. It was not the chill of a summer evening. It was the pervasive, slightly humid enveloping cool of autumn. Not only that, but the front drive/porch had been swept of debris two weeks earlier, and had remained clean - but that afternoon, it was scattered with fresh fallen leaves.

Fall is coming. The days are shortening. I hope you've got someone to cuddle with on standby, a good apple crisp recipe at hand, and a trusty furnace.

Yesterday we celebrated Ira's 60th birthday with a surprise party. I threw it together only two days in advance, with much help from Abe when it came to food prep and purchasing.

Many of Ira's beloved friends were there, a few even drove out from Shannon Farm. Ira was completely and totally surprised. Good food was enjoyed by all, and I slept damn well once the night was finally over.

I spent Saturday at Twin Oaks' Women's Gathering doing henna for many beautiful ladies. I was thrilled to barter henna for a gorgeous wire-wrapped unakite jasper pendant. I put it on a gold chain once I got home and have been wearing it delightedly ever since.

Sunday I was in Richmond shopping for the party and picking up FOUR new 6' tall bookshelves from my friend April (thanks April!) which will Greatly increase the organization, presentation, and productivity of our library.

And there you have it. Several nights ago I laid on the trampoline with Abe, looking at the stars. The sky was so clear - it was one of those nights where you can see the milky way. My next intangible project is to learn the constellations.

In other news, I'm making updates to the Acorn web site, and found our old policy binder. I'm sure Marielle will be thrilled to see all the old policy that we thought was lost.

Something I find myself doing often at Acorn is stopping in the middle of something to look around. Often it's the sunset cutting a brilliant curtain of light over half of the treeline, or the moon rising behind the trees around Heartwood, and I want to walk out to the fields to see it more clearly. Or it'll be twilight in the winter, and the trees cast a beautiful silhouette against the blue palette of night.

Last week it was a double rainbow. It was the first rain we'd gotten in awhile, and it didn't last long. I walked outside with Drea and River to watch, and we stood there for a good ten minutes or more, just looking. The first rainbow was vivid and bright. We could see both ends of it, and further out... another, lighter rainbow. The clouds were stark in comparison, some of them weary leftovers of the storm slumping away, some silvery, inspired to carve out a tenacious edge on the colorful stage of skyspace.

I love living somewhere with so much beauty that it constantly stops you dead in your tracks.

I've seen a lot of awesome bugs at Acorn. I think I've already posted pictures of the first, awhile back - it was black with tiny white spots and two BIG white spots over its shoulders.

This is the next (or the first official) in the series.

I saw this bug in late June while working in the herb garden, and suddenly felt like I was inside an old Zelda game. Its shiny, metallic-looking armor reminded me of similar shiny-armored exoskeletal bug bosses from Link to the Past, especially the crazy worm creatures from the desert. The colors were what struck me first, though - despite most of its surface area being black, it had striking, solidly yellow Feet and vivid lava-red plate edges.

I love seeing awesome parts of nature close-up like this. It makes me feel like I really am part of a magical world. Sometimes I just can't believe creatures like this, so vibrant, so perfectly formed, really exist.

Now that I have uploaded over 100 new photos of Acorn alone, I can try to post daily to show you these lovely new images.

The first? Comes from the oldest batch - herb harvesting in late June with Abe and Marielle.

Abe and I spent one morning right around solstice harvesting kitchen herbs. First, we harvested oregano, and smelled like pizza. Afterward, we harvested spearmint, and then smelled like toothpaste. Each time we filled HUGE bowls with piles and abundant mounds of herbs. What a good feeling!

The second photo is from several days later, St. John's Eve, said to be the best day of the year for harvesting herbs for magickal purposes. Marielle and I spent much of the day snipping away at the overflowing herb beds. The scents and colors were lovely, and I was excited to be around someone who knew what to do with the plants we were harvesting. Now if only the mosquitoes hadn't shown up.

This is another call to any faithful (or not so faithful) reader who wants to receive snail mail. If you REALLY want to know what I'm posting on my blog, I can send you my posts through the post (ha!). Otherwise, send me your address by e-mail or comment and I'll write about whatever.

You can make crazy requests, too. Like that I only write sonnets or haiku, that I only talk about things that are purple or smell bad... mostly I just want to write to people, so if you're interested, let me know! It's so much fun to get letters in the mail :)

The days are flying by - as I suppose they should, during the heat and bustle of summer. Tomato canning is happening at Twin Oaks, and I helped River pick tomatoes from our fields one morning as we talked about my clearness happening later in the day.

I've been getting back to all the projects I left behind at Acorn in June, and it feels good. I've neglected my rune study though it's been on my mind often enough. I've also neglected my blog and my general personal computer interests - you'll be happy to hear I uploaded Hundreds of pictures from the past two and a half months onto my Flickr page, though I've yet to finish tagging them.

Soon enough there will be new posts (hopefully daily) accompanied by pictures on the blog of all the beautiful things I've seen lately.

In the meantime, I'll be waking up closer to 7am every day in a fierce attempt to regulate my sleep schedule, and will be either doing yoga, weightlifting, or running every morning to help get some energy for the coming day. Support and kudos welcome!

Love and apologies for slacking at my posting duties,

Joan

I was out tending the plum tree yesterday and today, bringing in loads of compost to cover up the cardboard I laid down a month ago. If all our trees get a good helping of nutrients and some help keeping weeds away, maybe next summer they'll be happier and disease-free! A girl can dream.

It was pretty hot so far today, but there was a Nice breeze as well... aside from the excitement of jams and preserving happening in the near future, I think I'm about ready for fall and winter, cozy months bundled up against the cold, tending fires.

There are still plenty of beautiful things happening here at Acorn, though. Morning glories are blooming, sunflowers nod in the breeze, and butterfly bushes are humming with activity. You can't tell I did any weeding in the herb garden last month... it's completely overgrown again, though that also means we have a lot of herbs to harvest. What a problem :)

I'm back at Acorn and trying to surround myself with good/healthy food opportunities so I don't revert to refined-sugar cravings and long nights of baking sweets.

One delicious snack that's enjoyed regularly here is popcorn. We buy corn that's particularly suited for popping, and we buy it in bulk - we keep a five gallon bucket around all the time.

When the time comes for a tasty snack (and a movie), we (or usually Abe, who Rocks at making delicious popcorn)take a thick bottomed pot, pour a light covering of oil on the bottom, put in three kernels, and turn the burner on until those first three pop, then we pour in enough kernels to cover the bottom of the pot.

It helps to shake the pot around some while the corn is popping - this scoots the kernels that may be sticking to the bottom and keeps them from burning.

Once you hear the pops slowing down to 1-2 seconds between each, turn the burner off and pour the popcorn into a BIG bowl. Sprinkle generously with salt, nutritional yeast, and dill (I know, sounds weird! But it tastes great). Abe made a batch two nights ago with some type of spicy pepper in it, and that was pretty delicious, too.

Once the toppings have been poured on, curl your fingers underneath the popcorn around the edges of the bowl and turn all the popcorn over on itself. This helps distribute the toppings without letting them all slide to the bottom.

Repeat to taste, then consume!

Note: You don't really need oil... try getting used to popcorn without butter or oil, it's much healthier!

Yesterday morning I went blueberry picking for the first time, and ate more blueberries than I had in my whole life - probably about a dozen. Ha!

It was amazing to be surrounded by so many berries. I found one part of the small orchard where the bushes had grown together in an arching forest passageway that was magical and a pleasure to spend time in. I wandered through covered corridors, with large, ripe clusters of berries hanging in abundance.

At one point I rubbed the blue dust off a berry on the top of the pile to find that it was really Black underneath. The contrast of one black berry on a mound of blue was startling and beautiful.

I wish I had brought my camera, but unfortunately, I left it in Richmond.

On the way home Ben, Drea, and I talked about making jam and I suggested that we make Bruise Jam- black and blueberry jam :) Ha. I wonder if our blackberries are still producing. I hope I didn't miss the whole blackberry growing season.

Alright.

#1 My friend Russell adopted the calico kitten from the farm. It is super adorable to see a large, large man with a tiny, cute kitten. Especially because Russell's nickname is Kittenheart.

#2 I will have a few more (and some of the last!) kitten pictures posted soon.

#3 Our cucurbits are flowering in my Mom's garden, though I feel like everything happens more slowly in her garden than it should.

#4 The sugar snap peas are dead. Many of them were knocked over and severely damaged in a major thunderstorm.

#5 Squirrels and/or dogs are messing with every garden bed, and the sunflower patch has been almost completely unsuccessful.

#6 The herbs and flowers I planted did not sprout, though I'm unsure of the optimal time to seed them, so it was somewhat expected.

#7 Rain is coming pretty regularly this summer, which is a blessing and a joy.

#8 The three tomato plants I bought from Ukrop's are all doing very well and are producing tomatoes. Note to self: Starting tomatoes from seed requires one persons (or more!) full attention starting in January(ish).

#9 I wish I knew what flowers were blooming right now, but I don't.

#10 Our mint bed is doing FABULOUS and makes me very happy. It has provided us with delicious home-made mint iced tea and fresh mojitos.

#11 Acorn has sunflowers. Some of them were planted by me. This makes me incredibly, amazingly happy.

20 days! 20 days since my last post. I've been putting it off quite a bit.

Well, time passes quickly in the city with less sense of accomplishment than 20 days at the farm. I've watched the garden progress slowly here and it makes me wish I'd seen it more than once every few weeks early this spring, that I could have been with it all along, or tending more of the gardens at Acorn.

My nails are long and awkward on the keyboard because I haven't been doing a lot of manual labor. I went to the gym with a friend and found my muscles sore the next day. I want to be home! I want to be using my body in pursuit of work that will further nourish it.

I have accomplished things while I've been here, many things involving the computer - I've been doing work towards HHF (the heritage harvest festival put on by Southern Exposure and TJ's Center for Historic Plants), the Center for Rural Culture site, my friend Karan's site for her jewelry business, my henna site, my personal site, and a new blog focusing on runestudy - you can find it at runes.hennalion.com if you're interested.

I'm VERY excited to be going back to Acorn soon and looking at it as a true home, as a place I'll be planning to Stay for awhile. More than ever I'm feeling strong urges to continue to better myself, to do yoga and lift weights on top of normal manual labor that comes with farm life, to learn as much as I can about our fruit trees, about preserving food (almost tomato canning time!!)... I want to build a simple temporary structure and camp for a little while, enjoy being in nature in simple, practical ways (i.e. ones that don't leave me covered in bug bites) and study older cultures that lived more simply than we did.

I'm going to end this post to try to think of more succinct updates that may be of interest.

Abby (a lovely Acorn intern who has since moved on) snapped these beautiful photos around Acorn with my camera before she left. I want to share them with you :)

Been thinking a lot about eating healthy? Other Americans have, too. SustainableTable.org is here to help - instead of focusing on the negative (industrial farming, rbgh, chickens in cages), they help support and spread awareness for a celebration of local food raised on small farms with good business practices. They're all about a sustainable table full of healthy, cruelty-free food with reasonable pay for farmers and a low- or no-dependence on fossil fuels for transportation.

Look at their web site to find support for your healthy eating habits. They'll share recipes, news about the local/green food movement, and ideas on shifting toward better ways to get the good food we need.

It's been too long since my last post... as I looked at my Blogger "Dashboard" it told me that this blog had last been published on June 24th, and that I had made a total of 111 posts. Wow! That's a lot! Over half a year, I suppose it should be closer to 175 if I were going more for daily updates, but 111 isn't bad!

Thanks to those of you who have been keeping up with my adventures and leaving comments. I like knowing that some of my friends are actually checking in. It's too hard otherwise for me to keep up with so many different circles of awesome people... dancers, fire spinners, high school friends, college friends, henna friends, people I've met on my travels, and people from different intentional communities... I'm sure you all share the same threads of interest, and am glad some of you have been keeping an eye on me.

Please, leave more comments! If you have ideas for things you'd like me to post or write about (or if you'd like this to become a collective blog so you can write about similar things), let me know!

Soon this blog may become fed through a personal web site. I purchased hennalion.com earlier this year in case I wanted to use it for my henna business, though I don't think I will (I've been using artisanhenna.com instead). HennaLion would be good for a personal site, though, where I could keep this blog and a gallery of Flickr slideshows, along with resource pages for people searching for information, and things that I learn at the farm all separated out - gardening pages, herbal pages, diy projects, etc.

Please let me know what you think about any of those ideas. Also let me know if you're tired of the Internet and want me to send you snail mail, as I've been writing a lot of letters lately and have been excited to make dozens of my own envelopes to send them out in. You can post your address in a comment here or e-mail me at leonine.lotus@gmail.com.

Thanks for reading :)

Love

Marielle and I harvested a bunch of herbs today, AND I got to see Tina James' Magic Evening Primrose blossoming while sphinx moths with HUGE proboscis(es?) eat from them. Talk about magic.

Apparently today was St. John's Eve, the best day of the year for harvesting herbs for magical purposes.

We harvested:

Bee Balm (Bergamot)
Black Hollyhocks
Catmint (Catnip)
Lavendar
Lemon Basil
Peppermint
Poppy Seed
Sweet Annie
Tansy
Thyme

Duncan, if I had known ahead of time that this was a magickal day, I SO would have tried to get you out here. It was incredible. I'm sorry you missed out on the herb harvest :) You'll have to come out to Acorn with me in August and do some harvesting for yourself, especially for a personal dream pillow or sachet.

Marielle showed me soapwort, which you can make shampoo from! Ah! So Cool!

Also today I weeded the thornless blackberry patch, but I think I already wrote about that earlier... so much happening! The days are flying by and there is so much that I want to cram in.

Possibly one of the most exciting reasons I look forward to living at Acorn is that I know I can be around year after year, as all these incredible things happen in nature time and time again. It's a constant drama in the form of blossoms and harvests, scents and flavors, this love affair with the earth. What other life could I want?

Happy solstice! I hope you enjoyed all the sunlight you could on the longest day of the year this past Saturday. I spent the day working in various gardens, and spent the rainy evening thinning out the long row of sunflowers. Yesterday I transplanted them, and they seem to be surviving - I also seeded new sunflowers in with them, just in case they don't do well. I still have a bucket full of plants, though... I only got about 2/3 of the total thinned back into the ground.

I've just spent the past two hours weeding the thornless blackberry patch, and it's looking a lot better - there are still young trees growing in there, but one side is drastically improved, anyway. It'll take another go or two before it's really shaping up.

Yesterday I joined Abe in the herb garden where we harvested a Lot of oregano for drying. We smelled like pizza (yum!) until we moved on to harvesting the spearmint (then we just smelled like toothpaste). I knew that you could pinch the flowers off most herbs to help them grow longer, but I learned from Marielle (who joined us later) that you could cut back Half the plant (preferably at a joint, so the leaves could branch out and keep growing) and that this would help it grow more thickly. It's nice to have people around who know the nitty gritty details of getting the most out of an herb garden. Soon I'll be learning to make salves and essences!! (Lemon basil, here I come) I wonder if the small cuttings I gave to Heather last fall were able to take root...

While we harvested oregano, a fox wandered nearby underneath the mulberry tree and feasted on fallen berries. It hung around for a good ten minutes before scooting into the trees nearby... it was beautiful, too, with a long, thick tail that had a dark stripe down it, rough grayish-brown fur and a lighter gray face.

I weeded the sunflowers today, they're getting to be a few feet tall. I wonder how I'll stake them...

I also had help identifying burdock on the property and am going to harvest some of the leaf and root with Drea for medicinal use... we'll also be harvesting red raspberry leaf for tea. Yay edible wild things!

The thornless blackberry patch is in DIRE need of weeding... though I did have a good amount of help from current interns/wwoofers in clearing out the brush under the plum tree by the road - it's actually recognizable as a fruit tree from far away! It's such a thrill to see it so distinguised from its surroundings. Unfortunately, the saplings I cleared out from under it turned out to be young hazelnut trees, spread out from a line of larger hazelnuts next to the plum. I identified them halfway through the cutting process, but kept cutting them down when I saw the big row of them... though I found out later that the young saplings were producing a lot more nuts than the mature trees. :(

Tomorrow I will put sheets or tarps under the plum tree so the ripe fruits can fall on them without rotting right away.

I also found out that the autumn olive trees produce a Lot and can be used for jam, and saw that the wild grapes are producing fruit. There are some gorgeous black-eyed susans down the old driveway path near the grapes, too. I still haven't identified the persimmon trees...

What else today? I weeded the two little strips of marigolds and did a bunch of computer work. I also got a bunch of books from the library on fruit, berries, and pruning. Come late winter I'll be READY with some sharp, pointy objects to help clean up our fruit trees :)